by J. M. Peace
Krista agreed completely with Mort. Spitting was vile. That's why it was considered a serious assault. But it was also the easiest thing in the world for some grub to do, spit something nasty in your face. It was enough to put the most mild-mannered copper in a bad mood. She felt vaguely guilty for being grateful it hadn't been her. She should try to get as much done as possible before he came back out, make him glad he was working with her. Hell, she was a copper, not just a trainee. Mort shouldn't have to hold her hand through everything.
She returned to the car, and grabbed the man's wallet and phone from where Mort had dropped them in the centre console. She opened the wallet and looked at the man's licence. Angus Melvin Hegarty, 19/5/1956. She wondered what had happened in his life that he was still getting arrested for spitting at coppers past the age of sixty.
She pulled out the watch house keys where she had tucked them in her belt. She had all the details she needed in order to lodge him properly.
The smell of the vomit was still getting to her. Even with it hosed down, the acid tang of it still lingered on the back of her tongue, as if she'd been the one throwing up.
She entered the watch house and went behind the charge desk. There was a neat row of tubs on a shelf, with a piece of laminate stuck to the front. She put the man's wallet and phone into a tub, wrote his surname on the laminate panel and also on the large whiteboard on the wall.
She paused, thinking back to her week in the city watch house. Okay, she needed to do the computer indexes now. She could do that in the station and keep an ear on the radio too.
She hung the keys back up on their designated hook inside the station. There was a large monitor mounted on the wall above the sergeants' desk. There hadn't been anyone lodged in the watch house so far during her shifts. She pushed the 'on' button at the corner of the screen, the monitor buzzed and the picture came up. It was divided into four sections. There was a camera at the charge desk and in each of the three cells. The first cell was the top right picture.
Krista saw the man had not moved at all. It gave her an unsettled feeling. She peered closer at the screen. The man was still kneeling on the floor, the upper part of his body leaning on the bed. Has arms dangled down either side of him. He must have passed out cold to be still kneeling on the cold concrete floor. She peered closer. Something wasn't right. Should she get Mort? How much longer would he take? Would he think she was fussing too much? He was just a drunk.
Again, she reminded herself – she was a copper. She could make her own decisions. She needed to stop acting like a recruit.
She grabbed the keys off the hook again and strode out to the watch house. She went through two doors before pausing at the door to cell number one.
She looked in through the small window in the metal door.
"Angus!"
There was no response. He was mostly face down on the vinyl mattress. Was he even getting enough air like that? Had he choked on a bit of vomit? They'd just taken off the cuffs and left. The angles of his body against the bed bothered her. There were splatters of something dark and wet on the mattress. She took her capsicum spray out of its pouch. Maybe he was playing possum, waiting for someone to check on him so he could jump up and go another round. But the feeling that something was wrong sat like a cold lumpy rock in her stomach.
She unlocked the door to the cell, pushed it cautiously open. She turned the key in the open door, clicking it open and shut a couple of times to see if the man would stir at this sound.
"Angus?" she called. Still nothing.
She walked across to the bed, approaching him from the side. She stopped and took a quick step backwards. She could see one of his eyes was open. She looked for movement in his torso as he breathed in and out. Nothing. He was motionless. He looked dead.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Angus!” She gave his shoulder a push.
The man flopped off the mattress and onto the floor. Like the man in the car yesterday, his eyes were open and vacant, staring at nothing.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Krista placed her fingers against the side of the man's neck, pressing hard, looking for a pulse. She could only feel her own blood thundering through his head. She'd done a First Aid course before she had entered the academy. What now? CPR? She had a mental flash of the vomit spewing out of the man. Call an ambulance? Get Mort? Get the boss? She made a futile examination of the man's neck for a pulse.
"Mort!" She yelled as loudly as she could. She pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket, keyed in triple 000.
"Mort!" she screamed. "Boss! Help!"
The number connected. She gave brief instructions to the operator for an ambulance to Tannin Bay watch house. Were the ambulance stationed locally? How long would she have to wait?
"Mort!" she yelled again, and her voice sounded strange to her.
She took a deep breath, tried to remember the CPR drills from the classes she'd been to. She rolled the man onto his side into the recovery position, though it was clear he wasn't recovering, squeezed his hand, "can you hear me?" The pointlessness of this, the seconds ticking away, increased her panic.
She ran out to the charge counter, pulled the first aid kit out, emptied it onto the floor. She found what he was looking for. A small piece of plastic containing a valve. A pair of gloves. As she ran back to the cell, she heard footsteps behind him. The Colonel in a dressing gown.
"Thank god you're here," Krista gasped. She gestured to the man on the floor. "He's not breathing."
"OK, Krista," the Colonel said. If he was alarmed, he didn't show it. "Have you called the ambulance?" He knelt on the floor, reached across repeating Krista's actions prodding the man's neck.
Krista nodded, pulling on the gloves. She stuck her finger in the man's mouth to clear his airway. Her finger scraped against his teeth and his tongue felt thick and shapeless. Not the same as doing it on the plastic CPR dummy.
She rolled him onto his back and gave the boss a look of that was equal parts fear and horror.
