Daughters of Eve, page 21
His hand was moving between us again like there was some invisible bond there.
‘I was pretty clear, Matt. It was just sex. Good sex, sure. But still sex.’
His hand reached out and brushed mine. It was like a lightning strike landing; energy skimmed over my skin, making all the tiny hairs stand on end.
‘There’s chemistry, Hart.’
The moon peeked between clouds, highlighting the shadow of stubble on his face.
‘Shit, Matt.’
He reached for my hand and I knew I should shake it off but I didn’t.
‘I know I’m an idiot,’ he said as his fingers threaded between mine. I felt it in my body like he was moving inside me. ‘I know it’s too early to talk about …’
‘Don’t you bloody dare.’ My voice was barely audible.
He took a step closer, making me step back until I felt the cool of the brickwork behind me and the heat of his body bleeding through my clothes.
‘I lost someone when I was younger, Hart. Someone I could have loved. I didn’t fight for my feelings then and I won’t make that mistake again.’
‘I don’t have any feelings …’ My words were barely mumbled into the space between us before his lips eclipsed the need for speech.
Matt was flipping pancakes in my summer dressing-gown when the girls got up the next morning. He’d booked a later flight so he could demonstrate his culinary prowess—at least, that’s what he’d said.
Rose was the first to be roused by the smell of sizzling bacon and percolated coffee.
‘You going in late?’ She looked at me quizzically, her head cocked to the side.
‘My fault.’ Matt leaped in like a knight in slippery satin, pulling the dressing-gown cord a little tighter to stop it sliding open. It was a couple of sizes too small for him with a bright floral pattern and, to be honest, he looked silly. Muscular, sexy and utterly ridiculous. ‘I offered to cook breakfast.’
Rose poured herself a coffee and topped up mine before dropping into a chair, pulling her knees up and letting her own dressing-gown slither open. The full length of her long slender legs was exposed, as was her left shoulder and the top of her left breast.
I watched her watching Matt, like a spider at the centre of its web, waiting for the fly to land. I knew her well enough to know she wasn’t trying to lure him for herself. This was a test.
Matt hovered over the stove, flipping pancakes and pulling the oven door open to drop them onto a waiting plate.
When he finally turned, his eyes widened and his cheeks flushed. He looked at me then turned back to the stove, where he clattered plates and cutlery.
Rose let her feet drop to the floor. She wrapped her dressing-gown around her and picked up a book. Apparently he’d passed.
Grace crept in while I was watching Matt’s muscles move under the slinky material. Still slightly drunk from the heady cocktail of post-sex hormones, I imagined sliding my arms around his waist, untying the dressing-gown and letting it slip to the floor.
‘Has anyone made tea yet?’ There was sadness in Grace’s tone and it pulled me up quick smart. I scoured the benches for somewhere to put the cups and saw the open flour packet surrounded by white powder, the open egg carton with cracked shells and a two-litre bottle of milk.
I hoped Matt was as good at cleaning up as he appeared to be at cooking.
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Matt reached across the bench.
‘I’ll do it.’ I was up out of my chair, filling the kettle with water and reaching for the top shelf to get the teapot when I saw Matt in my peripheral. He was watching me, his lips stretched in a smile.
I wanted to kiss him so badly in that moment and the feeling was so powerful it scared me. Suddenly I wanted him gone. I wanted my kitchen back the way it was, with me and the girls and the focus on work and life and getting them organised and fighting for my next promotion. I didn’t want this flimsy, slippery feeling in my belly or the growing hunger for his touch, his taste. It was dangerous, stepping this close to the cliff face of a relationship.
I remembered so many mornings like this growing up. My mother in the kitchen cooking and my father easing up behind her, running his hand down her back and over her bottom, squeezing the soft flesh. There had been love in that house, between the beatings. Soft, tender, squidgy love that I had taken to be the bedrock of my life. I’d leaned into those memories for comfort as I’d slid under my bed with my hands pressed to my ears, trying to escape the cyclonic wind of my father’s escalating rampage.
