Thicker Than Water. Lindy Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ so they'd be able to keep her out of any trouble-making too.

      "So Kit," asked the devil-herself, back from the loo, "what are you going to do?"

      Kit started counting off on her fingers. "I'm going to try wangling more info from Detective Cathy, talk to Scooter when you find her and, right now, I'm going outside to interrogate the shit out of Carrie McThing and find out who her alleged sources are."

      Del snorted. "She's a journo. If she's remotely worth her salt she won't divulge that info."

      "Not even if I threaten to tell the other reporters out there that she and herself were two of her own quoted witnesses?" Kit proposed.

      "You cannot out her, Katy O'Malley," Angie stated. "No matter what she's written."

      "Unless she is a heterospy of course," Brigit allowed. "Then you can do anything you like to her. I'll help."

      "Hey you guys," Kit raised her hands in surrender. "If she is gay I'd never out her - but she doesn't know that. So if she is, but I can't get her on side, then I'll just make noise."

      "And if she isn't gay?" Del asked.

      "Then I'll make a lot more noise."

      "What if she is but you scare her back into the terrible darkness of denial?" Angie asked.

      "That's too bad," Kit said. "It'll be her own fault for smudging our rules anyway."

      "We have rules?" Del asked.

      "Of course we have rules," Kit said.

      "What are they?" Angie queried.

      Kit ran her right hand through her hair; then did the same on the other side with her left hand. "They're unspoken rules," she proclaimed.

      "Ah," Del nodded. "That explains every-McThing."

      "No," Kit said, sliding off her stool to pose with her hands on her hips. "It explains why she only smudged the rules. I am now going outside to set her straight."

      "O'Malley," Del warned.

      "Not that kind of straight, Del."

      "Speaking of O'Malley, O'Malley," Brigit began... and then continued because everyone including Kit looked at her blankly. "How come Detective Cathy calls you O'Malley and not Kit or Ms O'Malley or Katherine?"

      Kit shrugged. "Why shouldn't she? You guys do sometimes."

      "Yeah, but only if we're trying to get your attention when you've vagued-off; or because we're mad at you. Not that we're ever mad mad at you, Kit, but you know what I mean."

      Kit pondered the original question for a moment, then shrugged. "Obviously my old habits have a resurrection tendency," she said. "I always preferred fellow officers to call me O'Malley because, in my callow youth, I thought it sounded tougher than Kit. But it seems that, without even thinking, I also ask it of new cops I meet; like Cathy, yesterday. Marek was the only one who ever, sometimes, called me Kit; though more often it was Kitty - which was mildly annoying then, but kinda nice now."

      "Interesting," Brigie noted, as if it really was, while she poked the pile of pictures that Angie had pushed aside when they arrived. "What's with the pics?" she asked.

      "Julia, Gwen and I have been discussing the theme for a new feature wall."

      Kit glanced over Brigit's shoulder at the photos, before grinning at Angie.

      "I knew you'd approve Katy," Angie said, spreading the photos out. "We agreed, a process no doubt clinched by the masculine infringements of the past twenty-four hours, that the time has come for bit of myth making and a pictorial tribute to our favourite butt-kicking icons."

      "It's about time," exclaimed Kit, who had groaned a year ago when the partners had finally given in to the sporty-dykes in the community and begun the Athletes Wall - still a work in progress - behind the pool tables. In the end of course, she had to admit that Cathy, Tatianna, Yvonne, Dawn, Susie and all the other splendid bods she didn't know from Eve, looked pretty spiffy up there. This, however, was her idea of the woman as hero and a perfect extension of the bar's other collages which featured the world's oestrogen-powered movers and shakers.

      Angie had just indicated the large expanse of purple but otherwise undecorated wall beyond the piano; the only vertical space yet to get the Terpsichore treatment. All the other lacquered walls, from the entrance and left around by the booths and on past The Red, were covered with photos, articles and paintings of real-life women who had inspired, led or featured in every kind of human endeavour ever recorded in or left out of history - from music, literature, art and acting to science, politics, humanitarian work and exploration.

      The new wall was to be dedicated to the imagination: to the world of goddesses, mythical she-beings, the female heroes of legend and, woo-hoo, contemporary pop culture.

      "I only know half of these mythological and fictional women," Angie was saying, "so your special-girl is not going to recognise many of them at all, is she Kit?"

      "Hey, we're getting there," Kit said. "But introducing a grown women with no concept of TV or movie culture to our known-universe is a very slow process. Alex does recognise Xena, Gabrielle and Buffy now - so it's a start."

      "There she is Angie - that's Seven of Nine," Brigit said, tapping a 'women of Star Trek' photo. "That's a great one of Emma Peel, ooh and Ripley."

      Kit was torn between curiosity and a job or two that needed doing. Bummer, the jobs won.

      "I'm going out to tackle the media now," she announced.

      "Be nice Katherine," Del prompted.

      "I'll do my best, Delbridge," Kit nodded, bracing herself for the thirteen-ringed circus outside. On her way out - just for luck - she stroked the perfect, left bum-cheek of one of the four life-size stone caryatids whose eternal task it was to hold up the cupola over the Terpsichore's ridiculous foyer-fountain.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      As she did a bit of care less leaning against a large tree of a kind she couldn't identify, Kit pondered the only use she could think of for being a smoker: it gave good cover. Being exiled to the great outdoors to inhale fresh air with one's ciggie, while the non-smokers inside were breathing the ever-mutating germs recycling through air-con systems that only operated at minimum efficiency now they didn't have any smoke to expel, meant that anyone with a cigarette in their hand had a valid reason for standing around pretending not to stare at people.

      Being a non-smoker, however, meant that Kit had to appear nonchalantly disinterested without a handy prop; no small task when Journo McThing kept glancing at her, possibly tossing up whether it was safe to approach yet or not.

      Make a note, O'Malley, she thought. Buy a packet of smokes so you can intentionally loiter anywhere with no apparent intent. She also noted that the side-show crowds outside Angie's had thinned a little. Only half of Rabbit's band of curt-remarksters were still there firing jibes at the fewer-in-number but still chanting HeteroGodsters, and the two remaining uniform cops were trying to ignore the reduced jackal-pack of reporters. Cathy had apparently made good her escape, and the DQs had gone wherever camp divas go in the noon-day sun.

      Kit СКАЧАТЬ