Kittyhawk Down

'A few weeks ago I got Rex off the computer long enough to search the Internet,' Kitty said with a laugh. 'I couldn't believe it when I found sites devoted to the Kittyhawk. Apparently the man who flew my plane died a few years ago, but one of his friends sent me this.'

The cover photograph showed a Kittyhawk fighter on an airstrip in the hot sun, a young man in shorts, boots and dogtags grinning at the camera. Challis guessed that he was the author as a young man, Lt Andy H. Ludecki, from New Jersey.

'Darwin?' Challis guessed, pointing at the photograph.

'Yes.'

Kitty couldn't control her pleasure. Her face was wreathed in smiles. 'He even mentions my plane and the man who flew her.'

But Challis felt only an unwarranted chill. 'I don't understand the title,' he said.

'Kittyhawk Down? Oh, that's just a quote from a radio transmission the day Darwin was bombed.'

'Shot down?'

'Yes.'

'Kitty,' Challis said, 'be careful, won't you?'

She looked at him oddly for a moment, touched his sleeve with a brief grin, and turned away, saying she'd better get back to work.

Shortly after that Challis's mobile phone rang. It was Tessa Kane, sounding less strained now, saying she had some information for him. Challis, feeling an obscure loneliness and pain, suggested a drink and bar snacks at the Heritage in Balnarring.

Six o'clock. A dewy evening was settling and the moon hung in the skeletal trees. Challis could smell chimney smoke as he got out of his car; good, they'd lit the open fire in the side room. Tessa Kane's car was already there, parked in a corner under a tree. No other cars yet. They'd have the place to themselves for a while. A glass of red and a plate of nachos by the open fire. Get a glow on and forget about Kitty Casement.

Challis found Tessa on the massive leather couch. She got lightly to her feet and kissed him affectionately. 'Sorry I got mad at you last time,' she said. 'I know you're under pressure and can't always divulge things when you want to.'

Challis felt a rush of affection and gratitude tinged with guilt: she didn't warrant his neglect. His heart lifted: the firelight, the beautiful woman, the promise.

'I ordered a bottle of Elan,' she said.

'Good.'

'Nachos, and guacamole and chilli dip.'

'Great.'

She turned a wicked, full-voltage grin on to him. 'Chilli dip prepared by someone else, you'll be glad to know.'

Challis snorted, blushed, shifted about, suddenly embarrassed. A few days before Easter he'd prepared a curry meal for them, and was slicing hot fresh chillies on his chopping board when she arrived. They kissed, and found themselves stripping, then making love, and afterwards, prone on the sitting-room rug, had felt a burning sensation in their genitals.

Tessa laughed. 'Sit, Hal.'

She swung her slim knees toward him when they were seated, and immediately began to speak. 'Remember I told you about the Easter walk and the men in the four-wheel-drive looking for something on the beach?'

Challis stiffened, then relaxed. This wasn't an attack. She was generous and forgiving by nature, and this was plainly business. 'Yes.'

'I saw one of them again.'

'Where?'

'The Munro place.'

Challis watched her carefully. 'Do you know who he is?'

'Lister. Carl Lister.'

'Are you sure?'

'Fairly sure. He was the passenger, not the driver, that day on the beach. At the time, I didn't think I'd seen him clearly, but I must have, subconsciously. I remember the scarring on his neck.'

'How do you know his name?'

'I was hoping to get an interview with Aileen Munro- you know, local paper, sympathetic hearing, not some hotshot from the Age or the Herald Sun-when this Lister character drives out. Almost ran over a couple of reporters. Anyway, I recognised him as the man in the passenger seat of the Toyota.'

Challis frowned. Toyota. Ian Munro owned a Toyota. 'But how do you know his name?'

She touched his wrist. 'Hold your horses. Drink your wine. Eat your nachos.'

He breathed out, grinned, swallowed his wine.

'That's better. The reason I know his name is that Ellen Destry arrived at that moment, and she helped Lister avoid the scrum, and told me his name.'

'Carl Lister,' Challis said to himself. Then: 'But the driver, that day on the beach. Could he have been-'

'Ian Munro? Yes, possibly, though he wore a beanie and shades and his face was distorted with all the shouting he was doing.'

Challis stared into the flames, losing himself in them. Lister and drugs, Munro and a drug crop…

'Hal?'

He turned to Tessa.

'What are you thinking?'

She wasn't asking it as a lover-or only partly-but as a journalist. She had that intent, narrowed gaze. But he found that she was holding his hand, so he told her that he was thinking not about the past but the here and now.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Larrayne was subdued, teary, on Wednesday morning. She didn't want to get up, and for the past two days had taken to wandering around with her mobile phone in her hand.

'Why won't he ring?'

'Perhaps he's away, sweetie. Studying for exams. Staying with friends.'

'Well, why didn't he tell me? I'm sick of leaving messages.'

Larrayne recognised the anguish well enough from her youth. There's nothing worse than waiting for calls that never come, the calls of the beloved.

'I love him, Mum.' Said frankly and devoutly, as though Ellen doubted it or no one before Larrayne had ever loved.

'I know you do. It will sort itself out, you'll see.'

'He's avoiding me, I can feel it.'

In the end, Ellen told Larrayne to get dressed, go to school, take her mind off Skip.

Fat chance, but it was worth a try.

She dropped Larrayne at the school gates and drove to the police station, and Challis nabbed her as soon as she walked in to CIB. 'Carl Lister was seen visiting Aileen Munro.'

And at once Ellen connected the dots: Lister, his son, Munro, marijuana, and saw good reasons why Skip had suddenly stopped seeing Larrayne.

Three-thirty that afternoon, just before the four o'clock shift went on, found Pam sitting with John Tankard and Sergeant van Alphen around a table in the canteen. They were full of coffee and someone's leftover birthday cake and disinclined to start work.

'Get this,' Tank said from behind yesterday's Progress. 'Says here: "With labels like 'illegals' and 'queue jumpers' we demonise the asylum seekers". I'll give her labels.'

He poked his head around to see that Pam was paying attention. 'Challis's girlfriend,' he explained unnecessarily.

Pam said sweetly, 'And what labels would those be, Tank?'

Caught on the back foot, he looked flummoxed, then mustered himself: 'Poser, do-gooder, un-Australian, wanker. That do you? Want me to go on?'

Pam thought that John Tankard would know all about labels, he who'd been called a stormtrooper. 'What do you think, Sarge?'

Van Alphen said, 'So long as it doesn't affect his job.'

She had no idea what he was talking about. Tankard's job? 'Sarge?'

'Challis,' van Alphen said. 'So long as his work isn't compromised by what his girlfriend thinks.'

'Hadn't thought of it that way, Sarge,' Pam said, thinking that Challis's relationship with Tessa Kane wasn't the issue here. The issue was the asylum seekers and their reception and treatment. People were funny. Funny and limited.

As Wednesday evening settled, the sun flattening red over the mangroves and smokestacks of Westernport, Brad Pike's skin crawled with need and loss, and he left his flat beside the strip of used-car yards and drove through the side streets to the cop shop at the roundabout. Plenty of parking outside so he zipped in, braked, turned off the ignition, waited a few seconds while the motor ran on and coughed and died with a rattle, then went in and said that he was being stalked.