Kittyhawk Down ic-2

by Garry Disher

  At least the Listers lived in a standard-looking house, even if it did belong more to Toorak or Brighton than the coast. It was Georgian baronial, she supposed, squat and box-like, and reached via a driveway that hooked around a grassy slope set behind an avenue of golden cypresses. The words 'Costa del Sol' had been picked out in mosaic chips on a board fastened to the front gate. Costa Packet, Ellen thought, remembering an old Punch cartoon.

  The front gate was locked. No answer when she pressed the buzzer next to the intercom.

  Ellen crammed Skip's jacket into the letter box then walked along the fenceline until she had a partial view of the rear of the house. Plenty of lawn, mown to within an inch of its life, well-kept shrubs, garden sheds, two vast white concrete rainwater tanks partly buried into an incline, and some other kinds of fancy landscaping, which gave the rear slope a terraced look.

  She sniffed. You were always getting the odd unpleasant whiff on rural properties. Weed killer, sheep dip, fuel, creosote.

  When Ellen drove back to Waterloo ten minutes later, coming down from the top of Five Furlong Road to where it separated open paddocks from a dismal new housing estate in the middle of nowhere, she thought she saw the man who'd earlier been looking at the sheep. He was standing in the front yard of a new, unfinished-looking brick veneer house, dressed in some kind of uniform and urging a small child to pat a rat-like creature on a lead.

  Lunch for Challis on Easter Sunday had been a ham and pickle sandwich washed down by peppermint tea. He let it settle and then took a bucket to gather rotting fruit under the pear trees, but angry bees were feasting inside the shells of the fruit, and the repeated motions of his arms failed to ease his mind, so he wandered down to his front gate in search of a different distraction: his eroded driveway entrance. He lived on an unsealed road. The topsoil had long since washed away, leaving sand and gravel, which in turn was pushed to the verges whenever the shire grader, making its perfunctory sweep, sliced off the tops of the corrugations to create more sand and gravel. The road also sloped uphill from Challis's front gate, and was lined with needle-shedding pines and bark-shedding gums. Whenever there was a downpour the bark and the needles combined with the sand and the water to form dense, clotting mats that blocked the open ditches and stoppered the concrete culvert pipe under Challis's driveway. As a consequence the floods sought new channels of escape, ultimately cutting deep trenches across his driveway and along the road itself.

  No one at the shire offices in Waterloo seemed to know who was responsible for his blocked pipe and ditch. Certainly no one was about to admit responsibility for either. He supposed that he'd have to shovel the matted sand out himself. But where should he put it? He was tempted to spread it across the road as a kind of speed trap and invite the shire engineer and the mayor to pay a visit. He was feeling more and more like Tessa Kane's Meddler.

  The neighbours were no help. 'You're a police inspector,' one of them said. 'Make use of that. Make the bastards listen.'

  The neighbour had pronounced 'bastards' as though wondering, as he said it, whether or not he'd be arrested for swearing.

  Challis knew he wouldn't trade on his job to get results. The police were constantly relying on shire officials for information to help their investigations into the citizens of the Peninsula.

  He went to work, first shovelling the sodden matter out of the ditch and dumping it under the trees, and then shovelling sand into the washaways. He paused from time to time as cars crept past, nodding hello to the locals. At last the rhythmic motions eased his irritation, and his wife and his lover receded from the forefront of his mind.

  By mid-afternoon he'd finished. His hands were blistered. His head pounded. But the sunlight was soft and languid, the air still, and the bellbirds were calling. Then he heard a loud, chaffcutter rattle overhead and looked up. It was a 1942 Kittyhawk fighter. Challis knew the plane, knew the woman who'd restored it. He watched as it banked overhead and turned south-east, presumably for the little aerodrome at Waterloo, and that's when Challis decided to pack in his Sunday afternoon's pottering and head there too, thereby placing himself right at the centre of most of what followed that autumn.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Challis showered, dressed, then set out in his rattly Triumph, steering among the channels and potholes of the road that went past his house. At the Old Peninsula Highway he turned toward Waterloo, passing through a region of orchards, vineyards and ostrich farms which gave way to a scattering of plant nurseries and riding schools, which in turn gave way to the drab housing estates, car yards, furniture barns, pump suppliers and junkfood palaces that lined the outskirts of Waterloo. Just before the police station he turned right, travelling for five kilometres to the aerodrome, where he drove in, passing a Land Rover that was parked on the track outside the entrance gate.

