Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  Peering through the glass, she saw a darkly slumped shape, quite small, about cat-sized but very, very still. Hana’s heart missed a beat and she knelt down to get a closer look, terrified it was Tiger. “No!” She put her hand up to her mouth.

  The glassy dead eyes of a possum stared through her, its matted fur on end in several places and its tongue lolling almost comically out of its mouth. It’s a possum, you know what it is she told herself over and over and although she managed not to scream, her strangled noise, brought Logan running. He pulled her up off her haunches and looked through the window at the dead animal, visibly perplexed by its presence. “Come out of the way. I’ll take a look.” Pushing Hana gently away from the door, he reached up and undid the bolts, repeating the process at the bottom before realising it was deadlocked and the key was deliberately elsewhere.

  Cursing loudly, Logan found it in the cupboard in the bathroom, a stupid place to hide keys as he repeatedly told his wife and unlocked the door. It opened outwards, shoving the little broken body away from its aperture as the cold air blasted in. Hana’s hand was over her mouth as he went out onto the roof garden. He was in his socks, having discarded his shoes already and Hana saw Logan accidentally stand in some pooled blood. The bile rose in her throat and she ran to the bathroom to vomit up the smoothie.

  She sat by the toilet for a while, hearing the outside door close and Logan lock up again. He found her in the bathroom, bringing her a glass of cold water. “This might help,” he suggested. Hana thanked him gratefully, reminded again of how thoughtful and kind he could be. Logan sat down on the board floor, leaning his back on the wainscoted side of the bath, waiting while Hana took small sips of the water. He ran his hands through his hair and then leaned his head back with a sigh. “I never expected to suck at marriage so badly.” Logan’s dark features were brooding and sad. “I’m sorry.”

  Hana breathed out slowly and thought about the dead possum’s face again and then realised her mistake as she struggled to stop herself throwing up. She couldn’t seem to stop interposing its face with hers or Logan’s. Dead. Logan reached out and took her hand, pulling it away from her face where she rubbed her eyes and forehead a little too hard and was in the process of pushing her nose flat against her face. “It was a possum,” he said, trying to sound reassuring, “to be honest, I think Tiger got to it. He was prowling around looking pretty pleased with himself like it was a gift or something. It would have been a fierce match for him normally, but they spray 10-80 up here so I think it was probably drugged and feeling quite sick anyway. Tiger got lucky.”

  Hana looked carefully at her husband, trying to detect any sign of a lie. She saw only tiredness and shuffled across to him, nestling her head in his lap for a moment while she caught hold of herself. Logan stroked her hair, pulling out the small tangles and tucking it behind her ear so gently she hardly felt it. He massaged her head and her temples and it was so nice Hana felt herself relaxing and almost falling asleep.

  Tiger padded in, flicking his tail and smoothing his body along Hana and Logan affectionately before curling up in her lap and lying on his back, belly exposed. Hana sighed deeply, feeling irrationally irritated when Logan moved her. “Let me help you get into bed, love. My legs are going dead.”

  Hana staggered to her feet and lurched out of the bathroom, flopping onto the bed with absolutely no energy left whatsoever.

  Hana Du Rose

  Chapter 25

  Vik argued furiously with Bodie about something in the living room. Their boy kept shouting, “I don’t know where it’s gone!”

  Hana heard the raised male voices from the bedroom. She sat up in bed, convincing herself the angry tones rising and falling meant they were really arguing. She had no energy and her feet felt like they were glued down as she tried to get out of bed. Her legs were bare and someone had helped her out of her tight work clothes after she fell asleep. Her underwear bit into her skin and she felt uncomfortable and cross.

  The shouting stopped and as she wakened more, Hana began to doubt what she heard. She felt groggy and disoriented, weaving across to the bedroom door and trying to get out into the hallway. She pushed on the door, finding it wouldn’t open. Panicking she pushed harder and then slapped it with the flat of her hand, her heart racing. Where was Vik? Why wouldn’t he come and open the door for her?

