Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (3 page)

Slim, boss, someone said.

I know its slim, said Challis,
showing some heat for the first time, but until weve got more to go on what
can we do but use our imaginations and think our way into what might have
happened? He tapped his right temple. Try to get a feel for this guy.

What about the VAA mechanic?

He got there after the police did.
Hes in the clear.

A detective said, I got called to a
Jane Gideons maybe six, seven months ago? Here in Waterloo. Shed had a
break-in. A flat near the jetty.

Thats her, Challis said. I
checked her flat in the early hours of Monday morning to see if shed simply
been given a lift home.

He put his hands on his hips. Theres
a lot riding on this. Waterloos not a big place. A lot of people would have
known her. Theyre going to be upset, edgy, wanting results in a hurry.

He waited. When there were no more
questions, he turned to a Lands Department aerial survey map on the wall behind
him. I want two of you to take a few uniforms and conduct a door-to-door along
the highway. Much of its through farmland, so that helps. I drove along it on
my way here this morning and saw only a couple of utilities and a school bus.
One 24-hour service station here, where the Mornington road cuts it. Most of
the farmhouses are set back from the road, but theyll still need checking out.
And certain businesses. A place called The Stables, sells antiques. A couple of
wineries. A deer farm, ostrich farm, flying school, Christmas tree farm theyll
be doing increased trade at this time of the year. A pottery, a mobile
mechaniclook twice at him, okay? See if he had any late calls on Sunday night
and the night Kymbly Abbott was killed. Also, in addition to Foursquare Produce
there are two other fruit and vegetable places with roadside stalls.

He turned to face them again. Thats
it for now. Well meet here again at five oclock. Scobie, I want you to draw
up a list of known sex offenders who live on the Peninsula. Ellen, come with
me.

* * * *

Two

young
uniform tried to book me for a cracked windscreen when I arrived this morning.
Beefy-looking, arrogant. Know who it would be?

As CIB sergeant at Waterloo, Ellen
Destry had very little to do with the uniformed constables, but she knew who
Challis was talking about. That would be John Tankard. They call him Tank.

Fitting. Built like a water tank,
roll over you like an army tank.

There have been a few complaints,
Ellen admitted. Someones been distributing leaflets about him, calling him a
stormtrooper.

She fastened her seatbelt and started
the car. They were going to Jane Gideons flat, and she eased the CIB Falcon
out of the car park behind the station and down High Street, toward the jetty.
She was reminded by the holly and the tinsel that shed asked people over for
drinks on Christmas morning, and still hadnt bought presents for her husband
and daughter.

That brought her by degrees to
thinking about Kymbly Abbott and Jane Gideon. No Christmases for them, and an
awful Christmas for their families. She tried to shake it off. You could get
too close. Challis had once told her that being a copper meant stepping inside
the skins of other peoplevictim, villain, witnessand playing
rolespriest-confessor, counsellor, shoulder to cry on. But ultimately, hed
said, you were there to exact justice, and when a homicide was involved that
meant exacting justice for those who had no-one else to stand up for them.

She glanced across at him, slouched
in the passenger seat, one elbow on the side window ledge, his hand supporting
his forehead. At the briefing hed displayed his usual restless intelligence,
but in repose there was sadness and fatigue under the thin, dark cast of his
face. She knew that he looked down a long unhappiness, and she didnt suppose
it would ever go away. But he was only forty, attractive in a haunted kind of
way. He deserved a new start.

He said unexpectedly, You like
living on the Peninsula?

Love it.

So do I.

He fell silent again. She loved the
Peninsula, but that didnt mean she loved life itself. Things were difficult
with her husband and daughter, for a start. Alan, a senior constable with the
Eastern Traffic Division, had a long drive to work each day and resented her
promotion to sergeant. Theyre fast-tracking you because youre a woman, he
said. And Larrayne was a pain in the neck, fifteen years old, all hormones and
hatred.

The real estate agency which managed
Jane Gideons block of flats was next to a dress shop that had gone out of
business six months earlier. A sign saying Support Local Traders was pasted
inside the dusty glass window. Ellen double-parked the car and waited for
Challis to collect the key. She watched a clutch of teenage boys on the
footpath. They wore pants that dragged along the ground, over-large T-shirts on
their skinny frames, narrow wrap-around sunglasses, hair gelled into porcupine
spikes. They were idly flipping skateboards into the air with their feet, and
one or two were spinning around on old bicycles. Nerds and rednecks, Mum,
Larrayne was always saying. Youve brought me to live among nerds and
rednecks.

Challis slipped into the car and she
pulled away from the kerb. She slowed at the jetty. Water made her feel
peaceful. The tide was out and she watched a fishing boat steer a course
between the red and green markers in the channel. Waterloo
did
have a
down-at-heel, small-town feel about it, so she could see Larraynes
point-of-view, but before that theyd lived up in the city, where Alans asthma
had been worse, and the teenagers more prone to try drugs, and Ellen had wanted
to get her family out of all that.

Jane Gideons flat was on a narrow
street of plain brick veneer houses. Ellen parked and they got out. Old smells
lingered in the stairwell: curry, cat piss, dope. Number four, top right,
Challis said.

Ellen pictured him two nights ago,
the darkness, his exhaustion, the long drive down here just to knock on the
door of this sad-looking flat in the hope that Jane Gideon had not been
abducted but given a lift home by a friendly stranger. He turned the key. Ellen
followed him inside, knowing there wouldnt be anything worth finding, only a
poor mothers phone number.

