The Dragon Man

Fifteen

At midday that same day, Danny Holsinger and Boyd Jolic were in a stolen Fairmont, approaching a secluded dirt road behind the Waterloo racecourse. Quiet Saturday lunch-time, no-one around, everyone on holiday.

‘Here we are,’ Jolic said.

A big house set back from the road. Plenty of trees, acres of close-cropped lawns, white railing fences for hundreds of metres, holding yards in the same white railing, a stable block, sheds, dam, fruit trees. A ‘forthcoming auction’ sign had been bolted next to the driveway entrance. It all spelt money. Well, so it should. Last year’s Caulfield Cup winner had been bred and trained there.

But as Jolic slowed to turn in, the engine cut out. ‘Fuel’s vaporising,’ he’d said, the first time it had happened, and now here it was, happening again. ‘Piece of shit,’ he said, grinding the starter, pumping the pedal. The Fairmont coughed and shook and they steered their shuddering way up a clean white gravelled drive to the side of the house.

And just as they were getting out, a woman stepped through a screen door and said, ‘Are you the new farrier?’

Unoccupied, Jolic had said. He had a plan of the house and assurances that the owners were holidaying in Bali until mid-January. A manager to feed and water the horses and a gardener two or three times a week, but that’s all, and no-one around on a Saturday afternoon.

So, who the fuck was this? Danny turned to Jolic, ‘Jesus, Joll,’ and Jolic elbowed him hard, in the chest. ‘Want to give the bitch our fucking names?’

Next thing, Jolic was out of the car and running straight at the woman, one arm concealing his face from her, reaching her and spinning her around and clamping a hand over her mouth. ‘Shut up and you won’t get hurt.’

He caught Danny’s eye, jerked it at the screen door. Danny, also concealing his face, ran with a crush and scrape across the gravel and opened the door.

They bundled the woman inside. They were in the kitchen: copper pots on hooks, a huge Aga oven, a bench as long and broad as a couple of single beds end to end, stained wooden floors and inbuilt cupboards. Searching frantically, Jolic snatched a cast-iron frying pan from a wall hook and slammed it against the side of the woman’s head.

She dropped like a stone.

They were panting. Danny thought they might have been yelling.

Who else was on the property?

Had he said it aloud? Yes, he was shouting it, and it was accusatory, telling Jolic he was acting on piss-poor information, doing over an ‘empty’ house. Now it was an aggravated burglary, and, for all Danny knew, from the way the woman had fallen and now just lay there like a rag doll, murder.

‘You arsehole, who else is here?’

He’d never called Jolic that before, not to his face.

‘Well why don’t you go and fucking look, Dan.’

‘Not me.’

‘We’ll both do it.’

They ran through the house, room to room, and saw no-one. So they calmed a little. Jolic bent over the woman, removed the plain gold necklace from around her neck, gave it to Danny. ‘Sorry, mate. Give this to your sheila.’

Mollified, Danny said, ‘Ta.’

Jolic took out his floorplan. He’d marked it with red crosses-a crystal cabinet here, solid silver cutlery there; here an antique clock, there some china figurines and a top-of-the-range sound system. They wrapped the delicate stuff in bubble wrap and stuffed everything into garbage bags.

There was a man in the kitchen corridor. He had his back to them and had clearly just stepped in from working outside: dusty, sweaty, smelling of horses, a weary hand in the small of his back. Water darkened his hair and collar, as though he’d come in via the laundry, freshening himself up a little first. Late lunch, Danny thought. Just fucking bloody perfect.

Yelling, charging like he was playing American football, Jolic took the man down in a low tackle. The man flipped back at the waist and Danny saw his head smack the wall before he crumpled to the floor.

Two down. How many more to go?

Jolic was like a cornered tiger now, stepping from foot to foot and swinging his head about, searching for his pursuers. Danny saw why some women might be attracted to him. He was fierce, reckless, arrogant, quick and light on his feet, his eyes alight. But he was also mad and dangerous, and snarled at Danny, ‘Help me get ‘em out.’

‘Out?’

‘Out on the fucking lawn, dickbrain. Now.’

The woman, then the man, letting their heads bump like potatoes in a sack down the back step and over a border of white-painted stones and on to the cool cropped grass.

‘Well away from the house,’ Jolic said.

‘What for?’

‘We’ve left evidence behind, moron.’

The woman coming out of the house like that had distracted them. They’d failed to remember the latex gloves in their pockets. It meant going through and wiping everything. Unless

‘Joll, no, you’re-’ what was the word? ‘-escalating it.’