  Hana wasn’t aware of her own shouts, but it seemed she must have called out because a dark shape loomed up behind her and gently took her arms and turning her around, asked her to calm down. “It’s ok, Hana. Everything’s fine.”

  Hana’s confusion trebled and she fought back, hitting at the hands that clasped hers. Where was Vik and why couldn’t she hear Bodie anymore? It had all gone strangely quiet apart from her rasping breaths as she struck out and the wailing sound seemed to emanate from inside her. The shape was strong and held her tightly, preventing her from thrashing. It came to her suddenly that Bodie had been shouting about the box. Of course, he didn’t know where it was, he didn’t know about it. She gave it to…

  Hana stopped fighting so abruptly it took her companion by surprise. She was quiet and still, grappling inside for a fix on her tenuous reality. She gave the box to Jas, not Bodie. Bodie wasn’t a little boy anymore and Vik was gone. Grief washed over her like a breaking wave and Hana found herself crying and shaking, leaned precariously up against the bedroom wall. Logan held her like a delicate piece of china, fearing the break on the inside would permeate to the outside and not knowing how he would cope if it did. For Hana, it wasn’t the first time and would probably not be the last, where the sorrow snuck up on her and erupted as freshly as frozen peas. Dragged from the freezer years after the day they were snap frozen and packaged, the awful emotions tasted just as fresh.

  The bitterness and bile, the overwhelming sense of loss never changed. Life dulled the sharpness of its cut but when confusion and tiredness overwhelmed the senses and forgetfulness altered reality, the realisation was as powerful and bone breaking when it came then, as it had been the very first time.

  Hana slid down the wall and cried until she was exhausted, as sleep and dreams deserted her and she finally knew where she was. Logan’s strength and patience were welcome then, the masculine nearness a salve for her wounded heart.

  She managed to communicate she felt nauseous and he helped her to her feet. He hurried across and put the lights on under the bed canopy and Hana felt her sense of perplexity reignite as she saw him open the door by pulling on it. It looked so easy - that motion of turning the handle and bringing the door towards him, especially after its refusal to grant her exit. But then it would. She had been pushing against it. Hana tried to distract herself as she was violently sick into the toilet, forcing her brain to remember where there was a bedroom door which pushed to open. Back it came to her, the scruffy little flat she and Vik barely afforded on their student grants, the flat to which she brought the infant Bodie and fumbled precariously through the first year of a marriage built on the foundations of an accidental pregnancy.

  Logan sat next to his wife and stroked her back, handing her a wad of toilet roll to wipe her mouth once she felt she could be sick no more. She cleaned her teeth, trying not to look at the pale middle-aged woman, staring back at her out of the mirror. The taste of toothpaste and the spitting action down the plughole almost set her off again, but there was nothing left in her stomach to oblige.

  Logan settled her back into bed and went off down the hall to make them both a cup of tea. Cold water had a tendency to shock her stomach at night if she wasn’t careful and he knew that. Logan came back with the drinks, Tiger hot on his heels purring and snuggling down into the rucks in the duvet. Hana cuddled her mug, holding it aloft so as not to spill as Logan settled down onto the bed next to her. The only sound for a while was the sipping of too-hot drinks. Hana placed her empty mug on the bedside table and smooched down into the covers, moving in close to Logan so her nose touched the waistband of his pyjama bottoms and the soft flesh
of his side. He squirmed as her breathing tickled him. “Was it the possum?” he asked tentatively, “Did it give you nightmares?”

  Hana rolled onto her back and thought for a moment, realising the last thing she wanted to do was lie to him. “It might have started it off,” she began, “but the dream wasn’t about the possum, it was about something else.”

  “Your husband,” said Logan after a long pause and his voice sounded so lost and empty Hana ached for him. For the first time since she married him, she saw the spectre of her dead husband challenging Logan for her affection and understood how that must feel. Vik’s influence was far worse than Caroline’s. The woman could tarnish her own reputation with her behaviour, but Vik couldn’t. He became sainted through death, yet he had been a long way from saintly.

