Corner Shop Jockey

"You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere."
- Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon.

The quiet inner city street slept, dark and forgotten. A remnant of when the city was smaller and the sprawl not so merciless and destructive. The city centre, while large and bustling during business hours, was a wasteland of underground parking lots and lost souls outside of these times. The sprawl made the city hard to manage, thousands upon thousands of square kilometres of housing projects and fibro homes, gated communities, hate factories.

Lying on a corner in the middle of the misplaced suburb there was a corner shop. It had been built there and used by a family. Catering to locals and children on their walk to and from school. On hotter days a refuge for neighbourhood kids. Icecreams and chocolate milk. Newspapers and tabloid magazines. As with the passing of time the family grew older, the kids grew up andmoved away. More conveniences moved in around the area, lower prices, longer hours, and like many of it's kind the corner shop closed. The parents grew old together and died together, and the land sold.

Emily Ticonderoga Jones lived on the corner of Halls and Peach st in an old corner shop convenience. Attached to the shop front was a small two bedroom one bathroom flat. The corner shop itself was converted into a studio, half finished oils and breif experimentations with watercolours hang and rest on paint spattered easles, calico, horse hair, the smell of oil and solvents. Emily was a military brat but worked hard and now had a comfortable house with a comfortable mortgage. A rich ex-boyfriend had bought three of her paintings and set her up with a few clientel who kept her busy buying her work. Emily sat in her small but comfortable living room, watching trashy television, nursing a joint and pampering a large maltese tabby named Chairman Meow. Her malaise was broken by the screech of brakes outside, a car door slam then a feirce, panicked rap on the studio door. Emily jumped at the sound, distubing the Chairman and dropping the hot roach. "Who is it?!" she asked, furiously fishing for the red hot remains. A voice responded that sounded suspiciously familiar. "Just a sec!" Emily grabbed the butt, dousing it in an empty wine bottle. "This better not be who I think it is be..." she stopped, having opened the door to a suspiciously familiar face with an unfamiliar expression, unfamiliar breathing, bleeding, bent over. "Tarquin, what the fuck?" Emily yelped, taking the battered Tarquin in, a quick scan to catch prying eyes.

Light streams into the homely lounge room, corridors of sunlight invade through the gaps of the curtains and catch the dust and floating detritus. Tarquin, groggy, strains to remember where he is, how he got there. The events of last night flow back, the darkness, the oily blood and cold steel. Tarquin groans, his hands on his head, trying to stem the tide of anxiety, the feeling of chaos, his life had been inexorably changed and Tarquin couldn't help but think for the worse. He struggled to remember how the ride had started, his original intention, his mission. Whatever it was it was no more, enveloping, changing, perverting, consuming. Osric's face seemed distant, obscured, being slowly forgotten. Tarquin, pulled his inhaler from a sandy pocket, using it, his mouth instantly showered in sand and dirt amongst the gas and wind of the medication. "Oh God!"

"Are you alright?" her voice called from the door of the bathroom.
"Fine thanks" his voice gagged from the toilet.
"What happened?"
"My inhaler..."
"What?"
"...Never mind" Tarquin conceded, rising from the bowl.
"You want some lemonade?"
"I'd love some, please." he sighed as she moved to the kitchen, her eye still tracking Tarquin.
"So...?"
"So what?" Tarquin glibly replied, wiping his mouth and walking into the kitchen area, leaning on the small breakfast bar, it's original use overridden by an avalanche of miscellaneous bills and papers. "Oh I don't know Tarquin, how about; so what the fuck were you doing bleeding on my doorstep at 3am in the morning? So where the fuck have you been since your brother's funeral, almost two weeks ago? So? So? So why don't you stop fucking lying to me for once and..." she swallowed, fighting down the urge, like hell she would let him see her tear up "...and let me help you for Christ sake". She tossed the can to Tarquin and sighed over the sink. Tarquin, thinking for a moment, tapping the top of the can with the one fingernail that had avoided being eaten away. "Ozzie was murdered Emily, this guy called Mr Niles murdered Ozzie and I still have no idea why. But he was working for someone else and I think I know who." he explained, producing a disc from his jacket pocket, placing it on the bar. "Last night I went to his apartment and I found some stuff. The guy was an contractor for someone called Ophelia"
"Tarquin, what are you telling me? How do you know all this? How did you get into this guy's apartment?"
"Because I got his wallet and keys, because he told me."
"Where did you find this guy?"
"Pete's Funland in The Beacons, he found me"
"Well where is he now?" Emily pleaded, stuggling to piece together what Tarquin was telling her.
"Still there. He's probably still there. Unless the cops have moved him" There was a cold silence as she realised what he wasn't telling her. "Why would he still be there Tarquin?" Silence. "What have you done?"
"I had no choice Emily." Silence. "He was going to kill me I... I had no choice."
Silence.