by Rhyll Biest
‘I’m good, everything’s good, thanks.’ Sharon’s smile was bright but haunted. ‘I just wondered whether you’d made any more gloves or booties for us?’
‘Gloves or booties?’ Kat raised an eyebrow.
Sharon flashed her a tight smile. ‘I taught Luka how to knit and now he makes mittens and booties for koalas affected by bushfire, as well as pouches for orphaned wombats, joeys, bandicoots, gliders and possums.’
The tops of Luka’s ears turned pink.
‘Wow, aren’t you worried someone will take your man card away, Belovuk?’ Kat smirked.
‘It’s for a very worthy cause.’ Sharon’s pigtails quivered with indignation.
The cause being you getting into his police pants. Kat kept her mouth shut to keep the bitchiness escaping. It was none of her business, after all, who was shagging who. None whatsoever.
When their meals arrived, Kat studied hers like there might be a pop quiz about it the next day.
‘Ah, okay, our food’s just arrived, how about we talk about this some other time, Shaz?’
Miffed, Sharon glanced at Kat, her eyeliner promising revenge. ‘Of course.’ She bent to kiss Luka’s cheek before clomping away on high heels.
***
Well, that was unfortunate, now he’d have to steer the conversation back to de-escalation training.
The new girl looked unfazed by the interruption as she applied herself to her schnitzel. Such a self-possessed creature.
As Sharon retreated, Luka scanned the room for Daryl Hicks—or Grinder, as he was known to his fellow bikers and most locals. The knowledge that Grinder and his ginger mullet had been involved in Mark Fairly’s murder, even if he hadn’t done the shooting himself, bubbled away deep in Luka’s chest.
The man was a human canker and his presence in the same room as the new girl made Luka’s hackles stand all the way on end. Wherever Grinder and his merry band of bikers plied their ice trade, bodies were sure to follow. But it was difficult to pin anything on them, and with the charges that did stick, it was always someone else who did the time, never Grinder.
Fucking Grinder.
Plenty of fantasies of throwing the man in a cell and beating the snot out of him had surfaced since Mark’s murder but Luka wasn’t stupid enough to act on any of them, even if it was a jab to the throat every time he saw the man walking around free.
Justice would come for the man. Whether in the form of a rival, an unhappy business partner or a set of bracelets, it would come.
Luka hoped he’d get to see it when it did.
But his job for now was to protect Walgarra’s citizens from Grinder, including the new inspector. He had to keep her close enough to protect her which was no hardship from his point of view. She still seemed wary of him, though, and there’d been that bad moment when her drink had spilled on the table and it had looked like a blood pool. His body and brain had buzzed with alarm, like he was about to choke out.
Pick something else to think about.
‘So, how was your first day on the job? Besides the fact you survived it.’ It must have been a long day, although not as wearing as some because her uniform didn’t appear to be smeared with any organic matter. He occasionally judged his own shifts by such standards.
She shrugged. ‘Okay.’
The tough girl act. He liked it. Strength as a show of power, a mask to cover inner doubt. Despite her size and sweet face, he sensed she had claws—no, make that a set of wire cutters and a chainsaw. There was so much more to this girl than what presented on the surface, her copper hair pulled tight into a plait, her face sharp and eyes alert despite her long day.
Most women were intimidated by him but not this one. That, along with the way she smelled, the graceful line of her neck and the abundance of secrets in her eyes, made him pay attention, made him feel hungry and playful at once. ‘Perhaps I don’t need to worry about your training wheels, after all.’
A slow, sly smile escaped her. Full of secrets that begged him to unbutton them, along with her unflattering uniform, and find out what lay beneath.
‘Settling in, okay?’ He doubted it since she was sitting next to him drinking diet soda in a dive of a tavern, adding all sorts of class she wasn’t even aware of.
‘I’ll feel more settled once my furniture arrives.’
