Take Out (6 page)

‘But I did find it on the old Cardex in the study.’ She tried to ignore the infuriating smile in his voice, remaining calm as he read out the number, returned his ‘love you’ and hung up.

A police car pulled away from the curb. Stevie prayed Trotman was in the remaining one, that he still had the same mobile number.

He answered on the second ring. ‘William Trotman.’

‘It’s Stevie Hooper, Bill. Don’t say a word. Just get out of the car and get away from the others. I need a private chat.’

The car door opened and she saw Trotman’s gangly form unfold into the street. ‘It’s fucking raining, Stevie.’

‘I’m trapped in the upstairs room. Come and get me out without telling anyone.’

Trotman let out a whooping laugh.

‘Just do it, you bastard!’

The door opened easily from the outside. To stop Trotman from asking what she was doing in the upstairs bedroom, she quickly pointed out the missing doorhandle, asking if it had been noted.

‘No idea,’ he said as they thumped down the stairs. ‘That’s the first I heard about it.’ They paused on the front porch, waiting for a break in the rain. A van pulled up alongside the police car. Stevie recognised the high-heeled form of the woman from the deli, hauling herself out with a box of snacks for the troops. Stevie’s stomach gave a hungry moan. It seemed hours since she’d eaten that salad sandwich.

‘But the room was like a prison,’ Stevie said. ‘I still think you should point it out to Fowler, just in case. Get yourself some brownie points.’ God knows he must need them. Fifty-five if he was a day and still a constable first class.

‘It’s probably just something to do with the redecorating that’s been going on,’ Trotman said, as if she should know what he was talking about.

‘Redecorating? What do you mean?’

Trotman took off his glasses and wiped them thoughtfully on his uniform jacket, making them streakier than they already were. ‘The neighbours told one of the lads about a fire here last year. Apparently an electrical fault damaged quite a bit of the inside of the house and they’ve been slowly getting the place reorganised. I guess they were just waiting on some more doorhandles.’

That would account for the fresh paint and lack of personal effects around the house; possibly, too, the boxed items in the storeroom. But what of the dirt, Stevie thought, the neglect of a beautiful house by a family who could easily afford to pay someone to clean it? And more importantly, how could the state of the baby be explained? A figure ran through the rain towards the porch before she could continue with the thought.

Her heart sank. Luke Fowler.

It seemed that during her absence her kitchen had been transformed into a Chinese laundry. Stevie blinked as she looked around the place, at the sheets of pasta draped over every available surface, from the oven doorhandle to the chair backs, the kitchen shelving to the wooden clotheshorse. Limp doughy strips even hung from Monty’s tropical fish tank. ‘See, curtains for the fish!’ Izzy proclaimed.

Stevie finally found the words. ‘I don’t believe this...’

Monty, with flour on the end of his nose and a generous dusting through his rust-coloured hair, put out two placating hands. ‘Don’t say anything, not one more thing. When you said you’d be home late we decided to cook dinner ourselves. It’ll be the best lasagne you’ve ever tasted—low fat everything, so don’t freak out—and you’ll enjoy it more if you don’t see any of the cooking process. Grab a drink, have a shower or check your email or whatever you want to do and leave dinner to us.’

‘But how can you say that? Just look at all the mess!’

‘Get out of the kitchen, Mum,’ Izzy commanded with a swish of strawberry-blonde curls. She was becoming more like her father in hair colour as well as temperament as the years passed, quick to anger but just as quick to defuse. A lot healthier than Stevie’s own anger, which tended to curl inside her like a spring. ‘We don’t need you!’ Izzy stated the obvious, giving the pasta machine a couple of decisive cranks and sending several more sheets flopping to the floor.

Jesus Christ.

Monty pressed a tin of Emu into Stevie’s hand. ‘Go and relax.’ Relax? That was easier said than done. After what she’d just been through with Fowler she felt about as relaxed as a car chase. But she was too tired for further argument. The beer was good, icy and cold. She took it with her into their living room, the stripped floorboards rough and splintery under her bare feet. With an uncommon flash of despair, she took in the room, a microcosm of the rest of their recently purchased, run-down house near the beach.

