Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (34 page)

You do that.

Challis turned away. Ellen Destry
was beside herself, marking time on the footpath, wanting to talk, wanting to
act. She kicked the tyres on the Jeep. Even in the half-light, Challis could
see that they were worn, mismatched. These arent Cooper tyres.

Ellens face was twisted with
something like shame. Hal, I think Hartnett saw me unloading the tyre casts we
made at the reservoir. He probably replaced the Coopers with secondhand tyres
later the same day. She looked away. If hes killed her, Ill never forgive
myself.

There was no point in getting angry
with her. Challis took her arm. Are you ready?

Am I ever.

They approached the front door. Dogs
were barking in the nearby yards. Challis slapped a mosquito away from his
cheek. He could hear the irregular splash and rustle of someone hand-watering a
garden bed at the house on the right. Ellen raised her knuckles and knocked.

A voice said, Excuse me. Youre the
police?

Challis crossed swiftly to the
border of trees and shrubs. Yes.

You after the air-conditioning
bloke?

What can you tell me about him,
sir?

We were talking just now. When he
saw your car slow down, he went barging over my back fence.

Hence the barking dogs, Challis
thought. Can you show me where?

The man pointed. I got the feeling
he was heading for the reserve.

Challis ran to the footpath. The
reserve was a dark mass in the lowering light of evening. He thumbed the
transmit button on his radio. Scobie, is the back door unlocked?

Yes, boss.

Send a man in. Tell him to open the
front door for Ellen. Theyll stay and search the house. You and the others
come with me. Hes on foot, gone into scrubland.

* * * *

Ellen
made a frantic search of the house, then gathered herself and searched again.
She kept bumping into the uniformed constable. It was a small house. There was
nothing ostensibly wrong about the man who lived in it. He owned a television
set, a stereo, a handful of books. His habits were tidy. There was nothing
freakish about the lighting, the wallpaper, the items in his cupboards and
drawers. There was no pornography, there were no implements of cruelty. There
was no body, alive or dead, or signs that one had ever been there.

But the house spoke of an inflexible
life. No clutter, no dust, no sign that an ordinary person sprawled there at
the end of the day. For just a moment, Ellen caught a sense of Rhys Hartnett,
his rigidity and his hatred of disorder.

And, for what it was worth, there
was a computer, and a Canon printer.

She remembered the bath. She levered
off the side panels. Nothing.

Only an odour of dampness.

But hed kept one souvenir, Kymbly
Abbotts backpack. Had he kept others? Or had he ceased to do that after Danny
had broken in?

The ceiling, Sarge?

There was a manhole. They positioned
the hall table under it and she watched the constable haul himself through the
narrow gap. She heard the roof beams creak. She heard a sneeze.

Then his face appeared. Nothing,
Sarge. He sneezed again.

Come on down. We need to know if he
owns or rents another house somewhere.

We havent searched the shed,
Sarge. And he might own a lockup somewhere, for his equipment and that.

Tear her hair out, thats what she
wanted to do. Her hands itched to hurt her own body.

Shed, first.

It was a gardening and tool shed. A
rake, a fork, a shovel and a small pick were propped handle-first inside a tall
wooden box in one corner. Lengths of dowelling rested across the beams above
their heads. Extensive shelving had been erected around three of the walls.
Ellen picked up a plastic honey tub. It was full of screws. The fourth wall was
hung with hammers, chisels, screwdrivers and wrenches. The spanners were in a
toolbox on the floor. She guessed that there would be more tools in the Jeep.

She grabbed the constable. We havent
checked his van.

It was careless of her. Hartnett
might have doubled back and escaped in it. And there were good reasons why it
should have been searched first.

All of the doors were locked. Ellen
sent the constable to search for the keys, while she walked around and around
the vehicle, tugging on handles and attempting to peer through the darkened
windows. A mobile hell, she thought, and began to cry. Hed snatched Larrayne
over ten hours earlier. If he was true to form, her daughter was dead by now.
She had to expect that, face that. She tugged on the rear door handles again.

The Jeep seemed to give an answering
shake, so minute that she almost didnt register it. She didnt trust her
senses. It could have been the plates of the earth shifting a little, far away,
far beneath her, registering as a tiny shake here, in this driveway.

The constable returned, waving keys.
In a basket on the kitchen bench, he said proudly. He stopped, looked toward
the reserve. Theyve brought in the chopper.

Ellen snatched the keys from him.
She wasnt interested in anything but getting the doors open.

The rear compartment, once so
familiar to her, a small, friendly, masculine place that spoke of Rhys Hartnetts
clever hands and efficiency, now seemed to be composed of sharp metal corners
and the coldness of metal. Shelves, brackets, tools, offcuts of aluminium, electrical
flex, drawers, a large, padlocked cabinet along one side of the tray.

A muffled knock. Another hint of
rocking.

They registered it together. The
constable fumbled the keys out of the door and searched for the smaller keys on
the ring. Ellen made to snatch the keys from him. They performed a small,
foolish dance, a playground grabbing contest, before the constable relinquished
the keys to her.

The cabinet door swung upwards.
Larrayne lay cramped on her side and wrapped in a blanket of thin, high-density
foam. Her wrists and ankles had been taped together. There was a strip of tape
over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and afraid, and then they began to blink
away the tears and she began to thrash her body, thrash it until theyd pulled
her out and cut her free.

