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HOW IT HAD happened, Jill couldn't figure. She had been curled in a lounge chair listening to the sounds of Gabriel cooking in the kitchen, the little grey cat named Ten warm on her lap, smiling at her, eyes closed.
She woke to Gabriel speaking her name quietly. Her heart shot to her throat and free-fell back again. She stared around wildly, still saturated with sleep, and when she realised where she was, she wanted to cry. Horrified, she felt hot tears well. She couldn't believe she had let her guard down so quickly with him. She straightened in the chair; a bolt of tension fused one side of her neck; her face felt scorched.
'You look like shit,' said Gabriel.
She stared at him, desolately.
'Probably we should eat something,' he said.
Dull pain pressed at the back of her throat and pulsed behind her eyes. She still felt utterly exhausted, and she allowed Gabriel to grab her hand and drag her from the chair. What am I doing here? she thought. She recognised the aches she felt in her elbows and knees as signs of a cold. The travelling, the new people, the case, the fucking air-conditioner. It had worn her down.
'Come and tell me how much you want.'
She followed him to the kitchen. And this guy. Never before had her nervous system habituated so rapidly to the presence of a man. She couldn't believe she'd fallen asleep in his house. She glared at the back of his head, angry with him somehow for that.
The smell of garlic finally made it past her muffled senses and Jill began to salivate. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. Unself-consciously, Gabriel helped himself first, filling a deep bowl with pasta from the pot on the stove. He handed her the spoon and stood back to watch. While she filled her mismatched plate, he began eating as he stood there, waiting for her. When her plate was full, he opened the oven door and pulled garlic bread off a tray with his fingers, dropped two fragrant wedges onto her plate. She hurried to sit, starving. The creamy sauce had a grainy heat behind it. It was almost gone before she reclined back in the lounge chair. She licked garlicky butter from her fingers.
Ten sat propped against a wall like a polar bear, her legs spread out in front of her, cleaning her stomach. A cool rivulet of breeze from the balcony washed over Jill's flushed cheeks. Gabriel spoke.
'I spent the morning here on the computer,' he said. 'Checking out our boy, Joss.'
Jill tucked her legs up under her and leaned back into the cushion, listening.
'He moved from Canley Vale High School when he was thirteen and finished his schooling at Sandhurst College,' he continued. 'He must've hung out with Cutter while he was living with his mother. She has schizophrenia. Been in and out of Rozelle and Cumberland for the last thirty years. Joss did his Higher School Certificate. Joined the army, Infantry corps. Went with the second contingent of Australian peacekeepers to Rwanda in 1995. The Australians on his tour got caught up in the Kibeho massacre. Do you remember watching the news about the war in Africa in ninety-four, ninety-five?'
'Yep.'
Jill had grown up horrified, along with the rest of Australia, by the famines in Africa. When Australians troops had joined the UN peacekeepers over there in 1994, she'd avoided the news programs for weeks because it seemed every story was about the 'rivers of blood' in Rwanda; images of mounds of corpses and scores of bodies floating down a river had left her feeling helpless, ill. Just as she'd changed the channel and ignored it, the world had also looked the other way.
She thought about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Supposedly the allies were there to liberate the people from the tyranny of their governments. No soldiers had been sent to fight for the tens of thousands of people who were slaughtered in Rwanda. Australia's peacekeepers had been impotent. Their rules of engagement had not allowed them to fire a shot in defence of the victims. They were there simply to observe and to assist the wounded when they could.
There was no oil in Africa.
'Preston-Jones was medically discharged from the army on psych grounds,' Gabriel continued. 'He married Isobel Rymill in ninety-three. As we know, they have one daughter, Charlie Rymill, aged four. His maternal grandparents are deceased. His father's name was not listed on his birth certificate. He works for a large insurance company in Martin Place.' Gabriel stood and stretched.
'You want a drink?' he asked, on his way to the kitchen.
Jill unfolded her legs on the couch. Ten now slept with a paw over her eyes, blocking out the soft light in the room. Her little body twitched as she dreamed. Jill took a look at her watch. Seven o'clock. I should go home, she thought, and sat up.
Gabriel returned with two cups. She took hers and sniffed it. Held the cup back out to him.
'It's butterscotch schnapps. It'll be good for your cold,' he said.
She lifted an eyebrow, stared flatly. He took a sip from his glass, a china teacup bearing red roses, and licked his lips, grinning at her.
She looked down into her brown earthenware mug; in an inch of amber, viscous liquid, two fat ice cubes circled lazily. It smelled great. She took her first sip of alcohol in ten years. The toffee liquid coated the back of her throat, burning and freezing at the same time. She had another taste, her lips sticky.
