Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (8 page)

BOOK: Challis - 01 - Dragon Man
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I didnt connect it with anything
until I saw the story about the latest case.

All right, thank you, Challis
said. He took down her details and filed them on computer.

He worked steadily through the
morning, hearing the background hum of voices and keyboards. At twelve-thirty
he asked Ellen Destry to have lunch with him, aware that the encounter with
Tessa Kane still rankled with her. Something simple, he said.

I know a place that does good
rolls.

Suits me.

They wandered down High Street. A
carolling loudspeaker blasted them from the doorway of the $2 Bargains shop.
All of the shop windows were frosted and hung with silver and gold tinsel. The
bargains shop was very busy; the others only moderately so. Here and there
Challis saw signs begging him to support his local trader, and he guessed thered
be a few closures in the new year. But not at $2 Bargains.

Done your shopping?

Not yet. I know what will happen:
at the last minute Ill buy Alan some T-shirts and wine, and Larrayne some
T-shirts and CD vouchers. Same as last year, and the year before. Its
depressing. You?

No. Frankly, Christmas makes me
anxious. So many people have so much riding on it that you feel somehow
responsible for their happiness.

She glanced at him worriedly. Youre
still coming for drinks on Christmas morning, arent you?

He stopped and touched her arm. Sure.
I didnt mean you when I said that.

They walked on. Challis felt a
sudden small surge of pleasure. The town was struggling, and there was a killer
circling it, but it felt good to be walking along a sunny street with Ellen
Destry and to see the shops and the people shopping for Christmas. There was a
general good will in the air. Its strange, he said, but I need to do things
like this occasionally, to remind myself Im just a working hack like everyone
else, not a copper and therefore separate from them.

She understood. She slipped her hand
into the crook of his elbow and with a bounce in her step steered him past the
butcher and into the health-food shop.

There were two middle-aged women
waiting to be served ahead of them. Challis found himself listening to their
conversation with the young woman behind the counter.

I wont let my daughter take that
road any more.

My niece, she takes the bus to
Frankston now, in case her car breaks down.

The shopgirl said, It makes you
think twice about going to the pictures and that. She shivered. Stay home and
watch a video instead.

Theyre cowards, you know. If youre
a woman and youre driving alone at night, take someone along with you. Theyre
cowards. They wont pick on two.

Makes you think.

Ill say.

There was no advice that Challis
could offer them, so he said nothing. Hed seen women take stupid risks and pay
for it. Hed seen them take extra care and still fall victim to rapists and
killers. Hed seen them fall victim in public thoroughfares, where they might
expect a measure of security. What good would it do for him to tell the women
in the shop: Youre right to be cautious?

He bought a pita bread pocket
stuffed with lettuce, tomato, fetta and leaky mayonnaise, Ellen a slice of
quiche. They wandered down to the playground next to the public swimming pool.
Some of their lightness had evaporated. Then something like that happens,
Challis said, knowing that Ellen would follow the trail of his thoughts, and I
realise that I
am
different, I
am
separate from everyone else. Im
expected to be. No-ones saying, Come in here with us, theyre saying, Stay
out there and watch over us. Its a crying shame, he said, hurling the
remains of his lunch toward the seagulls, and nothing can be done about it.

Ellen leaned briefly against him and
said, Hal, softly.

They wandered back to the station,
saying little, but feeling a kind of commonality with each other, and sadness.

* * * *

They
hadnt been in the incident room for long when Ellen murmured, McQuarries
here.

The man coming toward them wore a
natty suit and the alert, clipped, close-shaven look of an army officer in an
old British film. Afternoon, everyone.

Superintendent.

Hal, have you seen one of these?

Challis glanced at it, a leaflet
headed Our very own stormtrooper.

I was aware they were around, sir.

The night shift found them on their
cars this morning. Someone had the nerve to walk in under our noses.

Since McQuarrie was based in
Frankston and rarely visited the regional stations, Challis didnt know why he
was saying
our
noses. I see.

Ive talked to Mr Kellock. Hes
going to post a stakeout over the car park tonight.

Challis glanced past the
superintendent at Ellen Destry, in time to catch a fleeting grin. Good for
you, sir.

Its the thin edge of the wedge.

For all of his talk about the thin
edge of the wedge, the superintendent was a diplomat, a man who bent with the
wind. His was the face the public saw whenever the police had to explain
anything. Challis knew that McQuarrie played golf with well-heeled men, and he
had no trouble seeing him scurrying along behind, letting them set the agenda.

Right, Kymbly Abbott, McQuarrie
said. Bring me up to speed. Any forensic joy?

Nothing to speak of. He used a
condom. No prints, but indications of a latex glove.

Tyres, footprints, sightings,
nothing like that?

Nothing, sir, except one witness,
who phoned this morning. She saw Abbott on the highway the night she was
murdered.

McQuarrie spun around and regarded
the wall map, his long hands on his bony hips. Challis winked at Ellen, then
joined McQuarrie at the map. Here, sir, where it starts. Apparently she was
sitting on the kerb, her feet in the gutter, holding out her thumb.

Pity our witness didnt pick her
up.

Yes, sir.

Mad. These young girls, I dont
know.

Challis couldnt find an adequate
response to that. He pointed at the map. And heres where Jane Gideon went missing.

The cases might not be related.

Thats occurred to us.

She might have recognised the
driver and gone off with him. Isnt aware that people are worried about her.

Challis rubbed his forehead
irritably. True.

McQuarrie said, But doubtful. Its
been too long and we cant discount that letter.

I agree.

I had Tessa Kane on the blower.

Yes, sir.