‘Escalating my arse,’ and Danny trailed behind him, into the workshop, where there was plenty in the way of rags and tins marked ‘flammable’. Then back to the kitchen and the other rooms, splashing it about, chucking matches as they retreated, kitchen last, then out the side door and into the Fairmont.

Which wouldn’t start. They heard it grinding away, tireder and tireder. ‘Fuck!’ Jolic slammed his palms on the wheel.

‘Jol, look.’

A Falcon ute, hot lilac paint job, chrome roll bar, fat tyres, smoky glass all round, towing a covered trailer in the same paint job, marked Steve Pickhaven, Farrier. By now there was smoke leaking from the house, and flames behind the glass as the curtains went up. They saw the guy get out, his bottom jaw dropping in disbelief as he put two and two together. Then he was digging in his top pocket for a mobile phone and punching at the keys.

Jolic was calm now, thinking, a dangerous condition in him. ‘Got a hankie? Quick wipe of the car, dashboard, door handle, window, everything. Forget the stereo, we’ll take the smaller stuff with us.’

‘On foot?’

‘Got a better idea?’

Within one minute they were through the railing fence and cutting across a paddock, past a horse trough and skirting a dam and losing themselves in a small wooded area on top of a rise. Here they had a view of the approach roads. Danny groaned. He went behind a tree and lowered his jeans and jockeys and felt it slide out of him, quick, soothing and perfectly formed. He fastened his jeans again, spat on his hands and rubbed them on his shirt, and felt unclean, the stink of defeat sticking to him.

But Jolic was more intent on their predicament. ‘Didn’t take the bastards long. Look.’

Pursuit cars, red and blue lights flashing, a distant wail of sirens. They were coming in on the house from both directions. And now a fire engine. It was doubtful, Danny thought, that he and Jolic would have made it even if the Fairmont hadn’t given up the ghost. Roadblocks, the police helicopter, they’d have been caught like rats in a trap.

Jolic watched avidly. He looks like he wants to be there, Danny thought, fighting the fire from the back of the Waterloo CFA truck. After a while, Jolic backed away, turned, began to cut through the trees, the garbage bag of stolen items bouncing over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything to Danny. What was Danny supposed to do? What was their plan? Was Jolic abandoning him? He ran, hard at Jolic’s heels.

‘Where we going?’

Jolic panted, ‘We pinch a car, right?’

Around the edge of the Waterloo racecourse, to a roundabout, then along the side of a housing estate, new houses cheek to jowl behind a high wooden fence. In at the first entrance, then along a couple of winding side streets, to a maroon Mitsubishi Pajero, sitting in the driveway of a house, dripping water on to the forecourt, keys in the ignition.

Sirens in the distance.

There had been a flurry when Jane Gideon’s body was found, but the investigation had stalled, so an aggravated burglary was good for sweeping the cobwebs away.

Ellen Destry parked the white Commodore off the gravel drive. The ambulance and the fire trucks and most of the police cars had come and gone. It was up to CIB now, and the fire inspectors, and the forensic crew dusting the Fairmont for traces of the burglars.

According to the farrier, the owners of the property had been called back early from holidaying in Bali. The stud manager had been worried about the condition of a pair of three-year-old mares, potential champions, particularly given that a January heatwave was expected.

The wife: severe concussion. The husband: groggy, but able to say that two men were involved, which was backed up by the farrier. Basically, they were looking for a small skinny guy and a tall, athletic guy.

Ellen wandered through the house. An odour of wet ash and dampened carpets, scorch marks on the walls and ceilings, some quite major fire damage in the front room, a sitting room, which had been torched first. ‘Check it out,’ Challis had said. ‘We haven’t got the resources for a major investigation. Bring in the arson squad if it looks big.’

Big meant over two hundred grand’s worth of damage, and this wasn’t two hundred grand’s worth. But it was messy. Arson, aggravated burglary, theft of a motor vehicle-two motor vehicles, if the Pajero reported stolen over in the housing estate was involved, and Scobie Sutton and Pam Murphy had been sent to investigate that. Ellen pulled on latex gloves and began to go through the house room by room.

She was standing in the study, doing what Challis often suggested, thinking her way into the case, when she saw a heat-buckled cashbox in the charred remains of the desk. She poked at the lid with a ballpoint pen. Five hundred dollars, in a paper band from the Commonwealth Bank, and it fitted as slim as a wallet into the inside pocket of her jacket.

At the same time, but some distance away, a horn sounded behind Stella Riggs again, but she refused to slow down, accelerate or pull over. Really, Coolart Road was the worst road on the Peninsula for incidents of bad driving: cutting in, overtaking on blind stretches, tailgating, speeding, impertinence and just plain anger. And a worse class of driver in respects other than manners. They were rougher to look at. They drove wrecks. And the number of times she’d had to brake for the oncoming garbage truck as it veered across in front of her, collecting the rubbish from both sides of the road. Why couldn’t it simply go up one side of Coolart and back down the other? Because those men wanted to work the shortest day possible for the same wage, that’s why. Rough, blue-singleted, jeering men.

