One Heartbeat

by Bowes, K T

  “I guess the police know what they’re doing.” Hana lobbed the damp towel on the floor by the door, ready to take to the laundry before they left.

  Logan stared sadly at the unmade bed for a moment and Hana knew he didn’t want to leave either. She put her arms around him, snuggling into his chest and breathing his aftershave deep into her lungs. “Let’s stay here,” she whispered. “Nobody would notice.”

  Logan squeezed her and kissed the top of her head. “Odering would love that. If we disappeared he’d assume I killed Collins. I bet he could find a way to prove it too. He’d probably send out Bodie to arrest me and they could have a double celebration.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Hana said, chewing her lip. “How can he prove it if you didn’t do it?”

  Logan cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “They can do anything, Hana.” He dumped his backpack by the door. The room looked empty and unloved. As Hana pulled her sweater over her head and reached for her jeans, Logan grabbed her hand, forcing her to turn and look at him. “The other night,” he said and her heart sank, hoping he wouldn’t rake over her misery. “It wasn’t the best idea for you to be wandering around site in the dark on your own. We don’t know how Collins died or why. If there’s something going on, we all need to be careful not to get caught up in it.” He looked pointedly at the scar on Hana’s wrist as it peeked out of her sleeve, gritty and sore after the horse ride. Hana nodded once to show she got the message and then bent to haul her jeans over her legs. She hid her face, not wanting Logan to see her guilt, unable to tell him she hadn’t been alone.

  Driving through Hamilton city, Hana tried to think positively about her return. Her father and Elaine would be back in town by the end of the week, she could see Mark often and her relationship with Izzie was fine; it was possible Marcus simply forgot to pass on her message. As for Bodie, he needed to sort out his own head and Hana decided to be patient.

  Logan emptied the Honda while Hana fed the baby, arriving home before her on his motorbike. There wasn’t much to unload as Hana arrived at the hotel empty handed.

  Phoenix breast fed fine, but screwed up her little face and turned away from the baby rice, making a horrible whining sound. “She won’t eat it,” Hana said in frustration as Logan carried the change bag through the front door. She had a lump of rice in her hair and raised a finger to her daughter as Phoenix got ready to blow more at her. “No, Phoe! Naughty.”

  Logan ran his huge hand over the child’s fluffy head and she beamed up at him. He leaned down and blew a raspberry on her neck. “You’ve had the good stuff now, haven’t you girly? Daddy’s prize moo cow.”

  Phoenix held her arms out to her side like she was flying and tipped forward and back in the high chair. She looked like a maniac and Hana laughed at her. Logan went to the small pantry and pulled out a cardboard box of rusks. Opening the foil wrapper inside, he broke off a shard and handed it to the baby. Phoenix made a few swipes at it, missing and then seizing it in an iron grip. It went straight into the hole at the front of her face, her eyes alight and excited. It wasn’t shepherd’s pie or boil-up-beef but it was sugary and different. She gummed it for a while until both she and the high chair were sufficiently smothered.

  Logan’s neat-freak tendencies were disturbed by the mess his daughter made and he dressed her in properly fitting clothes and changed her nappy. “That rusk’s exhausted her,” he whispered to Hana, putting her straight into her cot. Hana washed the high chair and the floor underneath it. “Fold it up and lean it against the wall,” Logan said, hefting the high chair behind the table. “This place is too small to leave it out all the time.” He sighed and looked around him. “Sometimes it feels more like a holiday caravan.”

  “It’s a shoe box,” Hana said wistfully.

  A succession of sharp raps on the front door shook the whole house and made Hana jump. She opened it with a trembling hand, thinking her moment with Amanda might have arrived.

  A uniformed police officer stood on the first step, a clipboard in his hand. He nodded to Hana. “Were making house to house enquiries relating to the suspicious death last week,” he said, stopping as Hana’s gaze drifted behind him. She wasn’t listening, instead watching her son miss out her door and move on to another unit. She tuned back into the officer and stood back to let him in, not understanding why he was there. The officer wiped his feet and sat in the two-seater. Logan nodded to him and raised an eyebrow at Hana as though saying, see, I told you so.

