Felicity Young - Take Out

‘Are you okay?’ he asked stiffly.

Stevie sniffed, swiped her eyes with a table napkin. ‘Do I look it?’

Frowning, he picked up the phone and glanced at the screen. ‘From Skye?’

‘Have a listen,’ Stevie said, lifting her glass and swallowing several mouthfuls of beer.

He listened, unmoving, then put the phone back on the table. The sparkling water in his glass ticked through the silence between them.

‘She said she thought there was a connection between Ralph Hardegan and the Pavels,’ he said at last.

Stevie kept her eyes on her glass of beer. ‘And Mrs Hardegan thinks she was murdered.’

There was another long silence as they considered Skye’s last words, both floating in their own private bubbles of misery. Everyone else in the tavern seemed to be laughing and flirting, roaring at the soccer game, getting on with having a bloody good time. Someone put a coin in the jukebox. The noise hammered at her ears and sank into her chest.

‘I thought the old lady was talking crap,’ Fowler shouted above the racket. ‘But I’m not so sure now—she might be right.’

Stevie pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I can’t think in here. Come outside.’ He followed her into the street where she turned and asked abruptly. ‘You still on the Pavel case?’

Fowler leaned into the brick wall of the tavern as if he needed it to stay upright. ‘Only helping out now. When the pathologist IDed the body and confirmed that it belonged to Delia Pavel, I handed the case over to the Serious Crime Squad. The officer in charge is an acting DI called Angus Wong; he seems very efficient. I’ve been delegated some tasks. ’

Stevie ignored the bitterness of his words; she had enough problems of her own without worrying about Fowler’s shattered career and flimsy ego, although she did agree with his assessment of Angus’s efficiency. ‘He’s Monty’s right hand man, “acting up” while Monty’s on sick leave.’ She paused, rested her hands in the back pocket of her jeans and considered the possibilities. ‘What tasks have you been given?’

‘Mainly reinterviewing the neighbours and the people Jon Pavel worked with. I think it’s worth mentioning the disappearance of Ralph Hardegan to Wong, even though the man might just be away on business. He was interviewed when Pavel first disappeared, but not by me. I don’t think he was able to shed any light on it. I’ll see if I can get clearance for an APB and a nationwide search. We need to talk to him again.’

Stevie nibbled at her bottom lip; maybe it was time to put aside some pride. Through the closed tavern door she heard The Panics singing ‘Don’t Fight It’—maybe they had a point.

‘Need a hand with these tasks?’ she asked, keeping her gaze fixed on the dirty slabs of the pavement.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Fowler pull away from the wall and straighten. He looked at her suspiciously, as if she must have another agenda, as if maybe she’d organised this whole thing for the sole purpose of spying on him—some people, Jesus.

‘You’re on leave,’ he said.

‘Mont’s officer in charge of the SCS, I know the guys there well—used to work with them.’

‘Going to pull some strings?’

Stevie gave a non-committal shrug.

He relaxed slightly and reached inside his jacket pocket. ‘Well, you’re not the only one with contacts. There’s got to be some perks to the job,’ he muttered as he punched numbers into his phone.

Stevie listened as he spoke to a mate in the Major Crash Investigation Squad, one finger in his ear to lessen the din from the tavern. When the phone was back in his pocket he pointed in the direction of their parked cars at the back of the building. ‘C’mon, I’ve made an appointment to see someone about this.’

It occurred to Stevie that Fowler was as determined to get to the bottom of Skye’s death as she was. Like her, he seemed to believe what Mrs Hardegan had said about Skye being murdered. As she followed him along the pavement to their cars, she recalled what else the old lady had said. In love with him, stupid boy— maybe Mrs Hardegan had been right about that too. (Image 11.1)

Image 11.1

CHAPTER TWELVE

Senior Constable Tony Pruitt met them outside the locked yard. The blue police overalls with the single stripe on the shoulder did nothing to complement his physique. Short, fat and balding, he looked about ten years older than he probably was. Perhaps this is what working in the MCIS did to a person, Stevie reflected. God only knew it was a joyless branch of The Job.

Pruitt unlocked the gate and she and Fowler followed him into the yard, threading their way through the morgue of wrecked cars: countless, inanimate reminders of death. Over the years, she’d seen her share of grisly and unusual forms of death, and more murder investigations than she cared to count. But there was something about the very randomness of death through car accident that made her bones turn to jelly. You might be the safest driver in the world, but if fate puts you on the same stretch of road as someone over the limit, or whacked out, or asleep at the wheel, or simply not concentrating, there’s not one single bloody thing you can do about it. And most people faced these risks on a daily basis without giving the matter a second thought.

If she were Pruitt, she probably wouldn’t drive at all.

‘The wrecks in here have all involved fatalities,’ Pruitt explained in a tired voice, the oily gravel crunching under their feet as they walked. The spring sun had quite a kick today, a taste of the coming summer. Stevie peeled off her denim jacket and slung it across her shoulder.

‘We conduct our investigations on behalf of state or district coroners,’ Pruitt went on. ‘And keep the wrecks until the investigations are finalised and the cause of death determined. Once we’re finished with them, they’re usually released for scrap.’

They reached Skye’s crumpled Hyundai lying next to a burned out Lamborghini. The strip of cartoon graphics on the side panel of the small white car stood out jolly and bright from the twisted metal surrounding it. Stevie swallowed hard, reading the Silver Chain logo: ‘Every minute, every hour, every day.’ Not any more, she thought, not for Skye.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pruitt said awkwardly, looking from one to the other of them. ‘She was a friend, yeah?’

Stevie nodded. Someone had tied a large white label to the crumpled bumper and it reminded her of a toe tag.

Fowler put on his mirrored sunglasses, not only to protect his eyes from the glare of metal, Stevie suspected. ‘What happened, Tone?’ he asked.

‘She was driving fast, but the speed, according to the intermittent skid marks, was pretty erratic. It was a dark night, but the road was dry. According to the truck driver, one minute her lights were on the correct side of the road, the next they were heading straight for him.’

Stevie noticed then that the roof of the car was missing, sliced through like the top of a boiled egg.

Oh, Christ, no, not that. She felt herself begin to sway.

Pruitt put his hand out to steady her. ‘It would have been very quick,’ he said softly.

Fowler kept his face like a mask. ‘Any other witnesses?’

‘The truck driver did see another pair of headlights, but the other car didn’t stop,’ Pruitt said. ‘We’ve put out a media bulletin with no luck so far.’ The Senior Constable regarded them through brown, hound-dog eyes. ‘Let’s get out of the sun, have a cuppa. I’ve got some other things to show...’