She glanced again in the rear-view mirror. That idiot was still trying to pass, sitting just metres from her rear bumper, and she was going a hundred! What if she had to brake suddenly? The fellow was a fool. Look at him, darting out, seeing that it wasn’t clear, darting back again.

She began to organise her thoughts, to write a report in her head, if ever one was needed. The incident had begun where Coolart Road crosses the Waterloo Road. She’d been driving home in her Mercedes, turning left into Coolart, and a Mitsubishi Pajero had approached the intersection at the same time, from the direction of Waterloo. The time had been two o’clock in the afternoon. She had the right of way, and had begun her turn when she noticed that the Pajero was also turning, no indicators on, threatening to cut her off. On snap consideration, she had accelerated, so as to complete the turn first. She had the right of way, after all, not the other fellow, and that needed to be demonstrated clearly to him. Besides, there were other cars behind her. It would have caused unnecessary alarm if she’d braked suddenly. So, she sailed through, completing her turn with inches to spare.

The look on that man’s face!

Description. More of an impression, really, for the side glass was tinted. He looked lean and tough, with close-cropped hair and the suggestion of tattoos. Aged in his late twenties? The other fellow, the passenger, well, he looked to be full of alarm. He was much smaller in build, with quite long fair hair. Also in his twenties. Neither man looked to be particularly intelligent. Blue collar, she’d say.

Odd that they should be driving a Pajero rather than a more common sort of car.

Anyhow, after the incident at the corner they had tailgated her Mercedes as if they wanted to run her off the road. She could see a fist shaking at her. Horn blaring. Right down the length of Coolart Road. At Chicory Kiln Road she turned right, and-and this was something she’d not tell the police, if she ever reported the incident-extended her arm out of the side window and stuck her index finger into the air as she turned, making sure they saw her do it.

And now…?

Stella swallows. The Pajero has overshot the corner, but now it’s backing up and turning into Chicory Kiln Road and coming up hard behind her. She can’t drive any faster, for Chicory Kiln Road is in a terrible state of repair, soft and treacherous at the edges, badly corrugated in the middle. And dusty! She has no hope of shaking the men off-all they have to do is follow her dust.

Which they do, as she turns into Quarterhorse Lane.

Snap decision. If they follow her to her door, they might attack her.

She remembers that before Christmas there’d been a bit of drama at the other end of the lane, near where it meets the Old Peninsula Highway. Clara, that was her name. Someone had set fire to her mailbox. Since then Clara had been having pretty frequent visits from a policeman-almost daily.

Boyfriend?

So Stella doesn’t drive the Mercedes home. She turns right, noting the charred mailbox, into Clara’s driveway, hoping, as she follows the curving gravel, that the police car is there.

It isn’t.

Behind her, the Pajero brakes, but doesn’t turn in. It waits, dark and malevolent looking, its engine ticking over. Then it reverses into the driveway before accelerating away again, back the way it had come.

Her breathing is ragged now. Her hands are trembling. But then a curtain twitches at a front window of the house, so she drives the Mercedes out of that driveway as hard as she can, up the road to her own house before those men come back and spot where she’s gone.

Tomorrow she’s flying to Sydney for a few days, friends on the North Shore, and, frankly, tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

The numberplate? A vanity plate, LANCEL, whatever that meant.

Pam Murphy had her notebook open. ‘You didn’t see them steal it?’

‘No, I’m telling you,’ the woman said, ‘I just stepped inside for a minute to wash the dirt off the chamois.’

‘That’s when you heard the engine start?’

‘Yes. Thought at first it was the people next door.’

They were standing in the hallway of a house in Seaview Estate, Scobie Sutton just behind Pam, letting her ask the questions. She took it as a vote of confidence. Meanwhile the Pajero’s owner, Vicki Mudge, was in a curious state, angry because her vehicle had been stolen from under her nose, but with an edginess under that, as if she didn’t want the police involved at all.

‘We’ll talk to your neighbours in a minute,’ Pam said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll need some details about the vehicle itself. Mitsubishi Pajero,’ she said, scribbling in her notebook. ‘Colour?’

‘Maroon.’

‘Year?’

‘Er, not sure.’

‘All right. Petrol? Diesel?’

‘Petrol. I think.’

‘Registration number?’

Here the woman’s face seemed to close down. Pam couldn’t read outrage or anxiety or any other useful emotion in it.

