Two Man Station

by Lisa Henry

  Dinner was surprisingly okay. Gio ate slowly thanks to his jaw, but he seemed relaxed, and he joined in the conversation. The conversation itself was awkward at first. Jason would have been happy to fall back on talking about work, but Taylor’s presence stymied much of that. No way in hell did Jason want Taylor spilling all the gossip on the school playground.

  “Do you know how to surf?” Taylor asked, picking apart his lettuce. “Everyone from the Gold Coast knows how to surf.”

  “Not me,” Gio said. “I used to go swimming a lot, and sometimes boogie boarding, but I can’t surf.”

  “Sometimes when we go out to the lake, we tie a boogie board to the back of my friend Kane’s dad’s tinny, and that’s almost like surfing!” Taylor beamed. “You should come with us!”

  Gio glanced at Jason.

  “Maybe we should let Gio recover from his current injuries before we try and give him some new ones, hey?” Jason poured himself another glass of water.

  “Okay!” Taylor was silent for about half a second. “You can just swim at the lake too. It’s awesome.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Gio promised him.

  There was an odd sort of furtiveness to Gio. He was guarded, and it didn’t seem to stem from last night’s assault. He unfurled a little in Taylor’s presence though, the stiff line of his shoulders relaxing as they ate, his mouth curving into a smile. Jason liked Gio’s smile. It made him look brighter, even with the swollen jaw.

  “I like Gio, Dad,” Taylor said much later, squinting into the bathroom mirror as he tugged his damp hair up into spikes.

  “Good,” Jason said. “Now brush your teeth.”

  He left Taylor to it.

  It was later still when Taylor was finally in bed and Jason was packing his lunchbox for tomorrow. He gazed out the kitchen window. There was a light on at Gio’s place, and Jason wondered what he was doing. It seemed dumb for Gio to be over in his own house watching a movie, when Jason was probably just going to do the same thing. But there was a difference between being friendly and actual friendship, wasn’t there? And everyone in the Service knew what Gio Valeri did with actual friendships.

  Jason put Taylor’s lunchbox in the fridge, checked the back door was locked, and went to bed. He lay awake for a long time before drifting off to sleep.

  Gio wasn’t sure when his texts with Richard from Baxter Mine had turned from friendly into flirtatious. Maybe they’d been that way from the start, because blokes didn’t just text one another randomly through the day, did they? Not if they were only acquaintances. Not unless they were both trying to be something more.

  Thinking of you, Richard sent one day, and the accompanying dick pic filled Gio with relief and arousal all at once. Relief that he hadn’t been misreading this whole situation and that Richard had actually made an unequivocal move, and arousal because that was a nice dick.

  That was what he sent back: Nice.

  And then he jerked off, imagining Richard doing the same thing two hundred kilometres away.

  “You’re looking chirpy,” Sandra said, eyes narrow with suspicion when Gio let himself in the back door of the station in time to start his 2 p.m. shift.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Gio replied.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s a Monday.”

  “Right.” Gio frowned. “Speaking of, why are me and the sergeant both rostered an afternoon shift on a Monday? Is there something on in town tonight?”

  “Mmm.” Sandra picked up a folder of court briefs and smirked. “It’s bingo night. Jason isn’t going to let you handle your first bingo night on your own.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  Sandra laughed and whisked the court briefs away.

  Gio figured maybe she was just winding him up.

  Bingo started at six, but their first patrol of the hall beside Saint Patrick’s Church was at four, when the volunteers were still setting up the tables and unstacking all the chairs. The ceiling fans spun slowly. A corner of the hall was decorated with finger-painted pictures courtesy of St. Paddy’s Playgroup, according to the banner tacked up above the makeshift gallery. There was a small stage at one end of the hall. A middle-aged man in thick glasses huffed and puffed as he fiddled with an uncooperative microphone system. A large trestle table sat underneath the windows on the east side of the hall. One end of the table was stacked with coffee mugs. The other was crammed with plates full of biscuits, scones, and cakes, every one plastic-wrapped against the flies.

