Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  Logan reached down and it was clear to Hana he intended to kiss her. It was also patently clear, as she leaned closer and heard him hold his breath, that she very much wanted him to. “Hana,” he whispered, “I need to tell you something.” He jumped as the air was rent by the sound of squeals and cries from further along the track. The couple jolted guiltily apart, and Hana slipped in exactly the same spot. Once righted, they set off at a run towards the terrible sound of dying children.

  The ground changed underfoot, becoming sodden and heavy, brown liquid resembling clay-slip oozing through Hana’s delicate strappy sandals and coating Logan’s trainers. The track wound through the trees and still they followed, a cacophony of bird sounds frantic overhead, disturbed by the sounds of boys.

  Rounding a sharp downhill bend, the couple stopped abruptly at the sight before them. Logan almost ran up the back of Hana, skidding to a halt and ending up with his arms around her to stop him cannoning her over onto her face. Where the two gullies joined into a muddy, swampy pool, which during the winter was impassable and fast flowing, was a group of thirty boys of varying height. Their smart black and white sports tops, emblazoned with the school’s impressive logo, were unrecognisable from the mud which covered them. Each boy was a light brown colour, shining and slippery with the liquid that ran down their bodies covering every inch of them from top to toe. It was hard to distinguish where their clothes began and ended, other than by the outline and certain tell-tale wrinkles through the filth. Their hair and faces were completely concealed. They rolled around in a heap like an enormous milk chocolate pudding, with punctuations where arms and feet poked out of the scrum.

  As Hana and Logan stood speechless, a glob of mud flew through the air, narrowly missing them as it spun like a missile between their startled, disbelieving faces. One boy looked up, although it was difficult to read any expression on his face as only his eyes were discernible. But it was as if a telepathic message had been sent to the group en masse. Instantly he leapt up and the pudding began to disband until the writhing lump became separate units of dirty boys standing almost perfectly in a line, knee deep in disgusting brown soup.

  Logan seemed at a loss for words and all Hana could think to say was, “I hope none of you swallowed any of that water. I know for a fact there are rats in there!”

  The collective eyes widened and look even more wary. A couple of them gagged.

  Logan still didn’t speak. His face was expressionless and unreadable but the boys looked terrified. Hana gave up on him and set off back up the track the same way they had come, slipping and sliding as she made towards more solid ground. Like a giant brown snake, the line of boys followed almost soundlessly behind her, as though she was a mother duck about to cross a busy road. Once back on the school grounds she turned around and was struck by the impossibility of sending this rabble back into school onto the polished parquet boards and pristine carpets. “You can’t go into class like this,” she said, mentally running through the options. Still getting no clue from the silent Logan who had taken his place at the back of the line, Hana withdrew her keys from her pocket and set off briskly towards the technology buildings. Still the boys and Logan followed. At the swimming baths she stopped and used her key to unlock the gates. The water temperature reading was sixteen degrees. The boys filed past her and she motioned towards the water. “Get in! And no noise!”

  Once the boys were in the water and had splashed around a bit, Hana made sure they all dunked themselves thoroughly. The mud had stained their clothes hopelessly and they all shivered, teeth chattering. “Don’t expect sympathy from me!” she told them. They were marginally clean at least and now passable as children.

  At last Logan took control and sent them all off to get back into school uniform. Hana took a broom from the pool shed and attempted to sweep the muddy footprints away, but only succeeded in smearing the brown paste around the tiles. Leaves and blobs of mud hung around the edges of the water like pond scum. “It’s not coming off,” she complained. “Collins is going to have a fit when he sees this. He’ll probably dispose of my body in the gully!”

  “Just leave it. I’ll take the blame.” Gallantly taking the broom from Hana and returning it to its hook, Logan seized her hand in warm fingers and led her out of the pool gate, waiting for her to lock it after them. The sound of a quad bike, bearing the fearsome, overweight frame of the head caretaker broke the tension and grabbing Hana by the wrist, Logan made a run for it, all bravado forgotten. Hearing the bike, Hana began rehearsing what she was going to say to excuse the state of the usually pristine pool, but Logan bolting took her by surprise and she ran next to him without thinking about what she was doing.

