Kittyhawk Down

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

In the middle of the questioning, the paperwork, his patching-up visits to the hospital over the next three days, Challis's wife killed herself, and his first thought was: I'm tired of all the dying.

Succeeded in killing herself, to be precise, sleeping pills this time, stolen and accumulated when she was recuperating in the prison hospital, the pills succeeding where sharpened plastic and half-hearted cutting motions had failed to work.

She left a note blaming him but he didn't feel any responsibility and went to the funeral and stared at the coffin, feeling nothing but pity for Bob and Marg, who clung to his arms and said how sorry they were.

Sorry for their daughter, sorry he'd been shot, holding his arms as much in need of support as to offer support and sympathy to him, with his bandaged leg and hospital crutch.

But that was on the third day. Hours of fruitless questioning had come before that, Challis with a temporary hospital patch-up on the first evening, so that he wouldn't lose the momentum with Casement, then a session in surgery while they removed the pellets, then back for another swipe at Casement.

Who'd had a lawyer right from the start, an overweight, heavily suited, idly contemptuous-looking man who slumped precariously in the plastic interview room chair. 'My client freely admits to attempted abduction and various weapons charges, but he denies killing anyone.'

'Ian Munro shot my wife,' Casement said, looking relaxed. 'For all I know, he also shot the Pearces. As for Trevor Hubble, I don't know anything about that.'

'You admit to knowing him, though.'

'Years ago.'

'Two years, in fact. You were business partners, you took over the business when he returned to England, but then he came back last October and you killed him because you'd taken over his identity and he was a threat to that.'

'It was easier for my client to leave the paperwork in Mr Hubble's name, that's all,' the lawyer said. 'He paid his taxes, he doesn't owe anybody anything.'

But the next day Challis was able to tell the lawyer: 'We sent your client's prints to Interpol and Scotland Yard. His real name is Michael Trigg and he's wanted for theft, fraud and money laundering. We intend to send him back to England as soon as he's served his sentence here.'

'My client will challenge any charge the English police try to pin on him. Meanwhile I doubt he'll serve much time for attempted abduction and firearms charges in this country.'

'You're forgetting murder,' Challis said. 'Four counts.'

'On what evidence?'

They didn't have any. Challis stuck with what he knew. 'According to Scotland Yard your client defrauded a circle of business acquaintances of three or four million pounds. He laundered that money through dozens of bank accounts. He disappeared before his trial and has remained at large by adopting a series of false identities.'

It was easier to say 'your client' than 'Casement', 'Billings' or 'Trigg', yet, in Challis's head, Trigg was Casement.

'As I said, my client is confident that-'

'Does your client have anything to say for himself?' Challis demanded. He was in pain, uncomfortable, irritable.

'I can only repeat what my lawyer has so ably said,' Casement replied levelly. He seemed to be enjoying himself and Challis guessed that he was entirely unmoved by the things that normally move us.

Challis went on: 'We know that you took the identity of at least two of your victims: Billings and Casement. Stripped a million quid from each of them, apparently.'

Casement shrugged.

'Did you use Hubble's carpet-cleaning business to launder the money you stole?'

No reply.

'Now it's safer and easier to sink your stolen money into Internet share trading, is that it?'

No reply.

'We found oil paintings, gold bars, cash and a selection of identity documents hidden in your house.'

This time Casement shrugged.

Challis went on: 'What did you do with your yacht?'

'What yacht?'

'According to Louise Cook, Hubble's girlfriend, when you were known as Billings you owned a yacht.'

'Do I look like a yachtsman to you?'

Casement could have owned the yacht under an alias the police were yet to trace, Challis thought. 'Where is the yacht moored now?'

'My client didn't own a yacht. Please don't harp on it, Inspector.'

'We'll find it,' Challis said. 'We'll match the anchor to it, we'll take a reading from the global positioning unit, we'll probably find your client's prints on it along with Trevor Hubble's.'

There was a flicker in Casement, a tiny shift, but the lawyer stepped in saying, 'I understand you don't have the anchor, Inspector. That it's gone missing.'

'These things always turn up,' Challis said.

