The Dragon Man ic-1

by Garry Disher

  ‘No kidding,’ Sutton said absently, and Challis knew that the man was thinking of his daughter again. It was as if having a child destroyed your sense of time’s continuum. Time was reduced to the present and nothing else.

  ‘Somewhere along here,’ he said. ‘Look for the name Saltmarsh on a mailbox or fence railing.’

  They drove for a further kilometre before they found it, a mailbox hand-lettered with the words M. Saltmarsh. They turned in and saw a small red-brick veneer house with a tiled roof. Behind it sat a modern barn, the doors open, revealing a tractor, a battered Land Cruiser, coils of rope, bike parts, wooden pallets, machinery tools and dusty crates crammed with one-day useful bits and pieces-chain links, cogs, pulley wheels, radiator hoses and clamps. A rusted truck chassis sat in long grass next to the barn. Hens pecked in the dust beneath a row of peppercorns. The apples in the adjacent orchard were still small and green. A dog barked, and beat its tail in the oily dirt, but failed to get up for them.

  ‘She’s a bit on the tired side,’ Sutton said, meaning the farm and whoever farmed it.

  ‘The Saltmarshs are old Peninsula,’ Challis explained. ‘Been here for generations, scratching a living out of a few acres of old apple trees. Two brothers and their families, on adjoining farms. Both brothers have other jobs to get by. Ken here works part time for the steel fabricator in Waterloo. Mike next door drives a school bus.’

  ‘Poor white trash.’

  Challis thought of the two teenage boys, Saltmarsh cousins, whom he’d seen walking along with their fishing rods the previous morning. How far was that image from the poor South of American film and literature? He finally said, ‘No, not poor white trash. Poor, but steady, and decent.’

  Maureen Saltmarsh came to the door. She was large, sun-dried and floury, smelling of the kitchen and the morning’s early heat. She wasn’t inclined to suspect them of anything, but smiled and said immediately, ‘Me husband’s not home. Did in the big end on his truck.’ The smile disappeared. ‘You’re that inspector.’

  ‘Hal Challis, Mrs Saltmarsh. And this is Detective Constable Sutton. We want to talk to your oldest boy, and his cousin.’

  ‘Brett and Luke? Why, what they done?’

  ‘I just need to talk to them. I’m more than happy for you to be present.’

  She was losing a little of her control. Her hand went to her throat. ‘They’re in watching TV. You know, school holidays.’

  ‘Bring them into the kitchen, would you, please? There’s nothing to worry about. They’re not suspects in anything. We’re not going to arrest them, only question them about something.’

  She ushered Challis and Sutton into the kitchen, cleaned breakfast dishes from the table and asked them to sit. While she was out of the room, Challis took stock: 1970s burnt-orange wall tiles above the benches, a clashing brown and green vinyl linoleum floor, chrome and vinyl chairs, a laminex and chrome table, a small television set, tuned to a chat show, the sound turned down, dishes in the sink, a vast bowl of dough next to a floury rolling pin and greased scone tray.

  The Saltmarsh cousins could have been brothers. They were about sixteen, large and awkward, both mouth-breathers with slack, slow-to-comprehend faces. Challis had an impression of softness, and clumsy angles, of pimples and sparse whiskers, of ordinary teenage stubbornness and stupidity, but not meanness or calculation. They seemed to fill the little kitchen. When they spoke, it was in gobbled snatches, as if they didn’t trust speech and hadn’t much use for it.

  ‘You boys were at Devil Bend Reservoir yesterday, correct?’

  ‘Us? No way.’

  Challis gazed at them for a moment. ‘But you both like to fish?’

  ‘Fish?’

  Scobie Sutton was impatient. ‘With fishing lines and rods and hooks and bait. You like to go fishing.’

  ‘Haven’t got a boat.’

  It was Brett, Maureen Saltmarsh’s son. Challis leaned over the table toward him. ‘I recently saw you and your cousin, on foot, all geared up to go fishing. You were climbing a fence and crossing a paddock. Not two kilometres from here.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, you weren’t out blackberrying. Now why don’t you tell us about Devil Bend Reservoir.’

