Judith looked up Gifford’s address—he lived on the Old Gippsland Road, in Lilydale. Damn. Lilydale was an outer-eastern suburb, located about thirty-five kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD. A return trip plus interview would take her the best part of two hours. Judith took a patrol car. She drove out of the city, taking the M3 most of the way. At five forty-five, she pulled off the M3 onto Anderson Street and stopped at a fast food place where she got spicy fried chicken and two bottles of water. She ate at a picnic table beside a car park.
She set off again immediately after eating, and reached the house just after six-fifteen. The Gifford place was an aging ranch-style house on almost an acre, with a huge work shed and vast lawns. The driveway was gravel. Judith took it slowly, and parked near the house. She got out of the car and looked around. The house was an old brick single storey with a tin roof, probably built in the eighties. It was well maintained. The gardens weren’t ornate—it didn’t have that perfectly planned and curated look you saw in gardens in Toorak or Canterbury—but it was looked after. The lawns were neatly trimmed, and the shrubs had obviously been cut back recently. The eaves and windowsills had no cobwebs, and the porch no dead leaves. Someone cared about this place.
Judith went to the door and knocked. It was opened a minute later by an apple-cheeked woman in her late sixties. She was wiping her hands on an apron.
‘Can I help you?’ She had an English accent.
Judith took out her ID. ‘I’d like to speak to Steven Gifford, if he’s about.’
The woman didn’t seem terribly surprised to see a police ID.
‘Come in, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m Alison, Steve’s wife. Are you hungry? Come to the kitchen. I’ve been making scones and Steve won’t eat them for me anymore. I love a scone. It’s not as much fun eating them alone.’
A little bemused, Judith followed Alison down the corridor to the kitchen. The wall on the right was full of family photographs, but there were far too many children in the photographs for one family. Judith slowed down, trying to take it all in. She recognised a younger version of the apple-cheeked woman in some of the photos. In most of them a great red-headed bear of a man stood beside her, his arm slung over her shoulders, or wrapped around her waist, as they both grinned at the camera.
‘Are you looking at my kiddos?’ Alison asked. She stopped walking and smiled fondly at the photographs. ‘Aren’t they beautiful? We’re too old for it now, of course, but Steve and I, we fostered thirty-six children over twenty-five years.’ She nodded in some satisfaction at Judith’s widened eyes. ‘I know that seems like an unreasonable number, but some of them were with us only for a weekend here and there, a bit of respite care, you know?’
She started walking in the direction of the kitchen again, and Judith followed.
‘Thirty-six... that’s a lot of kids.’
‘I suppose we might have had one or two more. I lost track of the full number years ago. The Foster Care Association honoured me and Steve last year. Wasn’t that lovely? There was a dinner and a plaque and everything.’
They’d arrived in the kitchen, where the promised scones were cooling on a baking rack. The kitchen was more modern than the rest of the house had promised. She’d been expecting more brick, and maybe yellowing cabinets, but they must have renovated this part of the house sometime over the past few years, because the kitchen was all bright and white modernity.
‘Take a seat there, Judith,’ Alison said. ‘I think Steve is in the shed. Let me see if I can find him for you.’ She disappeared through the back door and returned a few minutes later, followed by the red-headed man from the photographs, a few years older now, and distinctly less bearish. Steve Gifford had that loose-skinned look that comes with major weight loss. He shook Judith’s hand, and she noticed that he’d lost the tip of his right index finger. Not recently. It was clearly an old injury, long healed.
‘Steve,’ he said. ‘Is Allie trying to force scones on you?’
Judith smiled. ‘They’ve been offered.’
Alison had already put the kettle on. She was busy spreading jam and cream on a scone, and setting it on a plate in front of Judith.
‘Just because you’re not eating nice things, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to do without,’ she said to her husband. She turned to Judith. ‘He’s on the Ozempic, you know? His doctor put him on it because of his diabetes. It’s wonderful, all the weight he’s lost, and his blood sugar is normal and of course I’m delighted, because my own father died of that disease and it’s a terrible thing. So it’s very wrong of me to say it, but I do sometimes miss the old Steve.’ Her expression was a mix of guilt and defiance.
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘I think that’s probably enough on that subject, Al. Judith, how can we help you?’ He took over the making of the tea. Alison sat at the table, and gestured for Judith to do the same. ‘Is it about one of the kids?’
It occurred to Judith that twenty-five years of providing foster care probably meant that the Giffords had experience dealing with police. That might be why they were so relaxed in her presence.
‘I’m here about the gun,’ Judith said.
Steve frowned. ‘I’ve been worrying about the damn things from the moment they were taken. Was one of them used to hurt someone?’
One of them?
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question right now,’ Judith said. ‘I’m just here to ask you about the theft.’ She took a bite of the scone. It was delicious.
Alison glanced at Steve.
‘There’s nothing we can tell you that we haven’t already reported,’ she said. ‘The guns were taken back in May. On the twentieth of May, sometime in the middle of the night. We were away for the weekend. When we came back, we found the safe open and the guns gone.’
‘Guns? More than one was taken?’
‘Yes,’ Steve said. ‘My .38 Super and my .357 Magnum.’
‘The safe was locked?’ Judith asked.
Steve nodded firmly. ‘It’s always locked, and so is the workshop. I’ve never messed about with gun safety. We had kids in the house for years. Some high-risk kids too. We know how to be careful.’
