The Delta Chain

by Ian Edward

  ‘Yeahhhh!’ they shouted back in unison.

  Adam began to move about in front of them, dribbling his ball back and forth. ‘Anyone not paying attention or mucking about will be out of the team. Got that? Out. I’m not here to waste my time. You guys have some talent but you have a long, long way to go. And you're up against some harsh competition in this division. Some of the teams have been together two or three years and they're good.’

  ‘We can beat ‘em,’ said Joey Cail. He was the curly-haired boy whom Adam had noted earlier was particularly clumsy with the ball.

  ‘No you can’t. Not yet. But if you listen hard, train hard, work hard then there's no reason you can't go all the way to the grand final. Got that?’

  Nods and grunts in reply.

  ‘First up we’re going to practice our ball handling skills. To the far side of the court and back again, dribbling all the way. Let’s go.’

  They were halfway across, following Adam’s lead, when the stadium supervisor came running over. ‘Adam. Phone call,’ said Artie Gold. Artie was like an uncle to anyone who'd ever played the game in his district.

  ‘Can you take a message, Artie?’ Adam called back.

  ‘It's the station dispatcher. Said it’s urgent.’

  Damn, thought Adam. He told the boys to continue the practice run four more times, then to take a short break. He headed over to the stadium office.

  By the time Artie Gold returned to his office, Adam was slamming the receiver back onto its hook. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Adam said, ‘I've got no right slamming down your phone.’

  ‘What is it, Adam?’

  ‘A drowning.’

  Artie's hand came to rest on his young friend’s shoulder. ‘Stay calm, I know it’s frustrating. I'll take over this session for you. The lads will be fine.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Go do your job. The boys won’t mind. They like the fact their coach is a police detective. They think it's cool.’ Artie had once quipped that with his lanky frame and well-set features, Adam could have passed as a poster boy for the professional leagues.

  ‘They think it's all so easy when they're fourteen,’ Adam said, heading for the door.

  Artie smiled after him. ‘So did you, Adam. I remember it well - so did you.’

  The high beam from the patrol car spread its light across the strip of beach where Costas had discovered the corpse. The coroner was already there with the two police constables who'd been first officers on the scene.

  Adam parked his Magna on the bluff beside the patrol car and the coroner’s van. He walked briskly down to the others on the beach. The wind was strong and the rain, heavy just minutes before, had slowed to a steady drizzle.

  ‘Not the best night to be called out to the beach,’ said Constable John Harrison, glancing up at Adam as he packed up the photographic gear. ‘That's the trouble with corpses, they’ve got lousy timing.’

  Adam wasn’t in the mood for their usual banter. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Female. Late teens,’ said Harrison, who’d shown a keen interest in advancing to detective work. ‘I get the impression Markham thinks there may be more to this than just a drowning.’

  Adam had known the coroner, Brian Markham, for many years. Fiftyish, with silver-streaked hair and broad shoulders, he was a policeman who’d always struck Adam as having a military air about him. Adam approached him. ‘Suspicious?’

  Markham had been squatting beside the body, water lapping at his feet, the constant roar of the waves filling his ears. ‘Can’t be certain ‘til I'm back at the lab, but this young woman has multiple bruising on the knuckles of her hands and puncture marks to the veins on both arms. It’s possible there's more to this than an innocent drowning accident.’

  ‘If that’s the case then it’s not much of a crime scene.’ It was a deliberate understatement from Adam.

  ‘No.’ Markham straightened up, removing rubber gloves, and he cocked his head toward Harrison. ‘Nothing more I can ascertain here, constable. Let’s get this one to the morgue.’

  The scene of a crime - or a suspected crime - was the lynchpin of most successful investigations. It was where bloodstains, hair and clothing fibres and other trace elements were collected for analysis. It was always a disadvantage if a body was discovered after it had lain outdoors for more than a few hours, particularly in adverse weather conditions. Adam knew the chance of finding those trace elements was reduced. In this case - a body washed from the ocean in a storm - there was no chance.

