Challis - 02 - Kittyhawk Down (35 page)

'It won't take a moment. Better than all of us yelling through the gate at each other,' Ellen said.

Lister exchanged a glance with Skip. 'Put the rake away, son.'

Skip frowned, then his brow cleared and he strolled away with his hands in his pockets toward the rear of the house. But he was too tightly sprung, hurrying a little too much, to pass it off as a casual stroll. Challis watched him go down the side of the house and disappear.

Only then did Lister open the gate for the Triumph. He left it open, as though he didn't expect them to stay long. Challis drove past him and along the driveway, parking outside the front door. He got out, Ellen got out, just as Lister reached them. The chemical smell was stronger here and Lister, apparently conscious of it, said, 'Come in out of the cold. Days are getting chilly, have you noticed?'

'Perhaps we should take a brisk walk,' Ellen said, 'get the circulation going.'

Lister forced a laugh. 'What? And disturb my leaves, all nicely raked into neat piles? No, no, come inside.'

They stepped onto the verandah. The sound when it came was muffled, but clearly an explosion. The ground shook, reaching them as a diminishing shock wave, and Challis ran to the rear of the house in time to see acrid smoke boiling out of a rupture in the dirt. Then there was another explosion and part of a concrete slab tore free from the grass and more smoke poured out.

Lister screamed, '
Skip
,’ and began to run. Afterwards Ellen told Challis that there was more heartbreak in the voice than she'd have thought possible.

'So there's no doubt?' said Scobie on Saturday morning, in the passenger seat this time.

'None,' Challis said. 'Lister confessed, for a start. And the evidence is there, despite the explosion. A pill-pressing machine, buckets full of powder, dye, sinus tablets, you name it.'

'And the kid?'

'Badly burnt, but he'll live, just.'

Sutton shook his head. 'Burns. It's what I fear most, Roslyn pulling a saucepan down on herself, or playing with matches and her clothes catch fire.'

Challis tuned out. Lister, distraught to the point of collapse, and then wracked with guilt, had told them everything yesterday. Yes, he'd been manufacturing amphetamines in an underground laboratory behind the house. Skip had been helping him. He was not proud of that fact. He was not a good father. He'd
made
the kid help him; had brought the kid up in a culture of sly dealing.

Ellen had burst out: 'My daughter loved him.'

Lister had hung his head. 'I know. And I think he was keen on her. But he felt guilty. He—'

Challis broke in. 'Tell us about your burns.'

A lab explosion a few years ago, Lister explained. He'd been living in Sydney then. This time he'd thought he was safer: more know-how, better equipment, Skip's university training.

Then he'd collapsed and they'd had to postpone the questioning.

Later, with a mild sedative under his belt, he'd continued to spill…

Yes, he was a loan shark. If anyone couldn't make the repayments he'd work something out with them,
quid pro quo
.

'Ian Munro?'

'He put the marijuana crop in for me. Actually, he leapt at the idea. Unstable bugger. I should never—'

'You harvested the crop? Sold it?'

Lister had shaken his head. 'Burnt it to the ground as soon as that aerial photograph showed up.'

'Is that why Janet Casement had to die? She was a loose end? Why wait so long?'

'I was going to ignore it but it kept niggling at me. Plus Munro was getting more and more unstable and I thought if he got himself arrested for punching someone from the shire or whatever, then the cops might start sniffing around.'

'You would have been better off killing Munro than Janet Casement.'

'You can say that again.'

'So why try to ram her plane? Why not just shoot her to begin with?'

'I wanted it to look like an accident. I mean, like maybe a drunk or someone stoned was responsible. Less suspicious that way.'

'It turned out to be
very
suspicious,' Challis told him. 'From my point of view, anyway. Who drove? You? Munro?'

'Munro didn't know anything about it. No, it was me.'

'Taking a risk,' said Ellen flatly.

Lister shrugged. 'I was going to hire a junkie, but that would've been a greater risk.'

'When that failed,' Challis said, 'you told Munro to shoot her. Or was that you?'

Lister had shaken his head, looking puzzled. 'Wasn't me, I'm telling you that now. Must've been Munro, mustn't it? I mean, he shot his lawyer, even told me he was going to do it, and I tried to talk him out of it. He might have shot that other couple as well, and the Casement woman, but I don't really know. He never mentioned them, and I never put him up to any shooting.'

'Oh, that's convenient,' Ellen said. 'You cough up to the lesser charge, an attempt on someone's life, but not to being a party to an actual killing. Having second thoughts, are you? Starting to regret spilling your guts the moment your son is almost killed, trying to claw back some lost ground now, is that right? You disgust me, Carl.'

And Carl Lister had turned a damp, distressed face to her and said, 'I know I do. You should throw away the key. But I don't know anything about the shootings, none of them.'

'And that's where we stand,' Challis said now, Scobie beside him in the passenger seat.

'I wonder how Ellen's kid is taking it,' Scobie said. He sat with one finger inside a street directory and was ducking his long, narrow head to peer up at passing street signs.

