Challis - 02 - Kittyhawk Down (29 page)

'Why won't he ring?'

'Perhaps he's away, sweetie. Studying for exams. Staying with friends.'

'Well, why didn't he tell me? I'm sick of leaving messages.'

Larrayne recognised the anguish well enough from her youth. There's nothing worse than waiting for calls that never come, the calls of the beloved.

'I love him, Mum.' Said frankly and devoutly, as though Ellen doubted it or no one before Larrayne had ever loved.

'I know you do. It will sort itself out, you'll see.'

'He's avoiding me, I can feel it.'

In the end, Ellen told Larrayne to get dressed, go to school, take her mind off Skip.

Fat chance, but it was worth a try.

She dropped Larrayne at the school gates and drove to the police station, and Challis nabbed her as soon as she walked in to CIB. 'Carl Lister was seen visiting Aileen Munro.'

And at once Ellen connected the dots: Lister, his son, Munro, marijuana, and saw good reasons why Skip had suddenly stopped seeing Larrayne.

Three-thirty that afternoon, just before the four o'clock shift went on, found Pam sitting with John Tankard and Sergeant van Alphen around a table in the canteen. They were full of coffee and someone's leftover birthday cake and disinclined to start work.

'Get this,' Tank said from behind yesterday's
Progress
. 'Says here: "With labels like 'illegals' and 'queue jumpers' we demonise the asylum seekers". I'll give her labels.'

He poked his head around to see that Pam was paying attention. 'Challis's girlfriend,' he explained unnecessarily.

Pam said sweetly, 'And what labels would those be, Tank?'

Caught on the back foot, he looked flummoxed, then mustered himself: 'Poser, do-gooder, un-Australian, wanker. That do you? Want me to go on?'

Pam thought that John Tankard would know all about labels, he who'd been called a stormtrooper. 'What do you think, Sarge?'

Van Alphen said, 'So long as it doesn't affect his job.'

She had no idea what he was talking about. Tankard's job? 'Sarge?'

'Challis,' van Alphen said. 'So long as his work isn't compromised by what his girlfriend thinks.'

'Hadn't thought of it that way, Sarge,' Pam said, thinking that Challis's relationship with Tessa Kane wasn't the issue here. The issue was the asylum seekers and their reception and treatment. People were funny. Funny and limited.

As Wednesday evening settled, the sun flattening red over the mangroves and smokestacks of Westernport, Brad Pike's skin crawled with need and loss, and he left his flat beside the strip of used-car yards and drove through the side streets to the cop shop at the roundabout. Plenty of parking outside so he zipped in, braked, turned off the ignition, waited a few seconds while the motor ran on and coughed and died with a rattle, then went in and said that he was being stalked.

The cop on desk duty—looked like a probationer—called Sergeant van Alphen. Shit, shit, shit.

Van Alphen came in, lean, dark, a repressive cast to his face. 'Well, if it isn't young Bradley. How's things, Brad?'

'Not bad. Yourself?' Pike said automatically, then kicked himself for being polite to a cop.

'So, what weird shit have you been up to now, Bradley?'

'No need to be like that.'

'Like what?'

'I come in here on legitimate business,' Pike said, the word 'legitimate' tangling his tongue a little.

'Your only business with us is telling us where you buried Lisa Tully's kid.'

Pike felt his face grow hot. 'The charges were dropped.'

'But that's not the same as being found innocent, though, is it, Brad?'

Twice lately he'd been told that. Van Alphen was a hard nut, dark and hard, like old leather. They reckon he'd gone off the rails a bit last year, but if that was true then he'd long recovered. He'd been on Pike's case from the start. In some ways he was as fucking bad as John Tankard.

'I come in here to make a complaint.'

'Don't tell me, you're being stalked. You said that on Monday, you said it last week…'

'So how come no one's listening?'

'Because you're full of shit. You're a slime bag and don't deserve to live.'

The probationary constable was looking on with his eyes and pimply mouth wide open.

'It's true, someone's following me.'

'Constable Tankard,' laughed van Alphen.

How did van Alphen know that? Had he put Tankard up to it?

'I dunno who it is,' Pike said. 'I get, like, these phone calls in the middle of the night, these letters. I can feel someone's behind me all the time. I think it's Lisa's sister, maybe Dwayne Venn. When I'm out walking and stuff.'

'Out walking? You never walked a millimetre in your worthless life.' Van Alphen leaned forward over the front desk, disturbing a pile of brochures. 'You know what I think? It's in your mind, a delusion. The world hates you for what you did to Lisa Tully's kid—hell,
you
are probably stalking
Lisa
— so you're twisting it around, pursuing the joys of victimhood.'

A deep, slow flush spread through Pike. But van Alphen wasn't finished.

'You're a lonely, isolated, pitiful specimen of humanity. You know it, the world knows it, and you're desperate for sympathy. You're intent on blaming others for your own shitty life. You can't accept any responsibility for that shitty life.'

Then van Alphen stood back and folded his arms dismissively. 'So forgive me if I'm sceptical, Brad.'

