by Jaye Ford
Liv watched the shadows in the light coming across the fence. ‘I bought new curtains today. I thought we could hang them tonight.’
‘Sure.’ Sheridan laid her knife and fork across her plate, dropped her napkin on top. ‘What’s the story with the guy who found you in the car park? I can’t track him down.’
‘He’s been great. He came here yesterday and installed new locks.’
Sheridan raised her eyebrows. ‘I couldn’t even get him on the phone. I left messages all over the place. I even called a couple of Becks in the phonebook. One was his sister. She said she’d pass my number on but I got nothing.’
‘What did you want him for?’ Liv stacked their plates and pushed them across the counter.
‘For the story. Well, that was on Tuesday. You know, a few words with the good Samaritan who found you. Then I googled him and got a better angle, which was why I was chasing him again yesterday. I thought it might be another chance to call for witnesses.’ She held a hand in the air like she was blocking out a newspaper headline. ‘Hero Still Coming to the Rescue. Did you see that?’
‘Where?’
‘On the internet. Didn’t you look him up?’
‘No. He was being nice, not applying for a job.’
Sheridan shrugged, as though there was no difference. ‘He was awarded a bravery medal a couple of years ago.’
Liv glanced up in surprise as she opened the dishwasher. ‘Well, if you have to have someone run to your rescue . . .’
‘Absolutely. Remember that building collapse on the Central Coast three years ago? He was in the Search and Rescue unit. He was the one who located the woman. He spent seven hours under slabs of unstable concrete with her until they got her out.’
Images of the disaster had been all over the media, first when it happened then again during the inquest into the deaths. Liv remembered the pictures – rescue workers covered in dust, the floodlit hole in the ground, the bloodied faces of victims, a stretcher swaying at the end of a crane as it was lifted out in the middle of the night. She thought of Daniel in the car park. He’d been decisive, in control, unfazed. ‘Monday night must have been a breeze in comparison to that.’
‘The fact you survived to tell your tale probably helped. That woman died on the way to the hospital while Daniel Beck was still being dragged out of the hole.’
‘That’s awful.’ He told her he’d gone to Emergency to make sure she got home. Maybe it was to make sure she got there.
Sheridan divided the last of the wine between their two glasses. ‘The story I read said he left Search and Rescue about a year later.’
‘No big surprise he wanted a career change. How many times could you do that and stay sane?’
‘What’s he like? He looked all dark and brooding in the photos. Part bad boy, part superhero. Totally beddable for a single girl like you.’
Liv finished loading the dishwasher and closed the door. ‘He could be George Clooney, for all I care.’
‘It’s been almost a year, Liv.’ Sheridan spoke a little softer. ‘You can’t live like a nun for the rest of your life.’
Time to kill that conversation. ‘Okay, he’s nice, which is why I wouldn’t wish me on him. I’m bitter and twisted and it’d turn out bad. Probably make him bitter and twisted, too.’
‘You could have bitter and twisted sex.’
Liv rolled her eyes.
‘It can be fun, too.’
‘Give me a . . .’
A sound in the courtyard made Liv’s eyes snap to the sliding door. It was brief but clear. A click or a tap. Then something heavy smashed on the pavers and the dog next door went crazy.
He was here.
She pictured a man in black swinging at her windows, took a step back, braced for an explosion of glass. But what came next was much quieter.
‘Fuck.’
The voice was male. Loud enough to be heard over the dog, half whispered like it was trying not to be.
She took another step back, felt a wall against her shoulderblades.
Outside, there was a quick scattering, like pebbles on a footpath, then a hard, dull thump at the far end of the windows. It rattled the sliding door in its track, kept going all the way up her spine.
A shadow, crouched and low, scuttled through the light shining on the old sheet. It moved in a straight line from the far end towards the kitchen. A second later, a figure ran past the window.
17
Liv’s eyes flew to Sheridan’s. Maybe it was because they were running partners or maybe they both hated to lose a challenge but some kind of silent signal passed between them that had the effect of a starter’s gun. In the same instant, they leapt into action, taking off across the lounge room, moving swiftly and quietly as though it had been prearranged.
