The Dragon Man

by Garry Disher

  He bought a pita bread pocket stuffed with lettuce, tomato, fetta and leaky mayonnaise, Ellen a slice of quiche. They wandered down to the playground next to the public swimming pool. Some of their lightness had evaporated. 'Then something like that happens,' Challis said, knowing that Ellen would follow the trail of his thoughts, 'and I realise that I am different, I am separate from everyone else. I'm expected to be. No-one's saying, "Come in here with us", they're saying, "Stay out there and watch over us." It's a crying shame,' he said, hurling the remains of his lunch toward the seagulls, 'and nothing can be done about it.'

  Ellen leaned briefly against him and said, 'Hal,' softly.

  They wandered back to the station, saying little, but feeling a kind of commonality with each other, and sadness.

  They hadn't been in the incident room for long when Ellen murmured, 'McQuarrie's here.'

  The man coming toward them wore a natty suit and the alert, clipped, close-shaven look of an army officer in an old British film. 'Afternoon, everyone.'

  'Superintendent.'

  'Hal, have you seen one of these?'

  Challis glanced at it, a leaflet headed 'Our very own stormtrooper.'

  'I was aware they were around, sir.'

  'The night shift found them on their cars this morning. Someone had the nerve to walk in under our noses.'

  Since McQuarrie was based in Frankston and rarely visited the regional stations, Challis didn't know why he was saying our noses. 'I see.'

  'I've talked to Mr Kellock. He's going to post a stakeout over the car park tonight.'

  Challis glanced past the superintendent at Ellen Destry, in time to catch a fleeting grin. 'Good for you, sir.'

  'It's the thin edge of the wedge.'

  For all of his talk about the thin edge of the wedge, the superintendent was a diplomat, a man who bent with the wind. His was the face the public saw whenever the police had to explain anything. Challis knew that McQuarrie played golf with well-heeled men, and he had no trouble seeing him scurrying along behind, letting them set the agenda.

  'Right, Kymbly Abbott,' McQuarrie said. 'Bring me up to speed. Any forensic joy?'

  'Nothing to speak of. He used a condom. No prints, but indications of a latex glove.'

  'Tyres, footprints, sightings, nothing like that?'

  'Nothing, sir, except one witness, who phoned this morning. She saw Abbott on the highway the night she was murdered.'

  McQuarrie spun around and regarded the wall map, his long hands on his bony hips. Challis winked at Ellen, then joined McQuarrie at the map. 'Here, sir, where it starts. Apparently she was sitting on the kerb, her feet in the gutter, holding out her thumb.'

  'Pity our witness didn't pick her up.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Mad. These young girls, I don't know.'

  Challis couldn't find an adequate response to that. He pointed at the map. 'And here's where Jane Gideon went missing.'

  'The cases might not be related.'

  'That's occurred to us.'

  'She might have recognised the driver and gone off with him. Isn't aware that people are worried about her.'

  Challis rubbed his forehead irritably. 'True.'

  McQuarrie said, 'But doubtful. It's been too long and we can't discount that letter.'

  'I agree.'

  'I had Tessa Kane on the blower.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Wanted a comment. Of course, I didn't tell her anything.'

  'Wise, sir.'

  McQuarrie clapped his hands together. 'Right, well, keep me posted.'

  FIVE

  After her encounter with Sergeant Destry that morning, Pam Murphy had caught the bus for Myers Point. It had swayed along the coast road, Pam swaying with it, her surfboard upright against her knees like a broad, blank-faced, yellow extra passenger. The drivers were used to her by now. Every Wednesday morning—shift work allowing—since mid-October. The other passengers she'd never seen before: two tired-looking men in blue overalls, a raucous mother with a four-year-old who seemed to suffer clips about the ears without pain, and an elderly woman with a handbag.

  The elderly woman alighted with her at Myers Point and limped toward a small weatherboard cottage. A woman watering the garden there carefully turned off the tap and embraced her visitor. Pam found that she was moved by the little incident. She had a sense of lifelong friends, who saw one another when they could and spoke on the telephone every day.

