Take Out (3 page)

As she stepped out of the front garden gate, a small colourful object caught her eye. She squatted down to take a closer look and found a silk-covered button. Making a mental note of its location she reminded herself to point it out to the police when they arrived.

It had been about fifteen minutes since her call and there was no sign of them yet. A dark slit appeared in the venetians of the house next door. Perhaps Mrs Hardegan was anxiously waiting for the police too? Skye had asked her to check up on the old lady—surely a quick word wouldn’t do any harm?

Rows of peppermint trees bordered the wide street, filling the air with a minty odour cut through by the tang of the sea to the west. Mrs Hardegan’s was one of the few untouched houses left in the area, most having been extensively renovated or knocked down and replaced by modern concrete monoliths and elegant reproductions such as the Pavels’. Her Californian bungalow was characteristically squat with tapered columns supporting a heavy front veranda, and a gabled roof with winking leadlight windows. Stevie detected the smell of camphor before the front door was even opened.

‘Where have you been, boy?’ the old woman demanded. She wore a simple linen dress enlivened with screen-printed green fish and secured with a tight leather belt. She stood ramrod straight, her bright, level eyes fixed unwaveringly upon Stevie. Stevie may have been wearing workman’s overalls, but she didn’t think her gender was that ambiguous. She began to explain. ‘Mrs Hardegan? I–’

‘We’ve been waiting here for days. What’s wrong with the smudgin’ fullets these days, why so long?’

It took a moment for Stevie to realise the woman’s peculiar speech must be the result of the stroke Skye had mentioned. It might also explain why she’d been unable to call the police herself, getting her son and Skye to do it for her.

‘I’m a friend of Skye’s, Mrs Hardegan.’ Stevie consciously slowed down her usual rapid-fire speech. ‘She asked me to look into the Pavels’ house for you. She said you hadn’t seen them for a while and were worried about them. I am with the police, but not from Peppermint Grove. The Peppy Grove police are on their way.’

‘A lovely boy, but the others are useless, quite useless. You’d better come in, have a cup of tea and tell us what’s going on.’ Despite the oddness of her speech, she had the cultured pronunciation of another era, almost English but not quite. Newsreel ABC.

Mrs Hardegan turned and clasped one of the bookcases in the dark hallway. As she eased herself down the passageway, Stevie noticed one leg lagging slightly behind the other. Seeing no sign of a Zimmer frame or stick Stevie instinctively reached for the woman’s elbow, but the well-intentioned gesture was shrugged away with an impatient scowl. On the wall above a bookcase, a black and white photo of a young Mrs Hardegan caught Stevie’s eye; the hooked nose was unmistakable. She was dressed in the uniform of a wartime RAN nurse—it figured.

Mrs Hardegan led Stevie past several closed doors to a lighter, self-contained room with kitchenette at the back of the house, where it appeared she did most of her living. Recycling was sorted and stacked in tidy piles on one of the benches. The surfaces of the kitchenette were clean; soapsuds popped on the drying plastic dishes spread across the draining board. The single bed in the corner of the room was made after a fashion, the lumps disguised by an intricately embroidered cotton counterpane. Stevie found herself wondering how long it had taken the old lady to make the bed, how frustrating the disability must be to someone who probably required everything around her to be shipshape. Every free surface of the room was crowded with various arts, crafts and sewing paraphernalia: crushed tubes of fabric paint, bottles of varnish, glue, jars of bristling paintbrushes. A wooden contraption, like an old printing press, stood near one of the windows. It would be used for screen-printing, Stevie guessed. Several bright cushions of the same fish design as the old lady’s dress were arranged in a precise line down one side of the bed.

An open door led into a bathroom. Stevie glimpsed a toilet and railed bath before Mrs Hardegan moved with surprising speed to close it.

‘Bloody Japs!’
The mechanical voice made Stevie whirl towards the source, a parrot, hanging in a dome-shaped cage from a ceiling beam toward the back of the room.

