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

Seven

T

he next morning, Challis read the Progress while Scobie Sutton drove. Tessa Kane had splashed the killer’s letter all over the front page. Soon the metropolitan dailies would pick up the story, and meanwhile McQuarrie had left messages, asking for an explanation. All this on top of a bad night for Challis, the image of Jane Gideon’s parents staying with him through the long hours. Better to spend the morning away from the station. ‘She says to me, “Eat your munch, Daddy. Sit up prop-ly and eat your munch.”‘

Challis worked a smile onto his face. ‘“Munch.” I like that.’

‘But where did she get it from, boss? Not me and Beth. Childcare, that’s where.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

‘I mean, they’re like a sponge, that age. Absorb everything.’ Scobie fell gloomy. ‘The good and the bad.’

‘I suppose it’s up to the parents to provide most of the good and counteract the bad,’ Challis said, for something to say, but wondering if he believed it. Look at his own wife. Fine, upright family background, and look what happens. She falls in lust-her explanation. ‘Hal, I fell in lust, I couldn’t help it, I had to have him and he had to have me.’ Sure, but you didn’t have to kill me to achieve it.

‘Which way, boss?’

Challis blinked. ‘Quite a way yet. Up near where I live.’

‘How long you been there now?’

‘A few years. You’ve got a place in Mornington, right?’

Sutton nodded. ‘But thinking of moving. With all the new housing, you know, house-and-land packages, cheap deals, newlyweds and welfare cheats and what have you living in each other’s pockets, the place is changing. No way I’ll send my kid to the local primary schools. You don’t know of any Montessori schools?’

‘Sorry, no.’

‘I forgot, you didn’t have kids,’ Sutton said, then fell silent, embarrassed.

He’s heard the stories, Challis thought. ‘How’s your daughter coping with crиche? Still kicking up a fuss in the mornings?’

Sutton shrugged. ‘So-so. But tomorrow’s the last day for the year, and they’re having a party at the Centre, so she’s looking forward to that.’

The days were sweeping by. Tomorrow was the twenty-second. Christmas day was Monday. Challis squirmed in his seat. He wasn’t ready.

He spotted the turn off. ‘Next left, then follow the road for about two k’s.’

Sutton took them on to a badly corrugated dirt road, then over a one-lane wooden bridge. ‘Sheepwash Creek,’ he read aloud. ‘God, the names.’

Challis was fond of the old names. They were a map of the Peninsula in the nineteenth century. Blacks Camp Road. Tarpot Corner. He said, ‘They washed sheep here in the old days, to prepare them for shearing.’

‘No kidding,’ Sutton said absently, and Challis knew that the man was thinking of his daughter again. It was as if having a child destroyed your sense of time’s continuum. Time was reduced to the present and nothing else.

‘Somewhere along here,’ he said. ‘Look for the name Saltmarsh on a mailbox or fence railing.’

They drove for a further kilometre before they found it, a mailbox hand-lettered with the words M. Saltmarsh. They turned in and saw a small red-brick veneer house with a tiled roof. Behind it sat a modern barn, the doors open, revealing a tractor, a battered Land Cruiser, coils of rope, bike parts, wooden pallets, machinery tools and dusty crates crammed with one-day useful bits and pieces-chain links, cogs, pulley wheels, radiator hoses and clamps. A rusted truck chassis sat in long grass next to the barn. Hens pecked in the dust beneath a row of peppercorns. The apples in the adjacent orchard were still small and green. A dog barked, and beat its tail in the oily dirt, but failed to get up for them.

‘She’s a bit on the tired side,’ Sutton said, meaning the farm and whoever farmed it.

‘The Saltmarshs are old Peninsula,’ Challis explained. ‘Been here for generations, scratching a living out of a few acres of old apple trees. Two brothers and their families, on adjoining farms. Both brothers have other jobs to get by. Ken here works part time for the steel fabricator in Waterloo. Mike next door drives a school bus.’

‘Poor white trash.’

Challis thought of the two teenage boys, Saltmarsh cousins, whom he’d seen walking along with their fishing rods the previous morning. How far was that image from the poor South of American film and literature? He finally said, ‘No, not poor white trash. Poor, but steady, and decent.’

