Free Night Fall by Frank Smith

opened the back door and peered out. Silly, of course he wouldn’t be there. Then the front door. The car was still there. She padded out to the street and looked both ways. A man on a bicycle sped past, and a boy was delivering papers across the street, but there was no sign of Dennis. She went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone on the counter.
    â€˜You wouldn’t be having me on, would you, Norman?’ she asked tartly. ‘I mean he went off to work same time as usual; he has to be there.’
    â€˜Well he’s not, love, so when you find out what he’s playing at, tell him to get himself down here. OK?’
    Frowning, Joan Moreland hung up the phone, then made her way upstairs to replace the extension as well. What could Dennis be up to? Where could he have gone? It wasn’t like him to go wandering off. She got dressed, then sat down on the bed to try to think what to do. He couldn’t have had an accident or she’d have heard, and it was no distance at all from the house to where he worked at the SuperFair market. A two-minute walk, that was all. Dennis
must
be at work. Probably doing something in the back, and Norm hadn’t bothered to check. Either that or it was some sort of wind-up by Norman Beasley. It was the sort of thing he might do and think it funny, and if that were the case, there was no point in worrying about it. She looked at the clock. Soon be time to get the kids up anyway, so she might as well start getting breakfast ready. She’d wait a while, then ring the market and ask for Dennis. Just to be sure.
    Paget sat back in his chair and said, ‘I’m sorry, Amanda, but it’s just not possible. We’re short-staffed as it is. There have been no replacements for almost a year now. On the one hand we’re being criticized for our clear-up rate and the time it takes to complete an investigation, and for the amount of overtime, and now you’re suggesting we cut staff by five per cent. It’s a simple equation, so if this is your idea of a way to impress Mr Brock, then I suggest you find another way.’
    Amanda had objected to Paget calling her ‘Ma’am’. ‘I don’t like the term,’ she told him flatly. ‘Superintendent in public, but in private, when we’re working one on one, I would prefer to use first names, if you have no objection?’
    His instinctive reaction had been to balk at that himself. It suggested a not so subtle attempt on Amanda’s part to break down the barrier that so clearly existed between them. But even as that was going through his mind, he knew it would sound petty, even spiteful to refuse. They could hardly go on addressing each other as ‘Superintendent’ and ‘Chief Inspector’ as they sat together day after day in her office, so he’d agreed.
    Amanda, who had been searching for something on the screen on her desk, turned to him. ‘I know you don’t think much of me,’ she said quietly, ‘but I think even you will concede that I’m not stupid. I know as well as you do the consequences of such cuts, but I have no choice. Mr Brock made it very clear that it’s not negotiable. Believe me, Neil, I’ve given the chief superintendent my opinion regarding where these cuts will lead, but I might as well have saved my breath, so let’s stop wasting time on a fight we can’t win.’
    The uniformed constable facing her when Joan Moreland opened the door looked almost too young to be a policeman. ‘Mrs Moreland?’ he enquired. ‘Constable Lowry. You reported your husband missing?’
    The man appeared little more than a teenager. Joan Moreland looked past him, hoping to see someone more senior, but the man was alone and there was no one else in the police car at the kerb. She hesitated, then sighed and said, ‘You’d better come in.
    â€˜I sent the kids off to school. I didn’t want to worry