Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (4 page)

A few lines of crisp type on a sheet
of A4 printer paper. Challis leaned over to read through the plastic:

This
is an open letter to the people of Victoria. I would be loosing faith in the
Police if I were you. There running around in circles looking for me. What have
they got? One body. But wheres the second? Gone to a watery grave? And now
theres going to be a third. Shes in my sights.

Oh, God, Ellen said.

Are you scared yet? You ought to be.

Envelope? Challis said.

Tessa Kane took out a second freezer
bag. He poked at it with a pencil, turning it so that he could read it. He
sighed. Block capitals. There would be no useful prints, and no saliva, for the
envelope was pre-paid, with a self-sealing flap, and available at any post
office. He saw the words, Eastern Mail Centre, but no other indication of
where it had been posted.

You got it this morning, and you
waited until now to show us?

Hal, I was out all day. It was left
on my desk and I didnt open it until a few minutes ago.

He looked at her closely. Have
there been any others?

No. She hooked a wing of hair
behind her ear. I think the spelling tells us a little about him.

Ellen had been itching to say
something. Not necessarily. Hes probably trying to muddy the waters. Look at
the tone, the way he uses short sentences for effect, the way his constructions
are uneven, the words a watery grave, the apostrophes. Id say hes had a
reasonable education and trying to make us think he hasnt.

Sniff. Youre the expert.

Challis stepped in. Well need to
examine the letter, Tess.

No problem. I made a copy.

Youre not going to publish, I
hope.

Her voice sharpened. Hes talking
about a
third
body, Hal. People have a right to be warned.

We havent even found the second
body yet, Ellen said. Jane Gideon might be alive, for all we know.

Challis backed her up. Your letter
writer might be a crank, Tess. An opportunist. Someone with a grudge against
the police.

He regarded her carefully, and saw
that she understood the implications.

Youre not holding out on me?

I swear it.

But can I say the police
think
there
may be a link between the first two?

He sighed. There may not be, but
there probably is.

She muttered, Not that quoting you
does me much good if you arrest him before Thursdays issue.

I cant help that.

She looked up at him. People are
scared, Hal. This morning I had a call from a real estate agent saying hes had
a couple of holiday cancellations. I checked with the caravan park and the
camping ground. Same story. A lot of the locals depend on summer tourists.

Tess, were doing everything we
can. Were following leads, checking our databases. As soon as there are any
developments, Ill give you a call ahead of anyone else.

She touched the tips of her fingers
to his chest and very lightly pressed him. Would you? Thatd be great, even if
you do sound like a police spokesperson. She stepped away from him. Well,
Christmas soon. Seasons greetings and all that.

You too.

She turned to Ellen. Someones been
distributing leaflets about Constable Tankard. Anything you can tell me about
that?

No.

Okay. Bye now.

When Tessa Kane was gone, Ellen
said, I hate people who say Bye now.

Ah, shes okay. You just have to
know how to handle her.

Hal, dont get in too deep.

He frowned. Are you my nursemaid
now?

I mean the police-media thing, not
your private life.

Challis was embarrassed. Sorry.

Ill get this letter off to the
lab.

It wont tell us anything.

I know.

* * * *

Canteen
gossip soon spread the word about John Tankards attempt to book Challis, so he
was foul company that afternoonas if he wasnt touchy enough already, owing to
that leaflet campaign against him. Pam Murphy trod delicately around him during
the ground-search of the Jane Gideon abduction site. Being diverted to attend a
domestic dispute with him, on their way back to the station, was the last thing
she wanted. Tankards method of policing domestics was the bellow and the clip
around the earhole.

She drove through the late-afternoon
heat. A week before Christmas, and four months of hot weather lay ahead of
them, the heat giving a particular spin to local crime. Your burglaries
increased, as people went on holiday or left windows open to catch a breeze.
Cowboy water-haulage contractors stole water from the mains. Brawling
increasedin the home, the pub, the street; outside pinball parlours; on the
foreshore on New Years Eve. Surfies reported thefts from their vans. Weekend
farmers drove down from Toorak and Brighton in their BMWs and Range Rovers on
Friday evenings and discovered that someone had emptied their sheds of ride-on
mowers and whipper-snippers, or their paddocks of cattle, sheep, horses, angora
goats. And now another highway murder.

Next right, Tankard said. He
sounded keen, as if he could sense an arrest.

Pam turned the corner. The arrest
rate was part of the problem. The sergeant was always urging a higher arrest
rate, saying it was too low for the region. Its not as if were in the inner
suburbs, Pam thought, tackling knife gangs. Down here a quiet warning should be
enough.

Still, she thought, Im the rookie
here, what do I know?

She braked the van gently about
halfway along the street. There was no need to peer at house numbers: the focus
of the drama was obvious, a gaggle of neighbours on the footpath. She pulled in
hard against the kerb, pocketed the keys, and got to the front door of the
house before Tankard could.

It was ajar. She knocked. Police.

The man who came along the corridor
toward them wore a bathmat of body hair on a white, sagging trunk. His feet
were bare, his knees like bedknobs under threadbare shorts. Someone had
scratched his plump shoulders. Hed also have a black eye By the evening. Look,
sorry you were called out, but weve got it sorted.

Pam said, Im Constable Murphy,
this is Constable Tankard. Who else is in the house, sir?

Just the wife, also the

John Tankard shouldered through. We
need to see her, pal.

The man retreated in alarm. Shes

Pam saw worry under the weariness,
the poverty and the beer. She touched Tankards forearm warningly and said, Constable
Tankard and I just need a quick word with your wife, sir, if you dont mind.

