Felicity Young - Take Out

‘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)

Image 9.1

MONDAY

CHAPTER TEN

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)

Image 10.1

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘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.