Challis - 02 - Kittyhawk Down (27 page)

'Did any of them say that Pearce contacted them direct, before he reported them?'

'No. That doesn't seem to have been his style, Hal.'

'True, but if he was impatient with officialdom dragging its heels, maybe he
did
take direct action. Also, check daily in case he sent letters that have been delayed in the post.'

'Done.'

'And his phone records.'

'Done.'

'And check the wife. Maybe
she
was the main target.'

Sutton nodded glumly. Challis turned to Ellen Destry. She looked tired. She'd hinted in the carpark earlier that there were problems at home. The daughter, the daughter's boyfriend, her husband, Challis thought. Or all of them. 'Ellen?' he said.

'I don't want to see another lawyer's caseload,' she said. 'Seigert dealt with wills, conveyancing and small business contracts. All deadly dull, all formulaic, nothing there to give rise to murderous passions. Except in someone like Ian Munro. There's a fat folder devoted to correspondence from Munro, Munro saying in effect that Seigert had sold him out and all lawyers are bastards and Seigert was going to get it in the neck one day when he least expected it.'

'A clear threat to kill?'

'More or less,' Ellen said.

'No witnesses? No sightings of Munro or his vehicle?'

'Nothing.'

Challis looked from Ellen to Scobie. 'What about correspondence received by Pearce? Anything at the house?'

Scobie shrugged. 'His mother wrote sometimes, there were some bills, receipts, junk mail, bank statements.'

'Any unusual payments in or out?'

'No.'

'That all?'

'Apart from his scrapbook,' Ellen said, glancing at Scobie, who muttered: 'You saw it, Hal, that day we found the bodies, all those Meddler notes and clippings from the local paper.'

Was Challis imagining it, or were Sutton and Destry stepping carefully where it came to Tessa Kane? They knew of his involvement with her. They probably wondered about its nature: mainly sexual? True love? Or was Challis using her to offer, and gather, information? Then his heart began to hammer: he hadn't told Tessa that Mostyn Pearce was the Meddler. He owed her that. Wanting to get Ellen and Scobie out of his office now, he said, 'Anything else in the house to interest us?'

'Only the damn ferret,' Ellen said. 'Which has escaped, by the way.'

'And the tapes,' Scobie said.

'What tapes?'

'Videos.'

Challis remembered. TV programs, films, documentaries, football grand finals… Nothing there to stir the heart.

'Any personal stuff on tape?'

'Their wedding.'

'My weary bones,' Challis said, his way of saying that it was time to go back to work and it would be thankless.

When they were gone, he dialled Tessa's mobile number. 'It's me.'

There was a pause, then a bright, 'Hello, me.'

He didn't want to banter just then. 'I thought you should know—Mostyn Pearce was the Meddler.'

This time the pause spoke volumes and her voice when it came was strained. 'You're only just
now
telling me this? It's been days. Are you sure? No, forget I said that, of course you're sure—but didn't you think I was important enough,
central
enough, to be informed?'

The phone went dead in his ear before he could add that the escaped asylum seekers had been found; and he thought absurdly that he didn't want to lose her.

When Carl Lister had said he wanted to be kept informed, he hadn't said it would be
every bloody day
. Here he was, Tuesday morning, on her doorstep.

Pam yawned. 'I was on till midnight. I'm on again this evening. I'll be hopeless if I don't get my sleep.'

He pushed past her and she seemed to blink and find herself making him instant coffee in her kitchen. The autumn sun was streaming in and ordinarily she'd have loved to sit there at the table over a steaming coffee, half awake in the warm splash of sunlight.

'I haven't got anything for you,' she said.

'You must have something. Dealers, pushers, runners, importers, addicts, the local Mr Big. Who's supplying the local school kids, the clubs? Who's pushing in the mall? Who's growing it, who's manufacturing it? These are the type of people who might come to me for money. I need to know beforehand if they're known to the police.'

So she told him about Ian Munro's marijuana crop.

He dismissed Munro with a wave of his hand. 'Everyone knows that. What else have you got?'

The Waterloo police station was full of names and drug-related activities: possession, possession with intent, all small-time stuff. She gave Lister a few names. 'Dwayne Venn,' she said. 'Brad Pike.'

'Pike? Piece of shit,' Lister snarled. He looked at her closely. 'Do you think he's responsible?'

Pam looked at him in bewilderment. Surely Bradley Pike wasn't a major league player in the local drug scene?

'For killing his girlfriend's kid,' Lister explained irritably.

'Oh. Yes. Guilty as sin.'

'I agree. Any other names?'

'No.'

Lister got up to leave, his coffee untouched. 'I'll need more, girlie. Otherwise I start calling in your loan the old-fashioned way.'

What did that mean? Court action? Bailiffs? A knee-capping?

John Tankard was on duty but felt so miserable half the time that he wanted to cry. Plus he was knackered, but unable to sleep. And his judgement was shot to pieces.

So he went herbing off to Penzance Beach in the divisional van and sounded the siren outside Pam Murphy's place for a bit of a giggle. Maybe she'd ask him in or he could talk her into going to the Fiddler's Creek pub later for a glass of suds.

