‘Another fine performance, Stevie, thanks for coming.’ Stevie and Donna made their way down the tiled corridor to the staffroom.
‘No worries, all part of the service; I think the message is getting across don’t you? It would be better if we could get more parents involved. I want to talk about the dangers of kids having web cams in their rooms. There are things the parents need to know that aren’t suitable for the kids to hear.’
‘I put a note in last week’s newsletter for the parents’ night you proposed, but so far we’ve only had three responses.’
Stevie sighed. What was it with these people? Child molestation directly resulting from Internet contact was rising daily, but it was a problem many parents seemed happy to ignore. Were they just ignorant of the dangers, or too busy with their own lives? It’s never going to happen to any of my children, she’d heard over and over again. No wonder she wrapped her own child in cotton wool.
In the staffroom Stevie settled into Donna’s cubicle with its window onto the oval. She had twenty minutes to relax before picking up six year-old Izzy from the school car park—luxury. She leant back in the chair and brushed her fingers across the bandaid on her cheek, teasing the minor wound underneath. The itch was a satisfying reminder of Monday’s successful apprehension of Robert Mason.
Donna came in with two mugs of coffee. ‘The kids loved your story about catching that guy in the park,’ she said. ‘One more chalked up to the good guys. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.’
Stevie pulled a face and dived into her bag. ‘Probably not. From what we can tell so far, the attempted abduction of Angel12 was a first offence—he has no prior convictions of interfering with children. We found kiddie porn on his hard drive and that’s about it. We’ll be lucky if he does two years.’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘This is between us, all right? I shouldn’t be telling you this sort of thing, but hey, there’s no names ... Can I smoke in here?’
‘No, but I won’t tell if you don’t.’ Donna slid the window open and the sweet fragrance of the newly mown oval wafted in.
Stevie blew out an angry jet of smoke.
‘It must be frustrating for you,’ Donna sympathised.
Stevie tried to shrug it off. ‘Most police work is frustrating, one way or another, whether it’s directing traffic or a cold case murder investigation.’
‘I imagine dinner conversations at your place must be quite lively at times.’
‘They can be,’ she said. ‘But the good thing about not officially living together is that if one of us is in a foul mood or pissed off, we simply stay out of the other’s way. Monty stays in his flat and I wall myself up with Izzy at my place until we feel like talking again.’
The staffroom door opened. ‘Quick, put it out,’ Donna said like a naughty schoolgirl. The half smoked cigarette plopped with a brief fizz into Stevie’s coffee as Donna went and dealt with the person at the door.
Stevie twisted the ring on her finger as she waited for Donna to return. Monty was cooking at his place tonight: curry, she suspected. His taste for spicy foods, his rust red hair and skin that turned fire engine red with ten minutes of full sun—everything about Monty McGuire radiated heat. It was no wonder he lived near the sea. With all the stresses of his heavy workload lately, she thought the only thing that saved him from spontaneously combusting was the chance of a quick dip in the Indian Ocean.
She found herself worrying for Monty. The pressures of the job had been weighing him down more than usual and he’d been having trouble sleeping. He said she wouldn’t be who she was if she wasn’t worrying about something or other. If it wasn’t Monty it was Izzy, and if she wasn’t worrying about their daughter, it was someone else’s child. Her mother always claimed that worry and guilt were a woman’s lot. Reluctant as she was to pay much heed to her mother’s pearls of wisdom, she had to concede that on this occasion, Dot was probably right.
Donna’s voice brought her back. ‘Sorry, that’s the problem with being new to the job—so many files to catch up on, and my predecessor was hardly an organised type.’ Donna paused. ‘I suppose you’ll have to leave to pick up Izzy. You’re lucky your hours are flexible enough to accommodate school pick-ups.’
‘Not always, sometimes Monty picks her up, often my mother—’ This train of thought lead to another. Now she remembered where she’d seen the girl with the messy dark hair.
‘What was the name of the girl sitting in the front row, the one asking the sensible questions?’
‘Emma Breightling, why?’
‘I’m sure I’ve seen her before; I think she baby-sits for one of my neighbours. My mother’s away on holiday, Monty’s stretched thin and I’m desperate for someone as back up for after-school care. What’s she like, is she old enough do you think?’
‘Some thirteen year olds wouldn’t be, but I don’t think Emma would give you cause to worry. As you’ve seen for yourself she’s very mature for her age, comes from a good home, her father’s a doctor, her mother’s some kind of professional. Other than that I don’t know much about her, which is good, really.’ Donna patted the pile of files on her desk, ‘I only get to know the problem kids.’
4
EXCERPT FROM CHAT TRANSCRIPT 150107
DANTHEMAN: tell me what u look like
BETTYBO: nooooooooo!
DANTHEMAN: go on
BETTYBO: ule think Im ugle
DANTHEMAN: no I won’t. u sound sooooo cute!
BETTYBO: I hav shot hair and im fat
DANTHEMAN: still sound cute to me!
Stevie carefully prised the fat from the chunk of curried meat and pushed it to the side of her plate. Her father used to say she had the metabolism of a greyhound, that the calories were burned up by nervous energy alone despite the arduous outdoor activities of her youth. But time had proved him wrong. The bull riding, rock climbing and orienteering had long given way to a demanding career and motherhood. The nervous energy was still there, but no longer seemed to have the same effect upon her body. If her metabolism continued to slow at this rate she thought, remembering the struggle to do up the button of her jeans that morning, the greyhound might soon be turning into a golden lab.
She finished a second glass of wine.
Then ate the scraps of fat from her plate.
She thought about telling Monty about Tash’s behaviour in the park, that she was worried her friend might be cracking up, but changed her mind. He was too high-ranking—his code of ethics wouldn’t let the matter slide. Life would be a lot easier if one of them worked as a pen pusher for the local council, she thought with a sigh, leaning back in her chair to look at him.
The pale face and violet circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and the crinkles around his eyes had more recently been used for frowns, not laughter. This evening he’d been unusually quiet as if he too was absorbed by his own thoughts. As head of the Serious Crime Squad he was in charge of several ongoing investigations. The case that was losing him the most sleep recently was the discovery of a body some three weeks ago in the Swan River.
‘How’s the floater going?’ Stevie asked him.
Monty put his fork down and pushed away his plate. ‘He’s Asian, had a couple of Triad-type tattoos on his arms. That’s about all we know so far.’