The Dragon Man

by Garry Disher

  Trina Unger lived in a small, worn-looking home unit. The doors were locked, the blinds drawn. The police had broken in eventually, but the place was empty. Trina Unger's bed was unmade. A half-packed weekender bag sat on the end of the bed. The other bedroom had been hastily tidied. There was a flatmate, according to the Ungers. They didn't know where she was. At her parents' for Christmas?—as Trina should have been.

  Then at lunchtime Trina Unger's car was found on a lonely stretch of the Old Peninsula Highway, just ten kilometres from Frankston. All of the windows had been smashed in.

  Now it was three in the afternoon. The parents had arrived from Shepparton, and Challis and Sutton were interviewing them in their daughter's sitting room. The walls were close and faintly grubby, the ceiling too low, and the overstuffed, mismatched op-shop armchairs crowded the small, tufted orange carpet. The place smelt damp, despite the heat of summer.

  'The second bedroom?' Challis said.

  'That would be Den's,' Mrs Unger said. 'Denise.'

  'Do you know where we can contact her?'

  'Afraid not.'

  Challis nodded to Sutton, who stood and made for the bedroom. All of the detective constable's movements were slow and automatic, his bony face drawn, his eyes ready to brim, as though he could not get the image of the cot-death baby out of his head.

  Challis turned to the Ungers again. 'We found your daughter's car.'

  Kurt Unger was sitting upright, his fists bunched neatly on his large knees. The words wouldn't come clearly, so he coughed and tried again. 'Yes.'

  'On the Old Peninsula Highway,' Challis continued. 'That's in the opposite direction from Shepparton. And she'd started packing, but hadn't finished. Have you any idea where she might have been going?'

  'None,' Freda Unger said.

  'Does she have a boyfriend? Could he have called her?'

  Freda Unger made a wide gesture with both arms. 'Who knows? We never met any, if she did have boyfriends. But she was young still.'

  'Twenty?'

  'Twenty-one in March.'

  Kurt Unger coughed. He said, 'I overheard a policeman say the windows were broken on her car.'

  Challis cursed under his breath. 'Yes.'

  'She locked her doors but he broke her windows with a rock and dragged her out,' Kurt Unger said fixedly. Nothing moved, only his bottom jaw.

  His wife crumpled. 'Oh, Kurt, don't.'

  'We don't know what happened,' Challis said. 'My feeling is, it's not related to her disappearance. All of the windows were smashed, suggesting vandals, and the radio had been ripped out and the boot forced open. Someone saw her car there and decided on the spur of the moment to break in.'

  'But what was she doing there?'

  'It's possible your daughter's flatmate will know,' Challis said. 'We're tracking her down now.'

  As he spoke, Scobie Sutton entered, holding an envelope in his long fingers. The flap was open; there was a letter inside. 'It's from this Denise character's mother,' he said. 'There's a return address on the back, somewhere in East Bentleigh. Do you know where the phone is, Mrs Unger?'

  'The kitchen.'

  'Right.'

  'Excuse me,' Challis said, and he joined Sutton in the kitchen nook. 'Scobie,' he muttered, 'if the girl's there, ask her what Trina's car was doing on the highway.'

  Sutton looked as though he'd just remembered his manners. He held out the handset. 'You want to make the call, boss?'

  'No, I didn't mean that. Ask her the obvious questions, Trina's movements over the past couple of days, any boyfriend, was she aware Trina was missing, that kind of thing, but we must know about the car.'

  Challis returned to the sitting room. The parents were whispering to each other. Reluctant to intrude, he crossed the room to the front door, stepped outside, and wandered across to the police car that had been parked in the driveway for most of the morning. A uniformed constable sat in the driver's seat with the door open, eating a sandwich. She swallowed hurriedly. 'Do you need me inside again, sir?'

  'Not just yet. They're holding up for the moment.'

  'Sir, we just got word a walkman and a sweatband have been found near the car.'

  'How near?'

  'A few hundred metres away.'

  Jogging, Challis thought. That's what she was doing there. But when? Yesterday? The day before? Why hadn't the flatmate noticed her missing?

