In Strange Company

✨Try something new✨

Chapter 1

A pounding rattled the flimsy plyboard door, threatening to put a hole through it. "Hector!"

Hector, curled up under a thin duvet, rolled over, dreaming of greener pastures than Mystery Cove, literally—Australia was in the middle of a motherfucking drought and the water restrictions were inching up higher than Grumpy Gavin's trouser waist, or Sloth's hairline. Sloth was his barely-there deputy who lived about an hour out, on a cruddy old farm that had seen better days.

"Inspector Hector!" The assailant threatened the door again, huffing, "Open the door."

"Go fucking away, mate. It's too early for teen bullshit." He pulled the duvet over his head and tried to drown out the world, a.k.a. his tiny, one-bedder, cockroach-infested hellhole otherwise known as his living quarters, right above his work.

"Hector! You've gotta come... quick." The young man outside pounded on the door again.

Hector flung the cover back, causing the book he'd fallen asleep reading—The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery—to fly off his king-single bed with a thunk. He poked his head out like a meerkat, squinting as a beam of sunlight hit his eye. "What do you want?"

"There's a body on the beach!"

"There's a body on the beach," Hector mumbled to himself, unimpressed. "Then stop going to the beach and, et viola, no body on the fucking beach, Hunt!"

Hunter, who'd run from the beach like a trooper, shook the doorknob. Hector almost wondered if the kid expected it to be open. Like, why would a cop sleep with his door unlocked?

"Fucking morons." Hector stifled a yawn, diving back into his bed.

"Hector. I'm serious. There's a fucking body on the beach. Gavin told me to scream 'blue murder,' whatever that means." The boy peeked through the gap in the curtain next. Hector could almost see his roaming eyeball. "That's why they sent me."

Hector groaned and peeled himself slowly from his bed. The lad wasn't about to go away. He could tell. He pulled his robe on and waddled to the door, stepping on a couple of cockroach carcasses along the way. "Blue murder? I'm gonna kill Gavin someday."

"And watch your mouth. Your mother knows you swear?" He threw the door open and waddled back to the kitchen to make coffee. He liked his coffee as dark as his mother's soul. "It's too early for pranks. Tell your bloody mates—including bloody Gavin—to get off the beach and go to school. You have school, don't you today?"

"It's Saturday, bro." Hunter followed him all the way into the kitchen, which could do with a stick of dynamite as a major facelift.

Hector rolled his eyes so severely that when he felt a pinch of pain behind his eyes, he panicked that they were going to get stuck in there, mid-roll. He pulled the coffee grounds from the cupboard and shimmied a bunch into the plunger, then pressed the button on the yellowing electric kettle. He was pretty sure there was some water in it from last night. Either way, he'd know soon enough if the kettle melted.

When he turned around, the boy was still there in his action-less bachelor pad, a point that was now grating on him with each lonely day spent cuddling his pillow. The animals in the surrounding farms probably saw more action than he had in a year, not counting Hilde a few months back, Hilde, who still called him. Take the hint! You are way out of my league, he often wanted to say.

"What are you still doing here? Run along. Go"—Hector snapped, irritated at being woken up for a prank. "And if I find out that this is a prank, I'll haul your skinny ass into lock up and call your mum to pick you up. Go do something useful," he added. He did not know what teenagers did these days on a weekend. Back when he was younger, they'd sneak into farms and "borrow" things just for fun.