The Dragon Man

Eight

Challis rose at six on Friday morning and, dressed in trousers, shirt and tie, sat on the decking at the rear of his house to watch the lightening sky and the swallows as they caught mosquitoes and other insects on the wing. The garden, such as it was, showed signs of cracked soil: even the weeds were dying. We were lucky to get that tyre track, he thought. The rest of the Peninsula is bone dry. But the tyre was all they had. No semen traces, for the killer had used a condom. No prints, for he’d worn gloves. What he’d left on his victims were absences, including the absence of life.

So, what did his victims leave on him?

Challis was expecting the additional detectives from Rosebud and Mornington to be at the early briefing. He drained the dregs of his coffee and walked the boundary again. Just as he reached the road gate, the council garbage truck slowed, saw that Challis had forgotten to wheel out his bin, and accelerated away again, leaving Challis a taste of dust and diesel exhaust. That’s what happened during the long cases- Challis forgot his life.

He stopped for petrol on the outskirts of Waterloo. A car towing a caravan was parked clear of the pumps, a disgruntled family watching a mechanic on his back beneath the rear of the car. Queensland plates. Challis imagined the oppressive summer heat of Queensland, the family driving to the same beach shack or caravan spot down here on the Peninsula year after year in search of a balmier sun.

Would they read the Progress and become fearful, and head back the way they’d come?

When he parked at the rear of the police station in Waterloo, he saw Ellen Destry getting out of her car, keys gripped neatly in her teeth, a briefcase and bundled folders in her arms. She hitched and hoisted this load and then, composed, bent swiftly to lock her car and check her reflection in the wing mirror. Wings of glossy brown hair swung about her cheeks. She was neatly packaged, Challis decided, and allowed himself a moment to watch her. She was a good detective, but saddled with irritations at home, and that made her like 90 per cent of the population. He saw her wave to the air-conditioning man, who’d been working at the rear of his Jeep. They drew close, and talked animatedly. Challis suspected everybody of something, these days. He didn’t make judgments, he simply observed.

Rhys Hartnett had been waiting for her. She was sure of it. She’d seen him idling at the rear of his van as she drove in, and he called her name as she locked her car. She didn’t want to seem too eager, and was pleased when it was he who moved first, stepping over the line of driveway shrubs and toward her.

‘Another early start?’

‘No rest for the wicked,’ she said, feeling immediately that she’d said something inane.

They chatted for a while. Then he fished for a square of paper that had been folded into his overalls and shook it out. ‘This was on my windscreen when I knocked off yesterday.’

She hadn’t seen this particular one before: BEEN HASSLED BY TANKARD AND VAN ALPHEN? DON’T LET THE FASCISTS GET AWAY WITH IT. REGISTER A COMPLAINT. DO IT NOW.

She passed it back. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘What’s it about?’

You were loyal to the job, your fellow members. Ellen Destry didn’t particularly like Tankard and van Alphen, but still, she didn’t know Rhys Hartnett, even if she did find him nice to look at and think about, so she said, ‘The world’s full of aggrieved people.’

He said darkly, ‘There’s a youngish bloke, big beer gut. He pulled me over when I first come here, did the full roadworthy on the van. Treated me like I was scum.’

‘Let’s just say a couple of my colleagues are a bit over-enthusiastic,’ Ellen said.

Rhys waved the leaflet. ‘Sounds like they’re getting people’s backs up.’

‘Rhys, about tomorrow. I should give you directions. Penzance Beach is a bit of a maze.’

And she rattled off directions, as you tend to do, even as he said he knew the Peninsula, and had a street directory.

He grinned, not listening, until she’d finished. ‘Look forward to it.’

She went in and found an envelope on her desk. Preliminary report on the tyre cast.

Challis stood before the wall map and said, ‘I’d like to welcome officers from Mornington and Rosebud. It’s good to have you on board. Most of you know one another already. If you see someone you don’t know, introduce yourselves after the briefing.

