by June Whyte
I leant closer, all the better to breathe my vomit-enhanced, vodka-fuelled breath into his disapproving face. “Just don’t expect him to answer any of your insinuating questions, either.”
4
After DI Adams returned, Tanya and I were separated for further questioning. Tanya to the comfort of the lounge room—me to the hard, straight-backed wooden chair in the kitchen.
And you guessed it…Tanya won Inspector Gorgeous in the raffle and I ended up with the booby prize...DI Adams, the Columbo lookalike in the daggy long overcoat.
Twenty minutes into questioning, DI Adams produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes. He gazed at them hungrily, then, with something like a snarl, stuffed the packet back into his pocket. I let out a sigh. That’s all I needed. Verbal wrestling with a grumpy nicotine addict in the throes of trying to kick the habit.
As it was, things weren’t going well. Every time I opened my mouth I seemed to dig a bigger hole. I’d find myself popping up in China if this went on much longer. My head drooped, my brain was out to lunch, and if I could dredge up the energy, I’d go hunt up a couple of paper-clips to prop my eyes open. The big question of the moment was: How could an alleged killer get into the house when there was no sign of a break and entry?
The Inspector leaned closer. I winced as his thick nicotine-stained fingers gripped the tabletop. “Were all the windows and doors locked before you and the deceased went upstairs to bed?”
“Yes, Inspector, I locked up personally, as I do last thing every night. But I’ve already told you this. At least six times.” My fingers, unable to keep still, fastened around the loose button on my suede jacket. Twisting and tugging. Tugging and twisting. I knew, deep down where the scary maggots and worms eat away at your insides, if this relentless inquisition continued for much longer, I’d scream—and somehow, once started, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop.
Unaware of how close I was to unraveling, DI Adams leant both elbows on the table and continued to chip away. “And does anyone else have a key to your house?”
I shook my head. Why waste words? The man wasn’t listening. I’d already told him no. Perhaps I should try answering in Pig Latin. Onay. So… ogay umpjay in the akelay.
“Well, what about a spare key? Do you have a spare key that you hide in some obvious place like under the mat or under a pot plant?”
“I hide my spare key inside the gnome’s mouth in the front garden.”
“I see.” DI Adams pushed his face so close to mine I got a whiff of what he’d eaten for supper. Something involving curry...with perhaps a touch of basil. On closer inspection, I even made out the faint coffee moustache from his last caffeine fix. “And why didn’t you advise me of that important fact earlier, Ms. McKinley?”
I shoved my face back at him, almost exchanging nose fluids. “Because I bring the spare key inside before I lock up at night,” I said, enunciating each word with tongue. “I’m not a complete ditz, you know.”
His bushy eyebrows speared downwards somewhere in the vicinity of his slightly crooked nose—probably broken as a baby when he poked it into another toddler’s affairs and got it battered with a rattle.
When he spoke again, his clenched teeth made the words difficult to decipher. “So, let’s get this new information completely clear, Ms. McKinley. Am I right in saying you not only locked up before going to bed last night but you also brought your spare key inside the house?”
My reluctant nod barely registered on the up-and-down meter.
“Which means no one could get into your house. Right?”
Suddenly I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“And...if no one could get in, that also means you were the only person in the house other than Matthew Turner when he was killed.”
I sagged deeper into the chair. Visions of prison bars, black-and-white striped uniforms and toilets resembling buckets swam through my mind. “No, that’s not right,” I protested, the loose button on my jacket finally coming off in my hand. “Obviously the killer was in the house too.”
“How could he be, Ms. McKinley? There was no sign of a break in. You locked up. You brought the spare key inside.”
Okay, stripes and bucket toilets weren’t my thing. I sat up straighter, grabbed a mouthful of air and jutted my chin forward. Time to climb out of the deep dark hole I’d managed to dig for myself. “For the last time, I did not kill Matt,” I said looking him squarely in the eye. “What if someone stole my spare key while it was in the gnome’s mouth, had a copy made and then replaced it before I could discover it was gone? And last night that someone let himself in the front door while we were sleeping.”