And then there was that day. In the car. On a dirt road on the way to Grandpa’s when I was twelve.
Their voices clamouring over each other, scrambling for supremacy. Words I wasn’t allowed to say battering the car’s windows, embedding themselves in the seats. My father’s face twisted into a furious red-hot rage. My mother’s arm between the seats, her hand reaching for me. Her face stretched in terror as the car slid sideways towards the tree.
I don’t remember the impact. Or much of the aftermath. What I do remember was the policewoman who came to the hospital. She told me I would have to stay with my grandparents because my mother had died and my father was in Long Bay awaiting trial. She must have seen something in my face when she mentioned my grandparents, because when I got out of hospital, I went to live with Great-Aunt Edith on the outskirts of Sydney.
I think that’s why I joined the police, why I still believe, despite the odds stacked against us, that the police can make a difference. That we matter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The squad room felt like a funeral parlour when I got in that morning. It was well after ten o’clock, because I’d dropped Matt at Central Station to catch the train to the airport. He’d been iffy about me driving, but my ankle had held my weight with support from the strapping.
It had been a strange and awkward trip. My prickly mood wasn’t improved by cars crawling along major roads with drivers gawking at the soldiers on the streets. In the end Matt had to climb out quickly, without a real goodbye, as there was a traffic inspector hovering by the drop-off/pick-up spot.
Driving away, I’d reminded myself of my three golden rules and made a commitment to walk this craziness back from the brink before Matt got hurt.
As I settled in my seat, Robbo looked up from his computer and we nodded a silent greeting.
I shot daggers at Peterson before switching on my computer. Yeah, I’m late! Whatcha gonna do about it?
Peterson didn’t run into Willoughby’s office to snitch, which made a nice change. The emergency declaration must have been making a big dent in his world, what with the DCI forced to integrate our investigation with a national taskforce on the Daughters.
When my computer started, I opened an email from Robbo. Where were you?
I looked over at him and frowned.
Another email popped up. Just checking you’re okay.
Yeah, sure you are. That’s the problem with working with investigators: we’re a nosy bunch.
I pressed reply. Had breakfast with the girls. Wanted to check they were okay with what’s going on. I looked up and he nodded.
I hit reply again. How are Jess and the kids taking it?
He shrugged. Yeah. That pretty much summed up everything.
I’d seen soldiers on the street when I was growing up, on the odd occasion that my father let my mother visit her parents. They lived near an army base, but those soldiers were off duty, just people going about their lives. The only thing that distinguished them from the rest of the town was the fact that they wore khaki. But the soldiers on our streets today were different. Imposing statues with shoulders back and eyes alert, they were stationed like signal fires, each able to see the soldier before and after.
Sydney felt like a city under siege.
Occupied.
I knew they were there to keep the peace, but the weight of their presence dampened the vibrant energy of my town and I wondered what it was like in the regional centres. The deployment was nationwide, not just to the capital cities.
Meet me on level four of the car park. Fifteen minutes.
I looked up and Robbo was watching, so I nodded.
He pushed his seat back casually and reached for his jacket. The sound of his chair lifted every head in the room. Robbo smiled as he shrugged into the jacket. ‘At ease, everyone. Just steppin’ out for a coffee.’
I was going to grab my bag to follow him out, but something about the way everyone watched him walk to the lift told me not to. I dropped my head to my screen and started tapping, even though I’d closed the email and nothing was open on my screen.
It felt like I’d stepped into that novel. What was it? That’s right, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Seemed like the only thing Orwell had got wrong was the year.
I’d waited fifteen minutes as instructed, then headed to the lift. No-one asked where I was going and I hadn’t offered an explanation.
When the doors opened on the car park, I looked around. A fluorescent light flickered; the intermittent shadow and light kept pulling my eye.