  Reaching the cover of the changing rooms, they flattened themselves against the wall of the building before Logan began to snigger. Hana was appalled. “That’s terribly dishonest. He’s going to go mental!”

  Logan’s laughter was infectious and despite her guilt, Hana found herself sniggering too, first softly and then stifling her growing hysteria with her hands covering her face. The boys trooped quickly and quietly back into the main building, late to their next class and bereft of explanation, smirking as they passed the adults who made a poor job of trying to hold it together.

  Five minutes later, with wet feet and sandals from trying to wash the dirt off under the water fountain, Hana appeared back up in the student centre in some semblance of dignity and readied herself to enter the still closed door of the office. She felt emotionally ruffled. In the shadow of the porch, Logan had leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, finally plucking up the courage. Hana had forgotten what it felt like to feel a man’s rough skin under her fingers or to have her mouth teased by another. It was blissful and exciting, like riding too high on a swing and losing her stomach on the downward. Logan’s lips were soft and persuasive and Hana, as a willing partner, felt the spectre of Vikram Johal let go of her slightly. It was decadent, like a teenager doing the ‘walk of shame’ after a night of passion. Hana thought about Logan’s sensuous lips on hers and put her hand up to her mouth, stifling a grin. This was so not like her. Looking back at the group of around fifty Year 13s apparently deep in study, she figured the argument in the office had ended some time ago.

  She smiled at Grant, the study supervisor and noted the roll of his eyes. The look of ‘Oh my goodness, not again,’ that he gave her with his raised eyebrows, caused her to change her mind. Hana went to the staff room for a coffee and a think about what she had just gotten herself into with Logan Du Rose. Surely it wasn’t too late to back out - if she really wanted to. But did she want to?

  Chapter 16

  Hana left work early on account of her saturated sandals having tightened as they dried. Blisters started where the straps met her foot; which was everywhere.

  Once in the car she took them off and drove barefoot. As she parked at the lights on Maui Street heading north, a brown leaf fluttered down onto her windscreen and Hana felt suddenly depressed. Autumn was coming and then winter would quickly follow. It seemed strange having Christmas in the summer, followed by winter in the middle of the year. Last Christmas was lovely with Izzie and Marcus staying and baby Elizabeth arriving on Boxing Day. By the time the tiny girl came into the world, crying and squealing five weeks early on the floor of the bathroom, the little family had already accepted her handicap, relieved she was safe and well. The ambulance men looked concerned, shooting glances at one another as they wrapped the tiny body and helped Izzie onto their stretcher. Hana could see them wondering if the family realised the little girl had Down Syndrome or whether they should mention it. “We knew,” Hana said to herself. “And we didn’t care a bit.”

  Indicating left after a fifteen minute drive, Hana pulled slowly onto the hard shoulder, ready to go round the corner and into her street. A black sedan followed closely on her tail and Hana worried that it would clip her bumper as she made the tight turn into her driveway. She slowed, giving copious amounts of warning, but the inevi
table happened and the rear bumper made a snapping sound as the following vehicle lurched into it. Hana was irritated and got out of the car to view the damage, her head feeling foggy from the whiplash action of her neck.

  A tall blonde man emerged from the driver’s side, exuding apologies while the passenger, a man with oriental features knelt down at the point where the vehicles touched. “Sorry,” the blonde man said again, but he sounded insincere and Hana wasn’t pleased.

  “I gave you lots of warning before I turned,” she complained, rubbing her neck. “You were driving far too close. To hit me that hard, you must have speeded up!”

  The Chinese man poked and prodded at the bumper but then moved around Hana’s vehicle on his knees, looking underneath and tapping at the metal.

  “What are you doing?” Hana felt vulnerable and looked up and down the street, hoping one of her neighbours might coincidentally appear. The street was empty. The remote for the garage door was in the glove box but Hana considered using it only momentarily. The street was definitely the safest place to be with these men. The bumper of her car had cracked across the centre, but the sedan looked undamaged apart from a small scrape.

