by J. M. Peace
"I can't remember exactly. Nothing important. I think."
"Well, you'd better have a bloody good think." The Colonel's voice was harsh. "Because if she's a journalist, she would have recorded it all. You can bet your bottom dollar that anything interesting you might have said is going to be on the telly."
"Fuck," Mort muttered.
"Yes, well, it was the thought of that which got you in trouble in the first place," the Colonel replied in clipped tones.
70.
John looked up from the computer when Callum came into the office with his ticket book and a grin on his face. He pulled the originals out and handed them to Anita for filing.
"I got a ticket on Hegarty today," he said.
"Roy or Stan?" John asked.
"Stan," Callum replied, with a small fist pump.
"Didn’t you hear the boss when he said to steer clear of them at the moment," John said.
"Didn't he say it was just Roy we had to leave alone? There was a traffic offence being committed, I felt I should take action."
"And just what was that traffic offence?" John asked.
"He was displaying 'L' plates when driving despite not being a learner. Skeeter was in the passenger's seat. He'd been driving, but they'd swapped over and not pulled the 'L' plates down."
"Really?” John said. “Come on, Cal. That's a pretty shit ticket."
"If they want to fuck with us, we’ll fuck with them. It's a valid ticket. I took a photo of the car with the 'L's on it and Hegarty in the driver's seat. They'll have a hard time contesting it."
"Why do you think they'd try to contest it?" John asked.
"Well, they filmed me the whole time," Callum said. "Skeeter pulled out his phone before I even made it to the window. Like I was doing something wrong and they were catching me out. I told them, go your hardest. I'm just doing my job. They have to learn, if you draw attention to yourself, then you get attention."
"Seriously, you'll be doing yourself a favour if you just ignore the whole family for a bit. They're out to make trouble," John advised.
"I'm not scared of them," Callum said. "I'm out of town anyway. I bet they don't even know where I live. Anyone turns up in the middle of the night, my rottweiler will take care of them."
He made a show of flicking his ticket book shut again and tucking it under his arm.
"Alright then, I'll get back out on patrol again. Do my bit to keep the streets safe."
"From dangerous drivers showing 'L' plates?" John asked.
Callum smirked and walked out again. John shook his head and went back to his work.
71.
Krista and Mort sat staring at the television.
"Did you hear Callum issued a ticket to Stan?" Krista said. It was a half-hearted attempt to chip into the ice-cold atmosphere.
"Yep," Mort replied but said nothing further.
Things had been different in the week since that night he'd brought the journalist home. They weren't different for Krista. Mort could bring home anyone he liked. He was single. Although she liked him, they'd only ever been friends since they met. But Mort was acting embarrassed as if she'd caught him out. She wasn't sure if it was because he'd been tricked by a journalist or because he'd brought home a potential one-night stand. She wanted to clear the air, but he seemed to be avoiding her and the right moment never presented itself. They seemed to work on opposite shifts now that they were both operational again. She wondered if Mort had deliberately asked for that. It didn't matter anyway. She was counting down the days until she could pack her bags and turn her back on Tannin Bay.
Krista glanced at the clock on her phone. The Sunday Confidential show was starting in five minutes. They'd seen two ads for the program in the last hour and judging by their content, the bulk of their information was coming direct from the Hegartys.
The mood in the lounge room was grim. Krista considered going across to the station to watch the show in the meal room. Whoever was on duty would surely try to sneak back to the station to watch it. They wouldn’t want her there. It had been the talk of the station that day, everyone speculating on just how poor a light the show would paint them. It was if the wall Mort had built around himself blocked the doorway out too. There was no escape for either one of them.
Her phone pinged. Mort looked across, then immediately away again.
"Watching Sunday Confidential. Call me if you need to talk xx." Ben. Someone she could count on.
"I'll ring you after," she typed back. There was no doubt in her mind that she would need to vent – or cry – afterwards. She wondered if Mort might open up once the segment was over, if the pressure that was building in him might be released once the piece was aired and over and done with.
Even though she was anticipating it, it was still a shock when the Tannin Bay Police Station flashed on the screen. It was weird. It didn't seem like the same place she worked at next door.
There was a voiceover and then Isabella Cronk walked into the frame in front of the station. Mort muttered something evil-sounding when she appeared.
"Tannin Bay seems like a quiet little town, where you'd expect the biggest problem to be whether the fish are biting. But there is a dark underbelly involving police corruption, bullying and possibly murder."
Krista looked across at Mort, her mouth hanging open. This was worse than she'd anticipated. Murder. Holy crap. Mort's face was blank, like he was a bystander at someone else's funeral.
Roy Hegarty's face filled the screen. He was clean shaven and wearing a button down shirt probably the same one he'd worn to Angus's funeral. He spoke about his dear brother, easy-going and loveable, and how his only crime was enjoying a couple of quiet drinks in Tannin Bay.
"Quiet drinks, my arse," Krista hissed at the TV. "Someone should have given them the footage from the pub." Mort sat stock-still like a cardboard cut-out of himself.