  She walked around to the surfing beach. The board grew heavy and awkward. She was hot. She needed a car, but money somehow failed to stick to her. She was chronically in debt. She was barely able to scrape up thirty dollars for this morning's lesson—not that Ginger would have insisted, but he was only a kid and it wouldn't have been right.

  He was waiting in the car park next to the public lavatories at the head of the dunes. Five others this morning, four women like herself and a guy in his fifties, a fit-looking character decorated with tattoos and a ponytail. Sure enough, there was a big chrome and black enamel Harley parked nearby.

  Ginger flashed her a smile. She wished it was just Ginger and herself and the wide blue sea this morning—as it had been once or twice before.

  The little group walked down through the gap in the dunes and came out upon flat sand opposite a mildly chopping sea. Ginger turned right and led them for some distance, staring critically at the water, the way the waves were forming and breaking. Pam admired the way he walked at an easy lope across the sand, while she and the others made hard work of it. Plenty of natural grace in that walk, nice tight muscles, long arms and legs, chin tipped back, his chopped-short, sun-bleached hair catching the sun. A wonderfully shapely face for a seventeen-year-old. No adolescent roundness, pimples or bumfluff. Cheerful. Uncomplicated. All that mattered to him were the surf and the surf school. It would be good if he had a little left over for her, she sometimes thought, even if he were jailbait—or at least cause for her to be reprimanded, maybe even dismissed, for disgraceful conduct.

  The others were drawing ahead now. Pam's breathing grew laboured. Her whole body ached. Plenty of exercise, the specialist had told her, but nothing with a percussive effect. No jogging, only careful gym work, plenty of swimming, regular massage and physiotherapy. He hadn't said anything about surfing, but Pam had always loved to watch it on the box, the Bell's Beach classic, Hawaii, the swift, nifty manoeuvres. She admired the women. So much guts and careless talent. It looked to be incredible fun. So, after the accident—a three-car pile-up in pursuit of a stolen Porsche in South Yarra—and her rehab and a breakdown that left her afraid and doubting and drained of esteem, and this posting to the Peninsula, far from the badness of the past, she'd seen the surfing lessons advertised in the milk bar and had thought, Why not?

  Now Ginger had seen that she was struggling. He told the others to stop and gear up, and came back for her, smiling and concerned.

  'You okay?'

  His wetsuit filled her eyes. She imagined his pale, slender, hard, hairless chest and stomach. 'A few aches and pains.'

  Her own wetsuit hid her scars. They weren't so bad, as scars go, but no-one knew the damage and pain they stood for. Ginger's glance went to her hip and shoulder. 'Would you like me to massage you?'

  She blushed. 'Ginger.'

  'I mean it. I'm always massaging people who seize up in the water.'

  'We'll see.'

  'Keep it in mind,' he said, taking her board for her and walking with her at her pace.

  She was thirty, almost twice his age. As far as she knew, he didn't have a girlfriend. But someone would turn his head eventually, someone his age. She had to keep telling herself that.

  Two hours later, back at Penzance Beach to shower and change and catch the bus to work, she saw a man, no more than a skinny kid, jemmy open the side window of the house opposite her flat, and climb inside. She was waiting for him when he came out.

  Clara had mixed feelings about van Alphen, not least because he was a copper and because of what had h
appened last night, when he'd been so sweet to her, attentive, shy and clumsy. She'd slept badly, the night wracked with dreams of masked figures tearing away their masks to reveal other masks. She hadn't drunk much of the vodka, simply curled up on the sofa with the big copper until she'd felt sleepy, but her head boomed now. She needed something to level her out. She'd sworn off coke, but what she wouldn't do for a snort right now. Trouble was, she couldn't afford to go looking for a supplier. There was no-one she could trust. Smoking dope and doing coke was the old Clara, and her enemies knew that, and that was where they'd have their feelers out, even from as far away as Christchurch.

  Midday. Her house in Quarter horse Lane stood opposite a broad paddock of rye grass. As she watched, winds pushed at the grass heads in long sweeps back and forth, like rollers pitching in an ocean. It looked lovely, but it was also a fire hazard, and she trembled again.

  The patrol car crept along the dirt road toward her front gate. She watched it pause at the mailbox, then turn in. He'd come back, just like he said he would.

