Kill Your Boss by Jack Heath extract

Allen & Unwin
Oct 3
6 min read

Updated: Oct 29

Read an extract of Kill Your Boss by Jack Heath.

KIARA

As the body crumples to the concrete, Kiara stands there, stunned. The ringing of the bike rack goes on and on, like the tolling of a giant bell. A blowfly buzzes past her ear. A leaf blows along the gutter, making a soft scraping sound. Absurdly, horrifyingly, the song ‘It’s Raining Men’ pops into her head.

The man, dressed in a dark blue suit with light blue pinstripes, lies facedown on the library steps. One of his trouser legs has ridden up, revealing a novelty sock with a dog-bone pattern. His polished brogues gleam against the dull concrete. His right arm is twisted awkwardly beneath his chest, while his black hair—short at the back, moussed on the top—shows flecks of grey and a disturbing splash of red.

Kiara looks up, as if she might see a wormhole or something. The bike rack is right under the eave of the roof. It’s a four or five metre drop, which might have been okay onto grass or a great big pile of pillows. Face-first into a steel bike rack? Not so much.

There’s a gasp of horror from the doorway of the bakery, where a woman wearing a baby carrier has just emerged. Someone else screams.

Kiara snaps out of her fugue state and kneels beside the man. She places a hand on his shoulder. ‘Sir?’ she says, giving him a light push. ‘Sir, can you hear me?’

If there’s a response, she can’t perceive it. A roaring fills her ears.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Tommo is rushing back. He must have heard the commotion. ‘Is he okay?’

It’s a stupid question, and Kiara ignores it. ‘Stay back,’ she says, and gently rolls the man over. His head lolls unnaturally, vertebrae crunching. The middle of his face has caved in where it hit the steel bar. The blood around his flattened nose isn’t bubbling. He’s not breathing. Kiara presses her fingers to the man’s broken neck, in case of a miracle. Not even a flicker.

It’s not the first death Kiara has ever seen, but it’s certainly the quickest. Her father took months to go. She remembers thinking how cruel that was, to be nibbled away rather than swallowed whole. At the time, she’d decided she would rather die suddenly. Now she’s reconsidering.

A lanyard is tangled around the dead man’s neck. Neville A, Head of Library Services, she reads. There’s an ID photo—neat stubble, a straight nose, piercing blue eyes. The guy was superficially handsome, before his face got crushed like an orange in a squeezer. Kiara doesn’t recognise him, but that’s not much of a surprise. She hasn’t visited the library since the invention of 4G. She’s pretty sure there’s still a card taking up space in her wallet, though.

She notes the time as she squeezes the button on her radio. ‘Dispatch, this is Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui. Update on the situation at the library. I have one man dead at the scene. Come in, dispatch.’

Marv has reappeared in the distance and is hurrying back this way. A few more looky-loos have emerged from the bakery and are coming over. Some of them have their phones out. Kiara is sure they only want to help, but she knows from experience that involving more people will only complicate the situation.

‘Is anyone a doctor?’ she calls, even though Neville A is clearly beyond help.

The bystanders stop advancing and glance uncertainly at each other, hopefully reassessing their relative qualifications.

‘In that case, everyone give us some room,’ Kiara says. She feels around the dead man’s suit, looking for his phone. He’s not wearing a wedding ring, but there’ll be someone who cares about him, and Kiara doesn’t want them to learn about his death from a Facebook post.

Her radio bloops and hisses. ‘What’s going on, Detective?’ It’s not the usual dispatcher. It’s her boss, Rohan, his voice typically terse. She can picture him pacing in his office, holding his pen in one fist, like he expects at any moment to have to parry an oncoming sword.

Kiara talks fast, her mouth not waiting for her brain. ‘Adult male. Possibly fallen off the library roof. No signs of life.’ She glances at Tommo, wondering if he’s had the presence of mind to call an ambulance. There’s no phone in his hands. He’s staring dumbly at the corpse. ‘I need an ambulance for the body,’ she adds. ‘Victim’s name is Neville A. Seems to be the head librarian. You know him?’