"I'll do the compressions, you do the breaths," the Colonel instructed. Krista nodded. She unfolded the plastic face shield, noticing how much she was shaking as she laid it over the man's face so the valve lined up with his mouth. The boss measured halfway along the man's sternum, placed one hand on top of the other, and with straight arms, started compressing the man's chest.
She remembered it was thirty compressions to two breaths. It had changed recently.
The Colonel counted to fifteen, then looked at her.
"Two breaths, Krista!"
"No. Boss, it's thirty compressions now," she said, shakily.
"Fifteen and two," he snapped. "Do the breaths!"
She leant over, couldn't help but meet the man's staring eyes right until she was close enough to blow into his mouth.
The boss started the compressions again. Fifteen. Two breaths.
Krista was so focussed on what he was doing, that she didn't hear Mort until he was right behind her.
"Fuck! What can I do?" he said, his voice cracking on the last word.
The Colonel tipped his head slightly while he was still pumping on the man's chest.
"I can hear the sirens. Show the ambos where to come."
Mort rushed out again. Krista and the Colonel went through one more cycle before the ambulance officers bustled in and took over with their equipment.
Krista backed out of the cell to where Mort was standing. Her fear was reflected in his eyes.
"Holy fuck," Krista breathed. She was too scared to cry. All she wanted to do was run out of the watch house, and back to the barracks until her shaking had subsided. But the boss was still in the cell, offering assistance to the ambos and it would be unacceptable to disappear now.
The frenzy of activity subsided as the man was loaded into the ambulance and it drove away. They didn't bother using the sirens.
19.
"Who's got the keys to the watch house?"
Mort and Krista
were standing in the breezeway between the station and the watch house when the Colonel walked out.
"Me," Krista said, grabbing at her belt where she'd tucked the keys.
Although his voice was firm, The Colonel looked dishevelled and out of place in his dressing gown, his grey hair sticking up on one side. Krista averted her eyes as he adjusted the front of his dressing gown and she realised he slept in the nude.
He held his hand out for the keys and locked the door.
"This is a crime scene now," he announced. “Both of you go over to the dayroom and wait for me there while I put some clothes on."
They walked into the station. Mort plonked himself into a chair, leaning forward to rest his face in his hands.
Krista went to sit down but found she couldn't, the adrenaline still running through her blood. She walked into the ladies, scrubbed her hands and forearms with soap. She grabbed a handful of paper towels, drying her hands completely. She leant forward looked at herself in the mirror. There was as smudge of something dark on her face. She smacked her hand onto the button of the soap dispenser, two, three, four times, lathering up and holding her breath to scrub her face. Water, more paper towels. Would they let her go for a shower? She was too scared to ask. She looked at herself in the mirror again. The front of her shirt was wet from all the splashing around. A small spot of red formed on her forehead. She had scrubbed a spot raw. But at least it was her own blood. She dabbed at the spot with a paper towel, until it came away clean and dry. The she went back out to Mort. He was sitting exactly as she had left him, head in hands.
"He’s dead, isn’t he?" she asked.
"It's a death in custody," Mort answered without lifting his head, as if that explained everything.
"Am I in trouble?" Krista whispered.
Mort looked up quickly. "No. But a death in custody is a huge event. Everything gets investigated. Brace yourself for a shit-storm. ESC will turn up."
Ethical Standards Command were the coppers who investigated coppers. Krista had never had anything to do with them, but their reputation preceded them. She'd heard them referred to as the 'toe cutters'. She started thinking of all the things she'd done poorly or even wrong since they first pulled up outside the Cool Mule.
"I should have run after that bloke Angus was fighting with," Krista said. "Do you think he king hit Angus or something? Or did Angus have a heart attack from the fight?"
Mort shrugged with a sigh. "We don't know how long they were fighting before we turned up. He's an old drunk. He might have some sort of medical problem. He couldn't even stand up by himself when I got him out of the pod."
Krista swallowed hard. "Fuck. He might already have been dying when we put him into the watch house."
Mort put his face back in his hands. Krista kept pacing back and forth. A hundred questions tumbled through her brain and some of them escaped from her mouth.
"Did you recognise the other bloke?" she asked Mort.
"The guy fighting with Angus? Nope. Don't think I've ever seen him."
"They'll have to find him. Shit, I'm not even sure I can describe him very well. I was recording though," she said. "You were too, weren't you?"
He nodded, pressing his fingers against the box part of the recorder on his tac vest.
"We should have asked him all those health questions before lodging him," she said. "Shouldn't we?" She looked at Mort, still with his head in his hands. It dawned on her. "Not 'we'. 'I'. I should have asked him the questions. I was the watch house keeper, wasn't I?"
Mort looked up now, and met her eyes with a fierce gaze.
"Listen," he said firmly, as if telling off a child. "What you did was completely reasonable in the circumstances. We put him in the watch house so I could get cleaned up. You were waiting for me to help lodge him properly because you'd never been in our watch house before and you were unsure of the procedure. He had been violent and it was a safety consideration not to approach him by yourself. Okay?"
She nodded.
