The Princess and the Cop (9 page)
‘Getting near it, sir.’
‘Good. I’m taking over. I want to make this arrest. I owe it to the Osbournes, my friends. Has she confessed?’
Now I was concerned for her. Bertram was a brute and was obviously after glory. I couldn’t protect her from him.
I didn’t respond to him.
‘Ok, Corrigan. Keep her on ice. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. I’ll make the arrest and take her back to Brisbane. When I arrive, you’re off the case and I’m totally responsible. Understand?’
‘Yes sir!’
He hung up abruptly, as courteous as ever.
I sat and thought things over. Then I went back to her.
‘Stay!’ I said to the sergeant.
Paula said, ‘I’m ready, Bart. I think I remember it all.’
So I let her go ahead, reading my notes and prompting her at times. O’Reilly watched her and his face became sad. But no sadder than mine.
When she’d finished, she put her head down on her hands and began crying. I wanted to comfort her but I couldn’t.
I said, ‘Paula, things have changed a bit. The Commissioner of Police is taking over this case and he’s flying here now in the Police plane to arrest you and take you to Brisbane. I wanted to handle all that but he’s a friend of Lily’s parents and wants it all for himself.’
She was frightened now. It had all been almost friendly before, with Bart. Now it was real.
I had worse to come.
‘I want to take you to the hospital for a body and clothing search before you travel. It’s a normal procedure. We have no Policewoman here so I’m hoping someone at the hospital will do it.’
She said, plaintively, ‘Do you have to? It sounds humiliating.’
‘Regrettably, yes. You must understand that you’re about to be a prisoner. No longer a country schoolteacher or Mrs. Carson. I’m sorry, Paula.’
O’Reilly and I drove her to the hospital but the medical superintendent objected to his staff having to do this. I quickly rang Don and asked him to arrange for a policewoman to be with the Commissioner. He rang back, just as quickly, to say it was too late. Bertram was on his way.
This was now getting serious. I called the staff together and asked for a volunteer.
‘You all know and like this lady, I’m guessing. When the Commissioner arrives and finds that she hasn’t been searched, he’s just as likely to do it himself or order me to. Please save her dignity?’
The Matron said, ‘I’ll do it’, and took Paula to a room. They emerged some time later, with Paula flushed and dishevelled and the Matron not much better. While she was in there, I searched her bag and removed some nail scissors, a nail file and a glass mirror. Later, in the car, I gave her a stainless steel mirror a few of which I kept for just this purpose. Oh yes! I cared for my prisoners!
Paula paused in front of a mirror on the hospital wall and touched up her hair, the way women do, and we drove out to the aerodrome.
****
At the aerodrome, the Police plane was waiting and our Commissioner was standing beside it. We stopped near the plane and I turned to Paula.
She was in a bad state, trembling hard and almost in tears.
‘I’m afraid now, Bart. I’m afraid of everything that’s going to happen to me—the questioning, the court and jail. They’ll take you away from me, won’t they, and I need you near me. Please don’t let them, Bart? Please?’
But before I could comfort her, Bertram arrived, wrenched open her door and pulled her roughly from the car.
They stood in the hot Monto sun and he went through the whole rigmarole---‘Paula Mary Carson I am arresting you for the murder of Lily Anne Osbourne in Brisbane on etc. etc.’
Paula didn’t say anything, as he cautioned her. She was nearly collapsing and I moved quickly around to support her. Bertram had put handcuffs on her, which was totally unnecessary.
‘Put her on the plane,’ he barked at me. The bastard had brought a photographer along and he was busy.
I had to half-carry Paula into the plane and onto a seat. I got some cold water and gave it to her, hovering and surreptitiously holding her hand.
The plane’s engines started and she started to come back to reality, staring at me with frightened eyes. I went to sit beside her.
‘No!” said Bertram. ‘Up at the rear, Corrigan. We offer no comfort to prisoners on this aircraft. Has she been searched?’
‘Yes.’
‘By whom?’
‘The hospital matron.’
‘Were you present?’
‘Of course not.’
He stared at me and I wondered what was coursing through that strange brain of his.
As we stood, illegally, while the plane took off, I noticed that Paula had kicked off her shoes, a sign to me that she was relaxing, being comfortable. I bent down and picked up her shoes and probed them. Perhaps the Matron hadn’t searched them. Paula gave me a brilliant smile, all fear apparently gone now. I touched her hand as I put the shoes down and moved to my allocated seat.
Bertram came and stood over me.
‘You are off this case, from the time I arrested her, Corrigan. All the credit is mine. You will help with her confession and then you’ll move on to your next case. Don’t have any contact with Mrs. Carson again. It seems, from the looks, that you’ve been too close already.’
