by Pat Ritter
beside her. 'Do you beg?' She asked the stranger.
'No, I don't beg. I don't need to. I wanted to ask why you beg?'
'I need to so I can stay at the Blind Institute to help pay my way.' Embarrassed to share her feelings with a total stranger but with the warmth this stranger showed she decided to tell him her story. 'How long have you been blind?' She asked.
'All of my life.'
'Why don't you need to beg, like I do.'
'I have sufficient money to keep me and Rufus.'
'Why are you interested in what I do?' She asked.
'I want to help you.'
'How? I don't need help. I'm happy doing what I'm doing.'
'Call me your guardian angel. I don't want you to beg any more. Come with me and I'll look after you.'
Could she trust this stranger. Would he actually help her? These questions raced through her mind. 'Are you telling me the truth?' She asked.
'Believe me, it's true. I want to help you. Would you please let me help you.'
'I'm right doing what I'm comfortable with and begging on this spot is what I want to do.' She wasn't comfortable speaking to this stranger.
'Okay Rufus, she's turned us down. Come on let's go and leave this lovely girl to beg.' He stood. Footsteps faded into the distance.
She returned to her begging and to this day she continues to beg for she is The Blind Beggar Girl.
Word count:589
The Cabbie Who Knew The Way
In 1965 aged 17 years old I visited my parents who at the time lived at Blacktown, a Sydney western suburb.
Uncle Bobby, my father’s brother held a cabbie license and drove his own cab. He picked my parents and me up at Blacktown to show us the sites of Sydney.
His cab, 1964 Holden Eh Sedan, grey with pink. When he picked us up from my parent’s home he told me to drive. I couldn’t believe my Uncle Bobby would give me an opportunity to drive his cab. I loved it.
Little did I realise at the time, because of my age, I couldn’t enter licensed premises and whilst I waited in the carpark, my parents and uncle entered the licensed premises.
Many hours later they returned to the cab with me sitting behind the wheel waiting for them. In those days the cabbie had no radio, only a meter to charge the customer. I never worried about waiting for I’d waited for my father many times before while he went for a drink.
With my uncle and parents over the top filled with alcohol I became a golden boy who drove them home. This didn’t concern me because only a couple of months prior to this event I’d gained my driver’s license and to drive a brand new Holden EH Sedan coloured grey and pink became a dream come true.
My uncle drove his cab for the remainder of his life until he retired at the Gold Coast. Ill health forced him to retire when shortly after he lost his life through a heart attack.
Driving in Sydney for most of his life he certainly had knowledge when taking customers to their destination. His stories intrigued me when he told me about drunken customers who had no idea where they lived but somehow he’d find an address to take them.
Uncle Bobby became one of the ole time cabbies who knew their way. Not like the cabbie of today who can’t speak or understand Australian nor read a map nor understand where they need to go.
On one of our trips we arrived in Adelaide and needed to hire a cabbie to take us to our hotel. Prior to departing the airport I explained the hotel where we needed to go. All I received in response, a nod of the head. The cabbie didn’t have far to take us to our accommodation because I could see the top of the hotel before we left the airport.
Either this cabbie had no knowledge where to go or he wanted to take us the long way around to charge us more fare. When I noticed he took the wrong turn, I commented he was going the wrong way and never changed direction.
Eventually we arrived at our destination and in disgust I told the cabbie what I thought of him. He made out he didn’t understand Australian language.
Word count:497
The Case Of The Barking Butterfly
Bundy Quicksilver retired from Queensland Police Service over twenty years ago, his daily habit to switch on the early news to watch the happenings in the world of crime.
Alarm bells exploded in his mind when he saw the body of a woman lying in a gutter in the inner city streets of Brisbane. ‘Does anyone know this person’ broadcast across the airways.
Bundy’s eyes almost popped from his head when he sighted a close up view of a tattoo ‘The Barking Butterfly’, now faded from its glorious colour way back in the 70’s but still he identified the tattoo and instantly placed a name with the body.
