Snapshot

6

Scobie Sutton stifled a yawn; he was sitting in the Frankston Magistrates’ Court, a thin man with the look of a mournful preacher. Heather Cobb was appearing this morning on drugs charges and Scobie, who’d arrested her, was there to ensure that she wouldn’t go to jail.

It had started two weeks ago, when he’d been called to a Waterloo primary school. At show-and-tell that morning Sherry Cobb, barely nine years old, had presented the class with a marijuana plant in a plastic pot. Scobie’s interview with the child, and subsequent visit to her home, had uncovered a typical story of poverty, addiction and neglect. There were five children in the Cobb family, ranging in age from three to eighteen; father in jail; mother an alcoholic. They lived in a two-bedroom weatherboard shack between the railway line and a timber yard.

Now, in the Frankston Magistrates’ Court, Scobie glanced at Natalie Cobb. She was the eighteen-year-old, in Year 12, wagging school today to provide moral support for her mother. When he’d first gone to question Heather Cobb, Natalie had been there, dressed in a tracksuit and slumped in front of the TV. She was a fine looking young woman, but it was two o’clock in the afternoon and she should have been at school. Today she looked not eighteen but twenty-eight, and as poised-in her best clothes, not her school uniform-as any of the young female lawyers you saw around the Magistrates’ Court. Natalie smiled at her mother, then gave Scobie a complicated look.

Complicated girl, Scobie thought.

The cases droned by, and then it was Heather’s turn. As expected, the magistrate let her off with a caution. ‘While I accept that you didn’t grow the plant, Mrs Cobb, you nevertheless allowed your premises to be used for the cultivation of marijuana.’

Heather, dressed in a thin summer dress and ragged parka, glanced worriedly at Scobie through pouchy eyes. He smiled at her, nodded, and mouthed the word sorry to her across the courtroom.

Heather brightened, brushed a greasy comma of hair away from her eyes, and looked confidently at the magistrate. She told him how sorry she was, it would never happen again, the man who’d grown the plants was a bully and she’d been scared of him, but he was in prison in Brisbane now, and no way was she going to let him back into her life.

She means it, too, Scobie thought.

Outside afterwards, Heather Cobb trembled as her tensions eased. ‘Mr Sutton, I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘That’s okay,’ Scobie said. ‘It was a good result.’

‘The magistrate listened to your recommendations,’ Natalie said. ‘You swung it for us. Thanks,’ she said, and pecked him on the cheek.

He blushed. ‘My wife knows you. The youth club on the estate?’

Natalie looked guarded. ‘Mrs Sutton, the social worker? She’s your wife?’

Damn, Scobie thought. I should have kept my big trap shut. If Natalie refuses to work with Beth as a result, I’ll have set back community relations and all of my wife’s good work.

A small van pulled into the kerb, the driver tooting. ‘Got to go,’ Natalie said. ‘See ya, Mr Sutton. See ya, Mum.’

‘Boyfriend,’ Heather Cobb said, watching the van peel away.

Somehow Scobie didn’t think the boyfriend was taking Natalie back to school. His mobile rang. It was Ellen Destry. ‘You finished?’

‘Yes.’

‘I need you back here,’ she said, but didn’t explain.

‘Come on,’ he said to Heather, ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’