Excerpt:
It felt as though I had only just managed to nod off.
The incessant ringing of my mobile standing in its charging dock slowly lifted me from a fitful sleep. At this time of night I didn't want to answer it.
I just wanted it to go away. To skip across my bed-side table and fall to the floor breaking into a thousand pieces.
'Yep?' I groggily answered.
'Joe? No time for your beauty sleep. We've got a call out. The night boys are out on another case so we're up on this one. Pick you up in 15.'
It was my partner D2 Marjory Hendricks as chirpy as ever. The best Homicide Detective that I had ever been partnered with.
She would never learn that fact from me, though.....never!
Not that I was an expert in such things.
Some would whisper that I was incapable of being successfully partnered, as I had gone through several since I joined the Murder Squad. Being teamed with Marjory Hendricks had been my redemption and the one thing that had cancelled my demotion out of the Squad.
I knew that I had been on thin ice.
I blame it on my previous life as an undercover Narc and Vice Squad Officer. Partners in those situations didn't seem to last long either, though it was for vastly different reasons!
I didn't even have time to tell her groggily to f**k off before I signed off, rattled the phone back into its dock, rolled over and began to drift off back into the nether world.
The phone rang again.
She was the pain in the arse not me, though I never seemed to have the time to tell her of that fact before she hangs up on me.
I rolled out of bed and headed for the En-suite to give myself a cold wake-up shower. Still partially wet, I quickly dressed and had just sipped at my first coffee when a quiet knock came from the front door. I had no idea why she always did that.......the ringing phone, my loud expletives as the cold water of the shower violently chilled my body and my stumbling, bleary-eyed attempts at dressing myself would, one have thought, woken up my twenty year old son.
If not the entire neighbourhood!
Not her shallow, furtive knocking on the front door.
She was supposed to have been one of the better Murder Squad cops yet she couldn't figure that one out!
I'll blame the hour of the morning, the manner in which I was awakened and the fact that I am not a morning person for my grumpy mood.
Not a great way to start a day, especially when its a murder involved.
'Coffee?' I enquired of her as I opened the door. I thrust a 'Thermo-cup' of coffee into her hand as I carefully closed my front door behind me. Two pieces of toast lathered with butter and Vegemite clenched between my teeth.
One for me and thoughtfully, one for my partner though she always refused the offer. Go figure. There's nothing better than a piece of warm toast lathered, no dripping with a mixture of butter and Vegemite first thing of the morning.
Her loss, my gain!
As I heaved myself into the Unmarked Cop vehicle, I tiredly asked my colleague had she ever had a full night's sleep where, when she woke, she felt as though she had not been asleep at all.