  “Hello, Jason, dear!” one of the ladies by the table called, and Sergeant Quinn waved and moved towards her.

  Gio followed, fixing a polite smile on his face as he prepared to get sucked into yet another round of small-town introductions and pleasantries. Hell if he knew why both he and the sergeant needed to be rostered on for this. It wasn’t exactly Cavill Avenue on a Friday night in Schoolies Week, and the Richmond Catholic Ladies’ Auxiliary wasn’t exactly a horde of rampaging teenagers hopped up on booze and testosterone. Gio shook hands with all of them, trying—and immediately failing—to commit their names to memory.

  “Do you play bingo, Gio?” one of the ladies asked him. Anthea? Andrea? She was wearing a brooch on the bosom of her purple blouse. It was a cat made out of pink diamantes, and Gio didn’t think it was supposed to be vintage, retro, or ironic.

  “No,” he told her. “I wouldn’t even know how.”

  She brightened. “Oh, well, it’s easy enough. You—”

  Sergeant Quinn saved him from what was probably going to be a lengthy explanation. “No gambling on duty, Gio,” he said with a broad smile and a wink that made the ladies laugh.

  “No, Sarge,” Gio agreed gratefully, and drifted away from the table while he could. The place his dad was living had bingo nights. Gio remembered that from one of the pamphlets Sophie had given him. Bingo nights, and talent shows, and arts and crafts. Like Dad was embarking on a holiday, and not a slow, pitiful decline into infirmity, a race between his body and his mind as to which one could reach rock bottom first.

  Gio had stared at those pamphlets until every word and every bright, glossy picture had bled together.

  Warm hands on his shoulders, thumbs digging into the knots in his neck. “Come to bed, Gio.”

  “Soon.”

  “Come on, babe, I’ll tire you out.”

  He’d laughed at that, despite everything, and let himself be distracted by Pete’s hands tugging at his shirt, Pete’s teeth biting down on his earlobe. Pete’s warm breath on the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine and a lick of heat curling through his gut.

  Gio jolted at the memory, ignoring the goose bumps that had broken out on his skin. The last thing he needed to do was get an erection in a room full of old Catholic ladies. One little text exchange with Richard this morning and he couldn’t stop thinking about getting laid. Still, apart from the risk of inappropriate erections, maybe that was a good sign, wasn’t it? Maybe he was finally finished just going through the motions every day. Maybe he was actually ready to claw a semblance of a life back.

  Maybe.

  They bought dinner from the servo, and returned to the station to eat it. Gio unwrapped his steak burger and ate it at his desk, yesterday’s local newspaper underneath it to catch the onions and beetroot that abandoned ship while he ate. Sergeant Quinn ate at the spare desk in the dayroom; the one usually used by Taylor after school. There was a Rogue One pencil case lying there, and a crinkled-up ball of foil that had possibly once been a Yowie wrapper.

  Gio’s radio crackled, and a few times he paused to listen and make sure Comms wasn’t calling them. There was a violent DV occurring in Charters Towers that had both their general duties crew and their one-up traffic unit attending, and the copper from Hughenden was doing a few traffic stops, but nothing for Richmond. Back on the Coast, meal breaks had been a time to kick back and joke around, and maybe get a head start on some paperwork since it had never been a case of if the shift would turn to shit later, but wh
en. Here though . . . here there was nothing to do but check his emails, check his text messages, and count down the minutes until it was time to head out on yet another patrol of town.

  “Hey, Taylor.”

  Gio looked over at Sergeant Quinn, then turned away again. It was one thing to listen in to a private phone call. It was another thing to do it openly.

  “Did you finish your homework?” The sergeant snorted at whatever response Taylor gave him. “No, you eat whatever Sandra puts on your plate. Yes, mate, even if it is cauliflower.”

  Gio hid a grin.

  “Of course that goes for broccoli too.”

  The buzzer from the front door sounded. Gio rose to his feet, wrapping the remains of his burger back into the bag, and waved at the sergeant not to get up. He walked through to the foyer, and unlocked the front doors. There was a woman standing there, her arms folded across her chest despite the heat. She looked to be in her sixties, maybe older. One of the bingo crowd.

