"The Dragon Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disher Garry)

Twenty-one

A

t nine the next morning, Scobie Sutton said, ‘Mrs Stella Riggs?’

She had her back to him, checking that she’d locked her front door. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m Detective Constable Sutton. I need to ask you a few questions regarding the fire at your neighbour’s house.’

He watched her turn from the door and step on to the path as if to brush him aside. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.’

‘According to my notes, you’ve been on holiday?’

She was almost past him, following a line of roses away from her front door. ‘If you know that, then you know I couldn’t possibly know anything about the fire. And she’s scarcely my neighbour. There is another property separating hers from mine.’

‘I understand that,’ Sutton said, hurrying along beside her. He didn’t like the woman. Clipped voice, born-to-rule manner, an air of impatience and indifference. ‘But I do need to ask you how well you knew Clara Macris.’

‘I didn’t know her at all.’

‘You never talked to her? Visited her?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Did she ever visit you?’

‘Good heavens, no. Look, all of my mail is being held for me at the post office. I got in late last night and have a lot to do. If you don’t mind, I’d like-’

‘Do you know who her friends were?’

Sutton was asking questions on the run, now, following Stella Riggs around to the side of the house, where she pointed a remote control at the lock-up garage. The door slid open, revealing a white Mercedes.

‘How should I know who her friends were? Nothing to do with me.’

‘Recent visitors, regular visitors, strangers, nothing like that?’

‘There’s her boyfriend. At least, I’m assuming it was her boyfriend. His car was always there.’

‘Boyfriend,’ Sutton said.

‘One of your lot. A policeman. In a police car. Always there. Tall, gloomy-looking fellow. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do.’

Sutton returned to the car. He muttered, as Pam Murphy started the engine, ‘There’s a prize cow.’

‘Sit down, Sergeant,’ Challis said, one hour later.

But van Alphen continued to stand, and first he gazed grimly at Challis, then at Scobie Sutton, and finally at Senior Sergeant Kellock. He pointed at Kellock. ‘What’s he doing here?’

Kellock cleared his throat. ‘I’m representing the interests of the uniformed branch, Sergeant.’

‘Bullshit. You’re here because you’re pissed off that I questioned your decision on Bastian, you and McQuarrie, and you’re hoping to see me sink.’

Sutton said, ‘Van, why don’t you just sit?’

Fatigue had sharpened the planes of van Alphen’s face. Not for the first time, Sutton was struck by van Alphen’s resemblance to Challis. They were lean, hard-working men driven by private demons. As though aware that the greater challenge came from Challis, van Alphen sat, finally, and squarely faced the inspector across the desk.

Challis said, ‘You claimed just now that the Senior Sergeant hoped to see you sink. Are you expecting to sink? Is there anything you wish to tell us?’

‘I’m not stupid, sir.’

‘Nobody suggested you were.’

‘I’m as tuned in to canteen gossip as anyone, even when it’s about me. You think I killed Clara Macris.’

Challis said, ‘Do we?’

Van Alphen folded his arms. He sat rock still and apparently filled with contempt. It was contempt for a police force that didn’t protect its own, Sutton decided, and not aimed at Challis in particular. ‘Van, we need to know more about your relationship with the dead woman,’ he said.

Van Alphen’s narrow head swung slowly around until they were staring at each other. No wonder the locals hate him, Sutton thought.

‘What relationship, Constable?’

Fine, Sutton thought, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll drop ‘Van’ and call you by your name and rank. ‘Sergeant van Alphen, we have a witness who saw a police car at Clara Macris’s house on a number of occasions. We’ve checked the vehicle logs and duty rosters. You often signed a car out.’

‘Really. Is that a fact?’

Challis stepped in. ‘You investigated the woman’s mailbox fire, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You made follow-up visits to her?’

‘I may have done.’

‘Either you did or you didn’t. It wasn’t that long ago.’

‘She was badly shaken up.’

‘And you went around and gave her a cuddle, hoping she’d come across for you,’ Kellock put in.