Liv scooped up the baseball bat, reached for the security chain on the front door. Sheridan ran for the access door, came back with the umbrella and held it like a club.
‘Okay,’ she whispered.
Liv pulled the door open fast. She’d never played baseball but she made like she was swinging for a home run in case the bastard was there ready to take the shot first. He wasn’t. The only thing in the doorway was light from the porch. Beyond it was the darkness of the driveway.
A metallic rattle came from outside, off to the right.
‘The gate,’ Liv whispered.
She stepped into cool night air, tightened her hold on the bat as she looked along the front wall. Sheridan followed, the umbrella held in front with both hands.
A figure launched itself off the top of the gate and landed badly on the concrete, hard on one knee, a hand skidding on the rough surface.
‘Hey!’ Liv yelled. It was loud. More aggressive than she felt.
There wasn’t enough light at the corner of the house to make out more than short, dark hair, white arms and red clothing as the man half turned towards them before starting for the driveway.
Rachel Quest’s words rang in Liv’s ears. Call triple-0 if you’re worried. Oh, yeah, she was worried. He was here. He knew where she lived. But the cops had no idea who he was. If she ran back inside and picked up the phone, he’d be gone. And they’d be none the wiser.
It wasn’t just that, though. He was right in front of her, metres away. She wanted to see the bastard. Get a look at the face of the man who’d beaten her up and destroyed her office.
She glanced back at Sheridan, saw she was waiting for Liv to make a call. ‘Pull the door and head left,’ she said softly, leaping the two steps to the pavement and taking off at a run.
The guy was at the bend in the driveway, taking loping, awkward strides around a bad limp. He must have hurt something when he fell. Behind her, she heard Sheridan make the jump down the steps and go wide.
Liv took a direct course at him, baseball bat at her side in her uninjured left hand, the concrete underfoot jarring against her stockinged feet. The guy was going nowhere fast and she was picking up speed. He looked over his shoulder, saw her at his back and jagged left, heading for the fence into the neighbouring property.
He lunged at it from too far away, caught the top with his hands but the rest of his body slammed into the metal with a crash that echoed in the quiet evening. He held on, feet scraping frantically against the smooth surface, trying to hoist himself up and over.
‘Hey, you fuck!’ Liv thwacked the bat against the metal at his side.
She’d hoped it would make him stop and surrender but it spurred him on. He flattened a shoe against the fence, got purchase and lifted himself off the ground.
She swapped the bat to her other hand and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. It was a long, red top, a singlet with a number on the back and she dragged on it. It didn’t bring him down, just held him in place, half up, half down.
‘Get th
e fuck off the fence!’ Sheridan yelled. She had the umbrella by its pointy end, brandishing the curved handle like she might hook him around the throat. The team captain in Liv made her want to shout, ‘Good job.’
For a long moment, no one moved. The bastard just held on tight to the fence, feet flat on the metal, butt out towards the driveway, an armed and angry woman on either side and Benny the dog sounding like he’d rip off a leg if he was given the chance. Then he gave it up. Let go, dropped to the ground and turned around.
Liv had imagined a cruel face, bruising on one cheek, hate in his eyes. What she saw in the light from her neighbour’s porch wasn’t anything like that. He was a kid. A tall, gangly, sweaty teenager. A long, damp fringe that hung over a smart-arse expression, a patch of bum fluff on his chin. Fifteen, at most.
‘What were you doing in my yard?’ Liv demanded.
‘Get your hands off me or I’ll sue you for assault.’ It was said with all the self-righteous arrogance of a teenager with half an idea about the law.
‘Great and I’ll see you done for trespass. And that’s just for starters, you little shit.’ Her heart was pounding, her breath was coming hard and not just from running. Was it him? Had this kid beaten her up? She licked her lips, shifted the weight of the bat in her injured hand. ‘Sit down. Against the fence.’ He gave her a belligerent adolescent sneer that might have made her think twice about shouting at him if he hadn’t just jumped her gate.