Next came some news footage of the Inspector talking about the investigation and the Colonel looking both uncomfortable and untrustworthy in his dress hat and tie.
"The Ethical Standards Command have shut this case. The death has been ruled 'accidental', with no evidence to support any charges. But the question remains - what happened in the single minute, that sixty second vacuum, when Angus was alone with Senior Constable Morten? And why has this officer's version of events never been heard by anyone except a select few other police? The police boys club has bailed this officer out."
Here was the phone footage of Mort at the back of the station which Isabella had filmed when she'd convinced Mort to bring her back to the barracks. It was so easy these days. Reasonable footage could be taken on a camera small enough to pop into a pocket.
"The extent of this double standard – rules for the police and rules for everyone else – is most apparent when drunk officers can wander unchallenged around their own station, doing the exact things that landed Angus Hegarty in the watch house." There was more of Isabella's phone footage, this time of Mort at the back of the station, obviously drunk. He was holding his hands up, palms out, staggering towards the camera, calling out 'stop'.
"As a result of the death of their family member, the entire Hegarty family now find themselves the selective targets of petty police officers."
Here was footage of Callum issuing his perfectly legal but completely shitty ticket.
"This is a valid ticket. I'll see you in court if you like." Callum looked smug and self-righteous.
"Police have declined to be interviewed in relation to these allegations. They have issued a number of official statements since this death occurred. Each one says roughly the same thing. The matter was investigated. There was no evidence to support charges against Senior Constable Morten."
"So the response from police to the sudden death of an unarmed handcuffed man in their back loading dock? Nothing but silence."
That's how the segment ended. With a wide view of Tannin Bay shot at night when nothing was moving and the sound of the crickets was the only thing t
hat could be heard.
"Holy crap!" Krista said, as soon as it faded to black. The sensation of her stomach dropping away and blood rushing to her head made her grip the arm of the sofa. She hadn't expected it to be so skewed. She hadn't known what to expect.
"How bad was that? Do you think people actually watched it? Do you reckon Hegarty actually believed what he was saying himself? Or do you think everybody saw it was a one-sided steaming pile of shit?" The words bubbled up and spilled out of her. She paused taking a deep breath. She looked at Mort. He was still staring at the screen. Some inane commercial blared tinny music. She grabbed the remote, hitting the mute button.
"Are you okay?" she asked, still breathless with the turmoil of it.
Mort looked across at her. "It wasn't as bad as I thought," he said in a monotone.
"What?" Krista was stunned. "Really? So you're okay with..."
Mort turned back to the television, flicking the volume back on.
"Mort?" Krista edged between him and the television. He stared straight through her.
She stood there for a moment, unsure what to do. She was upset but couldn't tell if it was still with Sunday Confidential, or with Mort now.
Krista went to her room and shut the door before calling Ben.
72.
Simon shut his office door in order to make this particular phone call. He didn't want to be disturbed, but he also didn't want anyone from the station listening in, accidentally or otherwise, to any part of it.
"Barry, how's it hanging?"
Barry Schubert had been Simon’s training officer in the eighties when he'd joined. Barry had a similar attitude to him, looking immediately to climb through the ranks, and was now an Assistant Commissioner. He was very well-connected and always helped Simon out where he could.
"Simon, you old fox. What the hell are you doing up there? I saw you on the telly last night."
"Yeah. It's shit," Simon replied.
"It looked pretty bad. But that family looks like a bunch of morons."
"They're a pack of hillbilly spoons. But they're making my life a misery at the moment. Do you know what they did? The nephew of the dead man, he goes to the same school as my daughter, Piper. He sat behind her on the school bus, pulled out a big pair of scissors and hacked off her hair."
"Fuck," Barry growled. "Hope you're going to nail him to the wall for assault."
"It's tricky. My daughter freaked out, Karen freaked out. She packed up the kids and moved back to Brisbane the next day."
"Oh no," Barry replied. "Have you split the sheets?"
"No. The marriage is still fine. Well, it's okay, as good as it could be after what happened. But Karen refuses to live in Tannin Bay any more. Not after what happened. And to be honest with you, I think she might have been looking for a reason to leave. She’s been wanting to go back to Brisbane for a while."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm hoping to get an urgent compassionate transfer back to the city. That's why I thought I might touch base with you."
"Oh..." Barry said.
Simon didn't like the tone of Barry's voice at all. "Or are there any Inspector's spots coming up? I'd have to be a good shot at one of them by now. That's why we moved up here, to try to broaden my experiences. I've certainly done that. Come on, there's got to be something I can do."
There was a moment's silence.
"Barry, I'm begging you. I don't want my family to be split up. I'm not sure my marriage will survive it. And the kids are going through that teenage thing where they ignore me if they can when we're under the same roof, let alone when I’m hundreds of kilometres away."
"Okay. Simon, we've known each other for a long time. I'm going to give it to you straight. And I think you already know what I'm going to tell you but don't want to admit at the moment. So I'll say it out loud for you, as one friend to another."