Maureen Saltmarsh came to the door. She was large, sun-dried and floury, smelling of the kitchen and the morning’s early heat. She wasn’t inclined to suspect them of anything, but smiled and said immediately, ‘Me husband’s not home. Did in the big end on his truck.’ The smile disappeared. ‘You’re that inspector.’

‘Hal Challis, Mrs Saltmarsh. And this is Detective Constable Sutton. We want to talk to your oldest boy, and his cousin.’

‘Brett and Luke? Why, what they done?’

‘I just need to talk to them. I’m more than happy for you to be present.’

She was losing a little of her control. Her hand went to her throat. ‘They’re in watching TV. You know, school holidays.’

‘Bring them into the kitchen, would you, please? There’s nothing to worry about. They’re not suspects in anything. We’re not going to arrest them, only question them about something.’

She ushered Challis and Sutton into the kitchen, cleaned breakfast dishes from the table and asked them to sit. While she was out of the room, Challis took stock: 1970s burnt-orange wall tiles above the benches, a clashing brown and green vinyl linoleum floor, chrome and vinyl chairs, a laminex and chrome table, a small television set, tuned to a chat show, the sound turned down, dishes in the sink, a vast bowl of dough next to a floury rolling pin and greased scone tray.

The Saltmarsh cousins could have been brothers. They were about sixteen, large and awkward, both mouth-breathers with slack, slow-to-comprehend faces. Challis had an impression of softness, and clumsy angles, of pimples and sparse whiskers, of ordinary teenage stubbornness and stupidity, but not meanness or calculation. They seemed to fill the little kitchen. When they spoke, it was in gobbled snatches, as if they didn’t trust speech and hadn’t much use for it.

‘You boys were at Devil Bend Reservoir yesterday, correct?’

‘Us? No way.’

Challis gazed at them for a moment. ‘But you both like to fish?’

‘Fish?’

Scobie Sutton was impatient. ‘With fishing lines and rods and hooks and bait. You like to go fishing.’

‘Haven’t got a boat.’

It was Brett, Maureen Saltmarsh’s son. Challis leaned over the table toward him. ‘I recently saw you and your cousin, on foot, all geared up to go fishing. You were climbing a fence and crossing a paddock. Not two kilometres from here.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, you weren’t out blackberrying. Now why don’t you tell us about Devil Bend Reservoir.’

Brett stared at the table. His mother said, ‘Brett? What have you boys been up to?’

‘Nothing, Mum.’

Challis said, ‘We’ve had reports of poachers in the district, dams and lakes fished for trout.’

‘Not us.’

‘I’m sorry, but I have no alternative but to charge you with-’

‘You said they hadn’t done anything!’

‘Mrs Saltmarsh, please…’

‘You can’t charge them if they haven’t done anything.’

Challis hated what he was doing. He said, ‘Brett, look at me. I don’t care about the illegal fishing, the trespassing. I don’t even intend to report your names to the local station. But unless you tell me what you saw at the reservoir yesterday, I will have you arrested and charged, believe me I will.’

Brett shot a look at his cousin. The cousin said, ‘We never done nothing. We just found her, that’s all.’

Challis sighed and sat back. ‘You went there to fish?’

‘Might have.’

‘Okay, okay, forget the fishing. You were out for a stroll. You were skirting the reservoir and came upon a body.’

They looked doubtful about the word skirting. Did it mean he suspected them of doing something unspeakable at the reservoir? But Brett muttered, ‘Yeah, we found her.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing! We didn’t kill her! She was already like that!’

‘Did you touch her?’

‘No way.’

‘Did you take anything?’

‘Rob a dead body? No way.’

‘Did you remove anything from the vicinity of the body?’

‘What?’

‘I’ll rephrase the question: Was there anything on the ground near the body? If so, did you take it away with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘We wouldn’t charge you with theft,’ Scobie Sutton said. ‘We just need to know.’

‘There was nothing there.’

Challis said, ‘Did you see anyone?’

‘No. Only her.’

Luke said, ‘She the one what was grabbed when her car broke down?’

Challis thought about it. He wanted to give something back to the boys. ‘Yes.’

‘Cool.’

‘What time did you find her?’

‘Dunno. Pretty early.’

