Felicity Young - Take Out

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.

Monty said, ‘You’ve always said Skye was a bit, what was it, unbalanced?’

‘No, not unbalanced, just highly strung and with a keen sense of moral justice.’

‘Sounds like someone else I know.’

She didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I get the feeling Luke Fowler and Skye know each other. She certainly doesn’t seem to have much faith in his abilities. There’s some history there, I’m sure of it. He strikes me as a bully—he’d better not be giving her a hard time over this.’

‘I’ve come across him once or twice; did a course with him in Adelaide. He seemed okay to me.’

‘He might be okay to prop up a bar with after a day of lectures, but you’ve never had to actually work with him.’

‘True. He must have seriously pissed off someone to land Peppy Grove. Never mind, if it does turn out there’s a homicide behind this case, it might end up on my desk at SCS, which means Peppy Grove can be ousted.’

‘You’re not on active duty,’ she reminded him.

‘But at least I’ll be able to find out what’s going on and you won’t have to rely on gathering information by devious means.’

The conversation faded; they lay in silence. He rolled over and she spooned into his solid back once more. His pragmatism, though sometimes an irritant, was a comfort tonight. She wondered again why it had taken her so long to agree to set up house with him, wondered how she’d ever thought she could do without him.

But then her thoughts drifted to the negative, the dialogue in her mind of ‘what ifs’ that refused to shut down. Monty’s upcoming heart procedure was a dangerous operation. The blockage was in the left anterior descending artery, the one the doctors called ‘the widow maker’. What if the operation was a failure? He could become an invalid or die under the anaesthetic; which was something he’d probably prefer, she contemplated morbidly. And they weren’t married, even though they were engaged and they lived together—would she still qualify as a widow? She wondered if she’d ever be able to revert back to the old Stevie, the one who didn’t need him or any other man in her life. The thought of being without Monty grabbed hold of her and shook her like a pitbull.

His muscles began to relax, his breathing to deepen. She breathed with him. Images of neglected babies, lonely old women, letters of dismissal and flatlining heart monitors faded. Finally she began to drift off.

Then Monty started awake with a sharp intake of breath. ‘Stevie, I’m so scared,’ he said. (Image 5.1)

Imgae 5.1

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER SIX

Like any member of the public, Stevie followed the Pavel case through newspaper articles and the TV news, bolstered by the occasional reports from Skye on the baby’s condition. After an official complaint from Fowler, Inspector Veitch—her boss at Sex Crimes—told her in no uncertain terms to lay off, and, as Monty had predicted, disciplinary action was taken no further. As Stevie’s own cases and the courtroom finale were dominating her every working hour, she backed down with little reluctance.

A couple of days had passed since their disturbing discovery and Skye’s calls became less frequent. But then Stevie received a call from Skye just as court was adjourning for lunch. The impeccable timing was soon explained by Skye’s appearance in the anteroom, phone still clamped to her ear, resplendent in full body armour: nose stud, eyebrow ring and multiple ear piercings.

Well prepared for battle, she would not take Stevie’s no for an answer. ‘Skye, I can’t, I’ve been warned off.’

‘C’mon, girlfriend, I’ll buy you lunch,’ Skye said, linking her arm through Stevie’s.

Stevie cringed at the loudness of her friend’s voice amongst the muffled whisperings of those leaving the court. ‘Skye, what the hell are you doing here?’ she shot back in a stage whisper.