Lights and Sirens

by Lisa Henry

  “Are you in the footy tipping?” Greg asked him out of the blue as they were heading back to the station.

  “No.” Hayden looked up from his log. “Why?”

  Greg shrugged. “Just wondered who you liked for this week.”

  “I couldn’t even tell you who’s playing,” Hayden said. “It’s not really my thing.”

  Greg’s mouth tightened into a thin line.

  “I’m from Victoria,” Hayden said. “I follow the AFL, not the NRL.”

  “Oh!”

  Yeah, and Hayden didn’t need to be particularly switched on to know exactly where Greg’s surprise came from, did he? He’d assumed that Hayden’s lack of interest in Rugby League was because of his sexuality, not geography. Greg was as transparent as glass.

  “My boyfriend’s a huge Cowboys supporter though,” Hayden said, just to watch Greg squirm. He honestly didn’t know if Matt gave a rat’s arse about the game at all, but fuck it, he was allowed to enjoy Greg’s momentary discomfort. Greg was a dick. Hayden deserved whatever payback he could get, even tiny victories like this one.

  Greg mumbled something about the Cowboys looking good this year, and they spent the rest of the ride back to the station in silence.

  Matt finished nights on Tuesday morning, and Hayden had days off on Tuesday and Wednesday. He spent most of Tuesday at Matt’s place, lying in bed with him and watching movies while Matt dozed on and off and tried to force his body to remember how to be diurnal. Hayden knew that feeling well.

  They went out to dinner on Tuesday night, and Matt slowly became more animated as the evening wore on. Yeah, he was going to be bouncing off the walls at three in the morning, wasn’t he? Hayden had been there. Every shift worker had. Those godawful hours between about 2 a.m. and dawn, tossing and turning and trying to sleep, knowing that tomorrow was going to be hell.

  “We should go for a walk,” he said.

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “A walk?”

  “Yeah.” Hayden flashed him a smile. “After dinner, let’s go out to Pallarenda and walk along the beach or something.”

  Matt looked at him like he’d never heard anything so crazy. And then he smiled too. “Why not?”

  There were only a couple of cars pulled in at the beachfront parking bays at the end of Cape Pallarenda Road: a silver Subaru with a sports kit, and a piece of shit Commodore with the exhaust almost hanging off. There were guys sitting in the Subaru. The windows were up, but the thump of the bass reverberated through the night air. Cape Pallarenda Road was a favourite for the hoons to meet up on, and then thrash the hell out of their cars as they raced back toward the city.

  Hayden and Matt took their shoes and socks off and left them in Matt’s car. Hayden didn’t miss the way that Matt took in the rego plates of both vehicles.

  They walked down to the beach, following the wooden slatted path over the rise of the dunes. A woman walking a dog on a lead gave them a wary nod as she headed back toward the road.

  The beach was mostly empty. Hayden saw a few figures some distance away to the left: he and Matt turned right. It was a bright, moonlit night and the ocean swelled and receded, pushing tiny waves up onto the sand.

  In the distance, lights from the city were visible, as were the lights on Magnetic Island. Red and green buoys flashed in the bay between the city and the island, marking out the safe shipping channels from the port through to the open ocean. There was at least one large cargo ship moving slowly out to sea now, lights blazing.

  Hayden and Matt walked, bumping shoulders at first and then, as the people further up the beach were swallowed by the darkness, holding hands. They walked close to the water, and small waves tickled Hayden’s toes. His bare feet sank in the wet sand, and the hems of his jeans were soaked wet and stuck to his legs. He tasted salt on his lips.

  “I always forget I live ten minutes away from the beach,” Matt said. “I mean, it’s really nice, but it never occurs to me that it’s an option to just come out here, you know?”

  “Same.” Hayden nudged him. “Have you ever had beach sex?”

  Matt snorted. “No!”