  Hana emptied the stagnant town water from the kettle and refilled it. “Tea, or coffee?” she asked the policeman and he looked surprised.

  “Coffee, please.” He looked young, very young, a-still-got-acne-kind-of-young. He slicked his blonde hair back with a trembling hand and Logan’s eyes narrowed with interest. Hana looked out of the window and remembered a saying of her father’s, ‘When teachers and policemen look like children, you know you’ve gotten old.’

  Hana automatically made her husband coffee. He pulled out a dining chair and did his thing, turning it around and straddling it. It was an action he did it without thinking but the horrified look on the cop’s face made Hana turn away to hide her smirk. Logan rested his chin on the back of the chair and studied the man as though he was a zoo exhibit. It was intimidating and Hana saw the cop bridle under Logan’s obvious scrutiny.

  ‘Watch him!’ Acting Detective Inspector Odering told the young police officer. Even Senior Sergeant Johal refused to do this house and he was usually up for anything. The young officer tried to hide his nervousness and ignore Logan’s intense stare.

  Hana put the coffee next to her husband on the table and raised an eyebrow at him to tell him to stop. Logan smirked, knowing exactly what he was doing. Hana handed the young man his coffee and sat on the sofa with her back to the breakfast bar, sipping her tea and looking at him in expectation.

  The officer cleared his throat and pulled the clipboard straight on his knee, beginning with routine questions. Hana answered looking to Logan for help, but he seemed happy for her to recount again where they were the previous weekend, what time they left and when they returned. Hana varied the pace of her speech, getting a bizarre kick from seeing the officer speed up and slow down his frantic scribbling.

  “We’ve identified the deceased as a Mr Larry Collins, grounds keeper here,” the officer said. Logan yawned but at least had the decency to cover his mouth. “When did you last see him?”

  “Dead or alive?” Logan asked with a wicked glint in his eyes.

  The officer became excited until his notes revealed Logan as the person who found the body. “Alive,” he said, his attention focussing on him with renewed interest.

  A heavy knock on the door prevented Hana answering the question. “It’s like Piccadilly Circus!” she grumbled. “Just as we get the baby down, someone hammers on the door!”

  With a glance of annoyance at the policeman, she moved quickly to open the door, preventing the visitor rapping again. A pink-cheeked Amanda stood on the front step. “Is Logan there?” she asked boldly, intent on brazening it out in the face of defeat. “I thought you left.” Amanda sounded disappointed.

  Hana took a deep breath and stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her. “We’ve got a cop in there,” she replied, hoping Amanda took the hint. She didn’t. Still slightly on the chubby side, Amanda tossed her hair and replied, “Mine just left. I need Logan to help me with something.”

  “No!” Hana’s retort was loud enough for the men inside to hear. “Logan won’t be helping you now, not ever. Not to undo jars, taps or to warm your bed, if that’s what you hoped. And seeing as you can’t take a gentle hint, it’s best you stay away from us altogether from now on, me included.”

  Amanda’s face dropped as the full ramifications of Hana’s words sank in. Extreme loneliness had caused her imagination to run wild, fantasising that the handsome man next door might be interested. She saw the reality of her error as she stood on the cold concrete with t
he pickle jar clutched in her hand. Having lost her only decent friend and willing babysitter Amanda felt foolish, but guilt made her angry. “What’s he been saying?” she spat nastily.

  Hana had no intention of arguing. She owed it to herself to guard her marriage with her life; it was God-given and she meant to keep hold of it. “I am sorry for you, Amanda,” she said. “I know what it’s like to raise children alone, those endless empty nights of worry and inadequacy. But I never tried to mask my own pain by reaching into someone else’s marriage and smashing it to pieces.” Hana shook her head, held up her hand palm outwards to signal the discussion was over and went inside, shutting the door assertively in Amanda’s face.

