A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four

by Claire, Nicola

  “Lara,” Damon said, sounding worried. “It was Carl. Just not the Carl you knew.”

  He didn’t see it, which was why it was so well done.

  Carl had cornered me at my home more than once now. He’d let himself in on one occasion and left behind a book that linked directly to the case I was working on. He’d dropped off pictures of Cawfield exposing his involvement in Sweet Hell. And he’d waited for me to come home and then confronted me on my doorstep; trying to get me to see the bigger picture when it was all going to hell.

  He hadn’t run. Not like last night. Not like in the alley with Eagle.

  I needed to see Eagle too, now.

  There weren’t enough hours in the day. Weston still had Stretch and Carole. Cawfield was skulking about in places he should have known better than to be. There were spooks involved in this from the top to the bottom; it reeked of clandestine operations and shadowy kill squads. PSYOPS for crying out loud!

  This was getting away on me. And I didn’t even have Hennessey or Hart to talk it out with.

  But I had Damon. Right here beside me. Pierce could have insisted he follow me out of ASI. Anscombe could have sent Savill or Charlie after me. Any number of possibilities abounded.

  But none of them was Damon Michaels. None of them loved me when more often than not I gave him no reason to keep hanging around.

  “How do you put up with me?” I asked, sounding more than a little stunned.

  “What do you mean? I love you.” Spoken so simply; so easily; so believably.

  “Huh,” I said and took the off-ramp for Henderson Valley.

  “Where are we going, love?” Damon asked again after watching me silently for a while.

  “Carl had one woman in his life he turned to for more than just sex. Although I’m sure, Margaret gave him what he needed in that regard. They all loved him dearly.”

  “All? How many did he have?”

  “Four when he died.” I closed my eyes briefly. “When he was shot and fell off the cliff,” I corrected.

  Damon ignored my slip. “Four? How did the old fart manage that? One’s enough.”

  “Har-har.”

  He smiled at me.

  “So, we’re visiting this Margaret?” he pressed.

  “Someone’s been helping him,” I said. “Someone’s been keeping him safe, offering unconditional support, while he’s evaded the police.”

  Damon thought about that for a moment and then said, “And you think it’s this woman in particular?”

  “Margaret was his conscience. His moral compass. When he’d been drinking too much or sexing too much, he’d go to Margaret to get back on an even keel.”

  Damon looked out the window, a small frown creasing his brow.

  “Then wouldn’t it be the woman who didn’t judge him that he’d turn to now?”

  My fingers flexed on the steering wheel.

  Damn it.

  I swung a U-turn, disrupting traffic and making Damon cling to the oh-shit handle; heading the car towards Howick, across the other side of the fucking city, and to the one place that was closest to where this all started.

  Mellons Bay Cliffs, where Carl had been shot and fell, where I’d killed someone in the line of duty, where my CIB partner had asked me to meet him after discovering something to do with Declan King, the drug lord, and Auckland’s Crown Prosecutor.

  Where would Carl have gone when he uncovered a hornet’s nest like that?

  To Margaret who would have given him solid guidance?

  Or to Rachel who would have helped him to, if only briefly, forget?

  I knew Carl. I knew him well.

  He’d have got himself shitfaced before he’d have had to face the music and the inevitable fallout of discovering a mob boss had owned our legal system.

  Just like he would have got himself shitfaced when he survived death so as to remind himself he was actually still alive.

  Even Crazy Carl would have done that.

  Just like Crazy Carl would not have spanked Eagle’s butt and helped my informant get-off while I watched.

  My foot pressed down harder on the accelerator; despite the fact that I’d taken way too long to go back there by now. To trace our steps, this dance we’d been performing, right back to the beginning. Right back to the start.

  Sometimes all it takes is a gentle shove in the right direction. Sometimes it takes a two-by-four to the head.

  My head had definitely started to hurt. Just like my heart had been hurting for months now.

