Dale Morton, the cop on the desk, scribbled down the information and explained that yes, Warren Robbie would need to come in to make a formal statement but that he, Morton, would put the report into the system straight away and see what turned up.
The girl looked deeply concerned at this, twisting her scrawny ponytail around her fingers.
‘Often these cars are found burned out in the bush somewhere within forty-eight hours,’ Morton explained. ‘Kids just mucking around and having fun. But with a car like that someone may actually want to keep it. Hard car to hide, mind you.’
The girl—Stacy Porter, I found out later—smiled at Morton encouragingly, looking up at him through her mascara-coated lashes.
‘How long you been with your boyfriend?’ he asked her.
‘Three years. Almost too long. You know what I mean?’ Her tinkling laugh chimed through the station but her movements were jerky. This was not a girl who relaxed very often, I surmised. She had the wary look of a beaten dog. ‘We’re really just like good friends now.’
‘Oh yes, I hear ya. Yep, uh-huh.’
A now uncharacteristically diligent Morton took down a few more details and then she left, a cloud of cheap perfume lingering in her wake.
I thought about Stacy and the alleged theft for the rest of the day. I knew in my gut that car wasn’t stolen, but that in itself was not so unusual; playing the insurance companies was almost a national pastime. It was the girl. I sensed Stacy’s brash front was hiding something far more sinister. I would have bet anything that her boyfriend assaulted her. The smattering of bruises that I’d clocked on her upper arms was a dead giveaway. Again, not so unusual. Unfortunately, over half our cases had an element of domestic abuse, but it seemed risky to send the girlfriend you abused to a cop station. What if she saw it as an opportunity to ask for help?
After Stacy left, I hit the road, dutifully completing my patrol shift at the local shopping centre, which was essentially an exercise in tolerance as I listened to Constable Toledo drone on about his in-laws for the best part of the afternoon. Rather than going home after, I headed back to the station to see what I could find out about Warren Robbie. Not much, it seemed. He’d left school just shy of his seventeenth birthday and got his driver’s licence the day he turned seventeen. He’d held down a job with the same bricklayer ever since and had applied for an ABN a year earlier. He split his time between the original employer and doing jobs for himself. Insurance on the Audi was taken out two months earlier. He’d purchased the car four months before that. In cash, from what I could tell. There were no records of a payment but nothing to suggest he’d have access to that much money either. Certainly his bricklaying salary hadn’t paid for the car.
Driving home later, I detoured past the house Robbie rented. A dark wooden cabin on the outskirts of Smithson, about five k’s from my place, it was set back from the road and surrounded by thick bush. A lonely outside light was on. I sat in the car for almost half an hour, watching the shadows moving through the house.
The next morning, I got in early and deliberately loitered near the front desk. At about eight, Warren Robbie came in. I knew it was him from the ID photos I’d seen the day before but his face was now half covered with a rangy beard and his hair was longer. His left eye was shaded by a large bruise and he wore a long-sleeved jumper despite the temperature outside already passing thirty degrees. Charming and personable, he went through the motions of reporting the theft, joking about having to catch the bus in this heat and politely wondering whether it was okay if he contacted the insurance agency to ‘get the ball rolling on that stuff’.
‘Pretty hot out to be wearing a jumper like that,’ I said from the back of the office.
He looked up, and in the harsh fluorescent light, I could see the soft shine of make-up that had been carefully applied to hide bruises that were clearly far worse than they had initially appeared.
Warren Robbie’s mouth pulled into a half-smile. His eyes glittered and, against my will, I found myself looking away. My body shifted into flight mode, my in-built radar deeming him unsafe.
‘Guess I’m not that hot yet. Got out of bed and came straight here.’
Morton looked back and forth between the two of us, irritated at my comment and seemingly unsure what to do next. ‘Anyway,’ he said, glaring at me, ‘thanks for coming in, Mr Robbie. I said to the girl—ah, Stacy—that the statement needs to come from you just ’cause all the paperwork is in your name, so if you can sign the stat dec we’ll be all set. Just your autograph here, please, and you can be on your way.’
Morton laughed awkwardly and Robbie acquiesced, smiling along. He sent a short glare in my direction before leaving.
‘Thanks, Dale, my man! Nice doing business with you.’
For a couple of days I pushed Robbie and his missing Audi out of my mind. I drove past the dark little house a few times but nothing seemed out of order. About a week after he came to the station a new blue ute appeared in the driveway. There was something about him that my body seemed to physically reject but I had court cases to prepare for, traffic hours to log, and I’d just moved in with Scott, which was taking some getting used to. I’d never shared a room with anyone before and I was surprised every morning to find Scott there. Him moving next to me. His breathing. I was pregnant at the time too, not that I knew it, and my body was responding as if it had been shot by a tranquilliser. But busy as I was, Warren Robbie lurked in my mind like a disease I couldn’t quite flush from my system. It wasn’t the insurance fraud keeping me up at night. It was the fear in Stacy Porter’s eyes when she’d realised that she would have to tell Robbie that he needed to come in himself. It was the quiet evil that I’d sensed in his own dark eyes.
And then, about two weeks later, on an especially hot night, I pulled over a ute with a broken tail-light just outside of Smithson. The windows were down and straight away I knew it was them. The long yellow tail of Stacy’s plait hung in parallel with the undone seatbelt. She’d been crying and one side of her face was red but I went through the motions of explaining the issue with the tail-light, writing out the ticket and checking Robbie’s licence. His presence was overpowering; I’d never felt so repulsed by another person. His anger burned through the air between us and I was unsure how to finish the exchange. I didn’t want to let him go. I wanted something on him, something real. I wanted Robbie put away. Permanently. I hadn’t wanted anything so badly in a long time. I sensed that he was capable of something truly terrible.
After the tail-light incident I became obsessed. After two weeks of sleepless nights and post-shift drive-bys, I went to Jonesy and told him I had suspicions about Robbie.
‘Malc Robbie’s boy?’ said Jonesy.