Limbo (24 page)

The altercation had attracted a bit of a crowd.

‘Jules,’ Dash said, his hand in place, his gaze never leaving the guy’s face, ‘Call this man a cab. It’s time he went home.’

‘Sure thing hon,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice, as if Dash pinning pissed grabby guys to walls was an everyday occurrence at the Parrot.

Charlie, who had the drunk guy by a further two inches, lumbered up. ‘Thanks,’ he said in his big gruff voice. ‘I’ve got him, Dash.’

Dash released his hand and the guy bent over, grabbing his throat and gasping.

He turned to Joy. ‘You okay?’

She nodded. Her brown gaze roved over his face and shoulders and chest, prickling his skin wherever it touched. Her nostrils were flaring and he realised she was breathing as hard as he was.

Was that just reaction settling in or was it something else?

That something else kicked him low in his belly.

‘Let’s just go back to your apartment and find us some bad guys, okay?’ she said.

Dash sighed. So much for
no way, no how
. He could hardly say no now, hot on the heels of what could have turned into a very nasty situation. ‘Sure.’

He hovered his hand near the small of her back as they pushed past the small group of rubber-neckers and headed to their table leaving the drunk guy complaining in the background.

‘He can’t do that. That’s assault. I’ll sue him, I’ve got witnesses.’

‘Anybody here see any assault going on?’ Charlie’s deep rumbly voice enquired.

Dash heard some vague negative replies as they grabbed their coats off their chairs and some more low, incomprehensible growling from Charlie as they headed for the exit, waving to Jules as they passed the bar.

The cold air slapped him in the face when they stepped outside and Dash was grateful for it. He felt hot all over. Whether that was to do with the way Joy’s nostrils had flared as she’d looked at him or the confrontation, he wasn’t sure.

A bit of both, he suspected.

Having to get physical with someone wasn’t something he relished — he preferred to talk someone down as he had done with Harry in the brothel. But sometimes a little force was necessary and he wasn’t above using it.

They walked side by side without saying anything for a while, their warm breath fogging the air. ‘You can handle yourself pretty well,’ he said eventually.

‘I’ve spent a lot of my life gigging in pubs. Drunk men are an occupational hazard. I picked up a few tricks along the way.’

‘I’ll have to get you to give Katie a few lessons.’

‘Surely a girl in an ivory tower isn’t going to need any lessons like that?’

‘Ah true.’ His face lit up at the thought. ‘See,’ he said looking down at her, ‘it’s brilliant on so many levels.’

She laughed and the tension that had sat heavy between them in the Parrot seemed to dissolve and mist into the air along with their breath and as they walked the rest of the way Dash described the exact specs of Katie’s palace of captivity.

‘Doesn’t it sound awesome?’ he said as they climbed the concrete stairs to his apartment.

Joy snorted. ‘If it’s so freaking awesome you live in it.’

He grinned as he shoved the lock in the key and pushed the door open, flipping on the lights in his office. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yes please,’ she said, shrugging out of her coat as she followed him over to his desk. ‘Hey, why’d you cover Ralph up?’ she asked.

Dash looked down at the cloth he’d thrown over the bowl earlier. Although he’d come to think of it as the boudoir since Ralph and Simone had moved out of the castle for their hanky-panky and were just doing it out in the open for everyone to see.

He never knew fish were such exhibitionists.

‘You told me to give them some privacy.’

She frowned as she joined him around his side of the desk. ‘Privacy, yes. Not suffocation. They’re probably dead in there from carbon dioxide build up.’

Well certainly neither of them would be dead from sexual frustration. ‘It’s okay, I left a gap at the top.’

She glared at him and pulled the cloth away. And there they were. At it again.

‘Oops. No.’ They both looked down into the bowl. ‘They seemed to be…surviving really well.’

Dash looked at his horny fish. A reasonable expectation after all the
exercise
Ralph had been getting at such an advanced age might have been that his heart would give out but apparently, Ralph had a heart like an ox.

‘
Thriving
I’d say,’ he muttered.

She nodded and for long moments they both just stood and stared down into the bowl. ‘See,’ he said after a while. ‘Compelling isn’t it?’