Fat chance. She really spewed when she saw him, said she'd been on duty and was catching up on sleep, so why didn't he just bugger off and leave her alone.

'My second visitor this morning,' she snarled. 'What the hell do you want?'

So who'd been the first visitor? 'Don't be like that,' Tankard said.

'Like what? You come here in broad daylight, siren blasting when I'm trying to sleep, and you expect me to like it? God knows what the neighbours think.' She laughed without humour. 'Probably take one look, see who's making the racket, and think to themselves: typical, it's the stormtrooper.'

Last year someone had gone around placing anonymous leaflets on windscreens complaining about John Tankard's Nazi stormtrooper tactics. He flushed. 'Can I come in?'

'No. Why?'

'Pammy please, I'm falling apart here.'

And she must have seen something in his face and manner that convinced her, for she gave him a subtle look of understanding and stood back as he stepped past her into the house. She was wearing pyjamas. Half of him was thinking, God I want a piece of that, and the other half wanted to grab hold of her for dear life and cry his heart out.

'Five minutes tops, okay?' she demanded.

'Okay,' he mumbled, and he watched her disappear into her bedroom and come back wearing a dressing gown guaranteed to kill all desire.

So he talked to her mate-to-mate about his bewilderment, his shame, his loss of nerve, and how it was all down to Ian Munro.

And she listened, mate-to-mate.

This time Dwayne Venn was there when Brad Pike called round to see Lisa Tully.

'If it isn't little Bradley.'

'Gedday.'

'Come in, son, come in.'

Two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon and the house was doped up, curtains drawn, air dense, Lisa and Donna sprawled on the floor, high as kites.

He had a lot of catching up to do, hadn't had a hit of anything since yesterday, and eyed the bowl on the coffee table. You had your speed there, your ecstasy, your hand-rolled joints, even—if he wasn't mistaken—a baggie of coke and heroin in a twist of aluminium foil.

Plus your bottles of Southern Comfort.

It all felt right, somehow. All of a piece with the Native American posters and the Confederate flag and Dwayne's Harley Davidson parked in the hallway.

'Got something to chill me out?' Pike asked.

'Have we ever,' Venn said, and slowly, over the next hour or so, Brad Pike began to unwind and talk and enter into the spirit of things. The last time he'd had the undivided attention of anyone in this town was when the cops had grilled him about Lisa's kid.

After lunch on Tuesday Ellen rang her husband and said, 'Alan, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said what I did.'

He didn't respond and she pictured him there in the kitchen, heavy jaw set hard against her, swotting for the sergeants' exam. It was not that she owed him an apology. It just made sense to apologise. She figured that if she could keep things sweet at home until after the exam, then he'd manage the exam better and life would be easier on everyone.

Then he coughed and said, 'Okay.' Not 'Thank you' or 'It was all my fault,' just 'Okay,' so she put some brightness into her voice and asked, 'Did Skip call?'

'No.'

Overnight, it seemed, Skip had dumped Larrayne. He'd not called her, taken her out over the weekend, or responded to the messages that Larrayne had recorded on the Listers' answering machine. Larrayne was distraught. 'What did I do wrong?' she'd wailed. 'Has he met someone else?' The dialogue out of a bad romance novel, but heartfelt and anguished even so.

'Okay, just checking in, hope it goes well today,' Ellen babbled, still playing the guilty one, and she hung up, almost banging the phone down.

And now it was the afternoon and she wanted a word with Aileen Munro.

She got to the farm in time to see Carl Lister trying to shake off a handful of journalists. He was in his car and looked ropeable enough to ram them but recognised her and called her name. 'Ellen, can't you do something?'

She got out of her car and approached them. 'Come on, guys, let the man leave.'

'But what is he doing here?' they wanted to know. 'Is he a friend of the family? Does he know where Ian Munro is?'

All good questions, Ellen thought. She cleared a path for Carl and was about to ask him how Skip was, had he gone on a trip, Larrayne would appreciate a call, but he sped away before she could get the words out. She gave a wry shrug to the waiting journalists, who mobbed her good-naturedly.

'Sergeant Destry, any news on Munro?'

'Any chance of an interview, Sergeant?'

'Is there a reason why you're calling on Mrs Munro at this time?'

And so on.

She grinned and turned away from them. As she did so she came face to face with Tessa Kane, the editor of the
Progress
. Ellen nodded. 'Tessa.'

'Ellen.'

There was a pause; then, to let Tessa know that she sympathised with her position on the asylum seekers, Ellen said, 'Did you hear? They found those poor Iraqi men camping at the tip.'

Tessa flashed a bleak smile of thanks. 'They'll go into solitary confinement and eventually be deported.'

Ellen didn't know why, but she said, 'I don't know where Hal is today. Following up something, somewhere.'

Tessa shrugged. She didn't seem to care. Instead, she said, 'Who was that man in the car just then?'

Ellen considered the question. There seemed to be no harm in saying, 'Carl Lister. He's more or less a neighbour. Why?'