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put his arms up as I untangled
the shirt from the bedclothes and tugged it over his head.
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You want to play on my phone for a minute?’
    ‘But is someone at the door? I think I can hear them.’
    I ducked back into my bedroom
and he followed so I lifted him onto our bed. He settled in as I unlocked the phone.
    ‘Angry Birds?’ I said, and he reached out, despite himself.
    ‘Only five minutes of that,’ I said, which we both understood meant half an hour,
maybe more.
    At the front door the detectives gave me impatient smiles. ‘Sorry. My kid woke up.
So what’s this about?’
    ‘You’re the owner of this residence?’ Victor said.
    ‘Yes. And Gina. We both own it.’
    ‘And does Gina always work nights?’
    ‘Only sometimes. All this week.’
    ‘Might have to put them in a hotel,’ Deborah said and wrote something down.
    ‘Why? What’s happening?’
    Victor cleared his throat. ‘We have reason to believe evidence pertaining to a major
investigation may be buried within the grounds of your premises.’
    ‘Buried?’
    ‘We’d appreciate your cooperation.’
    ‘So wait, you want to dig? Can I check with Gina first?’
    ‘What time did you say?’
    ‘Around eight?’
    ‘I’m sorry. The matter is time-sensitive. We need to get started.’
    ‘Right now?’
    ‘Strike the iron when it’s hot, as they say.’
    I wasn’t sure anyone said that, but a car alarm took our attention to the street
where a cop wearing jeans and a police-issue vest was rifling in his pockets for
the clicker. The siren had set his dogs barking—police dogs, right there on our lawn.
    ‘Ma!’
    I heard little feet on the carpet and a moment later Lucas had a grip on my leg.
    ‘It’s just dogs, Lucas,’ I said.
    ‘But what are they doing here?’
    At last someone managed to turn the alarm off and the cops ordered their dogs into
silence, but too late, because the neighbourhood dogs had taken up the cause, spreading
an uneasy mood across the morning.
    ‘Do those dogs bite?’ Lucas said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Only bad guys,’ said Victor.
    ‘But there are no bad guys,’ I said.
    Lucas rolled his eyes as if this were obvious, as if the two of us had not been awake
at three that morning finding ways to disprove his theories about the upside down
house buried under our own, and the very bad guy who lived there.
    ‘Would you like to come and meet our dogs?’ Victor said. ‘Lucas, is it?’
    He looked up at me.
    ‘Put your shoes on first.’
    He scrambled to the floor and sorted a match from the pile.
    ‘If it’s okay, ma’am, I’ll send in some officers to discuss matters with you while
your son meets our dogs?’ Victor said.
    ‘Sure, go ahead.’
    I watched Lucas shuffle across the lawn in his short pyjamas and sneakers, no socks.
    They sent two young cops for my interview. They took my name, date of birth, checked
my license, etc and then they asked for a deed to the house, which I miraculously
found in the study.
    ‘Gina Lim?’ they asked me.
    ‘My girlfriend. She’ll be home in a minute.’
    ‘Here?’
    ‘She lives here.’
    ‘L-I-M?’
    ‘Yes. Like it says.’
    ‘What kind of name is that?’
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘I mean where’s it from?’
    ‘Singapore, she’s from Singapore.’
    ‘And she’s the nurse,’ the detective said, ‘she’s a nurse?’
    ‘No, a sleep scientist,’ I said.
    ‘What’s that, exactly?’
    ‘She monitors people’s sleep overnight. People with sleep issues, insomnia, sleep
apnoea mainly.’
    ‘She’s not a doctor?’
    ’No, she just records data while they sleep.’
    ‘And what do you do?’
    ‘I’m self-employed.’
    ‘In what sort of work?’
    ‘I’ve just started this business. Scientific-editing services, you could call it.’
    A rising guilt reminded me this was not entirely true, but Gina was always telling
me to be more confident, more positive, talk it up. She wouldn’t have meant to the
cops, but it was the principle.
    The cops could