Kittyhawk Down

by Garry Disher

  'I'll come with you,' Challis said.

  Feeling a twinge of guilt, he called the admin office of the aerodrome and learnt that, yes, Kitty had come in to work. She was with air safety investigators, examining her damaged Cessna. Did Challis want to leave a message?

  'No, that's okay.'

  He turned to the others. 'Let's go.'

  Sutton drove the unmarked CIB sedan, Ellen in the passenger seat, Challis behind her. Sutton often drove and, not for the first time, Challis wondered why they let him. Sutton tended to be inattentive and restless, always shifting to get comfortable, sighing, suddenly swigging from a water bottle, slowing right down whenever he contributed to a conversation. Ellen liked to say that Scobie Sutton was the most un-still person she'd ever met.

  Now, as he wound the car past a housing estate and then marshy paddocks and an orchard, the pear trees turning gnarled and spindly as the wind whipped away the dying leaves, Sutton turned around to glance at Challis in the back seat. 'In California, marijuana is the second most valuable cash crop after corn.'

  'For God's sake, Scobie, watch the road,' Ellen said.

  He swung away, gripping the wheel. 'I was reading up on the sinsemilla variety the other day. It was developed in California. What they do is uproot the male plant and this causes the female plant to put out richer and larger buds in an effort to get fertilised. You can have plants up to three-and-a-half metres high, with sixty heads. What I'm getting at,' he added hastily, as though sensing their impatience, 'is that big cannabis crops can mean booby traps and gangs ripping one another off.'

  Challis nodded, on the one hand reminded of the booby traps he'd encountered when he'd worked briefly in the Drug Squad a few years earlier, the trip wires tied to shotguns at knee height, the steel wire nooses, the fishhooks and grenades filled with shrapnel, and on the other thinking that maybe the plane-ramming incident was related to the drug crop in the photograph.

  'How do we do this, Hal?' Ellen asked.

  'You take the lead,' he said. 'Concentrate on the photograph rather than the ramming incident. If the photo seems to be related, then I'll have some questions for her. But until then I'll simply observe. But let me put her at ease first, okay?'

  Ellen nodded.

  They arrived in time to see a small mobile crane carrying the fuselage of the Cessna from a grassy corner of the field to one of the hangars. The wings—one of them badly crumpled—had been removed from the fuselage and waited in the grass for the crane to return. They found Kitty in the hangar, supervising the unloading of the fuselage. A handful of mechanics and men with clipboards waited nearby.

  She was so absorbed that she jumped when Challis said in her ear, 'Could we have a word?'

  She glanced at him, glanced at Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton, then returned her gaze to the punctured fuselage of her Cessna. 'It's not really a good time,' she said, faintly irritated. 'And I don't think I can add anything to what I've already told you.'

  'We're opening up another line of inquiry, Mrs Casement,' Ellen said.

  Kitty blinked at her distractedly, wanting to be polite but drawn to her aeroplane as it thumped softly onto the concrete floor and the holding straps settled around it. Challis stepped in, touching her upper arm to gain her attention, then introducing Ellen and Scobie, adding, 'We'll be as quick as we can.'

  'Time is money right now, Hal. I have to get in the air again as soon as possible.'

  'I understand.'

  She sighed. 'All right, where do you want to do this?'

  'Your work area will do.'

  She led them to her bench in the hanger where Challis was restoring his Dragon Rapide. Ellen had been there before but not Sutton, and he gazed around him with a low whistle. 'So this is where it all happens.'

  They ignored him. Kitty stood leaning against the workbench, her arms folded, frowning a little at Challis, who nodded to Ellen to begin.

  Ellen took the photograph from a folder. 'Mrs Casement, is this one of your photographs?'

  Kitty gestured shyly. 'Call me Kitty. Everyone else does.' She leaned over to look. 'Yes, I took this. In fact'— she glanced around at her noticeboard —'it used to be pinned right there. How did you… ?'

  'Could you tell us when you took it?'

  Kitty shrugged. 'It was left over from a job I did for someone.'

  'But when did you take it?'

  'Year ago? Six months? I can't remember.'

  'It's clearly not a year ago,' Scobie said. 'Look at the orchard in the top right-hand corner. The trees have still got all their leaves.'

