Whispering Death

15

Challis checked in with the crime-scene officers at the reserve, then headed for the little airport a few kilometres north of Waterloo.

He ruminated on the past ten years, all that had been transitory and permanent. He’d been a solitary figure, a little lonely and probably sad, when he’d taken up the position of CIU head at Waterloo. New to the Peninsula, and still stunned by the knowledge that his wife and her lover had wanted him dead.

A chance visit to the local air show had rekindled an interest from his childhood-a time of balsawood kit planes and spotting for the crop dusters on the hilly paddocks of the South Australian wheat country. Dreams in which he floated above the ground.

Entranced by the vintage aeroplane display, he’d let it be known that he’d like to buy one, preferably unrestored. Six months later, he bought a 1930s Dragon Rapide which was gathering dust and a colony of rats and mice in a hayshed outside Toowoomba.

In the years that followed he spent his spare time, his blessed quiet hours, tracking down missing parts, engineering others. Ten years of snatched afternoons and weekends, ten years of hangar and machine-tool hire, ten years of outlaying all his spare cash.

But ten years of mental and physical relief from the dirt he walked in every day. As he’d restored the Dragon, the Dragon restored him. And she was beautiful, an elegant silver dragonfly.

Now he simply saw the Dragon as a phase of his life that had come to an end.

A truck load of timber held him up outside Waterloo. It was turning into a low-lying paddock on the left, a housing estate named Copley Downs, still under construction and at this stage just an open mire of culverts, heavy tyre tracks, concrete slabs and skeletal house frames on senseless curved streets. Challis thought about what he’d said to the reporter yesterday afternoon. Young, cash-strapped families would move in to Copley Downs and put pressure on the local services, including the police. As for the name, Copley had been a stalwart of the football club, a man who spent his time drinking and bashing his wife. Having played half a season of League football however, he was a local celebrity. The world we live in, Challis thought.

He drove through a stretch of farmland to the outskirts of Tyabb: some straggling pine trees, a weather-beaten girl-guide hall, a sad strip of shops, a solitary traffic light. A bus and half a dozen cars were stopped for the red. Challis braked gently and the Triumph stalled. He started it, nursed the accelerator. The old car shuddered and then he was at the intersection, turning left.

Now he was passing a scattering of bungalows, the airfield beyond that, rambling antique shops on his right. Tyabb owed some of its reputation to the airfield and the annual air show, but was better known as a Mecca for anything old. Most of the dealers operated out of a massive converted railway workshop, others out of houses, sheds and barns situated on the main roads of the town. Challis slowed the car and pulled into the driveway of an old church. A sign on the picket fence said ‘The Doll’s House Collectibles Fine Art Antiques W. amp; M. Niekirk Prop.’ Beneath it was another sign: ‘Niekirk Classics’, with stylised images of an old plane and an old car.

He got out. He could hear a distant aero engine. A young woman appeared in the doorway, slightly plump, cheery, under-dressed, jiggling a three-year-old girl on one hip. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Are you Mrs Niekirk?’

The girl got a kick out of that. ‘I’m Tayla, the nanny. Mrs Niekirk’s over at the airstrip.’

She didn’t know about Mr Niekirk, so Challis thanked her and headed to the airfield, entering via a slip road that led to a gate and a collection of admin buildings and hangars. He was tempted to check on his Dragon, but resisted. He steered around the perimeter, passing a dozen parked Cessnas and Pipers, to a couple of hangars on the far side. He pulled up against the side wall of the first hangar. A wooden sign above a small door read ‘Niekirk’.

He got out, yawned, stretched the kinks out of his spine, consciously holding back. He was a tall man, probably underweight, and still wore the tired pallor of a long winter and longer hours. Part of him wondered, as he spotted a Beechcraft make a banking turn above farmland at the far end of the landing strip, if he was about to take a step that he might regret. The plane flattened out, came in shallowly over the access road and touched down neatly. Nothing new, yet Challis watched with a childlike pleasure.

