Chain of Evidence

18

Why do I do it to myself? wondered Pam Murphy late that afternoon.

Tests, exams and formal challenges of any kind always made her anxious. So why had she applied to do this course?

She’d been up since 5 am, when she’d showered, had breakfast, packed, and driven to the training facility, a converted youth camp in the foothills outside Melbourne. Prefabricated huts, a gym, swimming pool, running track, classrooms, dining hall and firing range. The morning had been aimed at seeing how fit they were. Pam, placed in the top five of her last three triathlons, had made it through without raising a sweat. The afternoon had involved a mock conflict-resolution scenario, which she’d stuffed up. This evening there would be a seminar. All in all, a testing regime of physical and intellectual activities aimed at sorting the wheat from the chaff. Two candidates had dropped out already.

Pam groaned, feeling stiff and sore. She was lying on a hard, monastic bed in a narrow room with flimsy walls. A guy in each of the adjacent rooms, and she wouldn’t mind betting that both were snorers. Not many female candidates.

The second week might be better. They would attend further courses at the police academy in Glen Waverley, followed by a final week at Command Headquarters in the city. There had been other two-, three- and four-week courses over the past year, and this was the last round. If she graduated she’d be entitled to apply for detective positions.

If she graduated.

She lay there, needing a shower but too sore and tired to move, and thought about the pressures faced by your average cop, wondering why she stuck it out. Tests, exams, even promotions and transfers-all stress inducing. Malicious civilian complaints, which always had to be investigated and blotted your record. Giving court evidence, especially being cross-examined by snide, flash defence barristers.

And the day-to-day aggravations. Two weekends ago she and John Tankard had picked up a drunken thirteen-year-old girl at three in the morning, driven her home, and been screamed at by the parents for ‘interfering’ in the family’s affairs. This year alone she’d attended five fatalities on the freeway-alcohol, drugs and speeding. Earlier in the year she’d arrested three teenagers from the Seaview Park estate who’d gone out armed with knives and machetes-’Just in case we get attacked by the Jarretts.’ A month before that she’d helped social workers remove three children aged under ten from a house in Seaview Park, the children starving and showing signs of years of abuse. They’d kicked and screamed: ‘I want my mum, I want my dad.’

Her bedside alarm sounded. She had an hour free to study before dinner and the evening seminar. Stretching, groaning, she told herself to see the following days as an opportunity to learn rather than be found wanting for what she didn’t know or couldn’t achieve. She took her little transistor radio with her into the shower, turned it to the 6 pm news.

The water gushed, drowning out the first item.

John Tankard was feeling a lot better that Monday. Good sleep last night, new car, Pam Murphy not around to bust his chops, an early finish time. He still burned inside, reliving that night on the back road behind the estate, but sensed that Kellock and van Alphen had a plan in mind.

He finished work at 3 pm, then shot up to Berwick in time to pick his little sister up from school. Nat was full of awe, running her hand over the duco of his new car. ‘Cool,’ she said. She was skinny where he was fat, olive-skinned where he was fair, quick and darting where he was slow. He hated to think of strangers laying their hands on her.

He took her for a spin. She bubbled over, madly waving at her mates. He felt protective. He felt helpless. How could you have sex with a kid? How sick was that?

On the way back he sent a text message to the woman he knew only as Terri, confirming drinks in the Chaos Bar at 6 pm. He’d met her through an on-line dating service. She sounded hot in her e-mails and text messages, her voice over the phone low, pleasantly husky. She’d sent photos: dark hair, humorous eyes, perhaps a tad round-faced but that often spelt big tits. In just a couple of hours, his laughing gear around a glass of ale, he’d know one way or the other.

You could get lucky and score on a first date. You were desperate, the chick was desperate (that’s why you were using a dating service, right?), so hitting the mattress was the logical outcome. But Tank had a secret weapon. He’d read on the Internet how attraction and desire boiled down to the odours released by the body. A bloke subconsciously picks up the scent when a woman is ready to mate. Women are turned on by something virile in a guy’s perspiration. Testosterone? Pheromones? Something like that. Or maybe he’d misunderstood the whole thing, the technical side of it, the long words.

Still, he spent late afternoon in the gym and went straight to the Chaos Bar without showering, a touch of healthy, moist heat in his face, hair and neck. Did the women turn their heads as he passed among them? Tank strode tall, that Monday afternoon at one minute to six. Chicks gasping for it, left, right and centre, nurses, receptionists, even a couple of young lawyers he’d seen around the magistrates’ court.

To the table in the corner, where Terri waited, a pretty face, yeah, but short, tubby, her butt overflowing the chair. Before he could stop himself, the words popped into his head and straight out of his mouth: ‘Looks-wise, you haven’t been exactly honest with me, have you?’

She flushed. They stared at each other. Suddenly she recoiled. ‘Body odour-wise, you really stink.’

She got up and left.

Well, shit.

He watched her go, his eyes drawn to the street beyond the smoky glass, where his fire-engine-red Mazda was being ticketed by a parking inspector.

Double shit.

His mobile rang. It was the producer of ‘Evening Update’. ‘I need all you can give me on Katie Blasko.’

‘I’ve already given you everything.’

‘Where she was found, who by, was she abused,’ the producer said.

‘Huh?’

Tank’s gaze went to the wide-screen TV on the wall. Later you got music clips-Kylie Minogue’s lovely arse, Beyonce’s crotch-but right now it was the six o’clock news, live feed coming in, Waterloo in the background, a reporter in the foreground, the familiar shot of Katie Blasko tucked into the top corner of the screen.

Alive? Dead? He strained to hear.