'Not good, apparently,' Challis said. 'That's why Ellen's taken the day off.'

'Think of the misery that guy's caused.'

'Lister, or the son?'

'Lister, mainly.'

'Where were you on Easter Saturday?' Challis had asked him.

Lister cocked his head. 'You're talking about the beach, right? When I saw that reporter at Munro's place the other day, I thought I recognised her. We went to the beach to collect a shipment of sinus tablets—brought down from Queensland by boat, it's safer that way than by road. Didn't count on the storm.'

Then Ellen asked him about Pam Murphy. Lister had waved it away. 'She didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.'

'She came to me and reported the blackmail.'

'So?'

'So I don't want you using it in any way. It won't help in your defence, it'll only make things worse for you if we call it attempting to blackmail a police officer.'

Lister had shrugged. 'I've got nothing against her. Water under the bridge.' He went on without a change of pace: 'I feel shithouse about Skip, can't you see that? I want to get things off my chest.'

Ellen had stared at him in disbelief. 'Constable Murphy is going to sell her car and pay back the loan.'

Lister rubbed his face violently, clearly fatigued now. 'I suppose it will come in handy. Legal fees. Hospital expenses.'

'You disgust me,' Ellen had said.

Challis didn't say any of this to Scobie Sutton now. Sutton wouldn't blab or use it in any way, but the Pam Murphy business should stay buried.

'Here we are,' Sutton said, 'next street on your right.'

They'd taken the Peninsula Freeway to Frankston, then cut across to the Nepean Highway, which hugged the bay one street back from the water, glimpsed now and then down the side streets. It was a cheerless, red-tile stretch of the city, despite the water: flat, sun-baked, a sameness to the houses relieved only by ugly Italianate villas, their terracotta tiles and white plaster columns glaring in the autumn sunlight.

Challis turned right, across traffic and into a narrow street that dropped away in a curve of 1950s triple-fronted brick veneers. Number 40 was in cream brick, the lawn parched, a Mazda bubble car in the carport at the side.

'Someone's home,' Sutton murmured.

Challis gave a faint headshake of irritation. He wouldn't have come all this way without checking that fact first.

Louise Cook was about forty, with shapeless carroty hair and the dry, lined face of a chain smoker. She had a smoker's cough and took them into her sitting room as if desperate for the relief of her armchair and nearby coffee table and ashtray.

But then she struggled to her feet again, saying breathlessly, 'Tea? Coffee?'

'Nothing thanks,' Challis said firmly. He didn't want to stay here for long, and saw her sit back relievedly and give him an expectant look.

'You want to know about Trevor?'

'You went to England with him in 1999.'

'That's right.'

'But you came back and he stayed on.'

'Yes. He was from London originally, but I'm from here, and I got homesick. Plus it was so cold and expensive in London.'

'Did you stay in touch?'

'Off and on. It was a fairly amicable split. No grand passion or anything.'

'What can you tell me about Billings, the man who took over Trevor's rental agreement for the St Kilda house?'

'He was a nasty piece of work. All I wanted when I got back to Australia was a room for a while, till I was on my feet again, kind of thing. Bastard shut the door in my face.'

'Before then. When you and Trevor Hubble first met him, before you went to London.'

'Trev and I had this carpet cleaning business. That's how we met Billings. We got talking, got friendly, he and Trev both came from the same part of London so they had stuff in common, and in the end he invested in our business so we could afford to go to England. He retained financial control, kind of thing.'

'What happened to the business?'

Cook gestured. 'You tell me. We wrote to him from England but he never replied. Then when I came back and tried to see him, he slammed the door in my face.'

'But he was friendly at the start and gave you money?'

'More or less, yeah. It was all legal.'

'I'm not interested in the financial aspects, or not as such,' Challis said. 'Tell me more about Billings.'

'Well, like I said, he was friendly, generous, offered to look after the business for us. I know Trev left a lot of paperwork with him.'

'What kind?'

'Banking matters and stuff like that. Documents. For safekeeping, kind of thing.' She gestured at Scobie Sutton. 'What's his story? Doesn't he speak? Is he your boss or something?'

Sutton, who'd found out about the active accounts and bills in Hubble's name, gave her a tired smile and said, 'When did you last see Mr Hubble?'

'I told you, when I said goodbye in London.'

'But you stayed in touch after that?'

'Couple of letters,' she muttered. 'Couple of phone calls. He didn't seem very happy.'

'With your leaving him?'

'No, well, maybe, but mainly he was unhappy living in London again. Too expensive, couldn't get a decent job, couldn't start up in business, had no family left, no friends to speak of.'

Now Challis knew why no one reported him missing in either country. 'So he came back to Australia?'

She shrugged, which seemed to aggravate her cough. They waited until she'd finished, half concerned that she might die in the meantime, for the coughing fit left her washed out.

'All I know is, he said he thought he'd come back here and take up where he'd left off.'