Mrs Saltmarsh said, ‘A school morning, you can’t get the buggers out of bed. School holidays and they’re up at the crack of dawn.’

Scobie Sutton asked, ‘Why did you wait before phoning the police?’

The boys looked at each other. Mrs Saltmarsh eyed them suspiciously. ‘They was waiting for me to go out shopping.’

‘Is that right?’

Brett scratched at a burn mark in the laminex with a grimy fingernail. ‘Suppose so.’

‘Your mother left the house when?’

‘About two,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

Challis had logged the call at 2.45.

‘You’d have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d given us your names, and rung earlier,’ Sutton said.

‘Didn’t take you long to find us anyway,’ Luke muttered grudgingly.

‘We’ll need your gumboots,’ Challis said.

Mrs Saltmarsh narrowed her eyes. ‘What for, if they’ve done nothing?’

‘To check their footprints against those found at the scene.’

‘To eliminate them,’ Sutton explained.

Both boys looked alarmed, as though elimination meant something damaging and final.

‘I’ll get them,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

‘Pop them in a supermarket bag,’ Sutton called, to her departing back.

The boys looked frightened now. Challis got to his feet. ‘No more sneaking around fishing from the neighbours, okay? Someone could take a shotgun to you, then I’d have another murder inquiry on my hands.’

They went white. ‘Joke, fellas,’ Sutton said.

Their grins were shaky.

On the way out, Challis said suddenly, ‘We’re forgetting something.’

‘Maureen, Mrs Saltmarsh,’ he said, when she opened the door to him again, ‘a quick question. What vehicles do you have on the place?’

She understood, and flushed sullenly. ‘Tractor, Land Cruiser, truck, Holden.’

‘The Holden-a sedan or a station wagon?’

‘Sedan.’

‘The truck. Is-’

‘I told you, he done the big end in a few days ago.’

‘Maureen, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a camera in the car. Couple of quick shots of the Land Cruiser’s tyres and we’ll be on our way.’

‘It hasn’t been out for days.’

He smiled, ignoring her. ‘Do the boys know how to drive?’

‘They’re too young to have their licences.’

‘But they know how to drive?’

‘Suppose so.’

‘Just a quick snap of the tyres and we’ll be gone,’ Challis said again.

‘In the bloody shed,’ Maureen Saltmarsh said, closing the door on them.

‘Really laid one on last night, Murph.’

‘Wacky doo,’ Pam said, stopping at the roundabout for a station wagon that had begun to nose uncertainly around it, as though lost. A rack of suitcases on the roof, a hint of bedding, buckets, spades and foam surfboards in the rear, children staring through the side windows, a woman driving, a man next to her, cocking his head at a map and waving one arm at her. Maybe, Pam thought, they’ll be next door to me in Penzance Beach when I knock off work tonight, ensconced like kings until school goes back in late January.

‘How come we never see you down the pub?’ Tankard demanded.

‘Got better things to do.’

‘Like what? Don’t tell me you’ve got a love life.’

That hurt. She took her attention from the road to flash him a look. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a love life?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against it.’

‘Against what?’

‘If you prefer women to blokes that’s no skin off my nose.’

Pam rubbed her cheek wearily. ‘Give it a rest, Tank. You wouldn’t know the first thing about me.’ She braked for the pedestrian lights outside the post office.

‘Like hell.’ He yawned. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’

‘The photo shop. The manager wants us to check out a roll of film he developed this morning.’

Tankard looked disgusted. ‘Who cares? You get all kinds of stuff now, no-one turns a hair. Holiday snaps in the nuddy, pregnancies, sheilas giving birth. No-one’s stupid enough to drop hard-core stuff off for developing.’

Pam wished that Tankard would shut up. ‘All I know is, the manager called the station, asked for Scobie Sutton, he’s busy, so he gave it to us.’

Pam turned left into the shopping centre, looking for Kwiksnap. Tankard glanced at her keenly, with a touch of not-unkind humour. ‘You’d rather be plain-clothes than driving around in the divvie van, wouldn’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be in uniform all my life.’

Tankard barked a laugh. ‘You’ll see a shitty side of human nature whatever you wear in this job. If the uniform work makes you suspicious of your fellow man, plain-clothes work only confirms it.’

