Gunner, p.1
Gunner, page 1
Publishing Details
Gunner by T.J. Beach
Published by T.J. Beach Writes
© T.J. Beach Writes
The moral right of this author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book. The views of the author belong solely to the author and are not necessarily those of the publisher.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
Ebook Version
(1st edition, 2022, electronic)
ISBN: 978-0-6487737-7-1 (epub)
Gunner
By T.J. Beach
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER ONE
“WHAT ARE YOU going to do? Janine’s in big trouble here.” Debbie Haring scowled at Gary Hollins across her dining table.
He scowled right back.
Typical, the grumpy goat had exuded attitude all afternoon. “This is serious, Gary. The supervisor knew the hand guards were faulty, but the insurance company will reject her claim if Janine can’t prove he told her the machine was safe. Janine’s a single mother with three kids. She’ll probably never work again. It’s life and death for her.”
Gary blew out a breath. “Same as always, I suppose; inspect the scene, take photos, interview the witnesses, write a report.”
“And?”
He shrugged.
“Keep thorough contemporaneous notes.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He reached for his beer.
“No, you don’t.” She jabbed the case study sheet. “No drinks until we finish this chapter.”
“I’m thirsty, and my beer’s getting warm.”
“Don’t be a baby. We’re a week behind our course schedule.”
“Your schedule.”
“Do you want us to get our private investigator licences or not?”
He took a big slug from the bottle and dared her with his eyes.
Debbie couldn’t read the grumpy-assed Englishman. They’d twice faced gunmen together. They’d solved serious crimes. Gary’d never let her down. She’d trust him with her life — again — but she knew more about the IGA checkout chick than she did about Gary, and she didn’t let Chrissie on Till Two babysit her children. Of course, Chrissie could be the poster girl for oversharing. Debbie really didn’t need to know about the piercings. Who’d want a stud there, for goodness sakes? She squirmed in her chair at the thought.
Gary would complete Certificate Three in Investigative Services because he’d promised, and Debbie would nag him until he gave in. She had no idea if he truly cared about passing as required to qualify for a Western Australian Private Investigator’s Licence.
Debbie sure as hell cared.
The future she wanted depended on it. She’d relied too long on her boss’s lost identity card. The one she found and laminated with her photo.
Gary flipped ahead in the folder she’d filled with the online course notes. Debbie printed the files, punched holes and inserted sheets into binders in her official role as Administration Officer for Kim Ridenour Investigations.
“We have to do all these?” he asked. The look on his face suggested no one should be subjected to such torture.
“Yes. It’s a competency-based assessment. We have to demonstrate the necessary level of the nominated skills in every component.”
“All of them?”
Gary reminded her of Lachlan so much. Of course, Lachlan was six, and Gary was … early thirties? All male emotional development stalled in primary school, as far as Debbie could tell. “I’ve walked you through this before. We have to provide evidence of competence. Your daily updates on the warehouse assignment will be ideal for workplace fraud. Nice to see you maintaining your cover as a scruffy, spaced-out storeman, by the way.” She nodded to his wrinkled tee-shirt and flip-flops. “If you don’t have direct experience, you can describe another situation in another role where the relevant skills were required. Surveillance, for instance. You’ll walk that after your time in the SAS.”
She paused, inviting him to share.
He grunted.
“He’s never going to tell you.” Debbie’s mum piped up from the couch over the rapid tick of knitting needles.
Gary snorted.
To which Mum added, “And Debbie won’t stop asking until you crack, Gary.”
“It’s how we roll, Nan,” Gary said. “She nags. I ignore her.”
Mum snorted back — the traitor.
Gary growled at anyone who called him Gaz but shortened Nancy to Nan and refused to call Debbie’s kids anything but Jenny and Lachy, despite her frequently reinforced preference for their proper names. Just one of his annoying habits.
“You can ask me anything,” Gary told her mother.
The needles ceased. She popped up like a meerkat with permed grey curls and purple glasses. “Were you in the SAS?”
“Good question. Ask me another.” He pasted on a smartass grin.
“Pardon?”
“I said you could ask me anything. I didn’t say I’d answer.”
“He thinks he’s funny,” Debbie said.
“I like his jokes,” Mum replied.
“Do you?” Gary asked with a bark of laughter.
His jokes were terrible. Which made the instant bond between her mother and her reluctant protégé all the harder to stomach. Nan wasn’t just a nickname. He treated Debbie’s mum like his own, and she’d adopted him as an extra son.
Gary and her seven-year-old, Jennifer, were thicker than school pals. Lachlan hero-worshipped the man. Even her husband, Matt, had dropped into one of those weird blokey, back-slapping bromances. Gary had seduced the whole family.
It irritated Debbie no end.