  I’m so sorry, Carl.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Carl Always Said You Had A Stick Up Your Butt.”

  Rachel lived in Waterloo Street, right behind the main shopping drag. The drive in took us through Pakuranga and Highland Park and nowhere near Mellons Bay, or the cliffs I knew were just the other side of Howick. This was as close as I’d got to them since it all started.

  I still remembered that night as if it were yesterday. I still remembered the salt on the breeze. The sound of the cicadas as they sang in the trees. I remembered thinking they were too loud and shouldn’t they have stopped by now; it was approaching ten in the evening. I remembered the heat on the sunbaked road through the soles of my boots; cooler at that time of day but no less powerful in my memory. The light that shone over the porch of a nearby house; a kid’s tricycle in the driveway. The smell of chilli someone had cooked that evening for their dinner.

  I remembered it all.

  I never needed to go back there to write my report or answer the copious amounts of questions asked of a police officer when they discharged their weapon. Or watched their partner get killed while I stood by and did practically nothing. And because I never needed to go back there to refresh my memory, I decided I never needed to go back there at all.

  Once it was all over and my statement had been made, the shrink had cleared me for duty, and Hart had accepted my take on matters, I purposely chose jobs and cases that kept me in the city. Anything remotely to do with the eastern suburbs was conveniently ignored.

  It was as if I’d chosen to forget Howick, and by extension, the cliffs in Mellons Bay had ever existed.

  Driving back into the historic village now and turning onto Waterloo Street was surreal. Surreal and frightening.

  It took Hennessey six weeks to crack the lid on Mellons Bay in my mind. Six weeks before I broke down and told him what I’d felt, what I’d seen, what had happened to me. He knew, of course; the reports I’d been forced to file had been sitting on his desk when I walked into that room the first time. But no one knew what I’d felt, what I’d been through, that night. Not really.

  The officers who’d turned up first on the scene were met with a detective in charge, giving orders, assessing the crime scene, completely calm about the dead body lying on the grass and the warm gun that had made it a dead body still in her possession.

  I’d crossed to the cliffs and looked down into the water expecting to see another dead body.

  I’d seen only what the moon had shown me; white-capped waves and rocks aplenty.

  I let out a pent up breath of air as I shook myself free of those morbid thoughts, and rolled the Commodore to a stop outside of a small, plain weatherboard house. The lawn needed mowing. The fence was crooked. The windows were flaking. There was a little rust on the tin roof. Despite its borderline neglected state, the house, being in Howick, would still be worth a penny.

  But you can be asset rich and cash poor in this city.

  Rachel was standing behind the kitchen sink, looking out the window at the police-issued sedan.

  It would have looked exactly like the car Carl had driven.

  I wondered if I was making a mistake; coming here and making her relive this. It was hard enough for me to be so near those cliffs. How was it for Rachel if she hadn’t been helping him?

  But Damon was right. Carl would have wanted someone who didn’t judge him, who would keep his secrets, who would help him when they knew he wasn’t q
uite right in the head. And as long as the alcohol flowed and the party kept swinging, Rachel would be happy.

  And Carl knew how to party with the best of them.

  I climbed out of the vehicle and looked up at the house. Rachel had moved from the kitchen to the front porch. No stopping this now. She knew the car wasn’t Carl’s. She knew me.

  She didn’t look at all surprised.

  Shit.

  I walked up the worn concrete path, Damon a silent wraith at my back. Neither of us was armed, but I didn’t think Rachel would shoot me. That wasn’t her style.

  But so much of what I was doing right now was taking me over that line in the sand, that I wasn’t sure if I was assessing the dangers correctly.

  “Lara,” she said in greeting.

  “Rachel,” I managed. Then I cleared my throat and indicated Damon. “This is Damon Michaels.” I left off his position at HEAT. It meant nothing here. Just a man at my back offering moral support as I faced the woman I thought my ex-CIB partner had turned to after he’d been declared dead.

  “I thought you’d come sooner,” she murmured.

