Two Man Station

by Lisa Henry

  “Go home, Gio.” Sergeant Quinn put a hand on Gio’s shoulder. Squeezed gently. “It’s been a rough night.”

  It had just been a couple of punches, Gio wanted to tell him, and a secondary exposure to the spray. Except he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say it without his voice shaking, and he didn’t want the sergeant to think he couldn’t handle himself in a pub fight. Didn’t want him to think he was so easily shaken up.

  A drama queen.

  “Go on,” Sergeant Quinn said, and dropped his hand.

  It wasn’t until Gio was halfway across the scrubby paddock that separated the station from the houses, the stars wheeling in the vast field above him, that he did the maths.

  Sixteen minutes it had taken Jason Quinn to get from his house to the pub in the middle of the night, and get kitted up on the way. Sixteen minutes where time had lost all meaning for Gio. The wait had been interminable, but at the same time somehow over in the blink of an eye as he and Barry struggled with the guy on the floor of the pub. Even with the cuffs on, the arsehole hadn’t stopped fighting. Sixteen minutes for the sergeant to be there, from bed to boots on. It hadn’t been much time at all.

  It certainly hadn’t been enough time to get a babysitter for Taylor.

  Gio didn’t sleep well, despite his painkillers. He tossed and turned until dawn, and then gave up and climbed out of bed.

  Got assaulted last night, he texted Sophie.

  His phone started to ring almost immediately.

  “What happened, bambino?” Her voice was pitched high with concern. “Are you okay?”

  Jesus. Now he felt like a total arsehole for not having spoken to her in so long.

  “I’m okay. I just have a bruised jaw. And I’m not your bambino.” This was a fight they’d been having for years. If Sofia Giulia Valeri had decided when she was twelve that she wanted to be called Sophie instead—and later completed her disguise by marrying Ian Cartwright—then she didn’t get to come over all Italian when it suited her and call him bambino.

  She’d never had a counterargument so much as she’d always had a fuck off, Gio.

  “Oh, Gio.” She sighed down the phone. “Why’d you have to move so far away?”

  For once, the words didn’t come with a sharp edge of blame.

  “I just needed a change, Soph,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  “Is it because you and Pete broke up?”

  “Yeah.” Because he and Pete broke up. Because Gio had ruined Pete’s career, his future, and at the same time had destroyed every friendship and professional relationship he’d ever built.

  “Gio.” She sighed again. “Does it totally suck out there?”

  He managed a slight laugh at that. “It does this morning.”

  Sophie made a sympathetic sound.

  Gio leaned against the back doorway, catching the slight breeze that whispered through the screen door. A flock of cockatoos, silhouetted by the pink and orange sky, settled in the rain tree at the back of the block, dangling from the branches as they screamed at one another. He could see the back of the Quinns’ house from here. Taylor’s bike was dumped at the bottom of the back steps. A cat, too skinny and furtive to be anyone’s pet, slunk out from underneath the house as Gio watched, and then darted away.

  Gio closed his stinging eyes. “How’s the family?”

  “You mean, ‘How’s Dad?’”

  He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Yeah. How’s Dad?”

  “We went to visit him on the weekend. He kept calling me Lucia.”

  Their mother’s name. “Shit,” he murmured.

  “It’s hard, Gio,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t left. Maybe he’d be better if you were here . . .”

  Gio knew his father wouldn’t be any better if he were there. But Sophie might. For things like that, family was supposed to step up. They were supposed to lean on one another. Gio was supposed to be there for her.

  “I’ll visit as often as I can,” he said, even if the thought of the drive made him want to cringe. He could drive as far as Townsville, maybe, and fly down. “This is just . . .” He drew a breath. “This is something I had to do, Soph.”

  She was silent for a long moment.

  “I know,” she said at last. “I know. For the record though, your timing sucks.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his throat aching. “I know.”

  At a little past eight thirty in the morning, Gio heard the screen door at the Quinns’ house slam in the frame. He opened his back door and looked across to the house, in time to see Taylor heading down the stairs in his school shirt, shorts, hat, and backpack. He jumped off the last step onto the ground, raising a cloud of dust, then set off towards the road.

