23. Taxi love
Flashing red and blue lights on Parkes Way beside the ASIO site. Half a dozen police cars, officers in reflective vests, orange wands. Random breath test. They never pulled cabbies over – a taxidriver would have to be insane to drink on a shift.
But a policeman was waving him to the side.
22. Dirty hands
Quint set down his bag. He’d look through that later, but for now he had to find out where he was leaking blood from. Somewhere on his head, most likely, because it wasn’t gushing out of anywhere visible. Unless it was on his back. Quint suffered badly from his back. There were parts he couldn’t reach, and they itched.
The face in Quint’s bathroom mirror was scratched. He looked like someone people would walk around on the street now. Hair full of mud and rotten oak leaves, eyes full of emotion, cheek covered in dried blood. Hands dirty and fingernails badly needing a scrub.
21. Corpsemen
Zoe: Thanks for chatting, Kimmie. I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for, well, years.
Kim: Anything else you want to get off your chest? *undoes top button*
Zoe: Kim!
Zoe: *undoes second button*
20. Bang for the buck
“Ooh, you’re so tense, darling,” she sighed, her hands moving over his shoulderblades.
Harley had to agree. The touch of her fingers kneading into his taut muscles was relaxing. And pleasant. Even more pleasant when the skin on his back informed him that whatever scant top the blonde had been wearing was no longer present. Her hands moved forwards, gliding through his chest hair.
19. What's it all about?
And the final corner, where the main gate area took a bite out of the Blamey Cresent intersection. Here a yellow-jacketed guard stood foursquare beside the gate. Quint took a photograph of the area, but he had no hopes in this direction. A guardhouse was manned around the clock and it was floodlit at night.
A few more lengths along Constitution Avenue and he would be back at the start point.
“Hey!”
The guard, calling him over.
18. Flight booking
“You’d think someone would have just opened it up. A book, for God’s sake! Just open the bloody thing up.”
“It had a picture of a bomb on the cover.” Kim had read the same reports.
“Yeah. And baby food has pictures of babies on the tin. But there was a clue inside. Some numbers.”
17. Treasure trove
Quint kept a clean flat. His own books were lined up – in alphabetical order of authors – on a bookshelf. Such a minefield of decisions in arranging books. Samuel Pepys had ordered his library by height, even to the extent of having book cabinets made especially for them. His will had specified that they not be altered, and by some miracle, three hundred years later they were still in order in the same bookcases.
CDs were less trouble. They were all the same size, mostly, in their plastic cases. Quint selected a compilation, one he’d bought at Starbucks when they were still in Canberra, and put it on. Chet Baker singing You Make me Feel so Young. Hard to imagine Mrs Campbell as a schoolgirl, galloping through the trees, firelight on her face, burying pirate treasure.
16. Pickup lines
Perhaps she visited her elderly mother on Wednesdays. Perhaps she did her banking and other chores during these few business hours. Perhaps she had a lover, and they spent the mornings rolling around in sweaty lust and heavy breathing.
Harley liked that last thought, inserting himself into the fantasy, kissing Ann between her bookshelves, embracing her in the romance section, leading her into the backroom where they disrobed amongst boxes of unsorted books…
He caught himself, smiling. Sharkey was right. He had sex on the brain.
How long had it been? Too bloody long. Cabbies might brag about lady passengers paying in kind, but it had never happened to him. Just a kiss on the cheek now and then from passengers happy with his line of chat. And twice now a male passenger, coming home alone late at night, had laid a hand on his thigh. He’d gently brushed them aside, saying he didn’t swing that way, but took no offence.
Maybe he should follow up on that fantasy.
15. Bedridden books
Softly, yet firmly, the eager lips of the Greek tycoon sought those of the bookseller. Slowly, gently, her reluctance melted. She sighed as his tongue met hers in bilingual embrace.
14. On the brain
Harley was having himself a good Tuesday in his taxi. Of course, every day spent driving around Canberra was a good day, and he gave heartfelt thanks that he was not a cabbie in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, where the traffic was fierce and the drivers more so. Cabbing in Canberra was a delight. [...]