Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (24 page)

What do you mean?

Up Cairns way, Danny said. Surfers
Paradise. One of them.

Just like that. Dump my job, my
mum, my friends, and just take off.

Not forever, just, you know, for a
while.

Megan stared at him suspiciously. You
in trouble or something?

Me? Nah.

You could have fooled me. Somethings
going on and I want to know what.

Nothing, I tell ya.

Is it Boyd Jolic? I bet it is. Whats
he got you into?

Danny chewed his bottom lip. I tell
ya, Meeg, hes mad.

Tell me something I dont know.
Whats he made you do now?

Nothing. But hes a mad bugger. Hes
fire
mad for a start.

Megans fingers went to the thin
strand of gold at her throat. Danny had given it to her last Sunday. Plain,
elegant, classy, except now it felt heavy and grubby, like she had a dog chain
around her neck. She took it off. Where did you get this?

Bought it in Myers, Danny said,
quick as a flash. Look, if he comes looking for me, tell him you havent seen
me. Tell him Ive gone off somewhere.

She stared at him. Like where?

Give us a break, Meeg. Im scared
of the bastard. I want to stay clear of him for a while.

I dont like this.

So, what do you reckon? Cairns?
Noosa? Surfers?

Danny, Im not leaving. You go, if
you want.

Danny chewed on his lip again. When
he put his arm around her, she pushed it away.

Come on, Meeg, just a quick one,
before your Mum comes home.

Thats all Im good for, right?

I tell you what, I got this video
we can watch, get us in the mood.

She frowned. What kind of video?

Youll see.

After a few minutes, she pulled away
from him and scrabbled for the remote control. Thats disgusting. Its
sick.
How could you? How could you think Id be turned on by stuff like that?
God, Danny.

Even Danny seemed stunned by what hed
seen.

* * * *

That
afternoon, van Alphen told Clara, Thats it, finished. Santa isnt coming any
more.

The look she gave him told him that
hed just shown his true colours, and as she twisted out of his arms he found
himself in a foolish tussle with her, made up of an attempt to embrace and
console her on his part, and fury on hers. He wanted her to want him as much as
he wanted her. He wanted her to listen to stern reason, give up the cocaine,
and find her lifeline in him.

But she shook him off finally and
yelled at him, bent forward at the waist, thrusting her hate-filled face at
him. You think youre here to save me, right? Think Ill melt in your arms. Id
have to be fucking hard up, mate, I can tell you. As a root youre less than
average. So if you cant get me any more blow, Im going elsewhere.

She walked to the curtains and
jerked them open. Then she extinguished the incense stick in the dregs of her
gin and tonic. The light through the window was harsh on her face, the room; a
harsh judgment on what van Alphen had got himself into with her.

He could see the irony. Hed just
spent a few days of his spare time in shadowing a local dealer, finally getting
lucky when he searched an empty flat the guy had visited twice in a row. Hed
found a stash of cocaine and amphetamines hidden above a ceiling batten in the
bathroom. Hed flushed away most of it, bagging just enough to replace what hed
removed from the evidence safe. Hed nearly been caught, but the point was he
hadnt been caught, and hed walked coolly back into that old feeling of being
able to take on the world and win.

The chink in the armour was Clara.

You dont need the stuff any more.
You need to get straightened out.

What are you, my father? My
brother? Both of them fucked me, so whats the difference?

He found himself snapping, Grow up.

Oh, thats a good one. Look whos
talking.

He struck her, a quick hard cheek
slap that rocked back her head and shocked her. She was livid. Just for that,
Im dobbing you in.

Shed said it before, as if it were
a hold she had over him. Yeah, sure.

Youre piss weak. No wonder your
wife walked out.

They were snapping off the insults
now. Van Alphen felt pressure building inside his skull. I could kill you, he
said.

You wouldnt have the guts.

* * * *

Boyd
Jolic was grabbing some shut-eye when the phone rang. He stumbled through to
the kitchen and snatched it up, but the ringing continued and he stared
blearily at the handset before he located the source.

His mobile was on the table, next to
a greasy plate, a stripped-down Holley carburettor and an oily rag. All of his
old practised motions seemed to desert him as he fumbled to find the right
button. Yeah?

I need to see you.

Oh, its you, he muttered.

And lovely to hear your voice, too,
Boyd. Just what a girl needs after a hard day.

A long time since you were a girl,
Jolic thought, as he scratched his stomach, his back. He began to contort, his
fingers searching under his T-shirt, reaching high, between the shoulderblades.
When do you want to see me?

Now. Tonight. Whenever.

The itch relieved, he looked across
the room at a Country Fire Authority poster on the wall above his sofa: WILDFIRES:
WILL YOU SURVIVE? Cant tonight, he said.

Why, have you had a better offer?

Unfinished business, Jolic said,
but told her later in the week, and cut her off.

He liked to keep her eager.

It was four oclock in the
afternoon. He might as well stay up, now that he was up. Work out a plan of
action, given that hed be on his own tonight, that little prick Danny wimping
out on him.

* * * *

Tessa
Kane was out all day, and didnt open her office mail until five oclock. There
was only one item. She knew at once who it was from: the same block capitals,
the same kind of envelope.

She weighed the envelope down with a
stapler while she opened the flap with a letter opener. Then, pinching the
envelope by one corner, she teased the letter out with the blade, and found
that she was thinking of Challis. She was doing this for Challis, keeping her
prints off.

