by Kristen Rose
‘O’Connell, I thought I told you to forget about the Verdad case.’ An angered voice yells.
‘I know, but, I’m so close to getting him. I’ve got new evidence.’
‘New evidence? What? Where from?’ The two men’s striding steps echo down a brightly lit, busy corridor.
‘From the source I told you about.’
‘Jesus Christ! The nut case? O’Connell, I would expect something like this from a newbie but not from you. You’re the best man we have, why are you looking for witnesses in a mental house?’
The two men approach the end of the corridor, arriving at a grey door. A sign in the middle of it reads Commissioner Greg Holmes.
O’Connell’s boss is well built for his mid-fifties age, his hair more salt than pepper, an old pair of rectangular glasses balance on the middle of his nose. Holmes opens the door to his office forcefully and leads O’Connell inside.
A small black couch rests towards the far right of the room, against the wall behind it are three solid filing cabinets. On the opposite side of the room is a dark, heavily polished wooden desk. Holmes strides over to it, footsteps echoing off the wooden floor, and sits down with a fiery face. He invites O’Connell to sit opposite him.
‘She’s not a nut case; she’s only pretending in order to protect herself.’ O’Connell continues the argument, dragging a chair out from the desk and sitting down.
‘Oh, and you believe that? How can you be certain?’ Holmes flails his arms about.
‘Well, I went and visited her the other week.’ O’Connell says quietly.
‘What! What do you mean you visited her?’ Holmes’ voice bounces off the opposite wall. ‘You were supposed to spend that week off forgetting about the case.’ His face reddens.
‘I know, but like I said, I’m so close. Closing it now means that I just wasted every hour over the last six months I’ve spent working on it.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It means that we’ve exhausted every possible way we have of making a case against him. Look, I know you and Verdad have some history and you seem to have a pretty big grudge against him about something but don’t let that ruin your career.’
‘I’m not! Look, I know when to stop and if I knew I couldn’t get this guy then I would stop, but I’m confident that I can. Even more confident now.’ O’Connell enthuses.
‘Now? You mean now that you’ve spoken with the nut case?’ Holmes snorts.
‘She’s not a nut case!’
‘Okay. Why do you think she’s in the coo coo’s nest then?’ He patronises.
‘I already told you, she’s hiding.’ O’Connell’s voice is barely a whisper.
‘Seems like a pretty drastic thing to do, admitting yourself into a mental institution. Why not ask us for help, get re-located or something, wouldn’t that have been better?’
‘She was afraid at the time. And it’s not a stupid place to go. I actually think it’s a brilliant idea.’ O’Connell says the latter part more to himself.
‘A brilliant idea! O’Connell you think everything is a bloody brilliant idea.’ Holmes’ glasses slide a little down his nose.
‘No I don’t! Look, can you just here me out? I think you’ll be really interested in what I have.’
‘Really? Well, what do you have?’ He mocks.
‘A voice recording.’ O’Connell smiles.
‘Of ...’ Holmes rolls his wrist, humouring him.
‘Of our conversation, I mean the one I had the other week with Jennifer.’
‘And Jennifer is the nut case, right?’ Holmes says, trying to keep up.
‘She’s not a nut case!’ O’Connell raises slightly in his seat.
‘Okay, she’s not a nut case.’ He says, raising his palms in an attempt to calm O’Connell down. ‘So what’s so special about this conversation?’
‘Well, I think that you can tell just by listening to it that she is perfectly sane.’
‘O’Connell, you could talk to my mother all day and think that she is perfectly sane and then out of the blue she’ll go and jump in the swimming pool wearing only a dressing gown and singing Let’s Get Physical by Olivia Newton John. Not something you would expect a sane person to do is it?’
‘Well, no ... but ... this is different.’
‘How? A nut case is a nut case.’ He concludes. O’Connell bites his tongue.
‘Well,’ he says, composed, ‘I suspect your grandmother is suffering from something related to her age, not insanity. And Jennifer is only twenty eight so nothing like that is going to happen to her just yet, and well ... she just wouldn’t do that, I mean ... there’s nothing wrong with her.’
‘You know, you’re really not selling your case very well O’Connell.’
‘Look, why don’t you just listen to the voice recording and make your own conclusion.’ O’Connell suggests. ‘She saw something that can put Verdad behind bars, she told me.’
Holmes lets out a lengthy sigh. ‘Alright then, let’s hear this stupid recording.’
O’Connell reaches his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out his old recorder. He presses the play button, the conversation echoes around the room. Holmes listens, humouring O’Connell at first, but as the minutes pass he begins to listen more intently, leaning further into his desk. O’Connell presses the stop button just after Jennifer’s voice says, “I don’t suppose we could talk about something else?”