The Pom was stocky, kept himself fit — a hangover from military training? — and reasonably good-looking in a battered, windswept sort of way. Half her girlfriends said they’d jump into bed with Gary in a flash if he cocked a finger — fooled by his mysterious-me schtick.
Debbie had to admit she and Gary hit it off almost immediately after he set off the alarm in the Ridenour Investigations office at two o’clock one fateful morning, but she’d never thought of Gary like that. Not even once. Why would she? She smiled inside at the thought of her gorgeous hunk of man, away on an eight-day Fly-In-Fly-Out stint at a Pilbara iron ore mine.
But enough of pondering her strange symbiotic relationship with the feckless oaf fidgeting in her dining room. They were there to work, and her mum was supposed to mind the kids so they could study in peace. “What are my children up to, Mum?”
“Oh.” She cast a wild glance through the open sliding doors. “Lachlan! Leave Jennifer alone.”
“She won’t share,” Lachlan yelled from the garden.
“Share with your brother.” Mum tried for stern. It never worked.
“He had a turn just now,” Jennifer replied.
“There you are, then.” The needle clatter resumed.
Debbie gritted her teeth. “Would it be a bit easier to supervise if you went out on the deck?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so, but it’s a bit hot today, and it’s hard to read my tablet in the sun.” She tapped the iPad propped against a pillow. “I’m following the pandemic news. All those poor families in Italy and Spain, even England. You must be so worried, Gary. Are your family all right?”
Debbie’d never thought to ask about family. Even if his parents had passed on, he must have relations in England.
He’d frozen, his face a blank.
“Gary?” Mum popped up again, concerned.
He shook himself. “Mmm,” he said. “Thanks for asking.”
“But—” Before Debbie could get out her follow-up question, Mum butted in, letting him off the hook. Perhaps that’s why they got on so well.
“I was looking at this terrible situation in Perth. Six cases from one man! The government’s talking about a lockdown. Won’t it be awful if the Coronavirus gets a hold here? There’s a list of the places this man…”
“Yes?” Debbie didn’t like the way her mum trailed off.
All she got in reply was a strangled gulp.
Debbie jumped up, closely followed by Gary.
“Are you okay, Nan?” he asked.
Mum’s finger trembled over her iPad, knitting forgot ten in her lap. “This cafe … in Mount Hawthorn, The Bodi Tree, that’s where I had muffins with Lana.”
Debbie got in close, staring over her shoulder. That couldn’t be right. Her mum couldn’t be exposed. “Tuesday morning, wasn’t it? When did this guy—“
“Tuesday.” Mum grabbed Debbie’s wrist.
“It’s okay,” Debbie’s heart rate had picked up, but she wasn’t going to let Mum see that. They were panicking. “You’re fine. What are the chances you were anywhere near him?”
“It’s a small place. Lots of bookcases. The tables are jammed in together.”
Debbie patted her mum’s shoulder. They needed to stay calm. The disease was deadly. But the experts said it wasn’t that infectious. You had to be within one point five metres and breathing on each other to contract it, didn’t you? None of it sounded half as reassuring when your mother was the potential victim.
Debbie’s stomach turned over.
“I have to get a test,” Mum said.
“Yes. You do. That’s right. Everyone who’s been at a hotspot should be tested.” Great idea. Clear the air. Get the facts. When the result came back negative, they’d all settle down.
Mum tossed her knitting aside and stood up. “Can you drive me?”
“Yes.” Sooner, the better.
“They’ve set up a drive-through place in town,” Gary offered.
“Is it open on weekends?” Debbie asked. “Can you just roll up and ask for a test?”
Mum had her bag in hand. “Let’s go.”
Debbie looked at Gary.
He shrugged. “I’ve got the kids.” His cheeky grin switched on.
Debbie jabbed a finger at him. “No soccer in the backyard. The gerberas will never recover from your last session.”
Mum pulled her to the kitchen bench to get the car keys. “He’ll be straight out for the soccer ball, I bet.”
“Don’t I know it. No one listens to a bloody word I say.”
The queue was short, three cars, but it surprised Debbie that even that many Bell’s Landing people required Coronavirus tests. The health authorities had told anyone with flu-like symptoms to seek a test, but the nearest confirmed case was in Perth, more than two hundred kilometres away as the crow flew across the Indian Ocean.
Mum took long slow breaths in the passenger seat, hands clasped across her stomach.
“There’s no need to be nervous, Mum. It’s a formality,” Debbie said.
“I’m not nervous. We need to do the right thing. It’s the only way we’ll keep COVID out of WA,” Mum replied.
Fair enough. Being the most isolated population mass in the world, Western Australia had a genuine chance to hold the scourge at bay.
The car ahead drove away, and Debbie pulled up to the portable gazebo in the shopping centre car park.