Challis darkened. ‘Senior Sergeant, please leave the room.’

‘I have a right to be here, Inspector.’

Challis was clipped and dismissive. ‘No you don’t. This is a murder investigation. Constable Sutton and I investigate murders. You don’t.’

‘This is my station.’

Challis slapped his hand on the desk and shouted, ‘And this is my investigation. Now get out.’

Kellock stood slowly, massively, and with feigned good grace left the room.

Challis grinned. After a while, van Alphen allowed himself a wintry smile.

‘Clara Macris was a user,’ Challis said. ‘According to the toxicology report on her body.’

‘I thought she might have been.’

Challis nodded. ‘But that’s all we know about her. And it’s one aspect of her that must have led her into contact with other people.’

Van Alphen shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

‘Do you know who was supplying her?’

‘No.’

‘What did she tell you about herself?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Did you like her?’ Sutton asked suddenly.

Van Alphen blinked. ‘Yes.’

‘Is that why you kept going back to see her?’

Van Alphen said irritably, ‘I didn’t keep going back to see her at all. I may have dropped in a couple of times.’

‘Did you have sex with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘Oh, so that’s why I killed her. I wanted a fuck, she didn’t, so I killed her.’

‘Well, is that what happened?’

‘No. I mean, no, I didn’t kill her.’

Challis had been watching this, leaning back, his right foot resting on his left knee, tapping a pen against his teeth. He straightened again. ‘What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘She didn’t tell you about her private life?’

‘No.’

‘What about your old cases, Van?’

Van Alphen frowned. ‘My what?’

‘You’re not very popular. Has anyone threatened you? Been following you? Could someone have wanted to kill your girlfriend to get back at you?’

‘She wasn’t my girlfriend. No-one was following me.’

‘Come on, Sergeant, we’re offering you a lifeline here. You were sleeping with her, weren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Were you supplying her with drugs?’

‘Was I what?’

‘You heard. She had a habit. She told you she’d sleep with you if you supplied her with drugs.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

Now, you shouldn’t have chosen those words, Sutton said to himself. They don’t ring true. He decided to push it. ‘Where did you get the drugs? The evidence locker?’

‘It seems,’ van Alphen said, looking at the ceiling, ‘that I should have a lawyer present.’

‘Or did you rip off a dealer? Is that how you kept her supplied?’

‘You’re making an awfully big leap from my visiting her a couple of times on official business to my supplying her with drugs in order to sleep with her.’

‘More than a couple of visits,’ Challis snapped. ‘Your car was seen there several times, by several of the residents of Quarterhorse Lane.’

Van Alphen muttered something sullenly.

‘Speak up, Van.’

‘I said, she thought someone was after her.’

The tension ebbed from the room. Challis said gently, ‘Were you sleeping with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did she tell you about herself?’

‘Almost nothing. She came from New Zealand, I suspected she was a user, and that’s about it.’

‘Who did she think was after her?’

‘She didn’t, wouldn’t, say.’

‘What led her to think someone was after her?’

‘She thought the mailbox business was a warning.’

‘You told her about the other mailboxes?’

‘Yes. I think I convinced her, but in general she was pretty agitated. The abductions didn’t help. She told me she thought it was a smokescreen, that she was the intended victim and it was just a matter of time.’

‘You must have formed an opinion of her, Van,’ Sutton said. ‘Who she was, whether or not she was hiding anything.’

Van Alphen looked at the ceiling again. ‘I formed the belief that she was running away from something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Some heavy people. A vicious husband or boyfriend. Someone she owed money to. Someone she ripped off. Something along those lines.’

‘But she didn’t say?’

‘No.’

‘Running away from trouble in New Zealand, do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But you think they found her?’

Van Alphen looked at Sutton and said carefully, ‘She thought they’d found her. But she was generally predisposed to think that. She was scared. If anything out of the ordinary happened, she misconstrued it, thought it applied to her alone.’

‘Except,’ Challis said, ‘this time she didn’t misconstrue it.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You’re not making this up?’

