Harum Scarum (3 page)

At first she’d been slightly anxious when she’d learned that one of her roles in the newly formed Cyber Predator Team was public speaking, but to her surprise she found she was beginning to enjoy it. In fact, educating children about the dangers of the Internet was the most rewarding experience she’d had in her fifteen years with the police.

A girl with round glasses and a thick mane of dark messy hair put up her hand. Her face seemed vaguely familiar. ‘But how did you know the man was planning on doing this?’

‘Our operations room in Central Police headquarters is filled with computers. We take it in turns to watch the kinds of Internet websites we think Perth children might be interested in. I logged into a chat room devoted to a local rock band and called myself Angel12. Pretty soon I began talking to a boy who began asking me all sorts of personal questions.’ Stevie didn’t go into the lurid details. ‘And I got the feeling he wasn’t the boy he was pretending to be. We arranged to meet and it was then that I discovered that he was an older man.’

One of the boys laughed and whispered to the boy sitting next to him. Donna, the school councillor, wagged her finger and shut him up.

The girl with the glasses put up her hand again. She had a pixie face, the tips of her ears visible through her hair. ‘Anyone who gives themselves a name like Angel12 is looking for trouble. The name just calls out, “Hey, I’m a cute girl and I’m only twelve.” No one should give themselves a nickname like that, a predator would know straight away how easily someone like that could be manipulated.’

The boy sitting next to her rolled his eyes, but Stevie was impressed with the girl’s command of language, her confidence and her insight. She nodded. ‘Yes, very good.’ Where the hell had she seen that girl before?

Another boy put up his hand. ‘Yeah, but it’s only girls they’re interested in, yeah?’

‘No, not at all, quite a lot of these men go for boys.’

There was a chorus of gross, yuck and pervert from the group of boys in the back row.

‘But all this doesn’t mean you can’t have fun on the Internet too or use it as a valuable learning tool.’ Stevie nodded to Donna who turned to face the whiteboard. ‘I’m going to give you a list of do’s and don’ts and Miss French is going to write them down for you to copy.’ She had leaflets she could give them, but if they wrote it themselves there was a better chance they’d remember it.

The children rippled like the sea as they sought their writing equipment.

‘First, when you’re on the Internet, don’t ever think you know who you are talking to, no matter what someone might tell you about themselves—people will often lie. Never give out personal information, and never agree to meet anyone unless you can bring a trusted adult with you.

‘Often the predator will try to build up to a trusting relationship with you. He might start in chat rooms, then private chat rooms. Instant messaging and emails would be next because it gives both of you the freedom of not having to be always logged onto the Internet. The more confident predator might even attempt to telephone you. When you hear a voice on the end of the phone, it’s easy for you to think you’re talking to a friend...’

Stevie knew the talk by heart and had to remind herself to slow down. Heads bobbed up and down as the children copied the notes and Donna’s careful printing squeaked upon the whiteboard.

‘Another fine performance, Stevie, thanks for coming.’ Stevie and Donna made their way down the tiled corridor to the staffroom.

‘No worries, all part of the service; I think the message is getting across don’t you? It would be better if we could get more parents involved. I want to talk about the dangers of kids having web cams in their rooms. There are things the parents need to know that aren’t suitable for the kids to hear.’

‘I put a note in last week’s newsletter for the parents’ night you proposed, but so far we’ve only had three responses.’

Stevie sighed. What was it with these people? Child molestation directly resulting from Internet contact was rising daily, but it was a problem many parents seemed happy to ignore. Were they just ignorant of the dangers, or too busy with their own lives? It’s never going to happen to any of my children, she’d heard over and over again. No wonder she wrapped her own child in cotton wool.

In the staffroom Stevie settled into Donna’s cubicle with its window onto the oval. She had twenty minutes to relax before picking up six year-old Izzy from the school car park—luxury. She leant back in the chair and brushed her fingers across the bandaid on her cheek, teasing the minor wound underneath. The itch was a satisfying reminder of Monday’s successful apprehension of Robert Mason.

Donna came in with two mugs of coffee. ‘The kids loved your story about catching that guy in the park,’ she said. ‘One more chalked up to the good guys. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.’

