Take Out (23 page)

‘Sounds like you’ve had a bad day.’

‘Tell me about it. About the only good thing that’s happened is that one of Izzy’s friends’ mothers thought I was you. When I explained I was the grandmother, her eyes nearly popped out of her head. Maybe those herbal skin pills really
are
working.’

Or maybe, Stevie thought guiltily, I’m so rarely at school for pick-up, no one knows who I am.

I am a bad mother.

‘I’ll go and have a word with Izz,’ she said, hiding the pang of self-knowledge.

Dot slipped the apron over her head and hung it over one of the hall hooks. ‘You do that. I need some fresh air, won’t be long—keep an eye on the roast will you? It’ll need turning down soon.’

Dot closed the door behind her and Stevie let out a sigh of relief. She never liked disciplining Izzy when Dot was around: Dot who’d raised four children in the middle of nowhere and always knew best.

She found Izzy in the kitchen, head in her arms at the Baltic pine table. The oven sizzled gently, the delicious aroma of roast lamb wafting around the room.

If she hadn’t known otherwise she’d have thought her daughter had sneaked a peak at
Gone with the Wind
—she was sobbing up a storm worthy of Scarlett O’Hara. When Stevie asked what was up, Izzy repeated what Dot had said, and more. ‘I left my book at home, that’s why I couldn’t hand it in. It’s stupid living here with Nanna, stupid! I want Dad to come home so we can go back to the beach. I need my reading book and I need to go home now!’

The sizzle from the oven began to intensify, the roast snapped and crackled. Stevie turned the temperature down and swung sharply on her daughter. ‘Enough of that—it’ll take too long to drive home and get it now. It’s getting late and Nanna’s put a roast in the oven. Try and calm down, having a tantrum won’t help.’

Izzy slapped her palms upon the table. ‘But I have to do my reading!’

‘Then we’ll find something else for you to read.’ Keeping her cool, Stevie reached for the Barbie backpack hanging on the back of the kitchen chair. It weighed a tonne, the amount of stuff these kids were expected to cart around on their backs never ceased to amaze her. She took the half-empty lunch box to the sink, binned the mashed contents and gave it a rinse, then dug into the bag again to see what else she could remove to lighten the load. Smelly sandshoes needed for PE tomorrow would have to stay; a Beanie Kid surely not needed at all, she left on the bench top. She reached for a bag of marbles, which weighed a kilo at least. With a petulant look Izzy told her to put them back, marble season had only just started—didn’t she know anything?

Stevie pulled out a picture book. ‘How about we read this?’

‘Too babyish,’ her daughter replied. Then she remembered something and her mood instantly brightened. ‘But there’s something else down there Mum—here.’ Izzy grabbed the bag. Delving to the bottom she handed Stevie a folded magazine. ‘Maybe I could read this—it’s got some really pretty ladies in it doing funny stuff.’

Stevie snatched the magazine from Izzy’s hand and jumped to her feet, knowing immediately what the high-gloss magazine was about. Attempting to hide her fear she unfolded it at the sink with her back to her daughter. Her stomach churned as she leafed through the hard-core porn, the nausea soon replaced by flaming anger. She took a calming breath and put the magazine face down on the kitchen bench

‘Izz,’ she turned back, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘A man gave it to me while I was waiting for Nan to pick me up from school. Can we read it now? Some of the pictures look
sooooo
weird, there was even a dog...’

‘What did this man look like?’

Izzy shrugged. ‘Tall.’

The man who’d threatened her outside court was tall, Stevie remembered. ‘As tall as Dad?’

‘I dunno. Come on Mum...’

‘Did he give anything to any of the other children?’

‘No, he came straight over to me.’

Hairs stood up on the back of Stevie’s neck. ‘As if he knew you?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Izzy, ‘But he didn’t speak so it was hard to say.’ She frowned. ‘He just
looked
as if he knew me.’ She lunged toward Stevie’s pocket and tried to snatch the magazine. Stevie sidestepped and caught Izzy by the wrist harder than she’d meant too. The girl whined, more from frustration than the pain of Stevie’s fingers. ‘But I need to do my reading!’

The journey to their house by the beach passed by in a blur. Stevie could think of nothing but the filth she’d found in her daughter’s backpack. The magazine was obviously a message. It told her they knew everything about her, even her daughter’s name and where she went to school. It meant they must also know what she did for a living; that she dealt daily with the scum-of – the-earth who got their rocks off by preying on other people’s children. They would know the effect this kind of message would have on her.

Now we have our sights on your child, Stevie Hooper.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, the message clearly telling her to back off. But who was responsible? She racked her brains. The obvious contenders were the three paedophiles she’d recently helped lock away—but it was a bit late now, wasn’t it? Surely the victimisation would have been carried out during the trial and not after. Unless of course, the motive was revenge, acted out by one of the many men involved in the paedophile ring still on the wrong side of the bars—God knows there were enough of them still lurking about. She’d not told her boss about the man who’d approached her outside the courtroom; it had seemed so trivial at the time, and she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly, let alone be able to describe him. Tall and fair, that was all she could remember.

Alternatively, this might have nothing to do with her previous case. Could the people traffickers be behind this? Unlikely, when they had no idea about her involvement with the Pavel investigation. The Crow was supposed to be Eurasian, which meant he was probably dark-haired, so he wasn’t the man outside court. But he might be the guy who gave Izzy the mag—maybe the people traffickers couldn’t be eliminated after all?

As she drove she took the magazine from the passenger seat and locked it in the glove box. She’d have to report the incident to Inspector Veitch and Angus Wong in the morning and cover all bases. Even if the offender turned out to be merely a random perv from the street, the matter would not be taken lightly. No matter how much irritation her interference on the Pavel case was causing, especially to Angus, cops always looked after their own.