‘There were firemen there with me the night her mailbox got burnt. They’ll tell you, she was scared out of her brain, when anyone else would’ve simply been pissed off.’

Sutton nodded. They’d already talked to the firemen.

‘So, where does that leave me?’ van Alphen said, challenging them.

Challis said, ‘Senior Sergeant Kellock wants you suspended.’

‘I bet he does, the prick.’

‘But we’re not going to suspend you,’ Challis went on. ‘However, I don’t want you on outside duties while we continue our investigation. I don’t want you talking to anyone. I want you indoors, making a list of anyone you’ve helped put away, or anyone with a grudge against you for anything at all.’

Van Alphen sneered. ‘Feels like a kind of suspension to me.’

‘And you feel like a not-quite-so-straight copper to me,’ Challis snarled. ‘That’s all. You can go.’

Challis bounced at a clip down the stairs. He sounded almost breezy,

‘How’s your daughter, Scobie?’

Sutton hurried to draw alongside him. Was Challis really interested, or going through the motions? ‘A handful now that she’s home all day long.’.

‘Will you send her back to the childcare place when it reopens?’

‘Probably. See how it goes.’

‘Good.’

Maybe Challis had wanted kids, before things blew up on him. They reached the ground floor and Sutton changed the subject. ‘Boss, you don’t think Van killed her, do you?’

Challis pushed through the rear door into the car park. The heat hit them. ‘I doubt it. But he was more than just a concerned copper to her. That’s why I want to have a talk to Stella Riggs. She seems to be the only independent witness.’

‘I don’t know what else she can tell you, boss. Wasted trip.’

‘Scobie, I’m not questioning your interview with her. I just want to be on firmer ground before we start digging any deeper into van Alphen.’

Scobie snorted. ‘She won’t thank you.’

‘Won’t she?’

‘She’s a stuck-up bitch.’

‘Then I’ll have to unstick her. Any luck with the gypsies?’

‘None.’

‘They could be in New South Wales by now.’

They had reached the Commodore. Pam Murphy, lounging on the grass beneath the line of gums that separated the police station from the courthouse, brushed leaves from her uniform and hurried toward them. Challis leaned on the roof of the car. ‘What about Ledwich? Still think there’s something iffy about him?’

‘Boss, we’ve checked him pretty thoroughly. His alibis aren’t crash hot, but we can’t prove that he wasn’t at work each of the times we’re interested in. The Pajero business is a fizzer. The registration had elapsed and he’d lost his licence, yet was still driving around in it, and was scared the police and the insurance company would find out, that’s how I read it.’

‘You think that’s why he was so edgy? Trying to avoid discovery?’

Sutton shrugged. ‘It’s one explanation.’

They drove out of the car park. ‘Back to Quarterhorse Lane, Constable,’ Challis said.

Stella Riggs showed them into a broad, gleaming room with polished floorboards, a vast open fireplace, several roomy leather armchairs and twin matching sofas, an antique drinks cabinet, and windows that offered a view across vineyards and orchards to Westernport Bay in the hazy distance. Around to the right, the ground was scorched bare.

‘As I told your man here, Inspector, I didn’t know the woman.’

Sutton bridled. She wasn’t British, but sounded it, in voice and attitude. Before he could respond, Challis said, ‘Yet you knew something of her movements.’

‘All I knew, Inspector Challis, was that she was often visited by a policeman in a police car. On two occasions I actually saw him. I gave your fellow a description.’ She turned to Sutton. ‘I trust you passed my information on. It wouldn’t surprise me if-’

Challis said, ‘You never visited her?’

‘No.’

‘Never saw anyone else visit her?’

‘No.’

‘Never saw any person or vehicle in Quarterhorse Lane that shouldn’t have been there?’

‘No. Or rather-’

‘Yes?’

‘I was once followed by someone.’

‘Go on.’

‘You must know about it. It’s been in the papers.’

Sutton frowned. What was the stupid cow on about? ‘What, Mrs Riggs?’