  “Can I help you?” Gio asked her.

  “Is—is Jason here?”

  “He’s tied up on a call right now,” Gio said. “I’m Senior Constable Valeri. Gio. Can I help you?”

  “I . . .” For a moment it appeared the woman would refuse, but then she seemed to steel herself. She dropped her arms to her side, nodded, and stepped into the station.

  There was something about her, something about the way she held herself that Gio recognised. He knew, even before she opened her mouth and began to speak haltingly, just what she was going to say.

  There was no such thing as a typical domestic violence victim. Patricia Howe was sixty-eight years old. She was the head of the CWA—an organisation Gio hadn’t known existed anymore—and lived on a property about twenty minutes from town. Her husband thought she was at bingo.

  Gio took her into Sergeant Quinn’s office—the sergeant was still on the phone to Taylor—and sat her down at the desk.

  The story she told him was unremarkable. He’d heard a thousand variations of it before. He watched her face as the words spilled out in fits and starts, and could predict the exact moment she started to make excuses.

  “It’s not that bad,” she said, as if she were trying to convince herself instead of Gio. And she was, he knew. Because if it was that bad, then why hadn’t she done anything before? How had she let it go on so long? To deny the severity of the abuse wasn’t just about protecting her husband. It was about protecting her self-image as well. Because what had happened that she’d let it continue? What had happened to the person she was inside that he’d been able to twist her so easily? That he’d made her an accomplice in her own abuse? The most insidious victim blaming didn’t come from the outside.

  “Small steps.” Gio shrugged when she lifted her gaze and met his eyes. “He started with small steps, didn’t he? Things that didn’t seem worth fighting about.”

  Patricia pursed her lips and nodded. “He won’t go to the doctor.”

  Gio waited.

  “My sister-in-law Anne,” Patricia said. She smoothed a hand over her knees, straightening the fall of her floral skirt. “Her husband had these awful mood swings, and it was his diabetes. I think that Brian might have it too, but he won’t go to the doctor.”

  “It could be that. But, even if it is, you don’t have to put up with the way he’s been treating you in the meantime.” There was a box of tissues on the sergeant’s desk. Gio pushed them towards her. “Has he hit you?”

  For a moment she wavered on the edge of a denial and then, at last, gave another short, sharp nod. “Only once.”

  “Once is enough though.”

  “We’ve been married for forty-one years!”

  “Once is enough,” Gio repeated carefully. “And domestic violence isn’t just physical violence. It can be about emotional or psychological abuse. It can be about him not letting you have control of your money, or threatening to damage your property, or hurt your pets. It’s not just about if he hits you. There are other things too, even if they’re not so obvious.”

  Gio saw a flash of movement from beyond the open door, and looked up to see Sergeant Quinn standing there, listening. The sergeant nodded at him.

  Patricia tugged a tissue out of the box. She blew her nose; a lengthy wet honk that made Gio fight not to flinch. “I don’t know how this happened!”

  Gio nodded, although he knew the answer. Because it had started slowly, in creeping little increments that could be excused or ignored, and by the time Patricia had realised how deep in she was, she’d already been drowning.

  “It’s like I don’t know who he is anymore!”

  “Okay,” Gio said. “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight, Patricia?”

  She looked at him, clearly startled, and balled the tissue up in her trembling fist. “I’m going home.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” It wasn’t, and Gio would argue the point if necessary, but he started off soft, conciliatory.

  “I’m not going to leave my husband,” she said, eyes widening.

  Gio felt a rush of anger that he knew was unfair, and only borne out of frustration. He was careful to keep his voice calm. “Okay, Patricia, what I want to do tonight is take out what’s called a Temporary Domestic Violence Order. That means that until it goes to court, Brian is going to be prohibited from coming near you. It’s for your protection and his that I don’t want you to go home tonight. It keeps you safe, and it keeps him from getting in trouble.”

