THERE was no naked dead woman in the little clearing, only dank grasses and bracken, the undergrowth partly flattened near the centre where it abutted a stone reef.
So she hadn’t been dead but had got to her feet and wandered off.
Or was dead and someone had retrieved her.
Or the story was bulls—.
Constable Pam Murphy turned to the witness. "The light’s tricky. You’re sure you saw a body?"
"Lying by that rock," Jan Overton said, fists on belligerent hips.
Pam had disliked the wildlife officer on sight, but it didn’t mean she was lying.
Glancing around, reluctant to enter the clearing for fear of disturbing possible evidence, she said: "I’ll see you back at the house, Jan."
When Overton was gone, she walked the perimeter, sketching and photographing, then returned to the house.
Overton and the elderly householder were in the kitchen, a chilly place, the domain of someone who has little money and failing eyesight.
Dust, crumbs, crusty forks, low wattage light bulbs, greasy smears across the table and benches. The women sat amid it, waiting as tea steeped in a dented pot and biscuits staled on a chipped plate.
Mrs McIntosh was astounded to see her. "Are you the meals-on-wheels?"
Pam smiled. "Police, Mrs McIntosh."
The old woman worked her mouth. "I didn’t do anything."
"Of course not," Pam said.
"I was wondering if you’d seen anyone wandering around in the trees behind your house."
Mrs McIntosh stared wonderingly. "who?"
Overton stepped in to help Pam, taking a frail hand and stroking it. "a young woman, perhaps? or anyone at all?"
Distress showed in the old woman’s eyes. "Are you from the council?"
"The council? no."
"I use tank water," the old woman said, turning her attention to Pam Murphy. "I’m not on mains water. so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it."
Pam tried a new tack. "perhaps you can familiarise me with this area. There’s a dirt road over there, beyond the trees, Waterloo’s in that direction, the council rubbish tip is over there … Do you have any close neighbours, Mrs McIntosh? It’s lovely and quiet out here. You most probably know all of them, what kinds of cars they drive?"
She bristled. "where?"
"Mrs McIntosh, did you hear or see anything suspicious last night or this morning? Someone in the trees, strange lights or sounds or cars?"
Overton was glaring at Pam now.
Realising it was a lost cause, the young detective eased out of the conversation, and the house, and sat in her car, planning her moves.
The next step was Missing Persons, local hospitals and, if that came to nothing, a background check on Jan Overton.
Meanwhile, she’d take the long route back to Waterloo – skirt around the nature reserve and back along Waterloo-Dandenong rd.
Mrs McIntosh’s road deteriorated, after a few hundred metres, into powdery drifts and bone-shaking corrugations.
Pam turned left at the T-intersection, finding herself on another chopped-about farmers’ road, which led her around the far side of the reserve.
Here she found a gate in a falling-down fence hung with fox pelts, and a bare patch of ground where anyone mad enough to stroll through the reserve could park.
She got out and made a skirting examination of the dirt. a faint suggestion of tyre tracks – but why wouldn’t there be?
No drag marks. no blood that she could see.
Maybe lovers had come here last night; something went wrong and the girl ran off.
Or they had drunken sex in the clearing and she was left behind to sleep it off.
Or nothing happened at all.
Pam drove along to the end of the track, relieved to find bitumen for the fast run back to Waterloo.
But after only a kilometre she saw a fancy gateway defaced by graffiti and there was her CIU colleague, Scobie Sutton, gloomily scribbling in his notebook. she pulled over, got out. "Scobie."
Sutton was tall, morose and thin, his black suit gaping and flapping around his fleshless limbs. "Pam."
She gestured at the graffiti. "Breaking the back of local crime, I see?"
Sutton was literal-minded and almost took the question seriously, but then a smile transformed his face. "Something like that."
"Where’s your car?"
"I came with Constable Tankard. He’s up at the house."
Pam lingered, yarning with Scobie.
He hadn’t seen anyone – certainly not a naked woman, he told her, blushing a little.
Then, almost immediately, they heard a voice, "Help me, please help me."
Startled, they glanced across the road.
Jan Overton’s victim, thought Pam, beginning to move.
Young, naked, filthy, she must have stumbled through bushland to get here.
Sutton followed her across.
The woman was clasping the top fence wire with both hands, rocking and keening like an abandoned child.
As though the notional obstruction of the fence was a kind of last straw.
"It’s OK, you’re safe now," Pam crooned, helping her bend between the wires.
"I was raped, someone raped me," the young woman said.
Scobie draped his suit coat around the thin shoulders and Pam noted the scratches automatically, the blood, the bruises, looking for drifts of dry semen.
Then they were at the car.
She gave the woman a drink from a bottle of water.
"My name is Pam, and that’s Scobie," she said. "We’re police officers."
The woman stiffened at the word "police", as if she might bolt. "I’m Chloe," she whispered finally.
"Do you know who did this to you, Chloe?"
At that moment, a police car came down the driveway from the house, the engine decelerating, tyres growling on the gravel as the car nosed through the gate posts.
John Tankard got out, a man with a barrelly torso and vast thighs barely contained inside his constable’s uniform. "What’s up?"
The response was instantaneous.
Bucking violently in Pam’s arms, Chloe screamed: "keep him away from me, keep him away from me."