Unlike the Pavels’, theirs was single storey and authentic Federation, with many more years of neglect under its belt. That was the challenge, Stevie liked to think, of putting it to rights, making up for the sins of the past. The beauty of art was in its imperfection. With this in mind she’d opted to keep the original character of the house as much as practically possible. Crooked doors, sloped floors, the outside dunny, would remain. Obvious dangers like the sagging veranda roof and floor would have to be fixed up; the electrical wiring replaced, the plumbing modernised. It would be a long, painstaking job. In some ways the process was much like the circuitous road she and Monty had taken to arrive at this point in their lives. The house they would do together; it was their future.

The renovation plans were with the council now, waiting for the official stamp of approval before the structural changes could commence. Stevie had been doing what she could to make the place more comfortable, though none of it was necessary in this time of limbo. But pulling up mouldy carpets, stripping wallpaper and painting selected parts of the outside at least gave her restless energy some direction. Monty had said it was a useless exercise, a waste of time, seeing the builders would probably destroy most of her hard work. But she’d bulled ahead regardless and had so far enjoyed every minute of the process.

Her workstation was tucked into a corner of the lounge room. The study was only big enough for one desk and Monty dominated that. His need was greater as he worked mostly from home at the moment, writing reports for the Corruption and Crime Commission, a desk job to lead him gently up to his heart bypass surgery—if he went through with the operation, that is. He’d pulled out a couple of months ago using the state of their new house as an excuse. And he’d given Stevie no guarantees that he’d go through with the rescheduled operation either, leaving her in another form of limbo.

This one she filled with police work.

Her squad had recently arrested three Perth men involved in an international paedophile ring. The highly publicised court case demonstrated that it was not as easy as it used to be for predatory scum like these to hide on the Internet. She had spent the previous week in court, using the weekend for catching up on paperwork and team meetings at Central. The end was in sight, the prosecution going well, with most thinking they’d have a verdict by the end of next week. When her part was finished, further legalities would be handed over to the Australian Federal Police and the appropriate international authorities, and then she would commence three weeks of well-deserved leave.

Her desk was even more of a mess than usual. It looked like Izzy had been playing here again despite its out-of-bounds zoning. While she waited for her computer to boot up she attempted to create some order in the chaos, sliding Lego pieces into their box, picking up scattered crayons and textas. At least Izzy had had the foresight to protect the desk with a newspaper, Stevie thought, until she saw the page it was open at—the personal columns. Various lurid pleas and advertisements had been singled out and decorated with rainbow borders, love hearts and stars. Shit. She could only hope Izzy hadn’t been able to read any of it. Imagine if she’d planned on taking this artwork to school for show and tell?

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She snatched the paper from her desk and crushed it into a tight ball. Christ, she thought, I’m officer in charge of the cyber predator team and I can’t even keep this junk out of my own home, away from my own daughter. Although this wasn’t quite what she dealt with at work, the core elements were still the same, it was all a question of exploitation. Sometimes she wondered what chance in hell they had in stemming this flood.

She looked at the picture of Izzy on the mantelpiece. It was her first day at school, her school dress stiff and new. The wide, gap-toothed smile seemed to say, look at me, I’m about to take over the world. Like her dad before his health scare, she thought she was ten feet tall and bullet-proof. Stevie saw a row of little faces in the photo album of her mind, exploited little boys and girls she’d come across during the course of her career, many who would have once been like Izzy. Her mind went to the abandoned Pavel baby—God, how could she protect them all?

She took a swig of beer and tried to calm down. The day had left her overwrought. Things weren’t all doom and gloom, she tried to console herself; her team in the cyber predator unit had proved that the system could work.

She scrolled through her mail and found the memo telling her what time she was expected in court tomorrow. It looked like it was to be an all day session, which meant nearly ten hours of skirt-suit and heels.
Shit.

Luke Fowler’s face filled the TV screen in their bedroom, pleading to the public for information regarding the whereabouts of Delia and Jon Pavel. The woman at the deli thought they sounded Russian: close—the newsreader said they were Romanian. Photos of the couple were broadcast along with their car rego and a picture of a green Jaguar similar to the one missing from their garage.