  Amanda’s anger bubbled over into pure malice until she remembered Hana was meant to be looking after Millie the next day while she worked an extra half shift. Knowing Hana’s kind and forgiving nature, she wondered if she should just turn up with the baby anyway. Otherwise, she was stuck. Amanda slouched back next door feeling a range of thwarted emotions, the strongest of all being self-pity.

  Back inside the unit Hana found herself trembling. She hated confrontation and despite hoping to keep her distance from Amanda, had seen instantly it wouldn’t work. The friendship was over and Hana’s assertiveness shocked her. She clattered around in the small kitchen, aware the men waited for her. Boiling the kettle again, Hana made herself another drink to buy herself time. “Carry on without me,” she told the cop, noticing the look of panic on his face. Logan smirked like an evil cartoon king and settled his gaze on the young man again.

  Armed with another cup of tea, Hana felt calm enough to sit down again. Logan winked at her, his face positively beatific with happiness. Hana felt as though she’d passed an unwritten test, making him feel cherished. She craved a cuddle and felt the overwhelming urge to ground herself in Logan’s physical strength.

  “Is everything alright, Mrs Du Rose?” the policeman asked and Hana’s eyes flicked to his face, wishing he’d leave.

  “Everything’s fine,” she replied. “Are we done now?”

  “I asked you when you last saw Mr Collins alive.”

  “Oh yes,” Hana sighed, taking another sip of tea. “It was the Friday before he went missing, at lunchtime. The bell rang for lunch and I walked my daughter to the main field because I knew my husband would be training with the sports teachers there. We watched him for a while. That’s when I saw Mr Collins.”

  The police officer wrote it down longhand on his clipboard. Logan’s face took on a curiously dreamy look. He remembered Hana standing on the grass watching him sprint. Her long hair streamed out behind her in the breeze and she wore a pretty red dress and black tights and boots. She looked like an angel and he felt like a king. He remembered she disappeared and his brow furrowed. One minute she was there and the next she wasn’t. Logan watched Hana’s face, curious as the cop asked her the next question. “Where exactly was Mr Collins?”

  “He was walking around the pitches checking the goal posts. I carried Phoenix, my baby, because he hates me pushing the pram over the grass. But he came up raging at me anyway because he said my boot heels dig in and ruin the turf. He told me to get off.”

  Logan exhaled loudly in exasperation, his fingers gripping the chair back as though he wanted to rip it off the base. “Bloody hell,” he breathed.

  “They were flat...are flat,” Hana said conversationally and both men turned to look at her. “My boot heels,” she said. “They’re flat ones. They couldn’t have dug in; he was being silly.”

  “What exactly did Mr Collins say to you?” the cop asked, frantically scribbling and sounding interested.

  “I can’t repeat it,” Hana said confidently. “It was along the lines of, ‘Get your bleep, bleep, bleeping, bleep off my bleep bleep bleeping grass, you bleep bleep stupid bleep!’”

  The policeman looked at her, frustrated. “I’m sorry ma’am, but for the purposes of your statement, it has to be verbatim.”

  Hana tutted and held out her hand for the clipboard. “I’ll write it,” she said. “But I might not spell some of it right.”

  When she finished, she prevented Logan from lurching at the clipboard, handing it directly to the police officer. He gave a low whistle, burying his smirk at some of the phonetic spelling.

  “What did he say?” Logan asked, frustrated.

  “That answers my next question,” the policeman said, sounding disappointed. “Which was, did your husband know what he said. Obviously I can see he didn’t.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Hana, making the cop raise his eyebrows. “I told you, I couldn’t repeat it; not foul language like that.”

  “So Mr Du Rose had no idea about this altercation?”

  Hana realised the young man had gotten a whiff of a motive for murder and wasn’t about to let it go easily. Logan sensed it too and wisely said nothing, keeping his opinions about Larry Collins for later.