Releasing his shirt, she moved a little closer but it was Sheridan who yelled, ‘Sit!’ He looked at her, then at Liv and started to lower himself.
Liv watched the kid favour an ankle, doing a little skip as he found his balance to bend down, taking his time to get there. He was tall but his arms were thin with only the beginnings of firm, young muscle in the deltoids. He had chunky sport shoes and long, baggy shorts that matched the top. It looked like a basketball uniform hanging off his shoulders and moving against his torso in a way that suggested a skinny, bony body underneath.
The bastard in the car park had been big and strong. He’d had some weight behind his fists. And Liv had hit him hard, she’d broken a knuckle doing it. This kid’s face didn’t have a mark on it. Maybe there were two of them?
‘What were you doing in my yard?’
He lifted a petulant chin. ‘Fuck off, lady.’
‘Oh, nice,’ Sheridan said. ‘You run through someone’s property then you tell them to fuck off. I’m going to call the cops.’ She moved a hand to the back pocket of her jeans.
Liv had no idea if she had a phone – it didn’t seem likely she’d fit one in there – but the kid believed her. He held up both his hands. ‘Okay, okay, sorry. Don’t call the cops. I didn’t think anyone was home.’
‘What were you going to do if I wasn’t home?’ Liv leaned down and spoke in his face. ‘Break in and smash my house up, too? Give it the same treatment as my office?’
His eyebrows shot up in alarm. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? I wasn’t breaking in. I broke a pot. That’s all and it was an accident, all right? Someone moved the fucking bin and I landed in the wrong spot. I didn’t know it was there. I’m usually further down the garden. And I sprained my fucking ankle, okay?’ He said the last part as though getting injured made up for the rest of it.
Liv straightened up, licked her lips again, tried to think it through. ‘What do you mean usually?’
‘I take a short cut through my mate’s place in Boronia Street.’ He pointed in the direction of the road behind Liv’s townhouse. ‘I get dropped off there after basketball and it takes ages to walk all the way around so I just, you know, take a short cut. I didn’t know you were going to be there. There’s never been anyone there before.’
‘Oh, yeah, right.’ She said it sarcastically but uncertainty made her hesitate. It was Thursday night. She usually did the groceries on Thursday after work. If Cameron was with her, they might stop somewhere for a bite. If he wasn’t, she’d work late, traipse through the aisles and pick up something easy to heat up. ‘Where do you live?’
‘At number twenty-nine.’ He pointed towards the street in front. ‘The house with the big grey columns.’
Liv knew the place. It was across the road and a block down, one of the few properties that weren’t stacked back-to-back with townhouses. Would he lie about that when she could walk down there now and knock on the door? Were fifteen-year-olds that brazen these days?
‘What’s your name?’ Sheridan kept at him.
‘Ryan Blaston. Please don’t call the cops. My dad’ll kill me.’
Liv exchanged a glance with Sheridan. The boy didn’t look so audacious now. He looked like he was about to cry. Maybe it was maternal pity but she didn’t think he was lying. This kid hadn’t whispered in her ear, hadn’t gone into a frenzy in her office and written threatening notes. She let the bat fall to her side, suddenly guilty she’d turned her anger on him. If someone had done that to Cameron just for running through a yard, she’d be ropable.
‘All right, you can get up.’ She stepped back, making space for him, waiting until he was on his feet. ‘Is your ankle okay?’
He tested it, winced like a big wuss.
‘Can you walk home?’ she asked.
He eyed off the bat and nodded.
She injected parental know-it-all into her voice. ‘Well, Ryan, I hope you learned a lesson from this. Don’t go running through people’s yards without permission. And don’t tell a woman to eff off. It’s not nice. Now go home and if I see you in my place again, I’m coming down to number twenty-nine to talk to your father. Okay?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded again, all the self-righteous arrogance whipped by embarrassment and shame.
‘Go on, then.’
