Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

Sutton nodded. The woman would engage the occupants- usually elderly men and women-while the child slipped away unnoticed to hunt out wallets, watches and jewellery. Or, while the occupants went to fetch the child something to eat or drink, the woman would rob them.

But this time the woman hadn’t needed to stage a distraction. The phone had done it for her. ‘And when you came back…?’

‘They were gone,’ the old man said. ‘I waited, but-’

‘Fool.’

‘-but they didn’t come back.’

‘What was taken?’

‘My purse,’ the old woman said. ‘I always leave it on the hallstand, along with my keys, gloves and hat. Forty dollars and some loose change, my Myer charge card, Medicare card, pension card, some other odds and ends.’

Sutton scribbled down the details. ‘Only the purse, or the keys as well?’

‘The keys as well.’

‘Better get your locks changed.’

‘Oh dear.’

The old man said, ‘Her eyes, that’s what I remember. She knew things. She looked right through you.’

Jane Gideon was almost forty-eight hours old, and still no body. The trail was growing cold. Challis re-read the file on Kymbly Abbott, talked to the VAA operator who had taken Jane Gideon’s emergency call, and began telephoning numbers from a rolodex that had been next to the telephone in Gideon’s flat.

One small piece of information: at eleven o’clock he took a call from a woman who claimed that she had seen Kymbly Abbott on the night of the twelfth.

‘Can you be sure of the date?’

‘My wedding anniversary. My husband and I were coming home from the city.’

‘Did he see her, too?’

A laugh. ‘He was asleep in the car. I was driving.’ Another laugh. ‘But I hadn’t been drinking. Or not much.’

Challis responded to the warmth in her voice. ‘Can you tell me what Miss Abbott was doing when you saw her?’

‘Poor thing, she was sitting in the kerb at the intersection, sticking out her thumb whenever a car went by.’

‘This is the intersection at the start of the highway?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t see anyone stop for her? No vehicle that stood out in any way?’

‘I’m afraid not, no.’ The woman paused. There was anguish in her voice. ‘I wish I’d stopped for her, seen that she was all right, but I live only a block from the intersection, and last month a pack of young girls her age mugged me at an automatic teller machine.’

‘I understand,’ Challis said. ‘You’re sure it was her?’

‘I saw her quite clearly, and the clothes she was wearing match the description in the paper.’

‘Is there a reason why you waited until now to contact us?’

‘I didn’t 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 there’d 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 I’ll buy Alan some T-shirts and wine, and Larrayne some T-shirts and CD vouchers. Same as last year, and the year before. It’s 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. ‘You’re still coming for drinks on Christmas morning, aren’t you?’

He stopped and touched her arm. ‘Sure. I didn’t 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. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘but I need to do things like this occasionally, to remind myself I’m 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 won’t 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.’

‘They’re cowards, you know. If you’re a woman and you’re driving alone at night, take someone along with you. They’re cowards. They won’t pick on two.’

‘Makes you think.’

‘I’ll say.’

There was no advice that Challis could offer them, so he said nothing. He’d seen women take stupid risks and pay for it. He’d seen them take extra care and still fall victim to rapists and killers. He’d 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: ‘You’re 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. I’m expected to be. No-one’s saying, “Come in here with us”, they’re saying, “Stay out there and watch over us.” It’s 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 hadn’t been in the incident room for long when Ellen murmured, ‘McQuarrie’s 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 didn’t know why he was saying our noses. ‘I see.’

‘I’ve talked to Mr Kellock. He’s 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.’

‘It’s 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.