Pam remembered: he’d been a detective for a while, at his last station.

He pointed. ‘Parking spot.’

‘I see it.’ She braked and parked.

There were bridal photos in one window of Kwiksnap, an automatic developing machine in the other, a young woman seated next to it, pushing buttons. Inside the shop were racks of film canisters, display cases of cameras and picture frames, and a booth set aside for passport photographs. The manager twitched aside a curtain and said, ‘I asked for Scobie.’

‘Constable Sutton’s tied up at the moment,’ Pam said. She introduced herself, then Tankard, and said, ‘You’re Mr Jackson?’

‘Yes.’ The manager glanced at Tankard. ‘And I know who he is.’

Tankard bristled. Pam said hurriedly, ‘You called about some suspicious photographs.’

The manager looked agitatedly at the door. ‘Yes. Look, she’s picking them up any time soon.’

‘Who is?’

‘The customer. She dropped the roll in for developing at five yesterday, pick up at ten this morning. That’s-’ he looked at his watch ‘-ten minutes ago.’

‘Let’s see these snaps, shall we?’

The manager hunted around in a shoebox for a Kodak envelope, then took out the photographs and laid them out on the counter top as though dealing cards in a game of patience. Pam peered at them. Exterior and interior shots of a huge house set in a vast lawn. White fence railings, a suggestion of outbuildings. The interior shots, she noticed, seemed to move from the general to the particular: a room, then what was in that room. Paintings in one photograph, a display case of silver snuffboxes in another. A vase. An antique mantel clock. She began to make scratch notes in her notebook.

But John Tankard was unimpressed. He pushed the photographs aside. ‘So what?’

The manager swallowed. ‘Well, see for yourself.’

‘I see sentimental snapshots,’ Tankard said. ‘Or maybe snaps taken for insurance purposes. Maybe the owners are scared a bushfire will destroy everything, so they’re keeping a record.’

‘Look at these two, John,’ Pam said. ‘The alarm system.’

‘See?’ the manager said.

‘If an alarm system set me back a few thousand bucks,’ Tankard said, ‘I’d want photos of it, in case the place burned down.’

Pam stared at him. Everything about him was contestable: his attitudes, his approach to the job, his day to day relations with people. She turned to the manager. ‘Let’s see who left these to be developed, shall we, sir?’

She tried to read the handwriting. ‘Marion Something.’

‘Marion Nunn,’ the manager said.

Tankard laughed. ‘Marion Nunn? Every policeman’s friend. Plus being a lawyer,’ he said, leaning his face close to Pam’s, ‘she deals in real estate. Hence the pictures. Live and learn, Pammy. You’ll run into the lovely Mrs Nunn sooner or later.’

Pam pushed the photographs away. ‘I already have.’

Ellen Destry fielded phone calls from journalists and worked on the sex offenders file again. She’d left it too long; it was clear that Lance Ledwich deserved a closer look. She picked up the phone. She’d try his employer first, then his home number.

By the time Sutton had returned to the station, she was ready to roll. She had the CIB Falcon waiting, a forensic technician in the back seat. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Scobie. You’re coming with me.’

Ledwich lived on a new estate near the racecourse on the northern edge of Waterloo, and they came to his house along a narrow court, creeping over speedbumps to get to it. The area depressed Ellen. A stained pine fence and a metre of air were all that separated the houses from one another on this estate. There were no trees to speak of. The nature strips looked raw, still to recover from trench-digging equipment and the summer’s dryness. There was a steel lockup garage at the end of Ledwich’s driveway, the door closed. A well-kept Volvo station wagon was parked in front of the garage, near a ragged patch of oil drips. The forensic technician went immediately for the Volvo.

As Ellen and Sutton approached the front door, a man slipped out of the metal side door of the garage and padlocked it hurriedly before coming toward them, wiping his palms on his trousers. Ellen recognised him from the photograph in his file.

‘Mr Ledwich? We’re-’

‘You don’t have to tell me who you are,’ Ledwich said.

‘Don’t we?’

There was something oily about Ledwich. Oily hair, an air of surreptitious oozing. ‘You bastards ever going to leave me alone?’

‘That depends, Lance,’ Sutton said.