Pike opened and closed his mouth a few times and turned to leave, just as the station boss, Kellock, burst in, calling, 'We need a couple of cars out at the aerodrome. There's been another shooting.'

'Munro?'

'Don't know. Security guard called it in.'

Then Kellock grew aware of Pike and shut down, growing cold and still, but Pike was thinking, I'm out of here, and he pushed through the glass doors to the footpath outside.

To his car, where Scobie Sutton was standing with his hands in his pockets. 'Brad,' he said mildly, 'perhaps you're not aware of it, but you're in a no-standing zone, police vehicles only. And I see your registration is long overdue.'

'So sue me,' Pike said with a sob, and he got in and turned the motor over for a long few seconds before it fired.

'She often worked late,' the security guard said.

Challis nodded. He knew that she did. He felt awful and was grinding his jaw in an effort not to weep.

'I could see a light on in the hangar. If there's no light I just check the doors are locked and continue on my way. If there's a light on I go in and natter for a few minutes, you know, the weather and that.'

I bet that thrilled her, Challis thought, and immediately regretted it. Maybe she liked having the guy come in and wish her good evening.

'You didn't see or hear anything?'

'Not a thing.'

'Anyone around? Pilots, mechanics…'

The security guard shook his head. 'You don't find anyone here after six, usually. Except Mrs Casement.'

'And what time did you find her?'

The man glanced at his watch. His breathing was habitually laboured and it was some time before he replied. 'Forty-five minutes ago. About seven-thirty.'

'Was this the start or finish of your rounds?'

'The start.'

'What did you do after calling it in?'

The guard looked embarrassed. 'I'm on a strict timetable. I thought if it took the police a while to get here I might as well finish checking the other buildings.'

'And did you?'

'Yes,' he said defiantly. 'Plus I thought I might spot who done it.'

Challis said, 'Look, that's fine. Better to do something than stand around letting a dead body get under your skin.'

The guard shuddered. 'Bad choice of words, mate.'

It was. Challis had seen the body. Massive shotgun wounds to the torso and head, indicating that the killer had fired twice. If it was Munro, and he had the double-barrelled shottie with him, then he'd fired both barrels. Or he'd had the single with him and reloaded it after the first shot.

Or he had an automatic shotgun.

Either way, Kitty Casement was dead.

Challis continued to work it out, trying to think like a policeman when all he wanted to do was chuck the job in. Kitty was a woman he'd only ever brushed against accidentally and certainly never kissed, but she'd lodged in his head and had died terribly. He swallowed. The image came back, unbidden: a corner of the hangar; harsh shadows cast by the unremitting fluorescent lights bolted to the steel rafters overhead; a tumble of empty fuel drums and greasy rags; the cold, chipped, oil-stained concrete black and sticky where her blood had pooled; her body splayed like something tossed aside.

The
smell
. Aviation fuel and grease and blood thickly spilt over the ground.

The security guard was talking to him. 'Sorry, what?'

'Can I go now?' the guard repeated. 'I've got me rounds to finish. Schools, the antique place, coupla supermarkets…'

Challis rubbed his face tiredly. 'Come down to the station tomorrow and give a statement, okay?'

'Sure, no drama.'

Challis watched the guard wheel out of the aerodrome in a little white van, then turned reluctantly back to the hangar. The crime scene technicians were working the corner where the body lay. Ellen Destry watched from the sidelines, looking up as she sensed his approach. She crossed toward him as though to head him off.

'Nasty one, Hal.' She paused, cocking her head in concern. 'You okay?'

Challis nodded. 'I want a doorknock of the houses out on the main road. They're a bit far away, and used to people coming and going here, but someone might have seen or heard something.'

'Seen Ian Munro, you mean. This
has
to be him, doesn't it?'

Challis turned on her irritably and said, 'Nothing has to be anything, Ellen,' and immediately wondered what he'd meant.

She backed away, hands up placatingly. 'All right, stay cool, I'll get onto it.'

'Then I want you to come with me to speak to the husband.'

'You don't think it was him, surely?'

The irritation came back into his voice before he could stop himself. 'He has to be
told
, doesn't he?'

As their tyres growled softly along the loose gravel of the Casements' driveway, Ellen said, 'He'd have to be wondering where she is by now.'

Challis was slumped against the passenger door. He'd not said a word since getting into the car. Now he roused himself, rubbed his hands raspingly over his face. 'Not necessarily. She often worked late. And he's apparently on the Net day and night.'

They parked, knocked on the front door, and then in unison turned on the doorstep and looked out at the distant bay. The water lay dense and black but lit here and there by the moon, while beyond the dark mass lay Phillip Island, full of twinkling lights.

They'd not heard footsteps but a spotlight illuminating the driveway and doorstep went on and a latch was turned. Rex Casement swung open the door, blinked as the light hit him, and stared past them into the gloom. He seemed dazed— exactly, Challis thought, like a man dragged away from an obsession.

'Who… I was… are you… ?' Casement said.