He places the tape recorder onto the desk and looks up at his boss. ‘Well?’
‘Well ... as much as I hate to say this, there may be something there.’ O’Connell lets out a small cheer but stops when he sees Holmes’ unimpressed expression.
‘I told you.’ He says, smiling, fighting the urge to scream out.
‘Yeah, yeah, okay. Look, even though there could be something there it doesn’t change anything.’ He concludes.
‘What do you mean it doesn’t change anything? You can tell that there is nothing wrong with her! You just heard her admit it, along with the fact that she saw Verdad do something. How does that not change anything?’
‘O’Connell, I’m not as dumb as some people around here seem to think. I can tell you’re biased. You like this girl, you want her to be sane, you want her to testify because you hate Verdad and you want him in gaol. Now, just because you want something, doesn’t mean you’ll get. It doesn’t even mean it’s possible to get. Whether or not this girl is healthy, no one is going to believe a thing she says.
‘I looked up this hospital when you first told me about it. Only the most extreme psychiatric patients get treated there. They have the best doctors in this country, how can anybody possibly fool them into thinking that they are insane? She’s been there what ...’ Holmes invites O’Connell to give an answer.
‘Seven years ...’ He breathes.
‘Seven years! O’Connell, look at the facts objectively. Regardless of her intentions, regardless of her sanity, she can never be used as a legitimate witness. No judge will give her the time of day. And to top all of this off she doesn’t even want to testify. You can’t make anyone do something they don’t want to do. A plane example of that is you!’ He splutters. ‘I told you to forget about this case until something viable came up, something that can actually be used against Verdad. But you think that you know better. You don’t want to give up the case and I seem to be having a tough time trying to get you to. Do you see what I’m saying?’
‘Yes sir, I understand.’ He stops. ‘But, I just have this gut feeling.’ O’Connell leans in.
‘O’Connell. If you continue to pursue this case you will no longer have a job here. Do you understand that?’
O’Connell lets out a long sigh. ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘Do you have anything else that you want to add before I tell you to get back to some proper work?’
O’Connell hesitates. ‘Sir, you heard Jennifer say that Verdad has someone in there watching her.’
‘She’s probably just paranoid.’ He leans over towards the front of his desk, pickin
g up a few sheets of paper.
‘No, she was genuinely scared.’
‘O’Connell ...’ Holmes looks up at him.
‘Just listen!’ He cuts him off. ‘I will stop pursuing this case if you give me permission to put a guy in there undercover to keep watch over her.’
‘Absolutely not! I am not going to pay a valuable officer to trudge around some mental facility until god knows when, keeping an eye on some supposed nut case who may or may not be being watched and who may or may not get killed. We’re short-handed as it is. Either you drop this case completely or you go back to your office, pack your belongings and leave.’ His face bright red. ‘And good luck finding another job because I can guarantee that you won’t get one.’
‘You can’t do that!’
‘Watch me.’ He smirks, looking back down at his paper work.
‘Fine, I’ll drop the case.’ O’Connell mumbles.
‘Good. A homicide just came in, my secretary’s got the details. Go and figure out who did it.’ Holmes says casually to his desk, flipping through the sheets of paper. O’Connell glares at him, returning his face to a placid stare when Holmes suddenly looks back up. ‘What are you waiting for?’ His tone intolerant.
O’Connell pushes his chair back and paces out of the office, closing the door with a bang. He turns and blares at Kerry, Holmes’ secretary, whose desk is a few metres away from the door.
‘The commissioner has a file for me I believe.’
‘Yes.’ Her red lips barely whisper. She turns hastily in her chair flipping through a bunch of files piled all over her desk. O’Connell taps his fingers noisily against the wall. After a minute she clumsily drags the correct file out and hands it to O’Connell. He snatches it from her grasp, she jerks back into her chair. He strides down the corridor without a word and thunders into his office, ignoring the glances from those on either side of his path. He chucks the file on his desk, throws himself into the chair, and forces the drawer on the left hand side open at the same time. He pulls out a small black address book and begins flipping through it furiously, stopping sharply on the desired page and bending the spine of the book to stop it from snapping shut. He reaches for his telephone at the far right of his desk and punches in a series of numbers, his eyes flicking back and forth from the book to the telephone.
He allows it to ring, impatiently tapping the black book on his desk in a fast staccato beat. When the call is answered he speaks quickly.
‘Jones?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s O’Connell. Remember that favour you owe me?’
#20 Slip of the tongue