Stevie pulled a face and dived into her bag. ‘Probably not. From what we can tell so far, the attempted abduction of Angel12 was a first offence—he has no prior convictions of interfering with children. We found kiddie porn on his hard drive and that’s about it. We’ll be lucky if he does two years.’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘This is between us, all right? I shouldn’t be telling you this sort of thing, but hey, there’s no names ... Can I smoke in here?’

‘No, but I won’t tell if you don’t.’ Donna slid the window open and the sweet fragrance of the newly mown oval wafted in.

Stevie blew out an angry jet of smoke.

‘It must be frustrating for you,’ Donna sympathised.

Stevie tried to shrug it off. ‘Most police work is frustrating, one way or another, whether it’s directing traffic or a cold case murder investigation.’

‘I imagine dinner conversations at your place must be quite lively at times.’

‘They can be,’ she said. ‘But the good thing about not officially living together is that if one of us is in a foul mood or pissed off, we simply stay out of the other’s way. Monty stays in his flat and I wall myself up with Izzy at my place until we feel like talking again.’

The staffroom door opened. ‘Quick, put it out,’ Donna said like a naughty schoolgirl. The half smoked cigarette plopped with a brief fizz into Stevie’s coffee as Donna went and dealt with the person at the door.

Stevie twisted the ring on her finger as she waited for Donna to return. Monty was cooking at his place tonight: curry, she suspected. His taste for spicy foods, his rust red hair and skin that turned fire engine red with ten minutes of full sun—everything about Monty McGuire radiated heat. It was no wonder he lived near the sea. With all the stresses of his heavy workload lately, she thought the only thing that saved him from spontaneously combusting was the chance of a quick dip in the Indian Ocean.

She found herself worrying for Monty. The pressures of the job had been weighing him down more than usual and he’d been having trouble sleeping. He said she wouldn’t be who she was if she wasn’t worrying about something or other. If it wasn’t Monty it was Izzy, and if she wasn’t worrying about their daughter, it was someone else’s child. Her mother always claimed that worry and guilt were a woman’s lot. Reluctant as she was to pay much heed to her mother’s pearls of wisdom, she had to concede that on this occasion, Dot was probably right.

Donna’s voice brought her back. ‘Sorry, that’s the problem with being new to the job—so many files to catch up on, and my predecessor was hardly an organised type.’ Donna paused. ‘I suppose you’ll have to leave to pick up Izzy. You’re lucky your hours are flexible enough to accommodate school pick-ups.’

‘Not always, sometimes Monty picks her up, often my mother—’ This train of thought lead to another. Now she remembered where she’d seen the girl with the messy dark hair.

‘What was the name of the girl sitting in the front row, the one asking the sensible questions?’

‘Emma Breightling, why?’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen her before; I think she baby-sits for one of my neighbours. My mother’s away on holiday, Monty’s stretched thin and I’m desperate for someone as back up for after-school care. What’s she like, is she old enough do you think?’

‘Some thirteen year olds wouldn’t be, but I don’t think Emma would give you cause to worry. As you’ve seen for yourself she’s very mature for her age, comes from a good home, her father’s a doctor, her mother’s some kind of professional. Other than that I don’t know much about her, which is good, really.’ Donna patted the pile of files on her desk, ‘I only get to know the problem kids.’

EXCERPT FROM CHAT TRANSCRIPT 150107

DANTHEMAN: tell me what u look like
BETTYBO: nooooooooo!
DANTHEMAN: go on
BETTYBO: ule think Im ugle
DANTHEMAN: no I won’t. u sound sooooo cute!
BETTYBO: I hav shot hair and im fat
DANTHEMAN: still sound cute to me!

Stevie carefully prised the fat from the chunk of curried meat and pushed it to the side of her plate. Her father used to say she had the metabolism of a greyhound, that the calories were burned up by nervous energy alone despite the arduous outdoor activities of her youth. But time had proved him wrong. The bull riding, rock climbing and orienteering had long given way to a demanding career and motherhood. The nervous energy was still there, but no longer seemed to have the same effect upon her body. If her metabolism continued to slow at this rate she thought, remembering the struggle to do up the button of her jeans that morning, the greyhound might soon be turning into a golden lab.