  'Honestly I can't remember when.'

  'How about who hired you?'

  Kitty took the photograph and gazed at it intently, then looked into the distance. A moment later her face cleared and Challis was certain that the change was genuine, not staged in any way.

  'Now I remember,' she said, and stopped.

  'Yes?' Ellen prompted.

  'It was a promotion thing.'

  'A promotion?' Scobie said.

  'You know, I was looking for business,' Kitty said. 'I spent a few days flying over the Peninsula—select areas like Red Hill, Merricks North, Flinders—taking photographs. Some were generic coastline shots at a medium altitude, others were low-level shots of individual properties, houses, gardens, nearby paddocks, that kind of thing. I remember I numbered each shot on a topographical map so I'd be able to match them to specific addresses, then I went knocking on doors trying to sell photos.'

  'And?'

  'Did quite well. People were intrigued, flattered. I showed them examples of frame sizes, matt or glossy finishes, and took orders. Or I sold them the sample photos on the spot.'

  They gazed at her. Challis was inclined to believe her and so, he sensed, were the others. Ellen indicated the photograph in Kitty's hand and said, 'Perhaps you could search your records and tell us which part of the Peninsula is depicted here.'

  At once Kitty lifted the photograph and examined it intently. 'Why? What's it show?'

  Challis wondered how Ellen would respond to that. There were good reasons why she shouldn't reveal too much, but he was pleased when she replied, 'It shows a marijuana crop.'

  Now all three were watching Kitty closely, gauging her reaction.

  'God. Where?'

  Ellen pointed. 'Here.'

  Kitty peered at it doubtfully. 'It could be anything as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't know a marijuana plant if I fell over it.'

  'If you could just search your records… ?'

  Kitty turned to her filing cabinet, four drawers of greasy, dented grey metal, pulled out a chart and spread it over her workbench. Challis could see names and numbers pencilled along the coastline. He heard Kitty murmur to herself and then snap her forefinger onto the chart.

  'Here.'

  They looked. A farm along Five Furlong Road, just before the costly houses of Upper Penzance, and a scrawled name: Ian Munro.

  Ellen gave Challis a brief, unobtrusive nod, and he stepped forward. 'Do you remember visiting the Munro farm?'

  'No. But I would have gone there.'

  'So you don't recall anything? Was there anyone at home? Did you have to call back? Did you see Munro himself or someone else who lives there? Did they buy the photo? If not, how come you have a copy?'

  She cocked her head at him. 'An awful lot of questions. I'll have to check, it's all here somewhere. But the reason I have another copy is that I sometimes took several of the one area. Sometimes there'd be a cloud shadow or a sunburst at the wrong moment. Or a car entering the shot.'

  He nodded.

  She looked troubled as she returned to her filing cabinet and took out another file. 'I keep a record,' she said, 'of where and when I take each photo, and when I went knocking on doors last year I made a note of visits and return visits and who bought what. Here we are. I spoke to Ian and Aileen Munro. They bought two shots: a close-up of their house and a larger area shot like this one. Oh,' she said, concern filling her face, 'his cheque boun
ced.'

  Challis went tense. 'Did you chase it up?'

  Kitty shook her head. 'There was no point. I hate aggravation and I didn't have the time or the resources to do anything about it. I just paid the bank fee and forgot about it. The photos only came to fifty dollars, not worth the hassle. Besides, it was all done on spec anyway. Only about thirty per cent of people I doorknocked actually bought anything, so it wasn't as if I really lost out.'

  Ellen said, 'You didn't follow it up at all? Didn't offer to take more photos at other times of the year? Didn't discuss aspects of the photo itself with the Munros?'

  'Not that I recall.' She went pale. 'You don't think it was him, do you? In the Land Rover?'

  Challis gazed at her evenly and said, 'That's what we intend to find out.'

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Pam Murphy was driving this time, but only because she'd beaten Tank to the keys and the driver's door. There was a corner—admittedly a pretty wide corner—of John Tankard that didn't hold with women drivers or women's driving ability. She kept her eyes on the road while beside her he stamped on an imaginary brake and braced his meaty hands against the padded dash. She edged up the speed a little, threw the van around the curves that would take them toward the Waterloo hospital. He must have forgotten that she'd driven pursuit cars at her last station and passed all of the advanced driving courses they'd thrown at her.