‘Now, to recapitulate. Two young women murdered, and a letter, which we think is genuine, promising another. Kymbly Abbott left a party in Frankston on the night of 12 December, was seen hitchhiking at the start of the Old Peninsula Highway, and was found raped and strangled by the side of the road early the next morning. Just under a week later, on the night of 17 December, the VAA recorded a call from a Jane Gideon, whose car had broken down outside a produce stall on the Old Peninsula Highway. The tape indicated the presence of someone else, Gideon was not there when police and the VAA mechanic arrived, and her body was found on Wednesday, dumped by the edge of the Devil Bend reservoir.’

Challis paused to sip from his coffee. He let his gaze take in Ellen Destry’s detectives and each of the new officers. He gazed at them calmly. He had no idea what they thought of him. He didn’t care. But he wanted them to know that the investigation was his, and that they were all equal in his eyes.

‘What have we got to go on? Very little. Indications that our man wears gloves, probably latex, the kind used by people who handle food, and therefore easily obtainable and that he uses condoms.

‘We’ve found traces of cotton and other fabrics on Abbott and Gideon, but some of those are likely to be innocent, and those that aren’t innocent are no good to us if our man burnt his clothing after each murder. His caution in other regards suggests that he might.

‘Abbott and Gideon were dumped. We don’t know what traces from the murder scene may have been transferred with their bodies because we don’t know if our man kills inside a house or a vehicle or somewhere else. But we do know they weren’t killed where they were abducted, out in the open, for the only signs of dirt or grass found on the bodies came from where they were found.

‘Now, the victims. They have in common that they were young, unaccompanied women, and abducted on the Old Peninsula Highway at night. We’ve found nothing to suggest that they knew each other, and I think we can say that they didn’t know their killer.’

He paused. ‘All we have is a set of off-road tyre tracks from the vehicle that must have dumped Jane Gideon. Ellen can tell us more.’

He saw her cough, as though he’d caught her with her attention wandering. ‘We found identical twin tracks-from the rear tyres if he backed in, and presumably he did to make dumping the body easier-and they’ve been identified as Coopers, an American tyre, this particular one an off-road tyre, quite distinctive, and rather uncommon in this country.’

A Rosebud detective said, ‘Ellen, I’ve seen utes with off-road tyres.’

Others murmured their agreement.

Challis stepped in. ‘But try to think your way inside his skin. He snatches a young woman, subdues her, and needs to hide her. He’s not going to hide her on the front or rear seats. Too risky. And if he were driving a utility, would he risk putting her in the tray, under the tarp or a blanket or a few old bags? I can’t see it, myself.’

‘A ute with canvas sides and roof,’ someone said.

‘Yes, possibly,’ Challis said, ‘but that would entail getting out of the cab and walking around to the rear, and when he dumped Gideon he didn’t leave footprints. The only footprints we found at the scene belong to the kids who found her. My gut feeling is, our man tossed the body out from the rear of his vehicle, and did it without alighting from the vehicle itself, suggesting a four-wheel drive or similar, with rear-opening doors.

‘But keep an open mind,’ he went on. ‘Now, prevention. You’ve probably observed lately that a mild panic has settled over the community. Many women are scared, and who can blame them? That’s going to make it more difficult for our man to operate. Maybe he’ll shut down, maybe he’ll move to another part of the Peninsula-but everyone’s wary, not just here in Waterloo. Maybe he’ll move interstate and become someone else’s headache, but that doesn’t mean we stop investigating what he’s been getting up to here. I’ve found similar cases interstate, so maybe he’s been active before, but we’re going back ten years or so, and the details are sketchy and it’s hard to recognise a pattern unless you’re looking for one.

‘Any questions?’

Scobie Sutton had been tapping his long teeth with a pen. ‘That Land Cruiser we saw at the Saltmarsh house.’

Challis turned to Ellen Destry, who shook her head, saying, ‘Different brand, different rim size. The Cooper we want fits a 235-75-15 rim, meaning a smaller vehicle, like a Jackaroo or a Pajero.’

‘And not a Volvo station wagon?’

‘No. Ledwich’s in the clear.’

‘And we have to ask ourselves,’ Challis put in, ‘whether or not a man like Ledwich-essentially a coward who relies on knock-out drugs and deception-is capable of graduating to the kind of violence and risk-taking needed to snatch young women from a public highway.’