  “No,” she replied defiantly, “you’re my husband. I dreamed about Vik and Bodie as a small boy. They were arguing, but it wasn’t real.”

  “What box were you upset about?” Logan asked, picking at a thread on the duvet, his body language taunt and awkward.

  It took some time for Hana to explain about the box she found and the debacle with Jas over it. Logan shook his head. “Little sod. He wouldn’t have messed me around like that. Let’s go over to Amy’s after work tomorrow to find it.”

  “There’s no rush.” Hana made excuses, remembering the doctor’s appointment. Logan picked up on her reticence, asking her a series of questions until she had to concede the truth. He spent his working life sorting out disputes between teenage boys with a natural propensity to lie their heads off. Obviously he was going to see through Hana.

  “Why are you shutting me out of this?” He was understandably hurt. “I know what Caroline’s saying about me…”

  Hana didn’t want him to finish. She couldn’t bear to think of Caroline or the baby he alleged was Logan’s. Not when she had her own problems to think about. Naturally Logan was upset she didn’t include him in her plans. He lay down in the bed next to her and turning out the lights, took her face in both of his hands, telling her, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m not going to get bored, leave, or die. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  His words, carefully chosen and well-aimed, resonated within Hana somewhere deep down. “Please babe, I’m struggling here. I’ve never done this before and I don’t know what to do. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Please don’t shut me out, I’m begging you?” Logan sounded so desperate.

  Hana sighed deeply and taking one of his hands, placed it on her stomach where the tiny being fluttered and moved in the unaccustomed wakefulness of the dead of night. Hana heard her husband hold his breath and connect with the little person, felt it halt and begin its frantic activity again. At that moment, she had an acute knowing beyond all reasonable doubt, she knew the sex of her child.

  Logan and Hana slept soundly, missing the alarm and dozing right through. It was seven thirty when Logan awoke suddenly. “Oh crap!”

  He ran around the house trying frantically to get ready for his tutor group at eight forty. Hana made plaintive efforts to get ready, stumbling around after him but the nausea returned with a vengeance and he banned her from going with him, promising to tell Sheila and anyone else who needed to know she was unwell. He left the Honda for her, riding out on his bike down the new driveway with far too much haste for Hana’s liking, despite his promises to her in the early hours about not dying prematurely.

  Feeling guilty about not going to work again, Hana was also glad of the opportunity to slow down and took her time getting dressed and tidying up after Logan’s mad dash around the house. She bent down to retrieve his pyjama bottoms from the hall floor where he shed them and the bathroom looked as though a bomb had gone off in the soap dish. The nausea pursued her from one end of the house to the other, but a single piece of dry toast calmed the beast for the time being.

  Hana spent the day pottering around, avoiding the doors out onto the roof garden, even though she knew Logan sluiced the area down with hot water and washing up liquid the night before, disposing of the body although she couldn’t remember where he said he put it. Polishing, dusting the skirting boards and vacuuming occupied most of the day. Hana had misgivings about enjoying a day for which she would undoubtedly claim sick pay and logged onto the school server for a couple of hours in the afternoon, clearing down emails and updating the various forms she used and which she intended to do at work. She pressed ‘print’ without thinking, realising too late she would make Pete jump out of his skin if he were in the office alone and cause much consternation if Sheila happened to grab the forms out of the printer and wonder where they came from.

  At half past two, Hana fancied a bath and decided to spoil herself, luxuriating in the deep tin tub, completely covered in foam and bubbles. She ignored the phone when it rang, feeling momentarily guilty in case it was important but fascinated by the sudden activity of the child as it moved around in her tummy, disturbed by the increased temperature of the bathwater. It still felt like wind or tiny butterflies but eventually Hana knew its movements would become visible, like the pitch and roll of an earthquake under her flesh as it turned over or shifted position. One day, a little fist or foot would protrude through skin which became paper thin and stretched. “I still don’t know what I feel about you,” Hana murmured to her child, admitting. “I’m confused deep down and very, very afraid of what the future holds.”