  Then they were off the main road and on streets too narrow and curved to risk putting the wind up John Tankard, so she settled into a gentler pace and rhythm. She felt him begin to relax. Then his overheated gaze settled on her.

  'You've got your pointy bra on today.'

  'Careful you don't impale yourself on it,' she said.

  Impale. He didn't like it. He knew what it meant but it wasn't an everyday word and she knew he took it as a subtle put-down of his intellect. 'Get off my case,' he said.

  They drove on in silence. She had a sense of his mind working overtime, trying for a way to flatter and charm her, put her onside. To steer him away from that she said, 'Do you think Kellock's right?'

  'About what?'

  She resisted saying about what he was talking to us about not five minutes ago, and said, 'Do the bad guys self-select?'

  'Sounded like bullshit to me.'

  'I think he had a point,' Pam said.

  There was a primary school on one side of the road, a church on the other. She slowed for a speed hump and the school crossing. 'I mean,' she went on, 'if you pull someone over for a broken brake light, ten-to-one he's also drunk or doped to the eyeballs or hasn't got a licence or his car's unroadworthy or he hasn't paid a swag of parking fines. As far as he's concerned, things like speed limits and working lights don't apply to him.'

  'Yeah,' Tankard said. 'He's stupid.'

  'I think it's more than that,' Pam said, but before she could expand on it, Tankard stretched elaborately and managed to drape his arm along the top of her seat. The next best thing to embracing her. She could feel his arm there, a pinkish hairy slab, millimetres from her neck and shoulders.

  She said dangerously, 'Don't.'

  'What?' he said, full of false innocence, but removed his arm anyway, turning the gesture into one long, getting-comfortable pantomime.

  'That's better.'

  'What is?'

  She changed the subject. 'Know anything about this Munro character?'

  He shrugged. 'Nup.'

  She could never be sure how much John Tankard took in during the briefings at the start of every shift. According to Sergeant van Alphen, an RSPCA inspector had been investigating a report of distressed sheep on a farm up near Upper Penzance. There was a suspicion that the farmer, Ian Munro, had assaulted the inspector and put him in hospital.

  'Check out the inspector's story,' van Alphen had said, 'see if he wants to press charges, then have a word with Munro.'

  There hadn't been time to run Munro's name through the computer, but one or two of the other uniforms in the briefing room clearly knew Munro, and had said to Pam, their voices full of mock direness, 'Well, good luck,' as though she was going to need more than luck on her side.

  'A thankless job,' she said now.

  'Being a cop?'

  'Well, that too, but I meant it'd be thankless being an RSPCA inspector.'

  'How come?'

  Why did John Tankard never engage with a topic? Why wasn't he musing over her remark right now and responding to it one way or the other? She wanted to say think about it, but they had reached the entrance to the hospital and she was forced to brake for an old man in an elderly Holden, nothing showing but his hat and his hands clutching the wheel as he contemplated his next move in the exact centre of the gate pillars.

  'Dozy old bugger,' she said, intending Tankard to see himself as ending up like that dozy old bugger one day.

  He said nothing. Then, as if to assert his masculinity, said, 'Footie season starts next Saturday.'

  She knew that he barracked for Essendon and had a head-banging regard for the game. So did she, for that matter. Hawthorn, of course, owing to where she'd more or less grown up. And the fact that she loved football in the first place owed plenty to the type of family in which she'd grown up: remote, university-intellectual father and brothers who had no time for athletic achievements—her achievements, to some degree. Her father was especially scathing about 'footie professors', particularly professors of Australian history, who liked to think they were at one with ordinary people but were in fact effete poseurs. She shook off the memory—she, for one, loved footie—and settled into a vigorous argument with John Tankard.

  Then they were inside the hospital grounds and parking in a 'visiting surgeons' bay and walking through glass doors into air scented with new paint, carpeting, concrete and steel. A woman at the reception desk directed them upstairs to a ward overlooking the carpark. Here the air was hot, sluggish, medicated, and Pam wanted to curl up and sleep.