The ice cubes clinked softly and Jill leaned back into the couch. Ten breathed heavily as she slept. The peal of a phone suddenly split the silence, and Jill snapped forward, grabbing for her bag.
'Jackson,' she said.
'Yo, J.'
'Scotty! What do you want?'
'What do I want? Nice. I have to want something now to say hi?'
'Sorry, Scotty. I didn't mean to say that. It came out wrong. How're you doing?' Jill stood and walked with the phone, acutely aware of Gabriel staring at her openly, as though she were a live stage show, or a scene from a riveting movie.
'Okay, but I miss you. Well, I miss beating you at things. It's not the same thrashing Robbo on the bike. He doesn't try as hard as you, and he never gets as pissed when I teach him a lesson.'
She smiled wryly.
'Jackson. You still there?
'Yes, Scotty. I'm still here. You don't always win, you know.' She found herself almost whispering.
'What are you doing now? I could whip your arse with a game of squash and then we could have a swim?' He cleared his throat. 'Or, maybe we could get something to eat?'
Jill's stomach lurched a little at the sudden vulnerability in his voice.
'I, ah, I already ate. I just finished working.' Why did she feel guilty?
Right then, Gabriel called from the kitchen.
'Jill, you want some ice-cream?'
'Ice-cream,' said Scotty. 'Working hard?'
'I said I just finished.'
'Uh huh. So who was that?'
'Gabriel Delahunt. New partner.'
'Gabriel,' said Scotty. 'Girl's name.'
Jill sighed. Oh for goodness' sake. 'Look, I was just about to head home. I think I caught a cold today. I just want to get to bed.'
'Yeah, well, don't let me keep you, Jill. I'll catch you later.'
'I'll call you next week.' She closed her phone.
'I think we should go to Balmain first thing Monday morning,' Gabriel said when she joined him in the kitchen. 'Speak to Joss and Isobel before they go to work. What do you reckon?'
'Yep. Good idea,' she answered sleepily. She drained her cup.
'So, you want some dessert?'
'No thanks, Gabriel.' Her voice sounded formal to her ears, and she felt suddenly shy, then annoyed that she should feel this way. 'I'm going to head home.'
'No worries. So, we'll make it six on Monday then?'
She nodded and moved to leave, determined to get out of there, her thoughts churning. Why did she feel like she was cheating on Scotty when she didn't think of him that way? And why should she feel like she was cheating at all when she barely knew Gabriel? They'd only eaten together, for heaven's sake.
She climbed into her car and threw her bag onto the seat next to her. That's why it's easier not to get too close to people, she told herself. These confusing feelings.
She buzzed her window all the way down as she drove, the evening breeze helping to dispel some of the dullness that smudged her senses. She still could not believe she'd fallen asleep in someone else's house.
Not counting her parents' home, that was a first.
Chloe returned to the house in Cabramatta at eight-thirty that night. The black Magna had left and she could see a green late-model Falcon sitting in its place. She chewed her lip.
What was the good of knowing about this place if she didn't get some more on this guy? Investigative journalists are like detectives, she reminded herself. They've got to have a cover and they've got to take some risks.
She knew by the end of this year there'd be a hundred new journalism graduates hungry to take her spot. That was not going to happen. Chloe got out of her car and opened the gate out the front of the small fibro house.
Cutter's house.
Mrs Tu Ly Nguyen wasn't sure what she should do. Although her English was limited, she knew enough to know that this lovely young girl wanted to speak to Henry. Henry had always told her never to speak to anyone about him. And her daughter-in-law and children were out visiting this evening.
It would be best to say nothing, to close the door, and she determined to do so. She sighed. The girl was so pretty.
Mrs Nguyen worried so much about her first-born grandson. He should have had a wife, a family by now to take care of him. She had hated leaving him in that room under the stairs. He should have more friends like this one.
She looked up at the girl on the porch. So tall. So beautiful! Something told her she could trust this girl. But she worried that Henry would be angry. She sighed.
Certain now that she was doing the right thing, Cutter's grandmother turned away from the door and walked back into the house.
She returned thirty seconds later with a piece of paper and an orange.
Mrs Tu Ly Nguyen pressed the fruit and the scrap of cardboard into Chloe's hand. Upon the paper was scribbled an address. A street number in Baulkham Hills.
No one should live under the stairs, Mrs Nguyen thought, shuffling back inside to pray to her ancestors at her shrine.