Ledwich stared angrily at the forensic technician, who was taking photographs of the Volvo’s tyres. ‘What’s that arsehole doing?’

‘Why don’t we come inside, Lance?’ Ellen said, moving to usher Ledwich to the front door.

Ledwich twisted away from her. ‘Whatever it is, we do it out here. I don’t want the wife-’

‘Fair enough, Lance. I can understand that. Why don’t we move over here, let the technician do his job.’

They took Ledwich to the CIB Falcon. Ellen sat in the driver’s seat, Ledwich beside her, Sutton in the rear. ‘You’re all the fucking same,’ Ledwich said. ‘A bloke goes straight, and you lean on him, hoping he’ll fuck up so you can put him away again.’

‘Are you going straight, Lance?’

‘I’m a storeman.’

‘Irregular hours, some night shift work, right?’

‘So what? What’s it to do with you? That other business, that was years ago.’

‘Not that long ago,’ Sutton said.

Ellen leaned confidingly toward Ledwich. ‘About your Volvo, Lance.’

His eyes shifted. ‘What about it?’

‘Nice set of wheels,’ Sutton remarked.

Ledwich was obliged to swivel his head, from Ellen and then around to Sutton and back again. ‘I look after it, yeah.’

‘How did you afford to buy it, Lance?’ Ellen said.

‘Christ, it’s twelve years old. It’s not worth all that much.’

‘How long have you owned it?’

‘Few years.’

‘Why a Volvo?’ Sutton asked. ‘Why not a Ford or a Holden, like everyone else?’

Ellen leaned closer. ‘Is it so people will think you’re an ordinary bloke, Lance, rather than a pervert?’

He flushed. ‘It’s the wife’s car, all right?’

‘How about tyres, Lance, between you and the road. You’d want to fit pretty good ones, yeah?’

Ledwich narrowed his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t know what brand they are. What’s this about?’

‘Do you own any other vehicles?’

Ledwich looked away, out at the forensic technician. ‘Nup.’

‘We can check with the Department of Motor Vehicles.’

‘Check all you like,’ Ledwich said. He turned back to them. ‘You going to tell me what this is about?’

‘You’re well set up, aren’t you, Lance? Roomy set of wheels, the freedom to move around at night.’

Ledwich muttered, ‘Lost my licence a while back.’

‘That doesn’t stop you from driving, though.’

Ledwich folded his arms. ‘I suppose if I sit here long enough you’ll tell me what this is all about.’

Ellen said softly, into his face, ‘Abduction, rape and murder.’

He jerked back. ‘Me? No way.’

‘You can’t get sex the normal way, you have to con women and force yourself on them. We know that. It’s a matter of record. But you began to get more violent toward the end, didn’t you? You started to use your fists.’

‘That charge was dropped.’

‘So what? Doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.’

‘You know what we think, Lance?’ Sutton said. ‘We think you’ve graduated. We think you now realise what hard work it is conning women to get a root. Much easier just to use force.’

‘Subdue them,’ Ellen said, ‘drag them into the rear of your station wagon, rape and strangle them.’

Ledwich swallowed. ‘I’m not into that. I’m married now.’

‘Poor woman,’ Ellen said.

That, more than the badgering, seemed to anger Ledwich the most. ‘You lousy slag. I’ll get you for that. Somewhere dark, no backup to look after you, then we’ll see how tough you are.’

‘You’re threatening me, Lance? Or is that an admission of how you operate? A woman alone at night, defenceless…’

‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’

‘Kymbly Abbott,’ Sutton said, ‘Jane Gideon. You forced them into the rear compartment of your Volvo, raped and killed them, then dumped their bodies.’

‘I bet I was working. Check with my boss.’

‘I did, Lance.’ Ellen numbered her fingers: ‘Late to work, finishing early, slipping away sometimes for an hour or more at a time. You aren’t up for Employee of the Year, Lance.’

Ledwich looked hunted. ‘I never fucking killed no-one. Prove I did.’

‘We will.’

‘I’ve put the sex stuff behind me.’

‘Lance,’ Ellen said, examining his perspiring face, smelling the fear, ‘you were sick back in 1991, you’re sick now, you’ll always be sick.’