DI Adams surprised me. Instead of hurling my idea out the window like a smelly cigarette butt, he burrowed deep inside his baggy overcoat, finally producing a notebook and silver biro from one of his many pockets. “Right,” he said, flicking the notebook open at a new page. “I need the names of anyone who knew where you kept your spare key during the day.”
Faces of friends, acquaintances and delivery guys played like a movie before my eyes. Who out of my friends hated Matt enough to run a knife through his heart? Surely I’d know a murderer if I saw one. Perhaps the kid from the supermarket who delivered my groceries on Fridays inadvertently mentioned where I hid my key to a bad-ass customer? I rubbed the back of my neck to ease the growing tension before answering. “Actually, quite a few people know where I hide my spare key, Inspector.”
“Names, Ms. McKinley.”
“Well…there’s the tradesmen, because I’m always busy out in the kennels whenever they call around and…well, I do have heaps of friends who come and go…and the local protesters meet here in my kitchen every second Wednesday night while I’m off trialing dogs at the Gawler track and once a month the—”
“Stop!” His fingers gripped the tabletop so tightly when he stood up I half expected the laminate covering to rise with him. “So the fact that you lock up at night and bring the spare key inside is really a wasted exercise.”
Geez…this guy was in dire need of anger-counseling, maybe even the services of a full on shrink. “Um…” I cracked a tentative smile and nodded. What else could I do? He made me nervous. “I guess if you put it that way….”
Ten minutes and fifty-one names later, I looked up to see Tanya pushing her way through the kitchen doorway. She waltzed across the room, Chief Inspector Gorgeous trudging wearily at her heels. The Chief Inspector appeared ragged around the edges. He had a mumbled conversation with DI Adams. Adams scowled, dug out his crumpled packet of cigarettes and offered one to his superior. Then, glancing across at me, he gave an exaggerated eye roll and lit one up for himself. I shook my head at him and frowned my disapproval. Finally they exchanged a few more mumbled words and left the room.
“How’d it go?” Tanya asked as soon as the door closed behind them.
“So-so. And you?”
“Not good,” she said scowling at a policewoman who marched into the room and stood, arms folded, watching us. “For a while there I had the Chief Inspector eating out of my hand but then I discovered he’s married with five kids and two mortgages. It sort of went downhill after that.”
To cheer myself up I drew a love heart on the table using the liquid from a puddle of vodka. First I put K. Mc. at the top, but before I could add initials to the bottom, the love heart ran into itself and changed back into a puddle. I let out a sigh. Typical. Especially for a girl whose bedside drawer contained a packet of vibrating panties as opposed to a much used packet of condoms.
“I’d better push off now, Kat.” Tanya’s words broke into my thoughts as I looked up to see her slipping her arms into the sleeves of her ratty purple bomber jacket. “The Chief Inspector has arranged for me to be driven home. I told him I only live around the corner but he wouldn’t listen. Anyway, after I sleep this vodka headache off I’ll ride my bike back and pick up Phoebe. I need my car to get to work.”
I really didn’t want Tanya to go.
Not with the police taking over the house. “Sure you can’t stick around a bit longer?”
“Sorry,” she said shoving the empty vodka bottle into an overflowing pedal bin. “I would, but I need to get home and grab a couple of hour’s shut-eye. The black coffee helped but I need to sleep and sober up. Thing is, I have to pick up Erin from her father’s before work. Dan reckons his transmission’s stuffed so he can’t drop her off at school this morning.”
I pushed away the dead chill that threatened to take over my limbs and turn me into a zombie. Of course Tanya had to get on with her life—just like I had to go out there and start working my dogs as soon as the police had finished with me.
“Sure your ex isn’t a vampire, Tan?” I asked aiming at eliciting a smile from her before she left. “Dan never gets out of bed until the sun sets.”
Tanya’s chuckle came from deep in her throat. “Dan throws up at the sight of blood so he’s hardly likely to be a vampire—but you’re right about him being allergic to work.”