  “Look officer,” Hana said with authority. “Mr Collins was always shouting at someone for something. If I told Logan every time he yelled at me for since we moved onto the site, I’d be in danger of becoming boring. He yelled at me on Wednesday for putting my sheets on the communal washing line when he wanted to mow the grass, even though he mowed it the day before. He yelled at me on Thursday for double parking on the street outside when my neighbour had visitors and used up all the spaces and I needed to get my shopping and baby out of the car. On Friday, it was walking on the grass and if you want me to, I can go back further. He probably shouted at me every day since we moved in. I got used to it.”

  Logan shook his head in irritation. “Damn it, Hana! You should’ve said something and I’d have taken it up with Angus. It’s not ok for a member of staff to abuse people like that. If you’d said something...” He shut up but obviously had more to say. Hana had no doubt she’d hear it later.

  The policeman let the tempting thread of a lead fall harmlessly to the ground, pursuing a different track. “What about you, Mr Du Rose? When was the last time you saw Mr Collins?”

  Logan settled down as he thought about his last conversation with the odious little man. He’d been his usual belligerent self. “It was before I went home on Friday afternoon around three-thirty, as the final bell had just gone. I walked across from St Bart’s as we were leaving straight away and Larry almost ran me down on his quad bike. He was raging about the trenches at the back of the dining room. We have a rat problem and the horticulture teacher insists on collecting vegetable rubbish from the boarding house kitchens each day and putting it into a composting trench. It’s an old fashioned way of composting and he’s using it to demonstrate something to his students. But it’s making a bad problem worse.”

  “What exactly did Mr Collins say to you?” the cop asked, scribbling away, needing to turn his sheet over and write on the back.

  “Pretty much the same kind of things he said to my wife. Only probably modified somewhat. He knew he was wasting his time trying to intimidate me.” Logan repeated his last conversation with the rude groundsman, adding, “I promised I’d talk to the horticulture teacher on Monday as soon as we were back in work. I agreed with him wholeheartedly that it’s a health risk and if Compo still wouldn’t listen to me, I’d escalate it to the principal. He grunted and left. I didn’t see him again after that. Well, not until Compo dug him up anyway.”

  The policeman finally stopped scribbling and snapped the top back onto his pen, standing up to leave. He handed Hana his coffee mug and thanked them both, going out into the cold winter air.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Logan said thoughtfully to his wife after the front door closed behind the policeman. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her cheek into his chest. “When Compo dug him up, I knew it was Larry Collins by the shoelaces, even though I couldn’t see his face. He was proud of those soccer boots and said they were his ‘lucky boots.’ Then I noticed his soccer shorts and shirt. That means he was on his way to the game when he was killed. Nobody can drive in sp
rigs, it’s too dangerous. He must have intended to walk across the ground to the game. We were on the back fields, Hana, so none of us really has an alibi do we? It could have been any of the players or spectators couldn’t it? One of us could be his killer.”

  Chapter 15

  The morning sky was clear and blue, but the temperature struggled to get above zero. Phoenix woke early, forcing Hana to get up.

  “Sorry,” Logan said, walking into the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his waist. “The shower backs onto her wall; I didn’t think about it.” He winced and ran his hands through the glossy waves of hair at his temple, wiping his palms on the towel.

  “I might forgive you,” Hana said, watching the bowl of milk spin round in the microwave. “But only because you’re naked.”

  Logan smirked. “I’m not naked.”

  Hana retrieved the bowl as the microwave pinged and pressed a rusk into the milk, watching it dissolve. Logan leaned across to flick the switch on the kettle and Hana yanked the towel, giggling as it pooled around his feet.

  “Not funny!” he exclaimed as the first fifteen rugby team took a shortcut past the house.

  “Hi, sir,” they shouted, seeing only Logan’s head and bare shoulders. He waved and waited until they passed before grappling for the towel.

  Hana paused until he got it almost fixed around his waist and then yanked it again.

  “Come back to bed,” Logan said, grinning, clinging to the towel.

  “Can’t,” Hana replied, losing the tug of war. Phoenix smelled the warm rusk and squealed.

  “Yeah, yeah, excuses,” he breathed, leaning in and kissing her neck.