There was still some light left clinging to the end of the day, but not much more to use it for. I got in my car and shut my eyes for a moment and smelled the residual sea breeze from Pillar Bay that I could've sworn was stuck lingering between my windows, and drove home.

Jake was in the kitchen and there was the heat of two steaks drifting from the stove. 'Off the clock?' he said as I came through the door.

I fell into a chair at the kitchen table. 'For now. Unless I get a hot lead in the next half hour or so. But you know that's never likely.'

Jake was concentrating on the steaks that were browning in the pan. 'Do you want potatoes?'

'I'm not that hungry,' I said.

He nodded. He was still looking away from me. 'You can take a moment to get your things off,' he said.

'No, we should eat first.'

'Come on, Holden,' Jake said.

'What do you mean come on?'

'Come on, as in, you don't have to.'

'But I want to.'

'You know I don't care that much.'

I stood and went to the counter.

Jake took a breath and said, 'There are more things to a relationship than eating dinner together.'

'Like having a schedule. A nine-to-five workday with benefits and time-off,' I said.

Jake turned around to me and sighed. His ashen blue eyes, under the swoop of his fringe hair hanging down over his brows, were steady but warning. 'We're not going to talk about this now,' he said.

'But it's what you think.'

'It's what I think, but I told you already there's no use wheeling it out as a weapon for either of us to use when we want. That's not the point of what I think and you know that.'

I stepped back and nodded simply. Jake moved his head in silence and went back to the stove.

I said, 'Do you need any help packing?'

He shook his head. 'I've got it all.'

'Just waiting to set-off, now.'

He nodded. Bending his head, he said, 'I think I'd like some potatoes, do you want to boil some while I finish up with these?'

There was no more discussion about it. Jake didn't ask me about that day's case, and I had no burning desire to tell him about it. We went to bed a couple of hours later as we always did, and I held him against me and put his hand in mine and felt the cold chill of his engagement ring rest against my skin.

As the lighter sleeper, I was the one that woke when I heard the ring of the front door and hoped that Jake was still sleeping. I slipped out of bed and put on a pair of pants and went through the flat.

To my surprise, I found the solemn figure of my old pal Inspector Dave Chalmers at the door, his hands in his pockets and his head hung in silence.

'Good evening, Dave,' I said simply, through my glassy vision. I rubbed my eyes. 'What time is it?'

Dave moved his head a little. 'After midnight, I think.'

He came inside and sat at the table. 'I guess I should ask if you'd like a coffee.'

'Love one.'

I turned on the coffee machine and made a one flat with no sugar. Dave didn't mind that I was out, or at least he made no objection.

He drank the coffee and I sat beside him. 'I never noticed how much you slimmed down since the old days on the league,' he said, taking a glance at my lean shirtless figure in the dimness of the kitchen light.

I shrugged. 'Not much reason to keep up the old work-out regimen these days. You?'

He shrugged as well. 'Sometimes. I'm not out in the field much anymore, but you never know. There are a couple of standard department exercise routines, but I always keep to the old footy regimen for nostalgia.'

'I don't have that much to be nostalgic about,' I said.

Dave nodded. He finished his coffee and put the cup down and said, 'I'd like you to put on some clothes and come with me somewhere, Holden.'

'Right now?'

'If it's not too much of a hassle.'

'No, I was about to take my nightly post-midnight stroll anyway. Is this official business?'

'Official-ish. But I think you'll be interested enough anyway.'

I looked at him. 'Is that so?' He looked at me. Hanging between us was a glare of moonlit darkness through the kitchen window. I took a breath and stood up and excused myself for a moment.

I went to the bedroom and quietly dressed in something simple. Jake was still asleep, as far as I could tell. There was always the possibility of his eyes being open and turned away from me, waiting patiently to find out if I would sneak out of our bedroom and away from him in the middle of the night. I hated that he was right, and since that was exactly what I was doing, I tried to lay less guilt on myself by looming slightly over the bed and giving a gentle kiss against his head as a parting gesture.

Dave's car was downstairs, and we drove in silence for a few minutes down the dead motorway.

'How's Angela?' I said eventually, when I'd looked at too many headlights run past us.

'Practically bursting at the seams,' Dave said. 'Any day now.'

'I just hate to think of you standing over a corpse when you get the call that your son's come into the world. That's a bad sign to be born under.'

Dave hummed with the simple tone of something he'd thought about many times already. He went on with polite catch-up. 'Jake?'

'Good. Still painting. Wants to open a gallery, just a little one for local artists. I want him to.'

'That sounds good. What about the wedding date?'

'He's got a lot of relatives up north,' I said with a sigh, 'trying to corral them all down for one day is a nightmare. Thankfully I've got no one, but we're still trying to get it over with before the end of the year. He's leaving in a couple of days to go up and stay there for a little while.'

Dave made an agreeable sound. 'Well, don't worry too much. It was the same thing with Angie. Chaos just means everything's going according to plan.'

'I hope so.'

'And what about the business?'

'My business?'

Dave nodded.

I thought for a moment. 'We've come to an understanding,' I said finally. 'It's not that much of a big deal anymore. But he still wants me to try and open an office, have a staff, all that normality stuff. Says an investigation business is more modern, and would be less stressful for the both of us.'

Dave looked at me. 'And where are you with that understanding?'

I turned out the window. 'I'm looking at leases,' I said quietly.

Dave turned slowly from the motorway, began down a lone road set through a woodland, and turned off. We cruised for a few minutes on a rough trail. Before long I could see the blue flashes of police lights glimmering ahead of us, cruisers and police vans crowded at the end of the track. Dave stopped the car along with them.

A couple of patrolmen stretching police tape nodded at him. I followed along as he led down the trail, along the bank of a tranquil country lake that was calm and silent under the heat of the static midnight air.

'Local drover made the discovery just after the sun went down. Lives nearby, was taking a walk after dinner when he thought he saw something lodged just under the surface.'

Dave nodded at a medical officer, who took a breath and wheeled forward a steel cart from nearby the open coroner's van. Laying on top of it in deathly stillness was a white sheet and a shape that was unmistakably human.

He went on and we stopped over the cart. 'He went inside, called the police, we dragged the lake. Found this.'

He unzipped a plastic evidence bag sitting next to the body; from it he removed a waterlogged canvas wallet, damp and heavy, which he handed gingerly to me.

I opened it. There was some cash and some debit cards, and a driver's license which I slid out. It was wet and grimy and muddy, but the name was unmistakable. Sebastian William Abbott.

I let out a breath. The odour of the corpse was strong. I couldn't help but put its turgid, bloated stench up against the crisp breeze of the ocean I'd indulged down in Pillar Bay just yesterday.

'I thought you should know,' Dave said. 'It was just a runaway case you were on?

I nodded. I tossed the wallet back onto the cart. 'A runaway case at first,' I said. 'Then a missing persons case. Now a murder. How long's he been in the water?'

'Coroner reckons about a day or two. If it wasn't for the wallet and identification, we don't know how long it'd take to get a DNA ID—the decomposition isn't too bad yet, but it's the water swelling that complicates things. As well as something else...What was it you had for dinner, Holden?'

'Steak and potatoes,' I said.

'Was it nice?'

I shrugged.

Dave clicked his teeth. 'Just try not to think about it,' he said. He gripped his fingers to the sheet and pulled it back. I gagged a little, looking all of a sudden at both halves of Sebastian Abbott's head.