It was dark by the time she pulled up outside her picket fence. In the distance she could hear the rumbling of breakers on the shore. She looked around the deserted street as she locked her car and walked cautiously toward the front gate. It was a corner block, the block next door vacant pending building and the neighbouring houses seemed a lot further away than they were. Her house was in darkness. She cursed herself for not thinking of leaving the lights on when she’d visited that morning.

She stopped before she reached the gate. Bloody hell. She clenched her fists as she looked down her front path. How dare they—no one was going to make her afraid of approaching her own house at night! She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to concentrate on what she’d come here to do. Izzy had said her reader was somewhere in the lean-to, maybe on the rug in front of the TV. As she placed her hand on the latch of the gate, she tried to remember if she’d seen the book there earlier.

A flickering in one of the front windows caught her eye. It wasn’t there a moment ago. Simultaneously she became aware of an indistinct, smoky odour on the sea breeze. Then the light in the window blossomed.

A bright orange flash blinded her.

A deep boom hammered through her skull.

She dropped to the ground and covered her head with her arms as a sear of pain ripped into her left shoulder. The blast drove the air from her lungs and replaced it with choking black smoke. Shock waves rumbled through the pavement. Building materials whizzed and clattered in the air from all directions, thudding heavily to the ground around her.

The noise ceased as suddenly as it had started. Lights turned on in the neighbouring houses, windows stared at her like unfocused eyes. Dogs barked, doors slammed.

Still curled into a protective ball on the pavement, she heard the sound of running footsteps above the crackle of flames. Someone shouted, ‘My God, what’s happened?’

A female voice answered. ‘Look, there’s someone over there!’

Footsteps pounded the pavement towards her.

Stevie slowly began to uncoil, first her legs, then her back. Other than her shoulder she could detect no other areas of damage. Deafened by the explosion she had trouble hearing what the man crouching by her side was saying to her. The roar of flames filled her head. A sudden crash of falling timber made her gasp and crushed the words struggling to leave her mouth. She tried again to gather her breath. ‘We need to get away from here ... there might be another explosion,’ she panted.

Shaking arms pulled her to her feet. She hissed an expletive when a hand was placed on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, dear,’ an elderly male voice said. ‘Needs must.’ He guided her wobbling steps further down the street. She looked to the sky. Above them, peeping through a cloud of oily smoke, the moon glowed.

‘It’s your house, isn’t it? Susan and I have been meaning to introduce ourselves,’ the old man said, a pattern of flickering flames dancing across the crevices of his face. ‘But we never expected it to be like this. I’m Ted. You’ll be all right, don’t worry. Susan’s called an ambulance. The police and fire brigade are on their way too.’

‘My house.’ Stevie struggled to free herself from the man’s grip.
Our house.
She tried to turn her head but pain shot up her neck, causing her to hiss out an expletive. She shook herself free of the man’s guiding arms and almost stumbled at the sight that confronted her, her house that was no longer a house. The blown front window was awash with fire, the central part of the roof collapsed. A quick glimpse around told her that none of the other houses in the vicinity had been affected by the blast—she had to be grateful for something, she supposed.

Susan hurried over. ‘We must get her off the street.’

Ted agreed with his wife, then said to Stevie, ‘Never trust the wiring of these old houses.’

Stevie knew too well it wasn’t the bloody wiring, but she’d let the old man think what he liked. Susan gave her a gentle push and attempted to guide her away from the inferno. Anger flooded through her, then an enraging sadness. Ignoring the pain from her shoulder, Stevie shrugged herself free from the fussing woman. She wanted to scream out, had to hold herself in check.
Bloody bastards, look what you’ve done to my house!

The police and the fire truck pulled up simultaneously. With her left arm clamped to her side, she ran over to them, telling the firemen which parts of the house to save first, begging them to go easy with the foam. She yelled to the police, telling them her house had been the target of an attack. Her sentences, she realised were running ten to the dozen in a gabble of nonsense worthy of Mrs Hardegan. She fell silent. Froze. Gazed at the sympathetic faces surrounding her. A strong arm supported her waist and she found herself propelled toward the open door of an ambulance. The attendant gritted his teeth and firmly helped her in, probably having already pegged her as one of those silly, hysterical females.

‘I’m not going in that,’ she yelled before collapsing on the trolley. ‘Our house,’ she heard herself repeating again and again until the attendant silenced her with an oxygen mask.

What the hell was she going to tell Monty? (Image 23.1)

Just after midnight, against medical advice and with sixteen stitches in her shoulder, Stevie discharged herself from the hospital and caught a cab back to her ruined home. The fire trucks had left, but a police incident van remained. She heard voices, members of the arson squad sifting through the wreckage, looking for clues as to the cause of the explosion, and called to them across her front garden. Yesterday her garden had been filled with lavender, frangipani and oleander; now it looked like something from the Gaza Strip. A man in black police overalls appeared through a hole that had once been the front door.

‘I thought you were in hospital,’ he said through the rising tendrils of smoke that separated them. He picked his way through the rubble towards her and said his name was Paul Aubin. He squinted back at her through the spotlight. White lines threaded through the soot around his eyes, etching out his concern.

‘I had some glass in my shoulder; they pulled it out and stitched me up. There’s was nothing more they could do,’ she said.

His pause told her he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘And you’re with Central, yeah?’

She had trouble hearing what he said; her ears were still ringing with the sound of the explosion. She asked him to repeat himself and studied his lips carefully. ‘Yes, Central.’ After a moment’s hesitation she said, ‘I think this might be something to do with a job I’m working on.’