Take Out (11 page)

Despite the several months she’d had to psych herself up for this, nothing had prepared her for the shock of seeing Monty post-op. His face was that of an old man, his skin the colour of a corpse. It was as if after draining his blood they’d forgotten to put it back again.

Thank God kids were not allowed in the ICU. Izzy would have had a fit if she’d seen her father looking like the living dead.

They could have been on a brightly lit tanker moored with several others on a quiet black sea. Night time in the ICU: raised, oversized beds with lifeless people buried somewhere amongst the bleeping machines and wires, the tread of crepe-soled doctors and nurses, the scratching of pulled curtains, the clanging of stainless steel and the low rumble of trolleys. How she hated hospitals.

Yesterday’s operation had been an unmitigated success, the surgeon had told her earlier. Monty would remain in the ICU for another day or so until the breathing tube was removed and then transferred to a single room in the coronary care unit. Barring complications he should be home in just over a week.

Barring complications. Stevie had made the mistake of looking up the complications on the Internet: thrombosis, infection, myocardial infarction; the list went on and ended with ‘death’.

Some complication.

The glass-panelled nurses’ station glowed like a captain’s bridge. Behind the glass she saw a tall man with wiry hair like a mad professor talking to one of the nurses. A strange time for Wayne Pickering to visit, she thought. Didn’t he know that only close family members were allowed in the ICU?

He saw her looking his way and indicated for her to step outside the ward. They met at the lifts.

Wayne clasped her arm. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s doing fine. They won’t let you see him though, the nurse in charge is tougher than Central’s desk sergeant, she—’

‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘It’s you I need to see. C’mon, I’ll buy you a coffee. You look terrible, the bags under your eyes could pack for a family of five.’

Wayne had always been a charmer.

A few minutes later they were sitting in the hospital canteen with cappuccinos and an oozing jam and cream doughnut for Wayne.

‘You shouldn’t be eating that,’ Stevie said, ‘think about your arteries.’

Wayne ignored her. ‘Do you know someone called Emily Williams?’

‘Emily Williams,’ Stevie repeated, thought for a moment. ‘No.’

‘She’s a nurse.’ Wayne took a bite of doughnut.

‘Oh. I know a nurse called Skye Williams.’

Wayne swallowed before he’d chewed his mouthful properly and appeared to be in pain. ‘That would be her.’ He patted himself on the chest. ‘Her mother calls her Emily.’

A cold stone dropped in Stevie’s stomach. ‘Wayne, what’s this about?’

‘Your name was in her phone. MCI called Sex Crimes trying to contact you. Sex Crimes knew your phone would be off so they called me, knowing Mont was off sick.’ Wayne reached for Stevie’s hand across the plastic table. ‘I’m afraid your friend was killed in a car crash on Friday night.’

Stevie shook her head as it filled with discordant thoughts. ‘No, you said Emily, not Skye. I don’t know an Emily.’

Wayne continued to squeeze her hand.

‘She called herself Skye. According to her mother she thought
Emily Williams
far too pedestrian.’

Stevie did not immediately respond. She sat still, her gaze switching from Wayne’s hand to a blob of cream on his psychedelic tie. Skye had changed her name, she would. It would be her way of distancing herself from her conservative farming family. When she was older she’d probably change it back again. But she wasn’t going to get older now.

‘They think she had an asthma attack while she was driving, lost control and hit a semi,’ he murmured.

‘She was only twenty-five,’ Stevie whispered to the air between them. She couldn’t cry. Like wheatbelt rain, the tears evaporated before they fell.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Wayne said.

Stevie pushed hair from her face. ‘No, I have to stay with Mont.’

‘He’s out of it Stevie. He’ll need you later, but not now.’ Wayne would allow no further argument. He pulled her up by her arm and guided her towards the exit.

Twenty-five; the thought would not leave her head. You’d think she’d get used to it, in her line of work, but it was a different thing altogether when you knew the person, were friends with the person. And then her thoughts shifted to Monty: if The Old Man Upstairs could take Skye, He could take anyone. (Image 9.1)

For much of the next morning, Stevie went through the motions as if her mind were disconnected from her body. She had breakfast with Izzy who was temporarily staying with her mother, Dot; she told everyone Monty was doing fine and dropped Izzy at school with a kiss and a smile as tight as stretched leather.

When she arrived at the ICU, she discovered a wizened old monkey of a man in Monty’s bed. She clung to a hunk of curtain, staring at the unconscious man as the pressure inside her began to build. She found herself gripped by an unreasonable sense of rage. How dare they move him without telling her!

The nurse responded to Stevie’s snapped enquiry with a flinch.

‘Mr McGuire is doing extremely well,’ she said nervously. ‘We moved him to the ward first thing.’

Stevie attempted to pull herself together, tried to make it up to the nurse with a deep breath and an awkward smile of apology. She mustn’t let Mont see her in this state and on no account would she tell him about Skye. If she tried to explain, she knew she’d lose it.

He was high as a kite on painkillers when she at last found him on the ward. He wouldn’t have known anything was wrong, even if she’d thrown herself on his pillow and sobbed her heart out—which was what she felt like doing. But soon he’d be back to his perceptive self and she had a lot to sort out before then. She stayed with him in his room for the rest of the morning, helped him eat an unappetising bowl of green jelly for lunch, put up with some moaning and a lot of swearing, then hurried off to meet Luke Fowler at Mrs Hardegan’s. On the way she remembered she’d volunteered to take a reading session at Izzy’s school. She rang the teacher and cancelled.