She turned to him, her back rigid, her nose tipped back as though to avoid catching his scent. ‘Road rage, of course.’

‘Road rage,’ Challis said.

‘This fellow thought that I’d cut him off, and he followed me all the way home.’

‘But what did that have to do with Miss Macris?’

‘Obviously I didn’t want the fellow to know where I lived.’

Scobie still didn’t get it. ‘So?’

But Challis did. He stared with distaste at Stella Riggs. ‘You didn’t drive to your own house, you drove to Clara Macris’s house.’

‘Yes.’

‘You thought if there was going to be trouble later, then it would be she who copped it.’

‘I must protest. It wasn’t nearly so calculated as that. I-’

‘Many road rage incidents involve quite considerable violence. Clara Macris may be dead because of you.’

For the first time, Stella Riggs’s composure began to break. ‘I didn’t think-’

‘No, you didn’t.’

She shrieked, ‘I turned into her driveway hoping the policeman would be there, or if he wasn’t then he could be fetched to help me.’

Challis closed his eyes. He opened them again and said gently, ‘Then what happened?’

‘The man following me drove past the front gate, then turned around and drove away again, so I left.’

‘You didn’t see or speak to Miss Macris?’

‘No.’

‘What did he look like, this man?’

‘Two men.’

‘Two men. Would you recognise them if you saw them again?’

‘The driver had short hair and wore a singlet, that’s all I can tell you. He looked like a labourer. The other fellow was smaller.’

‘And the vehicle?’

‘It was a Mitsubishi Pajero.’

Challis sat back. ‘A Pajero.’

She sounded almost proud. ‘My late husband drove one for many years. That’s how I know.’

Sutton said, ‘What colour?’

‘Maroon, from memory.’

‘What more can you tell us about it?’

Stella Riggs got up and crossed the room to the mantelpiece above the fireplace. ‘I jotted down the registration. Yes, here it is.’

On their way out, Sutton said, ‘She killed her, didn’t she?’

‘As good as,’ Challis said.

When Pam Murphy knocked on Challis’s door, half an hour later, she was tentative, wondering if he’d be distracted and dismissive.

‘Sir, I heard you talking in the car. You think whoever was driving the Pajero might have come back and killed Clara Macris.’

The inspector switched his attention fully on to her. ‘It’s possible. Do you have something?’

She told him about the litter that she’d bagged where the Pajero had been torched.

‘You did this off your own bat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Bottles, cans, and what else? Cigarette packets?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You didn’t handle them?’

‘Picked them up with my pen, sir.’

‘Where are they now? Evidence locker?’

Pam squirmed. ‘My own locker, sir.’

‘Damn.’

‘Sir?’

Challis looked up at her, faintly irritable. ‘We require a clear chain of physical evidence if we’re to use it in court. Anything you find at the scene of a crime must be logged in officially and immediately. If the chain is broken, the evidence, in effect, is tainted, even if it hasn’t been touched by anyone else.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘What were you thinking?’

‘Well, sir, I wasn’t supposed to be at the scene and I felt a bit stupid, Tank-Constable Tankard, sir-slagging off at me for wasting my time. And it was near the end of the shift and we had a lot on our plate…’

Challis gestured. ‘It’s all right, Constable. At least we can see if we’ve got any prints worth using. If we’re lucky, they’ll match prints already on record. If they do, then it’s a matter of leaning hard or finding other evidence we can use in court.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So, get it all over to the lab. I’ll tell them to give it priority.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘How old was the stuff you picked up? Had it been there for long?’

‘I left the really old stuff, sir.’

Tessa Kane waited at the front desk for almost an hour before Challis appeared. She saw his face shut down the moment he recognised her. He looked tired. Pushing the hair away from his forehead distractedly, he said, ‘I’ll see if I can find us an empty office.’

‘It’s all right. I’m just dropping this off.’

She handed him a letter and then an envelope, in separate freezer bags. ‘It was in the box this morning. I tried to contact you earlier, but you were busy.’