  Brett stared at the table. His mother said, ‘Brett? What have you boys been up to?’

  ‘Nothing, Mum.’

  Challis said, ‘We’ve had reports of poachers in the district, dams and lakes fished for trout.’

  ‘Not us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have no alternative but to charge you with-’

  ‘You said they hadn’t done anything!’

  ‘Mrs Saltmarsh, please…’

  ‘You can’t charge them if they haven’t done anything.’

  Challis hated what he was doing. He said, ‘Brett, look at me. I don’t care about the illegal fishing, the trespassing. I don’t even intend to report your names to the local station. But unless you tell me what you saw at the reservoir yesterday, I will have you arrested and charged, believe me I will.’

  Brett shot a look at his cousin. The cousin said, ‘We never done nothing. We just found her, that’s all.’

  Challis sighed and sat back. ‘You went there to fish?’

  ‘Might have.’

  ‘Okay, okay, forget the fishing. You were out for a stroll. You were skirting the reservoir and came upon a body.’

  They looked doubtful about the word skirting. Did it mean he suspected them of doing something unspeakable at the reservoir? But Brett muttered, ‘Yeah, we found her.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing! We didn’t kill her! She was already like that!’

  ‘Did you touch her?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Did you take anything?’

  ‘Rob a dead body? No way.’

  ‘Did you remove anything from the vicinity of the body?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll rephrase the question: Was there anything on the ground near the body? If so, did you take it away with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘We wouldn’t charge you with theft,’ Scobie Sutton said. ‘We just need to know.’

  ‘There was nothing there.’

  Challis said, ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘No. Only her.’

  Luke said, ‘She the one what was grabbed when her car broke down?’

  Challis thought about it. He wanted to give something back to the boys. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘What time did you find her?’

  ‘Dunno. Pretty early.’

  Mrs Saltmarsh said, ‘A school morning, you can’t get the buggers out of bed. School holidays and they’re up at the crack of dawn.’

  Scobie Sutton asked, ‘Why did you wait before phoning the police?’

  The boys looked at each other. Mrs Saltmarsh eyed them suspiciously. ‘They was waiting for me to go out shopping.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  Brett scratched at a burn mark in the laminex with a grimy fingernail. ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Your mother left the house when?’

  ‘About two,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

  Challis had logged the call at 2.45.

  ‘You’d have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d given us your names, and rung earlier,’ Sutton said.

  ‘Didn’t take you long to find us anyway,’ Luke muttered grudgingly.

  ‘We’ll need your gumboots,’ Challis said.

  Mrs Saltmarsh narrowed her eyes. ‘What for, if they’ve done nothing?’

  ‘To check their footprints against those found at the scene.’

  ‘To eliminate them,’ Sutton explained.

  Both boys looked alarmed, as though elimination meant something damaging and final.

  ‘I’ll get them,’ Mrs Saltmarsh said.

  ‘Pop them in a supermarket bag,’ Sutton called, to her departing back.

  The boys looked frightened now. Challis got to his feet. ‘No more sneaking a
round fishing from the neighbours, okay? Someone could take a shotgun to you, then I’d have another murder inquiry on my hands.’

  They went white. ‘Joke, fellas,’ Sutton said.

  Their grins were shaky.

  On the way out, Challis said suddenly, ‘We’re forgetting something.’

  ‘Maureen, Mrs Saltmarsh,’ he said, when she opened the door to him again, ‘a quick question. What vehicles do you have on the place?’

  She understood, and flushed sullenly. ‘Tractor, Land Cruiser, truck, Holden.’

  ‘The Holden-a sedan or a station wagon?’

  ‘Sedan.’

  ‘The truck. Is-’

  ‘I told you, he done the big end in a few days ago.’

  ‘Maureen, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a camera in the car. Couple of quick shots of the Land Cruiser’s tyres and we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘It hasn’t been out for days.’

  He smiled, ignoring her. ‘Do the boys know how to drive?’

  ‘They’re too young to have their licences.’

  ‘But they know how to drive?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Just a quick snap of the tyres and we’ll be gone,’ Challis said again.

  ‘In the bloody shed,’ Maureen Saltmarsh said, closing the door on them.

