Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

‘What time did you find her?’

‘Dunno. Pretty early.’

Mrs Saltmarsh said, ‘A school morning, you can’t get the buggers out of bed. School holidays and they’re up at the crack of dawn.’

Scobie Sutton asked, ‘Why did you wait before phoning the police?’

The boys looked at each other. Mrs Saltmarsh eyed them suspiciously. ‘They was waiting for me to go out shopping.’

‘Is that right?’

Brett scratched at a burn mark in the laminex with a grimy fingernail. ‘Suppose so.’

‘Your mother left the house when?’

‘About two,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

Challis had logged the call at 2.45.

‘You’d have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d given us your names, and rung earlier,’ Sutton said.

‘Didn’t take you long to find us anyway,’ Luke muttered grudgingly.

‘We’ll need your gumboots,’ Challis said.

Mrs Saltmarsh narrowed her eyes. ‘What for, if they’ve done nothing?’

‘To check their footprints against those found at the scene.’

‘To eliminate them,’ Sutton explained.

Both boys looked alarmed, as though elimination meant something damaging and final.

‘I’ll get them,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

‘Pop them in a supermarket bag,’ Sutton called, to her departing back.

The boys looked frightened now. Challis got to his feet. ‘No more sneaking around fishing from the neighbours, okay? Someone could take a shotgun to you, then I’d have another murder inquiry on my hands.’

They went white. ‘Joke, fellas,’ Sutton said.

Their grins were shaky.

On the way out, Challis said suddenly, ‘We’re forgetting something.’

‘Maureen, Mrs Saltmarsh,’ he said, when she opened the door to him again, ‘a quick question. What vehicles do you have on the place?’

She understood, and flushed sullenly. ‘Tractor, Land Cruiser, truck, Holden.’

‘The Holden-a sedan or a station wagon?’

‘Sedan.’

‘The truck. Is-’

‘I told you, he done the big end in a few days ago.’

‘Maureen, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a camera in the car. Couple of quick shots of the Land Cruiser’s tyres and we’ll be on our way.’

‘It hasn’t been out for days.’

He smiled, ignoring her. ‘Do the boys know how to drive?’

‘They’re too young to have their licences.’

‘But they know how to drive?’

‘Suppose so.’

‘Just a quick snap of the tyres and we’ll be gone,’ Challis said again.

‘In the bloody shed,’ Maureen Saltmarsh said, closing the door on them.

‘Really laid one on last night, Murph.’

‘Wacky doo,’ Pam said, stopping at the roundabout for a station wagon that had begun to nose uncertainly around it, as though lost. A rack of suitcases on the roof, a hint of bedding, buckets, spades and foam surfboards in the rear, children staring through the side windows, a woman driving, a man next to her, cocking his head at a map and waving one arm at her. Maybe, Pam thought, they’ll be next door to me in Penzance Beach when I knock off work tonight, ensconced like kings until school goes back in late January.

‘How come we never see you down the pub?’ Tankard demanded.

‘Got better things to do.’

‘Like what? Don’t tell me you’ve got a love life.’

That hurt. She took her attention from the road to flash him a look. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a love life?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against it.’

‘Against what?’

‘If you prefer women to blokes that’s no skin off my nose.’

Pam rubbed her cheek wearily. ‘Give it a rest, Tank. You wouldn’t know the first thing about me.’ She braked for the pedestrian lights outside the post office.

‘Like hell.’ He yawned. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’

‘The photo shop. The manager wants us to check out a roll of film he developed this morning.’

Tankard looked disgusted. ‘Who cares? You get all kinds of stuff now, no-one turns a hair. Holiday snaps in the nuddy, pregnancies, sheilas giving birth. No-one’s stupid enough to drop hard-core stuff off for developing.’

Pam wished that Tankard would shut up. ‘All I know is, the manager called the station, asked for Scobie Sutton, he’s busy, so he gave it to us.’

Pam turned left into the shopping centre, looking for Kwiksnap. Tankard glanced at her keenly, with a touch of not-unkind humour. ‘You’d rather be plain-clothes than driving around in the divvie van, wouldn’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be in uniform all my life.’

Tankard barked a laugh. ‘You’ll see a shitty side of human nature whatever you wear in this job. If the uniform work makes you suspicious of your fellow man, plain-clothes work only confirms it.’

Pam remembered: he’d been a detective for a while, at his last station.

He pointed. ‘Parking spot.’

‘I see it.’ She braked and parked.

There were bridal photos in one window of Kwiksnap, an automatic developing machine in the other, a young woman seated next to it, pushing buttons. Inside the shop were racks of film canisters, display cases of cameras and picture frames, and a booth set aside for passport photographs. The manager twitched aside a curtain and said, ‘I asked for Scobie.’

‘Constable Sutton’s tied up at the moment,’ Pam said. She introduced herself, then Tankard, and said, ‘You’re Mr Jackson?’

‘Yes.’ The manager glanced at Tankard. ‘And I know who he is.’

Tankard bristled. Pam said hurriedly, ‘You called about some suspicious photographs.’

The manager looked agitatedly at the door. ‘Yes. Look, she’s picking them up any time soon.’

‘Who is?’

‘The customer. She dropped the roll in for developing at five yesterday, pick up at ten this morning. That’s-’ he looked at his watch ‘-ten minutes ago.’

‘Let’s see these snaps, shall we?’

The manager hunted around in a shoebox for a Kodak envelope, then took out the photographs and laid them out on the counter top as though dealing cards in a game of patience. Pam peered at them. Exterior and interior shots of a huge house set in a vast lawn. White fence railings, a suggestion of outbuildings. The interior shots, she noticed, seemed to move from the general to the particular: a room, then what was in that room. Paintings in one photograph, a display case of silver snuffboxes in another. A vase. An antique mantel clock. She began to make scratch notes in her notebook.

But John Tankard was unimpressed. He pushed the photographs aside. ‘So what?’

The manager swallowed. ‘Well, see for yourself.’

‘I see sentimental snapshots,’ Tankard said. ‘Or maybe snaps taken for insurance purposes. Maybe the owners are scared a bushfire will destroy everything, so they’re keeping a record.’

‘Look at these two, John,’ Pam said. ‘The alarm system.’

‘See?’ the manager said.

‘If an alarm system set me back a few thousand bucks,’ Tankard said, ‘I’d want photos of it, in case the place burned down.’

Pam stared at him. Everything about him was contestable: his attitudes, his approach to the job, his day to day relations with people. She turned to the manager. ‘Let’s see who left these to be developed, shall we, sir?’

She tried to read the handwriting. ‘Marion Something.’

‘Marion Nunn,’ the manager said.

Tankard laughed. ‘Marion Nunn? Every policeman’s friend. Plus being a lawyer,’ he said, leaning his face close to Pam’s, ‘she deals in real estate. Hence the pictures. Live and learn, Pammy. You’ll run into the lovely Mrs Nunn sooner or later.’

Pam pushed the photographs away. ‘I already have.’

Ellen Destry fielded phone calls from journalists and worked on the sex offenders file again. She’d left it too long; it was clear that Lance Ledwich deserved a closer look. She picked up the phone. She’d try his employer first, then his home number.