* * * *

Challis
felt his chest tighten. His mouth tasted sour and his breathing came in tight,
strained shudders that barely sustained him. Asthma. He flashed on his
childhood. The evenings had always been the worst time. Hed want to run and
climb and charge about, anything to avoid bed, anything to fill up the minutes
before he was called inside, anything to stay outside, and the attacks would
come, so bad sometimes that his panicked parents had called for an ambulance.
But that was childhood. He had a more recent memory, of a small town, his wife,
the other constable, the affair between them burning unnoticed by him until the
anonymous call that had lured him to a patch of trees along a moonless back
road. The shots. Hed taken one in the arm, a sleeve-plucking flesh wound. Hed
circled around and hed shot the man whod wanted him out of the way. Challis
stopped now, one hand resting against the trunk of a tree. His breathing
rattled and wheezed. So much for silence, he thought.

There were men on the way. Fifteen
minutes, according to the duty sergeant in Frankston. And a helicopter with a
searchlight.

Hartnett had a lead of two minutes.
He knew his way through the reserve, presumably. Challis hadnt sent a car
around to the bottom edge of the reserve. There were simply no roads to it. So,
all four of themhimself, Sutton, the two constableswere floundering in the
twilight, only two torches between them.

He thumbed his radio. Anything?

The replies came: No, boss.

Everyone keep still a minute, and
listen.

After a while he said, Anything?

No, boss.

Then Challis heard it, the thud and
chop of rotor blades. A voice crackled on his radio. Inspector Challis?

In the reserve. Can you see it?

Silence, then, Approaching you now.

There are four of us, Challis
said. Two uniforms, two plainclothes. Were wearing white shirts.

Hows our target dressed?

I dont know.

Roger. Well flush him out,
sweeping now.

Suddenly light was probing the trees
near Challis. It flicked like an angry finger, then began to make steady sweeps
across the reserve as the helicopter moved slowly down its length.

In the mind-numbing din, Challis
felt ill. He realised that he hadnt eaten for many hours. He thought about
following the light, then decided to head in the opposite direction. There were
men enough to grab Hartnett if the spotlight flushed him out, but what if it
had passed right over him and he was
behind
the sweep now, safe in the
darkness, waiting until he could slip away.

Hartnett shouldnt have moved,
Challis told himself later. Hartnett should simply have waited. But he didnt
wait. He burst from a thicket, screaming unnervingly, swinging a knife. Challis
felt the blade slice above his nipple. There was warm wetness at first, then
the pain.

He feinted, dropping to one knee
with a groan. Hartnett swung around. He was still screaming, fighting the air
with the knife. The danger to Challis lay not in Hartnetts skill and
calculation but in that windmilling wild arm. Challis rolled on to his back,
jackknifing his knees to his chest. To Hartnett, it must have signalled
submission, for he ran forward, bending low, coming around on Challiss left
side, still screaming.

Challis waited. He waited for the
upstroke, the moonglint on the knife that told him it was about to swing down
and cut him open. Propping on his forearms, he swivelled his trunk around and
shot out both feet.

He caught Hartnetts knees. One
smacked against the other and Challis heard the moist, muffled crack of a bone
breaking. Hartnett screamed. His arms swung up and his back arched. He flopped
to the ground and began to flounder. Challis felt terrible. Hed never seen so
much agony in anyone and had never caused so much.

* * * *

Twenty-Eight

e
kept saying, Your mothers a bitch. Stupid copper bitch. Stupid copper bitch
who goes back on her word.

Hush, love, its all right.

It was like it was personal.

I think it was, this time.

He told me I was always rude to
him. Well, I
was.
I always thought he was a sleazebag. I told you I
thought that. I couldnt believe you brought him into the house.

Its all right, sweetie. Its all
right. Youre safe now.

They were in the car. Sutton was
driving, with Challis next to him. The ambulance crew had cleared and dressed
Challiss cut before taking Hartnett away. Larrayne Destry was in the back of
the car, with her mother. Shed refused to be taken to hospital.

You dont have to talk about it
now.

I want to.

Okay, sweetie.

You think he raped me, dont you?
Well he was going to, he said. Kept telling me all the things he was going to
do to me. Told me this time was going to be different from the other times.
This time he was going to draw it out for a few days.

Challis heard the soft scrape of
fabric against fabric. He didnt turn around. They were not wearing their
seatbelts but were huddled together, sniffing, sometimes crying, Ellen
ceaselessly touching her daughters face.

He showed me all this stuff.

What stuff?

There was a watch, a ring, a hair
clip. Little things.

Souvenirs.

Oh.

A cloud passed across the moon. They
seemed to be alone on the black road. Challis coughed, and said, over his
shoulder, Where did you see these things, Larrayne?

He sensed that Larrayne was leaning
toward him. Where Mum found me, inside that cabinet thingy in his van.

Challis nodded. And he talked about
the other women hed abducted?

Over and over. Boasting.

Ellen said, I cant believe I let
him see those tyre casts. He must have enjoyed himself, working next door to
the police, watching them flounder. Probably couldnt believe his luck.

Challis nodded. It would have taken
a certain kind of nerve and arrogance for Hartnett to stay on at the
courthouse, working, watching.

As if reading his thoughts, Ellen
said, He was under our noses the whole time. I trusted him.

It occurred to Challis then that his
sergeant had something to hide. She was fighting unwelcome emotions and
realisations. Her talkativenessshe was feeling relief, but did she also feel
betrayed and embarrassed? It was as if something had happened to challenge her
good judgment of herself. He remembered seeing her with Hartnett several times.
How far had it gone?

* * * *

How
much longer do you intend to hold my client?