  ‘Really laid one on last night, Murph.’

  ‘Wacky doo,’ Pam said, stopping at the roundabout for a station wagon that had begun to nose uncertainly around it, as though lost. A rack of suitcases on the roof, a hint of bedding, buckets, spades and foam surfboards in the rear, children staring through the side windows, a woman driving, a man next to her, cocking his head at a map and waving one arm at her. Maybe, Pam thought, they’ll be next door to me in Penzance Beach when I knock off work tonight, ensconced like kings until school goes back in late January.

  ‘How come we never see you down the pub?’ Tankard demanded.

  ‘Got better things to do.’

  ‘Like what? Don’t tell me you’ve got a love life.’

  That hurt. She took her attention from the road to flash him a look. ‘Why wouldn’t I have a love life?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against it.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘If you prefer women to blokes that’s no skin off my nose.’

  Pam rubbed her cheek wearily. ‘Give it a rest, Tank. You wouldn’t know the first thing about me.’ She braked for the pedestrian lights outside the post office.

  ‘Like hell.’ He yawned. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’

  ‘The photo shop. The manager wants us to check out a roll of film he developed this morning.’

  Tankard looked disgusted. ‘Who cares? You get all kinds of stuff now, no-one turns a hair. Holiday snaps in the nuddy, pregnancies, sheilas giving birth. No-one’s stupid enough to drop hard-core stuff off for developing.’

  Pam wished that Tankard would shut up. ‘All I know is, the manager called the station, asked for Scobie Sutton, he’s busy, so he gave it to us.’

  Pam turned left into the shopping centre, looking for Kwiksnap. Tankard glanced at her keenly, with a touch of not-unkind humour. ‘You’d rather be plain-clothes than driving around in the divvie van, wouldn’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be in uniform all my life.’

  Tankard barked a laugh. ‘You’ll see a shitty side of human nature whatever you wear in this job. If the uniform work makes you suspicious of your fellow man, plain-clothes work only confirms it.’

  Pam remembered: he’d been a detective for a while, at his last station.

  He pointed. ‘Parking spot.’

  ‘I see it.’ She braked and parked.

  There were bridal photos in one window of Kwiksnap, an automatic developing machine in the other, a young woman seated next to it, pushing buttons. Inside the shop were racks of film canisters, display cases of cameras and picture frames, and a booth set aside for passport photographs. The manager twitched aside a curtain and said, ‘I asked for Scobie.’

  ‘Constable Sutton’s tied up at the moment,’ Pam said. She introduced herself, then Tankard, and said, ‘You’re Mr Jackson?’

  ‘Yes.’ The manager glanced at Tankard. ‘And I know who he is.’

  Tankard bristled. Pam said hurriedly, ‘You called about some suspicious photographs.’

  The manager looked agitatedly at the door. ‘Yes. Look, she’s picking them up any time soon.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The customer. She dropped the roll in for developing at five yesterday, pick up at ten this morning. That’s-’ he looked at his watch ‘-ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Let’s see these snaps, shall we?’

  The manager hunted around in a shoebox for a Kodak envelope, then took out the photographs and laid them out on the counter top as though dealing cards in a game of patience. Pam peered at them. Exterior and interior shots of a huge house set in a vast lawn. White fence railings, a suggestion of outbuildings. The interior shots, she noticed, seemed to move from the general to the particular: a room, then what was in that room. Paintings in one photograph, a display case of silver snuffboxes in another. A vase. An antique mantel clock. She began to make scratch notes in her notebook.

  But John Tankard was unimpressed. He pushed the photographs aside. ‘So what?’

  The manager swallowed. ‘Well, see for yourself.’

  ‘I see sentimental snapshots,’ Tankard said. ‘Or maybe snaps taken for insurance purposes. Maybe the owners are scared a bushfire will destroy everything, so they’re keeping a record.’

  ‘Look at these two, John,’ Pam said. ‘The alarm system.’

  ‘See?’ the manager said.

  ‘If an alarm system set me back a few thousand bucks,’ Tankard said, ‘I’d want photos of it, in case the place burned down.’