  Sutton joined him. He tried for some humour. 'Denise has been hitting the Christmas champagne pretty hard. Hard to get any sense out of her. But she said Trina Unger likes to go jogging on the highway. Used to jog around the park, but got scared off by a flasher a few months ago, and now jogs on the highway because it's quiet.'

  'What time of day?'

  'Early morning. Daybreak.'

  'Never in the evening?'

  'Not according to Denise.'

  'When did she last see Trina?'

  'Friday night. On Saturday she went to stay with her parents in East Bentleigh to help her mother get ready for Christmas. She noticed that Trina hadn't come back from her run, but didn't think any more about it.'

  'Boyfriend?'

  'She didn't know of one.'

  Challis stared unseeingly over the rooftops. Young men and women left home to lead their separate, secret lives, and some of them didn't make it. 'Scobie, go home, spend some time with your wife and kid. I'll see you tomorrow.'

  THIRTEEN

  On Boxing Day the Age and the Herald Sun carried stories about the missing girl. At 8 a.m., Tessa Kane came to the station and told Challis that she was bringing out an issue between Christmas and the New Year after all. 'We received another letter. It was hand-delivered to the box we have next to the main entrance.'

  Challis spread it out inside its clear plastic slip case and read: hike you, my eyes are everywhere. But mine know what to look for. Do yours?

  'Fancies himself,' Challis said. 'Well, that's true to form.' He sighed. 'You've taken a copy?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'll send this to the lab.'

  'We go to press tomorrow night.'

  'Tess, you're inflaming the situation.'

  'Try and stop me, Hal. I've had legal advice.'

  'That's not the point,' Challis said. 'You're scaring people, and in danger of attracting crackpots, not to mention copycats.'

  'That doesn't negate the fact that there's been two murders and a possible third.'

  'At this stage it's an abduction.'

  'Hal, come on.'

  Challis said, 'I'd prefer it if you didn't publish, that's all.'

  Ellen parked her car. Rhys was waiting for her again. Working on Boxing Day? Talk about keen. He crossed to where she was standing and handed her an envelope. 'Your quote.'

  She opened it, saying, 'Rhys, this is the season to be jolly. It's also the season to get the phone bill, the gas bill, the electricity bill . . .'

  She said it with a grin, but there was a flash of irritation and he said, 'I thought you were serious. I kept the costs down as much as possible.' He turned toward the shrubbery border to cross into the grounds of the courthouse.

  'Rhys, wait.'

  She caught up to him and said, 'Look, I didn't mean to offend you. You must be wondering what you've got yourself into with my family.'

  He was still prickly. 'I got the distinct impression the other day that your husband doesn't want aircon fitted.'

  Ellen said, keeping it light, 'Oh, he'll come around eventually.'

  'He didn't seem to like me much. That I can do without.'

  There was no point in avoiding what had happened. Rhys had stayed for a barbecue lunch, but it had been a disaster. 'Alan gets like that sometimes. It's not a pleasant job he's got, he sees terrible road accidents.' She grinned. 'But yeah, I don't think another barbecue is a good idea just now.'

  She saw the tightness go out of him a little. He looked at his watch. 'I'd better get back to work. Why don't you look over the quote and I'll catch up with you later in the week.'

 
She said, 'A drink would be nice.'

  He hesitated. She seemed to wait for a long time for him to smile and say, 'Good idea.'

  Challis briefed them at eight-thirty, saying: 'Unger, curiously, was snatched at dawn, when she'd gone for an early morning jog. But what does that tell us? Not much. Does our man prowl up and down the highway for hours every night, to see what he can find? Was he coming home when he saw Unger, or on his way somewhere, to work perhaps? Was it opportunistic, or had he seen her jogging before?

  'Which brings us to his psychological make-up. A loner, according to one of our shrinks. Probably smart, in his thirties, a normally functioning citizen on the surface. You'd live next door to him for years and not know he liked to rape and kill young women. Probably some trouble in his childhood. Drunken, abusive father, unhealthy attachment to his mother. Unable now to relate easily to women, beyond surface pleasantries. We've heard it all before, there's no point knowing these things unless to have them proven after the fact. The point is, he looks, and behaves, like the man next door, he has no work, family or other link to his victims, and so we'll simply have to rely on luck and chance along with good old-fashioned detective work.