His mind travelled back in time to when he first sighted the tattoo. The year 1970, only a couple of weeks prior he’d been sworn in as a constable with Queensland Police Service or Force it was known then.
Instead of serving in uniform, his role to be an undercover agent with the Licensing Branch, to seek out prostitutes and gaming dens. This particular night his task to visit the Wickham Hotel in Fortitude Valley and there pick up a prostitute and take her to ‘San Remo Brothel’ in Wickham Terrace with explicit instructions from his bosses ‘not to partake in any sexual activity’.
After trying his luck with twelve well known ‘girls of the night’ each didn’t want to go to San Remo but to a closer brothel, number thirteen became lucky.
‘Take me any where, handsome’ She replied holding Bundy by the hand and going with him to his 1964 Holden Utility parked in the car park.
Entering the foyer of San Remo Bundy paid the Madam for a room. Lucky number 13 grabbed his hand quickly dragged him to the room. Once inside she undressed and this is when Bundy sighted the tattoo on her right thigh ‘The Barking Butterfly’.
Lying on the bed naked Lucky Number 13 coaxed Bundy to undress and get into action for she needed to return to select another customer. His mind raced to find questions to ask while he focused on the tattoo.
‘What a beautiful tattoo’? He said looking directly at it.
‘It is nice, now forget about the tattoo and let’s get into action’. She started to rise from the bed.
A knock on the door, ‘Police, open up?’
Bundy opened the door to let his fellow officers into the room. Lucky Number 13 arrested.
Bundy never forgot ‘The Barking Butterfly’ tattoo or Lucky Number 13. Now she was no more. May she rest in peace?
Word count: 434
The Dawn Of Insanity
When is a person deemed to be insane? This question arose many times when I investigated crimes involving people who thought God told them to murder the other person or to do them harm.
I remember clearly an investigation which happened many years ago involving a father and son who lived on a property. At the time the son had been released from a mental institution to visit his father who was dying of cancer.
During his visit over Christmas the son fatally shot his father while the father watched television. He admitted to killing his father, to put him out of his misery. At the time he honestly thought he did the right thing when God told him to do it.
Later when the son appeared in the Supreme Court, he pleaded ‘not guilty’ on the grounds God told him to murder his father. His admission to hearing voices in his head demanding he shoot his father to stop him from suffering.
The detective asked this question, ‘if a policeman was standing beside you, would’ve you killed your father?’ His reply, ‘no, it would be wrong to murder someone in front of a policeman.’
The jury found the son guilty of murdering his father. His answered, he knew it to be wrong shooting his father if a policeman was standing beside him, he had the capacity to know how wrong to commit the offence. He received a life imprisonment for his actions.
Up until this time many persons escaped their punishment on the grounds of ‘insanity’. Detective Brown from the Criminal Investigation Branch in Adelaide posed this question to a suspect during a murder investigation.
If Det
ective Brown didn’t ask this question, perhaps more persons would’ve escaped punishment by admitting to being insane at the time of the offence. This always puzzled me when in my work as a detective because if a person claimed they were insane, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the person was sane at the time they committed the offence and knew what they did wrong.
Detective Brown’s initiative and clarity when questioning his offender about a policeman being present at the time certainly placed the onus of proof back onto the offender to prove they were insane at the time of the offence.
Word count:390
The Perfect Tenant
Let me share a family story about my grandmother. At twelve years old she came into my life. My family moved from the country to live with her in the city until suitable accommodation found for our family. Her dark grey hair, silky skin and always wore an apron. She lived in a flat at Spring Hill, an inner city suburb of Brisbane. Early in her life she lost sight in one eye and had it replaced with a glass eye.
She paid rent to live in a shop, one of four shops converted to flats. One walked from the footpath directly into the lounge room, which joined the kitchen. Glass windows, painted white fronted the footpath with double doors in the centre. A narrow stairwell went upstairs to three bedrooms. A small verandah overlooked the city. Downstairs, the toilet, bath and laundry with the narrowest back yard possible. Weekly she paid a guinea for rent. To my knowledge she lived in this flat from 1936 until 1971. She was the perfect tenant.
My