Free Drainland (Tunnel Island Book 1) by Iain Ryan

back to the Gold Point and canvased the staff. No one said a word. She went back to the crime scene and the whole room was wiped clean, as if it never happened. They even took the car.

    B y any measure , the case was already fucked. Romano took a drag on her cigarette and held the photo of the bodies up.
    No IDs.
    No weapon.
    Every type of scene tampering.
    The scene looked like an OD and suicide, but just enough of it was left unconfirmed to make things difficult.
    She exhaled and watched the smoke join the cloud under the pub’s ceiling.
    “Another?” said the barman. It was the same cocky guy as before. She was back in the Point Hallahan Public Bar like the first night. He seemed to remember her. Romano could feel herself swaying a little on the bar stool.
    “Hold up,” she said. She took a photo of the dead woman’s face from the file and held it up. “You know this girl?”
    The barman gave her a vacant pissed-off stare.
    “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “It’s my job, apparently,” she said. She put the photo down. “Same again.”
    He fixed the drink and brought it back.
    “You can’t do that in here,” he said, nodding at the file. “Take it outside.”
    “Bad for business, huh?”
    The place was empty. Two old diggers sat down the far end of the room by the Kino screen. That was it. The barman leaned across and said, “Bad for you. Just take it somewhere else.”
    “I’m too drunk to drive, so this is it. I guess you’re all under arrest, this is a fucking…crime scene now.”
    She could tell by the look on his face that it came out a lot louder than she’d hoped. The diggers looked over from their game.
    “Okay, last drink,” he said, knocking on the bar. “Then I’m calling you a cab.”
    “You ain’t calling me shit,” said Romano.
    The barman ignored it.
    He went and picked up a phone. As he spoke into it, he looked right at her and nodded. He did not look happy.

    —

    I n the morning , Denny—who was devoutly teetotal—refused to drive her back to the pub for the cruiser. Chandler saw it more as an opportunity. In the pub car park, he walked around the police Land Rover and whistled. “To be honest, Romano, I didn’t think you’d work out over here, but now I’m starting to think otherwise.” Leaving the police cruiser there was a serious policy infraction and Romano had no real idea how it had happened.
    She was at the pub.
    She woke up on the living room floor.
    There was nothing in between.
    The morning sun beat down on her as Chandler tsked-tsked. “I’ve done a lot of dumb shit, but I’ve never left the car out,” he said.
    Romano took a mouthful of coffee. “Thanks. You’ve been a real big help, dickhead. A real comfort.”
    “You know, they’ve got AA over here.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Nah. We won’t bother writing it up,” he said. “I’m sure it’s fine. It’s not like anyone wants to be seen in one of these things over here.”
    Romano waited for him to go before getting in. The morning heat had baked the cruiser’s interior and it raised hell in her gut. Swallowing fast, she turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired. She was so dazed and queasy that it took a while, a few minutes of driving along the esplanade, before she noticed the yellow flyer flapping under the wiper. Romano pulled over and unpinned it: Angel City Bar And Show. Two women in tight-fitting police uniforms lay draped over each other, Photoshopped halos around their heads.
    New Girls Every Month. $10 Buffet. Ladies In For Free!
    It was down in Domino.
    She turned it over.
    Job Opportunity marked in felt tip.
    She couldn’t be sure this was a message. Romano did not trust herself when hungover. She turned the cruiser around and headed back to the pub. There, she walked the car park and searched around. Another half-dozen cars sat abandoned over night; none of them had flyers pinned to their windshields. She checked the gutters and the bins, turning up food wrappers,