Base Nature by Ged Gillmore

Author:Ged Gillmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: australian crime fiction, amateur sleuth, murder mystery series, mystery & detective, human traffic, intelligent crime fiction, hard boiled fiction, british detective, small town, noir, contemporary noir
Publisher: deGrevilo Publishing
Published: 2018-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Friday, 15th March

The day itself

At the sound of the man’s voice, Anita turns so suddenly that she loses her balance. Using the hand holding her keys, she grabs at the door frame, pinching her fingers painfully between the metal and the wood. Over-compensating with her weight in the other direction, one of her feet twists painfully away from its shoe and her handbag slips from under her elbow. She catches the bag at the last second, but something else falls too and, in her pain and confusion, Anita can’t understand what it might have been.

‘Oh, Terry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

Terry Hatch stares at her in the gloom of the stairwell, eyes narrowed and calculating. He is wearing a pale blue polo shirt that stretches across his belly, its shoulders and chest soaked and moulded around his hairy frame. As Anita watches, Hatch bends down to pick up the injection kit from the metal landing between them. Overhead the rain intensifies, its hammering faster than ever, a continuous blur of metallic noise.

‘You all right, Anita? Why you so jumpy?’

‘I’m not!’ She laughs at the tremble in her voice. ‘Oh, thank you, I’ll take that. Are you looking for Scott?’

‘Your foot,’ Hatch gestures with the kit in the half-light. ‘You hurt yourself?’

She can feel every pulse passing through her ankle and she knows already it will swell.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘It’s these silly shoes.’

Hatch inclines his head to one side and gives Anita a strange look as she forces her foot back into her shoe. The pain makes her start to sweat, salt water mixing with the rain in her still-damp shirt.

‘This is a bit lumpy.’ Hatch is squeezing the injection kit with both hands, like a child working out a Christmas present. ‘Whoever packed it didn’t do a good job. What is it?’

‘It’s Scott’s.’ Anita, the discreet and loyal secretary, tugs the kit gently from Hatch’s hands. ‘Were you looking for him?’

It’s unpleasant here on the dark landing with Hatch, his belly almost touching hers. Anita has often wondered if the man buys his polo shirts to fit his biceps, forgetting they have to accommodate the rest of him too. She wants to move away from him but she doesn’t trust her ankle to get her down the metal staircase.

‘You all right, Anita?’

Before she can answer, there are footsteps below them and Tom Brandle, the foreman from the warehouse, appears at the turn of the stairs. He seems surprised to see anyone there.

‘G’day,’ he says, squinting uncertainly up at them. ‘Anita, there’s two blokes in a car downstairs blocking the entry—’

‘They’re with me.’ Hatch says it in a tone that doesn’t invite questions, but maybe Tom Brandle doesn’t hear it over the noise of the rain. Or maybe he chooses to ignore it.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he says. ‘You a client of ours?’

Anita wants to scream at the two men to get the hell out of her way. Instead, the professional tells Tom, yes, this is Terry Hatch, an

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