Earlier, between bites of lasagne—Monty had been right, it was one of the best she’d ever tasted—Stevie had recounted the details of her afternoon, including her brief imprisonment in the upstairs bedroom.

‘Good old Blinky Bill, coming to the rescue,’ Monty said again, killing the TV with the remote and plunging them into darkness.

She wriggled further into the covers; the nights were still chilly despite the warmer days. ‘Yeah, well he may have got me out of there, but he didn’t do anything to help when I had the blow-up with Fowler.’

‘How could he? You were blatantly out of line.’

Stevie snorted. ‘I thought you at least would support me. Fowler seems to think he can get me sacked for tampering with a crime scene.’

‘Bullshit, it’ll just get brushed under the carpet. You’re the hero of the hour, the flavour of the month, walking on bloody water in fact.’

Ice clinked as he drained the last of his whisky then thunked the empty glass upon his bedside table—more than a little drunk, she suspected. He shouldn’t have been drinking so close to his operation, but she couldn’t chastise him now, not when he was saying things she needed to hear. ‘There’s not much you can do wrong at the moment,’ he went on. ‘Milk it while you can, it won’t last.’ He said it with no bitterness, despite the uncertain direction of his own career.

She snuggled into his back. He was a large man who carried his weight well. She had always thought he was fit too, despite the cigarettes. Until the onset of angina last year, he had jogged along the beach most mornings. It was hard to reconcile this outwardly fit body with its inner frailties.

‘I managed to get a bit more from Trotman when Fowler finally climbed back under his rock,’ she said. ‘According to the people in the street, neither of the Pavels has been seen for four days.’

‘The baby can’t have survived alone for four days.’

‘I know that. But the date corresponds to when Jon Pavel was last seen at work and Delia was seen at the supermarket. It doesn’t necessarily mean that was when they last tended to the baby, though going by the state of him I’d say he’d been on his own for some time. ’

‘What does Jon Pavel do?’

‘Businessman.’

Monty grunted. ‘That covers a multitude of sins.’

‘Runs a couple of restaurants in West Perth and a nightclub in Fremantle.’

The phone by their bed rang. Monty swore. Stevie groped for the light and leaned over him to answer it.

With no preamble, Skye gave her a rundown on baby Pavel’s condition. She said he was improving and the doctors were cautiously optimistic he’d get through the physical ordeal with no lingering ill effects. ‘But what about his mental condition?’ Skye said with a hitch in her voice. ‘That’s what I want to know. Can you imagine the psychological effect this will have on him? I mean, the poor kid was obviously adopted in the first place, so who knows what hell he’s already been through?’

Stevie sat up in bed. ‘Adopted? Who told you that?’

‘I don’t need to be told, it’s obvious. I noticed it straight off, didn’t you? The kid’s Asian.’

Stevie paused and thought back to their discovery. Yes, come to think of it, she had noticed Asian features under the dirt and grime. But as she hadn’t known anything about the child’s parents at the time, she hadn’t given the matter much thought. The penny should have dropped when the deli woman mentioned that the parents were eastern European. She chided herself—she was usually more on the ball than this. Just as well this wasn’t her case, that her leave was almost due. Monty, the cyber-predator case, the house; the stressors were adding up. She was more tired than she’d thought.

With her hand over the receiver, she told Monty Skye’s news. He lay on his back with his hands under his head and stared at the ceiling, his face mirroring her own perplexed look.

Stevie listened to Skye a while longer and tried to reassure her that everything was being done to locate the baby’s parents. ‘She’s not handling this very well,’ she said to Monty when she finally extracted herself from the phone. ‘This baby business has really upset her, she’s a sensitive soul.’

Monty turned and raised an eyebrow as if to say: and you’re not?

‘At least I can detach,’ she said, flipping the light off again. Despite almost half an hour under the hot shower, she could still detect the sour odour of the baby on her skin. In some ways, she reflected, its associations made it worse than the scent of decay.