  “I’m sorry,” I said without thinking. I didn’t usually apologise; I was off my game completely.

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  We stared at each other. I was beginning to think I’d got this wrong. He hadn’t turned to Rachel. If not Rachel then who? Not Margaret. Damon was right. Too strait-laced and judgemental. Liz was insubstantial. A pretty bit of fluff to wear on your arm when having to attend official functions. That left Sally. The light-hearted one. The one I thought he should have married.

  But Carl abhorred the thought of being tied down. As much as he truly did love Sally, he kept her at a healthy distance. Had the head injury changed that? Had he turned to her at last?

  The thought strangely made me happy. As if in death, he’d found what he couldn’t in life.

  But that’s not how it goes. Or, at least, as far as I’ve seen of this world and its inhabitants. That’s not how life goes, is it?

  I looked at Rachel and said, “Where is he?”

  She offered a small smile and then turned, walking back into the house and expecting us to follow.

  Damon stiffened beside me. I understood his concern. This had ‘trap’ written all over it, and we were unarmed — not even a pepper spray or taser between us. But I’d come this far after delaying for so long.

  I had to know. I had to end this.

  I stepped over the threshold and Damon followed behind me.

  The house was cool and dark, despite Rachel’s decorating style being bright and eclectic. Sunflower yellow cushions on an electric blue suede couch. A yucca palm sat sentinel in the corner, and a CD rack towered high in the other. A large flat screen TV clung to the wall between them, which I was sure Carl had provided. Women’s lifestyle magazines mixed with dog-eared Reader’s Digests dotted the coffee table as did an empty coffee mug. A clay figurine of a horse stood beside a fluffy soft toy that could have been a mouse on a bookshelf. Fiction and non-fiction books were mixed up and displayed grouped by colour and not the more common subject, author, or genre.

  The place was clean but cluttered. Rachel’s personality interspersed with Carl’s.

  None of it was conclusive evidence that he’d been staying here. Hell, like me, Rachel could have simply been unable to let go of the past.

  “Have a seat,” she said, taking the two-seater that had seen a lot of butts over its life — a bigger depression on one side than the other. Rachel took the shallower butt-worn side.

  The other was Carl’s.

  Again not conclusive. Carl had been seeing Rachel for years when he died. When this all started.

  I perched on the three-seater. Damon sat down beside me, eyes scanning the room and exits. He made a good sidekick.

  Damn you, Carl.

  I looked at Rachel. She watched Damon for a moment and then flicked her eyes to mine.

  No surprise. No judgement. No grief-stricken sadness.

  This house was too much a mausoleum to Carl. If he were dead to her, she’d still be grieving.

  “Where is he, Rachel?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen him,” she said. She was playing with me because this was Rachel. The trickster. The party princess. The good time gal.

  But although she hadn’t qualified how long it had been since she’d seen Carl, she also hadn’t said, “He’s fucking dead, how dare you ask!”

  I frowned.

  “I’ve seen him,” I said.

  She nodded.

  It was such a simple move. A common motion. And yet it made the world stop.

  “When did you last see him?” I heard Damon say from a mile away. Time had slowed and somehow still kept going.

  I knew Carl was alive. CIB knew Carl was alive. But we sure as hell hadn’t told anyone who didn’t need to know that Carl was still alive. Rachel and Carl’s ex-girlfriends were all in the do-not-need-to-know category.

  A small part of me thought perhaps the CIB traitor had a hand in this and Rachel hadn’t been harbouring him at all. That this was a set-up. Designed to get at me. To stab a dagger through my barely beating heart.

  But the empty mug on the coffee table said ‘World’s Best Cop’ on it like those mugs that have ‘World’s Best Dad’ or ‘World’s Best Mum.’ Or like my pen holder with permanent marker scrawled across it saying ’Superstar Cop.’

  My eyes met Rachel’s.

  The room came into sharper focus.

  “Stop playing games,” I said. “This isn’t a party.”