  She hugged him briefly. He looked tired. His hair was damp. She felt shy. 'You came back.'

  'Just passing. Did you sleep?'

  'So-so. You?'

  'Managed to snatch a couple of hours at the station.'

  He'd shaved badly. She touched his jaw. 'Coffee, Van? That will blow the cobwebs away.'

  I can't stay long. We had a woman abducted three nights ago and I have to supervise another line search.'

  She tugged gently on the fingers of his burnt hand. I won't keep you. Just a quick coffee and you can be on your way.'

  But in the kitchen she found herself shaking violently and she let a cup fall to the floor. 'A woman abducted?'

  He clasped her upper arms. 'Are you all right?'

  'Stressed out, can't you tell?'

  'Look, come and sit down.'

  He cleared the newspaper off the sofa and sat with her. Their knees touched. 'An abduction,' she said. I just know they're out there, waiting to get me.'

  'Clara, this has nothing to do with your mailbox getting burnt.'

  'It feels like it does!'

  'Hush, hush.'

  He was huge and enveloping. They were very warm against each other, heat coming through the thin cotton, and, where her bare forearm touched his, a kind of current was passing. Her voice was muffled against his uniform. 'Van, I really need something to chill me out.'

  She wasn't surprised that he misunderstood her. He began to stroke her, thinking that was what she wanted. Still, the stroking felt nice in itself. The other could wait, and would come sooner rather than later if she could soften him up over the next couple of days.

  She was stroking him now, the soft skin inside his elbow. She reached up and pulled his head down to hers. The kiss started slowly, no more than a nibble, but Clara was surprised to find herself enjoying it. The line between calculation and need grew blurred.

  Afterwards, drowsy and half-naked on the Moroccan floor rug, he said, 'God, I needed that.'

  'Been a while?'

  'I don't mean that. I mean the world's such a shitty place you forget what's good about it.'

  Christ, he wasn't going to fall in love with her, was he? 'So I'm a good fuck,' she said, to keep things in perspective for him.

  He was mortified. 'No! Well, yes, but in a nice way.'

  She laughed. 'Only teasing.' She rolled on to her hip and lay with her cheek on the hard slab of bone and muscle that was his chest. 'Will I see you again?'

  She heard the rumble in his chest wall. 'I could come again tomorrow.'

  'Or I could come to your place.'

  He rolled away and pulled on his underpants and trousers. 'Christ, no, don't do that.'

  'Why? Ashamed of me?'

  'It's better if I come here, that's all. It's quiet here. Tucked away. Nobody to see me come and go.'

  It was as if everything was decided.

  It was stuffy in the Displan room. Ellen Destry pinched an electric fan from the sick bay and placed it on her desk, letting the air wash over her as she opened Scobie Sutton's file of convicted sex offenders now living on the Peninsula. Twenty-two names. After a further search, she discounted eight: they were serving prison sentences. Of the remaining fourteen, five had moved interstate, two had committed suicide, and three had convictions for paedophilia. She made a printout of all the names, in case some had finished their prison sentences or moved back into the area, and printed out full criminal-file copies of the remaining four men. One, in particular, caught her eye: Lance Arthur Ledwich, born 1955, convicted in 1991 on five counts of procuring sexual penetration by fraud and three counts of rape. Released in 1995. Apparently he'd placed ads in a Geelong newspaper calling for young women to audition for a film. A producer of wedding videos by trade, he'd auditioned the women at his studio in Newtown, where his cameras, lights and props had provided the necessary verisimilitude. He'd asked each woman to undress and change into a gym tunic for the part of a schoolgirl who'd been sexually awakened after a rape. He'd managed to deceive five women into having sex with him and had raped another three. One woman also alleged that he'd punched and squeezed her windpipe when she refused to have sex with him, but this charge was later withdrawn.

  Violent, devious. Was he working the highway now?

  The phone rang. It was the new constable. Could someone in CIB be present at an interview of a burglary suspect? Ellen pushed Ledwich's file to one side and went downstairs.

  'The time 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 20 December. Present in the room are the accused, Daniel Holsinger, Detective Sergeant Ellen Destry, and myself, Constable Pam Murphy. Now, Danny, this interview is being recorded. You say you waive your right to have your lawyer present?'