  “We should have beach sex,” Hayden said, laughing. “Not like now, since we don’t even have a blanket or anything, and I don’t want sand in my arse, but like, at some point. When we have it better planned.”

  “That sounds awful. You know what we should do though?”

  “What?”

  “We should go up to Mission Beach or something for a few days. Or over to the island.” Matt squeezed his hand. “Stay in one of those places that’s right on the water, but also really private. That way we can leave the doors open and have sex while we’re looking at the beach, without getting sand in either of our arses.”

  “We could do that,” Hayden agreed. “Very practical.”

  “I thought it was romantic.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly a hearts-and-flowers kind of guy.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “When?” Hayden asked. “Was it when I blew you in a toilet?”

  “Yeah, it was round about that time.”

  Hayden laughed, and tugged Matt into the shallows. The water was cool. Wet sand shifted and crunched under his feet. “To be fair, I was slightly drunk.”

  “Same,” Matt said, and drew him close for a brief kiss. It tasted of salt.

  Hayden shivered as the breeze tickled over him. There was something about the sea air. It was invigorating, but he always slept soundly after spending time in it. Good, solid sleep, not the usual piecemeal awake-every-few-hours bullshit he got most nights. Hopefully Matt was the same, and that a walk along the beach would help him sleep through the night.

  He looked out across the bay toward the island.

  “You know that Captain Cook called it Magnetic Island because his compass went all weird when they sailed past it,” he said. “Except that it’s not magnetic, so it’s a misnomer. Which is fine, but then what the hell happened to Captain Cook’s compass that day?”

  Matt smiled.

  “Can you imagine what it must have been like back then?” Hayden leaned down to scoop up a shell, water dripping off the tips of his fingers as he straightened up again. “Navigating through the reef when nobody had done it before? Thinking that every minute you might hit something and tear a hole in your ship?”

  He wondered for a moment if it felt anything like this. Like being in a relationship that was so new he couldn’t read it yet, couldn’t see the hazards underneath the surface. Like a part of him was waiting for them to hit a reef and be wrecked. And Hayden didn’t know what to do with that feeling, except to push it down and pretend it wasn’t there.

  He closed his fingers around the damp shell for a moment, and then pressed it into Matt’s free hand. A tension he didn’t know he’d been holding inside him loosened when he saw Matt slide the shell into his pocket.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to my place.”

  Hand in hand, they walked up the beach again, putting distance between themselves when they got to the walkway that led back over the dunes to the road. Hayden’s hand tingled where Matt had held it, and he wished they didn’t have to leave yet, and break the beach’s spell.

  The doof-doof-doof of the bass from the Subaru’s stereo made itself heard from the crest of the dune. It grew louder as they stepped back onto the cement path at the end of the wooden slats, and one of the windows of the Subaru slid down as they approached.

  A guy stuck his head out the window. “Hey!”

  Hayden and Matt kept walking.

  “Hey, fags!”

  Matt stopped and turned. “What’d you say?”

  The guy sneered. “You heard me!”

  Matt stepped towards the car, reaching into his pocket and drawing out his badge as he did. He flipped the wallet open and showed it to the guys in the car. Hayden could barely swallow down his laughter when the guy’s face dropped, and heard the chorus of dissent coming from inside the car as the other three occupan
ts suddenly claimed that their idiot mate had nothing to do with them.

  “Turn the stereo off,” Matt said. “And take the keys out of the ignition.”

  Hayden leaned up against Matt’s car and folded his arms over his chest as Matt took his phone out of his pocket and called someone. He had a short, clipped conversation, giving their location and the registration number of the Subaru. His expression gave absolutely nothing away. Apparently he didn’t need to be in uniform to transform back into Constable Dickhead. Hayden wouldn’t have guessed he’d ever be happy to see that guy again, but here he was enjoying the show.

  Matt checked the tread on the Subaru’s tyres, while the guys inside the car got progressively more annoyed.

