Human Frailty, a Detective Mike Bridger novel (8 page)

He looked around at the nearby houses;
students occupied every one of them, a whole subculture living in a
fish tank for all to see. It was almost a tourist attraction.

He had heard somewhere that Otago University
was the oldest university establishments in New Zealand, first
situated in the Exchange area at the other end of the city,
predating the current buildings that were over 130 years old.

One of the downfalls of being such an old
establishment, he thought, was the students have had a long and
rich history of trouble making, each new induction trying to outdo
the last, trying to come up with bigger and better ways to get into
trouble, future leaders of society all. Trouble making should be a
degree course, he thought. He wondered if they burnt couches for
fun in the 1870's.

Feeling slightly uneasy about Marion,
Bridger returned to the police station. His head was thumping when
he walked into the claustrophobic environment of the watch-house.
An office that was the buffer zone between the public and the
clients tucked up in their concrete suites at the rear of the
station.

"Mike, how's things? You don't look to
well".

Bridger looked over at a familiar friendly
face.

"Just following up on a possible
missing girl that John Maine passed on to me Julie, how's things
with you?
”

"So, so, Mike, you know how it is when
there is more than one person in the cells. Your lot just leaves it
to poor old me to operate the front counter. It is just lucky I am
such a tolerant sort of person. The complaints I have had to deal
with this morning, you would not believe. Everybody and their dog
have something to say about last night
’
s riot in town. Sometimes I think I
should just become a proper police officer, My current pay packet
is not nearly enough to deal with all that. But I guess I'm a
little old to join now".

Bridger smiled at Julie, unsure of how to
reply. Julie Downie was the oldest civilian employee that they had;
he had known her from the day he arrived in the Dunedin police
station. She was the first face he saw and she had been friendly
with him ever since.

"I'm sure you are more than capable Julie,
you put a lot of the new guys to shame with the effort you put
in".

Julie smiled radiantly. "If
you
’
re
looking for John he's gone home. That young Nick Brown is the
acting Sergeant now. It seems that they do not have enough senior
Sergeants to cover the Saturday shifts. But I guess there are no
hot scones on offer in the canteen on a Saturday to entice them
in".

Bridger walked into the senior Sergeants
office. The scene could not have been more different from a few
hours earlier. The smell of cigarettes had disappeared and a fresh
faced 20 something with a well-worn uniform was sitting behind the
desk reading a thick file. Bridger introduced himself to the
serious young officer and explained the situation.

"No problems Sergeant, I will have my
section staff check her address every few hours to see if she gets
home".

Bridger noted the use of the words, 'My
section', and thought it was very proprietary for a person who was
only relieving in the role.

"That would be great, just get someone to
leave a note on my desk if I'm not around when she's located".

Bridger left the office thinking how long it
had taken him to consider any type of promotion, this new breed of
police officer all seemed to be champing at the bit to rise up the
ranks.

Reaching his squad office, he turned off the
harsh overhead lighting leaving only the dull grey light from
outside to filter through the blinds. Rubbing his temples, he sat
at his desk, then reached over to the small office fridge and found
the bottle of chocolate milk he kept in there for emergencies.
Opening the bottle he took a long pull, emptying half of it in one
go. The milk lined his stomach, making him feel partially better.
The sugar content was also gave him a little boost.

Going back over the mornings events, he knew
he had done what he could; his enquiries could not raise anyone in
the house next door to Marion's place either. The students, who no
doubt lived there, were probably sleeping off a big night.

Which is exactly what Marion will be doing
with someone right now, he thought.

Bridger was satisfied that he had done right
by Mrs. Watson and her concerns about her daughter, and now had to
concentrate on the next few hours before he could knock off. He
wondered what sort of mood Laura would be in when he got home, if
he was honest with himself, which he did not seem to be too much of
lately, she would be pretty pissed off. He knew she had the right
to be, but it did not make the thought of going home any
easier.

Needing something to take his mind off the
impending confrontation with his wife he glanced around the empty
office. To his dismay, his eyes kept coming back to the overflowing
file tray on his desk. He knew he would have to make some inroads
into that pile of paperwork that was threatening to fall off the
desk. He hated paperwork as much as he hated hangovers.
Unfortunately, both were something that was a by-product of a short
period of fun.

Reluctantly he picked the file that was
closest to the top of the pile and opened the front cover sheet. He
would feel like a hypocrite as the newly promoted Detective
Sergeant telling others about the evils of forgetting to complete
the necessary paperwork, if he did not have a clear desk
himself.

Glancing distastefully around the office at
his colleagues equally overflowing file trays he realised that he
would now be responsible for checking those files as well.

Maybe promotion was not such a good idea, he
thought, too late now.

Police work was not all driving fast and
using corny one-liners as the movies had enticingly promised him
before he joined.

Trapped in the stale room, her breathing the
only thing keeping her company, she was fighting against her fear.
She did not want to be scared but she could not help it. The shadow
had returned a little while later and given her some food, not much
and the same disgusting texture as the last time, but it was enough
to stave off her hunger pangs. Trapped in the dark little room
Marion desperately tried to calculate how long she had been there.
Her frightened mind was telling her it was a lifetime. It was
telling her that she knew no other existence than the dark torment
that she felt now.

The shadow had not touched her since she had
woken on the cold floor; he had only watched her in the dark. Her
vulnerability highlighted in her nakedness.