  Clive Fenwick lay glumly looking at the pink venetian blinds on his sun-struck window. There were no cards or flowers, nothing to cheer him or his nurses or visiting police officers. He turned his head stiffly, saw their uniforms through glasses too big for his face, and closed and opened his eyes.

  The disapproving face of a born inspector, Pam thought. His hair had bunched up from hours of lying on a hospital pillow and he looked profoundly aggrieved and disappointed. She introduced Tankard and herself, and said, 'We'd just like to ask you a few questions regarding the incident at Ian Munro's farm, Mr Fenwick.'

  Fenwick closed his eyes. His forehead was cut and bruised; one arm and one ankle were in plaster. A broad strip of cotton bandage showed at the collar of his pyjamas, as though his ribs had been tightly bound.

  'Munro really laid into you, old son,' Tankard said.

  Fenwick shook his head and croaked, 'No.'

  'No?'

  'Accident.'

  'You want to wake up to yourself, mate,' Tankard said, ignoring Pam, who glared at him to tone it down. 'You went to check on this guy's starving sheep and he flattened you.'

  'Crashed my car.'

  Pam cocked her head at Fenwick in doubt. 'You told the doctor who treated you that you'd been beaten up.'

  'Misunderstanding.'

  'Yeah, sure,' Tankard said. 'Munro went ballistic, right?'

  Fenwick closed his eyes. If his face hadn't been so stiff and sore, he'd have pursed his disapproving mouth, Pam thought. 'Mr Fenwick, tell us what happened. Start at the beginning.'

  'Anonymous call,' Fenwick said. 'Starving sheep, no water in the paddock. I drove out to the address given. It was borderline. The sheep had been shorn, so they looked skinny. And there was water for them, in a trough in the far corner that couldn't be seen clearly from the road. The paddock slopes,' he explained, looking fully at Pam for the first time. 'But I wasn't entirely happy. The sheep were hungry, though you could see where hay had been spread for them a few days earlier.'

  'What did you do?'

  'Went to the h
ouse, said who I was—'

  'Who did you speak to?'

  'Mrs Munro.'

  'And?'

  'Then her husband comes charging over from one of the sheds, shouting abuse at me. He thought I was from his bank or the shire or something.'

  'Go on.'

  'When I said I was from the RSPCA it was like the last straw,' Fenwick said, more animated now. 'I've heard it all in my time, but this was shocking, absolutely shocking. I feel sorry for the wife, quite frankly.'

  'Mr Fenwick,' Pam said, 'how did you get the injuries?'

  Fenwick looked away. 'Accident.'

  'How?'

  'Rolled my car at the bottom of the hill.'

  'So Mr Munro didn't touch you?'

  In a voice she could scarcely hear, he said, 'Kicked me.'

  'He kicked you? Where?'

  Fenwick wouldn't look at her. 'Seat of my pants,' he said, as if he couldn't bring himself to say 'buttocks', or wanted to downplay the incident.

  'So he did assault you,' Tankard stated.

  Fenwick said hurriedly, 'I don't want to press charges.'

  Pam gazed at him. In her mind's eye she saw the way it had played out, the chain of events that put Clive Fenwick in Waterloo hospital.

  The visit to the property. Munro, beside himself with fury at the intrusion by another bureaucrat. Worse, a bureaucrat who has come to investigate his farming practices, based on an anonymous tip-off. Fenwick sent packing with a kick up the bum. Deserved, at one level, because he's such a tightarse. Fenwick drives away, badly panicked, and rolls his car. Is hospitalised. Frightened, outraged, ashamed, he declares his injuries to be the result of an assault. Then reconsiders, not wanting a man like Munro to come gunning for him.

  He's telling the truth now, Pam thought—or some of it, leaving out the panicky drive down the hill and rolling his car on the first bend.

  Still, Munro warranted a hard talking to before he caused serious harm to somebody.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Today the Meddler was driven more than usually by sourness. Not that the day had started badly. He was on the four pm to midnight shift this week, leaving the mornings free to take Jessica to school, and yesterday and today he'd thought it would be good to have the ferret with him, watch the kids jostle nervously, wanting to touch but fearful of sharp teeth. He'd even dared them a little. He got a kick out of it—their fear, his difference from the other parents: drones, most of them.