Free Now You See Me by Jean Bedford

take all the hot water — I’m due in court at ten.’
    She punched two fingers into the air at him and twisted them slowly.
    He lay listening to the shower running, thanking his stars he hadn’t said all of what he was thinking. He accepted, uncomfortably, that her body excited him partly because it was so small and childlike. It was a hypothetical excitement, he thought, the idea of forbidden fruits hovering somewhere. He felt like a giant beside her, and sometimes while they were making love he’d picture it in his mind, his physical bulk and her fragility, and there’d be some almost unconscious frisson of his potential power over her which would send him mindlessly into spiralling orgasm. ‘They that have the power to hurt, yet do none,’ he thought, half remembering some Shakespeare from school. He had a feeling there was something wrong with that, though — wasn’t that the one that ended with something like lilies smelling more rank than weeds? This was the sort of thing he could have discussed in detail with Fran, he thought. She’d always been fascinated by his sexual fantasies, though he’d never known if they turned her on. Sometimes he’d felt as if he was like a tame case study for her — she was much more interested in analysing their sex than actually doing it. He wondered, without much real interest, how she was. He’d overheard Carly and Rosa talking about her at the picnic and it had surprised him. He hadn’t thought she’d kept up with any of the old crowd.
    ‘Come on Mr Bigshot Lawyer. Get in the shower and I’ll put the coffee on.’
    He stood up and put his arms around her. ‘I love you, you know. I would never hurt you.’
    ‘OK.’ Her smile was puzzled. She gave him a quick kiss and started to get dressed.
    *
    Tony Voulas lived in a yellow-brick block of flats in Ashfield, several streets back from the highway, but the noise of heavy traffic was continuous. He had his windows open, seemingly impervious to the racket outside, and though it was a cool morning he was dressed in a thin T-shirt and shorts. Noel thought he looked more like a footballer than a cop, with the athlete’s bull neck and sloping powerful shoulders. He offered them coffee and she and Sharon sat on the vinyl couch while he made it.
    ‘I wonder who his interior designer is,’ Noel whispered, looking at the sparsely furnished room. Apart from the couch and a matching armchair, there were only a television, video and music complex on a rickety veneered table. He’d obviously made no effort to receive visitors; a pair of balled up socks lay on the floor beside a damp-looking towel, and his breakfast plate, covered in crumbs, sat on the television. There were also crumbs caught in the meagre pile of the generic brown carpet.
    ‘Proves he’s honest,’ Sharon said in her normal voice. ‘And hardworking. Got no time or money for homemaking.’
    Noel lifted an eyebrow. ‘Pardo n me ’ she said.
    ‘So,’ Voulas said, coming in with cups and a carton of milk on a tin tray. ‘You’ve been listening to old Albie Spinks, have you? Shit, I forgot the sugar.’ He went back into the kitchen and returned with a plastic bowl.
    Sharon spooned sugar into her coffee and took a sip. ‘Tastes like the crap they have at the station,’ she said. Voulas ignored her and lit a cigarette before sitting in the armchair. He looked at Noel.
    ‘He does seem to have a point,’ she said. ‘He told me he talked to you about it, you and Detective Reston, but you weren’t interested.’
    ‘Oh, we were interested,’ he said. ‘It just went nowhere. Theory, supposition, what-ifs. We already had Farrell by the balls. Even the mother baulked at giving him an alibi for the night the kid went missing. Silly as she is, even she stuck at him killing her daughter.’
    ‘Wher e di d he say he was that night?’
    ‘He said he was out looking for the little girl until three a.m. This was after the mother denied he was with her all