Challis - 02 - Kittyhawk Down (31 page)

On Thursday morning, Aileen Munro said, 'You again.'

'I don't have time for this,' Challis said. 'Last time I was here you told me that you never have visitors.'

'We don't.'

Ellen leaned forward. 'Aileen, on Tuesday Carl Lister came to see you.'

'Well, yes.'

'So you do have visitors from time to time.'

'But he's a neighbour. He lives up the road in one of them big houses on the ridge.'

'Has he been a regular visitor?'

'You don't call them visitors when they're your neighbour,' she muttered at the floor, then looked up and said, 'He pops in now and then.'

'Sits down and has a cup of tea with you?' Challis asked.

'Not really. They weren't that kind of visit.'

'What kind were they then?'

'He always come to ask Ian a favour,' Aileen said. 'Like, could Ian take his tractor up there and slash his grass for him, or he was bogged and could Ian come and pull him out, that kind of thing.' She folded her arms aggrievedly. 'He wasn't visiting. It was work, kind of thing.'

'Work,' Challis said, his lean face prohibitive in the dim light. Since Kitty's murder he'd felt close to heartsick and was barely hiding it.

'Yeah, work.'

'Did Lister help your husband to grow the marijuana?'

'I told you, I never knew about that. Why don't you believe me?'

'Were they partners?'

'I'm not answering any more of your stupid questions if you don't believe what I say.'

'Or did Lister pay your husband to grow the marijuana?'

Aileen Munro assumed the behaviour of a stubborn child, humming loudly to block out their voices, tapping her foot and gazing about the room. It irritated Challis even as he understood the reason for it.

'Mrs Munro, did Ian go off somewhere with Lister on Easter Saturday?'

She frowned. 'Might of done. Can't remember.'

'Did they say anything about going to one of the beaches?'

'One of the beaches?' Aileen was dumbfounded. 'What, like fishing?'

'Or for a walk, something like that.'

Aileen shook her head in wonder. 'I've never seen Ian within cooee of a beach.'

'Did Ian ever make deliveries for Lister, or fetch things for him?'

She screwed her face up in doubt that merged into disbelief. 'Nah.'

'You never saw him with packages?'

'Nup.'

'Did Ian take drugs?'

Aileen drew herself up, as though the question reflected badly on her or the choices she'd made in life. 'Never.'

Ellen said, 'Aileen, where is Ian now?'

'Haven't the foggiest.'

'Is he with Mr Lister? Is Mr Lister hiding him?'

'You'll have to ask him.'

Challis said, 'What did Lister want with you yesterday?'

'Dropped in to see how I was getting on.'

They gazed at her, wanting, expecting more, and were rewarded when she said into the silence: 'Asked me about you lot.'

Challis sat back and watched her levelly with a half-smile. 'Asked just out of passing interest, or was it more than that?'

She thought about it. 'He seemed a bit bothered.'

'About what, exactly?'

'He asked the kind of questions you've been asking. Did I know about the marijuana. Did I know what Ian had been up to. Had I told the police anything. I thought he was just being nosy.'

Then she muttered something and went pink.

Challis snapped forward. 'I didn't catch that, Aileen.'

She glared at him defiantly. 'He give me some money.'

'How much?'

'Hundred dollars.'

Challis guessed a few hundred. 'Did he say why?'

'In case I need anything. Ian did all the banking and stuff.'

'Did he place conditions on the loan?'

'Wasn't a loan!'

'Was it hush money, is what the inspector is asking,' Ellen said. 'In other words, did he ask you not to tell the police certain things?'

'He said the police don't have to know all my dirty wash Aileen Munro said sulkily. Then: 'Will I have to give it back?'

Challis shook his head. 'Keep it.'

'Good, because it'd be useful. For the bills and that.'

In the car afterwards, Ellen said, 'They were growing marijuana together, or Munro was growing it on Lister's behalf. Then the aerial photograph turns up and they destroy the crop in a hurry, or at least remove the plants and put them somewhere to dry, assuming the plants were ready for drying and processing.'

'But now they can't risk growing another crop,' Challis said, taking up the narrative, 'in case it's spotted from the air again.'

'So they switch to something else: ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, dropped off at sea.'

'But there's rough weather and one of their shipments is washed away or destroyed.'

They fell silent. Scobie was driving, and now he said, 'But how long have they been doing it? Was this the first time? For that matter, was the stuff washed away, or were the goods maybe snatched by someone else?'

Challis pictured Tessa Kane on her Easter walk, trudging along a lonely beach, a strong wind kicking sand into her eyes. A Toyota pickup appears, Munro and Lister inside, clearly angry and suspecting that their drugs shipment had been stolen.

Had the marijuana crop been stolen from them too?

Had Kitty Casement recognised the crop and harvested the plants under the cover of darkness? Had she then monitored Munro's and Lister's movements and got to the seaborne drugs first?

Challis was not surprised to hear Ellen ask, 'Have we got a turf war on our hands?'

Or to hear Sutton ask, 'Do we know anything about Kitty Casement's husband?'

'The smell,' Ellen said suddenly.

