Marion Lennox - Abby and the Bachelor Cop

They stood staring at each other in the sunlight. Abby…

‘The tapes, Raff,’ she said gently, and she gave him a wide, impudent smile. It was a smile he hadn’t seen for years. It made him feel… It made him feel…

As if Abby was back.

‘You’ll take care of them?’ she asked.

‘I…yes.’ What else was a man to say?

‘Have fun, then,’ she said and she climbed into her car. ‘I’m sure you will.’

He collected the tapes with speed-something told him it might be important to have them collected and be gone before Dexter realised the mix-up.

He thought about Abby.

He headed back to the station thinking about Abby.

Life was getting…interesting.

Have fun?

He should be thinking about tapes.

He was, but he was also thinking about Abby.

She went home, but only briefly. She changed into jeans, collected Kleppy and headed up the mountain.

She had some hard thinking to do, and it seemed the mountain was the place to do it. For a little bit she thought about Philip’s briefcase but by the time she reached the mountain she’d forgotten all about Philip. She’d moved on.

She parked out the front of Isaac’s place-the safest place to park. Kleppy whined against the fence and she cuddled him and thought…

Ben was here.

That was why she’d come. Ben had died up here, in the thick bushland on the mountain, a place that had magically been spared logging, where the gums were vast and the scenery was breathtaking. After all these years, suddenly it felt right that she was here with him. Her brother.

For the last ten years Ben had been lost, and she’d been empty.

With Kleppy carefully on the lead-who knew what he’d find here?-she walked along the side of the road where the crash had happened. The smells were driving Kleppy wild. He tugged to the place he’d been digging the night she and Raff had been here, but she pulled him away.

‘No wombat holes,’ she told him. ‘Sorry, Klep, but this trip is about me.’

She reached the foot of the crest. The road was incredibly narrow. The trees were huge-they were so close to the road.

Two cars colliding at speed… They’d never stood a chance.

She thought of that night. Of how they’d been before. Five kids. Fledgling love affairs. The things they’d all done.

Stupid kids, trying their wings. They’d been so sure they could fly. The only unknown was how far.

They’d been kids who thought they were invincible.

One stupid night.

She sank onto the verge at the side of the road and hugged her dog. ‘Raff’s right,’ she whispered, the emotions of the past two days kaleidoscoping and merging into one clear vision. ‘To forgive… That means he was wrong; the rest of us were right. That’s how we’ve acted and that’s what he’s worn. He’s accepted total blame.’

How hard must that have been?

A truck was approaching, slowly, a rattler. It came over the crest and slowed and stopped.

Lionel. Climbing out. Looking worried. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Then he saw Kleppy and Kleppy saw him. It was hard to say who was most delighted and it took a while before Lionel finally told her why he was here.

‘I keep coming up hoping she’s left the gate open,’ Lionel told her. ‘Mr Isaac’s daughter. She’s locked the place and I can’t water the spuds. We were growing blue ones this year, just to see what they’re like.’

‘It’s a lovely garden.’

‘It was a lovely garden,’ he said, sad again, and he gave Kleppy a final hug and rose. ‘The gate’s still shut?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d better slope off then,’ he said sadly. ‘Back to the golf course.’ He sighed and glanced towards the garden. ‘You gotta put stuff behind you. I’ll be good at growing grass.’

‘You will, too.’

‘I might go out to see Sarah some time,’ he said diffidently. ‘You be out there, too?’

‘I…probably not. I’m not sure.’

‘You’re Sarah’s friend?’

‘I am.’

‘And the copper’s friend? Raff?’

‘I hope so.’

‘He’s good,’ Lionel said. ‘When I wanted to keep Kleppy he came to see my landlady; told her how much I wanted him. Didn’t make any difference but he tried. I reckon a man like that’s a friend.’

‘He…he is.’

‘And I bet he’s pleased Kleppy’s found you,’ Lionel said, and he hugged Kleppy one last time and headed off back to his golf course.

She sat on the verge with her dog for a while longer. Letting her thoughts go where they willed.

She fiddled with the medal on Kleppy’s collar. Thought about Lionel. Thought about Isaac.

Isaac Abrahams was a brave man, she thought. He’d been through so much-and he’d gone through more for his dog.

