Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

‘A few years. You’ve got a place in Mornington, right?’

Sutton nodded. ‘But thinking of moving. With all the new housing, you know, house-and-land packages, cheap deals, newlyweds and welfare cheats and what have you living in each other’s pockets, the place is changing. No way I’ll send my kid to the local primary schools. You don’t know of any Montessori schools?’

‘Sorry, no.’

‘I forgot, you didn’t have kids,’ Sutton said, then fell silent, embarrassed.

He’s heard the stories, Challis thought. ‘How’s your daughter coping with crиche? Still kicking up a fuss in the mornings?’

Sutton shrugged. ‘So-so. But tomorrow’s the last day for the year, and they’re having a party at the Centre, so she’s looking forward to that.’

The days were sweeping by. Tomorrow was the twenty-second. Christmas day was Monday. Challis squirmed in his seat. He wasn’t ready.

He spotted the turn off. ‘Next left, then follow the road for about two k’s.’

Sutton took them on to a badly corrugated dirt road, then over a one-lane wooden bridge. ‘Sheepwash Creek,’ he read aloud. ‘God, the names.’

Challis was fond of the old names. They were a map of the Peninsula in the nineteenth century. Blacks Camp Road. Tarpot Corner. He said, ‘They washed sheep here in the old days, to prepare them for shearing.’

‘No kidding,’ Sutton said absently, and Challis knew that the man was thinking of his daughter again. It was as if having a child destroyed your sense of time’s continuum. Time was reduced to the present and nothing else.

‘Somewhere along here,’ he said. ‘Look for the name Saltmarsh on a mailbox or fence railing.’

They drove for a further kilometre before they found it, a mailbox hand-lettered with the words M. Saltmarsh. They turned in and saw a small red-brick veneer house with a tiled roof. Behind it sat a modern barn, the doors open, revealing a tractor, a battered Land Cruiser, coils of rope, bike parts, wooden pallets, machinery tools and dusty crates crammed with one-day useful bits and pieces-chain links, cogs, pulley wheels, radiator hoses and clamps. A rusted truck chassis sat in long grass next to the barn. Hens pecked in the dust beneath a row of peppercorns. The apples in the adjacent orchard were still small and green. A dog barked, and beat its tail in the oily dirt, but failed to get up for them.

‘She’s a bit on the tired side,’ Sutton said, meaning the farm and whoever farmed it.

‘The Saltmarshs are old Peninsula,’ Challis explained. ‘Been here for generations, scratching a living out of a few acres of old apple trees. Two brothers and their families, on adjoining farms. Both brothers have other jobs to get by. Ken here works part time for the steel fabricator in Waterloo. Mike next door drives a school bus.’

‘Poor white trash.’

Challis thought of the two teenage boys, Saltmarsh cousins, whom he’d seen walking along with their fishing rods the previous morning. How far was that image from the poor South of American film and literature? He finally said, ‘No, not poor white trash. Poor, but steady, and decent.’

Maureen Saltmarsh came to the door. She was large, sun-dried and floury, smelling of the kitchen and the morning’s early heat. She wasn’t inclined to suspect them of anything, but smiled and said immediately, ‘Me husband’s not home. Did in the big end on his truck.’ The smile disappeared. ‘You’re that inspector.’

‘Hal Challis, Mrs Saltmarsh. And this is Detective Constable Sutton. We want to talk to your oldest boy, and his cousin.’

‘Brett and Luke? Why, what they done?’

‘I just need to talk to them. I’m more than happy for you to be present.’

She was losing a little of her control. Her hand went to her throat. ‘They’re in watching TV. You know, school holidays.’

‘Bring them into the kitchen, would you, please? There’s nothing to worry about. They’re not suspects in anything. We’re not going to arrest them, only question them about something.’

She ushered Challis and Sutton into the kitchen, cleaned breakfast dishes from the table and asked them to sit. While she was out of the room, Challis took stock: 1970s burnt-orange wall tiles above the benches, a clashing brown and green vinyl linoleum floor, chrome and vinyl chairs, a laminex and chrome table, a small television set, tuned to a chat show, the sound turned down, dishes in the sink, a vast bowl of dough next to a floury rolling pin and greased scone tray.

The Saltmarsh cousins could have been brothers. They were about sixteen, large and awkward, both mouth-breathers with slack, slow-to-comprehend faces. Challis had an impression of softness, and clumsy angles, of pimples and sparse whiskers, of ordinary teenage stubbornness and stupidity, but not meanness or calculation. They seemed to fill the little kitchen. When they spoke, it was in gobbled snatches, as if they didn’t trust speech and hadn’t much use for it.

‘You boys were at Devil Bend Reservoir yesterday, correct?’

‘Us? No way.’

Challis gazed at them for a moment. ‘But you both like to fish?’

‘Fish?’

Scobie Sutton was impatient. ‘With fishing lines and rods and hooks and bait. You like to go fishing.’

‘Haven’t got a boat.’

It was Brett, Maureen Saltmarsh’s son. Challis leaned over the table toward him. ‘I recently saw you and your cousin, on foot, all geared up to go fishing. You were climbing a fence and crossing a paddock. Not two kilometres from here.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, you weren’t out blackberrying. Now why don’t you tell us about Devil Bend Reservoir.’

Brett stared at the table. His mother said, ‘Brett? What have you boys been up to?’

‘Nothing, Mum.’

Challis said, ‘We’ve had reports of poachers in the district, dams and lakes fished for trout.’

‘Not us.’

‘I’m sorry, but I have no alternative but to charge you with-’

‘You said they hadn’t done anything!’

‘Mrs Saltmarsh, please…’

‘You can’t charge them if they haven’t done anything.’

Challis hated what he was doing. He said, ‘Brett, look at me. I don’t care about the illegal fishing, the trespassing. I don’t even intend to report your names to the local station. But unless you tell me what you saw at the reservoir yesterday, I will have you arrested and charged, believe me I will.’

Brett shot a look at his cousin. The cousin said, ‘We never done nothing. We just found her, that’s all.’

Challis sighed and sat back. ‘You went there to fish?’

‘Might have.’

‘Okay, okay, forget the fishing. You were out for a stroll. You were skirting the reservoir and came upon a body.’

They looked doubtful about the word skirting. Did it mean he suspected them of doing something unspeakable at the reservoir? But Brett muttered, ‘Yeah, we found her.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing! We didn’t kill her! She was already like that!’

‘Did you touch her?’

‘No way.’

‘Did you take anything?’

‘Rob a dead body? No way.’

‘Did you remove anything from the vicinity of the body?’

‘What?’

‘I’ll rephrase the question: Was there anything on the ground near the body? If so, did you take it away with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘We wouldn’t charge you with theft,’ Scobie Sutton said. ‘We just need to know.’

‘There was nothing there.’

Challis said, ‘Did you see anyone?’

‘No. Only her.’

Luke said, ‘She the one what was grabbed when her car broke down?’

Challis thought about it. He wanted to give something back to the boys. ‘Yes.’

‘Cool.’