He raised his brows. ‘What happened? Stuff up with the movers?’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ She flexed her neck as though she had a crick in it and he pictured himself massaging it for her, working his fingers deep to unknot the tension. Desire coiled in the pit of his solar plexus. ‘What did you sleep on?’
‘The floor, though I was lucky enough to have a sleeping bag in my car.’
Lucky. Not many folk would use the word ‘lucky’ in connection with having to sleep on the floor. That interested him too, suggesting as it did an acquaintance with hardship. ‘I’ve got an air mattress I can loan you until your furniture arrives.’ Or you could just share my bed, if you like.
‘Thanks for the offer but the movers have promised my stuff will arrive tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Let me know if it doesn’t.’
She nodded, reluctance written all over her. A girl who didn’t like to accept help—or not from him, at least. Interesting. And refreshing. He was all too used to being viewed as a meal ticket, or—due to his size and profession—enforcer and knight errant. She seemed immune to his charms, however.
A good thing considering she was engaged. A bad thing when it came to getting her to do de-escalation training and keeping her in one piece.
Chapter 7
She hadn’t expected to sleep well atop her sleeping bag on the floor but—as she’d discovered from Belovuk’s effect on her hormones—her body lived to defy her expectations.
Awake early, she was eager to get to work, to slip into her new role once more. New home, new role, new start, new people. A shame one of them reminded her way too much of a shitty childhood she’d rather forget.
As she dressed she replayed their conversation at the tavern, the way he’d looked. There was so much at war in his face—the cold, clear intelligence of his eyes contradicted by the scar through his eyebrow. Which dominated? Brains, brawn or instinct? Not for the first time she questioned her attraction, and yet her ovaries remained adamant about it.
We want what we want, Kat.
Goddamn you, ovaries.
It didn’t matter. He’d overstepped several boundaries by telling her what she should and shouldn’t do, pulling that ‘white knight’ bullshit with his constant warnings. Warnings which didn’t offer any constructive advice on how best to protect herself, which made her doubt the value of the de-escalation training he’d mentioned, and which made her doubt herself.
She loathed self-doubt.
‘Screw you, Serpico,’ she muttered and started her car.
The lack of stop signs and traffic lights made it a fast trip to Evert’s house, as did the almost complete absence of traffic—seven in the morning apparently too outrageous a time for most of the town to be up.
She glanced at her empty water bottle. No prizes for guessing what she wished she’d brought with her. Wishes were her thing lately, wishing that her furniture would arrive, that she’d picked an easier town to work in—one with a lower crime rate and less of a substance-abuse vibe, and one without an oversized cop who loved to put the wind up her. Not that Belovuk could help the physique he’d been born with. No, the stupid attraction she felt was all down to her and a dumb longing for something she couldn’t even identify.
A fact that made her want to punch her empty water bottle. Except that her metacarpal bones were dear to her and she would never risk a bar-room fracture.
She pulled up at Evert’s small, square house and yanked her seatbelt off, impatient with it and herself. ‘Stop being a dickhead and do your job.’
Evert appeared at the first toot of her horn, pulling the front door to his squat, single-storey house closed behind
him.
As they met at his car, she nodded at the wellingtons he clutched. ‘Do you know something about today’s schedule I don’t?’
He laughed. ‘I like the way your suspicious mind works but no, I just finally gave them a clean, that’s all.’
‘So, whose life are we fucking up today?’
That drew a smile from him, one that made her wonder what he’d looked like before he’d earned himself a face full of scars. She’d bet when he was younger he’d had the sort of looks that, in combination with his gift of the gab, had melted many a pair of knickers.
Though not Stacey’s for some reason.
‘I’ll take you to the government housing apartments, we spend a fair bit of time there.’
‘How come?’
He tossed the boots in the back of his car. ‘Aside from being low-income earners, quite a few of the pet owners there have mental health problems, drug and substance abuse issues, or a history of domestic violence in combination with learning and reading difficulties. They need their pets but they don’t always know how to care for them so I like to help them to do the best they can.’
