Read Online Challis - 02 - Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher - Free Book Online

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