* * * *

Before
logging on to the computer and doing a printout of sex offenders, Detective
Constable Scobie Sutton signed out a Falcon from the car pool and drove to the
Waterloo Childcare Centre. Hed scarcely been able to keep his feelings under
control during the briefing, and drove hunched over, his knuckles white on the
steering wheel.

He pulled on to the grass at the
side of the cyclone fence, and watched. Morning tea. The kids were seated in
circles on the grass, grouped according to their ages. There she was, in the
dress she called her blue ballet, happy as Larry now, her little face absorbed
under the shade of a cotton explorer hat, slurping from a plastic cup and
sticking her little fist into what looked to be a tupperware container of
biscuits. She turned to the kid next to her and Sutton saw her grin, and then
both children leaned until their foreheads touched.

He felt the tension drain away. But
that didnt change the fact that his daughter had screamed the place down when
hed dropped her off at eight oclock. I dont want to go in! I want to be
with you! Six weeks earlier the shire council, hit by budget constraints, had
shut down another of its childcare centres and forced an amalgamation with
Waterloo. Twenty new kids, six new staff, nowhere to fit them all. Kids are
conservative. They dont like upheavals in their routines. The cheery woman whod
been in charge of his daughters room, the two-to-three-year olds, had taken a
redundancy packageno doubt out of anger and frustration. Now a stranger was in
charge of the two-to-three room, and Roslyn threw a wobbly whenever Sutton
dropped her off each morning. Was this woman slapping her on the sly? Being
mean to her?

At least she was happy now. Sutton
started the Falcon and wound his way back through the town to the police
station.

The desk sergeant caught him at the
foot of the stairs. Scobe, I got a woman out front. Says shes got some information
about Jane Gideon.

Whats she like?

A crank, the desk sergeant said
simply.

Scobie took the woman through to an
interview room. She had to be humoured, like all the cranks.

Name?

The woman drew herself up. Sofia.

Sofia. You say youve got
information about Jane Gideons disappearance?

The woman leaned forward and said,
her voice low and rasping, her eyes like glittering stones, Not just a
disappearance. Murder.

Do you have direct knowledge of
this?

I
felt
it.

You felt it.

I am a Romany. I am a seer.

She stared at him. Her eyes: hed
never seen such intensity. She seemed to be able to switch it off and on, too.
His gaze faltered. He examined her hair, black and wild, her ears, ringed with
fine gold hoops, her neck, hung with gold chains, and the tops of her brown
breasts in a thin, loose, hectically coloured cotton dress. A gypsy, he
thought, and wondered whether or not there were gypsies in Australia.

You mean you kind of sensed it?

She died violently.

He doodled on his pad. But you have
no direct knowledge.

Water, she said. Thats where youll
find her.

You mean, the sea?

The woman stared into vast
distances. I dont think so. An area of still water.

He pushed back in his chair. Fine,
well certainly look into that. Thank you for coming in.

She smiled dazzlingly and waited
while he got the door. She was stunning, compelling, in a creepy kind of way.
The gold, the hair, the vivid dress and the soft leather, they all seemed to
fit her naturally.

You have a little girl, she said,
as she stepped out of the room.

Sutton froze. It was a rule of
thumb, never let members of the public know anything about your private life.
He looked at her coolly. For all he knew, she might have a kid at the childcare
centre, might have seen him dropping Roslyn off in the mornings. She didnt
seem to be looking for a lever to use against him, so he said simply, Yes.

Shes confused by the changes in
her life, but shell come through. Shes resilient.

Thank you, Sutton said, and
wondered whyjust like that, in a flashhe believed her.

* * * *

Challis
returned to the abduction site that afternoon and later drove to the bayside
suburb where Jane Gideons parents lived. They had nothing to add to what theyd
told him the previous day. Their daughter had moved down to the Peninsula
originally because shed met a cadet at the Navy base there, and had stayed on
when he broke up with her. No, he was serving in the Gulf somewhere.

When he got back to Waterloo he
found Ellen Destry standing wary guard over Tessa Kane, who was perched on the
edge of a steel folding chair and smiling a smile that his sergeant was bound
to find insufferable. Tess, how are you? he said.

Hal.

Published any scoops lately?

Scoops is a relative term in a
weekly
paper, Hal.

Boss, I said you were busy and

Thats okay, Ellen, Challis said.

She says shes got information.

Got it, or want it, Tess?

Tessa Kanes voice was low and deep
and faintly amused. Both.

Whens your next issue?

Thursday. Then we miss an issue
between Christmas and the New Year, and publish again on 4 January.

Challis said. A lot can happen.

Hal, a lot has happened.

Challis watched her stand and smooth
her skirt over her thighs. She was shorter than Ellen Destry, always full of
smiles, many of them false and dangerous, others lazy and uncomplicated. He
liked her plump cheeks. Women disliked her. Challis had no opinion on the
matter, beyond knowing that he had to watch what he said to her.

This information you say youve
got, he began.

She cut him off. Can we do this in
there?

The incident room? Tess, please.

She grinned. Just a thought. An
office, maybe, instead of here in the corridor?

Challis turned to Ellen. Sergeant,
lets take Miss Kane into your office, if thats okay by you?

He saw Ellen sort out the
implications. He was including her, not giving her the shove, so she said, Fine
with me, sir.

The office was a plasterboard and
frosted-glass cubicle further along the corridor, and once they were inside it
Tessa Kane turned and said, I was hoping

This is Sergeant Destrys station,
her office, her investigationas my offsider. So, whatever it is you want to
tell me, you tell her, too.

Suit yourself.

They watched her take a clear
plastic freezer bag from her briefcase and lay it on the desk. This came in
the post this morning.