"Now, when it starts raining inspectors here, and they interview you, make sure you remember to say all of that."
There was an intensity about him that alarmed her.
She turned abruptly. "Do you want a coffee?" she called over her shoulder by way of explanation as she headed up the hall.
"Nup," Mort called back.
Krista went to the kitchen. She leant against the sink, breathing heavily. When she moved, her actions were slow and mechanical. Take the kettle. Empty it. Refill it. Find a clean cup. Coffee, sugar, milk in that order. The station felt vast and empty, the clink of the spoon against the cup like a bell tolling as it echoed around the room. The kettle was just whistling when she heard the back door open. The footsteps went from the back door to the dayroom.
"Where the hell's Krista?" The Colonel's voice sounded alarmed.
Krista called from the kitchen, answering his question with a new question. "Do you want a coffee, Senior?"
"Oh, there you are," the Colonel called back, his voice still gruff but without the sharp edge. "Yep, that would be great. Black please."
Krista found another cup. She wasn't sure what would happen next. She’d never met anyone who had been involved in a death in custody? And here she was, in the middle of it all. She fought to control her breathing.
She under-filled both cups, to try to reduce the spillage as she carried them into the dayroom. Her hands hadn't stopped shaking. She handed the Colonel his cup. He was in his uniform, his hair wet from where he'd tried to flatten it down. Mort looked insignificant with the Colonel standing over him.
Krista remained standing, nursing her cuppa until the Colonel looked at her and pointed to a seat.
"Now, what the hell happened? How'd that man die in my watch house?" he asked.
Krista looked at Mort for help.
"There was a fight at the pub." Mort's voice sounded like it was coming from far away. "Angus was fighting some young bloke I didn't recognise. They were on the ground rolling around when we got there. When I went in to split them up, Angus spat in my face and the young bloke took off. Angus was really drunk, and threw up on me at the back of the station. I went to the barracks to shower and get a clean uniform. Krista started lodging him."
Krista spoke up now. "When I turned the monitors on..." She pointed to them. They were still on. A smudge on the floor of cell one was the only sign that anyone had been in there at all. "... I saw Angus hadn't moved. The way he was laying looked odd. I just had a feeling something was wrong. When I nudged him, he just flopped onto the floor. I saw his eyes were open. They looked... dead." The word caught in her throat. "I rang the ambos and started yelling."
The first time she had been in a fight. The first time she had been watch house keeper. And a man was dead. And it was her fault.
"I've got some calls to make," the Colonel said in clipped tones. "I'll have to get the Inspector out of bed. ESC will be alerted. I'll have to get another crew to cover the rest of your shift. You two better make yourselves comfortable, you’re not going anywhere. It's going to be a long night."
20.
Simon felt scrambled as he sat in his office, making phone calls. He kept a running sheet in front of him, making notes of the calls he had made, ticking off each of the boxes. He had a nagging feeling that he had forgotten something, so kept ploughing through his list, waiting for the feeling to subside.
John and Piero were the two sergeants he called out of bed to help him. John had thirty odd years in the job, a career cop who could always be relied upon and always went by the book. Piero was young to be a sergeant and when Simon first met him, he'd taken him to be a bit of a clown. But behind the jokes and loud laugh was a very switched-on officer.
They were both there and kitted up with fifteen minutes. That was the great thing about working in a small town, everyone pretty much lived close by. They asked very few questions and headed out to take over the night shift.
The district inspector took longer to get t
here. It was about 4am before Owen Howard banged on the front door. He and Simon saw each other on a semi-regular basis at district meetings and Simon blamed the time of morning for Owen’s less than friendly greeting. He brought him through to the kitchen.
Mort was sitting staring right through a newspaper opened in front of him. Krista had her eyes shut, head leaning against her hand, propped up on her elbow.
The inspector stopped suddenly.
"These are the two officers involved?" he asked.
Both Mort and Krista sat up at the sound of his voice.
"Hello Inspector," Mort said with a raspy voice.
"Hello Mort. Are you in the thick of things here?"
"Yes, sir."
"And this was your partner?" he asked, gesturing to Krista. She was blinking quickly.
"Yes, sir. This is Krista Danaher. She’s new here."
The inspector turned to Simon. "Why are they sitting together? You should know better than that. Too late now but separate them anyway. They’re not to speak to one another until they’ve been interviewed."
"Oh. Yes. Of course." Damn it, Simon thought. "Mort, into the interview room."
Mort obliged wordlessly, not even bothering to take his cuppa with him.
The inspector continued up to Simon's office, with Simon hurrying to keep up with him. He hated this feeling, that the inspector was treating him like he a subordinate who didn’t know what he was doing. So, once in his office, Simon was eager to show the inspector his running sheet and his progress so far.
The Inspector regarded him over the top of his reading glasses.
"Have you done the death knock?" he asked.
There it was. The thing which hadn't made it onto his list. He wasn't sure if a part of his brain had deliberately forgotten it. It was going to be a grim job. So did he admit he had forgotten it, or try to come up with some plausible excuse on the fly?
"No, I haven't had a chance..."
"It's a job you need to do," the Inspector cut in over him. "You can't delegate that."