Kittyhawk Down

'So we need to hear back from Scotland Yard?'

'And we need to go back and search the Pearce house again,' Challis said. 'Ellen, you come with me. The rest of you, you know what to do.'

They were crossing the carpark when his mobile phone rang.

'Inspector Challis? You gave me your number just in case.'

'Who's talking?'

'Louise Cook.'

'Yes, Louise.'

'Um, I think I did something stupid. But I was that mad.'

Challis clenched inside, knowing what to expect. 'What did you do?'

'I rang that mobile phone number I gave you. Billings answered and it definitely was him, even though he gave a different name.'

'And?'

'And I got mad at him. Told him I knew he killed Trevor.'

'Christ.'

'Look, I'm really sorry. It's just I felt-'

'When?'

'What?'

'When the bloody hell did you call him?'

'There's no need to be like that. I did the right thing, I called you straightaway, soon as I realised it was him.'

'But you warned him, and now he'll run and now your own life is in danger. Christ.'

'What? What do you mean?'

Challis forced himself to be calm. 'I hope you didn't tell him where you live. Tell him you wanted money in return for silence.'

'If that's the thanks I get for-'

'Goodbye,' Challis said, snapping his phone into his pocket and telling Ellen, run.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

'How's John Tankard?'

'Not too bad,' Pam Murphy said. She was driving, Challis beside her, van Alphen and Ellen in the back seat.

'Is he getting counselling?'

Challis sensed resistance in her. She's protecting her own, he thought. She doesn't like this line of questioning. She drove expertly, at speed, along the coast road toward Penzance Beach and the turnoff for Upper Penzance, and deflected him: 'Will Casement run, sir?'

'He has before. He'll have a contingency plan, new ID to slip into.'

'Do you think he'll be there?'

'I hope so, but drive like the clappers even so.'

'Will he be armed if he is?'

'There's a good chance.'

And so they were armed. And armed backup would follow behind them as soon as Senior Sergeant Kellock could muster some more uniforms. Unfortunately there were officers down with the flu and others attending at a four-car pile-up at the corner of Myers and Coolart roads. The Meddler had been right about that intersection: why the hell had they installed give-way rather than stop signs?

Challis watched Pam Murphy brake and corner with a flick of the wheel onto Five Furlong Road. There was something a little staged about the manoeuvre, something a little self-conscious. She'd driven pursuit cars in her last posting; she was still young enough to want to show off. She wanted to join CIB but the uniform allowed her to do the fun stuff, like drive at speed, siren on, telling the world to step out of her way.

'Damn, there he is,' Challis said.

This part of Five Furlong Road was narrow, rutted, pot-holed, with treacherous gravel verges. Two cars passing from opposite directions were obliged to slow to a crawl and pull over to the side, outside wheels in the ditch if that were shallow enough. If not, you risked bottoming out and scraping away your sump and exhaust system. But Casement, in the familiar Mercedes station wagon that his wife had driven, was not slowing, pulling over, stopping. Pam swung into the bracken between two peppermint gums, bouncing the chassis over clumps of hardened mud cast up by a shire grader, while Challis craned his head around to peer through the rear window at Casement, who had flashed past, churning up a dense blanket of gritty dust. They heard small stones ping against the rear of the police car.

'Quick,' Challis said, immediately regretting the obviousness of it.

'I am, sir,' Pam said, showing irritation and anxiety in the face of his scrutiny.

She spurted forward, looking for a farm gate, nosed in, reversed, then a horn brapped sharply. Before she could complete the turn and demand right of way, a Telstra linesman passed, his van top-heavy with ladders. Challis read alarm in his face and then he was past them and they were crawling behind him. He seemed panicked to have the police on his tail, to be hindering them, and slowed to a walking pace; but the edges were soft gravel, and overhanging branches threatened to tear off his ladders. Challis's own road resembled Five Furlong Road. At least once a year he called the shire's emergency number to fetch the tree-removal crew. Why none of the neighbours ever called it in, he didn't know.

'Sound your siren,' van Alphen said from the back seat.

'It's all right,' Challis said. 'He knows we're here, he'll pull over when he can.'

Beside him Pam Murphy flashed him a look of thanks.

Then they were past the van and picking up speed. Dust lingered. They reached the intersection with the coast road and Pam said, 'Sir? Left? Right?'

The answer came to Challis. There was something neat and ironical about it. 'The aerodrome. We know he can fly.'

Pam laughed. 'I've got visions of chasing him up and down the landing strip.'

It should be possible to box him in, Challis thought. The Waterloo airfield was laid out in a simple T-shape, aligned north-south and east-west. Plenty of grass between the strips and the perimeter fence, like a large open paddock, hangars to one side, a couple of gates, cyclone fence.

'And if he's not there?' Pam said.

'Better call it in,' van Alphen said, taking out his mobile phone and murmuring, then shouting to be heard, finally shutting down the phone and pocketing it.

'I can never get a decent signal around here,' he said. 'The Peninsula's full of dead spots.'

They ignored him. Pam hammered the police car along the coast road back to Waterloo. Challis guessed they'd lost about two minutes back there on Five Furlong Road. Casement would have put on speed when he saw them. He would have guessed they were after him. Was two minutes enough time to fire up a plane?

Which plane?

The Cessna? It was being repaired in a separate hangar. Challis didn't know if it was ready or not.

The Kittyhawk? The Kittyhawk would give him speed, but also stand out everywhere, and you didn't just step into an old war-era cockpit and trundle out onto the strip to take off.

They were there in nine minutes. If Pam Murphy had been driving at the safe-let alone the legal-limit it would have taken them at least fifteen minutes to reach the aerodrome. She braked at the dirt road outside the perimeter fence, fishtailed at the gate, swung through.

It was late afternoon by now, the place had almost shut down for the day, and it was apparent that Casement wasn't there.

'Shit. Sorry, sir.'

'Don't stop,' Challis told her. 'He'll have driven into a hangar.'

Pam accelerated, spurting between the hangars to the landing strip itself, and now they could see an open hangar door and the dusty Mercedes deep in the shadows. She braked and they piled out, Challis directing them.

'We can't be sure when our backup's going to arrive, so Van and Ellen, you check the planes,' he said, pointing to a dozen light aircraft parked on an asphalt clearing beyond the hangars. 'Pam, you come with me. All of you be ready to draw your firearms, but warn him first, the usual drill.'

They spread out and began the search. Five minutes passed, then ten, and as the evening light spread from horizon to horizon, filling the aeroplanes and hangars and their hidden niches with tricky shadows, Challis began to wonder whether they were too late, if Casement was already in the air, maybe having hijacked the pilot of a plane that had been about to take off.

Stupid. He should have checked with the ground staff.

And now it was the end of the work day for the ground staff. He could see them driving toward the gate one by one in a motley collection of family station wagons, four-wheel-drives and small Japanese sedans, craning their necks to see what the drama was.