  But moments like this, when she could pause and sort of enjoy the feeling of being an expectant mother again, helped her to adjust.

  Hana got out of the bath carefully, as the floor was slippery. She let out the water and watched the bubbles fight their way down the plughole as though duelling for some fantastic prize, instead of being first down the smelly pipe to the septic tank. She dried herself and made sure she wore clothing a doctor could poke around in, giggling a little at the lewdness of the thought. Her sleeves could be raised easily for bloods to be taken and track pants would allow access for an examination of her stomach. She realised how blindly she went into it all with Bodie and then Izzie, so quickly afterwards. She also remembered with Bodie’s pregnancy, having to strip almost naked when she couldn’t get her skirt down enough to expose her stomach, or her sleeves up for the blood pressure cuff to go around her arm. I’m older and wiser, she told herself, but not quite so pleasant to look at!

  Hana collected her bag and things together ready for her appointment and heard the gate alarm give its bleep. The sound of Logan’s motorbike roared through and tackled the slope, its steady thrum echoing off the surrounding bush. It started to drizzle slightly and Hana worried unnecessarily, until she saw the headlight breach the final bend and come up towards the house. Logan waved as he saw her in the hall window and rode down to the opening garage door, slotting the bike under it out of her view. The sound of the engine cutting was simultaneous with the motor on the garage door and Logan’s footsteps came heavily up the stairs. His hair was flat from the helmet and his leather jacket and trousers were speckled from the first of the rains. He stood in the entrance hall not moving or speaking, looking expectantly at her.

  Hana waited for a long moment before holding out the Honda keys to him. “Would you drive?”

  Logan’s face betrayed complete pleasure at the offer and like a small child, he skipped excitedly down the back stairs to the garage and held the door open for her. Hana settled herself in the car as Logan stripped the leather pants from over his work trousers. The Honda fired up and they backed out of the garage, Logan at the wheel and Hana turned her face away smirking to herself, enjoying her husband’s sense of reprieve.

  The doctor’s surgery in Ngaruawahia was busy. It was also full and Hana missed the days when men and boys would offer their seats to women. The receptionist seemed uncomfortable when Logan walked in, looking slyly over at him in case he was nursing a broken bone or some kind of haemorrhage which, to be fair, on other previous occasions he had been. After paying, Hana
and Logan lurked in the corner admiring the enormous fish in a tank that bore the name, ‘Rent a Tank.’ The big orange fantails didn’t seem awfully disturbed by their status as ‘rentals’ and were boisterous and healthy. Hana alarmed Logan by pointing at the label and asking him, a bit too loudly, “Is that kind of like, prostitution, for fish?”

  He cleared his throat and tried not to burst out laughing at her as at least thirty pairs of eyes pointed their way.

  Hana’s appointment was technically half an hour before she actually parked her backside on a chair in the harassed doctor’s room. She stood for most of that time too; until Logan made her sit down in a recently vacated seat. The occupant had only got up to get a tissue though and Hana was forced to relinquish the plastic chair when they came back looking huffy and annoyed. It was a woman not much older than Hana but was definitely not pregnant, although Hana conceded she didn’t look it yet either. Logan was irritated though and Hana was glad when her name was called.

  Logan hesitated, not knowing whether to follow her in or not. He was unsure how far the welcome extended. When Hana realised he wasn’t with her and indicated he should come, Logan lurched after her with a look of grey relief on his face. Hana’s doctor was Indian and tired after the typical Friday night rush to get seen before the weekend. The fee was double on Saturdays and Sundays as it was considered out-of-hours. Hence the full waiting room of ailments and plagues that suddenly couldn’t be left.

  For all of that, he was kindly and gentle with Hana. “Congratulations on your pregnancy. Now please will you go and produce the yellow evidence, so I can check you out.”

  Logan sat awkwardly in the room with the doctor while Hana went off to squeeze another one out, wishing she hadn’t gone at home. When she finally re-emerged, clutching the pot of frothing, brimming pee, having made the humiliating trip across the middle of the waiting room with it for all to see, she found the men chatting about soccer.