Garry Disher - Kittyhawk Down

She looked bewildered. 'How do you know?'

'We've tracked down credit card statements, phone and electricity bills…'

'Perhaps Billings paid the bills in Trevor's name,' she mused, 'but surely he wouldn't use Trevor's credit card?'

Challis merely watched her.

'Look, all I know is, Trev said goodbye and moved back to England in 1999. Billings moved in, and I didn't hear anything about Trevor returning to Australia. His girlfriend did, but Trevor didn't. She only lasted in England a few months.'

'Did you see her again?'

'We got kind of friendly when she lived here with Trev. It was always she who brought me the rent. We'd natter, you know. Then when she came back from England she asked me if it would be all right if she took a room here. It was all right with me, but Billings didn't like the idea. He'd been friendly with her when Trevor was on the scene, but now he was quite cold with her.'

'Do you stay in touch with her?'

'She moved to Queensland.'

'But do you stay in touch?'

'I've got her number somewhere.'

She crossed to a small cabinet and took out an address book, scribbled a number on a scrap of notepaper, and handed it to Challis. 'Look, can you tell me what this is all about? I should have asked you at the start, but I didn't want to seem as if I was poking my nose in, but now my curiosity has got the better of me,' she said, half embarrassed, half imploring, running out of breath as though she knew that something bad had happened to people she'd known and trusted.

'We think we've found Trevor Hubble's body,' Challis said. 'He'd been murdered.'

Her jaw dropped. 'Where? Here in Australia?'

'Yes.'

'When?'

'About the time that Billings moved out of this house.'

He could see her thinking about that. 'Was Billings pretending to be him?'

Challis's gesture said that he didn't know but she'd probably made a good guess.

He'd tried the number for Hubble's girlfriend last night, in the car, driving back to the Peninsula in a settling fog, and got a sleepy, surly voice saying she'd left Queensland and moved to Melbourne. Challis scrawled her new phone number into his notebook but didn't call. It was late by then, too late to call.

So he thought he'd try from work on Friday morning, but just as he'd brewed the coffee and was reaching for the phone, Ellen Destry appeared in his doorway and said, 'Got a minute?'

Challis closed his notebook and gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. 'My time is yours.'

'You've never thought Munro shot the Meddler and his wife, right?'

'Right.'

'Do you think he shot Janet Casement?'

'Everyone else seems to think so.' Challis folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. 'The super practically told me so. "Good result, Hal," he said, in that glorious way of his.'

Ellen gave him a grin, her face losing its seriousness, becoming briefly ironical, likeable, disrespectful. Then it faded and she said, 'I think we can put Carl Lister in the frame.'

Challis nodded slowly. 'Go on.'

'He's a loan shark on the side.'

'Uh-huh.'

'This next bit's in confidence. It involves one of the uniforms and I don't want to get this officer into unnecessary trouble.'

Challis stared hard at her, then shrugged. 'It's your call, Ells.'

'Pam Murphy.'

'She's a good officer,' Challis said.

'You keep saying that. The thing is, well, she seems to have stuffed things up a little.'

'Go on.'

'She borrowed money from Lister to buy a new car. Couldn't meet the repayments, so Lister kindly came to an arrangement with her.'

Challis frowned. 'Sex? What's that got to do with the shootings?'

Challis saw Ellen shudder. 'I can't imagine Murphy agreeing to have sex with that creep. No, in exchange for information, Lister went easy on the interest payments. Basically, he wanted police intelligence on the local drug scene.'

Challis swung in his chair and stared moodily out of the window, toying with his coffee mug. 'You think Munro owed him money too?'

'Bet on it.'

'Couldn't meet the repayments so Lister told him to put in a marijuana crop.'

'Yes.'

Challis swung back. He felt the interest stirring in him again. 'The Meddler somehow got wind of it, blackmailed them maybe, or was seen poking around, so Lister shot him and his wife.'

'It was more of a Lister kind of shooting than a Munro kind of shooting, if you get me,' Ellen said. 'Carefully staged, etcetera, etcetera.'

'You don't like him, do you?'

'Never did. Not from the very start. I think he's got his son involved in selling and distributing drugs up at the university and probably the local rave scene, kids' parties, that kind of thing. I think he wanted to know what we know so he could stay a step ahead or undermine the opposition. He always struck me as calculating. Munro was more hotheaded. Munro was always going to run off the rails.'

'Did Pam Murphy give Lister anything useful?'

'She says not-or nothing crucial. Says she named a couple of local junkies, that's all. But says that Lister was starting to get nasty, starting to put pressure on her.'

'Is that when she came to see you?'

Ellen nodded.

'And you think Lister killed Kitty too?'

'It makes sense, doesn't it?'

'It does if she was killed because of that photograph.'

'Hal, what if it wasn't just the photograph?'

'Look, Ellen, Kitty is dead now, I feel bad about it but it's not as if there was ever anything between us, despite what you think. So if you think she was bent, please just say so.'

'I never thought you were romantically involved. I never thought that. But I could tell you liked her.'

'Okay, I liked her. But I didn't know much about her, so I don't know why she was murdered. So for Christ's sake, lay out your theories.'

Ellen made a brief face at him, then said, 'Well, we've more or less been over it all before. She was innocently involved. She sold Munro the photograph without knowing what it depicted. Munro told Lister, and it's the kind of thing that festers, and eventually he decides to get rid of her.'

'Strange way to go about it, though, first trying to ram her plane.'

'In some ways, maybe, but it had the same throw-the-police-off-the-scent elements about it as the murder-suicide of the Meddler and his wife. Perhaps he hoped we'd think it was drunken kids joyriding in a stolen car, and waste a lot of time investigating in that direction.'

Challis nodded. 'I see your point. But then she was simply shot. Nothing complicated or ambiguous about that.'

'Opportunistic,' Ellen said.

Challis felt a slow burn inside. He leaned his forearms on the desk. A cloud passed over the face of the sun, darkening his window then flooding it with autumn light again. 'This is how Lister figures it. Munro has gone off the rails. He's out there roaming around with a shotgun, which he's already used on people he hates. So why not pin another death on Munro? He's bound to be shot dead by the police, and if he isn't, who's going to believe that he didn't shoot Kitty?'

Ellen nodded.

'But why?' Challis said. 'That's what it comes down to.'

'The photo.'

'I need more than that. Kitty showed that photo to Munro months ago. Why would Lister fear it now?'

'We've already covered that. Kitty knew what it depicted and blackmailed Munro, who told Lister, or she ripped them off, or she bought into their little racket.'

Not the Kitty I knew, Challis wanted to say. They were silent. Then Ellen said, 'Have we got enough for a warrant to search Lister's place?'

'Not even close.'

'Can we go and talk to him at least?'

Challis reached for his jacket. 'Don't see why not.'

On the way there in the Triumph, Challis said, 'What does the son study?'