Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (2 page)

BOOK: Challis - 01 - Dragon Man
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He didnt expect that from the
Waterloo CIB. Hed worked with them before.

* * * *

Challis
drove south for twenty kilometres. The highway ran down the eastern side of the
Peninsula, giving him occasional glimpses of the bay. Then the Waterloo
refinery came into view across the mangrove flats, bright oily flames on the
chimneys, and glaring white tanks. There was a large tanker at anchor. The
highway became a lesser road, bisecting a new housing estate, the high plank
fences on either side hiding rooftops that varied greatly but were never more
than a metre apart. He crossed the railway line and turned right, skirting the
town, then left on to a main road that took him past timber merchants, boat
yards, Peninsula Cabs, crash repairers, an aerobics centre, the Fiddlers Creek
pub and a corner lot crammed with ride-on mowers and small hobby tractors.

The police station and the adjacent
courthouse were on a roundabout at the end of High Street, opposite a Pizza
Hut. Challis glanced down High Street as he turned. The water glittered at the
far end; frosted Santas, reindeer, sleighs, candles, mangers and bells swung
from lampposts and trees.

He parked in the side street
opposite the main entrance to the police station, got out, and walked into
trouble.

That windscreens not roadworthy.

A uniformed constable, who had been
about to get into a divisional van that idled outside the station with a young
woman constable at the wheel, had changed his mind and was approaching Challis,
flipping open his infringement book and fishing in his top pocket for a pen. Hes
going to book me, Challis thought.

Ive ordered a new windscreen.

Not good enough.

The Triumph was low-slung. On the
back roads of the Peninsula, it was always copping stones and pebbles, and one
had cracked the windscreen on the passenger side.

This your car?

It is.

A snapping of fingers: Licence.

Challis complied. The constable was
largetall and big-boned, but also carrying too much weight. He was young, the
skin untested by time and the elements, and his hair was cut so short that his
scalp showed through. Challis had an impression of acres of pink flesh.

Quickly, quickly.

A classic bully, Challis thought.

Then the constable saw the name on
Challiss licence, but, to his credit, did not flinch. Challis. Inspector
Challis?

Yes.

Sir, that windscreens not
roadworthy. Its also dangerous.

I realise that. Ive ordered a new
one.

The constable watched him for a long
moment, then nodded. He put his book away. Fair enough.

Challis hadnt wanted to be booked,
and telling the constable to follow the rules and book him would have been an
embarrassment and an irritation for both of them, so he said nothing. The
constable turned and made for the van. Challis watched it leave.

A real prick, that one, a voice
said.

There was a work-dented Jeep parked
outside the courthouse. The rear doors were open and a man wearing overalls was
unloading air-conditioning vents. Challis glanced at the side of the Jeep:
Rhys
Hartnett Air-Conditioning.

The bastard did me over yesterday.
Hadnt been here five minutes and he booked me for a cracked tail-light.
Shouted in my face, spit flying, like I was some kind of criminal.

Challis steered the conversation
away from that. Are you working in the police station?

The man shook his head. The
courthouse.

He snapped a business card at
Challis. He did it in a way that seemed automatic, and Challis had a vision of
hundreds of people walking around with unwanted cards in their pockets. He
glanced at it.
Rhys Hartnett, Air-Conditioning Specialist.

Well, I wish you were doing the
police station.

Hartnett seemed to straighten. You
a copper?

Yes.

Just my luck. I was wasting my
breath complaining to you about police tactics.

Not necessarily, Challis said,
turning away and crossing the road.

* * * *

The
police station was on two levels. The ground floor was a warren of interview
rooms, offices, holding cells, a squad room, a canteen and a tearoom. The first
floor was quieter: a small gym, lockers, a sick bay. It was also the location
of the DisplanDisaster Planroom, which doubled as the incident room whenever
there was a major investigation.

A senior sergeant was in overall
charge of the station. He had four sergeants and about twenty other ranks under
him, including a handful of trainees, for Waterloo was a designated training
station. The CIB itself was small, only a sergeant and three detective
constables. There were also two forensic technicianspolice members, and on
call for the whole Peninsulaand a couple of civilian clerks. Given that over
thirty people worked at the station, that shift work applied to most of them,
and that the uniformed and CIB branches generally had little to do with each
other, Challis wasnt surprised that the young constable hadnt recognised him
from his two earlier investigations in Waterloo.

The tearoom was next to the
photocopy room. Challis crossed to the cluttered sink in the corner, four young
uniformed constables falling silent as he filled a cup with tap water. He
looked at his watch. Time for the briefing.

He wandered upstairs and found the
CIB detectives and a handful of uniformed sergeants waiting for him in the
Displan room. The morning light streamed in. It was a large, airy room, but he
knew that it would be stuffy by the end of the day. The room had been fitted
with extra phone lines, photocopiers, computers, large-scale wall maps and a
television set. Every incoming telephone call could be automatically timed and
recorded on cassette, and there was a direct line to Telstra so that calls
could be traced.

Challis nodded as he entered the
room. There were murmured hellos in return and someone said, Heres the dragon
man. He crossed to a desk that sat between a whiteboard and a wall of maps. He
positioned himself behind the desk, leaned both hands on the back of a chair,
and said, without preamble:

On Sunday night a young woman named
Jane Gideon made an emergency call from a phone box on the Old Peninsula
Highway. She hasnt been seen since, and given that another young woman, Kymbly
Abbott, was found raped and murdered by the side of the highway a week ago, were
treating the circumstances as suspicious.