  “Come on, mate,” one of them said, then backtracked when he caught Matt’s look. “Officer. We weren’t doing anything wrong. You can’t keep us here!”

  “I can,” Matt said. “Under the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000, section 59, Power for regulating vehicular and pedestrian traffic, I am legally able to inspect your vehicle for defects.”

  That shut them up.

  A few minutes into Matt’s impromptu inspection of the car, a marked police car drove up, slowed, and did a u-turn to park behind the Subaru, neatly boxing it in. The man who climbed out of the driver’s seat was sandy-haired and barrel-shaped. He wore the insignia of a senior sergeant on his epaulettes, and looked vaguely familiar.

  “Constable Deakin,” he said, his voice gravelly.

  Matt nodded in greeting. “Boss.”

  “What’s the problem here?”

  “No tread on the back tyres, boss.”

  The senior sergeant shone his torch on the tyres. “They probably left it on the road between Rowes Bay and here. Someone’s been laying down some rubber along there tonight.” He raised his voice. “You boys wouldn’t know anything about a car doing burnouts around here about an hour ago, would you?”

  They denied it robustly.

  “Righto.” The senior sergeant snorted and looked at Matt. “Defect notice book is on the front seat.”

  Matt went to collect it, and the senior sergeant strolled over to Hayden. “Hayden the ambo.”

  Hayden glanced at his nametag: Senior Sergeant Gordon. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “You were at that fatal up at Rollingstone not that long ago,” Senior Sergeant Gordon said. “Car versus truck. The truck won.”

  “Yeah,” Hayden said, chest tightening at the memory. “I was at that one.”

  He wondered if he imagined the slight softening of the senior sergeant’s expression. He wondered if the senior sergeant remembered the way Hayden had held the girl’s hand and talked to her while the fireys cut her out. Held her hand, and also held the plastic sheet in place to block her view of her dead little brother in the seat beside her. Hayden remembered an older copper who could have been the senior sergeant passing him a water bottle through the twisted remains of the sedan and angling it for him so he could take a quick drink.

  “Hell of a day that was,” Senior Sergeant Gordon said.

  “Hell of a day,” Hayden echoed.

  Matt was speaking to the driver of the Subaru now, filling out the defect notice for the bald back tyres.

  “Want to tell me why he’s ruining your nice evening out with this?” Senior Sergeant Gordon asked in an undertone.

  Hayden threw him a speculative glance. “Apparently the way the front-seat passenger called us fags really drew Matt’s attention to those tyres.”

  “That’s lucky,” Senior Sergeant Gordon deadpanned. “They could get into a tragic accident driving on tyres like that.”

  Hayden shook off the memory of that Rollingstone job and decided that he very much liked the senior sergeant. “Right.”

  It was the work of minutes for Matt to present the disgruntled driver with his defect notice, and then he returned the notice book to the senior sergeant. “Thanks,

  Gordy.”

  Senior Sergeant Gordon tucked the book under his arm. “I’m always happy to help promote greater road safety, Constable Deakin. You know that.”

  He nodded at them both and headed back for his car. He got in and reversed far enough to let the Subaru out. Then he pulled onto the road behind it and followed it towards the city. Hayden had no doubt the dickheads in the Subaru would be doing at least five kilometres under the speed limit the entire way there.

  Their unexpected delay in the parking bays had one plus: most of the sand on Hayden’s feet had dried and was easy enough to brush off before he climbed into Matt’s car. Those guys sure as hell hadn’t been expected some barefoot target of their bigotry to whip out a police badge.

  “Sorry about that,” Matt said, clipping his seatbelt on.

  “Why?”

  “For ruining the mood?”

  “They were arseholes and they deserved it,” Hayden said. “I don’t know why you’d think that petty and vindictive isn’t a total turn on for me.”

  For a second Matt’s expression didn’t shift, and Hayden was again reminded of the aloof, unreadable mask that Constable Dickhead wore, but then he laughed, the sound warm and maybe even a little relieved, and the strange moment of tension passed.