‘Hello, who’s this?’ Stevie said as she approached, resisting the urge to poke a finger through the bars. The parrot stared back. It had bright black eyes and a beak similar to its owner’s—it could probably shear a finger with a single snip. Bald in places, its patchy arrangement of feathers looked as washed-out as a favourite summer shirt.

‘Captain Flint, our feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan said.

The tea was made with only a few minor mishaps—Stevie given three lumps of sugar when she asked for none—and settled by Mrs Hardegan on a tapestried footstool in front of a high-backed easy chair next to the window. One side of the Pavel residence was visible from this vantage point and the binoculars resting on a shelf nearby were no doubt used for further surveillance.

Difficulties of expression do not necessarily mean difficulties with understanding; Stevie knew that. But to be safe, she explained what she’d found at the Pavel house as slowly and as simply as she could. She cringed at the patronising sound of her own voice, so like the manner in which some people talked to her seven-year-old daughter, Izzy, but could think of no other approach. She would tread softly until she could work out the extent of the woman’s brain damage.

But the hooked nose wrinkled when Stevie described the unkempt Pavel house and the blue eyes dampened when she mentioned the abandoned baby. Some of her doubts about the old lady’s comprehension were put to rest.

‘When did you last see the Pavels, Mrs Hardegan?’ Stevie asked, speaking more naturally.

Mrs Hardegan leaned back in her easy chair, tented her fingers and looked sincerely back at Stevie. ‘About twenty years ago.’

Stevie’s raised hopes took a dive. ‘Did you know them well?’

Suddenly the elderly woman’s face twisted and she stamped her feet on the linoleum floor, the force of her anger surprising Stevie. ‘We can’t tell you—it’s all our fault!’ Tears spilled down the old lady’s cheeks.

Stevie got up from the footstool and placed a calming hand on her shoulder only to have it dashed away with a string of unintelligible words. She looked helplessly around the room, wondering what to do next. This meeting was going nowhere fast—she shouldn’t have even tried, should have trusted her instincts and not become involved at all.
Damn you, Skye.
What if she caused the old lady to have another stroke? She spied a box of tissues on a work table crammed with sewing paraphernalia. Stevie offered the box and Mrs Hardegan swiped at her eyes. ‘Can’t help it ... can’t get out. Trapped...’ she said, tapping fiercely on her temple.

Stevie hadn’t noticed the arrival of the police car earlier, and spotted it now parked outside the Pavels’ house, one door carelessly left open.

With relief she said, ‘I’d better go now...’ about to add a consoling ‘love’, she stopped herself in time. ‘The
proper
police are here and they’ll probably need to talk to you. If talking is hard, perhaps you could write down what you remember about the Pavels for them?’

Mrs Hardegan shook her head.

‘Never mind,’ Stevie said, injecting her tone with false brightness. ‘I’m sure the other neighbours will be able to help out.’

Mrs Hardegan closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep calming breath. ‘We’re sorry, better leave now. Needed to do that.’

‘Are you going to be okay?’

Mrs Hardegan nodded and reached into her sewing basket. Stuck into the padding was a row of pre-threaded needles of various shades of wool. Inspecting them in the window’s light she selected a strand of lemony green. ‘Too long,’ she muttered to herself, cutting it to size with a decisive snip of the scissors, before picking up a swathe of cross-stitch tapestry. Stevie was dismissed.

She made her way unescorted to the front door. Mrs Hardegan would be written off as a witness, even though it was obvious she knew more than she could tell. They’d have to dig into the Pavels’ history from other sources.

Wait a minute; Stevie stopped halfway down the darkened, book-lined passageway. What was she thinking? This wasn’t her problem; her problem was a can of paint she’d forgotten to put the lid on and some half-finished eaves she’d have to live with until her next day off. She looked to the west and noticed the brewing bank of grey clouds, hoping what she’d painted that morning had had a chance to dry; it looked like the weather bureau had got it right for a change.