  Kitty's Mercedes was parked behind the main hangar. He pulled in beside it and got out. As he approached the metal side door a Cessna began to head along the runway, finally lifting from the ground and clawing skywards. He'd glimpsed the words Peninsula Aerial Photography Services stencilled on the fuselage, and that meant that Kitty had landed and parked her Kittyhawk and taken off again in her Cessna. She made a bread-and-butter income from the cameras fixed to the underside of the Cessna, taking low-altitude shots of farmhouses to be laminated and later hung on study walls, high-altitude shots for the shire's planners and surveyors, and oblique shots of the coastline for publication on postcards and calendars.

  Challis stepped into the hangar, making for a partitioned corner that had been set aside for the restoration of old aeroplanes. His 1935 Dragon Rapide was at the far end. He had to pass a wrecked Wirraway, Kitty's latest project, to get to it. Everyone called her Kitty because of the Kittyhawk. Her real name was Janet Casement, and although Challis had a companionable relationship with her they were not close in any sense. There was an air of solitariness about her. Tinged with loneliness? Unlikely, given that she'd got married only six months ago. Perhaps he was reading his own loneliness into her.

  He pulled on a pair of overalls, found an FM station on the greasy transistor radio that was strapped to a rusty hook on the wall, and went to work. He didn't mind working alone. He too was guilty of solitary habits and intentions.

  Six years earlier he'd found the Rapide lying in pieces in a barn north of Toowoomba, bought it and had it trucked down to Waterloo. So far he'd replaced the splintered, rotted and worm-eaten sections of the airframe and rebuilt one of the motors. He rarely had time to work on the Dragon, but believed that time didn't matter when you were restoring something of beauty. He admired the way the Dragon sat there with its flimsy upper and lower wings outspread and its questing, rounded snout testing the air.

  Today he'd work in the cockpit. Most of the instruments needed to be replaced or recalibrated. This was better than gardening or cleaning ditches, and his mind began to sift and refine the clutter of his life, bringing him by degrees to the Floater again.

  Specifically, the Rolex watch. Frozen at ten o'clock on the second of the month. Morning or afternoon? He stopped suddenly, screwdriver poised in one hand. Why was he getting bogged down in questions of time? Perhaps he should be considering the watch itself. How rare was the Rolex? Could it be traced?

  Challis pondered this as he unscrewed the back plate of the airspeed indicator in order to clean it and replace the cracked glass, and as he worked he grew aware of two distinct sounds outside the hangar: an aeroplane was throttling back as it made its approach, and a noisy vehicle had entered the aerodrome and was roaring past the hangars toward the landing strip.

  Then there was a shout, the brap of a horn and a squeal of tyres. Challis raced outside. The Land Rover that had been parked on the track outside the perimeter fence was now at the far end of the airstrip, gathering speed and heading straight for Kitty's Cessna, which had just touched down. He watched helplessly. So did a handful of weekend pilots, mechanics and aerodrome staff. Kitty swerved left. The Land Rover swerved, cutt
ing it off. Kitty swerved right; the Land Rover leaned hard in anticipation, tipping dangerously, leaving commas of rubber on the landing strip. Finally Kitty took the only avenue available to her: she opened the throttle, waited for lift, and skipped over the Land Rover, clipping it with her tailwheel. But she hadn't the speed to sustain a takeoff, and bounced onto the strip again, the tailwheel breaking away and sending the Cessna into a twitching skid past a row of Aero Club planes parked on an asphalt apron between a hangar and the perimeter fence. Finally it skewed around, halted, leaned, and Kitty got out shakily. She stood bent over for a moment, her hands on her knees as though gasping for breath. Then she straightened her back, gazed at Challis and the others, stuck her thumb in the air. A ragged cheer went up around the airfield.

  Challis swung around to follow the progress of the Land Rover. The driver was a shadow behind dark glass and he was accelerating erratically toward the exit gates. Mud-streaked side panels. Mud-obscured rear plates.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  'He must've been drunk or something.'

