Dark Clouds on the Mountain. John Tully

crispy bacon or a slab of steak or a chicken curry.

      'You're a bloody silly pair, Jack,' Helen said, bending down to ruffle his hair: brown hair, but she noticed the streaks of grey on his neck and above the small, almost delicate, ears. 'Why you have to argue with her all the time, I don't know. Not so long back she was your shadow.'

      'Well, she's just so bloody argumentative,' Jack said, a whining note of indignation creeping, to his horror, into his voice. 'You can't say anything without her disagreeing. God forbid, it isn't as if I said I believed that bloke was responsible for what was done. Jesus, I'm supposed to be a detective. I'm supposed to follow all leads. Not take anything for granted.' He dragged furiously on his cigarette. 'And while we're at it, why do you always have to take her side on these things?' He crushed the fag out noisily in his ashtray, as if to emphasise the point. It was already half full, she noticed, her lips tightening. The dog shuffled uneasily, sensing the tension, whining and thrusting her wet muzzle into her hand, anxious for reassurance.

      The row had blown up over politics. There wasn't anything new about that. It was almost always about bloody politics these days. Wendy was almost twenty and was in her second year at the university. Jack often wondered out loud what they taught them at the place. Nothing was sacred. It was worse than an Irish parliament. Leave the Irish out of this Helen had interjected, remembering her Fenian grandparents from the Ring of Beara. Jack ignored the interpellation, complaining that now Helen was at the university too, she always had to have her two bob's worth. For Christ's sake, she'd snapped back. Would you listen to yourself ? You sound just like your mate Langdale or that fat Sergeant Paisley!

      Wendy had been reading the paper when he'd come in from work, pleased as punch to have the weekend off, with a couple of six-packs of ice-cold 'Cascade Green' beers under his arm. He'd ripped the top off a stubbie quick smart as soon as he'd tossed his keys down. Ah! The pale ale had hit the spot after all the aggravation he'd had all day from various idiots both in and out of the Force.

      Wendy had stood looking at him over the top of the paper and he could sense she was in a bad mood. What now, he thought, catching sight of her pouting mouth. Bloody hell, it didn't seem like yesterday that she'd been Daddy's darling daughter, the precious little creature he could hardly bear to see go out of his sight into the school yard and into the care of strangers. Then she flounced off across the room and lounged all over the sofa like the Maja Clothed - just - and eyed him suspiciously. There was a distinct curl at the corner of her mouth that he didn't appreciate. He didn't go much on the stud in her nose, either, or the lip ring. Oh well, she'd tell him what the matter was in her own time, he sighed as he downed a couple of inches of beer.

      He flicked the remote for the television and the early news came on. It was useless; no context to anything, dumbing down commercial TV style. He shook his head with weary cynicism. The usual parade: Jews and Arabs killing each other; slaughter in the Balkans; bombs in Belfast; ructions in the building industry; cats up trees in Lindisfarne and a Hobart woman in a yellow bri-nylon trouser suit and blue rinse hair complaining about a Communist bookshop next door to her house. Jack knew her: Mrs Audrey Amos, serial pest and vexatious litigant. The Prime Minister's face came on, his voice hectoring, his fingers tugging at an earlobe. He was calling some unfortunate member of the public a bastard: no wonder they called the white-headed politician the 'Silver Bodgie'. Bugger that, snorted Jack. He flicked the thing off and concentrated on his beer - his second - and he could feel the third coming on already just like in the 'Fourex' ads, only Jack was a Tasmanian patriot when it came to ale.

      'How's the uni?' he asked, swigging his drink and stifling a burp, desperate to get to know this young woman who was becoming a stranger to him. 'I mean, the mid-year exams must be coming up fast. Essays and stuff due in?' He poured her a glass of beer and took it over to her: a peace offering.