  Pam stared at him. Everything about him was contestable: his attitudes, his approach to the job, his day to day relations with people. She turned to the manager. ‘Let’s see who left these to be developed, shall we, sir?’

  She tried to read the handwriting. ‘Marion Something.’

  ‘Marion Nunn,’ the manager said.

  Tankard laughed. ‘Marion Nunn? Every policeman’s friend. Plus being a lawyer,’ he said, leaning his face close to Pam’s, ‘she deals in real estate. Hence the pictures. Live and learn, Pammy. You’ll run into the lovely Mrs Nunn sooner or later.’

  Pam pushed the photographs away. ‘I already have.’

  Ellen Destry fielded phone calls from journalists and worked on the sex offenders file again. She’d left it too long; it was clear that Lance Ledwich deserved a closer look. She picked up the phone. She’d try his employer first, then his home number.

  By the time Sutton had returned to the station, she was ready to roll. She had the CIB Falcon waiting, a forensic technician in the back seat. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Scobie. You’re coming with me.’

  Ledwich lived on a new estate near the racecourse on the northern edge of Waterloo, and they came to his house along a narrow court, creeping over speedbumps to get to it. The area depressed Ellen. A stained pine fence and a metre of air were all that separated the houses from one another on this estate. There were no trees to speak of. The nature strips looked raw, still to recover from trench-digging equipment and the summer’s dryness. There was a steel lockup garage at the end of Ledwich’s driveway, the door closed. A well-kept Volvo station wagon was parked in front of the garage, near a ragged patch of oil drips. The forensic technician went immediately for the Volvo.

  As Ellen and Sutton approached the front door, a man slipped out of the metal side door of the garage and padlocked it hurriedly before coming toward them, wiping his palms on his trousers. Ellen recognised him from the photograph in his file.

  ‘Mr Ledwich? We’re-’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are,’ Ledwich said.

  ‘Don’t we?’

  There was something oily about Le
dwich. Oily hair, an air of surreptitious oozing. ‘You bastards ever going to leave me alone?’

  ‘That depends, Lance,’ Sutton said.

  Ledwich stared angrily at the forensic technician, who was taking photographs of the Volvo’s tyres. ‘What’s that arsehole doing?’

  ‘Why don’t we come inside, Lance?’ Ellen said, moving to usher Ledwich to the front door.

  Ledwich twisted away from her. ‘Whatever it is, we do it out here. I don’t want the wife-’

  ‘Fair enough, Lance. I can understand that. Why don’t we move over here, let the technician do his job.’

  They took Ledwich to the CIB Falcon. Ellen sat in the driver’s seat, Ledwich beside her, Sutton in the rear. ‘You’re all the fucking same,’ Ledwich said. ‘A bloke goes straight, and you lean on him, hoping he’ll fuck up so you can put him away again.’

  ‘Are you going straight, Lance?’

  ‘I’m a storeman.’

  ‘Irregular hours, some night shift work, right?’

  ‘So what? What’s it to do with you? That other business, that was years ago.’

  ‘Not that long ago,’ Sutton said.

  Ellen leaned confidingly toward Ledwich. ‘About your Volvo, Lance.’

  His eyes shifted. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Nice set of wheels,’ Sutton remarked.

  Ledwich was obliged to swivel his head, from Ellen and then around to Sutton and back again. ‘I look after it, yeah.’

  ‘How did you afford to buy it, Lance?’ Ellen said.

  ‘Christ, it’s twelve years old. It’s not worth all that much.’

  ‘How long have you owned it?’

  ‘Few years.’

  ‘Why a Volvo?’ Sutton asked. ‘Why not a Ford or a Holden, like everyone else?’

  Ellen leaned closer. ‘Is it so people will think you’re an ordinary bloke, Lance, rather than a pervert?’

  He flushed. ‘It’s the wife’s car, all right?’

  ‘How about tyres, Lance, between you and the road. You’d want to fit pretty good ones, yeah?’

  Ledwich narrowed his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t know what brand they are. What’s this about?’

  ‘Do you own any other vehicles?’

  Ledwich looked away, out at the forensic technician. ‘Nup.’