  Now that she'd walked twice around her wrecked Cessna and noted the damage, Kitty looked drained suddenly, pupils dilated, features pale, a slight tremble in her hands and voice. She pushed both fists into the pockets of the old suede jacket she wore whenever she flew, and began to bump her upper thigh against the fuselage. Then she jerked into action again, retrieving a film canister from the nose-mounted camera.

  'Kitty.'

  Challis said it a little sharply, to gain her attention. A gaggle of other pilots and mechanics was converging on them. 'Kitty,' he said, 'do you know who it was?'

  She shrank inside her jacket. 'I've no idea.'

  'Did you get a clear look at the vehicle or the driver?'

  'Not really.'

  'Did you recognise the vehicle from anywhere?'

  'No.'

  'Kitty it seemed deliberate to me. Is there anyone you-'

  But then they were surrounded by others, who were full of noise and curiosity, shaking their heads on her behalf. They took over cheerily, wheeling the Cessna around, hooking it to a tractor and towing it off the landing strip before Challis could think to tell them they might have been interfering with a crime scene. But then he thought that it didn't matter. They'd all seen what had happened. He took their names one by one, asking: 'Do you know who it was?'

  They all said no.

  'Know any reason why someone would want to hurt Kitty?'

  'No,' they all said. And echoed Kitty: 'The guy must've been drunk.'

  Then Challis led Kitty to the hangar and gestured for her to sit on a packing case next to her workbench. 'Tea? Coffee?'

  'Actually, Hal, there's a shoebox full of mini-bar bottles under the sink.'

  Challis gave her a brief, lopsided grin and hunted in the damp shadows for the shoebox, which was soft and warped and broke apart as he lifted it out. 'We have scotch, brandy, gin.'

  'Brandy. Have one with me.'

  'Scotch.'

  They drank from the flimsy plastic cups that came with the coffee dispensing machine. The brandy seemed to burn through the tense muscles that had forced Kitty's features into an unbending mask, heightening her colour and giving her back her nerve. Her eyes, dark and enlarged by fatigue, sorrow or fear, flashed a little. 'I could have been killed.'

  'Tell me what happened,' Challis said.

  'Well, I took Rita for a spin'-Rita, for Rita Hayworth, her long legs and name stencilled on the nose of the Kittyhawk by an American pilot based in Darwin in 1942- 'then came back and loaded film in the Cessna and took off again,' Kitty said. She glanced at him. 'Real estate firm in Red Hill hired me to take some shots.'

  Challis nodded. 'Go on.'

  'The rest you know. I finished the job, came in to land, and this big…' She looked at him inquiringly.

  'It was a Land Rover,' he said.

  'Land Rover comes racing in off the entry road and drives straight at me. Hits the undercarriage and part of the fuselage.'

  She went motionless and distant. Challis knew to be patient. She was still a little unhinged. 'Kitty' was a curiously apt name for her, although 'Janet' suited her, too. Her movements were slow, economical, almost sleepy-like a cat's-but hinting at barely contained energy. He saw her push both hands back through her hair, tucking the ends behind her ears, and then she blinked in an effort to focus her attention on him again.

  'Sorry, Hal, it's starting to get to me. If you don't mind I'd like to ring my husband.'

  Then she lifted up both hands and looked at them in wonderment. 'Look, I'm shaking.'

  'I'll ring him for you,' Challis said, taking out his mobile phone. 'What's his name?'

  'Rex.'

  'He'll be at home?'

  She nodded. 'He's always at home. He generally likes to stay at home and play the stockmarket on the Internet.' She looked faintly embarrassed, as though a husband should have an out-and-about sort of job. 'I actually taught him to fly, but he's not really interested.'

  She was prattling, a sign of rattled nerves, so Challis smiled and gently, firmly, asked for her home phone number and dialled it.

  Five rings and then the answering machine, Rex Casement's voice, a clipped English accent: 'You have reached the number for Rex and Janet Casement. You may leave a message after the tone.'

  Challis said, 'It's Detective Inspector Challis, Mr Casement. Don't be alarmed, your wife's okay, but there's been an incident here at Waterloo aerodrome and your wife would like you to collect her. Please call me,' he finished, giving his mobile number.

  'Not there?' Kitty said.