  ‘Don't like the look of this,’ Markham said to Adam as the corpse was zipped into a body bag. ‘Naked body. No rings or earrings. It's as though the girl, or someone connected with her, didn’t want us to have any means of I.D. I'd say she’s been in the water around twenty four hours, but of course I'll know more after the autopsy. Any reports of a missing girl yesterday or today?’ The question was directed to both Adam and Harrison.

  ‘No,’ Adam said.

  ‘Don't like the look of it,’ Markham repeated.

  After the coroner had driven off, Adam and the two constables walked back to their cars. Harrison filled Adam in on their arrival at the crime scene. They’d taken details from the fisherman, who’d been extremely cold and in a distressed state, then sent him home. Costas Yannous had agreed to come by the station the following morning to give a formal statement.

  ‘Nothing more we can do tonight,’ Adam said. ‘We'll see what the autopsy reveals in the morning. When you get in, John, run a check through all the previous missing persons lists for anyone who fits this girl’s description. If there’s anything relevant, put it on my desk. And get hold of a national, updated list of anyone reported missing in the last few hours.

  ‘Consider it done. The girl’s most likely an out-of- towner anyway. If she was local surely someone would've raised the alarm by now.’

  ‘Maybe. I'll see you in the morning, John.’ Adam thought that Harrison, a meticulous procedure man, was sometimes naive when it came to matters concerning people’s habits. The simple fact was that this girl, aged late teens, could have lived alone and no-one might yet be aware she was missing. Or perhaps she lived with parents who were used to her taking off for days at a time, crashing at friends places, going from work to social outing to work again, forgetting to make contact. It wasn’t unusual.

  No point returning to the stadium. The boys would’ve finished their training and left by now. Adam drove home. The rainstorm had passed and the wind had died, leaving an unnatural stillness to the night air. A neon glare touched the wet streets and the car radio played a haunting Evanescence track about loss.

  He visualised the face of a drowning girl, but it wasn’t the face of the girl who’d been discovered tonight. It was another face from another time - a face he remembered well. The pang of an old despair returned, like a ghost swept in by the earlier storm. He made an effort to break his thoughts free, and return them to the current case.

  In doing so Adam felt an odd shiver pass through him as he remembered Brian Markham's words: It’s as though the girl, or someone connected with her, didn't want us to have any means of identification.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Barbara Cail smiled at her son as he came bounding in the front door. ‘Hi, Joey.’

  ‘Anything to eat yet, Mum?’ he called out, throwing his bag down and dribbling his ball across the living room. He was always hyped up when he arrived home from one of his basketball practices. One of his mates’ mothers had dropped him off tonight.

  ‘Not in the house, Joey. If you want to play with that thing take it outside.’ She was certain she said the same thing every time he came home lately.

  He dribbled the ball through to his room before stopping. ‘So when’s dinner?’

  ‘Five minutes,’ she called back. She’d been checking the roast and now she replaced the lid of the pot and checked her watch. Costas was half an hour late. Where was he?

  It was six years since Barbara's husband had walked out on her
and Joey, for a younger woman. Barbara had been thirty-eight at the time and, at first, hadn’t expected to have another relationship. She didn’t consider herself attractive, and she’d been filled with apprehension at the mere thought of dating. And, of course, she had her hands full as a single parent.

  Costas Yannous ran the local delicatessen, and Barbara had known him for a few years. She shopped there once a week and she always enjoyed her chats with him, chats which often lasted twenty minutes or more. She was both surprised and pleased when Costas asked her out. Costas, a widower with one grown up son who'd moved away, was late forties, good looking in a big, cuddly bear kind of way. He had an easy, down to earth manner, which always put Barbara at ease.

  They'd been dating three months. They usually went to the local club or movie theatre on a Saturday night, and Costas would come over to Barbara’s for dinner once or twice during the week. He would always arrange a time to arrive and he was always punctual. That was the kind of man he was.

