Dirty Work (eBook)

Brett Sody (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
316 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9870-5 (ISBN)

Infos

DIRTY WORK Detective Pete Young - at twenty-two the youngest detective in South Australian police history. He's lifting the lid on all sorts of DIRTY WORK going on, right under his nose. Headline City. Priest Under Pump - Rock Band on Make - Family Business Hard Hit - Celebrity Chefs on Outer - Writer Grinds Axe - Builders Stir Pot - Pastor's New Take on Old Theme - Murders To Go. A couple of miracles tossed into the mix, then stirred. And that's just the humans. DIRTY WORK: Hard-boiled detective parody, dishing out the facts of life, shithouse though most of them are. Like it or lump it. Whatever you happen to be.

Textauszug

FOURTEEN

 

 

Det. Pete Young, late morning sun on his shoulder, is walking south along Crowton Road, heading toward his old school, St. Bart’s, at 37 Cedar Street. The exact ten minutes it’ll take him to walk there will give him time to ponder the possibilities of the case at hand, with his feet on the street and his ear to the ground.

The Missing Persons.

Tricky.

Foul play? Or just shot through? Who can say?

Due to disappearing, Kev Stanton and Bev Stacey are more well-known now than they ever were when everybody knew their whereabouts. Now that no-one does, they need looking for.

Det. Pete keeps walking. Cedar Street’s coming up on the left, house after 54. That corner turned, it’ll be straight up the hill to St. Bart’s. The last and every time he’d trekked up there he’d carried a lunch-box. And in that lunchbox packed, stacked: Crowton Organic Produce.

What else? Best lunch in school, no contest, other than Todd and Karen, obviously, who had the same as their brother. Tuck-shop slop was not an option when you’re packing premium home-grown goodies your own mother yanked from the ground, or ground up or down or out or picked from vine or tree, plucked from bush or pod and wrapped up in brown greaseproof which was the same brown grease-proof as the day before, brought back on home, neatly folded. Its job? To last the week. Why wouldn’t it if you looked after it? Waste not, want not, what’s not to get?

Det. Pete hits the corner of Crowton and Cedar and heads on up. It will take six minutes. He knows. How many times do you think he’s made this journey? Work it out. Det. Pete could tell you; a school year’s two hundred days. Walk there two hundred times, back two hundred times; that’s four hundred per year. Twelve school years. So twelve times four hundred is four thousand eight hundred. That’s how many times this trail’s been trudged.

And today will make another one.

The odd sick day?

You’re kidding, right? There’s been as many of them as dodo’s sighted since 1662; young Pete being very light-on in the sickie department due, naturally, to being so healthy.

Why so?

Because he was raised, not on rubbish, but on Mother Nature’s Own. Crowton Organic Produce. You are what you eat, says mum. Eat COP. Am cop. Got it? Good for you.

Det. Pete’s now halfway up Cedar Street. Going past 16; two blocks to go. He checks his watch. Not noon yet. 18’s a shabby old weatherboard. Two Rottweiler’s cut loose in the front yard and bark like the rotters they are. Just Det. Pete walking past is giving them grief. Edgy, aren’t they? Bitey. Seem a tad tense, too, hiding something are they? Some sorry stiff buried in the backyard? Stored in the cellar? In pieces in the freezer? Packed under the floor? What about in the cavity wall? Plenty of space for a well-wrapped body. Det. Pete crosses the road when he hits 32. Once over, left at 33. Two more and there it is. Or was. The old school, St. Bart’s, is now a Supa-Cheap Auto-Mart. The oval’s a car park. Full, too. Next?

Det. Pete heads back down Cedar. May as well go home. Maybe those quiches are ready. Trust mum to have some-thing cooking. He hasn’t.

Not yet, anyway.

 

Half of one of those quiche’s is cooling down right now, and heading up into the hills on a plate all wrapped up in greaseproof and laying on the back seat of a ’92 Volkswagen, “Crowton Motors” sticker stuck on its rear end, “Goddess Inside” sign up front. Det. Pete Young’s elder sister Karen’s driving.

Karen’s wearing Tibetan love-beads over a white em-broidered Indian cotton top, mirrored Balinese slippers and a pair of pale green Peruvian hemp drawstring pants. She’s trying to keep one eye on the road and the other on the rear- view mirror in the struggle to paint a small red dot in the middle of her forehead using some leftover nail polish. That bloody bindi. Not easy at the best of times and especially so around here. Corners galore. Steep, tight, tricky, whoops! There go the citrine crystals sliding off the dash but the Beetle handles well. Dad had assured Aunt Eileen it did when she’d bought it. An oversized hessian and cane carry bag is hogging the passenger seat. Karen’s left hand is poking around inside its innards.

