‘Your enthusiasm overwhelms me,’ Danny said, immediately pleased with the way the words had come out, ‘Your mum in?’
‘Gone to see Gran.’
Danny jerked his head toward the bedroom. ‘You on?’
‘Suppose so.’
She was like a damp rag. She just lay there, saying things like, ‘Ow, that hurt,’ or not saying anything at all.
‘Got your period?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fair enough. But you could wank me, suck me off. Doesn’t mean we have to stop.’
‘I don’t feel right.’
Danny opened his mouth to complain, then flopped onto his back next to her magnanimously, and eyed her room: a poster of Hutchence, screaming into a microphone; Lady Di; a cat with huge, soulful eyes; scarves hanging from her dressing-table mirror; an impression of smudged make-up on the mirror.
‘Where’s the backpack?’
He’d seen her hang it on the back of her door yesterday.
She burst into tears. ‘That fucking cow.’
‘Who?’
‘Mum.’
‘Why?’
‘She let it get stolen, that’s why.’
‘Stolen? I only gave it to you yesterday.’
‘This lady come round with a kid. Said she was going to bless the house. Mum lets her in, the stupid cow, and when her back’s turned they nick her purse, the cordless phone, Dad’s watch, stuff like that. I didn’t realise till later they’d also nicked the bag. Dan, I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you.’
That bag’s getting around, Danny thought. Maybe I can pick something else up for Megan, this job Jolic’s got lined up for us.
‘Don’t hit me, please.’
He stared at her. ‘Hitcha? What do you take me for?’
‘You’d have a right,’ Megan said, ‘that beautiful bag.’
The daily postal deliveries were arriving later and later in the lead-up to Christmas. Jolic wasn’t even sure that the package would arrive before the weekend. But it was there, waiting for him in his letterbox when he came back from the pub at five o’clock. He walked through knee-high weeds to his backyard, punching a mobile phone number into his own mobile. ‘The stuff arrived.’
‘You can mock up a floor plan from it?’
‘No problem.’
‘The owners are going away after Christmas, two weeks in Bali, so you won’t be obliged to bash anyone this time.’
‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘You’re a funny woman.’
‘Take only the stuff on the list. If there’s any spare cash lying around, it’s yours, but don’t get greedy. Don’t stay too long and get caught, in other words.’
‘If I go down, you go down with me.’
‘I’ll ignore that. Is Danny all right on this?’
‘I can handle Danny. He does what I tell him.’
‘As long as he stays in the dark.’
Jolic laughed. ‘Danny’s always in the dark, O Beautiful One.’
‘How come whenever you say something that’s the least bit nice about me, it’s in a mocking voice?’
Jolic registered the shift in her tone. He knew how to mend the situation. Working a shy, tentative note into his own voice, he said, ‘I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at me, if you want to know, in case you think I’m coming on too strong, you know, saying things you don’t want to hear.’
Phew.
He heard her voice shift again. ‘Boyd, I’m not so hard that I don’t want a touch of romance now and then.’
Challis arrived home at seven. He was due at Tessa Kane’s house at seven-thirty, and he almost called to say he wouldn’t be coming. He didn’t want to rush but to sit and watch the sun go down with a glass of red. Read a book. Microwave something from the freezer. Let the day ebb, in other words, his cares dropping away as the light faded in the west.
But he hadn’t had a dinner date-if this could be called a dinner date-for some time. His invitations to dine with police colleagues had declined in the past six years. Part of it was his single status. An unattached person at the dinner table was a reproach to coupledom. And Challis wondered if those husbands and wives saw him as jinxed, an unhappy ghost or shell of a man.
He stripped and stepped into the shower. There was a shower head over his bath, but Challis preferred the shower cubicle inside his back door, next to the laundry. He thanked the foresight of the people who’d built the house. He liked being able to step in from an hour’s gardening or walking and dump his clothes in the basket and step into a box of steaming air and water.
He worked shampoo into his hair and left it there while he soaped his body. Slowly the bucket at his feet filled with sudsy water.
Then there was no water hitting his head and shoulders and he hadn’t rinsed the shampoo away and he knew that the electric water pump above the underground tank would be screaming, sucking air.
Challis burst naked through his back door and switched off the pump. He needed to rinse his hair. He filled a saucepan with water from the corrugated iron tank attached to his garage and poured it over his head. It was like ice. He did it again, then worried that he was being wasteful. The third time he tried to stick his head in the saucepan and swish the water through his hair. He looked at the result. The water was mildly soapy. He poured it at the base of an old and possibly dying lemon tree. He wasn’t convinced that his hair was free of shampoo.
Finally he dressed, dragged a comb across his itchy scalp and went back outside. Clearly he’d need to buy water, but no carrier would come at this hour and possibly not for several days, if there was a rush on in the district. Challis found three lengths of hose in his garage and joined them together. He attached one end to the tap at the bottom of the iron tank, fed the other into the overflow of his underground tank, and turned on the tap. He’d let the water drain over several hours. He reminded himself to prime the pump.
The phone was ringing inside.
‘Hal, it’s almost eight thirty.’
She was trying not to sound hurt or let down. Challis glanced at his watch: eight fifteen. ‘Sorry, Tess. A small emergency here.’
‘Police wives must feel like this. Hal, you hadn’t forgotten?’
‘Coming now.’
He left, feeling scummed and scaly, and more jittery than at any time he could remember in his puzzling life.
John Tankard and Pam Murphy were assigned to the night shift for the Christmas weekend, routine patrol, Tankard behind the wheel of the divisional van for a change, figuring that driving would keep his mind off the pain in his lower back. He found the scratchy murmurs of the police band comforting.
They rode around in silence, lit greenly by the instrument panel. Nine p.m.. Ten. Eleven.
Then Murph the Surf had to break in. ‘Not much happening.’
‘Wait till New Year’s Eve. On for young and old, parties all over the joint.’
