Lights and Sirens Page 17

  Hayden’s mouth quirked up in a smile before he even realised it. And then he saw Isaiah again, and Zach, and the people from the traffic accident, and a ball of emotions too confused to unknot—anger, grief, guilt, and some that flashed by too quickly to put a name to—expanded in his chest, pressing down on his lungs.

  Another rumble of thunder, and a burst of warm air through the kitchen that rustled the papers stuck to the fridge, but then the rain eased to a steady patter on the roof. Hayden could hear himself think again. Could pull in a breath again.

  He made his coffee and sat down at the table with Joe.

  “You sleep okay?” Joe asked.

  Hayden jerked his head in a nod.

  “Good.” Joe curled his gnarled fingers around his tea. “Listen, the tap in the bathroom’s dripping. How are you at changing washers?”

  “I can give it a go,” Hayden said, the tightness in his chest loosening.

  It would be good to have something to do apart from sit around and wait for Matt to get home and think.

  Hayden found Matt’s toolbox in the shed, and then he had to turn the water off at the meter by the front gate. He was drenched by the time he made it back to the house. He changed his clothes, helping himself to more of Matt’s, and dropped the wet ones in a heap in the shower cubicle to deal with later.

  The hardest part was taking the cover off the tap. It was old, and pretty much rusted on. Hayden managed to knock the skin off his knuckles before he’d loosened it enough to unscrew.

  Joe leaned in the bathroom doorway while Hayden worked, chatting about all the repairs that Matt was doing to the house. “He’s a good boy. There’s not too many fellas his age who’d be willing to move in with their grandad to help out around the place.”

  Hayden hummed, lifting the tap’s headgear free. The washer was so old that it was copper, not rubber, and it was worn thin around the edges. Hayden levered it free and turned it over in his palm.

  “A fella his age should be going out every night and sowing his wild oats,” Joe said.

  Hayden snorted, and set the old washer down. He found a replacement in the tool box. “Don’t you worry about Matt. He does just fine on that score.”

  Joe laughed. “I guess he does!”

  Hayden replaced the hardware on the tap, before taking advantage of a brief lull in the rain to dash outside and turn the water back on at the meter. Then he came back to check the tap was working okay, washing his scraped knuckles under the water. They stung, but had already stopped bleeding when he patted them dry on Matt’s towel.

  He liked this house, imperfect and knocked around the edges a bit. He liked the cracked tiles in the bathroom and the worn patches on the hardwood floors. He liked that it was lived in, and he liked that Matt was fixing it up in tiny increments. It felt good to contribute to that, even in such a small way.

  “Anything else need doing?” he asked. “Before I put the tool box away.”

  Joe cocked a hairy eyebrow. “The door on the china cabinet’s a bit loose.”

  Joe kept Hayden occupied for the next hour or so. They talked a little about Joe’s time in the army, and then about his work as a mechanic at Queensland Rail after that, while Joe found a bunch of simple jobs Hayden could do around the house. Hayden suspected Joe was just trying to keep him distracted. He didn’t mind.

  The morning passed slowly. The rain pattered on the tin roof. It was background noise; constant, comforting.

  They ate sandwiches for lunch, all the ingredients laid out in their plastic containers on the kitchen table like a buffet. Hayden felt quiet, calm. Still off kilter, maybe, but no longer panicking about it. He was okay. He was okay here.

  After lunch he went back into Matt’s room and found his phone. He sent a text to Monique to tell her he was staying with Matt for a few days, and then one to Kate to promise he was fine and he’d be back at work soon.

  He didn’t know how soon.

  He sat on the end of the bed for a while, turning his phone over and over in his hand before he finally took a deep breath and called Priority One.

  Matt arrived home just after two, with a loaf of fresh bread and a roast chicken from Woolworths. Charlie met him at the front door and nosed the bottom of the bag with interest, sagging with disappointment when Matt lifted it out of his reach.

  “How was work?” Hayden asked, nudging the dog out of the way with his knee.