'What smell?' Challis said, even as his skin tingled and the hairs stood up on his neck, responding to her.

'There's a distinct chemical smell in the air around Lister's place.'

Challis continued to register the stirring of his skin. 'You're right, I noticed it too.'

'A lab?' Scobie said. 'He's cooking speed in a hidden lab?'

'Cooking something,' Ellen said.

They had reached High Street and the roundabout. 'But where's his lab? I didn't see any sheds there the other day,' Challis said.

'If you walk further along the fenceline you can glimpse part of the grounds at the rear of the house,' Ellen said. 'It's been landscaped, sort of terraced, with cement structures set in the ground. I'd assumed they were retaining walls or underground rainwater tanks, but they could be a laboratory.'

Scobie Sutton mused on it as he parked the car. 'These guys like to steal sinus tablets and process them in labs.'

Challis nodded. They crossed the asphalt surface to the back door of the station.

Sutton went on: 'So was Lister leaving the finished product to be collected, or was he taking delivery of sinus tablets?'

'Don't really know, Scobe,' Ellen said. She grew tired of Sutton sometimes.

Challis stopped suddenly. The others collided with him. 'Hal?' Ellen said, steadying herself, one hand on his upper arm.

'The beach.'

'What about it?'

'Miles of coastline,' Challis said, 'and none of it's been searched. We've been looking for Munro in the wrong place.'

'A bit nipple out,' Tankard said, shoulders hunched against the chilly wind. Four-thirty in the afternoon, a warmish autumn, how come it was so cold here on the beach?

He trudged on with Pam Murphy, glancing at her chest for a glimpse of hardened nipple—too much clothing—then looking at her face to see how she'd taken the nipple comment. Didn't even crack a smile. She was restlessly scanning the ti-trees for signs of Ian Munro. Like, was he going to pitch a tent in the bushes? Tankard had hoped, after his tearful visit to her place the other day, that she'd chill out a bit with him today. He could still feel her comforting arm around his shoulders, smell the talc in her dressing gown before she'd changed into jeans and a windcheater.

Now here she was in a uniform as stiff and impractical and out-of-place as his own, ploughing along getting sand in her shoes, cursing occasionally, ignoring him. The thought came into his head from nowhere: what would it take to get you to love me?

Love? Going a bit far there, mate.

So Tankard hunched his shoulders a little more, plunged his hands into his pockets, tried to avoid the kelp and the dog shit.

He'd never been a beach person, never been to this stretch of sand before. Penzance Beach seemed to merge with Myers Point, yet on the map they were separate places. A handful of costly holiday houses ranged up and down the cliffs, but mostly he was looking at the flat areas in between, where tiny fibro shacks, nestled in ti-tree clumps, sat right on the edge of the sand.

Their job was to doorknock and look for signs of life or break-and-enter in the apparently empty houses, search any caves they might see in the sides of the cliffs, check out the yacht club, see if anyone was camping, talk to people. Other uniformed police were scouring the empty stretches toward Point Leo in one direction and the navy base in the other. According to Sergeant van Alphen at the briefing, CIB had urged Special Ops to search the beachfront but these requests had been shrugged off, so this was purely a Waterloo operation. There was backup in the form of two patrol cars in radio contact.

Autumn, a chilly wind blowing in off the bay, the place was practically deserted. Every single holiday house was shut up, there was a geezer sewing a torn sail at the yacht club, the ti-trees were impenetrable, one or two retirees walked their dogs, but that was it.

'Everyone else has more sense than to be walking on the beach today,' Tankard said. 'A bloody long shot, if you ask me.'

Pam ignored him. She was treating the exercise as if it was a dead certainty that they'd find Ian Munro and return to the station as heroes.

Come to think of it, she'd hardly said boo since they came on shift. Charging along as though obsessed, face set in an unyielding expression, not interested in talking.

'Cat got your tongue?'

A seagull slipped down the channels in the sky above him and shat at his feet.

'Did you see that? Christ, we need danger money.'

She forged on as if he'd not spoken. He had to hurry to keep pace with her, and his vast inner thighs chafed, his breathing was laboured, he felt sweaty despite the cold wind. 'Oi, slow down, will ya?'

She ignored him.

'What's got your knickers in a twist?'

He hoped
he
hadn't got her knickers in a twist. Hoped she didn't regret taking him in and comforting him. His eyes pricked with tears to remember the pain he felt that day, and still felt sometimes, and which she'd kindly soothed away.

'How's the new car?' he called, knowing that was a safe topic.

If anything, she increased her pace, her back stiffened, her swinging arms positively punched the air around her.

Christ, what had he said wrong now?

Maybe she'd pranged it already. Maybe it was a lemon and kept breaking down. Piece of Japanese shit, give him a V8 Holden any day.

Suddenly she stopped. 'What?' he demanded.

They were at the base of a sheer cliff. On either side of it there was scrub, but the cliff-face itself was yellowish stone and clay. Behind them the sea frothed over rocks that would sandpaper your skin off, the Penzance Beach shop lay to the east, Myers Point around a headland to the west. Tankard and Murphy were alone now, and for the first time he felt spooked.