Lights and Sirens

by Lisa Henry

  Kate ran a hand through her short hair. “He does. And you don’t need the grief, my love.”

  Hayden couldn’t remember when they’d started all the loves, dears, and honeys. Was it when Kate’s husband had made some comment about her spending her nights with a man young enough to be her son? Probably. Their flirting was all in fun. Jimmy knew he had absolutely nothing to worry about on that front. Hayden and Kate had been working together for two years now. Kate was very, very married, and Hayden was very, very gay. Kate was also old enough to be his mother, but she’d never once treated him like she treated her kids, thank Christ.

  “Oh, honey,” she’d told him when he’d been deliberating about whether to text some guy who’d given him his number, “I get enough of this soap opera shit at home. Harden the fuck up. If you want to get laid, text him. If you don’t, shut up about it.”

  Hayden doubted she gave her kids the same advice.

  “How’s Sam going?” he asked as worked the brush around Kate’s boots.

  Kate sighed. “Oh, you know. He doesn’t want to finish school. He wants to do an apprenticeship instead. But I know what will happen. The lazy little shit won’t do anything about it, and end up living in my house until he’s thirty-five, playing World of Warcraft and getting into flame wars on the internet about crap that actual adults don’t care about.”

  Hayden snorted with laughter.

  Kate lifted her feet for him. “I swear I need to put a bomb under that kid. I keep telling him nobody wants to hire a grotty teenager who can only communicate by using a system of grunts, and he just stares at me.” She rolled her eyes. “God give me strength!”

  Hayden smiled. Kate didn’t mean a word of it. “And Heather?”

  Kate sighed. “Don’t get me started on Heather. She’s got this boyfriend now, did I tell you? And she wants to change from Medicine to Performing Arts, because that’s what he does. That’s all well and good for now, I told her, but what happens six weeks down the track when you realise he’s not the love of your life? I thought I’d skipped all the teenage drama with Heather, but I think she’s just a late bloomer.”

  Hayden hauled himself up into the back of the ambulance. “Are we stocked up for everything?”

  “We’re okay. We need to fuel up though. Any plans for days off?”

  “Not really.” Hayden rolled his shoulders. “Sleep, I guess. Catch up on some TV.”

  And he’d probably end up hitting a few of the clubs in town at some point, slinking home before dawn and spending the next day sleeping off his hangover and avoiding the judgement of his flatmate, Monique. Monique was a third-year Marine Biology student at JCU, and knew way more about sea lice than Hayden cared to think about. Thanks to her study habits and Hayden’s shiftwork, they could usually go days without running into one another. It suited both of them.

  Kate chewed on the end of her pen. “We’re having a barbeque tomorrow night. Come over about six.”

  “Want me to bring anything?”

  “Just yourself, dearest,” Kate told him. “And whatever you’re drinking. You can crash in the spare room.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Hayden said. The clubs would still be there the next time he had a weekend off. Besides, he could always bump and grind with Jimmy.

  “If you’re leaving me for a man, Jimmy, I’m not breaking it to your mother!” Kate had told them one night when they’d drunk just a bit too much and had been holding one another up as they sang along to Lady Gaga.

  Good times. Hayden smiled broadly at the memory as he began to take inventory of the supplies in his kit. In fact, didn’t he have some Lady Gaga on his phone? He drew it out of his pocket and flicked through his music catalogue. Hell yeah, Bad Romance. That’s what he and Jimmy had been singing.

  He turned it on, and turned it up.

  Kate laughed and began to move from side to side with the beat. She raised her arms and sang along.

  There wasn’t much room in the back of an ambulance for an impromptu lap dance, but Hayden gave it his best shot anyway. Kate threw her head back and roared with laughter.

  A flash of movement in the periphery of Hayden’s vision made him realise he had more of an audience than he’d intended.

  It was Constable Dickhead and the newbie. They were both staring at Hayden and Kate. The newbie looked like he was trying not to laugh, but Deakin was as stony-faced as ever.

