Kittyhawk Down

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

'Your hair's still fairly blonde from summer,' John Tankard said.

They were climbing the winding road out of Penzance Beach and through farmland to Ian Munro's farm, Tankard driving this time. Pam ignored him, just looked out at the dusty blackberry canes and bracken that choked the ground between the roadside gums and pines. Not a good walking road, she thought, glancing at the man who'd stepped off the gravel onto the grassy verge to let the divvie van pass. But then she supposed that there wasn't a lot of traffic, so you could safely stroll along the centre of the road and enjoy the view across Ian Munro's paddocks to the sea and Phillip Island.

But what about snakes? Snakes in the grass, she thought, and wondered why. Maybe the man standing in the grass made her think of 'snake'. Something quick and flickering about him. A hint of snake in the way his tongue-tip rested on his upper lip and his neat shaved head had watched her. Where was his dog? Somehow you expected a dog when you saw a solitary figure walking along an unsealed road.

'I notice the way your hair goes lighter in the sun,' Tankard said.

Pam wanted to call him a try-hard, but thought that any response at all would encourage another clumsy overture.

It was hot in the van. The sleety winds of Easter had given way to an Indian summer. A top of twenty-eight degrees expected today. She wound down her window. A turbulence composed of grassy odours, dust and heat swirled past her face. A tendril of hair escaped from her clip and pasted itself to her damp neck. The way Tankard had been talking about her hair lately, he probably imagined it spread like a fan over his meaty thighs and stomach. Vomit.

Too bad he'd had to see her in her black bra at the stakeout on Saturday night. He'd been generally inflamed ever since.

'Must've spent a lot of time at the beach this summer,' he went on.

She could turn this to her advantage. 'Surfing,' she said, and added: 'With my boyfriend.'

He seemed to rock back in the driver's seat and went mercifully quiet. Her boyfriend. In fact, the kid who taught her surfing at Point Leo. Eighteen years old. Seventeen to her twenty-seven when they first had sex. Young enough to bring a frown to certain faces. Maybe a disciplinary charge. So she'd kept quiet about it, knowing it wouldn't last-and it hadn't. She pointed suddenly. 'There. Hang a left.'

The name Munro was carved out in big rounded letters on a stained pinewood signpost. A driveway entrance marked by white-painted wagon wheels, three on either side of a stock ramp.

Tankard steered onto a narrow, blue-gravelled track that wound between fences, past a dam and an ancient apple orchard, down to a clearing and a weatherboard farmhouse, silent and dark beneath huge pine trees. Someone had painted the house white a long time ago, but pollen, salty sea winds and the prevailing damp and lack of direct sunlight had turned the boards greenish-black. The gutters hadn't been cleaned in a while and grew rust and tufts of grass. Pine needles carpeted the ground. Pam got out and felt how closed-in the place was. The light was dim and the pine needles deadened her footsteps. Even the pink Barbie bike propped against a verandah post looked cheerless.

'This way,' Tankard said, walking toward a door in the screened-in back porch.

'Please,' a voice said suddenly, 'leave us alone.'

A woman was standing in the doorway. Pam had encountered Scobie Sutton in the carpark earlier and told him about Munro, and he'd described Munro's wife as looking 'worn out'. More than worn out, Pam thought, peering at Munro's wife through the grimy screen door. Defeated. Waiting for the inevitable, whatever that might be.

'Mrs Munro?' Tankard said. 'We need to speak to your husband.'

Her voice was flat. 'Can't you leave us alone?'

'Just a quick word.'

'He's got a lot on his plate at the moment.'

'This won't take long.'

The woman's voice changed in tone, becoming shrill and accusatory. 'You people just can't let up, can you? You just push and deny and quote regulations this and regulations that until the ordinary person has lost everything, including their dignity.'

Pam wondered if these were Aileen Munro's words or her husband's. 'We won't take up much of Mr Munro's time,' she said. 'Just a couple of quick questions.'

'If it's about the RSPCA inspector-'

'An allegation has been made,' Tankard said. 'You know the drill: save yourself some grief and just tell us where he is.'

Pam placed her hand warningly on his arm. Short sleeves. The flesh was moist. She jerked her hand away again and said, 'Perhaps you could ask him to come to the police station in Waterloo?'

'It's okay, love, I'll talk to them.'

Ian Munro had been standing in the gloom behind his wife all along. His face, hands and shirt front were damp, as though he'd come in for morning tea and thrown handfuls of water over himself to sluice away farmyard grime. At first glance he didn't necessarily look like the kind of man you couldn't turn your back on. He had a pleasant, forty-year-old weatherbeaten farmer's face and looked a lot healthier and better adjusted than his wife. His body was a neat package of muscles and tendons, contained and fit and graceful, like a large, sleek dog. Pam was attracted and repelled.

He'd shaved scrupulously, leaving neat sideburns that ended level with the bottoms of his ears. He wore half-moon specs, the frames thick and chewed-looking, the lenses a little scratched or scorched, as though he wore them for close work, like wielding a grease gun under a farm implement, or welding a metal gate.

But he was staring at Pam over the lenses and there was definitely something unhinged in the gaze-strong feelings of antagonism barely held in check, a quickness to take offence, a contempt for officialdom. It was there briefly, and gone again, as though she'd imagined it.

'May we come in, sir?'

'No.'

'Perhaps we could talk out here then,' Pam suggested.

'All right.'

He came out, passing close to Pam so that she could smell him, a not-unpleasant mix of the morning's shampoo and shaving cream, perspiration, diesel fuel and something familiar yet harder to place. Some kind of oil?

She froze. Gun oil.

'What's this about?' he said mildly.

'An RSPCA inspector by the name of Clive Fenwick alleges that you assaulted him,' Tankard said.

'No he doesn't. And I didn't,' Munro said. Then he smiled, a dismissive half-smile, showing more gums than teeth, waiting as if he had all the time in the world.

'But you did threaten him?' Pam said.

'His word against mine. Little jumped-up office clerk.'

'You kicked him,' Tankard said.

'Look,' Munro said, glancing at his watch. 'I'm busy. If there's nothing more…'

'Booted him in the arse.'

'Did he own up to that? A grown man?'

They were getting nowhere. 'Sir,' Pam said, 'a kick is a kick. It can be construed as assault. Did you or didn't you-'

'Is the prick pressing charges?'

'Well, no, but that's not the point. Did-'

'Goodbye,' Munro said, and he walked calmly, economically, back through his screen door and into the inner darkness.

They returned to Waterloo, passing the snake in the grass again. This time he seemed to be pissing against a tree. Then the radio was squawking. Something about the library and pornography, and would they deal with it.