A sudden crash made the pencil point snap on the page.

Wayne Pickering rolled his eyes at Barry Snow and placed a hairy hand over his receiver. ‘Here we go again. Better call the cleaner, Barry.’

Barry pulled a frog face, his protruding ears following his mouth downwards. Stevie wondered why a man with ears like that would choose to shave off all his hair.

‘I’m surprised there’s anything left in there to break,’ Barry said.

The stream of expletives seeping through the porous office walls became a torrent. Angus Wong kicked Stevie under the desk, indicating the inspector’s office with a jerk of his blue-black head.

She set her mouth into a straight line and didn’t move.

‘Go on, make yourself useful,’ Wayne said as he put the phone down and smoothed a long feathery sideburn. Today he wore his wide-lapelled bottle-green suit and zebra-print shirt; Stevie could still see the black and white stripes when she closed her eyes. They added a crackle of static to the web of sound.

‘You have such a soothing effect on him,’ Wayne added.

She reached into her bag for her smokes, met his eyes and lit up. After a luxurious inhalation she blew out, enveloping him in a grey cloud.

‘Put it out, Stevie,’ Angus said without expression. He didn’t give a hoot about smoking in the incident room, but it was in the book, so he enforced it.

Young Barry Snow grinned a monkey grin. She ground out her cigarette and mouthed ‘fuck off’ to him.

‘Go check on Monty,’ Angus said.

Stevie swallowed her sigh of resignation, stood up and pulled at the legs of her jeans to dislodge the bunch of seams knotted at her crotch. The inspector’s door was ajar. She pushed it open and stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him.

Monty was standing with his back to her, hands on his hips, gazing out of the sixth-floor window. He was looking at the aerial acrobatics of a red leaf caught in the updraft of a wind tunnel, rising and falling like the flicker of an igniting flame.

He turned when he heard the click of the closing door. ‘Watch the glass,’ he said. He closed his eyes and let out his breath, his complexion fading from red brick to jarrah pink in the time it took to inhale again.

Stevie managed to pull her features into an expression of cool severity not lost on Monty. He slapped at his thighs, bent down and started tossing the bigger chunks of glass into the rubbish bin.

She took a leaflet from his desk and scraped the smaller shards into a tidy pile. ‘Barry’s called the cleaner. This’ll need vacuuming,’ she said at last.

Monty made an indifferent grunting sound.

After some more silent scraping she said, ‘You going to tell me what this is about?’

‘I’m surprised you need to ask.’ He tossed a piece of glass into the bin, straightened and jabbed his fingers into his rust-coloured hair.

‘The super?’ she asked.

‘He’s piked out of the press conference last minute; knows he’s in for another roasting and handed it over to me.’ Monty wagged his head from side to side, mimicking their superintendent. ‘You always handle the press so wonderfully, Monty, in the palms of your hands. Just tell them the bare essentials, tell them we have some leads, that we expect to be laying charges within the next twenty-four hours.’

‘But that’s bullshit!’

‘Of course it’s bullshit, which is exactly how the Kings Park murders were handled.’ Monty flung a hand towards the super’s office, two floors above. ‘His excuse is that he’s got that Christmas in July dinner with his politician buddies. The bottom line is he’s terrified of the press and wants me to do his dirty work for him.’

‘Let’s face it though, Monty, he is good at schmoozing the pollies.’

‘I know, he’s a natural brownnose. I guess he does have some talents.’

Stevie looked her inspector up and down, unable to hide the smile she felt tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘Well, you can’t go to the press conference looking like that,’ she said, indicating his smudged tie and the crumpled shirt he’d been wearing for two days.

Monty glanced down at his clothes; his physical appearance wasn’t one of his priorities. But one of the perks of belonging to an elite team like the SCS was the luxurious appointments of the inspector’s office: on the back of his private bathroom door Stevie found a hook laden with dry cleaning. She thrust a plastic-covered bundle into his arms and turned to leave.

‘Stevie wait, there’s something else.’ Monty put the bundle of clothes on his desk, yanked at his tie.

She knew what was coming and her heart dropped. She’d missed putting her daughter to bed for the last two nights; it was already seven—only half an hour until bedtime.

Monty knew it too. He spoke without looking at her, too busy ripping at the flimsy membrane covering his clean shirt.

‘You’re going to have to go to the airport and pick up De Vakey. His plane comes in at eight. I’ll never get there on time now with this fucking press conference.’ He stopped what he was doing and scrawled out the flight details for her.

Now it was her turn to feel wound up. ‘Jesus Monty, can’t you ask someone else? I haven’t seen Izzy for two days!’ She didn’t like the whine she heard in her voice but it was too late to take it back now.

He raised his eyebrows and held up one finger.

Don’t push it, she said to herself, you knew the hours when you took the job.

Her intentions on holding back, however, proved futile. ‘I’ve never been in favour of bringing De Vakey in. Baggly’s against it and he could make things very difficult for you. It’s a big career risk.’

‘Just let me worry about my career, okay?’ Monty’s frown suggested this was the end of the topic. He handed her the sticky yellow slip and turned away in a quaint gesture of propriety. A shiver rippled the muscles of his broad back when the crisp fabric of the shirt brushed his skin.

‘Izzy’s happy enough with your mother, isn’t she?’ He turned back to Stevie as he did up the buttons.

‘She’s taught her the ABC song.’

‘That’s great.’ The lines at the sides of his eyes crinkled like a geisha’s fan.

‘And how is Dot?’

‘Batty as ever. Driving me crazy.’

‘I think she’s coping remarkably well. It can’t be a year since your dad died.’

‘Eighteen months. I think she has TAFE tonight.’ The lie slipped out without any premeditated help. ‘She’s just enrolled in a herbalist class. I don’t know who else I can get to babysit.’

‘You’ll find someone. What about Justin Baggly? I thought he was good with her.’

Stevie let out a sigh; she could see Monty wouldn’t be budged. When he started fumbling with his belt buckle she decided it was time to leave. She opened the door just as the cleaner raised his hand to knock. His sudden appearance made her jump back a step. He was a strange-looking man, an albino who worked the night shift, sleeping during the day so he could hide from the sun.

‘C’mon in, Martin,’ Monty said, unfazed at being caught in his polka-dotted boxers.

Stevie pressed herself into the doorjamb and tried to squeeze past the cleaner without making any physical contact. She found the man repulsive, like one of those blind naked moles that live underground somewhere in Discovery Channel land. The sullen look he gave her in return suggested he was well aware of the distaste beneath her transparent smile. She shivered, ashamed of herself. Prejudice. God, she knew all about that. Sometimes she felt she’d written the department manual.

‘Hey Martin,’ Monty said. ‘Did you hear the one about the nun and the bus driver?’

‘Nope. Don’t think so.’

She stepped over the vacuum cleaner and closed the office door behind her.

***

Stevie slicked her way down the rain-washed highway where the lights flickered like coloured stars. Lost in her own thoughts, it was only when she had to slam the brakes to avoid the sudden erratic lane change of a mini-minor, that she found herself jolted back to the present. With alarm she realised she had no memory of leaving Central, of the dodgem dash across the roundabout, the Causeway, or even noticing Gustav the one-armed fisherman on the bridge. Until now she hadn’t even been aware of the press conference on the radio.