  'I won't kid you, things have stalled. Not much forensic joy from the bodies, and nothing on the letter sent to the Progress. The paper comes from laser printer paper available at any newsagent and many supermarkets. The printer was a Canon, and they're a dime a dozen, found in businesses and homes all over the country. The envelope was post office issue. There are prints on the envelope, but they're smudged and likely to be from mail-sorters and posties. We're checking that now.'

  He paused. 'Since then, another letter has come.'

  'Any more on the vehicle, boss?'

  It was one of the Rosebud detectives. So far there was no sign that Ellen Destry's crew, or the reinforcements arranged by McQuarrie, were losing faith in him. 'No. And once you ask yourself who on the Peninsula uses a four-wheel drive, you want to have a Bex and a good lie down.'

  He started numbering his fingers. 'First, any farmer, orchardist, winegrower or stock breeder. Then we have your ordinary suburban cowboy, who's never taken his pride and joy off the sealed roads. After that, your average house painter, electrician and handyman.' He stopped numbering. 'Not to mention mobile mechanics, courier drivers, shire council workers, power-line inspectors, food transporters.'

  He gazed at them. 'The link we need could come by accident. We have to be alert, and read the daily crime reports. Maybe our man is known to us, or will become known to us, for a quite different offence. Maybe his vehicle's been involved in something—Yes, Scobie?'

  Scobie Sutton was half way out of his chair. 'Boss, while we're on that subject, I've got one possibility.'

  'Go on.'

  'On Saturday I went out to Tidal River to question a gypsy woman for theft. She was camped there with three blokes and at least one kid. Two camper homes, one caravan, a couple of Holden Jackaroos. The thing is, she came to the station last week more or less saying she'd had a vision of where we could find the body. Near water, she said. I thought she was a crank. Sorry, boss.'

  Challis was angry but tried not to show it. 'You'd better get out there straight away.'

  'Yes, boss.'

  Kees van Alphen delivered a second freezer bag. 'You're really getting through this stuff, Clara. Hadn't you better cut down a bit?'

  He felt her arms go around his neck. 'Gives me an appetite. Haven't you noticed?'

  'I'll say.'

  'Then what's your problem?'

  'Supply, that's my problem. Getting found out. Going to gaol. How's that for starters?'

  'Then you'd better bust a few dealers, hadn't you? Restock the evidence cupboard and deal direct.'

  He'd thought of that. He could do it, but didn't feel good about it.

  Afterwards, on her patterned carpet, lit by the curtained window light, he traced her nipple and said, I have to go.'

  'So soon?'

  'The neighbours are going to wonder why there's always a police car in your driveway.'

  'Them? They scarcely know I exist.'

  Scobie Sutton asked for two vans, a police car and two probationary constables. Pam found herself driving him. She'd had a call earlier to say that her mother had fallen, not badly, but enough to bruise her poor, ropey arm. Pam had been ironing her uniform when the call came, listening to a new CD, a compilation of '60s surfing songs: 'Wipeout', 'Pipeline', 'Apache', a couple of Beach Boys hits. Ginger had once told her you could hear, in the beat and the guitar of '60s surfing instrumentals, the shudder in the wall of a breaking wave, so she'd been listening hard, as she ironed her uniform shirt and longed for him.

  Sutton broke in. 'You know how my kid pronounces "quickly"? "Trickly." To get her to go to the loo when she wakes in the morning we have to pretend her teddy needs a wee. So she rushes off to the loo on her little legs, saying, "Trickly, Blue Ted, trickly, hold it in, hold it in."'

  His bony face was wreathed in smiles. 'Huh,' Pam said, trying to work up some good humour.

  'And vegemite sandwiches? She calls them sammymites.'

  'Cute.'

  She sensed that Sutton had turned his protuberant eyes upon her, gauging her remark. After a while, he looked away again.

  Five days until New Year's Eve. She had time off, and thought about Ginger and the parties he was bound to be going to.

  They entered the Tidal River caravan park, skirted the central reserve, and made their way to a dismal, unsheltered corner by the main road.

  Sutton groaned. 'They've legged it.'