  Maybe it was just the oversized backpack, but he suddenly seemed very small.

  Jason would have preferred not to use his day off to drive a prisoner to Charters Towers, but Gio had to go and get himself assaulted, didn’t he? Not that it had been his fault. Kev Lindeman hated coppers. He’d had a go at Jason one night, high on ice and armed with a knife to boot—Dan had tasered him. Lit him up like a Christmas tree. Apparently Kev’s previous experience with Richmond’s finest, and his six months in prison for waving the knife around in public, hadn’t taught him how to pull his head in. Gio had been lucky that Barry had been happy to dive in and help.

  Jason did some paperwork at the station until he saw that Taylor had headed off for school okay, and then got Kev Lindeman out of his cell.

  The three hours to Charters Towers was painful. Kev was still sobering up, or coming down, or both, and wasn’t happy to find himself in the pod in the back of the LandCruiser. He spent most of the drive yelling and kicking at the sides of the pod. Jason made sure he hit every pothole he could find.

  He radioed the guys in Charters Towers when he was about fifteen minutes away, and they met him at the back of their station and hauled Kev out. He could cool his heels in their holding cell for a while, until they were ready to take him halfway to Townsville. They were waiting on the call from the Townsville crew before proceeding.

  Sometimes police work was police work. Sometimes it was a fucking taxi service.

  “How’s your new senior connie going, Sarge?” one of the guys asked him.

  Jason shrugged and made a noncommittal sound.

  “I’ve got a mate on the Coast,” the second guy said, and they fell into silence. Probably because Jason hadn’t given them enough to read the situation yet. Did they shit on Gio or not? Jason wasn’t in the mood to encourage them.

  “Thanks, fellas,” he said.

  “You heading back already?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, and flashed them a grin. “Day off. Can’t you tell?”

  Jason didn’t go straight back. Taylor would never forgive him if he found out Jason had been all the way to the Towers and hadn’t got him Maccas. Jason went through the drive-through and loaded up on cheeseburgers. They microwaved reasonably well out of the freezer. For certain values of reasonable. Taylor liked them anyway.

  On the drive back, unwrapping a cheeseburger awkwardly against the steering wheel, Jason thought of Gio. He’d looked spooked last night. Not when Jason had raced into the pub to back him up after getting the call from Comms, but in the locker room at the station when it had all been over.

  Shit.

  Jason wanted to like the guy, wanted to work well with him—he wanted to reassure him and be on his side when he got hurt on the job—but how the hell could he do that when everyone knew Gio couldn’t be trusted?

  Red dust billowed behind him as he headed west again.

  The familiar conversational tones of the ABC’s morning presenter carried Jason back to Richmond, interrupted here and there by blasts of chatter from the CB radio that was set up to listen to the truckies, and the back and forth of job details between Comms and Charters Towers on the police radio. The blast of static had been part of the soundtrack of Jason’s life for years now.

  When Jason got back, it was ju
st past midday. He parked the LandCruiser behind the station, checked in with Sandra to let her know he was back and make sure there was nothing that needed his attention, then headed home. The sun beat down as he walked, and the thick soles of his boots crunched against the clumps of dry grass. Flies buzzed around him, attracted to his bag of cheeseburgers. Jason waved them away, clamping his mouth shut to avoid inhaling one of the little bastards. They were getting bad again, but they were preferable to the mosquitoes that would come once the rain did. Anything was preferable to the mosquitoes.

  Jason climbed the front steps and unlocked the door.

  The air inside the house was still and warm. Jason turned on the ceiling fan in the lounge room as he made his way inside. It clicked and whirred as the blades began to spin. Jason went through to the kitchen and stashed the bag of cheeseburgers in the freezer. Taylor would never look behind the frozen broccoli, not in a million years.

  There was a bad smell coming from the rubbish bin in the corner of the kitchen. Jason poked the lid warily, dislodging a lazy couple of stench-drunk blowflies and a wave of something rancid.