  Well, Hayden thought after the initial burn of embarrassment had worn off, if Constable Dickhead can’t see the funny side of having a middle-aged woman smack your arse in the back of an ambulance to the beat of Bad Romance, he needs to get out more.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Day shifts bled into afternoon shifts bled into night shifts. Days off passed in the blink of an eye, and before Matt Deakin knew it he was facing another week of 6 a.m. starts. Morning shifts always seemed to drag. More corro and less excitement than on an afternoon or a night shift, particularly at the beginning of the week. And all shifts dragged with a First Year stuck to his side like a wet tissue. Sean Foster was only in his third week of the job, and painfully new. He was trying Matt’s patience, but no more than any other First Year he’d ever had. The first few weeks were always torture, and all the newbies walked around with slightly panicked looks on their faces that said: Holy crap, they gave me a gun. What if they expect me to use it?

  But Sean was okay, if a little shell-shocked. Not because of any particular jobs they’d been to, but because he’d just spent six months slogging it out at the academy and was now facing the horrible realisation that he still knew next to nothing about operational policing.

  At just past 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, the 610 job appeared on the Q-Tasks list, and Matt winced as he read it. A woman was reporting she hadn’t seen her elderly neighbour in days, and there was a bad smell coming from his house. There were a few other crews on who could take the job, but nobody would be tripping over themselves in their hurry to grab this one.

  He tapped the screen of his device, accepting the job.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Sean, and they left the station together.

  The address was in West End, only a few minutes’ drive from the station. It was a nice neighbourhood. The street was right at the base of Castle Hill, and full of old railway cottages. Most had been renovated, but some hadn’t. Some, like this one and the old lady’s next door, had probably housed the same people for the past sixty years. No fancy architraves and latticework on them. The bull-nosed windows were the originals. It was a lot like Grandad’s place, which was an association Matt could do without right about now.

  “I haven’t seen him since last week,” the elderly neighbour who came out to meet them fretted. “He has a heart condition, you know.”

  Had, Matt thought, staring at the cottage. He had a heart condition.

  “Okay,” he told her. “Why don’t you go and make a cuppa, and we’ll take a look.”

  “How do you have it, dear?” she asked him.

  “I’m okay,” he said, patting her arm. “You just make one for yourself.”

  He watched as she tottered back down the footpath and turned into her own neat garden.

  Matt exchanged a dubious glance with Sean.

  The old fibro cottage was locked up. From the footpath Matt could see the cloud of flies against the windows inside. It turned his stomach, and he hadn’t even smelled it yet.

  “Let’s get it over with,” he said almost unwillingly.

  Sean nodded grimly.

  The little front gate squeaked open as Matt pushed it. He took a few steps onto the cracked concrete path, and then looked back as an ambulance rumbled into the street. It pulled to a stop behind the police car, and the doors opened. The guy who climbed out of the driver’s seat was tall, lean, and had short-cropped red hair that immediately drew the eye. There was no mistaking him.

  Great.

  Hayden Kinsella, of fucking course.

  “Hey,” Matt said, forcing hi
mself to keep his tone conversational as Hayden and his partner Kate met them at the gate. “Looks like it could be a bad one.”

  Kate nodded, her mouth a grim line as she took in the flies that pinged lazily against the windows.

  “Super,” Hayden muttered.

  “Okay,” Matt said to Sean. “This one’s yours.”

  Sean squared his shoulders and approached the house. He climbed the three low steps that led to the front door, and turned the knob. The door was locked. Sean’s shoulders slumped in relief. Sean was new, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t eager to get inside.

  Matt tried not to think about exactly what it would smell like the moment the door was opened. Sights, he could handle. Smells usually did him in. It took a lot of washes to get the stench of a really bad dead body out of his uniform, and a lot of hot showers to get it off his skin, his hair, and out of his throat and lungs.

  It would be like something out of a horror movie in there.