Sutton slumped. They all did, a little.

Danny Holsinger finished work at 1 p.m., went home, pulled off his T-shirt and jeans, which were dusty and damp from his morning on the recycling truck, and stood under the shower for ten minutes. Just the thought of Megan Stokes made him tug on his tackle, his mother on the other side of the door, screaming, ‘You going to be in there all day?’

‘Ah, get stuffed, you old bitch.’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that.’

He waited. Nothing more. His mother slagged off at him just to keep in practice. He towelled himself dry and pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and sandals. Poofter gear, yuppie gear, he privately thought, but it was humid out and Megan had given him the gear as a present a few weeks earlier and he needed to keep in her good books.

He found her in a shifty mood. Wouldn’t look him in the eye, half-ducked away from his kiss. ‘Check out the shorts, Meeg,’ he said.

‘You look good in them,’ she said absently.

‘How’s the backpack?’

‘Oh, good.’

‘Your enthusiasm overwhelms me,’ Danny said, immediately pleased with the way the words had come out, ‘Your mum in?’

‘Gone to see Gran.’

Danny jerked his head toward the bedroom. ‘You on?’

‘Suppose so.’

She was like a damp rag. She just lay there, saying things like, ‘Ow, that hurt,’ or not saying anything at all.

‘Got your period?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Fair enough. But you could wank me, suck me off. Doesn’t mean we have to stop.’

‘I don’t feel right.’

Danny opened his mouth to complain, then flopped onto his back next to her magnanimously, and eyed her room: a poster of Hutchence, screaming into a microphone; Lady Di; a cat with huge, soulful eyes; scarves hanging from her dressing-table mirror; an impression of smudged make-up on the mirror.

‘Where’s the backpack?’

He’d seen her hang it on the back of her door yesterday.

She burst into tears. ‘That fucking cow.’

‘Who?’

‘Mum.’

‘Why?’

‘She let it get stolen, that’s why.’

‘Stolen? I only gave it to you yesterday.’

‘This lady come round with a kid. Said she was going to bless the house. Mum lets her in, the stupid cow, and when her back’s turned they nick her purse, the cordless phone, Dad’s watch, stuff like that. I didn’t realise till later they’d also nicked the bag. Dan, I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you.’

That bag’s getting around, Danny thought. Maybe I can pick something else up for Megan, this job Jolic’s got lined up for us.

‘Don’t hit me, please.’

He stared at her. ‘Hitcha? What do you take me for?’

‘You’d have a right,’ Megan said, ‘that beautiful bag.’

The daily postal deliveries were arriving later and later in the lead-up to Christmas. Jolic wasn’t even sure that the package would arrive before the weekend. But it was there, waiting for him in his letterbox when he came back from the pub at five o’clock. He walked through knee-high weeds to his backyard, punching a mobile phone number into his own mobile. ‘The stuff arrived.’

‘You can mock up a floor plan from it?’

‘No problem.’

‘The owners are going away after Christmas, two weeks in Bali, so you won’t be obliged to bash anyone this time.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘You’re a funny woman.’

‘Take only the stuff on the list. If there’s any spare cash lying around, it’s yours, but don’t get greedy. Don’t stay too long and get caught, in other words.’

‘If I go down, you go down with me.’

‘I’ll ignore that. Is Danny all right on this?’

‘I can handle Danny. He does what I tell him.’

‘As long as he stays in the dark.’

Jolic laughed. ‘Danny’s always in the dark, O Beautiful One.’

‘How come whenever you say something that’s the least bit nice about me, it’s in a mocking voice?’

Jolic registered the shift in her tone. He knew how to mend the situation. Working a shy, tentative note into his own voice, he said, ‘I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at me, if you want to know, in case you think I’m coming on too strong, you know, saying things you don’t want to hear.’

Phew.

He heard her voice shift again. ‘Boyd, I’m not so hard that I don’t want a touch of romance now and then.’

Challis arrived home at seven. He was due at Tessa Kane’s house at seven-thirty, and he almost called to say he wouldn’t be coming. He didn’t want to rush but to sit and watch the sun go down with a glass of red. Read a book. Microwave something from the freezer. Let the day ebb, in other words, his cares dropping away as the light faded in the west.