The longest Dan had ever held down a job was two weeks—and the shortest—thirty seconds. He walked into a car factory one day, discovered a worker with actual sweat on his forehead and broke the speed record getting out of there.
“Sure you’ll be okay, Kat?”
“Of course,” I said forcing my smile muscles to work. “Go on. Go home and get some sleep.”
After all, I only had Matt lying dead upstairs, the police on the verge of charging me with his murder and the real killer threatening to carve up my face.
Why wouldn’tI be fine?
* * *
Tanya’s breezy voice, asking someone she referred to as PC Plod whether he was her allocated chauffeur and if so where the heck was his limousine, drifted back to me. A car door slammed. The motor sprang to life. And my one-person support team was gone.
What now? I perched on my hard wooden chair in the kitchen with a burly policewoman guarding the doorway and sniffed. My energy levels were down and dirty and mixing it with pond scum. And to make it worse, the two glasses of medicinal alcohol I’d consumed after the killer’s phone call had changed my brain cells into lumpy porridge.
However, before my mother’s voice started yakking away in my mind, ordering me to get a backbone, I dashed the back of my hand across my eyes and cemented my bottom lip. Okay, Mum. I know. No more pity party…if I wanted to survive this nightmare I had to toughen up. Inhaling a deep breath, I glanced at the kitchen wall clock before coercing my soggy limbs to push off the chair and support me. My greyhounds were howling, which meant, although it was only 4:30 a.m. it was time to take a shower and start my day.
After all—with such a murderous beginning—surely my day hadto improve.
I settled the chair back under the table but before I could drag my dishrag body toward the bathroom, a smiling blonde policewoman entered the room, a mug of black coffee in one hand. The sixth brew she’d boiled up in the last half-hour. I shook my head. “Bladder’s ready to explode,” I explained and headed for the stairs.
Immediately the burly policewoman standing guard flung herself away from the doorway and appeared at my side. Unlike the smiley blonde, P. C. Hilliard looked like she’d been caught sucking a lemon when the wind changed. Pumped-up authority and no-nonsense seeped from every pore as she thumped up the stairs behind me, her breath like exhaust fumes searing the back of my neck.
I paused on the landing. I could hear low voices coming from behind my bedroom door and the horror of what lay on the other side of that door hit me all over again. My stomach swirled. My legs buckled. I made a grab for the banister to steady myself. Then, panting like an old dog on a five-mile hike, I scuttled past the crime-scene tape, praying no one would open the door. I didn’t want to see inside my room. I didn’t want to see Matt’s dead eyes, smell blood or urine or hear the click of police photographers’ cameras as they took snaps of Matt’s final indignity.
When I reached the guest room at the end of the passageway, I slipped inside, propped myself up against the side of the wardrobe and caught my breath. Ever vigilant, my escort tagged me all the way. I snagged a pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt from inside the wardrobe and stomped across the room to the old-fashioned dresser given to me by my Granny McKinley. The policewoman shadowed my every move, so close she bumped against me. I glared at her, beetling my brows into dark storm clouds. What the heck was she expecting me to do? Pluck a homemade bomb from under a pile of my ratty sweatshirts? When she stepped closer, peering over my shoulder as I opened my underwear drawer, I actually snarled. “You want to choose my panties, constable?” I gestured with one aggressive thumb at the open drawer. “If so, go right ahead.”
All I wanted to do was empty half a bottle of coconut shower gel over my skin, scrub the vomit from my feet, the sweat from my body and the stink of fear from my armpits. And I wanted to carry out said ablutions alone. Was that too much to ask? Gritting my teeth in frustration, I whipped knickers and matching bra from the drawer and headed for the bathroom.
So did my shadow.
“Ican take a shower without you holding my hand,” I growled attempting to shut the bathroom door on her shiny black size tens.
“Ms. McKinley.” Her voice was cool, almost disinterested. “I’m only doing my job.” She elbowed past me into the bathroom and stood beside the pale pink washbasin, arms folded across her Amazon chest. “And until we have finished our enquiries I cannot permit you to shower.”