  The situation felt wrong and Hana tried to memorise the registration number of the black car, whilst reaching into her truck for her handbag and insurance details. The blonde driver stood too close to her as she fumbled in her bag for a notebook. “I’ll need your name, address and insurance details,” she said.

  His face became hard and he sneered. The Asian continued to move around the vehicle, poking around underneath as he went. “Details please?” Hana demanded in her best school-voice. The blonde remained silent and stared her down as his companion banged around the outside of her vehicle. He was tall, casting Hana into shadow. His face was elegantly formed, ruggedly handsome punctuated by striking blue eyes framed by dark lashes. Something about him looked familiar and Hana stared at him longer than he liked. His eyes blazed and Hana gulped, making a mental choice not to care about the bumper as long as these peculiar men left quickly. She changed tack. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, it’ll be cheaper to fix it myself.”

  Still the man said nothing but the Asian continued his intent examination of the underside of the Serena. Hana concentrated on breathing as the oddness of the situation communicated itself to her lungs and then the rest of her body. She glanced frantically along the street but it was still deserted, not a soul in sight who could offer assistance. The moment seemed unreal as though she were not really there, with the intimidating blonde man stood dreadfully close to her, trapping her in the space between the open driver’s door and his body. He smelled of an aftershave that she recognised, but failed to recall the name of. Ash coloured stubble sprouted from the pores in his face. His latent hardness rendered his otherwise good looks unappealing.

  Abruptly, the Asian man got to his feet, dusting down his trousers from road debris and swearing quietly to himself. “Nothing,” he said crossly, with a hint of a Chinese accent. His compatriot used his body to push Hana so hard into the door, she heard it creak on its hinges as it took the strain of their combined bodyweight.

  “Where-is-it?” he hissed, stressing each word slowly as though Hana was intellectually limited. With each syllable, she felt his spittle land on her face and winced. She was petrified and overwhelmingly in danger, but something in her snapped and she pushed him back forcefully with both hands full in the chest.

  “Get away from me!”

  He stepped backwards and attempted to grab at Hana’s arms. His full weight went onto his back foot and squarely onto the patent shoe of the Asian, who had moved around the vehicle and waited behind him. Knowing she didn’t have time to get into her house without them following, Hana slammed the driver’s door hard and bolted around the vehicle, running for her neighbour’s house and praying Andrea would be home already. As she ran, Hana pointed the car keys over her shoulder and pressed the remote control which should have set off the vehicle alarm. She was too far away and it only activated the central locking, shutting the two men safely out of her truck.

  Hana didn’t linger at Andrea’s front door. She bolted around the side and into the back garden, terrifying Andrea’s husband Paul, who had just emerged from the kitchen door with the washing basket. He dropped it in fright. The empty basket bounced on the concrete, but its contents comprising of hundreds of wooden pegs, scattered far and wide. “I thought I heard you come home,” he began to say, as he bent down to gather the pegs. “What was that bang?”

  The open kitchen door behind Paul’s bent back consumed Hana’s avid attention and she pushed rudely past him and into the safety of the house. Once inside, she became acutely aware of the panic which had seized her body and shaking and trembling, she began to cry. Paul left the few remaining pegs on the ground and went inside, slowly, tentatively, hoping with every fibre of his being that Andrea was not very far away right now.

  “Please get the washing in…before it rains,” his wife had asked him, dashing out to fetch Carlie from school and Daniel from kindy, leaving baby Ryan asleep in his cot. Her comment was a spin off from the row they had only yesterday, when he sat working in his office thinking how green the garden was, while rain pelted the washing. As he stepped over the threshold wondering what on earth a sensible male scientist could do with a sobbing, clearly distressed female neighbour in the absence of one’s much younger and decidedly capable wife, the overhead clouds began their inevitable leaking, on schedule - and on the washing. “Oh, shit!” he said uncharitably.