He stepped around to the front of the building and halted in his tracks. Two flatbed trucks were parked there, a front-end loader. Beyond them, in the dim interior, a huddle of overall-clad men were scratching their heads beneath a looming World War II warplane. Bristol Beaufighter, thought Challis automatically, admiring the stubby, menacing shape. Long-range fighter-bomber, designed in Britain and built in Australia, deemed ‘whispering death’ by the Japanese.

The Beaufighter claimed most of the space, both engines thrusting forward of the bulbous snout like a crab’s claws. He walked along the left flank, overhearing one of the men say, ‘Dismantle the wings first? Tailplane?’

Challis could see an office in the corner. Behind the plane, stacked here and there against the walls were old wardrobes, colonial-era sideboards, antique chairs with moth-riddled upholstery. The hangar was a useful space if you were a second-hand dealer with an overflow of stock.

The office door was open, a woman standing at a filing cabinet. Hearing his footsteps on the cold concrete floor, she turned to face him. She was tall, angular, about forty, wearing a loose white shirt over black tights, a little harried-looking as she peered at him over maroon designer frames. ‘May I help you?’

‘Mrs Niekirk?’ he asked, conscious that he sounded like a policeman.

She seemed to flare up. ‘I’ve had it with you people. We’re complying with that order.’

Challis held up both hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not here about any order.’

She went very still and waited, tense under the surface. ‘What can I do for you,’ she said flatly.

‘My name is Hal Challis and I own an old aeroplane and I’m thinking of-’

A narrow hand went to her throat. Challis saw small chips of gold there, gold on her fingers and earlobes, too. And a flicker of dark emotions. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said, barely moving her mouth, ‘but my husband is going out of the aircraft business.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame.’

With an effort, the woman shook off whatever had been affecting her. Her voice a low, pleasant rasp leavened with a smile, she offered her hand and said, ‘Mara Niekirk. Please forgive me, I sounded harsh.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘The thing is, we had our fingers burnt recently. Do you see that heap of junk out there? The men and the trucks?’

And Challis thought at once: the Beaufighter’s being repossessed. ‘Yes.’

‘My husband has a sideline business, brokerage. He puts people who have a classic car or aeroplane to sell in touch with people who want to buy one. But this time’-she gestured at the plane beyond the office door-‘he thought he’d be buyer and seller himself. More profit, you see. He even had a UK client lined up, prepared to pay a hundred thousand pounds sterling. The next thing you know, the federal government steps in and says the deal can’t go ahead. Fifty thousand dollars down the drain.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Needless to say, I’m a little cross.’

Challis didn’t ask where the husband was. In the doghouse somewhere. Instead, he asked why the Beaufighter couldn’t be exported.

‘According to the officious little bureaucrat who slapped the order on us, that damn plane has cultural heritage significance. If Warren tries to ship it overseas it will be confiscated and he’ll be hit with a heavy fine, even jail time.’

Challis jerked his head at the trucks. ‘So you’ve found a local buyer?’

Mara Niekirk grimaced. ‘It doesn’t rain but it pours. It seems the man who sold us the plane may not have had rightful ownership of it.’

‘It’s being confiscated?’

Mara Niekirk held up a finger. ‘ Repatriated is the word they used. It’s going to the War Memorial in Canberra and when the ownership issues are thrashed out, we’ll get a tax break under the cultural gifts program. Did you know such a thing existed? I didn’t.’

Challis stored the information, Mara Niekirk watching him steadily over the rims of her glasses. ‘Which is not the same thing as getting our money back.’

‘Can’t you sue?’

‘Hah!’

So the man who’d sold it to them can’t be found, or he’s broke, guessed Challis. He eyed the metal walls, hung with a number of prints and drawings: a Charles Blackman schoolgirl, a Brian Dunlop print of an open, curtained window. A matched trio of Brett Whiteley artist’s proofs, an homage to Van Gogh.

Mara Niekirk, watching Challis appraise them, blew a tendril of brown hair away from her nose. ‘This room needed a certain something.’

‘So, no more dealing in aeroplanes.’

‘Or vintage cars, my husband’s other side interest.’

Challis gave her a crooked smile. ‘Pity. I also have an old Triumph sports car I want to get rid of.’

She returned the smile. ‘Can’t help you.’