She didn’t answer but she didn’t stop looking either. She just reached for the fish food and opened the lid.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Feeding them. That’s some fairly vigorous foreplay going on there. I think they could do with some sustenance.’

Dash took it off her. ‘No. I think there must be fishy Viagra in this gourmet food you bought. Going to get some of that no-name stuff tomorrow.’

‘Wow,’ she said, still staring into the bowl. ‘I didn’t realise they…went for that long?’

‘Oh yeah, apparently Ralph has stamina to burn.’

‘Well…he’s in good company then, isn’t he?’ she murmured.

And just like that, sex was between them again. The strange, weird vibe from the pub was between them again. The banter of their texting was between them again.

The
nudie pic
was between them again.

Dash felt the rampant desire to yank up Joy’s shirt and suck on her breasts streak like a drug through his system, and he gripped his coffee mug hard. ‘Anyway,’ he said, clearing his throat and handing her his coffee. ‘This way.’

Far away from nookie-obsessed goldfish.

He could do this. They could do this. There was plenty to look at. Plenty to discuss. They could be adults. He could just pretend he was shooting the breeze with Baz, bouncing stuff off him like they used to do when a case got gridlocked and they were stumped.

Partners. Buddies. Pals.

Not that it had worked out so well for them in the end either.

Or that there’d ever been a nudie picture between them.

He strode into the lounge room, flipping on the light as he went, already feeling more in control now that Randy Ralph and Sex-obsessed Simone were in the other room.

Maybe the two of them had been emitting some kind of fishy sex-pheromone into the office all day that had been affecting his libido. He should have moved into the lounge from the beginning but the need to use the internet connection on his computer had chained him to his desk most of the day.

He sensed Joy settling herself on the lounge chair as he crossed to the board of death and dragged it over. He’d written up his three most likely suspects on the opposite side to the one they’d already been using. Then he took two paces to the dining-room table that was covered in printed matter pertaining to any armed robbery he could find in the year leading up to Hailey’s disappearance.

He grabbed a folder with the basics of about two dozen known criminals that he thought could have been responsible for the liquor-store robberies then handed it to Joy.

She took it and opened it on her lap, glancing briefly through it before looking up at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain. Like she was a pupil awaiting wise words from the guru. And damn if that didn’t turn him on too.

Which was ridiculous. There was nothing about her that he usually went for. She was slender — he liked something to grab on to. Her body was more on the athletic side — he liked curvy. She was flat-chested — he liked his breasts big (although after his obsession with her nudie pic today, he was probably going to have to revisit that).

Not to mention she was about a decade too young for him and had
pink
hair and black nails for fuck’s sake!

But she was sitting there with her big brown eyes and that ridiculous coloured fringe and her long black boots and he was
so damn hot
for her he couldn’t even see straight.

Fuck.

If he got through this night without leaping on her it was going to be a miracle.

‘So?’ she prompted when he clearly wasn’t forthcoming with anything. ‘What’s this?’ she asked holding up the folder. She nudged her chin in the direction of the board. ‘Are those your three most likely up there?’

Dash took a calming breath, thought about drinking down a glass full of raw eggs (the most disgusting thing he had ever done) instead of small, lickable breasts, and plunged in.

‘Yes. In the folder are the two dozen suspects that Kimberley and the stick-up squad looked at for the liquor-store jobs.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘They’re called the stick-up squad?’

‘Well, not officially, no.’

‘And she just…gave them to you?’

Dash shrugged. ‘Like I say, she owes me.’

‘Could she get into trouble for passing it on?’

‘Yes.’

‘A lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was very good of her then.’

He nodded. ‘Anyway…’ If he didn’t keep this on track his mind was going to wander again. ‘I’ve looked at all of them and these three,’ he picked up his trusty marker and drew a big circle around all of them, ‘are the ones I like the most.’

She looked at each face intently for long moments, that familiar little v forming between her brows. ‘Why?’ she finally asked. ‘What about them makes you like them?’

‘All of them have histories of armed hold-ups with balaclavas. Two of them with shotguns.’