He straightened his back and looked
out above their heads. Youre Jane Gideon. You work at the Odeon cinema. You
catch the last train to Frankston from the city, collect your car, an old
Holden, and head down the highway, your usual route home. Picture the highway
at night. Almost midnight. No street lighting, cloudy moon, very few cars
about, no sense of humankind out there except for a farmhouse porch light on a
distant hillside. Its a hot night, the hills are steep in places, your car
badly needs a tune. Eventually the radiator boils over. You limp as far as the
gravelled area in front of Foursquare Produce, which is a huge barn of a place,
set in the middle of nowhere, but there
is
a Telstra phone box nearby.
No doors on it, very little glass, mostly steel mesh painted blue-grey. Feeling
exposed to the darkness, you call the VAA.

He slipped a cassette tape into a
machine and pressed the play button. They strained to listen:

Victorian Automobile Association.
How may I help you?

Yes, my names Jane Gideon. My cars
broken down. I think its the radiator. Im scared to keep going in case I
break something.

Your membership number?

Er

They heard a rattle of keys.
Here
it is: MP six three zero zero four slash nine six.

There was a pause, then:
Sorry,
we have no record of that number. Perhaps you allowed your membership to
elapse?

Please, cant you still send
someone?

Youll have to rejoin.

Jesus Christ, someone muttered.
Challis held up his hand for quiet.

I
dont care. Just send someone.

How would you like to pay?

There was a pause filled with the
hiss of radio signals in the dark night. Then Jane Gideons voice came on the
line again, an edge to it.

Someones coming.

You dont require assistance after
all?

I mean, theres a car. Its slowed
right down. Hang on.

There was the sound of more coins
being fed into the phone.
Im back.

The operators tone was neutral, as
though she could not sense the black night, the isolated call box and the young
womans fear.
Your address, please.

Um, theres this shed, says
Foursquare Produce.

But where? Your membership number,
thats the Peninsula, correct?

Im on the Old Peninsula Highway.
Oh no, hes stopping.

Where on the highway? Can you give
me a reference point? A house number? An intersecting road?

Its a man. Oh God.

The operators tone sharpened.
Jane,
listen, is something going on there where you are?

A car.

Is there a house nearby?

No.
She was sobbing now.
No house
anywhere, just this shed.

Ill tell you what Im going to do.
You

Its okay, hes driving away.

Jane. Get inside your car. If its
driveable, find somewhere off the road where it cant be seen. Maybe behind
that shed. Then stay inside the car. Lock all the doors and wind up all the
windows. Can you do that for me?

Suppose so.

Meanwhile Ill call the police, and
Ill also send one of our breakdown vehicles out to you. You can rejoin the VAA
on the spot. Okay? Jane? You there?

What if he comes back? Im scared.
Ive never been so scared.

Her voice was breaking as her fear
rose. The operator replied calmly, but there was no comfort in her advice:
Get
in the car, lock the doors, do not speak to anyone, even if they offer help.

I could hide.

Clearly the operator was torn. The
Victorian Automobile Association had been taping its emergency calls ever since
a member had sued them for offering wrong advice which proved costly, with the
result that operators were now careful not to offer advice of any kindbut a
young woman alone on a deserted road at night? She deserved wise counsel of
some kind.

I dont know,
the operator confessed.
If you
think it would do any good. Hide where? Hello? Hello?

There was the sound of a vehicle,
muffled voices, a long pause, then the line went dead.

The rest you know, Challis said. The
VAA operator called 000, who contacted Frankston, who sent a car down there.
They found Jane Gideons car. The phone was on the hook. No signs of a
struggle. They searched around the nearby sheds and orchards in case Gideon
had
decided to hide herself, but found nothing. He glanced at his watch. Uniforms
started searching the area at daybreak yesterday. Our first task will be a door
knock.

He paused. Its early days, so try
not to let one case colour the other, but we cant discount the possible links
between Kymbly Abbotts murder and Jane Gideons disappearance. Since Im
already working oh Abbott, Ive brought her files with me. Any questions so
far?

What are the links, boss?

The Old Peninsula Highway for a
start, Challis said. He turned to a wall map. It showed the city of Melbourne,
and the main arteries into the rural areas. Pointing to a network of streets
which marked the suburb of Frankston, on the south-eastern edge of the city, he
said, Kymbly Abbott had been at a party here, in Frankston. The highway starts
here, a few hundred metres away. Abbott was last seen walking toward it,
intending to hitch a ride home. He traced the highway down the hook of the
Peninsula. She lived with her parents here, in Dromana. They own a shoe shop.
I have her leaving the party at one oclock in the morning, possibly drunk,
possibly stoned, so her judgment would have been shot. No-one at the party gave
her a lift, though I will be talking to them all again. Her body was found
here, by the side of the highway, just seven kilometres south of Frankston. Were
appealing for witnesses, the usual thing, did anyone see her, give her a lift,
see someone else give her a lift.

But that suggests our mans also
prowling in Frankston itself, not simply up and down the highway.

I know. Or he lives in the
Frankston area and was just setting out somewhere, or lives down here and was
on his way home. Now, other similarities. Both incidents happened late at
night. Both victims are young women who were alone at the time.

He passed out crime-scene
photographs. They showed Kymbly Abbott like a cast-aside rag doll in death, her
throat and her thighs swollen and cruelly bruised. Raped and strangled. If
that was the first time for our man, he might have been on a high for a few
days, eager to try again on Sunday night.

BOOK: Challis - 01 - Dragon Man
12.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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