‘Look, if it turns up, it turns up. Probably kids out for a joyride. If it gets damaged, insurance will cover it.’

‘We still need the registration number, Mrs Mudge.’

Vicki Mudge folded her arms and stared at the carpet and said woodenly, ‘Personalised plate. Lancel.’

Pam asked for the spelling. Then suspicion hardened in her. She was suddenly very alert. ‘Mrs Mudge, are you employed at the moment?’

‘What are you getting at? What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?’

‘I have to ask you this: did you arrange to have the Pajero stolen?’

The woman snarled, ‘By Jesus, you’ve got a nerve.’

Sutton cleared his throat. ‘Who else lives here, Mrs Mudge?’

‘My husband. He’s in Thailand on business.’

‘You do want your vehicle back again, I take it?’ Pam said.

Vicki Mudge shot a look past her ear. ‘Yeah, sure, it’s insured.’

There’s something there, Pam thought. A suggestion that she’d be uncomfortable if the Pajero turned up.

When van Alphen found Clara she was trembling, sitting in curtained gloom, a kitchen knife in her hands. No incense this time.

‘Clara?’

‘I’ve been trying to reach you all day!’

‘We had a suspicious fire.’

‘They were here!’

‘Who were?’

‘The people who want me dead.’

He crossed to her, thinking that he couldn’t keep up with her and she was bad news, but he was in too deep to let her go. She bewildered him. She’d be lucid, calm and funny, her head firmly on her shoulders, then a little sultry and uninhibited when it was time for sex, then strangely hyper and funny but also easy in her head whenever she’d done a line of coke-and then she could be like this, freaked out and making no sense. He couldn’t avoid thinking that she’d never been a casual user in the past, but an addict, and it had fried her brain, only she was good at hiding the fact. And now she was on the stuff again, courtesy of him, and the madness was showing.

He thought all of these things even as he hugged her tight and stroked her temples and wanted her so badly that he slipped his hands under her T-shirt, to where her flesh was hot and pliant.

She erupted, shoving, screaming at him. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? They were here!’

‘Clara, who were?’

‘I told you, the people who want me dead.’

‘Who wants you dead?’

‘People from my past. It doesn’t matter. The thing is, I need protection.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘I didn’t see them.’

‘Then how-’

‘I saw their car.’

‘Where?’

‘It came right into my driveway, sat there, then went away again.’

‘Ah,’ van Alphen said. Maybe she wasn’t losing her marbles. ‘Can you describe it?’

‘It was a white Mercedes.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I had one like it once, in the good old, bad old days.’

See? Sharp and self-mocking again.

‘Okay, white Mercedes. Did you-’

‘I had the impression,’ Clara said, concentrating, ‘that there was another car out on the road, a big dark one. It slowed as it went past the gate, but by then I was paying more attention to the white one in the driveway.’

‘Did you get the registration?’

‘Forgot. I was too scared.’

‘That’s okay, most people forget.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Stay the night, for a start.’

She hugged her upper arms, sat rocking, her knees together. ‘I’m really strung out, Van.’

‘I’ll give you a massage.’

She rounded on him, shouting, ‘I don’t want a fucking massage. I need you to get me some more blow.’

‘Clara, lay off that stuff. You’ve had a shitload since I met you.’

She was scornful, looking him up and down. ‘You want me, right? My cunt?’

‘Clara, I-’

‘If you want me you’re going to have to pay for it, like any punter. Do I owe you special privileges? I don’t think so.’

He was dismayed to find himself so hurt and so floundering. ‘I thought-’

‘You thought this was special? Uh, uh. I’m special. You want me, lover boy, you pay for me. What’s wrong? Shocked, are we? Thought I was a little angel, did you?’

‘I looked after you.’

‘Then fucking continue looking after me. Get me some more stuff, or fork out a hundred bucks a time to see me naked.’

She lifted her T-shirt, waggled her torso briefly, covered herself again. Something fractured a little further in van Alphen then. That life boiled down to supply and demand, rather than values, was the position he’d reached after a working life doing this shitty job.

Saturday night, about eleven o’clock, and Challis was alone in the incident room, logging on to the database to see what the analysts had found. He was looking for a similar pattern of abductions and rape-murders in other parts of the country, with cross-references to mini-vans, four-wheel drives and other rear-compartment vehicles.

When the call came, a Mitsubishi Pajero found abandoned and torched at the side of a dirt road near the Old Peninsula Highway, his first thought was: Maybe our man’s panicking, getting rid of evidence.

But within an hour he’d established that the Pajero had been stolen earlier in the day, probably by two men fleeing from an aggravated burglary, and, disappointed, he logged off and left the building.

He got home just as one day drifted into the next and it was New Year’s Eve.