And it did, in a second-hand chandlery store along the beachfront at Rosebud. No, the owner couldn't remember where he'd got the anchor.

And then the yacht was found. Casement had tucked it away down a drainage channel near Tooradin, some distance away, where it might never have come to anyone's attention if it hadn't dragged its anchor chain and damaged someone's dinghy. Crime scene technicians found Casement's prints, Hubble's prints.

'So I owned a yacht? So what?'

'So you lied to us.'

'My client is understandably nervous about these murder charges, Inspector Challis. As a result he's forgetful but also inclined to be self-protective. You can understand that.'

'Oh, I quite understand,' Challis said. 'He's trying desperately to save his neck. But that doesn't change the fact that we have your client's prints and his victim's prints on a boat he denies owning.'

'The correct term is yacht, not boat,' said Casement automatically.

'Terribly sorry. But as I said-'

'And there's an innocent explanation,' Casement said. 'I expect Trev's prints have been there for ages, from back when we went sailing on weekends, before he flew to London.'

'So who killed him and why a death at sea?'

'Why not ask Louise Cook about that? She wanted him dead, I heard her say so often enough when she came back to Australia without him. "I hate his guts," she'd say. "I'd happily shoot him." That's where you should be looking.'

Challis made a mental note to do just that, and said, 'The global positioning system puts you off Flinders at the time of the murder.'

'But that's not proof that my client was on the boat at the time or that he killed Trevor Hubble or that Hubble was on the yacht at the time. Other people may have taken the boat out.'

'Yacht,' Casement said.

'Why did you kill the Pearces? What did Pearce have on you?'

'My client has already denied-'

'Did Pearce discover your true identity? Did he see you kill Hubble? Was he sniffing around, asking uncomfortable questions?'

'Didn't know the chappie, sorry,' Casement said languidly.

'Why did you kill your wife?' Challis went on. 'Was she onto you? Did Pearce approach her separately, telling her who you were? Or did she already know and you had a falling out? Or was she bringing unwanted police attention to herself, so you felt threatened? Was it money? I understand there is some cash and property and an insurance policy for half a million dollars.'

'My client has already denied-'

Stalemate.

Casement was called a flight risk and placed on remand on the abduction and weapons charges, so he wasn't going anywhere, which gave Challis the space to breathe and think. What he thought about was constancy, and counting his blessings. His wife had not been constant in love but constant as a thorn in his side. Now he was free of her. Kitty Casement had been constant until she was murdered, constant but remote, and not free to love him.

Love. That was a dream because he'd been unhappy at the time.

Tessa Kane had shown herself willing to be a constant in his life, and he was free to love her now-unless he'd driven her away. He found himself wondering how he should tell her that his wife was dead. Would she say 'Too late'? Would she say 'Too convenient'? Would she wonder what other impediments he might bring to their relationship?

But he should count her as a blessing. Whether she counted him as one was another matter.

And so it was that the day after the funeral his unconscious mind prompted him and he said to Scobie Sutton: 'We were going to search the Meddler's house again, if you remember.'

It wasn't a sharpening of Challis's faculties, for he rode drowsily in the car and dreamed while Sutton talked.

'Aileen Munro took her kids out of the school.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Poor little beggars.'

'Yes.'

'How do you tell kids that young what happened? It's been hard enough explaining to my kid. Given rise to some heavy questions. "Dad, where do you go when you die?" kind of thing.'

Challis let Sutton talk, and trailed behind him into the Pearces' house. In the days since the murder something other than blood had thickened the air. Strangely, it was the smell that woke Challis. He tracked it down to a small bin under the sink, a lidless bin crammed with packaging, as though one of the Pearces' last acts had been to put away the shopping. The bad smell came from skin and fat trimmed from a chicken, he realised, as he carried the bin out into the back yard and tipped the contents into a wheelie bin.

That's when he saw the cellophane wrapping and an empty sheet of stick-on videocassette labels at the bottom of the bin, together with a cash register receipt dated two days before the murder, and these everyday things took him back into the house and the VCR and the video labelled 'International Most Wanted' still there in the machine, waiting to spell out the link between Casement and the Meddler.

No proof yet that Casement had shot Kitty, but first things first.