  ‘We're not waiting for Costas until we eat, are we, Mum?’ Joey shouted from his room.

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘But Mum-’

  ‘That's quite enough, Joey.’

  The one thing that disappointed Barbara was her son’s negative reaction to Costas. Costas genuinely liked Joey and made every effort to talk to him, include him in conversations, offering to take him out to play games or watch sports - the kinds of things Joey loved. He always went along to watch Joey’s basketball games on the weekends. But her son remained surly and difficult where Costas was concerned.

  She hoped Joey’s attitude would begin to soften, but so far there'd been no sign of that. With a sigh she cast the thought aside and went to the phone to call Costas, a sudden sense of unease welling up inside her.

  Kate Kovacs was in Adam’s apartment when he returned. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she called from the kitchen, her back to him as she checked the vegetable stew on the hot plate.

  He came into the kitchen behind her, his arms circling her tiny waist, his face nuzzling the nape of her neck. ‘Who's a stranger?’

  ‘Weren't you due in half an hour ago?’

  ‘I was called away from the stadium,’ he said, and he told her briefly about the girl on the beach.

  ‘Does that job of yours ever end?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Long day, so you're going to need a good feed. Agree?’

  ‘Agree.’

  ‘So sit down and look extremely grateful while I serve.’

  They sipped on chilled white wine as they shared the meal and Adam told her a little about the rough and ready group of boys that had been thrown together as a team. He’d always loved the game of basketball and was looking forward to the fun and the challenge of working with this group of youngsters. He didn’t elaborate any further on his earlier mention of the drowned girl and Kate didn't ask.

  That was one of the things Adam liked about this young woman. When he was with her he was able to switch off completely from the job and enjoy her company. It was a long time since he’d been able to do that. An earlier, long-term relationship with a female police officer, back in his constable days, had been fairly intense but not much fun. She'd always been talking shop, and they’d often disagreed on police matters. That particular young woman had long since moved to another posting.

  After the meal Kate dashed into the kitchen to make coffee.

  ‘You're really spoiling me tonight,’ Adam called after her. ‘So what's with all this special attention?’

  ‘Every now and then I get these rushes of domesticity, y’know, the ol’ cookin’ and cleanin’ for your man.’ This last phrase delivered with a country music twang. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts. There’s usually long periods of rampant feminism in between these girlie bursts.’

  He laughed, and watched her as she strode back in, mugs of the steaming liquid in each hand. She had a soft, silken beauty, large brown eyes and olive skin. Her collar length blonde hair had a tousled look to it.

  He liked her natural energy. Her perky face leant itself easily to emotive expressions and her voice held just a touch of huskiness.

  Adam had met her just three weeks before when he’d been called out to the Westmeyer Institute at the northern end of the Northern Rocks coastal strip

  The institute had been established in the town just twelve months earlier, and in recent months had an intruder alarm system installed that was linked directly to the police station. Whilst such systems had become increasingly regular in the cities, it was far less usual in regional areas. But then few regional areas had an international state-of-the-art medical research facility nearby, as was now the case with Northern Rocks. John Harrison had been on duty that evening and Adam had been working back, catching up on paperwork. The’'d gone rushing to the institute only to discover it was a false alarm - just the latest incident in a series of mishaps and system crashes within the institute's computer operating network.

  Adam and John had been met at the front gate by the institute’s security chief, Tony Collosimo, who’d gruffly apologised for the false alarm. ‘Our IT lady is here and she’s fixed the problem,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘She’s established that the alarm was activated by another of these damn virus problems we’ve been having.’

  William Westmeyer himself had come across, with the IT consultant, from the main building. He introduced himself to the officers and made his apologies but Adam found it hard to take his eyes off the young woman who accompanied him. Westmeyer introduced Kate, and said, ‘With any luck, gentlemen, Kate here will solve all our systems problems so that something like this won’t happen again.’