All she could do now was have a quick word with the local cops, put the incident behind her and return to her family. (Image 2.1)

A plainclothes cop in a snappy suit and crisp white shirt leaned on the car’s bonnet, writing notes. He barely looked up when Stevie approached. ‘Hi, I’m Stephanie Hooper; I called you. The Silver Chain nurse and I found the baby.’

The cop lifted his left hand in brief acknowledgement and continued to write. ‘Detective Sergeant Luke Fowler, Peppermint Grove.’ He put a full stop at the end of his sentence, straightened and inspected her through mirrored sunglasses. ‘You’re a painter?’

‘No, I was painting my own house. Nurse Williams called and asked me to go with her to the Pavels’. The old lady next door told her there was something amiss over there.’

‘Well she’s got that right in one, no sign of the Pavels at all—but why did the nurse call you?’

‘The old lady was getting agitated. She has speech problems and had already asked her son and the nurse to call in her suspicions to the police, but apparently the matter wasn’t followed through.’ Stevie made sure to keep her tone neutral; she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. ‘Nurse Williams decided to call me because we’ve worked together before. I’m with Central...’

Fowler cut her off. ‘That wouldn’t be
Skye
Williams, would it?’

‘That’s right.’

Fowler ran his hand over his buzz cut as if to say, Jesus, that’s all I need.

Stevie let the matter slide. ‘Skye went to the hospital with the baby. Do you want me to ring her for you?’

‘No, I’ll get to her later,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’ll do for now.’

‘I might call her anyway.’ Stevie delved into her overall pocket for her phone. ‘I’d like to know how the baby is. He was badly dehydrated when we found him.’

He pushed her hand away before she could reach the phone. ‘Leave it to the police please, ma’am; we’ll handle this.’

Stevie felt a sudden pulse of anger. ‘The baby’s condition should be top priority, Sergeant—you might find you have a homicide on your hands. ’

Before Fowler could retort, the uniformed officer who’d accompanied him appeared from the back of the house. ‘Looks like the pool cover’s been removed recently, Luke.’

‘That was me,’ Stevie said. ‘I thought someone might’ve been stuck under it.’

Stevie might have been able to exercise a certain amount of control, but the same couldn’t be said for Sergeant Fowler. He hissed out a breath through clamped teeth. ‘Oh, is that so? And what else have you tampered with, Ms, er—’

‘Hooper, Detective
Senior
Sergeant Hooper, Central Police.’

The detective paused. Stevie delighted in seeing the skin around his collar redden. He hitched his trousers and took off his sunglasses to get a better look at her. The blond buzz cut, the hard blue eyes and the razor-sharp scar on the cheek reminded her of someone or something she couldn’t place.

‘Did you spot the stains under the chesterfield?’ she asked holding his blazing gaze with her own.

Unaware of the mounting tension, the tall uniformed officer did a double take, gaping at her through thick-lensed glasses. ‘Stevie Hooper, what a sight for sore eyes! I’ve been following your exploits in
Newsbeat.
Congratulations, sounds like you’ve really wiped the floor with those cyber predator arseholes. I hear you’ve shacked up with Inspector McGuire—how is old Monty going these days—coping okay with your new-found fame?’

William Trotman had been a divisional colleague of Monty’s some years ago, and obviously had climbed no further up the career ladder since. Staffed by the likes of him, the tardy response of the Peppermint Grove station now came as no surprise.

At last it seemed that Stevie and Fowler were on the same wavelength and neither in the mood for idle gossip. ‘Save the chitchat, Bill,’ Fowler told him. ‘Notify the station and have a team dispatched over here asap. Then call the office and get them to phone the local hospitals, see if anyone’s been admitted matching the parents’ descriptions. The couple might have just ducked out to the shops while the baby was asleep and met with some kind of accident.’

Fowler turned back to Stevie while Trotman carried out his instructions on the car radio. The Pavel house would soon be a hotbed of police activity—though perhaps ‘soon’ was optimistic.