A young girl in nurse’s uniform came to the window with a clipboard, friendly eyes glowing over a blue face mask that matched her disposable gloves. “Hello, thanks for taking a COVID-19 test today. Do you have your Medicare card and driver’s licence?”
“It’s my mum that needs the test.”
The nurse peered past Debbie. “Hello. Feeling poorly, are you?”
“No. Fit as a fiddle, but I was in the Bodi Tree cafe on Tuesday.”
The nurse frowned.
“It’s been identified as a hotspot for that guy who’s infected half a dozen people in Perth.”
That got her attention.
“Oh, right. Do you have your identification?” She went around to the passenger side window, took Mum’s cards and read questions off a form. “Do you have any of the following symptoms: cough, fever …”
She returned to a desk under the gazebo, typed into a computer, printed labels and attached them to sample tubes, changed her gloves and returned with a tray of cotton buds. “Mrs Werner, this may hurt, I’m afraid, but only for a moment.”
Mum sucked in a breath and tipped her head back. “I’ve heard it stings.”
Mum whimpered when the nurse pushed the damn thing in so far it might have popped out of the back of her head.
“Sorry. That’s it. Thank you.” The nurse stored the sampling stick in a tube and sealed the top.
Mum sniffed. “I need to sneeze, but that was easier than I thought.”
“Please isolate yourself at least until you get the all-clear.” She turned to Debbie. “Can you do that too? Shall we test you, as well?”
“No, that’s okay.” The process looked darned uncomfortable.
“It’s voluntary, of course, but you’re a close contact of a contact if you see what I mean. It might be prudent.”
Debbie sighed. “Okay.”
“I feel a lot better now.” Mum had perked up considerably since her test.
Debbie rubbed her nose. It tickled where the cotton tip of the sample stick had probed her nasal cavities. The masks, sterile gloves, the regimented professionalism of the nurse made COVID-19 horribly real in a way that pictures of hospital wards in Rome and London had not.
She needed bread and milk, and the supermarket beckoned over three rows of parked cars, but it seemed miles away. A lady pushing her shopping trolley out through the automatic doors could have been in an alternate universe with her daughter bouncing alongside. Shopping would be irresponsible when the nurse had just reminded her to stay away from everyone else, even if the chances she was infected were a million to one.
When they got home, the children were at the dining table, flushed and sweaty, sipping juice from kiddie-sized boxes.
“Everything good?” Gary held up a mug of tea. “Kettle’s just boiled if you’d like a cuppa.”
“Ooh, that’d be nice.” Mum kissed both her grandchildren on the head. “They were very efficient, quite reassuring. They tested Debbie, as well.”
Gary raised an eyebrow as he got up.
Debbie waved him down. “I’ll make coffee, Mum.”
“Even better. What did you kids get up to with Uncle Gary?”
“We played — ouch.” Lachlan glared at Jennifer, then reached under the table to rub his ankle.
Jennifer smiled angelically. “We played in the garden.”
“We played soccer,” Gary said, “but no flowers were injured.”
Debbie asked her kids to do something, and they did exactly the opposite, egged on by Gary Hollins. A welcome return to normality.
Two hours later, Debbie was wrangling tacos at the stove for dinner when her phone buzzed with a text from a number she didn’t recognise. The message said:
Dear Deborah
COVID-19 test …
She went straight to the following paragraph:
RESULT: COVID-19 was NOT DETECTED…
“My test was clear,” she said.
“You got your result already?” Mum asked.
“Look at your phone. They took my swab after yours.”
As Mum fiddled in her bag, the phone rang. She tugged it out, frowned at the screen and swiped to the call. “Hello. Yes.” Her eyes went wide, her mouth fell open, and she sat down hard on the couch.
“Mum?”
She dropped the phone. “I tested positive.”
CHAPTER TWO
MUM WENT BACK to her phone call, stammering over names, places she’d been as all the colour drained out of her face.
Collecting leads to follow up was important work, but didn’t the contact tracer realise Mum needed a cuddle?
Oh, God, Debbie shouldn’t even touch her own mother. Damn it. Mum would get one good hug before she went into isolation.
Lachlan crept up under Debbie’s arm and pressed his cheek to her stomach. “What’s happening, Mummy?”
Someone else who needed comfort almost as much as she did. Debbie held her little man tight.
Jennifer patted her on the elbow. Debbie opened up her arms to hold them both. She couldn’t remember when her eldest felt the need for support — Miss Nothing-Fazes-Me.
“Does Grandma have the Coronavirus?” Jennifer asked.
Debbie nodded. She didn’t dare speak for fear she’d blubber and make things worse.
Gary hovered, biting his lip, radiating concern.
“We have to social distance. They told us at school,” Jennifer said.
