Signal Loss

by Garry Disher

  He found the man on his back between a rosebush and the far corner of the wall. Panting, eyes glazed, no gun.

  Crouching painfully, his whole torso feeling dented and bruised, Challis cuffed the man’s ankles together and crept into the yard at the rear of Bowie’s house. The back wall was mostly glass, leading onto a deck overlooking a pond and a scattering of bottlebrush and other small native trees. A brick had been thrown through the glass sliding door and blood had pooled on the tiles a short distance inside it. And there was the missing pistol, several metres in from the broken glass, on the floor beside a glass-topped bamboo table.

  He called, ‘Mr Bowie?’

  Silence. He called again. ‘Police, Mr Bowie. You’re safe now, your intruders have been arrested.’

  Still no answer. ‘May I come in, Mr Bowie?’

  ‘Go away. Leave me alone.’

  A kind of shrieking panic in the voice. This is going to take a while, Challis thought. Negotiator. Armed response. Evacuation.

  He could start the process. He could talk to Bowie, a mild, softpedalling conversation that didn’t accuse the man but rather built him up a little. But he felt so tired.

  ‘Did Owen come to you for money, Mr Bowie?’

  There was no answer, and no answer with the passing of time, the gathering of armed response police, negotiators, gawking citizenry and TV vans, until, hours later, one muffled gunshot sounded somewhere deep in the house.

  Prompting one policeman to mutter, ‘Another fucking cliché.’

  42

  A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and Pam Murphy said, ‘I can drive.’

  Michael Traill soon scotched that idea. ‘It might have escaped your notice, but your arm’s in a sling.’

  ‘I can steer with my good hand and you change gears for me.’

  ‘And you an officer of the law,’ he said.

  And so he drove, from her front door and across to Peninsula Link, then up EastLink and finally to the car park of the funeral home on Canterbury Road.

  Pam was powerfully aware of him beside her, contained and unruffled, showing only a trace of the slow drip of disappointment and loneliness she’d first witnessed in him. She watched his capable hand on the gearstick of her car, and thought of her shot arm, the punching sensation of the bullet and the shock she felt afterwards, how now the arm, in its sling across her breasts, was both comforting and being comforted by her.

  Since the shooting, she’d been given to stupid fancies. If anything, Michael was the comfort. He’d been her comfort in hospital, and out, then at every fraught and tedious stage that had attended her mother’s death.

  ‘How’s your book?’

  He gestured. ‘Ah, I’m not going to write a book. I don’t need to write a book.’

  She glanced at him uneasily. Was that a good thing? Had she been responsible? He seemed settled enough, and, as they drove, another idea grew in her mind. ‘Are we going to live together?’

  She’d never lived with a partner. Hadn’t had much of a love life, in fact. The usual adolescent fumbling, a mad few weeks with a young surfer, a madder week with a female sergeant…

  He shot her a look. ‘It’s not too soon?’

  ‘As in, we barely know each other? No. It feels right.’

  ‘It does feel right,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Of course, I’m universally loathed…’

  He was sun-browned and slim and compact there beside her. ‘Not by me,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Good to know.’

  ‘Two incomes, we can afford to rent a decent place.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Traill simply.

  What Pam didn’t say, and it stirred a touch of guilt in her, was that there would be some money from her mother’s estate, sometime down the track.

  AS IF TO ATONE FOR THESE thoughts, she contemplated the nature and existence of misery which, it turned out, resided everywhere. She should be glad to be alive, but her feelings, all of them, were scrambled. She would burst into tears at nothing. Life was short and risky. People lived in misery. The misery of Christine Penford, the misery of the children.

  Pam only wanted to feel better.

  She said, ‘Let’s buy a bike.’

  CHRISTINE PENFORD’S MOTHER lived in a small brick house on a street that had never entertained hopes or expectations but merely endured. She answered Pam’s knock with Troy Penford on her hip. Peering, frowning, she said, ‘I know you: you’re that policewoman.’

  ‘Pam Murphy, Mrs Penford.’

  The older woman looked past her. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘That’s Michael. My friend.’

  Her eyes narrowed, darted, her mind making rapid calculations and adjustments. She recognises him, Pam thought, and readied herself—but for what? To give him a mouthful?

  Mrs Penford’s gaze finally settled on the bike. It was pink, with purple grips and pedals. A white cane basket above the front wheel, pink and purple flowers woven into it, and a pink saddle.

  Her eyes blinked. ‘I tried to get her old bike back but the fellow had already sold it.’

  Michael wheeled the bike past Pam, up onto the veranda. He flipped the stand with the toe of his shoe and propped it there. Pam said, ‘Will you give it to her now, or for Christmas?’

  A decisive woman, but just then indecisive. Pam said, ‘We bought wrapping paper and ribbon, just in case.’

  And Michael said, ‘What’s one week, in the scheme of things?’

  That decided her. ‘I’ll hide it in the shed.’

  MEANWHILE, IN A MENSWEAR department, Ellen Destry was saying, ‘And how was Sergeant Cleavage?’

  Arguing with the nurses and doctors, the last time Challis had seen her. Showing just a little cleavage. ‘Fighting fit,’ he said.

  Ellen tucked her arm in his. ‘I don’t mind if you visit her, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Challis said.

  She squeezed his arm, a simple gesture, but he saw complicated layers of meaning behind it. Ellen was glad that he hadn’t been wounded. She was glad Coolidge hadn’t died. She was glad Challis was hers, not Coolidge’s. She, herself, would hate to be shot, and pitied Coolidge. And she acknowledged Coolidge’s attraction and power.

  She gave him an affectionate shake as they walked, but the movement wrenched his bruised rib cage and he smothered a gasp. She failed to notice, so intent was she now on the racks of shirts and trousers. After shopping for him, they would head up the escalators to search out a Christmas present for Ellen’s daughter. Right now, it was his turn.

  ‘I bet Sergeant Cleavage doesn’t take her boyfriends clothes shopping.’

  Challis laughed, but the sweat was breaking out. Every item of clothing felt harsh on his skin, too pressed and starched to bear. A great many carried patterns and inscriptions. Some were woven from unusual but uniformly awful fabrics. He’d tried on a pair of chinos with a false back pocket, stitched shut! And the muzak lodged deep in his skull.

  His jaw ached from clenching.

  Then, with relief, he spotted a face he recognised. A big guy… assault? Armed robbery. Paroled only a couple of months ago. His interest quickened. Maybe the guy was here to rob the place. Or shoot me, he thought. He stiffened, wanting to pull away from Ellen and slip into cop mode, shadow the guy, anything but this… this…

  A competent, stern-faced woman swung around to face the bruiser. She held a shirt to his chest. She eyed it for colour and fit. And the hulking, tattooed giant reached out a hand and touched her cheek.

  Maybe he endured the torture because he loved, and was loved, and it was Christmas. Like me, Challis thought.

  ‘My love?’ Ellen said then, her mind not on guns or thugs but some little thing of life.

 

 

 
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