Garry Disher - The Dragon Man

When he’d first moved to the Peninsula, he’d joined the Aero Club and learned of a Dragon Rapide lying in pieces in a barn north of Toowoomba. He’d paid ten thousand dollars to buy the wreck and a further fifteen hundred to have it trucked down to Victoria. There was a serial number, A33-8, as well as an old VH registration, but Challis knew nothing else of the particular history of his aeroplane. He knew that in 1934 de Havilland had flown the prototype at Stag Lane, in the UK, as a faster and more comfortable version of the DH84 Dragon, with Gipsy Queen 6 motors instead of the Gipsy Major 4s, but who had imported his Rapide, and what had she been used for?

He turned on a lathe. Several pieces of the airframe had been damaged, sections of the plywood fuselage casing were lifting away, the six passenger seats had rotted through, and both motors would need to be rebuilt. He was also attempting to find new tyres, and had asked a machinist to manufacture a number of metal parts to replace those too rusty to be restored. It could all take years. Challis was in no hurry.

A woman came in, smiling a greeting. ‘The dragon man.’

‘Kitty.’

Challis knew that Kitty wasn’t her real name, but derived from Kittyhawk. They exchanged pleasantries, then Kitty fetched overalls from a hook on the wall and went to the other end of the partitioned space, where the fuselage of a 1943 Kittyhawk fighter sat on the concrete floor, next to an engine block. The only other restoration project in the room was a 1930 Desoutter, which was close to completion.

Challis returned to his lathe work. Behind him, Kitty began to remove the sludge from the engine block. It was companionable working with her. Challis felt some of the blackness lift away. He didn’t have to account for himself here. He didn’t have to apologise for, or hide, his obsession with the Dragon. Here it was as if he didn’t carry his whiff of people who had died terribly or committed terrible things. He was simply Hal Challis, who liked to fly aeroplanes and was restoring a 1930s Rapide.

The moon was out when he finally drove home. The eyes of small animals gleamed in his headlights. The telephone was ringing in his hallway.

‘Yes.’ He never said his name.

‘Hal?’

His sense of calm left him. Some of the day’s badness came leaking in to take its place. He dropped onto the little stool beside the phone. ‘Hello, Ange.’

She didn’t speak for a while. ‘An early Merry Christmas, Hal.’

‘You, too.’

‘I thought, I might not get an opportunity to ring you next week. Everyone here will be hogging the phones on Christmas Day, so I thought, why not call you tonight, get in early.’

‘Good thinking,’ Challis said. He wished he had a drink. ‘Look, Ange, I’ll take this in the kitchen, okay?’

‘If this is a bad time I’ll-’

‘No, now’s fine, just wait a moment while I go to the kitchen.’

He poured Scotch into a glass, stood the glass on the bench top, stared a moment at the wall phone next to the fridge, then let out his breath.

‘I’m back, Ange.’

‘I’m trying to picture your house.’

‘It’s just a house.’

A catch in her voice. ‘Not that I’ll ever see the inside of it.’

‘Ange, I-’

‘I imagine somewhere peaceful and quiet. I miss that.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not a bad person, Hal. Not deep down inside.’

‘I know you’re not.’

‘Temporary madness.’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t really believe it all happened like that. Like a bad dream.’

‘Yes.’

‘You do forgive me, don’t you?’

‘I forgive you.’

The answers came automatically. He’d been giving them for years.

She said, in a wondering voice: ‘You’re an unusual man, Hal. Other husbands wouldn’t forgive their wives, not for something like that.’

Challis swallowed his drink. ‘So, Ange, will your mum and dad come on Christmas Day?’

‘Change the subject, why don’t you? Mum will, Dad won’t. He doesn’t want to know me.’ She broke down. ‘God, seven years, and he hasn’t been once to see me.’

Challis let her cry herself out.

‘You still there, Hal?’

‘I’m here.’

The night was still and dark. The house was like an echoing shell around him.

‘You don’t say much.’

‘Ange-’

‘It’s okay, Hal, I have to go anyway. My phonecard’s almost used up.’

‘Take it easy, Ange.’

‘I shouldn’t be here, Hal. I don’t belong, not really.’

Challis said gently, ‘I know.’

‘It’s not as if I did anything. Conspiracy to murder, God, how did I know he’d try it?’

‘Ange-’

She sighed. ‘Spilt milk, eh?’

‘Spilt milk.’

‘Get on with my life.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘I can’t believe I wanted him instead of you.’

Challis drained his glass. He said, ‘Ange, I have to go now. Take it easy, okay? Keep your spirits up.’

‘You’re my lifeline,’ his wife said.

That same night, a woman on Quarterhorse Lane jerked back her curtain and saw that her mailbox was burning. Now the pine tree was alight, streaming sparks into the night. God, was this it, some twisted way of telling her that she’d been tracked down?

She’d been briefed carefully, eighteen months ago. Never draw attention to yourself. Keep your head down. Don’t break the law-not even drink driving or speeding, and especially nothing that will mean you’re ever fingerprinted. Don’t contact family, friends, anyone from the old days. Change all of your old habits and interests. Dress differently. Learn to think differently. You liked collecting china figurines in the old days, right? Went to auctions? Subscribed to magazines? Forget all of that, now. Switch to sewing, cooking, whatever. It’s good to give people a box to put you in-stereotype you, in other words, so that their minds fill in the gaps in your new identity. Above all, don’t go back, not even if you get word that your mum’s dying. Check with us, first. It could be a trap. You make one mistake, or ignore what we’ve been telling you, they’ll find you and they’ll kill you. You’ve got a new ID; it’s pretty foolproof; you’ll do all right. You’ll be lonely, but plenty of people start over again. Just be wary. Watch what you tell people. But you’ll be okay. Plenty of New Zealanders in Australia, so you won’t stand out too much. Meanwhile we’ll do what we can to keep you alive from our end.

That’s what they’d told her. She hadn’t made much of an effort. There hadn’t seemed much point, because the situation had begun to unravel even before the plane that was to take her out of the country had left the ground.

She’d been in the departure lounge of Christchurch airport, eighteen months earlier, seated with the detective assigned to escort her across the water and into a new life, when two men from her old life had waltzed in and sat down nearby. The detective tensed. He knew who they were, all right.

‘Terrific,’ she’d said. ‘They’ve found me already.’

‘Wait here.’

She watched him walk to the desk and show his warrant card. For a while it looked like a no-go, but then the reservations clerk turned sulky at something the cop said and punched a few keys and stared at his screen.

Meanwhile one of the men had spotted her. He nudged the other, whispered in his ear, and now both were staring hard across the dismal green carpet at her. She saw hatred and hunger in their faces. One of them enacted a pantomime of what lay in store for her when they caught her: a bullet to the head, a blade slicing across her windpipe. She hauled her bag onto her lap, got to her feet.

A hand tightened on her shoulder. The cop said urgently, ‘Clara, come with me.’