A beat. ‘Yeah. Neville Adams. We were at school together.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kiara says.

After another pause, Rohan says, ‘His ex-wife is probably still listed as his next of kin. I’ll get someone onto it. Any witnesses?’

‘I saw him hit the ground. There are a few people about—someone might have seen how he fell.’ Kiara has found a sleek phone in one of Neville’s pockets. The screen is chipped, and it won’t switch on. In his other pocket, there’s a wallet.

‘Copy that,’ Rohan says. ‘I’ll find Whitmey and Vickers and head in. Might grab the new kid, too. Anyone else hurt?’

‘No, boss.’

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah.’

There’s a pause, then he says, ‘All righty.’ He doesn’t sound like he believes her. Police get shuffled around a lot, but Rohan has been directly above Kiara for most of her career. He was her sergeant when she was a constable, a detective when she was a sergeant, and now her inspector while she’s a detective. He knows her too well. ‘Hell of a first day back,’ he says.

Kiara thinks of Bali. The impossibly blue, impossibly warm ocean. ‘I’m fine, boss.’

‘Yeah. See you in ten.’

‘Bloody hell.’ Marv has ignored her instruction to stay back. ‘Is that guy dead?’

Tommo responds, their fight apparently forgotten. ‘Sure seems like it.’

Marv looks up at the sky, in the manner of someone who just felt a raindrop on his scalp. ‘What happened? Did he fall off the roof?’

Tommo’s voice is soft. ‘Maybe he jumped.’

‘Thought I told you blokes to move along,’ Kiara says, studying the driver’s licence from the dead man’s wallet. Privately, she suspects Tommo is right. The suicide rate in Warrigal is sixty per cent higher than in Sydney, and the victims are typically single men between the ages of thirty and fifty. Neville Adams, born in 1978, fits the profile, at least demographically speaking. On the other hand, if he really intended to die, wouldn’t he have found something higher to jump off? He could have survived that fall with a broken spine if not for the bike rack.

There’s a rattle as the front doors of the library slide open and one of the borrowers hobbles out—it’s an old woman with tattered clothes and a neon green scarf. Kiara recognises her as one of a few unsheltered people who hang around the library in the colder months. ‘Fuck me!’ she says, when she sees the body at Kiara’s feet.

‘Stay back, Judy,’ Kiara calls. She needs to get the body out of sight. To Marv, she says, ‘Take off your shirt.’

He looks startled. ‘What?’

‘To cover him up.’ Kiara slips off her leather jacket then lays it carefully across Neville’s squashed face. She holds out a hand to Marv. ‘You can leave, or you can help. Shirt.’

Reluctantly, Marv unbuttons his flannel.

Tommo offers, ‘I have a blanket in the shitbox—I mean, in my vehicle. Detective.’

‘Go get it,’ Kiara says.

‘It’s roadworthy,’ Tommo adds.

‘I didn’t ask. Go.’

As Tommo jogs away, Kiara takes Marv’s flannel and drapes it over the dead man’s legs. Something catches her eye a couple of metres away—a half-smoked cigarette, still lit.

She looks at the dead man’s fingernails. Slightly yellow. Lifting her jacket off his face, she checks out his teeth. The ones along the top jaw are all shattered, but the bottom jaw is largely intact. They’re yellow, too. The cigarette was probably his.

She jogs back to her car to where she’s got a basic crime scene kit. She pulls on a latex glove, picks up the cigarette, and dips it in a puddle to extinguish it. Then she seals it in a Ziploc bag. If the rooftop was this guy’s regular smoking spot, it’s even less likely he fell by accident. He would’ve known of any tripping hazards.

Suicide, then. Except . . .

If you were going to kill yourself, wouldn’t you finish your last cigarette first?

Kiara leaps to her feet. In her shock, it didn’t occur to her that this was anything other than a suicide or a ghastly accident. She hasn’t been thinking like a detective.

Whirling around, she points at the entrance to the library. ‘Lock those doors!’ she shouts through the gathering crowd. ‘No one leaves!’

Kill Your Boss by Jack Heath releases November 4.