  “I’ll go check around the back,” Matt said, and headed down the side of the house.

  “That was harsh,” Hayden said, his voice travelling.

  Matt stopped.

  “What?” Sean asked.

  “Your mate there,” Hayden said. “Flicking this job to you.”

  “I need a dead body,” Sean said, sounding colder than Matt had ever heard him. “For my competencies.”

  Matt hoped that Hayden’s sudden silence was an awkward one. He continued on towards the back of the house. The back door was locked as well.

  Sean popped up at his side, looking uncomfortable. Matt wondered how much of that was to do with what was waiting inside for them, and how much was Hayden Kinsella. “Locked?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Matt exhaled heavily. “Which leaves us with a few options. We can try and track down a relative with a key, but you have to factor in long that could take. And the last thing we need is family turning up to see this, and that’s supposing they even live locally.” He unhooked his baton from his belt and extended it. “We’ll smash a window. It’s an old house, no security screens.”

  Sean nodded.

  “You ready?” Matt asked.

  Sean took a breath and held it.

  Smart bloke.

  Matt smashed the window.

  The glass shattered and then the cloud of flies was free. It dissipated quickly on the breeze, and Matt gagged as the stench followed it out of the broken window.

  “Here,” a voice beside him said.

  It was Hayden, and he was pressing a mask into Matt’s hand. Not that it would do much against the smell, but at least it would keep the remaining flies away. Hayden passed one to Sean as well.

  “Thanks,” Matt said, pressing the mask over his mouth and nose.

  Hayden Kinsella might be a prick, but they were still on the same team. In theory, at least.

  Matt edged into the house. It was disgusting. The place crawled with flies and insects, and the stench was enough to turn his guts. He fought against the nausea, pushing it back down. He was not going to vomit.

  Not in front of Hayden. The last thing Hayden needed was more ammunition in this weird little feud they had going on.

  Matt was used to people hating him just for doing his job, but he wasn’t used to getting it from other emergency service workers. And all over a speeding ticket. Jury fuckers, he’d heard them called once, and wasn’t that the truth? It didn’t mean he was allowed to stop giving them out though, and if anyone knew what speeding could do it should have been an ambo.

  But, no. Hayden Kinsella had taken the whole thing personally apparently. Maybe he’d really thought Matt was dumb enough to fall for his attempt to talk his way out of the ticket by saying where he worked, or flirt his way out of it, but Matt wasn’t putting up with that shit from anyone, colleague, ambo or Joe Public. It was the insult behind it. The assumption that all it would take would be a pretty face and a friendly smile to weasel out of a ticket. Attractive guys like Hayden probably got away with that shit all the time.

  The worst part was that everyone else seemed to like Hayden. Matt had never heard anyone say a bad word about him. Why he’d taken such an intense dislike to Matt over a bloody speeding ticket, he had no idea. Most of Matt’s colleagues at the station had met Hayden, and most of them thought he was a barrel of laughs. It didn’t hurt that he was a good-looking guy a well, with a confident swagger and an easy smile.

  Although, Matt thought as he tried not to choke on the stench, he wasn’t so hot now. He glanced back at Hayden. He was pale, the mask shifting as he grimaced, and he appeared like he was trying very hard to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged. He frowned when he saw Matt watching him.

  Matt turned his attention back to the job at hand.

  They found the body in the bedroom. The room was crawling with insects, and the air was thick with black flies. Matt forced his nausea back, and crossed to the window to open it. The mask Hayden had handed him was no real protection against the stench.

  The man had been there for some time. His flesh had started to melt into the bed. It was grotesque, and Matt threw a worried glance at Sean.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Sean spun around and headed for the door.

  “I’ve got him,” Kate said, following.

  In the gloom, the man appeared to be moving. Maggots.

  Matt closed his eyes as his nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He forced it down, holding his breath and trying not to hear the buzz of insects in the air. Trying not to give in to the stench that crawled down his throat to his churning stomach. Trying not to vomit.