‘Hart. Over here.’
I followed the sound and saw a shadowy figure fifty metres down the ramp. ‘Is that you, Robbo?’ I took a few tentative steps.
‘Who else would it be? Santa?’
I picked up the pace and joined him by the Monaro. ‘What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger?’
‘Where are you parked?’
I pointed to where the back of my car was just visible beside a Hyundai hatch, about five cars down.
‘Okay.’ He opened his boot and lifted the edge of a blanket to reveal a rifle.
‘What the hell …’ Then I remembered Rose and her ridiculous ride into the heart of darkness. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’
‘I meant to give it to you yesterday, but with everything going on it slipped my mind.’
I smiled as I reached in; it had slipped mine too.
‘Keep it in the blanket.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s a good woollen blanket. The gun’s as old as Methuselah.’
Robbo’s hand rested on my arm. ‘I’m not worried about the gun. I’m worried about you getting picked up in a stop-and-search.’
That stopped me in my tracks. The gun wasn’t registered.
When I’d found the gun safe at my grandparents’ farmhouse, my head hadn’t been in the game. I just wanted the farm sold and the possessions gone. It was the real estate agent who’d pointed it out. ‘You need to get rid of that. No-one wants to see guns right now.’
Port Arthur was still raw, the gun buyback had finished, and I was a rookie at the Police Academy, too scared to ask what I should do with a safe full of guns that may or may not be compliant.
I’d hidden the safe under a tarp until the farm was sold, then transferred it to the house I’d bought on the strength of that sale. I’d bolted it out the back for security, fully intending to surrender the guns for destruction but somehow that hadn’t happened. The longer the safe sat out there, the less I noticed it. Like a face pixelated for privacy in the papers or on telly, it became a void more than an object, but at the back of my mind it loomed large. By the time I was ready to research how to dispose of the guns, the safe had attained a mythic status, standing sentry just inside my laundry door. I had no more interest in opening that Pandora’s box than I had of visiting any other aspect of my youth. So the safe had stayed bolted in the laundry, unopened, its contents unregistered.
‘Thanks.’ I pulled the blanket and rifle out and Robbo and I walked down to deposit it in the boot of my car.
‘You were lucky that girl of yours got pulled over by Andy. He was at the academy with me, third-generation blue. When she said the gun belonged to a homicide detective, he rang me to confirm and I called in a favour. Kept her and the gun off the record.’
I smiled and nodded. And now I owed that favour to Robbo. That’s how it worked, how it had always worked.
Robbo went up to the squad room. I went out for a coffee to avoid suspicion, but as I crossed the floor to my desk ten minutes later, it felt like the walk of shame. Between Matt Hayes and Robbo, I’d done way too much sneaking around for my own comfort recently.
Peterson looked up as I passed him and his lip curled into a snarl. ‘Couldn’t have got that on the way in? Had to do it in work time.’
Of course that’s what he’d think; that’s what he did every day. But when I sat I realised I’d only been in for half an hour, which was quite out of character for me.
‘Updated body count’s come in.’ Willoughby was framed by the doorway to his office.
‘Three more deaths in Sydney overnight, two male and one female. Twelve nationally. Seven male, five female.’
Peterson jumped up. ‘I’ll update the figures in the conference room, sir.’
Willoughby nodded. ‘Good man. Thank you.’
The DCI closed the office door behind him and went back to his desk. Peterson’s shoulders dropped and he turned to run his eye over the new uniforms brought in to bolster our numbers.
‘Nguyen. Update the numbers, please.’ Peterson sat down and I shook my head as Nguyen locked his computer, pushed back his chair and walked into the conference room. He’d probably been doing something useful, unlike Peterson, who had the racing pages partially obscured by the file he’d covered them with when Willoughby appeared.
I signed back into my computer and sent Robbo an email. That appeared to be how we were communicating in the squad room these days because no-one was talking.