But he hadn’t had a dinner date-if this could be called a dinner date-for some time. His invitations to dine with police colleagues had declined in the past six years. Part of it was his single status. An unattached person at the dinner table was a reproach to coupledom. And Challis wondered if those husbands and wives saw him as jinxed, an unhappy ghost or shell of a man.

He stripped and stepped into the shower. There was a shower head over his bath, but Challis preferred the shower cubicle inside his back door, next to the laundry. He thanked the foresight of the people who’d built the house. He liked being able to step in from an hour’s gardening or walking and dump his clothes in the basket and step into a box of steaming air and water.

He worked shampoo into his hair and left it there while he soaped his body. Slowly the bucket at his feet filled with sudsy water.

Then there was no water hitting his head and shoulders and he hadn’t rinsed the shampoo away and he knew that the electric water pump above the underground tank would be screaming, sucking air.

Challis burst naked through his back door and switched off the pump. He needed to rinse his hair. He filled a saucepan with water from the corrugated iron tank attached to his garage and poured it over his head. It was like ice. He did it again, then worried that he was being wasteful. The third time he tried to stick his head in the saucepan and swish the water through his hair. He looked at the result. The water was mildly soapy. He poured it at the base of an old and possibly dying lemon tree. He wasn’t convinced that his hair was free of shampoo.

Finally he dressed, dragged a comb across his itchy scalp and went back outside. Clearly he’d need to buy water, but no carrier would come at this hour and possibly not for several days, if there was a rush on in the district. Challis found three lengths of hose in his garage and joined them together. He attached one end to the tap at the bottom of the iron tank, fed the other into the overflow of his underground tank, and turned on the tap. He’d let the water drain over several hours. He reminded himself to prime the pump.

The phone was ringing inside.

‘Hal, it’s almost eight thirty.’

She was trying not to sound hurt or let down. Challis glanced at his watch: eight fifteen. ‘Sorry, Tess. A small emergency here.’

‘Police wives must feel like this. Hal, you hadn’t forgotten?’

‘Coming now.’

He left, feeling scummed and scaly, and more jittery than at any time he could remember in his puzzling life.

John Tankard and Pam Murphy were assigned to the night shift for the Christmas weekend, routine patrol, Tankard behind the wheel of the divisional van for a change, figuring that driving would keep his mind off the pain in his lower back. He found the scratchy murmurs of the police band comforting.

They rode around in silence, lit greenly by the instrument panel. Nine p.m.. Ten. Eleven.

Then Murph the Surf had to break in. ‘Not much happening.’

‘Wait till New Year’s Eve. On for young and old, parties all over the joint.’

She nodded. ‘The town’s gradually filling up, have you noticed? More traffic during the day down where I live. People arriving for their holidays.’

Tankard grunted.

Silence. Then: ‘You should see a physio, or a chiropractor.’

Tankard blinked. What was she crapping on about now? ‘What?’

‘You look like you’re in pain, Tank. Is it your back?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘It’s all the gear we have to lug around on our waists. Heavy belt, handcuffs, baton, capsicum spray, holster, gun. Puts a strain on the lower back. Plus the weight’s not evenly distributed.’

He glanced at her. To his mind, she was as ugly as a hatful of arseholes. ‘You don’t say.’

‘A sports medicine clinic should be able to help you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not. It’s not weak to admit your back needs adjusting.’

‘Look, Murph, why don’t you just rack off, okay?’

He saw her slump against her door. ‘Suit yourself.’

A car shot out of a side street, BMW sports, going like a bat out of hell.

Tankard chortled. ‘Okay, dickrash, let’s see how you like this,’ and he activated the siren and planted his foot.

As they drew closer, a lazy hand appeared, giving them the finger, and the BMW twitched under heavy acceleration and drew rapidly away.

‘Oh, mate, will I have you for breakfast.’

Beside him, Pam Murphy was sitting intensely, peering ahead, her hands on the dash. ‘Careful, Tank.’

‘Careful? You don’t chase someone carefully.’