  But she’d only seized on one word. “Court?” Tears slid down her face. “I came to you for help, and—”

  Suddenly Sergeant Quinn was standing beside Gio. “This is how we help you, Patricia. We put safeguards in place for you.”

  Safeguards. As though a piece of paper had ever stopped anyone from hurting their partner. Or maybe it had; fucked if Gio knew. He’d been to plenty of violent assaults, and a few homicides, that said otherwise though.

  She wavered. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Stay in town tonight,” Sergeant Quinn said. “We’ll take the order out, serve it on him tomorrow morning, and you can get the support you need. Just because it goes to court doesn’t mean that Brian goes to jail. It only means that with an order in place, he has to be of good behaviour. If he breaches the order, he might be looking at jail time, but just putting the order in place? It doesn’t even go on his criminal record unless he breaches it.”

  Patricia looked between them worriedly.

  Gio leaned forward. “This might be the wake-up call he needs, Patricia. To see a doctor. To change his behaviour.”

  It felt like a cheap shot, like playing on her hopes, because Gio was too much of a cynic to believe it was true.

  “Yes,” she said at last, nodding. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

  Sergeant Quinn dropped Patricia off at her friend’s house in town while Gio worked away at the Temporary Domestic Violence Order.

  “Any reason we’re not serving this on the respondent tonight?” he asked when the sergeant got back.

  “Bingo night.” Sergeant Quinn shrugged. “We’re about to get busy.”

  Gio huffed. “What does that even—”

  His radio burst into life. “VKR Townsville calling Richmond two-eight-nine.”

  Gio turned his head towards where the microphone was hanging off his epaulette. “Two-eight-nine, VKR. Go ahead.”

  “Job details when you’re ready.”

  Gio scrabbled for a pen and looked up at the sergeant.

  “Bingo night,” Sergeant Quinn repeated, and tapped the side of his nose.

  Andrea was no longer wearing her glittery pink cat brooch. She was no longer wearing anything at all by the time they escorted her through the back door of the station and into the holding cell. Her clothes had made a trail all down Church Street from the hall at Saint Patrick’s to the school on the next corner. They’d located her on top of the monkey bars.

  “Who called the cops?” she’d demanded.

  “Come on, And
rea,” Sergeant Quinn had said with a sigh. “Time to come down.”

  Bingo night.

  Gio ate the rest of his cold burger, hours old now, while he finished up the paperwork from the DV, and listened to Andrea singing off-key from the holding cell. He looked up as Sergeant Quinn crossed through the small dayroom, a bottle of water in his hand.

  “So that’s bingo night,” Sergeant Quinn said, as Andrea failed to hit a high note but kept trying anyway.

  “Every bingo night?”

  The sergeant transferred the bottle of water to his other hand. Condensation slid down the sides. “The thing with Andrea is that for thirty days out of every month she’s a saint. She wouldn’t even dream of jaywalking. But when she has a few sherries at bingo . . .” He shrugged, as though that was all Gio needed to know.

  Gio was silent for a moment. Bingo night was obviously a running joke, but it had also been part of his induction into policing in Richmond, just like visiting Janey Ferguson’s house, and doing a run out to the mine and the cattle stations. It was Sergeant Quinn showing him the ropes still. And it rankled.

  “Any reason we both needed to be rostered on to deal with her?” Gio asked.

  The sergeant didn’t even try to sugarcoat it. “I wanted to make sure you knew how to handle it the right way.”

  His way being the right way, of course, like Gio was some dumb-as-shit first-year constable who had no idea how to do the job.

  Bingo night was a joke. It was also a test.

  And Gio was tired of being tested.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are we charging her?”

  The sergeant met his gaze squarely. “Nope.”

  “Why not?” Gio set his burger down. “You keep reminding me the rules are different out here, Sarge, and I know we’ve got discretionary powers. I know we don’t have to charge her, but if there’s a reason you’re not charging someone who habitually gets drunk and runs naked down the street, then—”

  “Andrea was a nurse,” the sergeant said, his expression hardening. “Before she retired. She was my wife’s nurse.”