Hey, wasn’t Nguyen supposed to be watching Patty’s place this morning?
I looked over and Robbo shook his head. DCI suspended the surveillance yesterday—said Peterson needed more resources.
I looked around the room at all the bodies sitting at desks typing furiously. To do what? What are all these people doing?
Robbo shrugged. Taskforce paperwork. That’s all I’ve been told.
I wanted to swear but there was no point; Robbo was probably as frustrated as me. I watched Peterson, he had the racing pages neatly arranged inside the file in front of him.
So, it’s you and me working the pre-manifesto Sydney shootings and everyone else working to Peterson on paperwork for the taskforce?
Robbo nodded, then hunched over the keyboard and thumped the keys. And you’re welcome. You were nearly working to Peterson too. I had to remind the DCI that the widow Griffith-Jones had friends in high places and might ask what progress we’d made on her case.
You had to hand it to Robbo. He understood how to wield the entitlement of wealth and privilege, even when it wasn’t his own.
I typed: I’m checking with domestic violence service providers to dig up some intel on the cathedral support group meetings to see how they fit with other support groups. Maybe it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous, and people don’t just go to one group.
Robbo nodded before returning to the keyboard. I’ll get back to my mate in Fraud, see how he’s going on finding who owns Patty’s house. If she turns up at the next meeting on Monday night, it would be good to know who’s paying her bills.
I was pretty sure the trail of shell corporations would end with Patty’s brutal benefactor, the shady-looking dark-haired guy we’d seen in surveillance photos. He was her only visitor apart from me and the grocery deliveries.
I pulled up the list of domestic violence contacts and emailed them to myself so I could access them from my phone and headed out.
Peterson closed his file and leaned back to catch my eye when I stood. ‘Where are you off to, Hart?’
‘None of your damn business.’ I stared him down.
‘Well, it’s nice of you to drop by the squad room for a few minutes. Don’t let our little national crisis interfere with your busy social life.’
I picked up my bag and fought the urge to whack him in the back of the head with it. ‘Fuck off, Peterson, you twat!’
He was the reason I was heading out to make my calls. No way was I giving Peterson a heads-up on our investigation. The bloke leaked like a sieve and I wanted to be standing on firmer ground before we fronted Willoughby again.
I clocked a lot of smirks on faces as I crossed the squad room on the way to the lift. As the doors slid shut, I allowed myself a moment to smirk too.
I’d been outside Patty’s house in my car for almost two hours, making calls and then scrolling through mug shots from the sex offenders register on my laptop. I had a grainy picture of Patty’s meal ticket wedged into the dashboard of my car, looking for a match. My back ached, my neck ached, my heart ached.
The domestic violence community weren’t giving me much to work with. No-one knew about the meetings at the cathedral and the sector seemed disparate and detached. Budget cuts were the two words I’d heard most, from every agency, even the government-funded services.
It had always been a woefully underfunded sector. From the first Australian refuge, set up in an illegal squat in Glebe in the 1970s, to legislative reforms in the eighties and the establishment of call centres and support services over the decades. Unpaid activists had worked hard for every advance. Now it appeared governments had been clawing back resources under the cover of busy news cycles and the white noise of internet outrage.
Then there was the endless parade of faces across my screen, each responsible for tipping a life into turmoil. I kept thinking of Zanthe, trying to take her own life to escape the pain and shame of rape, and Grace shivering under a cold shower, hoping the water could wash her mind clean of memories. Then there was me, sitting in this car, wishing I could do something to stop the endless cycle of violence and damage.
And then I saw him. At least I was pretty sure it was him. I grabbed the fuzzy photo from the dash and held it next to the screen. His hair was longer and he had a beard now but the shape of his face, his height and body shape looked like a match.
I grabbed my phone and scrambled to find Robbo’s number.
‘Talk to me, Hart.’
‘I’ve found him I think. On the register. Patty’s visitor.’