Fowler was napping in his unmarked police car when she pulled up alongside him in front of the Californian bungalow. She tapped on his window.

‘You’re late,’ he said buzzing the window down to look at her through cool blue eyes.

‘I’ve been at the hospital. My partner’s recovering from surgery.’

He grunted out a stock reply of sympathy, attempted some small talk. It seemed he did remember doing the course with ‘Inspector McGuire’ in Adelaide. ‘Where’s Skye?’ he finally asked.

‘She’s dead.’ In a tone as emotionless as a police report, she told him what happened.

He gave her the same stunned look she must have given Wayne.

‘We’d better go and see Mrs Hardegan and tell her about Skye,’ Stevie said briskly, giving him no time to absorb the news. She hurried on bubble-soled trainers toward the house, anxious to get the next unpleasant task over and done with. She stopped when she realised he wasn’t following.

Fowler hadn’t left the car. He turned his face away when she opened the passenger door and leaned in. ‘Are you coming?’ She paused, regarded the turned back and hunched shoulders and let out a sigh of impatience. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Sergeant Fowler?’

He put on his mirrored sunglasses and released a heavy sigh of his own. ‘Just a shock,’ he said as he climbed from the car.

The old lady took the news better than either of them, though it was hard to tell quite what was going on behind the thin skin of the veined forehead. Every now and then though, Stevie caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, a look she’d only noticed in the eyes of the very young or the very old. She couldn’t have explained what it was, but it spoke of some kind of privileged, hidden knowledge.

‘Silver Chain will be organising someone else to come and see you soon,’ Stevie told her.

Mrs Hardegan pulled her gaze back from the window. ‘They murdered him,’ she said in her forthright way.

‘Bloody Japs, bloody Japs!’
The parrot in the corner screeched. It ruffled its sparse covering of feathers, making the dust motes fly, releasing a sweet, seedy smell.

Fowler ceased his search of the kitchenette for tea making equipment and met Stevie’s eye.

‘Tell the feathered one to shut up,’ Mrs Hardegan said, glowering at the cage.

‘Who murdered who?’ Gripped by an urgent state of panic, Stevie had to hold herself back from shaking the old lady into some kind of coherency. ‘Skye? Someone killed Skye—who?’

Mrs Hardegan responded to Stevie’s impatience with a sharp snap. ‘How the hell should we know? Don’t want tea.’ She turned to berate Fowler. ‘Brandy, need brandy!’

‘What makes you think Skye was murdered? It was a car accident.’ Fowler moved to the tall cupboard to which Mrs Hardegan pointed a knotted finger. When he opened the door, Stevie glimpsed rows of unopened bottles of cheap brandy.

Mrs Hardegan caught Stevie’s look. ‘We’re saving them for the Big Push.’ She took the glass from Fowler, her hand a lot steadier than his. ‘The boy knew about the snoodle pinkerds, we told him and they killed him. Now you know about them and they might kill you too.’

Snoodle pinkerds?
Stevie shook her head in exasperation.

‘Now, go. Leave us alone. We have a headache. And you...’ As if with an afterthought, Mrs Hardegan thrust her glass towards Fowler’s chest. ‘Take one of our bottles, go and get drunk.’ She turned to Stevie. ‘In love with him, stupid boy.’ (Image 10.1)

‘She speaks like the fucking Queen: we this, we that...’

‘She can’t help it, Fowler. She’s not in control of the words that come out. It’s the stroke she had. Expressive dysphasia. Skye explained it to me.’

Fowler flinched.

Stevie noted it, and wondered why. ‘I’d like to see what you’re like when you’re that old,’ she said, a bit more gently. ‘What’ll you have? My shout.’

‘Perrier.’

She ordered the water for him and a Crown Lager for herself—he might not need the pick-me-up, but she certainly did.

The barman tilted her glass to the tap and she watched the amber liquid rise. ‘I’ve just started three weeks leave,’ she said though this hardly felt like a celebration.

‘Time off so you can look after Inspector McGuire?’

God he was irritating. Why did he have to call Mont ‘inspector’ all the time? ‘Yes, if he lets me,’ she said, scooping the beer from the counter. The delicate green bottle of water looked incongruous in Fowler’s thick hand.

They carried their drinks to the only free table in the lounge, rammed against a sidewall near the loos. The place was more crowded than usual, many of the clientele fixated on a soccer game on the wide-screen TV above the bar. Fowler poured his Perrier into a glass and Stevie checked her missed calls, an emergency call from the hospital foremost in her mind. There was nothing from the hospital, she discovered to her relief, but she did find a voice message from Skye.

Stevie stared at her phone. The message had been sent the day Skye died. The illuminated screen swam before her eyes. Her first tears for Skye could not have come at a worse time. Swivelling in her chair she turned her back on Fowler, took a steadying breath and dialled 101. After listening to the message she placed the phone on the table and slid it toward him.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked stiffly.

Stevie sniffed, swiped her eyes with a table napkin. ‘Do I look it?’

Frowning, he picked up the phone and glanced at the screen. ‘From Skye?’

‘Have a listen,’ Stevie said, lifting her glass and swallowing several mouthfuls of beer.

He listened, unmoving, then put the phone back on the table. The sparkling water in his glass ticked through the silence between them.

‘She said she thought there was a connection between Ralph Hardegan and the Pavels,’ he said at last.