Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (19 page)

At this stage its an abduction.

Hal, come on.

Challis said, Id prefer it if you
didnt publish, thats all.

* * * *

Ellen
parked her car. Rhys was waiting for her again. Working on Boxing Day? Talk
about keen. He crossed to where she was standing and handed her an envelope. Your
quote.

She opened it, saying, Rhys, this
is the season to be jolly. Its also the season to get the phone bill, the gas
bill, the electricity bill . . .

She said it with a grin, but there
was a flash of irritation and he said, I thought you were serious. I kept the
costs down as much as possible. He turned toward the shrubbery border to cross
into the grounds of the courthouse.

Rhys, wait.

She caught up to him and said, Look,
I didnt mean to offend you. You must be wondering what youve got yourself
into with my family.

He was still prickly. I got the
distinct impression the other day that your husband doesnt want aircon fitted.

Ellen said, keeping it light, Oh,
hell come around eventually.

He didnt seem to like me much.
That I can do without.

There was no point in avoiding what
had happened. Rhys had stayed for a barbecue lunch, but it had been a disaster.
Alan gets like that sometimes. Its not a pleasant job hes got, he sees
terrible road accidents. She grinned. But yeah, I dont think another
barbecue is a good idea just now.

She saw the tightness go out of him
a little. He looked at his watch. Id better get back to work. Why dont you
look over the quote and Ill catch up with you later in the week.

She said, A drink would be nice.

He hesitated. She seemed to wait for
a long time for him to smile and say, Good idea.

* * * *

Challis
briefed them at eight-thirty, saying: Unger, curiously, was snatched at dawn,
when shed gone for an early morning jog. But what does that tell us? Not much.
Does our man prowl up and down the highway for hours every night, to see what
he can find? Was he coming home when he saw Unger, or on his way somewhere, to
work perhaps? Was it opportunistic, or had he seen her jogging before?

Which brings us to his
psychological make-up. A loner, according to one of our shrinks. Probably
smart, in his thirties, a normally functioning citizen on the surface. Youd
live next door to him for years and not know he liked to rape and kill young
women. Probably some trouble in his childhood. Drunken, abusive father,
unhealthy attachment to his mother. Unable now to relate easily to women,
beyond surface pleasantries. Weve heard it all before, theres no point
knowing these things unless to have them proven
after
the fact. The
point is, he looks, and behaves, like the man next door, he has no work, family
or other link to his victims, and so well simply have to rely on luck and
chance along with good old-fashioned detective work.

I wont kid you, things have stalled.
Not much forensic joy from the bodies, and nothing on the letter sent to the
Progress.
The paper comes from laser printer paper available at any newsagent and
many supermarkets. The printer was a Canon, and theyre a dime a dozen, found
in businesses and homes all over the country. The envelope was post office
issue. There are prints on the envelope, but theyre smudged and likely to be
from mail-sorters and posties. Were checking that now.

He paused. Since then, another
letter has come.

Any more on the vehicle, boss?

It was one of the Rosebud
detectives. So far there was no sign that Ellen Destrys crew, or the
reinforcements arranged by McQuarrie, were losing faith in him. No. And once
you ask yourself who on the Peninsula uses a four-wheel drive, you want to have
a Bex and a good lie down.

He started numbering his fingers. First,
any farmer, orchardist, winegrower or stock breeder. Then we have your ordinary
suburban cowboy, whos never taken his pride and joy off the sealed roads. After
that, your average house painter, electrician and handyman. He stopped
numbering. Not to mention mobile mechanics, courier drivers, shire council
workers, power-line inspectors, food transporters.

He gazed at them. The link we need
could come by accident. We have to be alert, and read the daily crime reports.
Maybe our man is known to us, or will become known to us, for a quite different
offence. Maybe his vehicles been involved in somethingYes, Scobie?

Scobie Sutton was half way out of
his chair. Boss, while were on that subject, Ive got one possibility.

Go on.

On Saturday I went out to Tidal
River to question a gypsy woman for theft. She was camped there with three
blokes and at least one kid. Two camper homes, one caravan, a couple of Holden
Jackaroos. The thing is, she came to the station last week more or less saying
shed had a vision of where we could find the body. Near water, she said. I
thought she was a crank. Sorry, boss.

Challis was angry but tried not to
show it. Youd better get out there straight away.

Yes, boss.

* * * *

Kees
van Alphen delivered a second freezer bag. Youre really getting through this
stuff, Clara. Hadnt you better cut down a bit?

He felt her arms go around his neck.
Gives me an appetite. Havent you noticed?

Ill say.

Then whats your problem?

Supply, thats my problem. Getting
found out. Going to gaol. Hows that for starters?

Then youd better bust a few
dealers, hadnt you? Restock the evidence cupboard and deal direct.

Hed thought of that. He could do
it, but didnt feel good about it.

Afterwards, on her patterned carpet,
lit by the curtained window light, he traced her nipple and said, I have to
go.

So soon?

The neighbours are going to wonder
why theres always a police car in your driveway.

Them? They scarcely know I exist.

* * * *

Scobie
Sutton asked for two vans, a police car and two probationary constables. Pam
found herself driving him. Shed had a call earlier to say that her mother had
fallen, not badly, but enough to bruise her poor, ropey arm. Pam had been
ironing her uniform when the call came, listening to a new CD, a compilation of
60s surfing songs: Wipeout, Pipeline, Apache, a couple of Beach Boys
hits. Ginger had once told her you could hear, in the beat and the guitar of 60s
surfing instrumentals, the shudder in the wall of a breaking wave, so shed
been listening hard, as she ironed her uniform shirt and longed for him.