  By the time they got to Rowes Bay it was like it had never happened at all.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  A group of girls in short dresses and tall heels—as long-legged as a herd of gazelles—swept past Matt and Sean as they stood outside Flynn’s Irish Bar, and Sean turned to watch them go, eyes widening appreciatively.

  Friday night on Flinders Street East. Matt hated it, but he’d volunteered himself and Sean for the shift because the more experience Sean got before Matt cut him loose, the better. So instead of driving from job to job as a general duties crew, they were on foot on the nightclub strip, trying to hear the radio transmissions in their earpieces over the music pumping out of the clubs and making a discordant cacophony of the street.

  Flinders Street East was two blocks of nightclubs, with the occasional restaurant sandwiched in between them. And on what Gordy called Fuck or Fight Friday—where if you couldn’t get the first, you settled for the second—it was busy as hell.

  Matt and Sean crossed the road to the hotdog stand and walked up to the Drink Safe tent. It was staffed by volunteers from one of the local charities, and provided water, basic first aid, and other forms of assistance to the club-goers. Matt checked they weren’t having any problems, and then he and Sean took the opportunity to linger on this side of the street for a while. This side, backed by Ross Creek, was quiet and dark compared to the other side, where music blasted out, pedestrian traffic snarled up and down the wide footpath, and people leaned on balconies from the various clubs and restaurants and shouted at everyone below them.

  Matt could see Linda and Paul across the road, and he knew the others were up where the police cars were parked. Only eight of them tonight, plus the supervisor, which meant they’d be stretched, but no worse than usual, and the general duties crews drove past when they could to make sure the foot patrols had it under control.

  By morning Matt would have sore feet and a headache, but at least the shift would go quickly. It always did on a Friday night. Still, on balance, he’d rather be in bed with Hayden.

  Hayden was on nights as well though, and they’d spent the afternoon tangled up in his sheets. Matt should have known that they wouldn’t get any sleep before they started work, but it turned out that a little bit of sleep deprivation was a price he was more than willing to pay to exchange long, lazy kisses—and hand jobs—with Hayden.

  “Hey, Matt?” Sean’s question broke him out of his reverie.

  “Yeah?”

  Sean threw him a worried look. “Am I doing okay?”

  “Yeah.” Matt could see that Sean didn’t believe him. “Look, you’re fresh out of the academy still. And honestly, for about the first six months you’re going to wonder what the hell you thought you were doing. It feels like you’ve been
thrown in the deep end, and you’re sinking, but you’re doing fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Matt said firmly. “Learning this job is all about getting in and doing it. And eventually you’ll have been to so many different incidents that they become second nature to you. And there’s never any shame in having to ask a supervisor what to do. That’s what they’re there for. So don’t worry that you can’t do it, because you’re already doing it, every day. And I have no doubt that in a few years you’ll be giving this same talk to your own First Year.”

  Sean snorted. “That’s pretty hard to imagine from where I’m standing.”

  “I know it is. But I’ve been where you’re standing, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

  Sean ducked his head when he smiled. “Okay. Thanks, Matt.”

  By midnight Flinders Street East was full, and Matt and Sean spent the next few hours going from incident to incident. It was the usual stuff: people arguing with security guards about getting into venues—funny how their arguments dried up when they were offered the choice between getting in a taxi or getting in the back of a police van. Matt wrote out a few tickets for public urination, and he and Sean shuttled a couple of arrests up to the watchhouse. There was at least one girl who got her drink spiked—Matt didn’t recognise the ambulance crew that came and picked her up—a few fights that broke out between drunken young blokes who thought they had something to prove, and a very embarrassed couple who’d thought they’d been getting down and dirty in private, until Sean pointed out the CCTV camera to them.

  Matt had lost track of time when he got the call from the Flinders Street supervisor to get back to where the police cars were parked.