8

Whoever stashed Jack in the refrigerator must have turned the gauge to minus 50 degrees. Ice clung to his broken nose, his bloodied lifeless eyes were frozen popsicles and if I leant forward and gave his ear a tug I had a feeling it would break off in my hand. Even the blood from his smashed skull was no longer liquid. Blood that had spurted, congealed or spilled down onto his nakedness, now resembled paint from a child’s finger painting.

I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to slam the refrigerator door shut and block the sight of dead Jack from view, but my feet refused to take me closer to the nightmare. Instead, they turned into two lead weights and became rooted to the spot. I still hadn’t recovered from waking beside my first dead body six weeks ago and here I was in the presence of another one.

A nervous lump clogged my throat and with an effort I tore my eyes away from the thing in the refrigerator, the thing that used to be Jack Lantana, and turned towards Tanya. In the dim light from the fly-spotted bulb in the kitchen, I could see my white faced friend clutching at a wooden rail-backed chair for support.

“Jesus!” She finally gasped, her breath wheezing like she’d just crossed the finish line in a Bay to City marathon. “Is that—”

Almost choking, I swallowed the lump in my throat before answering. “Tanya, meet my dog-napper. Jack Lantana.”

“He looks so…so…”

“Dead?”

“And…so meaty. You know, like a…a butcher shop.”

Tanya was right. From this day forth, the nauseating stench of blood and the image of Jack Lantana’s raw gaping head would precede me every time I set foot in a butcher’s shop. I was just contemplating the pros and cons of turning vegetarian, when Tanya spun around and took off out of the kitchen like she’d been bitten by a swarm of bees.

I followed her. No way did I want to be left alone with that. What if, now the refrigerator door was open, Jack started to melt? Would the blood melt too? Would the blood trickle out in a pool over the gray linoleum? I started to run. No way did I want to hang around in front of the refrigerator and risk drowning in melting blood.

“I’ve gotta find something to drink,” Tanya called over her shoulder as she made a dash down the passageway and into the first room on the left which was Jack’s lounge room. “And I don’t mean water.”

“Shouldn’t we ring the police first?” I asked, then froze–half-in, half-out of the doorway. An upturned coffee table, now minus one leg, shards of opaque glass with the remains of what looked like a cheap vase, and dirty white lace curtains torn from a smashed window littered the stained carpet. Clearly Jack had put up one heck of a fight. But the ugly stain, dark red against a pale green background, showed the exact spot where he’d fought and lost.

Oh God. I really didn’t want to be here. If only I could go home, lock all the doors, take a cleansing shower, slip into my comfortable Pooh Bear nightdress and watch an old romance movie on Channel 72, squashed up on the sofa with my dogs.

“Kat, you’re not thinking straight,” said Tanya. “Look around. We’re not in a public place here. It’s not the Mall or the cinema or the greyhound track. We’re trespassing in the dead guy’s house.” She shook her head at me as though talking to a simpleton, then punched the air when she spotted an old fashioned vinyl covered bar attached to the back wall of the room. “Believe me—this won’t look good to the men in blue.”

I drew in a breath and closed my eyes.

Won’t look good? Hell, they’d lock us up and toss the key into the nearest crocodile infested swamp.

“I know, but we still have to ring the police,” I said and grabbed a breath. “We can’t get past the Cujos without their help?”

Tanya considered my latest comment while checking out the contents of the bar and the frown between her eyes deepened. Then she shrugged, reached out and snagged a slab of VB beer. “Okay,” she said, tugging at the ring on one of the cans. “You make the phone call. I’ll drink the booze.”

After dialing 911 and admitting to Detective Inspector Adams that yes, there was another dead body and yes, I was currently in the house with said dead body, I wandered back into the lounge.

Already Tanya was downing her second can of VB. “Here, take this, it’s all I can find. No whisky. No vodka. No wine. This guy has absolutely no taste in liquor,” she said tossing me an unopened can from the slab she’d set down on the coffee table.

“We can’t drink Lantana’s beer. That’s stealing.”

“Hey, Lantana has no need for it. Where he’s gone he’ll be too busy dodging fire and pitchforks.”

I placed the can back down on the table and studied Tanya’s face. It was like last time when I’d called her after discovering Matthew Turner, a fellow greyhound trainer and a one-night-stand who’d been murdered in my bed. Tanya had hurried over to support me and ended up drunk and disorderly by the time the police arrived.

“Go easy on the alcohol,” I warned her. “You know what drinking too quickly does to you, Tan.”

She lifted both eyebrows at me in query.

“It turns you into a legless drunk.” I threw myself down on the nearest lounge chair and sank my head in my hands. “Oh God, this looks bad for us, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t worry.” Tanya drained her second can and immediately tore the ring off the next. “When the police see the dead guy they’ll know it wasn’t us. That guy’s an ice block. He’s been dead for hours. We’ve been in the house, like, ten minutes. All they’ll do is ask us a couple of questions and then let us go.”

I hung onto that thought. Bathed in it. Licked it up and let it warm my cold insides. As soon as Detective Adams pulled up out the front, I could walk away from this nightmare and let him take over. Let him bring in the dog-catchers. Deal with the suspicious death. Contact the coroner. Seal off the area. Turn off the fridge. And whatever else the policeman in charge did in the presence of a dead body. He was more than welcome to it.

All I wanted to do was go home.