‘They’re just a bit fucked up, in other words.’
Evert glanced at her. ‘Exactly, but still worth helping as much as anyone else. A bit of knowledge goes a long way. They want to do the right thing, they just need a bit of help to do it. That’s not always the case.’
Doubt stitched her lips together as she joined him in the car. What could she say that wouldn’t reveal how far out of her depth she was? How was she, with her warped middle-class upbringing, going to relate to the chronically poor and addicts?
She glanced at Evert. She’d have to rely on him, look to how he worked with them. Relying on others wasn’t something she was used to doing, and it left her feeling stripped, naked as a peeled prawn. ‘What should I expect?’
Evert took a left turn. ‘Don’t think of them as bad people but some have a higher likelihood of experiencing the emotional states—distress or high emotional arousal—that lead to acts of aggression or violence. Many also have inappropriate skills for dealing with feelings of frustration, fear and anxiety, and a good number have substance-abuse disorders, some with a sprinkling of mental disorder on top.’
Some sprinkling, Kat preferred nuts. ‘So what’s the best way to approach them?’
‘Fairly and with respect. One of the strongest triggers for physical violence is the perception of being treated unfairly or without respect.’
She would have reviewed her parents’ violent episodes to test that theory if the thought didn’t make her want to throw up. ‘Anything else?’
‘They’ll be pretty honest with you and say things like ‘I got my Centrelink payment but I blew it on ice and now my dog’s sick’.’
Okay, that wasn’t so bad, she could deal with that. ‘I read in the shelter manual that Centrelink customers can use a payment plan to pay the shelter for treatment of their pets.’
He nodded. ‘It costs the shelter delayed income for services but if we didn’t do it we’d never get to see these animals or their owners, so it’s a good thing. By the way …’
Uh-oh, that sounded ominous. ‘Yes?’
‘I couldn’t help noticing that you and Luka looked pretty cosy together last night. Is love blossoming?’
She almost laughed. They’d been on the verge of fisticuffs. ‘I was going to say the same thing to you.’
‘What?’
‘You and Stacey.’
His expression resembled that of a student she’d busted with ten kilos of pork products in his suitcase. ‘No, no. I would never—’
‘Fish off the company jetty?’
‘That’s right because we work together and you don’t want to, ah …’
‘Dip your pen in the company ink?’
‘No, it’s never a good idea to—’
‘Buy from the company catalogue?’
‘Yeah, and that’s enough of that.’
She smothered a smile. Talk about a man in denial. ‘So, who are we visiting at the government housing place?’
‘I’ll check my job sheet but I’m pretty sure there are two visits. Our first stop is a guy with a dog losing its hair.’
‘Did he ask for help?’
‘Nah, one of his neighbours dobbed him in, someone with a beef wanting to get even. But that’s okay, we’ll focus on the dog and ignore the other shit.’
Kat tightened her ponytail. They might ignore it but would the owner? Them showing up uninvited would probably go down like a warm cup of sick. ‘Okay. And the second visit?’
Evert turned down a street where it had recently snowed litter. She eyed the fluttering footpath, advertising flyers and food packaging dancing lazily over the concrete and sprouting weeds. A street sign leaned at a drunken angle, its original message erased by graffiti. They could have been in a different country. Welcome to the ghetto …
‘The second visit won’t be half as pleasant.’
The first one hadn’t sounded pleasant. ‘Why not?’
‘We get a call from this lady probably once a month. When we visit she’s always black and blue and the dog has taken a beating as well.’
An old, dark anger wiggled inside her like a rotten tooth. ‘Can’t you do something about it?’
‘It’d be tricky. I doubt she’d want to identify the guy responsible and it may not even be the same one each time.’
That sounded like so much fun. Not. ‘Is she the one who calls or do her neighbours?’
‘She does, but between the time she calls and the time we visit she can sometimes have a change of heart—or an ingestion of alcohol—and decide she doesn’t want us there.’
‘That sounds … difficult.’ And annoying as shit. And bad news for the dog.