She finished a second glass of wine.

Then ate the scraps of fat from her plate.

She thought about telling Monty about Tash’s behaviour in the park, that she was worried her friend might be cracking up, but changed her mind. He was too high-ranking—his code of ethics wouldn’t let the matter slide. Life would be a lot easier if one of them worked as a pen pusher for the local council, she thought with a sigh, leaning back in her chair to look at him.

The pale face and violet circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and the crinkles around his eyes had more recently been used for frowns, not laughter. This evening he’d been unusually quiet as if he too was absorbed by his own thoughts. As head of the Serious Crime Squad he was in charge of several ongoing investigations. The case that was losing him the most sleep recently was the discovery of a body some three weeks ago in the Swan River.

‘How’s the floater going?’ Stevie asked him.

Monty put his fork down and pushed away his plate. ‘He’s Asian, had a couple of Triad-type tattoos on his arms. That’s about all we know so far.’

‘Did Angus Wong have anything to say about the tatts?’

‘Angus said he’d seen something similar from Hong Kong, a dragon around one bicep, a white tiger on the other. But in our guy, the colours are different. He thinks the guy might have been from mainland China.

‘The single bullet to the head, the mutilated face, the severed fingertips—all smacks of organised crime if you ask me.’

‘Maybe, but not by an Asian gang; I think his murderer might be a westerner.’

‘Why’s that?’ Stevie asked.

‘If the murderer was Asian, especially an Asian gang member, he would have known about the tattoos and cut them out along with the face and the fingertips. The body was found in the river fully clothed, wearing a long-sleeved shirt. The murderer would have no idea about the tatts. He’s probably be feeling pretty cocky, thinking he’s done a good job at disguising his vic’s identity.’

Stevie smiled, ‘But not good enough to fool you, eh, Sherlock?’

Monty held up his finger. ‘None of your sarcasm,’ he said with the flicker of a smile. ‘I’ve had people scouring China Town, Northbridge and East Perth, but nothing so far. It’s hard when they don’t have a picture to show around. He was probably an illegal.’ He took several gulps of beer. ‘And now I have a child missing under mysterious circumstances.’

She should have realised it would take more than a floater in the river to keep Monty McGuire silent. ‘Shit. Is this going to be a combo job?’

‘Afraid so. Unless she turns up unharmed within the next few hours we might find ourselves in this together.’

The Cyber Predator Team was under the umbrella of the Sex Crimes Division and joined forces with Monty’s Serious Crime Squad in cases of overlap, such as child murder and abduction.

‘Does she have a computer, have they checked her hard drive?’ Stevie asked.

‘She does have a laptop and it’s missing. It’s the first thing I asked when the file appeared on my desk. See,’ he shot her a smile, ‘despite what you think, I do listen to you. Sometimes.’

Stevie twisted the ring on her finger. It had been a while since they’d worked together. Not since she’d transferred from the SCS, when their engagement had become official. She wondered how she’d cope if technically he was her boss again. Before it had been easy, she’d enjoyed working with him—but now? Maybe he would finally see why she was still so insistent about keeping their lives separate. She squinted hard at the single diamond, as if she might see their future in it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him looking at her over his beer glass and could tell he knew what she was thinking.

‘We can’t go on living apart when we’re married, Stevie, no matter how much our job paths might cross,’ he said.

‘Can’t we?’ she said flippantly, knowing the look of hurt she’d see in his eyes if she chose to lift her head to meet them. It didn’t help that, from one of those dark places deep inside her, she knew it wasn’t only their careers that were the problem. ‘Why change when everything’s working so well...’

She got up and started clearing away the clean dishes from the draining board. Monty’s kitchen accoutrements were made up of a hotch-potch of odds and ends, the remnants of a former life and a former marriage. Nothing matched, but everything was stored in an orderly fashion, lined in rows of regimental precision in cupboards that would have made Martha Gardener proud. At her place she couldn’t open a cupboard door without something falling out.