The man twisted his features at her.
Look, girlie, I

It had been a long day. Pam pushed
her face into his and breathed shallowly. She got girlie twenty times an hour
at the station; she didnt need it from some civilian as well. Are you
obstructing us in our duty, sir? Because if you are

A priest appeared from a back room. Its
all right, its all right. Im talking to them. Were sorting it out. Theres
no need for police intervention.

See? Told ya.

Pam hooked her finger. Father,
could I have a minute?

She took the priest out on to the
lawn at the front of the house. Tankard scowled after her. She ignored him. Father,
Im as anxious as you are to avoid trouble.

The priest nodded. Everythings
calm now. The fellows wife has a history, a personality condition. Sometimes,
when its been hot for a few days, things get on top of her and she snaps. Thats
what all the ruckus was about. She hit him, not the other way round.

How is she now?

Quiet. Ashamed. She hadnt been
taking her pills.

Pam walked with the priest back to
the front door. Sir, we wont be taking any further action.

Tankard was furious with her in the
van. We should have talked to the wife.

Pam explained. Tankard said nothing.
He said nothing the whole way back to the station, not until he saw Inspector
Challis outside the station, getting into his car to drive home.

Arsehole.

* * * *

There
had been a time when Challis wanted to write a book about the things hed seen
and known and done, a lot of it bad. Fiction, because whod believe it if he
tried to pass it off as fact? Hed studied with a novelist at the TAFE College
in Frankston, Novel Writing, every Wednesday evening from six until tenwhen he
wasnt on call somewhere, staking out a house, feeling for a pulse, arresting
someone who didnt want to be arrestedbut soon realised that although he had
plenty to say, he didnt know how to say it. It was locked inside him, in the
stiff language of an official report. He couldnt find the key that would let
the words sing on the page. Hed confessed all of this to the novelist, who
congratulated him, saying, My other students either have nothing to say or
never realise that they havent got a voice, so count yourself lucky.

Challis had smiled tiredly. You
mean,
you
count yourself lucky youre not stuck with one more bad
writer.

The novelist laughed and invited him
to the pub to say goodbye.

But one thing stuck in Challiss
minda quote from a writers handbook. Georges Simenon, author of the Maigret
novels, had said: I would like to carve my novels in a piece of wood. Challis
felt like that now. As he drove away from the Waterloo police station at six oclock
that evening, he thought that hed like to be able to stand back from this
case, his life, and gauge where the shape was pleasing and where it was all
wrong.

He turned right at the sign for the
aerodrome and splashed the Triumph into a parking bay at the rear of the main
hangar. He went in. One end had been partitioned off, and here Challis pulled
on a pair of overalls, tuned in to Radio National, and went to work.

When hed first moved to the
Peninsula, hed joined the Aero Club and learned of a Dragon Rapide lying in
pieces in a barn north of Toowoomba. Hed paid ten thousand dollars to buy the
wreck and a further fifteen hundred to have it trucked down to Victoria. There
was a serial number, A33-8, as well as an old VH registration, but Challis knew
nothing else of the particular history of his aeroplane. He knew that in 1934
de Havilland had flown the prototype at Stag Lane, in the UK, as a faster and
more comfortable version of the DH84 Dragon, with Gipsy Queen 6 motors instead
of the Gipsy Major 4s, but who had imported
his
Rapide, and what had she
been used for?

He turned on a lathe. Several pieces
of the airframe had been damaged, sections of the plywood fuselage casing were
lifting away, the six passenger seats had rotted through, and both motors would
need to be rebuilt. He was also attempting to find new tyres, and had asked a
machinist to manufacture a number of metal parts to replace those too rusty to
be restored. It could all take years. Challis was in no hurry.

A woman came in, smiling a greeting.
The dragon man.

Kitty.

Challis knew that Kitty wasnt her
real name, but derived from Kittyhawk. They exchanged pleasantries, then Kitty
fetched overalls from a hook on the wall and went to the other end of the
partitioned space, where the fuselage of a 1943 Kittyhawk fighter sat on the
concrete floor, next to an engine block. The only other restoration project in
the room was a 1930 Desoutter, which was close to completion.

Challis returned to his lathe work.
Behind him, Kitty began to remove the sludge from the engine block. It was
companionable working with her. Challis felt some of the blackness lift away.
He didnt have to account for himself here. He didnt have to apologise for, or
hide, his obsession with the Dragon. Here it was as if he didnt carry his
whiff of people who had died terribly or committed terrible things. He was
simply Hal Challis, who liked to fly aeroplanes and was restoring a 1930s
Rapide.

The moon was out when he finally
drove home. The eyes of small animals gleamed in his headlights. The telephone
was ringing in his hallway.

Yes. He never said his name.

Hal?

His sense of calm left him. Some of
the days badness came leaking in to take its place. He dropped onto the little
stool beside the phone. Hello, Ange.

She didnt speak for a while. An
early Merry Christmas, Hal.

You, too.

I thought, I might not get an
opportunity to ring you next week. Everyone here will be hogging the phones on
Christmas Day, so I thought, why not call you tonight, get in early.

Good thinking, Challis said. He
wished he had a drink. Look, Ange, Ill take this in the kitchen, okay?

If this is a bad time Ill

No, nows fine, just wait a moment
while I go to the kitchen.

He poured Scotch into a glass, stood
the glass on the bench top, stared a moment at the wall phone next to the
fridge, then let out his breath.