Evert glanced at her. ‘You have to remember that quite a few residents here have a low frustration tolerance. They’ll get easily frustrated and angry, or they get high and say shit they don’t mean. So it’ll be up to you to keep your cool and contact them again later to deal with them when they’re not in such an emotional state. Focus on building a relationship of trust.’
Her head twisted as she stared at a burned-out car body. ‘A relationship of trust. Got it.’
‘I know it sounds like being a counsellor or something but sometimes that’s pretty close to what we are. Counselling people on how not to fuck up their pet’s lives.’ He pulled into a dusty parking lot.
Hell, she could use someone to counsel her on how not to fuck up her life.
‘Welcome to Walgarra Heights.’
She booty bumped the car door shut and stared at six stories of reinforced concrete, steel and shame.
A gust of wind filled the sails of several empty plastic shopping bags and they floated past, ghostlike, as she followed Evert.
He paused. ‘Ready?’
Nope, not ever. ‘Ladies first.’ She stood aside and gestured towards the entryway of the first block of flats with an exaggerated flourish of her hand.
He sashayed by with an exaggerated hip wiggle that made her smile, that smile fading as he disappeared inside the thick walls. She followed on legs stiff with unwillingness.
Even with Evert providing a reassuring buffer, the walls crowded in, sucked inches from her height, tested her resolve.
The thick cement walls opened into a courtyard where she climbed an exterior concrete stairwell behind Evert. The corners of her eyes registered a curtain twitch here and there. Residents sitting on their balconies watching them between swigs from bottles.
Kat stepped gingerly around broken glass, vomit and discarded disposable diapers spilling their smelly contents. A grim list of communicable diseases spread through contact with faeces skipped through her head: Campylobacter infection, cryptosporidium infection, giardia infection, hepatitis A, viral meningitis, rotavirus infection, salmonella infection, shigella infection and viral gastroenteritis.
The balcony smelled like piss.
Jesus
.
What a fucking place to live.
Evert stopped before a door and checked his job sheet. ‘Okay, so this is the one about the dog missing hair. Could be a bad burn, or—more likely—a bad case of mange. We’ll ask some questions about what kind of care or treatment he’s sought for the dog, if any.’
A half-hearted bark behind the door suggested they had the right address.
She nodded as Evert rapped on the door. After a minute the door eased open a crack and a sallow-skinned middle-aged man with prominent bones appeared, his shirtless chest concave.
From his doped-out expression Kat had no problem guessing what he’d try to smuggle in his luggage. Or elsewhere.
‘Whaddya want?’ The man scratched his bare chest.
‘Hi, I’m Inspector Nick Evert from the RSPCA, and this is Inspector Kat Daily. I’m here to talk to you about your dog.’
Silence before the door opened wider and the nose of a blonde Labrador pushed through.
The man squinted, rubbed his sleepy face. ‘What about my dog?’
His teeth were all fucked up, grey. Was she seeing her first case of meth mouth?
Evert squinted at the dog. ‘Does your dog have a problem with hair loss?’
The man looked down at the mischievous face thrust fully through the open door. ‘She’s okay.’
Evert crouched down, an invitation the dog couldn’t refuse. She pushed through the open door and rushed to lick his face.
The Labrador looked healthy to Kat. Perhaps this was another case of one neighbour dobbing in another, making a false report to the RSPCA as some form of payback.
‘Is this your only dog?’ Evert asked.
The man shook his head.
Ahhhh. Kat couldn’t believe he kept one Labrador in an apartment, let alone two.
Evert gave the dog a final pat. ‘Could we see the other one, please?’
‘The other what?’
Kat exchanged glances with Evert.
‘The other dog.’
‘I don’t know …’ The man blinked, rubbed his eyes.
‘It’ll only take a second.’
‘Alright.’ A shuffling sound and the door opened fully.
The blonde Labrador took full advantage, bounding out into the hallway, her body wriggling and twisting.