Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

‘He wanted her to be found,’ Challis said, ‘just like he wanted Kymbly Abbott to be found.’

That was all he knew. That, and to expect another body.

Tessa Kane was at the jetty, waiting for Challis. Six o’clock, her shadow long on the water, the day winding down. She’d bought two rockling fillets for dinner that night, and while she waited she watched the fishmonger toss the day’s fishheads and entrails to the gulls and the pelicans. She gasped and said, ‘My God, a seal.’

The fishmonger pointed across Westernport Bay to the Nobbies, the seal colony at the western end of Phillip Island. ‘He been coming in for a feed last four, five days, missus. He pretty old, I think. See the scars? Can’t look after himself so good no more.’

She watched in awe. The seal thrashed in the water. Whole fish torsos disappeared. The wind was up. Sail rigging pinged against the masts of the yachts moored in the marina. She breathed the air. It was laden with sea salt and mangrove swamp, that living stew of muddied roots, cloudy water, swamp gas and crawling sea life.

‘Good to be alive?’

It was Challis. She rested her palm briefly against his chest. ‘You said you had something for me?’

Challis told her about the body and its discovery. He confirmed that it was Jane Gideon and detailed the comparisons with Kymbly Abbott’s murder.

She scribbled in her notebook, sensing his calm eyes upon her. ‘Just don’t arrest anyone before midnight, okay? Or I’ll miss tomorrow’s issue.’

‘Tess, what do you intend to do about the letter?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I think it would be a mistake to publish it.’

She shrugged. ‘What else can you tell me? I need colour, Hal. I need the broad picture.’

‘The broad picture’s clear enough. There’s a killer out there and women would be mad to go out alone at night. They shouldn’t drive alone, they shouldn’t hitchhike.’

‘I can quote you on that?’

‘Yep.’

‘It might shut him down.’

‘That’s the general idea.’

‘Meaning you won’t have anything to work on except what you’ve got already.’

‘Tess, I can’t believe you said that. You want more abductions, bodies dumped at the side of the road?’

‘No, of course not. I was trying to see it from a police point of view.’

‘Don’t try to double guess us,’ Challis said.

‘I’ll be reaching for links between the victims.’

‘Reach away.’

She closed her notebook. ‘You’ve never liked what I do. You like me but not what I do. That’s what this hostility is about.’

As though it were an ongoing thing between them. In fact, Challis scarcely thought about Tessa Kane from one day to the next. But when he did, and when he saw her, something always shifted a little inside him, and it wasn’t always unpleasant.

‘I’ll keep you posted.’

‘I’m not finished,’ she said. ‘There’s community concern about two of the uniformed police, John Tankard and Kees van Alphen.’

‘Nothing to do with me. Ask Senior Sergeant Kellock or Superintendent McQuarrie.’

‘McQuarrie. Now there’s a fund of straight information. Is it true Ethical Standards might be called in?’

‘McQuarrie.’

‘Bugger McQuarrie,’ she said.

‘No thanks,’ Challis said. He rubbed his face tiredly. ‘Tess, do me a favour? Jane Gideon’s parents still haven’t been told. They’ve still to identify the body. Please wait a couple of days before you speak to them.’

‘What do you take me for?’

They both looked up at the sound of an aero engine. She saw the lowering sun flash on the fuselage. Challis shaded his eyes. ‘Desoutter II, three seater high-wing monoplane,’ he said automatically. ‘Found in a playground in Tasmania four years ago.’

‘Is that a fact.’

He grinned shyly, as if caught out in something. ‘I helped to restore it.’

Her gaze settled on him.

When Ellen got back to the station car park, she checked that her initials, and those of the forensic technician, were etched into the plaster tyre and footprint casts, and was unloading them from the rear of the forensic van when Rhys Hartnett said, behind her, ‘Sergeant Destry?’

She pulled bin liners over the casts hastily and turned around to face him. He was standing there, the setting sun behind him, coiling electrical flex between elbow and hand. It was an automatic but neatly articulated process, and it got under her skin. There was something about men who worked with their hands. She seemed to float on her toes. ‘Call me Ellen.’

He bobbed his neat head shyly. ‘Call me Rhys. Look, I could come to inspect your house on Saturday, if you like.’

‘Are you sure? That’s only two days before Christmas.’

‘I’m sure. I’m working right through, apart from Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. I take my summer break in February, when the schools go back.’

‘Wise man,’ Ellen said. ‘How about late morning, around twelve?’

‘Fine.’

Danny Holsinger waited until seven-thirty in the evening before going to the police station. The chick who’d arrested him said she was on duty until eight, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone else about Boyd Jolic. She was nice. But first he had a pizza, extra thick, in Pizza Hut, sitting in the window where he could watch the cops come and go on the other side of the roundabout. He felt jumpy. After that Nunn bitch had taken him home earlier, calling him a moron, he’d gone straight around to Megan’s place and given her the backpack. Sort of getting rid of evidence, even though the backpack hadn’t been lifted from the old lady’s house but from a house he’d robbed last week. ‘Happy birthday, Meeg,’ he’d said.

‘Sorry it’s so late,’ and she’d smelt the leather and gone all soppy over him and they’d had a quick one on her bed, so that was all right.

But then he’d gone home again and Boyd Jolic had rung, reminding him that his help was expected on a break-and-enter soon. ‘I don’t want you forgetting, Danny, or pissing off on me.’ Danny’s position now was, he needed help of his own.

He gathered himself, walked across the road, reached the door and chickened out. Boyd Jolic had a longer reach than the law did. Even if the law put Jolic away, he had mates who knew where Danny lived.

The next morning, Challis read the Progress while Scobie Sutton drove. Tessa Kane had splashed the killer’s letter all over the front page. Soon the metropolitan dailies would pick up the story, and meanwhile McQuarrie had left messages, asking for an explanation. All this on top of a bad night for Challis, the image of Jane Gideon’s parents staying with him through the long hours. Better to spend the morning away from the station. ‘She says to me, “Eat your munch, Daddy. Sit up prop-ly and eat your munch.”‘

Challis worked a smile onto his face. ‘“Munch.” I like that.’

‘But where did she get it from, boss? Not me and Beth. Childcare, that’s where.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

‘I mean, they’re like a sponge, that age. Absorb everything.’ Scobie fell gloomy. ‘The good and the bad.’

‘I suppose it’s up to the parents to provide most of the good and counteract the bad,’ Challis said, for something to say, but wondering if he believed it. Look at his own wife. Fine, upright family background, and look what happens. She falls in lust-her explanation. ‘Hal, I fell in lust, I couldn’t help it, I had to have him and he had to have me.’ Sure, but you didn’t have to kill me to achieve it.

‘Which way, boss?’

Challis blinked. ‘Quite a way yet. Up near where I live.’

‘How long you been there now?’