Take Out Read Free Page B

days, why so long?’
    It took a moment for Stevie to realise the woman’s peculiar speech must be the result of the stroke Skye had mentioned. It might also explain why she’d been unable to call the police herself, getting her son and Skye to do it for her.
    ‘I’m a friend of Skye’s, Mrs Hardegan.’ Stevie consciously slowed down her usual rapid-fire speech. ‘She asked me to look into the Pavels’ house for you. She said you hadn’t seen them for a while and were worried about them. I am with the police, but not from Peppermint Grove. The Peppy Grove police are on their way.’
    ‘A lovely boy, but the others are useless, quite useless. You’d better come in, have a cup of tea and tell us what’s going on.’ Despite the oddness of her speech, she had the cultured pronunciation of another era, almost English but not quite. Newsreel ABC.
    Mrs Hardegan turned and clasped one of the bookcases in the dark hallway. As she eased herself down the passageway, Stevie noticed one leg lagging slightly behind the other. Seeing no sign of a Zimmer frame or stick Stevie instinctively reached for the woman’s elbow, but the well-intentioned gesture was shrugged away with an impatient scowl. On the wall above a bookcase, a black and white photo of a young Mrs Hardegan caught Stevie’s eye; the hooked nose was unmistakable. She was dressed in the uniform of a wartime RAN nurse—it figured.
    Mrs Hardegan led Stevie past several closed doors to a lighter, self-contained room with kitchenette at the back of the house, where it appeared she did most of her living. Recycling was sorted and stacked in tidy piles on one of the benches. The surfaces of the kitchenette were clean; soapsuds popped on the drying plastic dishes spread across the draining board. The single bed in the corner of the room was made after a fashion, the lumps disguised by an intricately embroidered cotton counterpane. Stevie found herself wondering how long it had taken the old lady to make the bed, how frustrating the disability must be to someone who probably required everything around her to be shipshape. Every free surface of the room was crowded with various arts, crafts and sewing paraphernalia: crushed tubes of fabric paint, bottles of varnish, glue, jars of bristling paintbrushes. A wooden contraption, like an old printing press, stood near one of the windows. It would be used for screen-printing, Stevie guessed. Several bright cushions of the same fish design as the old lady’s dress were arranged in a precise line down one side of the bed.
    An open door led into a bathroom. Stevie glimpsed a toilet and railed bath before Mrs Hardegan moved with surprising speed to close it.
    ‘Bloody Japs!’ The mechanical voice made Stevie whirl towards the source, a parrot, hanging in a dome-shaped cage from a ceiling beam toward the back of the room.
    ‘Hello, who’s this?’ Stevie said as she approached, resisting the urge to poke a finger through the bars. The parrot stared back. It had bright black eyes and a beak similar to its owner’s—it could probably shear a finger with a single snip. Bald in places, its patchy arrangement of feathers looked as washed-out as a favourite summer shirt.
    ‘Captain Flint, our feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan said.
    The tea was made with only a few minor mishaps—Stevie given three lumps of sugar when she asked for none—and settled by Mrs Hardegan on a tapestried footstool in front of a high-backed easy chair next to the window. One side of the Pavel residence was visible from this vantage point and the binoculars resting on a shelf nearby were no doubt used for further surveillance.
    Difficulties of expression do not necessarily mean difficulties with understanding; Stevie knew that. But to be safe, she explained what she’d found at the Pavel house as slowly and as simply as she could. She cringed at the patronising sound of her own voice, so like the manner in which some people talked to her seven-year-old