‘Two days in a row,’ Clara told him. ‘That’s nice.’ She held him tight on the doorstep, then led him into the house. Incense, already lit. Curtains already drawn.

‘Just passing,’ Kees van Alphen said.

‘Yeah, sure.’

She unbuckled his belt. He groaned. He was so hungry for her. Afterwards he said, ‘Did you sleep all right last night?’

It was the question she needed. ‘No,’ she said, with a laugh of real pain. ‘It’s been awful, just awful.’

‘You should get something to help you sleep.’

‘Having you there would help me sleep, big boy.’

He was pleased and embarrassed. ‘Maybe soon. I’m on nights a lot at this time of the year. What about sleeping pills?’

‘They make me hazy in the head the next day. Look, don’t be upset with me, but the only thing that would relax me is dope or coke.’ She stopped. ‘Now you’re disappointed. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

He’d gone tense in her arms. She held on, willing him to relax.

‘Sorry, I’ve clearly said the wrong thing.’

‘It’s all right. It’s just, I don’t understand it, that’s all. I don’t mind so much if people are private users, it’s the scumbags who traffic in the stuff, to schoolkids, that really gets to me.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

She turned away from him and began to get dressed. She was cutting him out, and she saw that it scared him a little. He pulled her back down to him. ‘Look, when you’re in the job you forget that most people are basically okay. You must’ve thought I was judging you. I wasn’t.’

‘It’s just my nerves at the moment,’ she said. ‘I’m not what you’d call a user. I used to smoke a bit of dope, do a line or two of coke, but that was years ago. I was hardly twenty. I’m clean now. It’s just, I’m so jittery, so bloody scared at night, if I had some dope or coke I think it would help straighten out my nerves.’

He was silent. She began to trace circles on his stomach with her tongue. He was so sensitive! She heard him groan as she took him in her mouth. She knew what she was doing, but even so there was a part of her that was immersing herself in physical pleasure and comfort. She lost herself for a while.

When he was finished, she wriggled to get close to his body, working her mouth to clear the thick saltiness away.

She heard the rumble of his voice in her ear: ‘I could get you what you want.’

She was very still. ‘Come again?’

‘Some grass, if that’s what you want. A couple of grams of coke maybe.’

She sat up and said earnestly, ‘That’s really all I want, Van. I don’t need much. How-’

‘Don’t ask. And if you repeat any of this, I’ll deny it.’

She moved away from him. ‘Don’t be like that. Don’t get angry with me.’

He pulled her against him. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’d never dob you in.’

‘Sorry, Clara, honestly, forget I said it.’

‘I mean, we’d both go down, Van. Ruin both our lives.’

‘Exactly.’

‘When?’ she said. ‘When can you get the stuff?’

‘I’ll come around some time tonight.’

‘What about your wife?’

‘Her?’ He laughed. ‘We separated long ago.’

She realised that she knew nothing about him. ‘Kids?’

‘One. I don’t see her any more.’

McQuarrie turned up that afternoon. ‘This letter, Hal. Any joy?’

‘We’re looking for a Canon printer, but the technicians doubt that the actual printer can be identified.’

McQuarrie swivelled in his chair. He seemed to be mulling over the dimensions of the incident room and the aptitude of Challis and his detectives. Wall map, half-a-dozen desks, files, telephones, computers, and three officers, heads well down because the super was in the room.

‘Two murders, with the likelihood of a third to come.’

‘More than two, sir, if he’s hot a local and done this kind of thing before. There’s a series up around Newcastle we’re looking at.’

‘I’m tempted to bring in the Homicide Squad, Hal.’

There were times when Challis used McQuarrie’s first name. Usually during social occasions. This wasn’t a social occasion, but McQuarrie’s voice had been tinged with doubt, as if he saw the case ballooning out of control-Challis’s, his, the force’s in general. He was a politician, essentially. He wanted reassurance, so Challis said, confidently, ‘That’s not strictly necessary at this stage, Mark.’

McQuarrie looked around helplessly. ‘You’ve got enough support?’

‘No. I could do with more detectives. See if you can get them assigned from two or three different stations so that no-one’s left short-staffed. I’ve already requisitioned more desks, phones and computers.’

McQuarrie sighed. ‘Fair enough. But the minute-’

‘The minute it threatens to fall apart, I’ll let you know.’