  Hard-baked, grassless earth, spotted with oil, but no sign of any gypsies. Pam watched Sutton get out of the Commodore and peer at the ground, as if searching for tyre tracks. He looked livid. Then he crossed to a rubbish bin and began hauling out food scraps, takeaway containers and bottles. At the bottom was what looked to Pam like a wad of black cloth. Then Sutton shook it out, and she saw straps and buckles, and realised that he was looking at a backpack. It was a mess. Sutton shoved it back into the bin.

  FOURTEEN

  On Wednesday 27 December, dark cloud masses rolled in from the west and banked up in huge thunderheads above the bay. By lunchtime an electrical storm had brewed. It lurked and muttered through the afternoon, approaching the Peninsula, building with gusting winds into a cloudburst at four o'clock. Challis, in the incident room at Waterloo, wondered how clogged his gutters were. He couldn't afford to have rainwater overflowing the gutters before it reached the down-pipes that took it to his underground tank. Ellen Destry, also in the incident room, thought of her house, shut up all day in the heat. Would Larrayne have had the sense to open the windows? She glanced out across the car park to the courthouse. Rhys Hartnett, stripped to the waist, was snipping tin vents in the rain. His body glistened. He seemed to sense her there; straightening, lifting his streaming head to the rain, he shook the water from his thick hair. John Tankard, out in the divisional van, switched on the wipers and pulled in to the rear of the Fiddlers Creek Hotel, opened his window, snatched the sixpack of Crown Lager from the manager, and slipped away again, stopping by his flat on the way back to the station. Meanwhile the ground under Clara's mailbox had turned to blackish mud. Kees van Alphen, exhausted in his bed at home, heard nothing of the storm. Four days had passed since Trina Unger's abduction. Her body had not been found. Life went on.

  On Thursday the Waterloo Progress came out in a small special edition. There was little advertising and only a handful of news items and a page of sports results. The front page was devoted to the second letter, under the banner: KILLER MOCKS POLICE. There was also a sidebar speculating that a four-wheel-drive vehicle had been used for the abductions. And, at the bottom, an item headlined 'Charges Dropped':

  'Police this week announced the dropping of charges against Mr Julian Bastian, 21-year-old playboy son of Melbourne and Portsea society matron, Lady Susan Bastian.

  'Mr Bastian was facing charges of driving while intoxicated. When arr
ested, his companion, Miss Cindy Price, 19, of Mount Eliza, was in the driver's seat of his BMW sportscar. Arresting police alleged that Bastian persuaded Miss Price to say that she was the driver.

  'Senior Sergeant Kellock of the Waterloo police station said: "There were procedural errors in the arrest."

  'Lady Bastian's late husband, Sir Edgar Bastian, was the moving force behind the White Sands Golf Course. Members include Superintendent Mark McQuarrie, of the Victoria Police.

  'Superintendent McQuarrie is superintendent of Peninsula District.'

  On Friday, Pam Murphy and John Tankard were back on the day shift, making their regular sweep of the town and the side roads.

  'See the paper yesterday, Murph?'

  Pam's mother had been treated for a blood clot. The treatment was plenty of rest and pills to dissolve the clot, but was she going to get much rest? Not likely, not with the old man the way he was.

  'You see it?'

  Pam looked through the windscreen, the side window, alert for kids on bikes and skateboards. 'See what?'

  'The article about that Bastian prick.'

  'I saw it.'

  'Pretty good, eh?'

  'In what way?'

  'Well, it raises doubts, doesn't it? If I can get some senior officers to swing behind this, maybe the charges will be reinstated.'

  'And pigs might fly.'

  'You're a negative bitch, you know that?'

  And Tankard folded his arms and leaned, tired and depressed, against the passenger door with his eyes closed.

  On Saturday morning Challis noted that the road outside of his front gate was dry and dusty again, almost as if there hadn't been rain earlier in the week. He made for the Old Peninsula Highway, as he always did. But this week he'd been braking slowly when he reached the Foursquare Produce barn and pulling on to the gravel forecourt. As usual today there were two cars parked hard against the building itself—employees' vehicles. The main door was open. He could see them, two women, one building a pyramid of apples, the other preparing price labels with a black marker pen. They recognised him and waved. He wondered what they thought of the occupant of the third car, which was parked next to the phone box. Pity? And embarrassment, for when we see such naked grief and desperation we turn away from it.