  “Jesus.” Jason grabbed the spray from under the sink and blasted the flies. Then he carefully lifted the lid off the bin and pulled the edges of the bag shut, shutting in the offending tuna tin.

  That bloody cat.

  That bloody kid.

  Jason had told Taylor not to feed the stray that had been hanging around, and he’d promised he wouldn’t, but Jason had noticed tins of tuna were finding their way into the trolley at the weekly grocery shop. And he didn’t need to be a cop to figure out why.

  Jason snorted as he let himself out the back door and went downstairs to dump the bag in the wheelie bin. Taylor might be constantly gobsmacked at the way Dad saw through all his schemes, but he was ten. He wasn’t anywhere near as sneaky as he thought he was.

  Jason disposed of the bag, and then picked up Taylor’s bike from where he’d left it lying at the bottom of the steps and leaned it against the back of the house. Then, glancing over at Gio’s house, he sighed and set off across the yard.

  A bronze skink scuttled out of his way.

  Gio’s car was parked under the house. The back steps creaked as Jason climbed them, and he could hear a movie or a video game with explosions playing in the background. He rapped on the screen door. “You home, Gio?”

  The sound cut out, and a moment later, Gio appeared at the back door.

  “Sarge.” Something almost like panic flashed over his face before his expression shuttered.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sorry, Sarge. Of course.” Gio fumbled with the door, pushing it open. He stood by the door as Jason stepped inside.

  Jason glanced around. The back door opened up into the kitchen. Beyond that was the open-plan living and dining area, and the seldom-used front door. When Dan and Gabby had lived here, there had been shit, as Dan said, from arsehole to breakfast. A couch that had always been half-covered by an overflowing basket of ironing. The baby’s playpen. Toys strewn over the floor. Shelves stacked with books and DVDs. The house had been messy, lived-in, and somehow welcoming at the same time. Now the living room seemed almost bare. Just a couch and a TV. The table in the dining area had two chairs and had clearly been made for a small kitchen nook. There was nothing hanging from the hooks on the walls.

  Jason pulled his gaze back from the empty living area, to Gio. He was wearing track pants and a T-shirt. He looked sleep-rumpled. His hair stuck up a little at the back. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a hint of stubble along his bruised, swollen jaw.

  “You slept at all?” Jason asked him.

  “I got in a couple of hours.” Gio raked his fingers through his hair, and then nodded towards the unnecessarily complicated coffee maker sitting on the kitchen bench. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  Gio stared blankly at the machine for a few moments—he’d probably been lying about getting sleep—and then he hit a button and started it up.

  “How’s the jaw?” Jason asked him.

  “The painkillers are pretty good.” Gio raised a hand and touched his jaw. His gaze slid to Jason. “Did you just get back, Sarge?”

  “Yeah.” Jason glanced around the kitchen. There was a toaster on the bench, with a loaf of bread sitting out beside it. A fridge with a surface entirely unpolluted by magnets and photographs and to-do lists. “I left him at the Towers.”

  Gio nodded. “What happens next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cap spray.” Gio’s brows tugged together. “The use of force.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jason said. “You did everything by the book.”

  Gio jerked his head in a nod, and turned to fiddle with the coffee machine. “I’ve got, um, I’ve got a lot of people waiting for the chance to dog me.”

  Jason studied the tense line of his shoulders. “Because of the Coast?”

  “Yeah.” Gio didn’t turn around. “It’d be good to know you’ve got my back here.”

  Yeah, Gio hadn’t slept at all today, had he? A punch to the face, a closer call than he wanted to admit even to himself, and he’d been too wired to sleep afterwards. Too hyperaware of not what had gone right, but what could have so easily gone wrong. Jason had been there.

  Jason stepped forward and nudged Gio out of the way of the coffee machine with his shoulder. “Do the cups go here?”

  Gio nodded.

  Jason put the cups in place a fraction of a second before the coffee began to dribble out. Gio was still standing close. He smelled faintly of some bodywash or deodorant Jason didn’t recognise. His warmth leached into Jason’s space.