  'No.'

  'I bet he was there. He gets on the Net and ignores the phone. After a while he'll play back the message.'

  They waited, sipping their drinks. Kitty looked forlorn suddenly, as though aware of her mortality. She glanced up at every noise outside, as if expecting her husband to appear. Challis was about to suggest that he call back and leave a message to say that he would take her home when the mobile phone in Kitty's pocket started to ring.

  She snatched it out. 'Yes… Yes, sweetie, I'm all right. No, nothing like that… Yes, but I feel a bit shaken…' She laughed fondly. 'I knew you were on the Net. Sure. I'll be here. Bye.'

  She closed the phone. 'He'll come straight here. You needn't hang around, Hal.'

  'It's all right.'

  She smiled gratefully, but clearly didn't want to talk. Challis sat and glanced around at the hangar as if seeing it for the first time. Spare parts, tools, workbenches, the Dragon Rapide he was restoring, a director's chair with a rotting canvas seat, Kitty's work area with its chewed-looking pinboard, filing cabinet, manila folders leaking letters and receipts, flying regulation books and navigation tables stacked on a shelf. Business cards, aerial photographs and a commercial pilot's licence thumbtacked to the pinboard.

  Challis said suddenly, 'Did you owe money to anyone?'

  She looked startled, then offended. 'Certainly not.'

  'Must have cost you money to set up the business.'

  She said coldly, 'I had money of my own.'

  Challis said nothing, showed nothing. It was a tactic honed over the years to elicit reactions, but how fair was it in this case? He felt drawn to Kitty. They'd shared hangar space and supported each other with labour time, contacts and companionable small talk at the ends of long afternoons. Companions. But that had shifted during the past hour, almost without his being aware of it. There was the badness with Tessa Kane, and with his wife, complicated by his witnessing what appeared to have been an attempt on Kitty's life. She was shaken, vulnerable, in need of comfort. Yet he was close to bullying her with these questions about enemies and money owed. Where did he stand, exactly? What was he here, now- policeman or friend?

  Stupid. She had a husband. She wanted and needed her husband, not an inquisitive cop. A door began to close inside Challis.

  He said gently, 'Does your husband have any enemies?'

  'Rex sits in his study and trades shares on
the Internet and makes a packet from it. So, no, he doesn't.'

  But her voice was tinged with neglect, and Challis imagined the lonely hours she might spend in a house with a husband who chose to shut himself away. He decided to drop the matter. He touched her forearm.

  'Routine questions,' he assured her. 'Forget I asked. We'll see if we can find the Land Rover and whoever was driving it and with any luck you're right, he was drunk or stoned.'

  Her head was bowed. She nodded numbly, and began to tremble. He got to his feet, crossed the grimy patch of concrete, and stood beside her, letting her rest her shoulder against his waist while he placed his hand comfortingly on her head.

  They were posed like that when the husband bustled in, full of concern. Challis stiffened in embarrassment but Rex Casement gave him a quick, shy smile of thanks and took over, murmuring, 'It's all right, I'm here now, it's all right,' as Kitty stood and flung herself against him. Casement wore a pair of old, belted cords and a blue polo shirt, sunglasses pushed back to nestle in fading red hair shot through with grey. Challis backed away with a brief nod and wave and was rewarded by a relieved smile from Casement over his wife's shoulder. Casement mouthed, 'Thank you,' then buried his face in his wife's abundant hair.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Easter Monday. Two days since the lovers' lane arrest and her daughter's party, and Ellen Destry was still bone-tired. She wasn't obliged to work today but had paperwork to catch up on, so she'd driven in to Waterloo after breakfast and now she regretted it. She'd found nothing on Carl Lister beyond the fact that he was new to the Peninsula. She swivelled in her ergonomic chair and leafed moodily through some new cases. A dangerous driving incident at the Waterloo airfield, involving a friend of Hal Challis. A break-in at the chainsaw and ride-on mower place out at the industrial estate. And a spate of incidents related to the new detention centre: two inmates on the run, a broad daylight assault on two Malaysian students, who'd had their headcoverings torn off, the words 'Bomb Moslems back to the stone age' spraypainted across the 'Keep Out' sign on the razor-wired cyclone fence around the centre.