  ‘We've had a few problems of our own with the police computer,’ Harrison said, ‘could use some help of our own, couldn’t we, Adam?’

  Adam had to agree. ‘Unfortunately we need to rely on the regional head office to send out their boffins when we experience serious system faults.’

  ‘I'm sure Miss Kovacs could assist, compliments of the institute, Detective,’ Westmeyer offered. He was a tall, broad shouldered man, smooth and articulate in manner.

  ‘No problem,’ Kate added, ‘in fact, I’d love a tour of the station when the chance arises.’

  The Northern Rocks police station wasn’t huge, and the computers were basic PC desktops for data entry and information retrieval. Without compromising any internal security, Adam had shown Kate around the station the following week, and she’d shown Adam and a few of the officers some admin ‘tricks’ for using their systems more effectively.

  Adam and Kate shared a pub counter lunch that day which led, a few nights later, to a dinner date at the local seafood restaurant. Over oysters kilpatrick and a mouth watering lobster dish, Adam learned that, in addition to computer troubleshooting, Kate’s other great love was gourmet cooking, and she arranged to visit Adam’s apartment the following week to prepare and share a home meal. ‘Normally,’ she said, ‘I don't offer to cook for a man until the third dinner date.’

  ‘And you’ll be cooking for me on the second.’ Adam picked up the rhythm of the humour. ‘I'm honoured.’

  ‘Consider yourself in the elite. But be warned, these relationships that get fast-tracked can also burn out before their time.’ They laughed together. But Adam found himself hoping that wouldn't be the case where he and Kate were concerned.

  Costas had arrived home shivering, fully intending to step under a hot shower. Instead he draped himself with a blanket and sat on the worn lounge in his small fibro and tile cottage, staring blankly at the wall.

  The sudden shrill ring of the phone startled him. He reached over to it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Costas. Why aren’t you here?’

  He felt a wave of nausea rising from the pit of his stomach. ‘Sorry, Barbara. Stayed fishing too long.’ His voice was strained.

  ‘Should've known.’ Her voice held its usual, easy warmth. ‘So are you about to leave? Dinner’s ready and, well, you know Joey, he’s starving.’


  Costas tried to stifle the rising bile. After a pause he simply grunted.

  ‘Costas...?’

  ‘Hold on-,’ he dropped the receiver and ran to the bathroom. He could feel the ice cold, dead flesh of the corpse all over - against his arms, his chest, his legs. Smothering him. And the eyes...

  He vomited into the bowl.

  By the time he'd composed himself and returned to the phone, the line was dead. He had no way of knowing that Barbara Cail was already in her fifteen-year old Ford station wagon, leaving behind the simmering roast and Joey’s protests, as she made the ten minute drive from her home to the cottage.

  She arrived to find Costas ashen faced and still shivering. He told her about the gruesome discovery he'd made on the beach and Barbara put her arms around him, hugged him close. ‘It must’ve been terrible. I can't imagine...’ Barbara’s neighbour was a nurse and Barbara had heard enough of that woman’s shop talk to suspect Costas was suffering from delayed shock.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ Costas said. ‘Just needed a little longer than I realised, to get myself together.’

  ‘Go take a shower, warm up. Then I’m running you over to the hospital to see one of the docs. You need something-’

  ‘No, no. No need for that.’

  ‘Go get under that shower,’ Barbara said. It was a long time since she’d needed to mother a man. She gave him another squeeze and then Costas went through to the bathroom. He was comforted by her presence.

  If Costas had any doubts about his feelings for Barbara, then they vanished right there and then as the needlepoint spray of the water gushed over him.

  After the meal Adam and Kate planned to sit quietly and watch some late night television. Kate commented that she would enjoy watching the old Harrison Ford/Anne Heche romantic comedy, “Seven Days, Seven Nights”. It was a favourite of hers.

  Adam couldn't, however, stay focused on the movie. His mind kept wandering, he was restless, and before the end he excused himself, went pottering around in the kitchen, then disappeared onto the balcony.