‘Just watch where you’re going.’

The BMW sped away from Waterloo, heading south-west, inland from the coast. Tankard didn’t want to lose him. The Peninsula was stitched together with narrow roads and lanes, where there was no lighting, only shadowy driveways and screening trees and hundreds of access gates.

Then they did lose him. They were on Tubbarubba Road when the BMW vanished. ‘Slow down,’ Pam Murphy said. ‘I saw something.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Behind that funny building on the corner.’

‘Automatic telephone exchange,’ Tankard said. ‘What did you see?’

‘A light, like someone opened the door of a car.’

Tankard reversed so hard and fast that the engine howled and the van snaked, leaving rubber on the road. ‘Spot on. There he is, the cunt.’

He parked, switched off, got out. ‘You wait here. Call the plate in, see if the car’s stolen.’

He could see that she didn’t like it, but she did as she was told. He approached the BMW, which was parked in long grass next to a cyclone fence, and shone his torch at the driver’s door. ‘Step out of the car, please, sir.’

It was a woman. She was young, and inclined to totter and giggle. Plenty of blonde hair, including a rope of it that she was chewing while she looked him over. Legs up to her arse and showing a bit of tit, too. John Tankard had an image of wealth and privilege disporting itself while the workers were slogging away. He called, ‘Murph, come here a minute?’

He didn’t take his eyes off the girl. When Pam Murphy was standing next to him he said, ‘This young lady got out of the driver’s seat.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Exactly.’

The blonde screwed a look of bafflement on to her face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Miss, is there someone with you?’

‘You mean my boyfriend?’

Tankard tipped back his head and called, ‘Sir, would you get out of the car, please?’

Pam Murphy edged away, and now she was staring along the flank of the car, at the passenger seat. She had her hand on her gun. ‘We don’t want any trouble now, sir.’

‘God, lighten up, why don’t you?’ the blonde said.

They watched the door open. A young man emerged from the car. ‘Why the strongarm act?’ he asked.

Pam said, ‘Sir, are you the owner of this car?’

‘So?’

‘Were you driving it?’

‘No way.’

‘We have reason to believe that you swapped places with your lady friend.’

‘Are you for real?’

Tankard said, ‘Sir, we have reason to believe that you were driving this car. You were driving above the speed limit and we’ll be breathalysing you to see if you were driving while under the influence of alcohol. We also believe that you changed places with your friend in an effort to escape possible prosecution. I’d like to see your licence, please, sir, and yours, young lady, and ask you both to submit to a breath test.’

‘Come off it! You bloody coppers don’t know who you’re dealing with. You’ve made a big mistake this time.’

They ignored him. They separated the couple and took them one at a time to the van for a breath test. When Tankard had the woman alone he said, ‘You could make it easy on yourself.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You give me something, I give you something.’

She said nothing, but her eyes narrowed, waiting for more.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Cindy Price.’

‘Cindy. Well, Cindy, do you really want to be booked for drunken driving and making a false statement to police?’ Tankard jerked his head. ‘Just to protect some arsehole? Your boyfriend, is he?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of. So you don’t feel too strongly. That’s good. Well, Cindy, we’re going to have to chuck the book at someone, so why don’t you go easy on yourself. Tell us what really happened, how he asked you to swap places with him, and I’ll see you don’t get charged with anything.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Is that all?’

They were closing in on it now. They were on the same wavelength. ‘If you wanted a watertight assurance, Cindy, you’d have to do one more thing for me.’

She said challengingly, ‘Try me.’

He waited a beat. ‘I intend to.’ He fished out his notebook. ‘What was the address?’

These days, his only way of pulling a bird. They rejoined the others.

‘You’ll be sorry about this,’ the boyfriend said.

He was like the girl, young, drunk, stamped with privilege. ‘I’ll punch you out in a minute, you don’t shut up,’ Tankard said.

‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with here.’

Tankard said to Pam Murphy, ‘There’s this joke, only it’s about Porsches, not BMWs, but it still applies. What’s the difference between a Porsche and a cactus?’

‘With a Porsche, the pricks are on the inside,’ Pam said.