Sutton broke in. You know how my
kid pronounces quickly? Trickly. To get her to go to the loo when she wakes
in the morning we have to pretend her teddy needs a wee. So she rushes off to
the loo on her little legs, saying, Trickly, Blue Ted, trickly, hold it in,
hold it in.

His bony face was wreathed in
smiles. Huh, Pam said, trying to work up some good humour.

And vegemite sandwiches? She calls
them sammymites.

Cute.

She sensed that Sutton had turned
his protuberant eyes upon her, gauging her remark. After a while, he looked
away again.

Five days until New Years Eve. She
had time off, and thought about Ginger and the parties he was bound to be going
to.

They entered the Tidal River caravan
park, skirted the central reserve, and made their way to a dismal, unsheltered
corner by the main road.

Sutton groaned. Theyve legged it.

Hard-baked, grassless earth, spotted
with oil, but no sign of any gypsies. Pam watched Sutton get out of the
Commodore and peer at the ground, as if searching for tyre tracks. He looked
livid. Then he crossed to a rubbish bin and began hauling out food scraps,
takeaway containers and bottles. At the bottom was what looked to Pam like a
wad of black cloth. Then Sutton shook it out, and she saw straps and buckles,
and realised that he was looking at a backpack. It was a mess. Sutton shoved it
back into the bin.

* * * *

Fourteen

n
Wednesday 27 December, dark cloud masses rolled in from the west and banked up
in huge thunderheads above the bay. By lunchtime an electrical storm had
brewed. It lurked and muttered through the afternoon, approaching the
Peninsula, building with gusting winds into a cloudburst at four oclock.
Challis, in the incident room at Waterloo, wondered how clogged his gutters
were. He couldnt afford to have rainwater overflowing the gutters before it
reached the down-pipes that took it to his underground tank. Ellen Destry, also
in the incident room, thought of her house, shut up all day in the heat. Would
Larrayne have had the sense to open the windows? She glanced out across the car
park to the courthouse. Rhys Hartnett, stripped to the waist, was snipping tin
vents in the rain. His body glistened. He seemed to sense her there;
straightening, lifting his streaming head to the rain, he shook the water from
his thick hair. John Tankard, out in the divisional van, switched on the wipers
and pulled in to the rear of the Fiddlers Creek Hotel, opened his window,
snatched the sixpack of Crown Lager from the manager, and slipped away again,
stopping by his flat on the way back to the station. Meanwhile the ground under
Claras mailbox had turned to blackish mud. Kees van Alphen, exhausted in his
bed at home, heard nothing of the storm. Four days had passed since Trina Ungers
abduction. Her body had not been found. Life went on.

* * * *

On
Thursday the Waterloo
Progress
came out in a small special edition.
There was little advertising and only a handful of news items and a page of
sports results. The front page was devoted to the second letter, under the
banner: KILLER MOCKS POLICE. There was also a sidebar speculating that a
four-wheel-drive vehicle had been used for the abductions. And, at the bottom,
an item headlined Charges Dropped:

Police this week announced the
dropping of charges against Mr Julian Bastian, 21-year-old playboy son of
Melbourne and Portsea society matron, Lady Susan Bastian.

Mr Bastian was facing charges of
driving while intoxicated. When arrested, his companion, Miss Cindy Price, 19,
of Mount Eliza, was in the drivers seat of his BMW sportscar. Arresting police
alleged that Bastian persuaded Miss Price to say that she was the driver.

Senior Sergeant Kellock of the
Waterloo police station said: There were procedural errors in the arrest.

Lady Bastians late husband, Sir
Edgar Bastian, was the moving force behind the White Sands Golf Course. Members
include Superintendent Mark McQuarrie, of the Victoria Police.

Superintendent McQuarrie is
superintendent of Peninsula District.

* * * *

On
Friday, Pam Murphy and John Tankard were back on the day shift, making their
regular sweep of the town and the side roads.

See the paper yesterday, Murph?

Pams mother had been treated for a
blood clot. The treatment was plenty of rest and pills to dissolve the clot,
but was she going to get much rest? Not likely, not with the old man the way he
was.

You see it?

Pam looked through the windscreen,
the side window, alert for kids on bikes and skateboards. See what?

The article about that Bastian
prick.

I saw it.

Pretty good, eh?

In what way?

Well, it raises doubts, doesnt it?
If I can get some senior officers to swing behind this, maybe the charges will
be reinstated.

And pigs might fly.

Youre a negative bitch, you know
that?

And Tankard folded his arms and
leaned, tired and depressed, against the passenger door with his eyes closed.

* * * *

On
Saturday morning Challis noted that the road outside of his front gate was dry
and dusty again, almost as if there hadnt been rain earlier in the week. He
made for the Old Peninsula Highway, as he always did. But this week hed been
braking slowly when he reached the Foursquare Produce barn and pulling on to
the gravel forecourt. As usual today there were two cars parked hard against
the building itselfemployees vehicles. The main door was open. He could see
them, two women, one building a pyramid of apples, the other preparing price
labels with a black marker pen. They recognised him and waved. He wondered what
they thought of the occupant of the third car, which was parked next to the
phone box. Pity? And embarrassment, for when we see such naked grief and
desperation we turn away from it.

He got out. As he approached the
car, the drivers door opened and a woman eased out from behind the wheel. Inspector
Challis.

Hello, Mrs Gideon.

There were posters as large as
television screens over the rear windows:
Did you see who took our daughter?
A blurred photograph, Jane Gideon clipped from a group of friends, smiling
a little crookedly, a little drunkenly, for the camera. There was a tangle of
streamers behind her, the edge of one or two balloons, and a mans shoulder
tucked into hers. A few lines of description under the photograph, and the
circumstances of her abduction.
If this jogs your memory, please call the
police on,
and a direct number to the incident room.