The letter read:

Hit a brick wall, have you? Put me
in the too hard basket?

Big mistake, fuckers.

Am I resting
or am I feeling the itch again?

Thats
what you should be asking yourselfs. People dont care about burglars or the spoilt
rich. They want to know if its safe for their daughters to go out alone.

Tessa laughed. Shed put his nose
out of joint. He wanted to be back on page one.

She lifted the phone.

Damn. Challis had left, according to
the receptionist. Wouldnt be in again until the morning. She looked up his
home number, made to dial, and hovered.

* * * *

The
phone was ringing when Challis got in that evening.

Hal.

Hello, Ange, he said.

He looked at his watch. Seven.
Surely they should all be in their cells by now?

Hal, I had to hear your voice.

How are you, Ange?

Dont be like that.

Like what?

Standoffish. Shutting me out.

Look, Ange, Im tired, Ive only
just this minute stepped in the door. Im talking on the hall phone, briefcase
in one hand. Let me take this call in the kitchen, okay?

Youre always just walking in the
door.

Ange

I wish I could see your place. I
keep trying to visualise it. I

Challis went to the kitchen. He
tried to spin out the fixing of a drink and a sandwich, but she was still there
when he lifted the handset from the cradle above the cutting bench.

Im back.

It hasnt been a good day for me.

I didnt expect to hear from you at
this hour, Ange.

His wife replied brightly, like a
child just home from school: Im in the play! Weve been rehearsing this
evening.

She told him about it. He thought
about his killer on the Old Peninsula Highway, and he thought about Tessa Kane.
Hed hoped it might be her, when hed heard the phone, ringing to repair the
damage.

Or was that up to him?

Either way, he wanted to hear her
low growl in his ear.

* * * *

Clara
had driven to Frankston after van Alphen left her, where she scored a small
amount of coke from an islander kid who called her sister. The quantity was
small but the price was high, and hed offered her a better deal on heroin,
said it was pure and there was plenty of it around, but she told him she wasnt
touching that stuff. Then two cops on bicycle patrol, looking like jet-streamed
insects, had come pedalling down the mall, and the islander kid had scarpered
and shed turned on her heel and ducked into the closest shop. It had NEW YEAR
SPECIALS! pasted across the window and sold computers. Shed never been in a
computer shop in her life before. She said, Just browsing, and when she
looked at the equipment and the vividly coloured boxes on the shelves, she felt
scared, ignorant, ignored, left behind in life, and couldnt wait to get out of
there. She went straight to her car and did three lines of coke, and felt so
high she didnt want to risk driving home but took a taxi instead. The good
thing about Witness Protection, there was a little money there from time to
time if she ever needed it.

So now she had a pleasant buzz on,
but it would wear off pretty soon. She knew shed want to score again, but she
could hardly go back to Frankston at this hour of the night, one-thirty in the
morning. Besides, shed left her car there.

Then the background sounds of the
night seemed to alter in her consciousness and one of them clarified as a tyre
crush on gravel outside of her window. She was just formulating an adage from
her old days, Never get involved with a copper, when glass smashed somewhere
at the rear of the house.

* * * *

Eighteen

t
was a night of hot northerlies, hotter where they passed over the flaming roof
timbers. Sparks streamed from the burning house, and some alighted here and
there in long grass that had not been slashed despite a request from the shire
inspectors. The small fierce firefronts became one, consuming the grass, and
then treetops caught, and one eucalyptus after another exploded in the nature
reserve between the burning house and the orchard, which bordered the winery on
the northern boundary fence and a horse stud at the rear. The orchardist heard
his dogs before he was fully awake and able to separate the smell of the smoke
from his dreams and the fact that his dogs were agitated. In the stables beyond
his eastern boundary fence, horses were panicking, waking the stud manager and
his wife. They stepped outside and saw the firefront, rolling as hungrily as a
tidal wave upon a sleeping coastline. Evacuate. Evacuate.

* * * *

It
was too hot to sleep. And too noisy. Penzance Beach had swelled by the
hundreds, it seemedfamilies whod come to their beach shacks for four weeks,
people camping, people looking for parties to crash. Pam found herself thinking
of Ginger. If she had the nerve, if he lived just down the street instead of
farther around the coast, shed sneak down and tapon his bedroom window. She
stood on the decking of her rented house, sniffing the wind.

Smoke.

The phone rang.

Pam? Ellen Destry. Ill collect you
in five minutes.

* * * *

Tessa
Kane was in Challiss bed this time, and she couldnt sleep and wanted to go
home. Now she knew what it had been like for him, that first time, when hed
tried to slip away from her bed. She glanced at him. He was wide awake, too.
They didnt want to make love again. They disliked each other, just at that
moment. They didnt want to be together. They wanted daylight and to be alone.
These were temporary feelings, and would pass, but right now they were
crippling.

Go, if you want to.

I think I might. She began to
dress.

Ill make you a cup of tea.

Hal, its two oclock in the
morning.

Youve a thirty minute drive ahead
of you.

No tea, thanks. Thanks for the
thought.

As she dressed, he said, No more
letters from our man?

She looked for an earring. Id tell
you if there were.

He nodded. What about Julian
Bastian? Has there been any pressure on you to drop the story?

Pressure from whom?

Lady Bastian. Her friends in high
places.