‘I mean, this isn’t exactly a case of a husband doing in his wife, Hal. This is different. This is big. I had the London Daily Telegraph on the line last night.’

Challis, to amuse himself, said, ‘What did you tell them?’

‘Oh, it was well under control, and nothing like the Belanglo Forest killings. I hope I said the right thing.’

‘Sir, we’ve got some solid forensic evidence with Jane Gideon. Tyre tracks in the mud, so we have some idea of the kind of vehicle we’re looking for. Apart from the blow to the head, her death resembles Kymbly Abbott’s. I think we can rule out coincidence. We’re putting warnings over the media. With any luck, our man’s supply will run out.’

McQuarrie screwed his mouth up. ‘Nice way of putting it.’

‘To him, sir, young women are a source of supply, they’re not real.’

‘Point taken.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes.’ McQuarrie got to his feet. He tilted back his head. ‘Listen up, everybody.’

Ellen Destry threw down her pen. What did the fool want now? She had work to do. Ledwich had taken up most of the morning, and she was still waiting for the forensic technicians to identify the brand of tyre from the plaster casts they’d taken. So far, all they could tell her was that it was an off-road tyre, only slightly worn-ten, maybe fifteen thousand k’s-and distinctive because it had a round shoulder and a very deep tread. No other distinguishing marks, such as chips, burrs or uneven wear in the rubber. ‘But find me the tyre, and I’ll see if I can match it,’ the technicians said. ‘Yeah, sure, piece of cake,’ she’d told them. As for the cast matching the tyres on Lance Ledwich’s Volvo, that seemed very unlikely, even to her untrained eye. Quite a different ‘footprint’, as the technicians put it. She really was not inclined to listen to some crap or other from McQuarrie.

She looked up to see that McQuarrie was watching her, waiting for her to pay attention. ‘First, I want to say that I think you’re doing a fine job under difficult circumstances. For that reason, I will arrange for extra detectives to be assigned to the case from Rosebud and Mornington. Sergeant Destry, you will continue to be in charge on the ground, answerable to Inspector Challis.’

She gave him a tight little smile. He washed his palms together. ‘Now, clearly this is the work of one man. Our priorities are to find him before he kills again. Equally, we need to provide a safe environment here on the Peninsula. We also need to find the vehicle used to dump Jane Gideon’s body. Finally, we need to think about the mindset of the person behind these killings.’

Mindset, Ellen thought. God.

‘Similarities between the victims,’ McQuarrie went on. ‘Differences. Did they know one another.’

Now he’s telling us how to do our job, Ellen thought.

‘Kymbly Abbott, Jane Gideon,’ McQuarrie went on. He shook his head and laughed, and it was a laugh that went wrong, even as he uttered it and said, ‘Kymbly. Where do these people get their names from?’

No-one shared the laughter. He was speaking ill of the dead. Meanwhile Ellen Destry felt herself blush, for she’d named her daughter Larrayne, not Lorraine, so what did that say about her? McQuarrie was a prick.

It was with relief that she went to her car at the end of the day and was able to snatch a moment with Rhys Hartnett. She wasn’t sure, but there was something there, in the way he looked at her. ‘Are we still on for twelve o’clock Saturday?’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘If you like, stay on and have some lunch with us,’ she said.

Challis worked until six-thirty that evening. As he was leaving the station, the prison called. Apparently his wife had tried to saw across her wrists with a plastic knife and had written a note that said, ‘Forgive me.’ They’d assumed that the note was for him. Maybe it was. Challis had long forgiven her, he was past making judgments about her, and had even told himself that she wasn’t his responsibility any more, but it was always him they called whenever she went off the rails. The call depressed him. He slumped back in his chair and stared at the wall maps.

Then the front desk buzzed him. ‘Tessa Kane to see you, sir.’

He put his hand to his forehead briefly. ‘Show her up.’

He stepped into the corridor and waited. He was alone on the first floor. When Tessa appeared with a young constable, he sent the constable back downstairs. Tessa’s eyes were bright and searching. She was pleased with herself, but also gauging what he thought of her now. ‘Hal, don’t be mad at me.’

‘I thought you agreed you wouldn’t publish.’