  The barefoot Hana was inconsolable and utterly incapable of telling Paul what the problem was. She pointed towards the front of the house and in between gulps and sobs, kept asking for Bodie. Eventually, Paul decided that investigation was probably the only answer and went back out of the kitchen door and round to the front of the property, whereupon Hana locked him out. It was as he was examining the Serena, which looked as though it had been dumped half on the driveway next door and half on the pavement, that he noticed the broken back bumper. Andrea spun round the corner and bounced onto their own driveway, wipers frantically waving to dismiss the raindrops on the windscreen. She expected answers, Paul had none. The washing was soaked and he was bizarrely locked out of his own home.

  With capable female ingenuity, Andrea lifted the garage door using the remote from her glove box and left Paul to heft the children out of the car. She hurried through the internal access door into the kitchen, where she found Hana perched on the edge of the old sofa in the corner, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve. By the time Paul entered carrying Daniel and what appeared to be a paper snow-storm, Carlie trailing behind grizzling with a sticky lolly glued to her hand, Hana had been soothed by her neighbour’s decisive hug and box of tissues. Within another few minutes, the police had been called and Hana’s shock had subsided considerably enough to entertain the baby, who woke up and sat expectantly on her knee, watching his mother heat up his milk in the microwave.

  Hana tried Bodie’s mobile number a couple of times but chose not to leave a message. “He’ll only worry if he’s on duty,” she said, hiccoughing with the remnants of a sob. When her phone chirped wildly from her pocket, she balanced the baby and answered it, expecting to hear the reassuring voice of Vik’s son, but instead it was Boris. “Hey my vriend, vould you like to come over for dinner zis evening? I am cooking and wezzer is miserable. Vas going to be BBQ but not nice, no?”

  Hana made feeble and pathetic excuses while the baby reached for the phone and tried to yank on the little silver boot hanging from it, a present from Izzie. Andrea reached over and Hana thought she was going to reclaim her child, but instead she took the phone and spoke into it for some moments, giving a brief rundown of events and finishing with the declaration, “We’re just waiting for the cops.”

  Again, Hana thought. How embarrassing.

  The police were reasonably quick to respond, even though the two men were long gone and the vehicle had been moved by Pau
l, much to the consternation of the constable. “You should have left it where it was, sir,” he told them in a stern tone. “It’s better for us to see it in situ.”

  Paul was fed up. It seemed he couldn’t do anything right. “I was only trying to get it off the path,” he moaned to anyone who would listen, which was actually nobody. He postured in the corner, waiting for Andrea to release him.

  Andrea’s children were fascinated with the police officers, both male and imposing and the baby, now fed and happy, crawled onto the sofa and tried to make free with the curly radio wire on the younger of the two. The older one, who introduced himself as Tony, remembered Hana, much to her increased discomfort. “You’ve had a few calls recently, miss,” he said, knitting his bushy black brows. “The night of the mugging and the incident with the windscreen.”

  “Mugging?” Andrea’s eyes widened in shock. “You didn’t say anything to me!”

  This time, the cop’s questions were of an entirely different nature, centring on the possibility of grudge bearers targeting Hana. “What did they want?” Tony asked for the third time. “They must have said. Or you must have upset someone,” he pressed. “This is too much of a coincidence. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone? No niggling disputes or unpleasantness? No ex-husbands or estranged boyfriends?”

  Hana’s face hardened and showed she had plainly had enough of their questions.

  “That reggo’s not coming up either. Are you sure you remembered it right?”

  “I’m going home,” Hana declared, getting to her feet.

  Returning to the kitchen, after answering a knock on the front door Andrea was trailed by Logan, Boris and Peter North, all demonstrating a touching concern for Hana’s wellbeing. The police retreated outside to examine the truck, delivering the usual patter. “Ring us if you think of anything. Go down to the station tomorrow and sign a written statement and we’ll be in touch if there are any further developments.” Tony nodded, fixed his hat back on his bald head and departed with his offsider.