Black Glass by Meg; Mundell

that pale skin and red hair, a certain way of walking.
    Someone had left an old coat on the church steps. It smelled inky, like newspaper, and came down to Tally’s ankles. It was too hot to wear in the daytime so she stashed it in a crack between two buildings and pulled it out after dark. When she wore it, her steps became lighter and her senses sharper. Fear could not creep in when the belt was knotted tight. It was a beige detective coat with inside pockets, one the perfect size for her camera. In the others she stowed two shoplifted pencils, an old docket book for making notes and maps, and a fresh box of bandaids she’d found at a tram stop.
    Tally was wearing the coat the second time she saw the puppy guy. He was outside the 7-Eleven talking on his mobile, the golden pup tethered to his belt by a long droop of string. It stared up at him in adoration as he paced a restless semi-circle back and forth under the store’s fluorescent lights. Tally marked the pair’s position carefully on her map, then sat back to watch. She’d discovered this vantage point in the cheap and noisy part of the Docklands: a sliver of space between an abandoned hot-dog stall and a stack of cement bags solidified by time and rain. Sheltered from the street by a scraggly plastic tree, the lookout seemed to render her invisible. The moment she found it, Tally knew it would reward her patience with clues.
    It was late, but not late enough to begin searching for somewhere to sleep. Words danced across shopfronts, music throbbed and overlapped in discordant waves as people stumbled along the footpath, pouring into fast-food joints and eddying at the open mouths of bars.
    The puppy guy jabbed the air with his forefinger as he spoke, then hooked it into his jeans pocket while he listened, the pup’s eyes following him as he paced out his tight arc on the footpath. It was hard to tell his age: maybe eighteen, maybe twenty-five, short and compact with a sharp jaw and quick eyes. Clean clothes, baseball cap, glasses flashing in the white glaze of the convenience-store lights.
    From her hideaway across the street Tally watched him clock each passer-by, attention flicking from face to face. He had a certain stance she recognised: the bearing of someone who spoke to strangers and connected this with that; someone familiar with fire escapes, with punching in digits and making swift decisions. His body seemed to transmit a code through the air, a complicated ripple of meanings that jumped off his skin like electricity. Tally caught snatches of it — cash , chance , opportunity — but the content seemed to shift according to the flow of people. The guy was hard to decipher, but the puppy lent him a benign air. Grace loved dogs. The girls had always wanted one, but no dice, Max had said: they moved around too much. Just another mouth to fill, no point.
    Two skinny kids, a boy and a girl with matching slouches, drifted closer to the pup. When he spotted them, the puppy guy immediately ended his phone call and bent to ruffle his dog’s ears, smiling at the kids, welcoming them closer. The three of them squatted on the footpath, stroking the animal. The kids were relating some story that seemed, from their gestures, to involve injury and exhaustion. The puppy guy made a series of shrugs and pointing motions, a gentle invitation, and the trio rose and walked off together with the animal trotting along behind. Its owner’s body radiated certainty, and people moved out of their way.
    Then a taxi screeched to a halt, blocking Tally’s view; a group of men in matching striped scarves spilled out, chanting some drunken footy theme song. She heard a bottle smash. By the time the men had straggled through the honking traffic and into a kebab shop, Tally was distracted, and the puppy, the guy and the kids had disappeared into the ebb and swirl of bodies.
    [Bloodhound TV, Flinders Lane, Civic Zone: candidate two, interview,