  “Good.” Matt pulled the door shut and leaned in and kissed him briefly. His face was wet from the rain.

  Hayden ducked his head and smiled as a flash of awareness sparked through him.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, we’re so fucking domestic right now.” Hayden rolled his eyes. “I feel like I should be wearing an apron or something, standing here waiting for my man to get home from work.”

  Matt laughed, colour rising in his cheeks. “That could work for me.”

  Hayden snorted.

  Matt’s smile faded, but brightness of it stayed in his eyes. “How was your day?”

  “Not bad. Fixed the bathroom tap.”

  Matt tugged the front door closed behind him. “Thanks. That’ll save me doing it on the weekend.” He swung the bag out of Charlie’s range again, the plastic rustling.

  “I called Priority One,” Hayden said, hating how hesitant his voice sounded.

  Matt’s eyes widened. “How’d that go?”

  “I dunno.” Hayden twisted his mouth. “I have an appointment with some psychologist over on Fulham Road next week. First three appointments are paid for by the Service, no questions. After that I need to put in a compo claim.” He waited for Matt’s expression to change from concern into something disapproving.

  “Well, you should,” Matt said. “If it comes to that.”

  Hayden tilted his chin up. “Because I can’t handle my fucking job?”

  And now the disapproval was there. Matt shook his head slightly. “If you put your back out on the job from all the lifting you do, you’d put a compo claim in, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s not the same—”

  “It’s exactly the same thing,” Matt said. “You got hurt on the job.”

  “Sure.” Hayden raised his eyebrows. “Would you do it though? Put in a compo claim for stress?”

  Matt held his gaze. “If I had to.”

  He looked so fucking sure of himself that Hayden didn’t have the energy to argue.

  “It might not come to that anyway,” Matt added. “And, if it does, we’ll deal with it when it happens.”

  We.

  There was no way so small a word should have had the power to fill Hayden with such warmth. It was a word he was unused to though. He’d dealt with stuff alone for so long that he hadn’t known there was any other way to do it. His eyes stung, and he nodded.

  “Come on.” Matt knocked him gently with his shoulder. “I need to put this in the fridge before Charlie gives himself a heart attack trying to steal it.”

  Hayden smiled, and patted Charlie’s head. Charlie, still mesmerised by the smell of chicken, seemed to barely notice.

  Matt headed for the kitchen, Hayden following.

  Joe was sitting at the table, peering at the classifieds in the newspaper. He was wearing his glasses, and also peering through a magnifying glass. “There’s a bloke in Garbutt selling ducks. You remember your sister had that duck when you were kids?”

  “I remember how happy I was when Dad killed it,” Matt said, and shrugged when he caught Hayden’s look. “It used to attack everything. I must’ve been four or five, and I can remember running through the yard screaming because this crazy bloody duck was chasing me. Even Jess hated it, and it was her duck. So Dad killed it and Mum cooked it up for dinner. Jess got the wishbone because it was her duck.”

  Hayden blinked at him for a moment, and then shook his head. “Jesus. Country kids are hardcore.”

  Joe laughed, rattling the pages of the newspaper.

  Matt put the bread on the bench and the ch
icken in the fridge, and then took Hayden by the hand and drew him toward his bedroom. “It wasn’t a nice duck.”

  “I’m seeing a side of you I never knew existed,” Hayden said. “You’re the sort of person who is happy when innocent animals are murdered.”

  “It wasn’t innocent!” Matt smiled. He had dark shadows under his eyes. Hayden wasn’t sure if they were because of yesterday, or just symptomatic of an early morning start. “You would have hated it too, I promise.”

  They reached Matt’s room, and Hayden lay down on the bed. He watched as Matt unlaced his boots and pulled them off. His pants followed, and then he dug through his dresser drawer for a moment, before he turned around again and raised his eyebrows at Hayden.

  “And the reason I can’t find my track pants is because you’re wearing them.”