‘Where the fuck’ she mutters, ‘is that Sacred Sounds CD?’

Karen doesn’t own a car just at the minute due to her current difficult financial circumstances. Not her fault. Aunt Eileen wouldn’t want Karen having to ride her bike all the way up to hers at Crowton Heights in the hills in order to help out, which is what the goddess is doing right now. Be a hell of a ride on a pushbike. Any quiche mum had packed would likely as not get seriously squashed, so thank Christ for the Beetle.

Karen’s been going up to Aunt Eileen’s twice a week for a few months now, Wednesdays and Fridays, to help the old chook around the house and take her into Crowton if she needs anything. Generally, groceries, almost always Op-Shop. Occasional banking, and a nice lunch somewhere that Karen would always insist on paying for but has never had to, so far, thank goodness, as she couldn’t anyway, being broke. Aunt Eileen will foot the bill as sure as water and dirt make mud. Her treat. After a nice day helping, Aunt Eileen always pops a hundred dollar note in Karen’s bag. Aunt Eileen’s not short of a quid, but that’s no secret.

Driver reasonably happy with bindi by now, given the conditions, citrine crystals back on dash, Sacred Sounds CD having been found, slid in, turned on and up, the Beetle turns into the driveway of its owner just as track one, “Song of the Fairies”, kicks in.

Aunt Eileen’s out front, big watering can in hand, having a little chat with one of the pot plants on her veranda, a struggling chrysanthemum.

Aunt Eileen’s Maine Coon cat Krishna, another veranda occupant, has the ideal stake-out spot. Corduroy cushion on cane tub chair next to the hare’s foot fern. Perfect vantage point. You come, you go, you’re going to get seen, simple as. Krishna’s keeping a sly eye on the niece behind the wheel of the Beetle pulling up. Observes the driver-side window being wound down.

Ears back. “Song of the Fairies” floats out. The owner of the Beetle approaches, watering can in hand. The driver says,

‘I love this CD’, through open window.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ asks Aunt Eileen.

‘I said, I love this CD. Sacred Sounds. It’s fabulous’

‘Sacred what? Sorry, I didn’t catch the last part’

‘The CD I had on in the car. Sacred Sounds. I played it all the way up here. You gave it to me. I love it’

‘Well, if I gave it to you’, says Aunt Eileen, ‘you must have needed it. What’s it called again?’

‘Sacred Sounds’ says Karen. ‘Thank you, JoY’

Karen has fully respected Auntie Eileen’s request, some time back, to be referred to by her new name, JoY, and that the name Eileen not be used when talking with her. So far, Karen’s had no problem with it. Walking into the house, Aunt Eileen a.k.a. JoY suggests that, before they talk about what Karen might do today in the help department, they should have a nice cup of herbal tea together on the veranda, sitting on the cane tub sofa, and have some of that yummy quiche that mum had thoughtfully sent up via Karen who’s not all that keen on quiche, generally, but who could definitely go a cup of tea.

While the kettle boils, the other half of the quiche is back in town heading up Crowton Road wrapped in brown greaseproof inside mum’s little foam esky, heading for 180. She likes to bring dad and Todd a delicious yet nutritious lunch whenever possible. Crowton Motors being just four minutes down and across the road from 149, a four minute walk, the boys could always pop home for it. But what if, mum’s fond of suggesting, at that precise moment a prospective customer should wander into the yard and find it unattended? Or pop into Crowton Crash and find whoever’s supposed to be there’s not? Lost sale, that’s what. Car-sales.com would win again.

Not happening.

Besides, left to their own devices, dad and Todd would more than likely head to the pub. The Duck Inn’s just down the road. Or worse, to the bakery.

Mum will make sure the boys get the good stuff, the other half of quiche number one, the half that didn’t make it up to Aunt Eileen’s a.k.a. Joy’s via Karen. Half of quiche number two’s already been scoffed by Det. Pete back home. So half of one’s coming up the road, all organic and headed to 180. Schnitzel, chips, beer, buns; not happening, and the men that know it best are Terry and Todd Young.

Mum and esky hit the car yard a bit before one.

Joe, the disgruntled former owner of the beaver-brown 2005 Mitsubishi Colt, bowls in dead on, as expected.

Dad is in no doubt as to where Joe’s spent the time waiting. The Athena Bar &...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.9.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-9870-X / 109839870X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-9870-5 / 9781098398705