  “I’ve got your back on this, Gio,” he said, as the rich scent of coffee rose in the air. “I don’t care about what happened down on the Coast.” A lie, but what else could he say? “I judge you by your actions here, okay? And from what I saw last night, and from what all the witnesses say, you did everything by the book.”

  Gio’s shoulders sagged, and he gave Jason an almost furtive look. He reached for one of the coffee cups, curled his fingers around it, and then put space between them. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  Jason took his own cup. “Have you got any sugar?”

  “No.” Gio gave a slight shrug. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. It’s better for me like this, right?”

  “Right,” Gio agreed.

  “You should get some sleep,” Jason told him, leaning back against the bench and sipping his coffee. It was good and strong. “Listen, I’m firing up the barbeque tonight. Nothing special. Just some snags. But you’re welcome to join me and Taylor for dinner.”

  There was something about Gio’s kitchen—probably how clean it was—that made Jason wonder if the guy was living on sandwiches and coffee when he wasn’t on shift. That might have worked down on the Coast, but the options for takeaway in Richmond were sadly limited.

  Still, he half expected Gio to say no, and was surprised instead when Gio hesitated and then nodded.

  “Thanks, Sarge,” he said at last. “That’d be good.”

  Taylor’s face scrunched up as he carefully positioned the tomatoes into a line on the chopping board and reached for the big knife. Jason watched closely, worried Taylor was still too little for this, too clumsy and uncoordinated, and it would all end in tears and bloodshed. But he was ten. Jason had been handling knives when he’d been ten. A part of him knew Taylor was easily old enough to do this. Another part of him wondered what the hell his parents had been thinking.

  “Watch your fingers,” Jason reminded him.

  Taylor nodded seriously, and began to slice the tomatoes. “Hey, Dad, you know on TV when the chefs just go chop-chop-chop like Fruit Ninja?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jason cautioned, and Taylor grinned at him. “Pay attention, mate.”

  “Can I do the onions too?”

  “If you don’t cut your fingers off doing the tomatoes.”

  Taylo
r snorted, but squinted with concentration as he worked. Jason watched him, warmth creeping through him. This kid. This exasperating kid. God. Alana wouldn’t believe how tall he was now. What a little smart-arse he’d grown into. Okay, well, maybe she would have believed that. Taylor had been talking back since before he could make proper words.

  The blade of the knife slid through the last of the tomatoes and landed with a dull thock on the chopping board. Taylor looked around for Jason.

  “Can I?”

  “Go on, then,” Jason said, and Taylor whooped and scurried to get an onion from the fridge.

  Jason supervised the onion chopping, and then headed downstairs to put the onions and sausages on the barbeque.

  He figured it was the smell of the cooking sausages that drew Gio over. And Gio wasn’t the only one who noticed. The smell certainly got the attention of every fucking blowfly in the entire region too. Gio was waving a few of them away from his face as he crossed the yard between the houses.

  “Come on upstairs,” Jason said, transferring the sausages and fried onion onto a plate. “Not as many flies.”

  Gio followed him up the back steps.

  “Hi, Gio!” Taylor exclaimed, his eyes widening. “Wow. Look at your face.”

  Jason winced internally. “Mate.”

  Gio smiled slightly. “It’s pretty bad, right?”

  “This one time, I crashed my bike and I landed on the handlebars, and the bruise was purple for weeks,” Taylor said. “Yours is cool but.”

  Gio’s smile widened, and he let out a small laugh. “Thanks.”

  Jason should have done this earlier. Invited Gio over for dinner, and at least made half an attempt to be a bit more sociable. Because there was a difference between being friendly and trusting the guy, and Jason should have remembered he could do one without the other. Inviting the guy over every couple of days didn’t mean he was setting himself up to be shit on. He’d told Gio earlier that he was only going to judge him by what happened here, not on the Coast. It was about time he actually gave that a try, right?

  He carried the sausages and onion through to the dining table.