  She laughed. “You know, Carl always said you had a stick up your butt.”

  It hurt, but despite Carl being my mentor and my idolisation of him, I had also known Carl and I were two sides of a well-worn coin. Both good at what we did, but both from completely different backgrounds. We lived our lives on opposite ends of a spectrum. Carl drank and fucked his way through life. I toed the law-abiding line and remained celibate.

  Damon was an aberration to my well trained and planned life. And even then, I kept him secret from most of the people in that life. But when I first met Carl, I was as straight as an arrow. It didn’t surprise me that he’d said something like this to Rachel at the beginning. He’d probably been pissed at the time. High on alcohol and sex and life. It didn’t mean anything.

  And eventually, he got me. Like I got him. Carl and I worked well together because we respected the differences, not because we tried to change things about each other.

  I studied the woman before me. She was angry. At me. I hadn’t seen it at first; I was too close to the edge. But she was angry, all right. Because I hadn’t come before now, looking for the man I thought had died.

  “I’m sorry you had to do this on your own,” I said quietly. She blinked and showed the first sign of surprise since we’d arrived. “I’m sorry I didn’t come here sooner. I thought…” I stopped, took a deep breath, looked around the room that was as much a reflection of her as it was Carl. “It hurt too much,” I said, instead of what I’d started.

  I thought he was dead.

  I had thought he was dead and I’d filed away Howick and Mellons Bay and everything east of the CBD. My father would have been proud.

  “He turned up three nights after they said he’d been shot and gone off that cliff,” she suddenly said, not looking at Damon or me, but staring off into the distance. Remembering that God-awful night. “He was incoherent and babbling, but when I tried to call for an ambulance he got so angry; I got a little frightened.”

  Carl could bluster better than anyone, but he’d never have hurt a woman before that night.

  I didn’t ask. Perhaps because I didn’t want to think that the man I had known and loved had struck his lover. In this, I was a coward. And it shamed me.

  “I cleaned him up, dressed his wounds,” Rachel said. “I let him sleep it off, waking him every hour to check for a head injury. It took a fortnight of hand feeding him soup and cleani
ng up after him before he started to cope on his own.” She licked her lips. “And then he started wandering. Going away for hours at a time. But he always returned. Sometimes late in the night, sometimes when the birds started singing. But he always came home to me. Came home to our bed. Each night.”

  Came home to me. Like they were partners. Not just hookups looking for a good time but something more. Something deeper. Something permanent.

  This woman loved him and was prepared to share him; as I was fairly certain, Carl hadn’t kept his girlfriends secret from each other. But that didn’t mean that Rachel didn’t want him all for herself.

  And she got him. After Mellons Bay Cliffs. She was the girlfriend who won the battle for his love.

  But was what Carl was putting her through love?

  “He asked you to keep his survival a secret, didn’t he?” I asked.

  She nodded her head and bit her lip, still not meeting my eyes.

  “I promised,” she said. “Forever,” she added. “’Til death do us part.”

  Oh, Carl. How could you?

  And then the words made it through the heartache.

  I sat forward. Damon sat up straighter beside me; registering my change in posture; the change of direction to my thoughts.

  “Where is he, Rachel?” I said, my heartbeat thundering inside my head.

  ’Til death do us part.

  Rachel hadn’t told a soul that Carl was alive and kicking back at her house.

  She’d kept her promise.

  Until now.

  It had nothing to do with who I was to Carl. It had nothing to do with me turning up finally when I should have visited and offered my condolences right at the start.

  It had nothing to do with me. Or Carl’s resurrection. Or our intertwined lives.

  It had everything to do with the other side of that existential coin.

  “Rachel?” I pressed.

  She lifted too-old and worried eyes to my face and said, “He hasn’t been home in a week.”

  And then he started wandering. Going away for hours at a time. But he always returned. Sometimes late in the night, sometimes when the birds started singing. But he always came home to me. Came home to our bed. Each night.