Simon leant his head on his hand and massaged his temple.
"Mate, it's all gone to shit for you up there. Everyone's talking about that TV program today. Everybody knows your name but for all the wrong reasons. There is no chance in hell you would get an Inspector's spot at the moment. You'll be struggling to get a straight transfer as a senior sergeant while this is all still current. I heard there’s going to be a coronial investigation?”
“Yep,” Simon sighed.
“Okay. Well, no one is going to touch you until you come out the other side of that and you'd better be smelling like roses. The fastest way you could get a transfer to Brisbane is probably to try winning a sergeant's spot on merit."
"A sergeant's spot?" Simon was a offended that he'd even suggest a demotion.
"Look, I know. It's a poor solution. But if you win a spot and you yourself are not directly being investigated, they may consider it. You could review it if they didn't, go through the process. I'm pretty sure I saw a sergeant's spot advertised at Indooroopilly not that long ago. That's close to your house here, isn't it? I know it's step backwards, but you'd be back in Brisbane with your family."
"You're killing me, Barry," Simon replied.
"Look, I'll make a couple of calls. I'll do what I can. But you need to work like buggery to get that mess all cleared up. You could still turn it to your advantage."
Simon wanted to believe him but reality sat like a hot rock in his stomach. A sergeant's spot. Fuck. He'd be a laughing stock.
73.
Roy Hegarty couldn't sit still. He paced up and down the patio at the back of his house. Every time he and Stan got to talking about Angus and the police, he wound right back up again. It made him wild. The injustice, the frustration, the feeling of beating your head against a brick wall. Everything they had tried so far had failed. Failed to bring them that closure, of knowing Angus's death wasn't meaningless.
"That story on the telly has stirred things up," Stan said. "There's a new investigation now. The coroner's in charge now."
"Fucken investigation," Roy said, kicking at an empty beer can on the ground. "What good's it going to do. It'll be the same as the last investigation. Even if it's the coroner and not the cops investigating, they're all the same. They're all government puppets. The bottom line is, the government does not want their police to look bad. They're all on the same page. 'We can't prove anything', they'll say. Doesn't matter what everyone thinks, what everyone knows. You've got to prove it."
Stan grunted. "People have seen that Sunday Confidential story though. People know now that it's all bullshit, that the coppers are just making things up to suit themselves."
"Yeah, they did a good job. But has it changed anything for Angus? No. It hasn't. We're still sitting here talking about what we can do, talking about how to get justice."
"We've done everything we can, Roy," Stan said.
"There's got to be something else. Every time I think about Angus, I feel sick, like I've failed him."
Roy sat down heavily on an old couch opposite Stan. He rolled a smoke without even really looking at it and lit it up. One of the dogs wandered across and nudged his hand with its muzzle. Roy obliged, riffling the fur between its ears.
"There's got to be something else," he said again.
Stan rolled and lit a smoke as well. Roy leaned back in the chair and folded his hands behind his head. Several minutes passed, only puffs of smoke passing between the two men.
"You know what?" Roy said, leaning forward, his voice low and sharp. "Fuck 'em. We'll play them at their own game."
"What do you mean?" Stan asked.
"They murdered our brother and got away with it. We should use the same tactic."
74.
"Come home," Ben pleaded. "Just pack up and come home.
Krista sniffled softly down the telephone. She didn't know how busy Ben was at work but he always made time to talk to her. Always. She must have caught him at a bad time sometimes but he never said anything. Just talked to her when she needed to talk. But there was a standard theme to these calls.
"Go out on
stress leave until those three months are up. Any doctor would write you up a medical certificate when you tell them everything's that happened. Come here. We'll find you doctor here. Just leave. We'll sort it out from here."
She'd just told Ben about the feeling of doom she had every time she slipped into her uniform. She had realised that as bad as what happened the night of Hegarty's death was, it still was far from being the worst that could happen to her as a police officer.
"I'm scared for you," Ben said. "You're going to end up with depression or something. You need to be with people who care about you. Not these strangers ignoring you."
Krista drew a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Ben. I'm sorry for burdening you with this. It'll be alright. It's not that long."
"I'm always here for you," Ben said and he'd certainly shown that he was. "You've always got a home here. You've always got a job here. It won't be like it was before. I've learnt. I respect you. I won't try to steamroll you. I'm just really worried for you right now."
Krista wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "It's okay. I'm okay. I just needed to talk to someone."
"Don't stay there just for the sake of stubbornness," Ben said. "You don't need to prove anything. You're not gaining anything by staying. You're just punishing yourself. After everything that's happened, it's understandable. It's not a failure or defeat. You gave it a good go. You don't need to torture yourself for these last few weeks in a job you don't want to do."
"I thought it would get better, that I could hang in there for a few weeks," Krista said. "I thought it would all blow over and things will get back to normal."
"You don't even know what normal is up there," Ben said. "You hadn't even been there a week when it all happened. You never should have gone there in the first place."
There. He'd said it out loud. But this time Krista knew he was right. She had no place in Tannin Bay. She had no business being a cop.