Kittyhawk Down

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Challis and Ellen went upstairs afterwards they found Scobie Sutton at the water cooler, staring into space, his long, mournful face heavy with thought.

'Penny for them,' Ellen said.

He came out of his trance. 'It's just… sometimes you're reminded how precious and vulnerable children are, and how precarious everything is, and how hard it is for some people.'

Sutton could be overly sentimental sometimes, but that was probably not a bad thing, Challis thought. It didn't make Sutton a worse copper-probably the opposite. In fact, Challis believed that his own sentimentality was leaking away and he wondered whether he'd have to chuck the job in when it was gone.

Meanwhile he said nothing. Scobie Sutton could be an earbasher on the subject of his little daughter. To avoid that, Challis said, 'Could I have a word with both of you?'

'Sure, boss,' Sutton said.

Ellen took off her jacket. 'What about?'

'Two things, but they're both linked to the one person.'

He ushered them into his office and shut the door. The flimsy wall shook.

'A woman called Janet Casement operates a flying business out at the aerodrome. Some charter work, aerial photography, joyrides-'

'The one you call Kitty?'

'That's right.'

'Someone rammed her plane on the weekend,' Ellen said.

'Yes.'

They looked at him expectantly. He said, 'John Tankard found the Land Rover on patrol yesterday. I'd like to question the owner.' He held the palm of his hand out toward them, as though to forestall objections. 'I know it's not strictly my area, but maybe it was attempted murder. Also, I know Kitty, and saw the incident, so I have a personal interest.'

Ellen looked at Scobie for confirmation. He nodded and she said, 'Fine by us, Hal.'

'Next matter.' He showed them Kitty Casement's aerial photograph. 'I found this pinned to a noticeboard in the hangar where she works.'

He watched them lean forward to peer at it. Scobie's hair was thinning, he noticed. Ellen's was neatly parted down the centre of her scalp, short fair hairs standing up here and there amongst the longer ones, and he felt an absurd, everyday connection with her, and remembered his childhood and playing with his sister on the sitting-room floor.

'What are we looking at?' Scobie said.

Ellen knew. Her long thin forefinger tapped the area of dark green under the washed-out eucalyptus tones. 'Marijuana crop,' she said. 'Mature plants, ready for harvesting by the look of it.' The finger moved. 'Irrigation pipes here and here, leading down from this dam. Pump housing. This could be the curing shed.' She looked up at Challis. 'Where was this taken?'

He shrugged.

Scobie said, 'Is she involved?'

'I don't know,' Challis said. 'People commission her to take aerial photographs all the time. We can't be sure she knows what's in this photograph.'

'Does she know you're with the police?'

'Yes.'

'Then she'd be a mug to leave it out where you can see it, wouldn't she?'

'That's what I was thinking,' Challis said.

'But either way,' Ellen said, 'we have to talk to her. At least find out where this place is.'

'I'll come with you,' Challis said.

Feeling a twinge of guilt, he called the admin office of the aerodrome and learnt that, yes, Kitty had come in to work. She was with air safety investigators, examining her damaged Cessna. Did Challis want to leave a message?

'No, that's okay.'

He turned to the others. 'Let's go.'

Sutton drove the unmarked CIB sedan, Ellen in the passenger seat, Challis behind her. Sutton often drove and, not for the first time, Challis wondered why they let him. Sutton tended to be inattentive and restless, always shifting to get comfortable, sighing, suddenly swigging from a water bottle, slowing right down whenever he contributed to a conversation. Ellen liked to say that Scobie Sutton was the most un-still person she'd ever met.

Now, as he wound the car past a housing estate and then marshy paddocks and an orchard, the pear trees turning gnarled and spindly as the wind whipped away the dying leaves, Sutton turned around to glance at Challis in the back seat. 'In California, marijuana is the second most valuable cash crop after corn.'

'For God's sake, Scobie, watch the road,' Ellen said.

He swung away, gripping the wheel. 'I was reading up on the sinsemilla variety the other day. It was developed in California. What they do is uproot the male plant and this causes the female plant to put out richer and larger buds in an effort to get fertilised. You can have plants up to three-and-a-half metres high, with sixty heads. What I'm getting at,' he added hastily, as though sensing their impatience, 'is that big cannabis crops can mean booby traps and gangs ripping one another off.'

Challis nodded, on the one hand reminded of the booby traps he'd encountered when he'd worked briefly in the Drug Squad a few years earlier, the trip wires tied to shotguns at knee height, the steel wire nooses, the fishhooks and grenades filled with shrapnel, and on the other thinking that maybe the plane-ramming incident was related to the drug crop in the photograph.

'How do we do this, Hal?' Ellen asked.

'You take the lead,' he said. 'Concentrate on the photograph rather than the ramming incident. If the photo seems to be related, then I'll have some questions for her. But until then I'll simply observe. But let me put her at ease first, okay?'

Ellen nodded.

They arrived in time to see a small mobile crane carrying the fuselage of the Cessna from a grassy corner of the field to one of the hangars. The wings-one of them badly crumpled-had been removed from the fuselage and waited in the grass for the crane to return. They found Kitty in the hangar, supervising the unloading of the fuselage. A handful of mechanics and men with clipboards waited nearby.

She was so absorbed that she jumped when Challis said in her ear, 'Could we have a word?'

She glanced at him, glanced at Ellen Destry and Scobie Sutton, then returned her gaze to the punctured fuselage of her Cessna. 'It's not really a good time,' she said, faintly irritated. 'And I don't think I can add anything to what I've already told you.'

'We're opening up another line of inquiry, Mrs Casement,' Ellen said.

Kitty blinked at her distractedly, wanting to be polite but drawn to her aeroplane as it thumped softly onto the concrete floor and the holding straps settled around it. Challis stepped in, touching her upper arm to gain her attention, then introducing Ellen and Scobie, adding, 'We'll be as quick as we can.'

'Time is money right now, Hal. I have to get in the air again as soon as possible.'

'I understand.'

She sighed. 'All right, where do you want to do this?'

'Your work area will do.'

She led them to her bench in the hanger where Challis was restoring his Dragon Rapide. Ellen had been there before but not Sutton, and he gazed around him with a low whistle. 'So this is where it all happens.'

They ignored him. Kitty stood leaning against the workbench, her arms folded, frowning a little at Challis, who nodded to Ellen to begin.

Ellen took the photograph from a folder. 'Mrs Casement, is this one of your photographs?'

Kitty gestured shyly. 'Call me Kitty. Everyone else does.' She leaned over to look. 'Yes, I took this. In fact'- she glanced around at her noticeboard -'it used to be pinned right there. How did you…?'

'Could you tell us when you took it?'

Kitty shrugged. 'It was left over from a job I did for someone.'

'But when did you take it?'

'Year ago? Six months? I can't remember.'

'It's clearly not a year ago,' Scobie said. 'Look at the orchard in the top right-hand corner. The trees have still got all their leaves.'

'Honestly I can't remember when.'

'How about who hired you?'

Kitty took the photograph and gazed at it intently, then looked into the distance. A moment later her face cleared and Challis was certain that the change was genuine, not staged in any way.

'Now I remember,' she said, and stopped.