‘No, I said I’d consider not publishing. Your finding Jane Gideon made it imperative, Hal. This was a scoop. It meant a lot to me, and I think it was in the public interest.’

‘I’ve never heard a more cynical-’

‘Hal,’ she said, and reached up and kissed him. He closed his eyes.

In her low voice, she said, ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.’

He was surprised to find that his anger was gone, and made a sound in his throat that might have been assent and pleasure.

‘Hal, would you have dinner with me tonight?’

Challis thought about it. He felt better about Tessa Kane, but doubted that he had energy and selflessness enough to be pleasant company for her. All he wanted to do was drive to the aerodrome and work on the Dragon.

‘Not tonight. Tomorrow?’

‘Fine.’

‘Somewhere out of the public eye,’ he said.

‘That’s easy.’

When he let himself into the hangar, twenty minutes later, he saw that Kitty had left the new issue of Vintage Aircraft on his tailplane, open at the centre spread. It showed a restored Dragon at Bankstown airport, full colour, the red and silver livery of an airline that had folded in 1936. Challis didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful aeroplane. The rounded nose reminded him of a tentative, questing snake, but in all other respects the Dragon Rapide was nothing like a snake. An insect? It suggested delicacy, restraint, grace, and the atmosphere of England-to-Australia races and records as the world came out of the 1930s Great Depression, before it all went wrong again.

He turned the pages to the ‘Help Wanted’ column. His letter was there. Somewhere in the world there might be a man or a woman who knew a little of the history of his aeroplane.

Kees van Alphen sat in the window of Pizza Hut. They were used to him in there; he often ate there. He saw Tessa Kane leave the station. At seven-fifteen, Challis’s car pulled out of the station car park. Van Alphen waited for the 8 p.m. shift to get under way before he walked back across the road and into the station.

Thursday night, a bit of action in town, what with people spending their pay cheques and gearing up for Christmas and the summer break. But quiet in the station itself. Van Alphen prowled about the building, opening and closing doors, chatting to the young constable on the front desk, the probationers in the tearoom, a couple of other sergeants writing up reports. In effect, he was mentally mapping the station, placing everyone, anticipating where they might accidentally wander. When he was satisfied, he walked into the office of Senior Sergeant Kellock-he who said his door was always open-and located the key to the evidence safe.

The drugs were on the top shelf, just a handful of small plastic sealables of coke and hashish, some pill bottles of ecstasy, some amphetamines from a garden-shed laboratory in a twist of paper. Van Alphen substituted two of the cocaine baggies for baggies of castor sugar, double checked the paperwork-they’d not be needed in trial for another six weeks yet-and left the office, locking the safe behind him.

‘I’ll be out for a couple of hours,’ he told the constable on the front desk.

‘Okay, Sarge.’

‘Our pyromaniacs might decide on return visits.’

‘Good one, boss.’

The constable seemed to be assessing him.

‘What are you looking at, Sunshine?’

‘Sorry, nothing, Sarge. I mean, you’re not on night shift tonight.’

‘Things hot up before Christmas, you know that. Plus we got members down with a stomach bug. I like to keep on top of things. It’s what makes a cop, that little bit extra.’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘All right then.’

Van Alphen took an unmarked Commodore from the car pool and drove to Clara’s house with the radio dispatcher’s voice scratching in the darkness and all of his heartaches on his mind. Fucking Tessa Kane and her editorials. What was she doing at the station? Trying to get more dirt?

Three strikes and you’re out. He’d been warned for over-enthusiastic policing in his previous two districts, and now it was happening again. No-one understood that you had to start hard and carry through on it, or the scumbags won. But the top brass were hypersensitive to the image the press gave the force, and the civil libertarians were always making a noise about police brutality. Fuck them. He knew his methods got results. He’d had the highest arrest record in each of his districts, which proved that crime was always there, under the surface, and had been allowed to tick over unchecked.

It was a pity the women in his life hadn’t been able to hack it. His wife and daughter had walked out, finally, saying they couldn’t stand the stares, the whispers, the aggravation. He felt sorry they’d had to suffer, but the fact that they hadn’t stuck by him left a sour taste in his mouth.

Then Clara wrapped herself around him like a cat, and his cares flew out of the window.