Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

‘Right, Kymbly Abbott,’ McQuarrie said. ‘Bring me up to speed. Any forensic joy?’

‘Nothing to speak of. He used a condom. No prints, but indications of a latex glove.’

‘Tyres, footprints, sightings, nothing like that?’

‘Nothing, sir, except one witness, who phoned this morning. She saw Abbott on the highway the night she was murdered.’

McQuarrie spun around and regarded the wall map, his long hands on his bony hips. Challis winked at Ellen, then joined McQuarrie at the map. ‘Here, sir, where it starts. Apparently she was sitting on the kerb, her feet in the gutter, holding out her thumb.’

‘Pity our witness didn’t pick her up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mad. These young girls, I don’t know.’

Challis couldn’t find an adequate response to that. He pointed at the map. ‘And here’s where Jane Gideon went missing.’

‘The cases might not be related.’

‘That’s occurred to us.’

‘She might have recognised the driver and gone off with him. Isn’t aware that people are worried about her.’

Challis rubbed his forehead irritably. ‘True.’

McQuarrie said, ‘But doubtful. It’s been too long and we can’t discount that letter.’

‘I agree.’

‘I had Tessa Kane on the blower.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Wanted a comment. Of course, I didn’t tell her anything.’

‘Wise, sir.’

McQuarrie clapped his hands together. ‘Right, well, keep me posted.’

After her encounter with Sergeant Destry that morning, Pam Murphy had caught the bus for Myers Point. It had swayed along the coast road, Pam swaying with it, her surfboard upright against her knees like a broad, blank-faced, yellow extra passenger. The drivers were used to her by now. Every Wednesday morning-shift work allowing-since mid-October. The other passengers she’d never seen before: two tired-looking men in blue overalls, a raucous mother with a four-year-old who seemed to suffer clips about the ears without pain, and an elderly woman with a handbag.

The elderly woman alighted with her at Myers Point and limped toward a small weatherboard cottage. A woman watering the garden there carefully turned off the tap and embraced her visitor. Pam found that she was moved by the little incident. She had a sense of lifelong friends, who saw one another when they could and spoke on the telephone every day.

She walked around to the surfing beach. The board grew heavy and awkward. She was hot. She needed a car, but money somehow failed to stick to her. She was chronically in debt. She was barely able to scrape up thirty dollars for this morning’s lesson-not that Ginger would have insisted, but he was only a kid and it wouldn’t have been right.

He was waiting in the car park next to the public lavatories at the head of the dunes. Five others this morning, four women like herself and a guy in his fifties, a fit-looking character decorated with tattoos and a ponytail. Sure enough, there was a big chrome and black enamel Harley parked nearby.

Ginger flashed her a smile. She wished it was just Ginger and herself and the wide blue sea this morning-as it had been once or twice before.

The little group walked down through the gap in the dunes and came out upon flat sand opposite a mildly chopping sea. Ginger turned right and led them for some distance, staring critically at the water, the way the waves were forming and breaking. Pam admired the way he walked at an easy lope across the sand, while she and the others made hard work of it. Plenty of natural grace in that walk, nice tight muscles, long arms and legs, chin tipped back, his chopped-short, sun-bleached hair catching the sun. A wonderfully shapely face for a seventeen-year-old. No adolescent roundness, pimples or bumfluff. Cheerful. Uncomplicated. All that mattered to him were the surf and the surf school. It would be good if he had a little left over for her, she sometimes thought, even if he were jailbait-or at least cause for her to be reprimanded, maybe even dismissed, for disgraceful conduct.

The others were drawing ahead now. Pam’s breathing grew laboured. Her whole body ached. Plenty of exercise, the specialist had told her, but nothing with a percussive effect. No jogging, only careful gym work, plenty of swimming, regular massage and physiotherapy. He hadn’t said anything about surfing, but Pam had always loved to watch it on the box, the Bell’s Beach classic, Hawaii, the swift, nifty manoeuvres. She admired the women. So much guts and careless talent. It looked to be incredible fun. So, after the accident-a three-car pile-up in pursuit of a stolen Porsche in South Yarra-and her rehab and a breakdown that left her afraid and doubting and drained of esteem, and this posting to the Peninsula, far from the badness of the past, she’d seen the surfing lessons advertised in the milk bar and had thought, Why not?

Now Ginger had seen that she was struggling. He told the others to stop and gear up, and came back for her, smiling and concerned.

‘You okay?’

His wetsuit filled her eyes. She imagined his pale, slender, hard, hairless chest and stomach. ‘A few aches and pains.’

Her own wetsuit hid her scars. They weren’t so bad, as scars go, but no-one knew the damage and pain they stood for. Ginger’s glance went to her hip and shoulder. ‘Would you like me to massage you?’

She blushed. ‘Ginger.’

‘I mean it. I’m always massaging people who seize up in the water.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Keep it in mind,’ he said, taking her board for her and walking with her at her pace.

She was thirty, almost twice his age. As far as she knew, he didn’t have a girlfriend. But someone would turn his head eventually, someone his age. She had to keep telling herself that.

Two hours later, back at Penzance Beach to shower and change and catch the bus to work, she saw a man, no more than a skinny kid, jemmy open the side window of the house opposite her flat, and climb inside. She was waiting for him when he came out.

Clara had mixed feelings about van Alphen, not least because he was a copper and because of what had happened last night, when he’d been so sweet to her, attentive, shy and clumsy. She’d slept badly, the night wracked with dreams of masked figures tearing away their masks to reveal other masks. She hadn’t drunk much of the vodka, simply curled up on the sofa with the big copper until she’d felt sleepy, but her head boomed now. She needed something to level her out. She’d sworn off coke, but what she wouldn’t do for a snort right now. Trouble was, she couldn’t afford to go looking for a supplier. There was no-one she could trust. Smoking dope and doing coke was the old Clara, and her enemies knew that, and that was where they’d have their feelers out, even from as far away as Christchurch.

Midday. Her house in Quarterhorse Lane stood opposite a broad paddock of rye grass. As she watched, winds pushed at the grass heads in long sweeps back and forth, like rollers pitching in an ocean. It looked lovely, but it was also a fire hazard, and she trembled again.

The patrol car crept along the dirt road toward her front gate. She watched it pause at the mailbox, then turn in. He’d come back, just like he said he would.

She hugged him briefly. He looked tired. His hair was damp. She felt shy. ‘You came back.’

‘Just passing. Did you sleep?’

‘So-so. You?’

‘Managed to snatch a couple of hours at the station.’

He’d shaved badly. She touched his jaw. ‘Coffee, Van? That will blow the cobwebs away.’

‘I can’t stay long. We had a woman abducted three nights ago and I have to supervise another line search.’

She tugged gently on the fingers of his burnt hand. ‘I won’t keep you. Just a quick coffee and you can be on your way.’