And Raff?

He’d faced condemnation from this community from the time he was a kid, and after Ben’s death it had been overwhelming. He’d been based in Sydney at the Police Training College when the accident happened. All he’d needed to do to escape censure was move Sarah into a Sydney apartment and never come back.

He’d come back and faced condemnation because this was the place Sarah loved.

What you did for love…

She hugged her dog and looked at his collar and thought about what brave meant.

And what forgiveness was.

Tears were slipping down her cheeks now and she didn’t care. These tears should have been cried out years ago, only she’d shut them out, shut herself down, turned into someone who couldn’t face pain.

Turned into someone she didn’t like.

Could Raff like her?

In time. Maybe. If she changed and waited for a while.

But then she thought about the expression on his face as she’d told him.

If I can forgive what happened with Ben…

How could she have said it? How could she be so hurtful?

Kleppy whined and squirmed and she hugged him tighter than he approved. She let him loose a little and he licked her from throat to chin. She chuckled.

‘Oh, Kleppy, I love you.’

Love.

The word hung out there, four letters, a concept huge in what it meant.

Love.

She whispered it again, trying it out for size. Thinking of all its implications. Love.

‘I love Raff,’ she told Kleppy, and Kleppy tried the tongue thing again.

‘No.’ She set him down and rose, staring along the track where Ben had died. ‘I love you, Kleppy, but I love Raff more. Ben, I love Raff.’

Was it stupid to talk to a brother who’d been dead for ten years? Who knew, and it was probably her imagination that a breeze rustled through the trees right then, a soft, embracing breeze that warmed her, that told her it was okay, that told her to follow her heart.

‘Just as well,’ she told her big brother in a tone she hadn’t used for ten years. ‘You always were bossy but you can’t boss me out of this one. I love Rafferty Finn. I love Banksia Bay’s bad boy, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change my mind.’

THE sight of Wallace Baxter’s face as the Crown Prosecutor asked a seemingly insignificant question about a bank account in the Seychelles was priceless.

As Crown Prosecutor, Malcolm might be too tired to do hard research, but when something was handed to him on a plate he shed twenty years in twenty seconds. Raff slipped him a question with a matching document, and suddenly Malcolm was the incisive legal machine he’d once been.

Wallace Baxter was heading for jail. The people he’d ripped off might even be headed for compensation.

And there’d be more, Raff thought with grim satisfaction. Raff had spent half an hour with Keith, poring through documents, listening to snatches of conversation, before Raff found the Seychelles document and they knew they had enough to pin Baxter.

They also suspected this was the tip of an iceberg. Philip’s tapes might have been intended for blackmail, or maybe they were simply a product of an obsessive mind, but they covered this case only, and there’d been murky cases in the past. By the time Philip finished in court there’d be forensic investigators on his doorstep, Raff thought with satisfaction. With search warrants.

Keith, though, was in charge at that end. He was calling for backup. Raff’s role was to return to court, focusing on this case only. So he listened to Malcolm ask his question and wave bank statements. He saw the moment Philip realised Abby had taken the wrong briefcase, and he watched his face turn ashen.

What had Philip been thinking, to record everything? Who knew? All he knew was that he was very, very pleased Abby was no longer marrying him.

He wanted to find her, but that was stupid. Wanting Abby had been stupid last night and it was stupid now.

He could leave the case to Malcolm now. He left. He should go back to help Keith-but he didn’t. Instead, he stopped at the baker’s to buy lamingtons. Sarah’s favourite. They’d sit in the sun and eat them, he thought. He needed to settle.

But when he got home he remembered Sarah was at the sheltered workshop on Mondays. What was he thinking, to forget that?

Maybe he’d been thinking about why he couldn’t go find Abby.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Should he go back and help Keith?

Keith would do just fine without him-and for some reason he didn’t want to see the grubby details of Philip’s profit-making. He didn’t want to think about Philip.

Instead, he turned his attention to the garden. There was plenty here that needed doing. His grandmother would break her heart if she could see how he’d let it run down.

This was a gorgeous old house, but huge. There were four bedrooms in the main house and there was another smaller house at the rear where he and Sarah had lived with their mother before her death, to give them some measure of independence.