constable, he sent the constable back downstairs. Tessa’s eyes were bright and searching. She was pleased with herself, but also gauging what he thought of her now. ‘Hal, don’t be mad at me.’
‘I thought you agreed you wouldn’t publish.’
‘No, I said I’d consider not publishing. Your finding Jane Gideon made it imperative, Hal. This was a scoop. It meant a lot to me, and I think it was in the public interest.’
‘I’ve never heard a more cynical-’
‘Hal,’ she said, and reached up and kissed him. He closed his eyes.
In her low voice, she said, ‘I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.’
He was surprised to find that his anger was gone, and made a sound in his throat that might have been assent and pleasure.
‘Hal, would you have dinner with me tonight?’
Challis thought about it. He felt better about Tessa Kane, but doubted that he had energy and selflessness enough to be pleasant company for her. All he wanted to do was drive to the aerodrome and work on the Dragon.
‘Not tonight. Tomorrow?’
‘Fine.’
‘Somewhere out of the public eye,’ he said.
‘That’s easy.’
When he let himself into the hangar, twenty minutes later, he saw that Kitty had left the new issue of Vintage Aircraft on his tailplane, open at the centre spread. It showed a restored Dragon at Bankstown airport, full colour, the red and silver livery of an airline that had folded in 1936. Challis didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful aeroplane. The rounded nose reminded him of a tentative, questing snake, but in all other respects the Dragon Rapide was nothing like a snake. An insect? It suggested delicacy, restraint, grace, and the atmosphere of England-to-Australia races and records as the world came out of the 1930s Great Depression, before it all went wrong again.
He turned the pages to the ‘Help Wanted’ column. His letter was there. Somewhere in the world there might be a man or a woman who knew a little of the history of his aeroplane.
Kees van Alphen sat in the window of Pizza Hut. They were used to him in there; he often ate there. He saw Tessa Kane leave the station. At seven-fifteen, Challis’s car pulled out of the station car park. Van Alphen waited for the 8 p.m. shift to get under way before he walked back across the road and into the station.
Thursday night, a bit of action in town, what with people spending their pay cheques and gearing up for Christmas and the summer break. But quiet in the station itself. Van Alphen prowled about the building, opening and closing doors, chatting to the young constable on the front desk, the probationers in the tearoom, a couple of other sergeants writing up reports. In effect, he was mentally mapping the station, placing everyone, anticipating where they might accidentally wander. When he was satisfied, he walked into the office of Senior Sergeant Kellock-he who said his door was always open-and located the key to the evidence safe.
The drugs were on the top shelf, just a handful of small plastic sealables of coke and hashish, some pill bottles of ecstasy, some amphetamines from a garden-shed laboratory in a twist of paper. Van Alphen substituted two of the cocaine baggies for baggies of castor sugar, double checked the paperwork-they’d not be needed in trial for another six weeks yet-and left the office, locking the safe behind him.
‘I’ll be out for a couple of hours,’ he told the constable on the front desk.
‘Okay, Sarge.’
‘Our pyromaniacs might decide on return visits.’
‘Good one, boss.’
The constable seemed to be assessing him.
‘What are you looking at, Sunshine?’
‘Sorry, nothing, Sarge. I mean, you’re not on night shift tonight.’
‘Things hot up before Christmas, you know that. Plus we got members down with a stomach bug. I like to keep on top of things. It’s what makes a cop, that little bit extra.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘All right then.’
Van Alphen took an unmarked Commodore from the car pool and drove to Clara’s house with the radio dispatcher’s voice scratching in the darkness and all of his heartaches on his mind. Fucking Tessa Kane and her editorials. What was she doing at the station? Trying to get more dirt?
Three strikes and you’re out. He’d been warned for over-enthusiastic policing in his previous two districts, and now it was happening again. No-one understood that you had to start hard and carry through on it, or the scumbags won. But the top brass were hypersensitive to the image the press gave the force, and the civil libertarians were always making a noise about police brutality. Fuck them. He knew his methods got results. He’d had the highest arrest record in each of his districts, which proved that crime was always there, under the surface, and had been allowed to tick over unchecked.
It was a pity the women in his life hadn’t been able to hack it. His wife and daughter had walked out, finally, saying they couldn’t stand the stares, the whispers, the aggravation. He felt sorry they’d had to suffer, but the fact that they hadn’t stuck by him left a sour taste in his mouth.
Then Clara wrapped herself around him like a cat, and his cares flew out of the window.
Eight
Challis rose at six on Friday morning and, dressed in trousers, shirt and tie, sat on the decking at the rear of his house to watch the lightening sky and the swallows as they caught mosquitoes and other insects on the wing. The garden, such as it was, showed signs of cracked soil: even the weeds were dying. We were lucky to get that tyre track, he thought. The rest of the Peninsula is bone dry. But the tyre was all they had. No semen traces, for the killer had used a condom. No prints, for he’d worn gloves. What he’d left on his victims were absences, including the absence of life.
So, what did his victims leave on him?
Challis was expecting the additional detectives from Rosebud and Mornington to be at the early briefing. He drained the dregs of his coffee and walked the boundary again. Just as he reached the road gate, the council garbage truck slowed, saw that Challis had forgotten to wheel out his bin, and accelerated away again, leaving Challis a taste of dust and diesel exhaust. That’s what happened during the long cases- Challis forgot his life.
He stopped for petrol on the outskirts of Waterloo. A car towing a caravan was parked clear of the pumps, a disgruntled family watching a mechanic on his back beneath the rear of the car. Queensland plates. Challis imagined the oppressive summer heat of Queensland, the family driving to the same beach shack or caravan spot down here on the Peninsula year after year in search of a balmier sun.
Would they read the Progress and become fearful, and head back the way they’d come?
When he parked at the rear of the police station in Waterloo, he saw Ellen Destry getting out of her car, keys gripped neatly in her teeth, a briefcase and bundled folders in her arms. She hitched and hoisted this load and then, composed, bent swiftly to lock her car and check her reflection in the wing mirror. Wings of glossy brown hair swung about her cheeks. She was neatly packaged, Challis decided, and allowed himself a moment to watch her. She was a good detective, but saddled with irritations at home, and that made her like 90 per cent of the population. He saw her wave to the air-conditioning man, who’d been working at the rear of his Jeep. They drew close, and talked animatedly. Challis suspected everybody of something, these days. He didn’t make judgments, he simply observed.
Rhys Hartnett had been waiting for her. She was sure of it. She’d seen him idling at the rear of his van as she