Marion's imagination had started to frighten
her even more than her reality. What did he want from her? Was this
some perverted type of foreplay, is this how he got off. She
thought of the rape that would happen. She knew that was what she
was there for, his deviant sexual pleasure. What else was there?
She thought about how it would feel, how she would feel, what he
would do to her and how it would hurt… She did not want him inside
her; she would rather die first than have that final degradation as
her last memory.

Marion wondered if anyone had missed her
yet, or wondered where she was. She knew most of friends would
think she was with Mat somewhere.

She thought back to what she remembered of
when it happened. She was on her way to the exam from Mats house;
she knew that was on Friday, but what day was it now?

She remembered she had kissed Mat as she
left his flat, just a peck on the cheek even though he was going
away for a week with friends, skiing at Cadrona. Now, trapped in
this nightmare, she thought of him carrying on with his life
oblivious to her plight. Her mother would wonder of course, she
always worried about her. Her mother hated Mat, she hated the fact
Marion had moved out and was living in the flat.

She looked around herself in despair; maybe
her mother was right in her distrustful view of the world. Is this
what she had in mind when she went on about all the bad things in
the world? Was this what she meant when she spoke of all the things
that human beings were capable of doing?

Memories of childhood lessons on the dangers
of making bad choices came back to her. Her mother always delivered
these lessons with fervor normally confined to preaching Ministers
on a church pulpit. It had got worse after dad died, she
remembered. It was almost as if her mother had finally felt free
enough or confident enough to vent a lifetime of built up
frustrations and emotion.

‘Men were nothing but violent
Neanderthals capable only of hurt and betrayal
’
, she would say.
‘
Some were not
capable of controlling their violence in any way, letting it spill
over into the daily lives of others. Some were clever and were able
to hide the undesirable streak, confining it behind closed doors,
venting it on those closest to them
’
.

Marion did not know whether her mother was
referring to her father when she spoke of these men, her memories
were of a gentle person who showed her nothing but love. He may
have lacked confidence and perhaps not made enough of his life, but
he always seemed happy enough.

She had heard the late night arguments
though, when her mother always talked down to her father, she could
tell it would wind him up, but he never had the confidence to say
something. He would get sullen and mope around for a while. It was
almost as if her mother was trying to provoke a reaction and was
not getting the right one. Maybe he said what he needed to in
private, preferring to have a rational discussion instead of an
angry debate.

She felt a burst of immense
loneliness, made worse in the darkness. She missed her father; he
would come to her rescue if he were still alive. That is what
fathers did, and fathers were men to. She heard her
mother
’
s
words in her head, she thought of the shadow somewhere outside the
darkness. This is one of those men, she thought, mum was
right.

The last thing she remembered was someone
whistling a tune she had heard before but could not place, strong
arms grabbing her from behind, before shoving a filthy rag in her
face, and then everything went black. It had been nothing but
darkness since, darkness and the shadow. How long had it been, she
had no idea. The room was stuffy; it reeked of human waste, her
waste. She felt filthy, degraded, frightened. She started to sob, a
sob that went on until he came for her, a sob that intensified as
he placed a gag on her mouth. A sob turned into a stifled scream
when he dragged her from the room and through the darkened house.
Then her scream stopped dead as he threw her roughly onto the
floor. He placed that stinking cloth over her face again,
whispering quietly to her as he held it tight.

"Don't worry mother the end is near".

Then everything went a darker shade of
black.

Coming to, he felt spittle forming a sticky
pool around his cheek which was resting on the desk, it took
Bridger a few seconds to realise he was still in the office. The
paperwork he was intending to complete was lying untouched in the
tray beside him.

Looking at the clock on the wall it told him
that he was well past knocking off time. It was getting dark
outside the window leaving the office bathed in shadows. His mouth
felt like it was full of cotton wool, the sugar from the chocolate
milk doing what sugar did.

The short sleep, however deep, had done
nothing to placate his thumping head. He thought about putting in
an extra hour to make a start on the paperwork, but he was having
trouble focusing his eyes so he decided to stop for the day.

Grabbing his bag he headed out the door and
into the stairwell, the stairwell windows looked down into the
police station gym on the side of the building, the lights were on
and he saw a couple of young officers energetically chucking a
basketball into one of the hoops. He was walking slowly himself;
every step was thumping inside his head and his breath coming in
short little rasps. As he reached the bottom and walked out into
the night air he felt a little better but not by much.

He pushed his electronic key tag up against
the pad on the rear gate, watching it slide open. He was followed
by a patrol car as he walked out of the yard and into the alleyway
beside the Police Station, it's red and blue lights blinked on as
it accelerated out onto the one way system heading north, off to
another call for help. He caught two somber looking faces in the
blur of the windscreen as it flashed by, both passengers intent on
their destination. He found his own car where he left it the night
before; he fumbled with the lock having to jiggle it a little bit
to get the door open.

Collapsing in behind the wheel, he let out a
pained sigh. He was glad he did not have to get involved in the
busy physical world of the uniform branch anymore. He would not
have survived a day like this on the back of his hangover. He much
preferred the more sedate style of a detective to catch the bad
guys.

Bridger drove away from the car park and
made his way up into the Octagon, which made up the hub of the
central city. Early evening diners were sitting at tables inside
the snug looking bar restaurants that lined the bottom half. Bars
that looked sedentary now, people having a relaxed drink, or
dinner, but later on he knew they would play host to hundreds of
intoxicated people as the younger crowd made their way to town, all
topped up on whatever cheap alcohol the supermarkets were selling
as a loss leader this week.