Wanted a comment. Of course, I didnt
tell her anything.

Wise, sir.

McQuarrie clapped his hands
together. Right, well, keep me posted.

* * * *

Five

A

fter
her encounter with Sergeant Destry that morning, Pam Murphy had caught the bus
for Myers Point. It had swayed along the coast road, Pam swaying with it, her
surfboard upright against her knees like a broad, blank-faced, yellow extra
passenger. The drivers were used to her by now. Every Wednesday morningshift
work allowingsince mid-October. The other passengers shed never seen before:
two tired-looking men in blue overalls, a raucous mother with a four-year-old
who seemed to suffer clips about the ears without pain, and an elderly woman
with a handbag.

The elderly woman alighted with her
at Myers Point and limped toward a small weatherboard cottage. A woman watering
the garden there carefully turned off the tap and embraced her visitor. Pam
found that she was moved by the little incident. She had a sense of lifelong
friends, who saw one another when they could and spoke on the telephone every
day.

She walked around to the surfing
beach. The board grew heavy and awkward. She was hot. She needed a car, but
money somehow failed to stick to her. She was chronically in debt. She was
barely able to scrape up thirty dollars for this mornings lessonnot that
Ginger would have insisted, but he was only a kid and it wouldnt have been
right.

He was waiting in the car park next
to the public lavatories at the head of the dunes. Five others this morning,
four women like herself and a guy in his fifties, a fit-looking character
decorated with tattoos and a ponytail. Sure enough, there was a big chrome and
black enamel Harley parked nearby.

Ginger flashed her a smile. She
wished it was just Ginger and herself and the wide blue sea this morningas it
had been once or twice before.

The little group walked down through
the gap in the dunes and came out upon flat sand opposite a mildly chopping
sea. Ginger turned right and led them for some distance, staring critically at
the water, the way the waves were forming and breaking. Pam admired the way he
walked at an easy lope across the sand, while she and the others made hard work
of it. Plenty of natural grace in that walk, nice tight muscles, long arms and
legs, chin tipped back, his chopped-short, sun-bleached hair catching the sun.
A wonderfully shapely face for a seventeen-year-old. No adolescent roundness,
pimples or bumfluff. Cheerful. Uncomplicated. All that mattered to him were the
surf and the surf school. It would be good if he had a little left over for
her, she sometimes thought, even if he were jailbaitor at least cause for her
to be reprimanded, maybe even dismissed, for disgraceful conduct.

The others were drawing ahead now.
Pams breathing grew laboured. Her whole body ached. Plenty of exercise, the
specialist had told her, but nothing with a percussive effect. No jogging, only
careful gym work, plenty of swimming, regular massage and physiotherapy. He
hadnt said anything about surfing, but Pam had always loved to watch it on the
box, the Bells Beach classic, Hawaii, the swift, nifty manoeuvres. She admired
the women. So much guts and careless talent. It looked to be incredible fun.
So, after the accidenta three-car pile-up in pursuit of a stolen Porsche in
South Yarraand her rehab and a breakdown that left her afraid and doubting and
drained of esteem, and this posting to the Peninsula, far from the badness of
the past, shed seen the surfing lessons advertised in the milk bar and had
thought, Why not?

Now Ginger had seen that she was
struggling. He told the others to stop and gear up, and came back for her,
smiling and concerned.

You okay?

His wetsuit filled her eyes. She
imagined his pale, slender, hard, hairless chest and stomach. A few aches and
pains.

Her own wetsuit hid her scars. They
werent so bad, as scars go, but no-one knew the damage and pain they stood
for. Gingers glance went to her hip and shoulder. Would you like me to
massage you?

She blushed. Ginger.

I mean it. Im always massaging
people who seize up in the water.

Well see.

Keep it in mind, he said, taking
her board for her and walking with her at her pace.

She was thirty, almost twice his
age. As far as she knew, he didnt have a girlfriend. But someone would turn
his head eventually, someone his age. She had to keep telling herself that.

Two hours later, back at Penzance
Beach to shower and change and catch the bus to work, she saw a man, no more
than a skinny kid, jemmy open the side window of the house opposite her flat,
and climb inside. She was waiting for him when he came out.

* * * *

Clara
had mixed feelings about van Alphen, not least because he was a copper and
because of what had happened last night, when hed been so sweet to her,
attentive, shy and clumsy. Shed slept badly, the night wracked with dreams of
masked figures tearing away their masks to reveal other masks. She hadnt drunk
much of the vodka, simply curled up on the sofa with the big copper until shed
felt sleepy, but her head boomed now. She needed something to level her out.
Shed sworn off coke, but what she wouldnt do for a snort right now. Trouble
was, she couldnt afford to go looking for a supplier. There was no-one she
could trust. Smoking dope and doing coke was the old Clara, and her enemies
knew that, and that was where theyd have their feelers out, even from as far
away as Christchurch.

Midday. Her house in Quarterhorse
Lane stood opposite a broad paddock of rye grass. As she watched, winds pushed
at the grass heads in long sweeps back and forth, like rollers pitching in an
ocean. It looked lovely, but it was also a fire hazard, and she trembled again.

The patrol car crept along the dirt
road toward her front gate. She watched it pause at the mailbox, then turn in.
Hed come back, just like he said he would.

She hugged him briefly. He looked
tired. His hair was damp. She felt shy. You came back.

Just passing. Did you sleep?

So-so. You?

Managed to snatch a couple of hours
at the station.

Hed shaved badly. She touched his
jaw. Coffee, Van? That will blow the cobwebs away.

BOOK: Challis - 01 - Dragon Man
4.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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