He said, without looking at her, ‘That’s right.’

They were both looking at the letter in his hands. ‘Our man sounds resentful,’ Challis said.

Tessa leaned against him fleetingly. ‘He wants to be on the front page again.’

After a while, Challis said, ‘Thanks, Tess,’ and made to go.

‘Hal, can’t we start again?’

Later, as Challis bumped along the narrow track to his front gate, Tessa Kane hard behind him in her Saab, he was forced to brake to avoid a massive structure ahead of him, one edge protruding a little into his path, the other filling the side gate to his neighbour’s vineyard. It was a superphosphate bin, chalky white in the evening light, sitting high on metal struts. Another country lane stranger to add to his list: top-dressing contractor. He’d already thought of a further two since leaving Waterloo. Horse trainer. Red Cross collector.

He stopped thinking about it. It was all academic, anyway. They had to find who wanted Clara Macris dead, not who had a reason to be in Quarterhorse Lane.

Challis parked and opened the front door. His eyes glanced automatically at the light on his answering machine. One message. He pushed the play button, heard his wife’s voice, low and choked and hectic, and immediately switched it off.

Tessa Kane entered the house behind him, carrying shopping bags. She’d bought fresh fish, a salad mix, a lemon, potatoes to make into chips. It was seven, the skyline pink as the sun settled. They cut the potatoes into chips, oiled them in a pan and placed them in the oven. They had little to say to each other and Challis wondered if he was making a mistake, even as he thought that it was nice, doing this, making a meal with an attractive woman and taking drinks out on to the decking while it cooked. He lit a citronella candle to drive away the mosquitoes and touched his glass to hers. In the half light, she looked not so hard-edged or apt to be secretive. The phone rang. Challis groaned. He knew people who could blithely ignore the phone, and people who were desperate to answer it. If he lived a normal life and wasn’t a policeman, he’d be one of the former, he often thought. ‘Excuse me.’

It was Scobie Sutton. ‘Boss, turn to “Crime Beat”, Channel 9.’

Challis’s kitchen opened on to the sitting room and the little television set he kept in the corner. He found the remote control, turned the set on and returned to the phone. ‘Okay.’

‘Watch.’

There was an outside shot, a modest house in Dromana, then the parents of Kymbly Abbott were seated on a velour sofa that had seen better days. They were raw-looking, anxious, the victims of a poor education and a poorer diet. They seemed to sense the skin-deep sympathy and staged sentiments of the interviewer, a young woman with cropped hair, a short black dress and plum-coloured lips.

Even so, Challis thought, as the interview progressed, they’re getting a kick out of being on television, and that’s almost, almost, overriding their grief. He heard the interviewer say:

‘You’d like the police to do more.’

Kymbly Abbott’s father intended to do all of the talking. ‘Yeah.’

‘You think they should be doing what you and the parents of Jane Gideon are doing?’

‘Yep.’

‘Handing out photographs and talking to people.’

‘Yep.’

‘Are Mr and Mrs Gideon helping you?’

‘We got the idea off them.’

‘You think handing out your daughter’s photograph will help jog someone’s memory?’

‘Yep.’

Then Kymbly Abbott’s mother leaned forward and made the only original observation that Challis had heard so far:

‘Like, the whole time, all youse reporters have done is concentrate on us-’ she poked herself in the chest ‘-our feelings, instead of getting people to try and remember if they saw Kymbly.’

As Challis watched, the screen filled with a close-up of a leaflet, Kymbly Abbott in full colour, the words Did you see who took our Kymbly? across the top, a description and a phone number at the bottom.

The phone to his ear, Challis said, ‘I wish they hadn’t done that.’

‘Boss, when they flash on that leaflet again, check out the description and the photo.’

Challis watched. Another close-up, and a voice-over, describing Kymbly Abbott the night she was abducted and murdered.

‘Scobie, I’m missing something here.’

‘The backpack, boss. They bloody forgot to tell us she had a backpack with her when she went missing.’