Challis - 01 - Dragon Man Read Online Free PDF

keys, and got to the front door of the
house before Tankard could.

    It was ajar. She knocked. Police.

    The man who came along the corridor
toward them wore a bathmat of body hair on a white, sagging trunk. His feet
were bare, his knees like bedknobs under threadbare shorts. Someone had
scratched his plump shoulders. Hed also have a black eye By the evening. Look,
sorry you were called out, but weve got it sorted.

    Pam said, Im Constable Murphy,
this is Constable Tankard. Who else is in the house, sir?

    Just the wife, also the

    John Tankard shouldered through. We
need to see her, pal.

    The man retreated in alarm. Shes

    Pam saw worry under the weariness,
the poverty and the beer. She touched Tankards forearm warningly and said, Constable
Tankard and I just need a quick word with your wife, sir, if you dont mind.

    The man twisted his features at her.
Look, girlie, I

    It had been a long day. Pam pushed
her face into his and breathed shallowly. She got girlie twenty times an hour
at the station; she didnt need it from some civilian as well. Are you
obstructing us in our duty, sir? Because if you are

    A priest appeared from a back room. Its
all right, its all right. Im talking to them. Were sorting it out. Theres
no need for police intervention.

    See? Told ya.

    Pam hooked her finger. Father,
could I have a minute?

    She took the priest out on to the
lawn at the front of the house. Tankard scowled after her. She ignored him. Father,
Im as anxious as you are to avoid trouble.

    The priest nodded. Everythings
calm now. The fellows wife has a history, a personality condition. Sometimes,
when its been hot for a few days, things get on top of her and she snaps. Thats
what all the ruckus was about. She hit him, not the other way round.

    How is she now?

    Quiet. Ashamed. She hadnt been
taking her pills.

    Pam walked with the priest back to
the front door. Sir, we wont be taking any further action.

    Tankard was furious with her in the
van. We should have talked to the wife.

    Pam explained. Tankard said nothing.
He said nothing the whole way back to the station, not until he saw Inspector
Challis outside the station, getting into his car to drive home.

    Arsehole.

    * * * *

    There
had been a time when Challis wanted to write a book about the things hed seen
and known and done, a lot of it bad. Fiction, because whod believe it if he
tried to pass it off as fact? Hed studied with a novelist at the TAFE College
in Frankston, Novel Writing, every Wednesday evening from six until tenwhen he
wasnt on call somewhere, staking out a house, feeling for a pulse, arresting
someone who didnt want to be arrestedbut soon realised that although he had
plenty to say, he didnt know how to say it. It was locked inside him, in the
stiff language of an official report. He couldnt find the key that would let
the words sing on the page. Hed confessed all of this to the novelist, who
congratulated him, saying, My other students either have nothing to say or
never realise that they havent got a voice, so count yourself lucky.

    Challis had smiled tiredly. You
mean, you count yourself lucky youre not stuck with one more bad
writer.

    The novelist laughed and invited him
to the pub to say goodbye.

    But one thing stuck in Challiss
minda quote from a writers handbook. Georges Simenon, author of the Maigret
novels, had said: I would like to carve my novels in a piece of wood. Challis
felt like that now. As he drove away from the Waterloo police station at six oclock
that evening, he thought that hed like to be able to stand back from this
case, his life, and gauge where the shape was pleasing and where it was all
wrong.

    He turned right at the sign for the
aerodrome and splashed the Triumph into a parking bay at the rear of the main
hangar. He went in. One end had been partitioned off, and here Challis pulled
on a pair of overalls, tuned in to Radio National, and went to work.

    When hed first moved to the
Peninsula, hed joined the Aero Club and learned