  Hayden hooked his thumb into the waistband of the track pants, and lifted his hips off the bed. “You want to take them off me?”

  An expression he couldn’t read flitted over Matt’s face, and then it was gone again. Matt crossed over to the bed and lay on his side next to Hayden, putting an arm over his chest. “Nah. I could use a nap though.”

  Yeah. That sounded like a nice idea. Hayden closed his eyes.

  Matt shifted closer. When he spoke, his breath was warm against Hayden’s throat. “Did it really go okay? Talking with Priority One?”

  “I don’t know.” Hayden exhaled slowly. “I just said what had happened, and they set up the referral to the psychologist for me. I’ll save all the extraneous bullshit for there, I guess.”

  “Extraneous?”

  “The stuff about me. About my mother.” She’d been in his thoughts a few times lately, even though she didn’t deserve any place at all in his head. He could hardly remember what she looked like—he just had a vague impression of blonde hair. And her hands. He remembered her hands. Remembered the cheap silver rings she used to wear that turned the skin underneath green. But his thoughts weren’t about her, not precisely. They were about the impact of being taken away from her. They were about being small and afraid, and totally alone. And they were about how Isaiah must have felt the same. Must have felt he wasn’t good enough for anyone to want. Hayden had struggled to untangle himself from that feeling for years. It was hard to shake it, even now, and even with Matt. Unfair too, to put the burden of something like that on such a new relationship. And hard not to listen to the voice of that scared kid in the back of his mind: He won’t stay. Nobody wants you.

  Hayden felt like shit for the way his thoughts of Isaiah all twisted back to me me me. He hated that Isaiah was dead, and that he was making it all about his relationship with Matt. Was he that shallow? That selfish? Or was that little kid’s voice in his brain that insidious?

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I want to go back to work. I want to do my job. I don’t want to be useless.”

  “You’re good at your job,” Matt said quietly. “Everyone knows it. Nothing that happened yesterday changes that.”

  Hayden pressed his mouth together in a thin line.

  “Would you second guess yourself if your knee had popped?”

  Hayden turned his head to look at him. “Come on. Not this again. It’s not the same.”

  “It’s exactly the same.”

  “Nobody else thinks so.”

  “Fuck what anybody else thinks.” Matt’s forehead was creased with a frown. “You’re good at your job, but you’re more than that too. You can’t just…” He sighed. “The job can’t be your life, because we’re in the sorts of jobs that are incredibly isolating, you know? The shiftwork, and the shit we see…it’s easier to only hang out with other people who get that. But then, if the job goes, who have you got?”

  “If you weren’t a copper, what would you be?”

  “I’d go back to uni,” Matt said. “Do something in environmental sciences and business. Or maybe education. I could be a teacher.”

  “From copper to teacher.” Hayden snorted. “That’s a hell of a leap.”

  “Not really. It’s all about crowd control.” Matt smiled and rubbed a slow circle on Hayden’s aching chest. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I like my job.” He swallowed. “I think…I think I wouldn’t know who I was without it.”

  And maybe that was…not unhealthy perhaps, but unbalanced, which seemed to be the point Matt was angling towards. Maybe Hayden didn’t need to take a step back, but he needed to know it was possible to do without the ground dropping away under his feet.

  He curled his hand around Matt’s, linking their fingers together. “This week—” He stopped. Cleared his throat and started again. “Thank you.”

  There were things too large for such small words to fully encompass, but when Matt only nodded and squeezed his hand, Hayden figured he got what he was trying to say.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Sunday mornings. Matt hated the early starts, but it was nice to go and grab a coffee, and then park somewhere along The Strand and watch the early morning light set the ocean on fire. There were always cyclists on The Strand at this hour, and people walking, and it felt good to get out of the car, call it a foot patrol, and breathe in a lungful of sea air. Yesterday’s rain had left everything smelling damp and new, and it was early enough that day wasn’t stinking hot yet.

