Read Online The First Week by Margaret Merrilees - Free Book Online Page A

live here? They flashed their badges at me. Then they pushed right in. I didn’t know what to do. It seemed a bit over the top. Three of them.’
    â€˜They should have had a warrant,’ Ros said indignantly. ‘Isn’t that right, Marian?’
    Marian shook her head. ‘I don’t know. They do in books.’
    â€˜They did show me something,’ Sam said. ‘Some piece of paper, maybe it was a warrant. Whatever. They just sort of waved it at me. I didn’t get a chance to read it.’
    â€˜Go on.’
    â€˜I thought Charlie was still in bed. I said what’s going on? They wouldn’t tell me. Just that there’d been a serious incident . They made me wake Ros up and they searched Charlie’s room.’
    Of course. That was why it was in such a mess.
    Sam tucked her hands under her arms and rocked on the chair. ‘By then I knew he wasn’t here, and I started to freak. But I still thought maybe it was a protest or a traffic thing. Or maybe he’d been down at the wharves.’
    â€˜Wharves?’ Marian asked sharply. ‘What would he be doing at the wharves?’ Smuggling drugs?
    â€˜Oh,’ said Sam. ‘We’ve been down there a lot because of the sheep ships.’
    â€˜You mean protests?’ Marian was angry now. The girl made it sound ordinary, as though everyone did things like that.
    â€˜Yeah,’ Sam agreed, not looking at Marian. ‘There’s been a lot going on.’
    â€˜How did the cops figure out he knew Lee?’ Ros asked.
    â€˜I told them,’ Sam said. ‘Before you got up. I shouldn’t have. The tough one kept making me go through everything Charlie did on Sunday night. So then they got Ben and Lee in here too. They said Charlie had a gun.’
    Ros interrupted. ‘It was bizarre. Like a movie or something. They just went off and left us here. Gave us a number and said ring if we remembered anything else. Like they didn’t believe anything we’d said.’
    â€˜They didn’t tell us they’d arrested Charlie already,’ Sam said. ‘But they must have, how else would they know his name? But we didn’t figure that out till later. We thought we should maybe go and find him before the cops got him. But then we thought maybe he’d gone mad.’ She pulled out a tattered hanky and blew her nose.
    â€˜Sam thought of you,’ Ros said. ‘That we should warn you or something. Let you know.’
    Charlie might be in trouble.
    â€˜So then we had to try and find your number.’
    â€˜Where was he all night?’ asked Sam, following her own thought. ‘In the paper they said he was at the supermarket when it opened at seven thirty.’
    â€˜Lee said we should see if there was anything on the news, so we put the radio on. We heard then. They didn’t say a name, but we figured it must be Charlie. Shit. That was so …’
    â€˜Like being in a nightmare, not being able to wake up,’ Sam added. ‘It was all … we were trying to think what to do, you know, where to get a lawyer and all that. We went to the lock-up but no one would talk to us. So we rang the number they’d given us and asked could we arrange bail for Charlie but the guy said you’ve got to be joking . He hung up on us.’
    â€˜But the men,’ said Marian. ‘The ones he shot. Who were they? He must have known them.’
    â€˜That’s what we thought. But the police really quizzed us. We’d never even heard of them, didn’t recognise their names, their photos. Charlie never mentioned them. It looks like they were strangers.’
    Marian was dismayed. Two ordinary people with no idea, no warning, going about the business of the day.
    Ros burst out. ‘If only we’d known he had a gun. We would never have let him have it here. We’re pacifists, you know? A gun!’ She put her head in her hands. ‘It’s like the