  Danny gave a whinnying laugh. 'Her? She puts words in my mouth. Last time, she let me talk my way into a month in jail.'

  Sergeant Destry stirred. 'Danny, she's not on our Christmas card list, but if she hadn't intervened that time you'd have got six months.'

  Pam waited. The sergeant sat back again, indicating with a nod that it was her arrest, she should run the interview.Returning the nod, she said, 'Danny, let's start with the backpack.'

  He bristled. 'It's mine.'

  'It's also Italian and worth a lot of money.'

  'So?'

  Sergeant Destry cut in, 'So I'd have thought a vinyl gym bag was more your style,' and Pam wanted to shoot her. Danny flushed, looked hurt and angry at the put-down, and now she would have to work hard to bring him around again. After the arrest, as they'd waited for a divisional van to collect them, she'd developed a kind of rapport with him. There was nothing vicious or bad about him, just a lack of grey matter.

  Danny was pouting. 'What would you know, you bitch?'

  'Danny, that's enough,' Pam said. 'Now, a lovely bag like that, weren't you worried you'd get grease on it?'

  'Never been out of work since I left school,' Danny said, still angry. 'You think I can't afford to spend money on nice things?'

  'Let's leave the bag. What we're most interested in is what you had inside the bag.'

  'My own gear.'

  'Hardly.' Pam picked up a page from a file. 'Items found in suspect's backpack: one ladies' wristwatch, Citizen; one camera, Nikon; one Visa card in the name of Anne M. Francis; forty-five dollars in cash; a Peninsula Library Service card, also in the name of Anne Francis; amethyst earrings set in gold.'

  'My girlfriend.'

  'I don't think so, Danny. Mrs Francis is seventy if she's a day.'

  'My grandmother.'

  'Cut it out, Danny,' Pam said. 'I caught you leaving the premises by way of a window. I checked with Mrs Francis and she's never heard of you.'

  'Yeah, and I bet she never heard of no backpack, neither, because it's not hers.'

  'Danny, give yourself a break.'

  'So I done her place over, so what.'

  Sergeant Destry said, 'Were you alone in this, Danny?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'You hang
out with Boyd Jolic, am I right?'

  Danny looked hunted. 'Sometimes.'

  'Do you burgle houses with him?'

  Danny muttered, looking away, 'No. Look, it's hot in here. Gis a Pepsi?'

  Pam glanced at Sergeant Destry, who gave her a tired smile, said, 'Interview suspended while Sergeant Destry leaves the room,' and went out.

  Danny said, 'Look, miss, can't we do something here?'

  'Like what?'

  'I know things aren't looking real good for me. What if I had something to give you?'

  'You offering me a bribe, Danny?'

  Danny waved an arm. 'No, no, nothing like that. Well, kind of. I mean, I hear things from time to time, might interest you.'

  'There's a lot going on, Danny. Abductions, murder.'

  Danny looked shocked. 'Hey, come on. Don't know nothing about that.'

  'What, then? You hang out with people who firebomb mailboxes, Danny? Or heavier people, the kind who pull aggravated burglaries?'

  'Don't know nothing about no ag burgs,' Danny was muttering as Sergeant Destry entered the room.

  The sergeant went very sharp and still. 'What ag burgs, Danny?'

  Pam immediately turned the tape on again, saying, 'Sergeant Destry re-enters the room. Interview continues, 2.45 p.m. Danny, if you have information about a crime, now is the time to share it with us.'

  'Why does it have to be here?'

  'Regulations, Danny.'

  The door opened and the woman who entered the room was dressed for power. She wore a costly-looking dress, an expensive haircut and plenty of gold on her neck, fingers and wrists. She was about fifty, slim and hard and fast. 'You've got no right to interview my client in my absence. Danny, you're coming with me.'

  Pam was happy to let Sergeant Destry take charge. 'Marion, he waived his right to have a lawyer present.'

  'Ellen, I expected better of you. What's he here for?'

  'Suspected burglary.'

  'Who arrested him?'

  'Marion, meet Constable Murphy. Pam, this is Marion Nunn.'