“Not shower?” I stared at the woman as though she’d just told me the earth was square. “But I have to shower.”
“Forensics may need evidence to verify whether there’s any of the victim’s DNA on your body.”
“Of course I have the victim’s DNA on my body,” I told her and sat down hard on the toilet seat. “What do you think Matt and I were doing in bed—playing Monopoly?”
Her responding smirk made me want to slap her. “Well, I certainly hope you kept the get-out-of-jail-free card,” she quipped. “You might need it.”
That’s when a blurred movement from the corner of the bathroom caught my eye. It was a bristling scrap of golden fur emanating get-lost vibes more potent than heat waves from sizzling tar. Tater, my Chihuahua had woken up. Born the size of a postage stamp but with the heart of a stegosaurus, Tater was a birthday present from my Dad five years ago. A week before the road train came blaring out of nowhere on the country road and smashed Alex McKinley into oblivion.
I watched P. C. Hilliard glance down at the time-bomb ticking away on the pink and white bathroom tiles. Evidently unfazed by the diminutive size of the aggressor, she returned her cool gaze to me.
“Ihave to shower,” I protested again, raising my voice to be heard above the now growing list of threats spewing from Tater’s yapping mouth. “I stink. I vomited on my feet and my fingers touched Matt’s body and–”
“Not my problem.”
It could have been her apathetic shrug that sent Tater into a final tailspin. Either that or my whispered, “Go get ’er, boy!”
Anyway…one minute Tater was using the floor as a trampoline, the next he’d wrapped his front paws around the policewoman’s leg and was doing what he did best—humping his little heart out.
I quickly shucked out of my suede jacket, turned on the shower and left them to it.
5
The remainder of the morning passed in a frightening blur.
My house crawled with forensics and men with flashing cameras and a buzzing hive of uniforms and plainclothes detectives. Early afternoon was no better. After I’d finished working my dogs, a policeman drove me to the police station where I was questioned again and subjected to the stark detachment of a fresh-faced constable who stole my fingerprints and entered them into the computer system. Made me feel like a real life character from The Gangs of Oz.
But by far the worst moment of the day was when two uniforms carried a bright orange body bag down the stairs on a stretcher. I think that’s when it truly hit me. My fri
end, Matthew Turner, was dead. Never again would I see him at the track, leaning over the rails, urging his dogs to victory. Never again would I return his shy grin or share a laugh over a cold can of VB beer.
By four o’clock in the afternoon I was a wreck. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and suck my thumb like a baby. Instead, I hitched my overflowing tote bag over one shoulder, crossed to the station wagon and opened the driver’s side door. Even with a baseball cap jammed on my head, I could feel the heat from the sun eating into my scalp, irritating a headache that four Panadol in as many hours hadn’t dented.
“I’d better push off or I’ll be late for kenneling,” I told my young dreadlocked assistant, Jake. Between us, we’d loaded six greyhounds into the dog trailer, checked registration papers against ear brands and packed leads, muzzles and kennel bedding into the tackbox for the night’s racing. Too much physical labor for someone whose head felt as though it might explode at any time. “You okay to finish off here, Jake?”
“Sure, dude. I’m rocking. Our protest march doesn’t like move off until seven.”
“So what’s the protest about tonight?” I eased behind the wheel, wincing when an army of fencing contractors began hammering hundreds of steel posts into my already tortured brain. “Save the whales? Save the trees? Save the dun beetles?”
Jake’s slow grin lit up the silver noserings that matched the hardware through both eyebrows and his right ear. “You can scoff, dude. Today’s march is against microwave ovens.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Did you know the radioactivity coming from your microwave can like kill you and all plant life in a ten meter radius?”
I gave a weary eye roll. Even though Jake was a fruitcake of the highest order and came highly un-recommended, my greyhounds adored him. As well as helping out in the mornings, it was his job to return around four in the afternoon and let each dog into a separate run for a final gallop, then feed up before going home to his pad, where he lived in happy squalor with six other professional protesters.