‘Ah.’ Joy’s eyes lit up in her serious little face. ‘Good thinking.’

Dash laughed. ‘I did learn a thing or two on the job.’

‘But it could be none of them, right? It could be someone who up until that point in time had never robbed anything before?’

‘Sure, it could be but Kimberley reckons they were professional jobs. There were two of them and they knew what they were doing. They weren’t kids or a junkie looking for some cash for a hit. They wore balaclavas and gloves, they had weapons, they hit at the end of the night when there were full tills and they went straight for the cash draw. They were calm and sure of themselves, and they were in and out in less than a minute.’

She nodded again as she listened to him intently, her mouth parted slightly. ‘Or we could be wrong about the theory completely?’

‘Yep. Absolutely. But the more I think about this, the more I think we’re right.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because those liquor-joint robberies had been happening every third day for three weeks. They were due to hit again on that night. On the eighth of January. But they didn’t hit that night. They just stopped the day of Hailey’s disappearance. And they didn’t do another job.’

‘Maybe they were just smart? Or…not greedy?’

‘Maybe,’ Dash acknowledged. ‘But in my experience, the vast majority of crims
are
dumb and greedy.’

‘Okay. So tell me about them,’ she said, pointing to the board of death.

Dash turned to the three pictures he’d pinned up there this afternoon after he’d gone painstakingly through everything he’d gathered. ‘This,’ he said, stabbing the marker into the middle of the prominent forehead of a guy with hooded eyes and thick eyebrows, ‘is Gerry Cardwell, and he —’

A harsh zipping noise stopped him in his tracks and he turned around to find Joy leaned forward, unzipping her boots.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m…taking my boots off if that’s alright by you,’ she said, easing her leg out of the left one. ‘I promise my feet don’t stink and I think better if I can sit cross-legged but I don’t want to ruin your lounge either.’

Dash stared as she unzipped the other one. He remembered her sitting cross-legged in the car coming back from Rockhampton. But she hadn’t just sent him a nudie pic then.

He suddenly found himself wishing her feet did stink. He prayed for it. It might derail the very bad thoughts he was having right now about helping her out of those boots. And the rest of her clothes.

And if she took off another piece of clothing, even if she pulled up the sleeves of her black skivvy with The Clash on it, he was not going to be responsible for his actions.

She threw both boots aside and tucked her legs in, settling back against the couch. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You were saying? About Gerry Cardwell, right?’

Dash nodded and turned back to the board, his head full of very unhelpful images that had nothing to do with Gerry’s ugly mug right in front of him. Thankfully years of being a cop kicked in and his mouth took over control from his brain.

And looking at the board —
not
looking at her — helped. Maybe he should rename it the board of sanity.

‘Gerry’s a career criminal. Actually, they all are. He’s been in and out of the slammer for the last twenty odd years for various armed robbery charges — banks, servos, liquor stores. He got out nine months ago. He usually works with one or two other guys. I like him because he’s one of our balaclava/shotgun candidates and he’s a BrisVegas native.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’ He glanced at her as she took Gerry’s profile from the folder and placed it beside her. ‘And the next one?’

Dash turned back to the board and pointed to the heavily jowled bald guy in question. ‘Ronald Stewart. Also a career criminal. Speciality is liquor shops. Been out of the joint for a year. Served his time, so not on parole. Also balaclava/shotgun combo but hails from just south of the border. So I like him less.’

‘Is distance something bad guys consider?’

‘It could be. It’s a lot of back and forth every three days. The longer on the road, the more things that potentially can go wrong. All of his jobs have been done in New South Wales and that’s where he’s also done all of his prison time. Also Ron usually does jobs solo and the liquor stick-ups that we’re talking about were done by two men.’

‘And these kinds of people usually stick to the one way of doing things?’

‘Usually,’ he said. ‘Most crims have an MO they adhere to pretty strictly. They like the tried and true. Which ironically leads to their downfall more often than not.’

‘How?’

Dash turned to face her, clicking the lid of the marker on and off, giving his hands something to do. ‘It’s a pattern. It gets you inside their heads. And you can map patterns. When you can map them you can analyse and even predict them.’