As he limped down the driveway, Sheridan stood beside her, holding the umbrella like a walking stick. ‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, he’s just a smart-arse kid. Not even that really when it got to the crunch.’
Now the heat of the fight had gone out of her the air felt cool and she folded her arms across her chest as she watched him all the way to the street. Benny had finally stopped barking and the silence in his wake and the darkness at their backs made her uneasy. She took Sheridan’s arm and hustled her back to the townhouse.
Liv shut the door, turned the key in the deadlock, slid the security chain into its slot. Her heart had slowed but her hands were trembling.
‘That bloody kid scared the crap out of me.’ She propped the baseball bat against the wall again.
Sheridan had a hand on her chest and a grin on her lips.
‘What?’
Sheridan let out a quick laugh, cut it off. ‘Not half as much as we scared him. Did you see his face?’ Her shoulders shuddered as she smothered a chuckle. ‘Two crazy women in socks.’
Liv dropped her eyes to her feet, saw her big toe poking through a green sock.
‘Wielding weapons and dragging him off the fence like undercover cops.’ She mimed holding a gun and deepened her voice. ‘Freeze, you fuck!’
Liv grinned. The shouting and swearing did seem a tad over the top now they were safely inside and the kid had gone home for dinner.
Sheridan pointed a finger at Liv like a cross school-teacher as she mimicked her final warning. ‘I hope you learned a lesson from this.’
A chuckle worked its way out of her throat. ‘The poor kid. I nearly made him cry.’
‘Yeah but you gave good advice. Don’t tell a woman to eff off, you little shit.’ Sheridan laughed out loud.
Liv joined her, quietly at first, a little ashamed of her overt aggression. But the truth was that it had felt good to belt down the driveway, to yell and make demands and be in control. To be assertive instead of just standing still and fretting. They hooted their way to her sofas, sprawling across them as the laughter ran its course. It had bee
n too long since Liv had howled with laughter and it felt strange and cleansing and therapeutic.
As the room fell silent, Liv’s eyes strayed to the strip of glass in the gap between the old sheet and the floor. She could see soil and broken chunks of terracotta pot scattered on the pavers outside and remembered the thud on the windows.
‘I need a drink,’ Sheridan said.
‘I need to get the curtains hung,’ Liv answered.
18
Liv leaned over the bathroom sink and examined her face. No chance make-up was going to cover it yet. Which was a pity, considering the dark ring under her good eye that had nothing to do with the beating and everything to do with lack of sleep. Maybe she could put foundation on one side of her face. Yeah, and look like the Phantom of the Opera.
She showered and dressed, went downstairs and rolled her eyes at Sheridan, who was pouring hot water into a coffee plunger – in a suit, hair straightened, make-up perfect, smile in place.
‘Oh, jeez. You make me feel like something I dragged out of the wash basket. Couldn’t you be dishevelled for once in your life?’
‘A mug of coffee for you, I think,’ Sheridan replied. ‘And you look, well . . .’ She gave Liv an up and down. ‘Casual. What’s with the shoes? Are you planning to walk to work?’
After pounding down the driveway in her socks, Daniel’s advice about being ready to get the hell out had come back to her. Wearing her standard straight skirt and stilettos into the office wasn’t being ready. Her lace-up boots weren’t exactly cross trainers but they went with her dress trousers and she could run in them a whole lot better than socks or skyscraper heels. ‘I figured I should have the right equipment in case I need to do any more running.’
Sheridan grinned as though she was going to make another crack about the kid, then her eyes caught on Liv’s and the humour in them disappeared. ‘Do you have to go into the office? I mean, it’s your business, can’t you take a day off when you want to?’
That had been part of the plan when they’d started Prescott and Weeks – run their own business, be their own bosses, set their own schedules. And they both did, taking days off when kids were sick or afternoons for school events. But today, when staying in the townhouse actually had some appeal, Liv didn’t let herself consider it. She had money problems to resolve and she wasn’t going to let a stalker stop her from keeping her business afloat. ‘We’ve got something big on. I need to be there.’