      She was non-committal as she took the glass. She studied hard enough, never needed prompting to open a book. She'd done well in her first year, so there was no reason to suggest that she'd wipe out now, but there was a certain restlessness about her these days. 'It's okay, Dad,' she said, sipping at the ale. She hesitated and then put the paper down on the coffee table, carefully folding it so that he could see what she'd been reading. Hello, he thought. Here we go. police question student, was the headline at the top of page 5 in the Mercury. It was about that Simon Calvert wanker. Some clown had leaked the story to the press. Gordon Paisley, thought Jack, his eyes narrowing; he wouldn't put it past that bastard. He'd missed it in his usual early morning flick through the pages as he bolted his coffee-fix and had been too busy all day to finish reading.

      'Dad, I'm at a loss,' Wendy began. She had an infuriatingly smug expression on her pretty face and she paused for emphasis like the star she was in the Old Nick Dramatic Society. 'I'm at a perfect loss to understand why you have been persecuting Simon Calvert. Dad, I know Simon and there is no way he would do anything like what you seem to think he did.'

      Yeah, know him far too well, thought Jack. Know as in the biblical sense, I'll warrant, but he didn't dare say it, didn't really want to think it. It made him gag on his beer. 'I've already told you,' he said, speaking with exaggerated patience. 'We can't discount anyone as a suspect until we've followed all leads. What do you expect when the bloke runs round in a group that carries on about Palestinian rights and we've got a spate of anti-Semitic acts?'

      'Oh, so that makes him anti-Semitic, does it?' she shot back, her voice icy with scorn.

      'Well, somebody daubed slogans all over the synagogue, didn't they!' Jack replied, his voice rising. 'We...

      'Yeah yeah, Dad, "We have to follow all leads",' she sneered. 'And whose bright idea was it to leak it to the papers, I'd like to know? Simon's had a hard time of it already without this.' Her eyes were flashing. Her square jaw was set. There were all the signs of a colossal blue brewing when they heard Helen's key in the front door. Helen had a naturally sunny nature. She breezed in through the lounge room door with her arms full of shopping for the evening's barbecue. Her smile dropped away as she took in the sight of father and daughter glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room. She sighed and went through to deposit her purchases on the kitchen table.

      'Oh, come on, you two,' she chided, walking back in and standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. 'It's Friday afternoon. We've got the whole weekend ahead of us, so don't go snapping each others' heads off again.' The antagonists ignored her, and when Jack said that in his opinion Simon Calvert was a prize little wanker, Wendy stormed out of the room. Ah Jesus, thought Jack. He didn't actually believe that Calvert was a wanker or at least not such a wanker as he made out. He just couldn't help himself when the devil got into him. Now he wished he hadn't said it. Sometimes he was just too impulsive for his own good.

      'That's just wonderful,' said Helen, furious herself now, turning sarcastically on her husband. 'You ought to write books on family counselling, you're so skilled as a father.' Jack sulked and drank his beer, his fifth 'stubbie'. He was feeling a bit light-headed.

      The evening almost revived when they fired up the barbecue and the Rattray-Spencers arrived, but it was clear to all that there was tension in the air. Bob Rattray-Spencer burbled on to Jack about some big contract he'd landed and his overmade-up wife Mandy was magging away about the boutique she ran in Magnet Court. Jack didn't say that he thought it all a load of bollocks, but his face did. Their guests left early. Great one, Jack, thought Helen as she closed the door behind them. It couldn't go on like this. They had a screaming row that night. About how he'd treated his guests and how he couldn't even talk to his own daughter. Rosie wagged her tail, though, when Jack gave her a biscuit and took her out to her kennel for the night.

      II

      The latest argument with Wendy had started a few weeks back. One sullen morning, dark with approaching winter and with a nasty wind off the Derwent, Jack had arrived at the Liverpool Street station early, intending to catch up on some paperwork. The sight of a new-looking manila folder on his desk did not improve his digestion; Graffiti On Synagogue, someone had written across it in a neat, slanting hand. The fried eggs and bacon kept repeating on him and that song about the kid who didn't like Mondays was going round and round inside his head, even though he hated it. He was craving for a cigarette, too, it being one of his periodic attempts to kick the