Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

By the time Sutton had returned to the station, she was ready to roll. She had the CIB Falcon waiting, a forensic technician in the back seat. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Scobie. You’re coming with me.’

Ledwich lived on a new estate near the racecourse on the northern edge of Waterloo, and they came to his house along a narrow court, creeping over speedbumps to get to it. The area depressed Ellen. A stained pine fence and a metre of air were all that separated the houses from one another on this estate. There were no trees to speak of. The nature strips looked raw, still to recover from trench-digging equipment and the summer’s dryness. There was a steel lockup garage at the end of Ledwich’s driveway, the door closed. A well-kept Volvo station wagon was parked in front of the garage, near a ragged patch of oil drips. The forensic technician went immediately for the Volvo.

As Ellen and Sutton approached the front door, a man slipped out of the metal side door of the garage and padlocked it hurriedly before coming toward them, wiping his palms on his trousers. Ellen recognised him from the photograph in his file.

‘Mr Ledwich? We’re-’

‘You don’t have to tell me who you are,’ Ledwich said.

‘Don’t we?’

There was something oily about Ledwich. Oily hair, an air of surreptitious oozing. ‘You bastards ever going to leave me alone?’

‘That depends, Lance,’ Sutton said.

Ledwich stared angrily at the forensic technician, who was taking photographs of the Volvo’s tyres. ‘What’s that arsehole doing?’

‘Why don’t we come inside, Lance?’ Ellen said, moving to usher Ledwich to the front door.

Ledwich twisted away from her. ‘Whatever it is, we do it out here. I don’t want the wife-’

‘Fair enough, Lance. I can understand that. Why don’t we move over here, let the technician do his job.’

They took Ledwich to the CIB Falcon. Ellen sat in the driver’s seat, Ledwich beside her, Sutton in the rear. ‘You’re all the fucking same,’ Ledwich said. ‘A bloke goes straight, and you lean on him, hoping he’ll fuck up so you can put him away again.’

‘Are you going straight, Lance?’

‘I’m a storeman.’

‘Irregular hours, some night shift work, right?’

‘So what? What’s it to do with you? That other business, that was years ago.’

‘Not that long ago,’ Sutton said.

Ellen leaned confidingly toward Ledwich. ‘About your Volvo, Lance.’

His eyes shifted. ‘What about it?’

‘Nice set of wheels,’ Sutton remarked.

Ledwich was obliged to swivel his head, from Ellen and then around to Sutton and back again. ‘I look after it, yeah.’

‘How did you afford to buy it, Lance?’ Ellen said.

‘Christ, it’s twelve years old. It’s not worth all that much.’

‘How long have you owned it?’

‘Few years.’

‘Why a Volvo?’ Sutton asked. ‘Why not a Ford or a Holden, like everyone else?’

Ellen leaned closer. ‘Is it so people will think you’re an ordinary bloke, Lance, rather than a pervert?’

He flushed. ‘It’s the wife’s car, all right?’

‘How about tyres, Lance, between you and the road. You’d want to fit pretty good ones, yeah?’

Ledwich narrowed his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t know what brand they are. What’s this about?’

‘Do you own any other vehicles?’

Ledwich looked away, out at the forensic technician. ‘Nup.’

‘We can check with the Department of Motor Vehicles.’

‘Check all you like,’ Ledwich said. He turned back to them. ‘You going to tell me what this is about?’

‘You’re well set up, aren’t you, Lance? Roomy set of wheels, the freedom to move around at night.’

Ledwich muttered, ‘Lost my licence a while back.’

‘That doesn’t stop you from driving, though.’

Ledwich folded his arms. ‘I suppose if I sit here long enough you’ll tell me what this is all about.’

Ellen said softly, into his face, ‘Abduction, rape and murder.’

He jerked back. ‘Me? No way.’

‘You can’t get sex the normal way, you have to con women and force yourself on them. We know that. It’s a matter of record. But you began to get more violent toward the end, didn’t you? You started to use your fists.’

‘That charge was dropped.’

‘So what? Doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.’

‘You know what we think, Lance?’ Sutton said. ‘We think you’ve graduated. We think you now realise what hard work it is conning women to get a root. Much easier just to use force.’

‘Subdue them,’ Ellen said, ‘drag them into the rear of your station wagon, rape and strangle them.’

Ledwich swallowed. ‘I’m not into that. I’m married now.’

‘Poor woman,’ Ellen said.

That, more than the badgering, seemed to anger Ledwich the most. ‘You lousy slag. I’ll get you for that. Somewhere dark, no backup to look after you, then we’ll see how tough you are.’

‘You’re threatening me, Lance? Or is that an admission of how you operate? A woman alone at night, defenceless…’

‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’

‘Kymbly Abbott,’ Sutton said, ‘Jane Gideon. You forced them into the rear compartment of your Volvo, raped and killed them, then dumped their bodies.’

‘I bet I was working. Check with my boss.’

‘I did, Lance.’ Ellen numbered her fingers: ‘Late to work, finishing early, slipping away sometimes for an hour or more at a time. You aren’t up for Employee of the Year, Lance.’

Ledwich looked hunted. ‘I never fucking killed no-one. Prove I did.’

‘We will.’

‘I’ve put the sex stuff behind me.’

‘Lance,’ Ellen said, examining his perspiring face, smelling the fear, ‘you were sick back in 1991, you’re sick now, you’ll always be sick.’

‘Two days in a row,’ Clara told him. ‘That’s nice.’ She held him tight on the doorstep, then led him into the house. Incense, already lit. Curtains already drawn.

‘Just passing,’ Kees van Alphen said.

‘Yeah, sure.’

She unbuckled his belt. He groaned. He was so hungry for her. Afterwards he said, ‘Did you sleep all right last night?’

It was the question she needed. ‘No,’ she said, with a laugh of real pain. ‘It’s been awful, just awful.’

‘You should get something to help you sleep.’

‘Having you there would help me sleep, big boy.’

He was pleased and embarrassed. ‘Maybe soon. I’m on nights a lot at this time of the year. What about sleeping pills?’

‘They make me hazy in the head the next day. Look, don’t be upset with me, but the only thing that would relax me is dope or coke.’ She stopped. ‘Now you’re disappointed. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

He’d gone tense in her arms. She held on, willing him to relax.

‘Sorry, I’ve clearly said the wrong thing.’

‘It’s all right. It’s just, I don’t understand it, that’s all. I don’t mind so much if people are private users, it’s the scumbags who traffic in the stuff, to schoolkids, that really gets to me.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

She turned away from him and began to get dressed. She was cutting him out, and she saw that it scared him a little. He pulled her back down to him. ‘Look, when you’re in the job you forget that most people are basically okay. You must’ve thought I was judging you. I wasn’t.’

‘It’s just my nerves at the moment,’ she said. ‘I’m not what you’d call a user. I used to smoke a bit of dope, do a line or two of coke, but that was years ago. I was hardly twenty. I’m clean now. It’s just, I’m so jittery, so bloody scared at night, if I had some dope or coke I think it would help straighten out my nerves.’