  A fly crawled over his cheek. Matt brushed it away and opened his eyes again.

  It had been a long while since he’d seen a body as bad as this one. Strange, but it was still the fresh ones that affected him worst on a visual level. The traffic accidents and the violent, sudden deaths. This would have been almost tolerable except for the smell that threatened to gag him, because it didn’t look quite real. As long as Matt didn’t stare too closely, it didn’t look much like a human being at all.

  “I’m calling it.” Hayden’s voice was muffled by his mask. “And we’re out of here.”

  Alright for him, Matt thought as Hayden left the bedroom. Come in, pronounce it, and sail off again. The job was just beginning for Matt and Sean.

  He glanced around the bedroom, taking note of the name of the medication on the bedside table. Then he headed into the bathroom and did the same there.

  He rattled through the cabinet above the sink. The cap was still off the toothpaste. There was a set of dentures in a glass on the sink. Mosquito larvae twisted in the cloudy water.

  God, the whole house was putrid. The poor old guy must have been here for days, and nobody deserved to end up like that. It was bad enough that he’d died alone, but it was far worse that it had taken this long for anybody to notice.

  Matt looked at his face in the bathroom mirror, obscured by the mask. His eyes told the whole story though. He saw scenes like this and wondered if that was what would happen to him. His pity wasn’t reserved for the old man alone. A lot of it was self-pity, and it was pathetic.

  He was twenty-eight years old. He was healthy. He had a good job. And he had plenty of time, didn’t he, to find someone?

  Twenty-eight wasn’t old. He’d said something similar to that last night.

  “Oh, you think you’ve got all the time in the world,” Grandad had said. “One minute you’re living the life of Riley, then before you know it you’re eighty-one and your hip shatters like a bloody light bulb.”

  “Good pep talk, Grandad,” Matt had said. “Thanks.”

  He needed air. He left the bathroom. Desperate to get out of the house, he collected what he hoped was an address book from beside the telephone in the hall, and headed back outside into the yard.

  He cleared the steps quickly, tearing his mask off as he reached the safety of the footpath. He could still smell it though. He would for days.

  Sea
n was braced against the front fence, and Kate was patting him on the back. He’d obviously been sick.

  “You okay?” Matt asked.

  Sean managed a nod. His face was grey.

  “Okay.” Matt could still feel his skin crawling, and couldn’t tell if there were insects inside his shirt, or if it was just the power of his imagination. “There’s water in the car.”

  Sean nodded again.

  Matt crossed the road to the car and opened his notebook on the bonnet. He listened to the radio for the moment. One of the other crews booked off for a meal. Another one was given a break and enter at a business in Currajong. Matt envied them for that.

  He switched over to the enquiry channel and contacted Comms, putting in his request for the detectives, for Scenes of Crime, for the duty officer, and for the undertakers to attend. There were so many boxes to tick with a sudden death, and they’d only just started.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Matt watched as Hayden climbed out of the front seat of the ambulance. Hayden had his back to the street, and Matt let his gaze slide over him. The ambulance uniform—bluish-green trousers and a matching shirt with red epaulettes—suited him, but Hayden Kinsella didn’t need a uniform to enhance his looks. He braced his arms against the side of the ambulance and leaned into it, stretching his back. Matt tried not to imagine the way the muscles moved under his uniform.

  It was getting more and more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.

  A moment later Kate headed back to join Hayden by the ambulance.

  “Hey,” Hayden called to her as she approached. “Is Constable Dickhead still inside?”

  Matt didn’t hear what Kate said, but Hayden slowly turned and saw him standing by the police car. Hayden’s eyes were wide with shock.

  Matt glanced away, fighting against the sudden stab of humiliation. He forced himself to study at his notebook, to stare at the words he’d written there until they coalesced into something that made sense.

  Fuck him. Fuck Hayden Kinsella. He was the one with the fucking problem.