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kept hours as odd as hers; even now the light in his study cast a glow on the path down to her door. They had a nodding relationship and kept an eye on each other’s places when one went away. Well, she kept an eye on his place when he slid a note under her door saying he was off to another conference. She herself didn’t go away. That was what piddling wages and a Sydney mortgage could do to you.
    She unlocked her front door and went inside, snicking the deadbolt behind her. She’d bought the place not long before Dennis left Hunters Hill Station for the bigger, brighter world of the Homicide Squad. On one of their last shifts together he’d brought her home after a scumbucket had deliberately vomited on her, and had waited to take her back to work. When she’d come out of her room, freshly showered and in clean clothes, sniffing at herself for any lingering hints of semi-digested hamburger, he’d been all around the place and made a helpful list. ‘Your shrubs are too close in the back there.’
    ‘I’ve bought an axe and a hoe and Dad’s booked in for next weekend.’
    ‘The locks on the side windows are flimsy.’
    She pulled a plastic bag full of clinking steel out of the pantry to show him.
    ‘The front door–’
    ‘Is not solid core, but will be replaced.’
    He’d nodded and flipped his notebook shut. ‘Good.’
    She’d made coffee. Dennis had talked about what he hoped to achieve in the squad and Ella had felt like a little sister being left behind. The more enthusiastic Dennis had become the darker her emotions had turned. They’d joined the job together, been probationers at Newtown together and helped each other through some pretty tough early days. He’d become a detective before her but that was no reason why his application should have been accepted while hers was turned down. She’d finally jogged the table with her leg to tip over Dennis’s coffee and make him shut the hell up.
    Ella opened a window and leaned on the sill. The sky over the city turned brighter as sunrise approached. The air was cool and clear, as yet unspoiled by the breath of thousands who would spend their day creating annoying cases for police.
    The house was her refuge. After a day spent listening to people bitch and moan it was wonderful to return to the clinking of mast cables on the yachts moored in Kissing Point Bay. With the shrubs gone from the wall no perp could lie in wait or try to jemmy the windows without being seen. The doors were solid and deadlocked, the window frames were equally secure. Even the manhole into the roof space was padlocked from the inside. Her mother said she was paranoid but Ella had seen too many crime scenes to feel comfortable in a house with less security.
    Besides, her mother said many things. When would she settle down? How could a nice girl get a man if she was always at work? Perhaps if Ella took a desk job in Traffic or in the courts she’d have time for a family. What her mother couldn’t grasp was that Ella was happy with her life. She didn’t need a man to make her feel complete. She had no desire for children. Going to work each morning, or night, or whenever her pager went off, and doing the job she’d looked forward to her whole life was plenty.
    She picked peeling paint from the windowsill.
    Had been plenty.
    9.35 am
     
    ‘Thirty-one, you on the air?’
    Sophie scrambled into the ambulance cabin to grab the radio. ‘Thirty-one’s clear in Stanmore.’ They’d just delivered an elderly woman to her nursing home following her discharge from hospital. Mick leaned on the bonnet, taking a moment, chin in his hand, face turned into the sun.
    ‘Wonderful, Thirty-one,’ Control said. ‘I have a woman in labour. Waters broken, contractions less than five minutes apart. She’s at 320 Glebe Point Road, Glebe Point.’
    ‘Thirty-one’s on the case.’ Sophie banged on the windscreen.
    ‘What?’ Mick said.
    ‘Labour, waters broken.’
    He ran for the driver’s seat.