He was making short forays into the housing estates and industrial park and down High Street-where he saw Sergeant Destry; now, she had a good set of tits on her-but mostly he kept close to the Fiddler's Creek pub, (a) because he had an arrangement with the bottle-shop manager for one slab of beer a week, and (b) because he'd seen Bradley Pike's car in the carpark.
He tried to picture it but couldn't. Everyone hated Pike. Who would want to sit with him? Who would want to drink with him? Everyone knew he'd offed his girlfriend's kid and hidden the body. Probably raped the poor little brat as well.
Tankard intended to follow Pike when he came out, stick hard on his tail all day, thoroughly rattle the useless prick till he made a mistake, broke the law and could be arrested.
But the next time Tankard swung by the pub, Pike's car was gone. And it was a different guy working the bottle shop. Fuck it all. Tankard slammed his fist on the dashboard in frustration. At times like this he knew why men went bananas with a gun.
He was driving along a rutted lane behind the industrial estate when he found a Land Rover, doors open, tinted windows, loose wires hanging underneath the dash.
Pam Murphy had Easter Monday to herself. She could have gone to Point Leo to surf but the buses were infrequent because of the holiday and the surf beach would have been packed with maniacs, so she stayed in Penzance Beach. Anyway, she didn't like the look of the sky. Squally wind, darkening clouds, pretty choppy out on the water.
Tomorrow with any luck the cheque from Lister Financial Services would clear and she'd have access to $30 000. One of the community policing officers at Waterloo was selling a Subaru Forester with roof rack, air-con, power steering, genuine 50 000 km on the clock. No more taking the bus to surf beaches.
Except she had a problem with money. A problem holding on to money. The police credit union had turned her down for a loan and so had a couple of banks, so she'd gone to Lister Financial Services and borrowed thirty grand. Fifteen per cent interest instead of the ten per cent a bank would have charged for a personal loan, so not too bad, could have been worse. The trouble was, she'd agreed to weekly repayments and, even though the loan cheque was still to clear, she'd signed the papers last Thursday, so the first repayment was almost due.
Time to manage herself better. For example, she could cut down on buying something each time she went to Ikea or Freedom, stop flying to places like Bali for holidays, stop buying CDs and books for a while.
The Meddler, Mostyn Pearce, walked along Ian Munro's fenceline to see if the starving sheep were still there. They were. He hoped the RSPCA would get their act together soon. Its being Easter shouldn't stop them from investigating.
He made to go on but two things changed his mind. First, the electronic bird-repelling gun was booming about once every two minutes in the orchard at the bottom corner of Ian Munro's property, and it was getting on his nerves. Two, there was a small car parked by the road, a man and a woman with plastic buckets walking head down beneath the pine trees on either side of the road. They were ethnics. Somewhere from Europe, judging by their features and the shape of their heads. Suddenly the woman stooped, flashed a knife and straightened holding a pine mushroom, which she dropped into her bucket. That figured.
So he turned and went back down Five Furlong Road, passing the estate where he lived and heading toward an intersection where Five Furlong Road met four other roads. One curved downhill into Penzance Beach, one went to Waterloo, one to Mornington and the other was a dirt lane that skirted farmland and gave rear access to Upper Penzance.
It was a bad intersection. It needed a roundabout. Pearce liked to stand there sometimes and watch the idiots endanger themselves through careless driving or failing to heed the give-way signs.
He was there for five minutes when the car coming down the track from behind Upper Penzance swerved and instead of slowing for the give-way sign actually skittled it, snapping it off at the base and running right over it, the sign bashing and scraping against the underside of the car.
Then it braked violently and a man he recognised from one of the big houses in Upper Penzance tumbled out of the driver's seat, brushing agitatedly at his clothing.
The Meddler was close enough to see the spider fly off and land in the grass. A big one, too. Probably dropped onto the guy's lap from behind the sun visor.
Then the car drove off again and Pearce took out his pad, noted the time, date, registration number and other details. He'd go to that big house and get the guy's name from his letter box or the mail in the box itself. Then he'd write a letter to the shire-which must, he thought, spend thousands of ratepayers' dollars each year replacing signs because it never knew who to fine.
He was halfway home and the driver's face kept swimming into his consciousness. He was sure he'd seen him in another context recently. The face was a bit different and it was in connection with something dark or unpleasant.
Then he remembered where. On that 'International Most Wanted' program he'd taped on pay TV.
An Easter Monday afternoon in early autumn. Early fall.
Challis watched a red persimmon leaf fall to the grass like a clumsy butterfly. On the tree they glowed like paintings but on the ground or pasted to his gumboots they merely looked lifeless. He glanced around his yard. Buttery sunlight, the air drowsy and still, but an autumn storm was brewing and this morning when he'd gone to collect the paper from his mailbox he'd seen strips of bark all over the road.
He put away the rake. He drove to the aerodrome at Waterloo, wondering at his motives.
Kitty wasn't there.
In fact, as he was working on the instrument panel of the Dragon a man and a teenage girl wandered in, asking where they could find 'the lady who gives joyrides'.
'We had an arrangement,' the man said, his face shiny, hard, stubborn. 'My daughter turns sixteen today.'
'Sorry,' Challis said, 'but she had a bad scare yesterday, and her plane's been damaged. She probably won't be coming in today.'
No gasps of concern. No is-she-all-right? Just irritation.
'But I paid a deposit. I want a refund.'
'Try calling her next week.'
'We came down here from Dandenong special,' the man said.
Challis shrugged, wiped his hands on a rag. 'Sorry.'
The man glowered. After a while he fished in his wallet and said, 'This is my card. Could you give it to her, ask her to call me?'
Challis didn't want to climb out of the cockpit of the Dragon so nodded his head toward Kitty's workbench on the other side of the hangar. 'Leave it over there,' he said, and went back to work.
When next he looked he was alone again and the man's business card had fallen onto the oily floor.
Challis sighed, climbed down and retrieved the card. Kitty had always pinned invoices, business cards, brochures and photographs to the pinboard above her bench. He looked for an unused thumbtack and his eye was drawn to a cluster of aerial photographs that Kitty had taken for one of her clients. They were curled and dusty and poorly composed. Presumably they'd been rejected by the client.
But one photograph in particular attracted a closer look. It showed a patchwork of pine plantation, open farmland, dam and vineyard, stitched together with roads and tracks. A typical Peninsula landscape, in fact.
Except for the cannabis plants, showing deeply and richly green under a dun-coloured canopy of eucalyptus trees.
CHAPTER TEN
Tuesday. School and work again for most people. The morning school-run served to anchor Scobie Sutton, reminding him that he was more than a CIB detective. He was one of the other parents, a citizen of the district and, most importantly, Roslyn's dad. He'd sing along to a Hi-5 tape with her as they drove to school, walk her to the Prep I classroom ('I' for Inger, Roslyn's prep teacher), natter with the other parents, make sure that Roslyn recognised the hook for her blue, surely-too-big backpack, then exchange a hug and kiss with her and a cheery goodbye with the other parents before returning to his car and the drive to Waterloo.