“Guy’s a creep. I thought he was going to pop the buttons on his shirt. And see that hair, some kind of wig—”
“Now I know where I saw him!” Jazz cut in. “At the park.” She told Lockie about the dogfight between the shih tzu and the boxer. “The guy was the boxer’s owner but he wasn’t wearing any suit.”
“So he is a cop!” Lockie said.
“How do you figure that?”
“You told me undercover cops patrol that park looking for ice dealers.”
“Did I?”
Some men were like dogs the way they took an instinctive dislike to each other and started barking. Lockie was still yapping, worked up about this stranger standing over at the bar chatting to one of the identical barmaids.
“There’s a difference,” he said, “between entrapment and a sting operation designed to catch a person committing a crime. What he was trying to do was entrapment.”
“But you don’t sell dope,” she said.
“I would never ask a complete stranger in a restaurant where to buy marijuana, would you?”
“It’s Newtown, Lockie. Forget about it.”
“I find people like that so obnoxious.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
She led him down the stairs, through the public bar, and out onto King Street. Crowds of people swept past, car horns blaring, colored lights flashing. She felt the heat of the pavement through her shoes. They looked in shop windows and walked off their dinner in silence. When they turned onto the quiet of Church Street, Lockie was still brooding. Jazz stopped outside St. Stephen’s Church. The gate was unlocked.
“That’s odd,” she said, “the rector always padlocks it at dusk.” She pushed on the heavy iron gate which gave a rough grinding sound as it swung open.
“What are you doing?” Lockie grabbed at her arm.
“I want to show you the churchyard at night.”
“It’s trespassing.”
She steered him past her favorite old fig tree, black shapes flitting between its branches. Clouds obscured the stars and the gravestones shone in the moonlight. She showed him the monuments she liked the best: the figure of a grieving woman, a ship ploughing through the waves.
Lockie displayed no interest in these stone carvings; all he wanted to do was get back to his father’s car. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said.
“Why don’t we do it here?” she suggested.
Lockie looked around at the swaying oak trees. She could sense the idea appealed to him.
“What if we get caught?”
“Who’s going to find us?” She didn’t mention the graffiti gang who scaled the walls to spray their tags or the bicycle cops who sometimes pursued them. She didn’t mention how she used to come here with her previous boyfriend. She read the names of someone’s beloved on a cracked headstone nailed to the bottom of the wall and then she knelt and unzipped his chinos and took him in her mouth. Kangaroo grass brushed against her legs. Once, she’d asked how old he was when he’d first had his cock sucked, and he’d answered, “Fifteen. At Joey’s.”
“By a woman?”
“You’re the first,” he said. Of course she’d suspected he was a virgin, all that studying law and going to the gym left no time for girls.
He lifted up her dress and rolled down her underpants. When he laid her gently on a horizontal slab, the sandstone felt cool against her bare skin but not unpleasant. Jazz closed her eyes and let the moment carry her. His breathing grew rapid and a cricket chirped and then a jet roared low over Newtown, muffling his cries. Afterward she held onto him, not wanting him to rush off.
“We need to talk,” he said. Glistening with sweat, he rolled off her onto the worn slab. Low spiky bushes surrounded them. “Don’t get me wrong, Jazz,” he began. His voice sounded nervous. “I like being with you, I really do, but I don’t know if we’re suited. I mean, we can still be friends, see each other now and then...”
She sat up and searched for her underpants, then smoothed down the giraffe-print dress she had worn especially for him.
“There’s no other woman, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just need to focus on my career. The next few years will be critical.”
Jazz let him talk. Men always let you down, her mum used to say, you can’t rely on them for anything. What would Lockie think of her in the years to come? Would he look back on their hasty sexual encounters with fondness or would she be quickly forgotten in his scramble for success? He never said it, but this is what he thought: she was not good enough for him.
He tried a change of tone, almost jocular: “You’ll probably thank me one day, Jazz.”
Something heavy moved near the wall and Lockie jumped to his feet. He buttoned his pants and grabbed a thick branch from the ground and raced over, thrusting the bushes aside. Jazz assumed it was a dog trapped in there or one of the local taggers.
A man ran out from the bushes straight at Lockie, who yelled and brought the heavy end of the branch down hard on the guy’s head. The sound it made was like a timber crate being split with an axe. Stunned, the man swayed, mouth agape, then fell forward. His forehead struck the edge of a stone urn with a loud crack and he landed sideways on an unmarked grave, arms and legs sprawled, not moving.
Jazz ran over and knelt beside him. It was the man who’d approached them in the restaurant. She saw the depression in his skull and placed two fingers against his carotid artery. Nothing. By the light of the moon she could tell he was gone. She’d seen two dead parents up close and knew that look. Wedged between the fingers of his right hand was the smoldering remains of a joint. So he had scored, after all.
Lockie tossed the branch into the bushes and covered his face with his hands. “Oh God,” he said, “I’ve killed a cop!”
“Why’d you do that?”
“He freaked me out, he came out of nowhere, I thought he was going to rape us...”
Jazz slipped a hand inside the man’s suit jacket and found his wallet. She flipped through a bunch of store cards looking for ID and there it was, a business card: Kenny Gelder. MEMBER. REIA.
“He’s no cop,” Jazz said. “He’s a real estate agent.”
“This isn’t happening!” Lockie was taking rapid breaths and looking up at the church steeple as if praying for a miracle.
Jazz touched the man’s coarse hair. Lockie had got that wrong too; it was no wig. Poor old Kenny with his bad skin and ruddy complexion.
“I’m fucked,” Lockie said.
“Tell the police it was self-defense.”
“I can’t go to the police. My whole life would be ruined. My father is a lawyer. My grandfather was attorney general.”
“Maybe they’ll get you off then,” she said.
“What was I doing in this churchyard? Having sex on a gravestone. Oh yes, that would look brilliant for my future employment. Why’d you bring me here?” His voice rose in anger. “Why didn’t we go back to the car?”
Surely he was not trying to blame her? She had a good mind to walk away and leave him to deal with it. But Lockie started to quickly backtrack. He was not the violent type, he’d never been in a fight before, not since high school. “What am I going to do, Jazz?” His eyes begged her. She stood up and held him in the dark. The moon had slipped behind the clouds and a few faint stars were the only light source.
“I’ll help you,” she said, “but this has got to be your decision.”
He wiped his nose and nodded.
“First thing, we need to get rid of his phone; second, the cops will interview everyone at the restaurant. We tell them we last saw him talking to the barmaid.”
“What about the body?” Lockie asked, staring down with distaste.