  The bay glittered as Matt and Sean walked along the wide pathway. The early ferry cut its way through the water, heading across to Magnetic Island. Matt thought of the night he and Hayden had walked on the beach at Pallarenda, and talked about getting away for a few days. Now was probably not the time, but maybe in a few weeks once Hayden was back into the swing of things. Matt hadn’t been over to the island in years, which was ridiculous. He lived in Townsville now, and it was only a short ferry ride.

  Or maybe instead of taking Hayden to Magnetic Island they could go to Mission Beach, and stop in at Ingham on the way. Matt wondered what it would feel like to show Hayden around all his childhood haunts. To have him meet his parents. He wondered when he was supposed to know if they were ready for that.

  “How’s Hayden doing?” Sean asked as they moved over on the path to let a jogger pass.

  Matt wasn’t sure how to answer a question like that. “He’s okay.”

  “Good.” Sean creased his brow. “That’s good.”

  A woman walking a beagle stopped them, explaining that she’d found a wallet in the gutter. Flinders Street East fed off The Strand though, and it was likely some drunk had lost it last night. He played with the dog while Sean jogged to the car to grab a Field Property Receipt book.

  When he got back, the woman gave Sean her details and he took possession of the wallet. He opened it up while they continued their patrol.

  “Still got cash in it,” he said. “And credit cards. He’s lucky that lady found it instead of anyone else.”

  There was a driver’s licence in the wallet too, so Sean would be able to track down the owner back at the station and give him a call. If the guy was really lucky he would still be sleeping off his hangover and wouldn’t have cancelled his cards yet.

  The Case of the Lost Wallet was definitely a change of pace from Thursday and Friday, and thank fuck for that. Matt and Sean were owed a break from trauma, both theirs and everyone else’s.

  Their first incident of the morning was a break and enter at a house in South Townsville. The offenders had also taken a set of car keys off the kitchen table: the occupants’ car was gone as well.

  Matt drove back to the station, while Sean flipped through his notebook to make sure he’d got everything down, and worried aloud that he hadn’t. Sean would be a good copper, as soon as he built his confidence up.

  The shift dragged. In many ways that was better than the alternative of running around like blue-arsed flies, but when Matt caught himself checking his watch three times in the space of a quarter of an hour, he knew the rest of the day was going to be a struggle. He just wanted to get home to Hay
den.

  The realisation gave him pause.

  Since when were home and Hayden synonymous? And that was a hell of a thing to put on Hayden right now, when he was dealing with the weight of his trauma. Matt thought about what Hayden had said about his childhood, and about what he hadn’t said. It wasn’t a tragedy, since Hayden insisted on that, but whatever he wanted to call it, it had left scars.

  Matt left Sean working on the report for the break and enter, and headed upstairs to Child Protection. Maggie gave him a wave as he walked in. Maggie had been in his team in general duties before getting a spot here. Matt returned her wave and then found Harry—a tall, thin man who appeared perpetually hungover—tapping away at his computer.

  “Hey,” Matt said. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside Harry’s desk. “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad.”

  Matt jumped straight to the chase. “That suicide. Isaiah. You got that file?”

  Harry nodded. “Mmm.”

  “Did he leave a note?” Matt asked. “Did he say anything?”

  He wasn’t sure what he was chasing here. Closure, maybe, even though he knew from experience that it was unlikely. It was hard to stand on the outside looking in, trying to understand why a decision like Isaiah’s had made sense to him. But maybe there would be something here that he could offer Hayden.

  “Nah, there was no note. He didn’t even change his Facebook status.” Harry’s expression sharpened. “You took the ambo home, right? The one who flipped out. Are you a mate of his?”

  Flipped out? Matt tried not to grind his teeth at that. “Hayden’s my boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” Harry shrugged. “Well, tell him I’m going to need a statement from him at some point.”

  “No.” Matt stood up again. “You can sort that out through his boss, not through me.”

  “What?” Harry squinted up at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  Harry snorted. “You don’t need to be a bloody dickhead about it.”