He tottered down to his seat in the swaying aircraft. As well as the photographer, he had his personal detective.
We flew on and I watched Paula. In other circumstances, I thought that she and I might have got together some time but, of course, there wouldn’t have been any other circumstances. Bertram was sitting opposite her and I noticed he wasn’t above casting admiring glances at her from time to time. She ignored him.
Then she sat up and looked around. The plane was noisy but I heard her ask Bertram if she could go to the toilet. He undid the cuffs. She bent down to put on her shoes, got her bag and primped her hair, using the stainless steel mirror I’d given her.
Bertram stood and opened the toilet door for her and she stood, turned to me and gave me a brilliant smile and I knew what she was going to do.
I leaped to my feet crying ‘NOOOOOO!’ and tried to catch her. Bertram was startled and she slipped around him and into the toilet, locked the door.
I started to shout her name and, ‘DON’T PAULA! I CAN HELP YOU! DON’T!’
Bertram grabbed me and threw me down to the rear of the plane but I returned to the toilet door and began pounding.
‘I need an axe! She’s harming herself in there!’
Bertram shouted, ‘Sit down, Corrigan or I’ll cuff you. That’s rubbish.’
And then he stared at his feet, looking ill.
Blood was seeping from under the toilet door into the passageway. Then he started to call for an axe and one of the pilots came out with a small emergency axe, hammer on one side and axe on the other. He started to pound at the door latch and then the hinges. Bertram snatched the axe from him and began his own pounding. He was so panicky that he was missing more than he hit.
I sat slumped in a seat and watched Paula Carson’s life seeping under the toilet door.
As the plane was landing in Brisbane, the door finally gave way and Paula’s body slumped out of the toilet. She’d slit her throat with a razor blade that was now floating in the blood on the floor.
When the plane stopped, in a hangar far away from any other aircraft or people, we were met by an ambulance and Assistant Commissioner Don Simmons and Internal Affairs detectives. The ambulance was superfluous, I thought. A morgue van was needed.
But before the plane doors were opened, the Commissioner did an amazing thing. He summoned all on board and said, ‘You all saw what happened. Corrigan was in charge of the prisoner. He took her over from me against my specific order. And he conducted an inefficient search and might even have abetted her suicide. You are suspended forthwith, Senior Sergeant Corrigan. Hand your gun and warrant card to my detective.’
I suppose I was a bit pale. I know the others were, as they stared at Commissioner Bertram in surprise.
But I had other things on my mind as Paula’s body was placed in a body bag. A Coroner’s van had arrived and slowly moved her out of the airfield.
I went to Don.
‘Get statements from everyone, straight away Don, please? Don’t let them leave. He’s blaming me.’
And then I was put in handcuffs and driven off by a couple of Uniforms. I was taking Paula’s place.
****
What followed was a long nightmare. There was an Internal Affairs inquiry into the loss of a prisoner while in custody. Then there was an inquest into Paula’s death. Then there was an inquiry into Lily’s death, involving Paula’s confession, and there was the Commissioner’s allegation that I’d taken over custody of Paula in contravention of his specific instructions. How he’d conjured up that one, I don’t know.
I think he had a breakdown when he saw Paula’s blood leaking from under the door and now, his brain was out of control.
The Police Union obtained for me the services of a leading lawyer in Brisbane—a barrister but not too proud to participate in all the inquiries. My story was the same for all of them. The worst part was the grilling, or grillings, and the fact that I had to relive that bad time again and again. I used the booze a bit to get to sleep each night.
Mr. Peter Driscoll QC was a dapper little man, smartly tailored and barbered who always wore a red carnation in his button-hole. Being a copper I had no love for lawyers but I excluded him from that. He was a joy to watch as he worked in each court-room. Smoothly and quietly, he destroyed Bertram’s stories by producing every witness to every event. None of them tried to avoid the truth. It was interesting watching him lead Bertram into verbal alleyways from which there was no escape and the Commissioner virtually convicted himself.
Bertram was suspended from the force, charged with negligence, perjury through false accusations (against me) and failure to protect a prisoner in his charge and, indeed, was lucky to escape jail. As it was he was dismissed in disgrace. I got no joy from any of that. As a rider, they tickled me about an inefficient search but Mr. Driscoll drew eye-witness evidence about what I’d done, especially at the hospital and I was exonerated. Other Police he called said they wouldn’t have considered the prisoner’s hair a hiding place. They did now.
When they turned to Corrigan, I was praised for solving the murder, commended for my handling of the prisoner up until the time she was taken from me. O’Reilly was a significant witness for me here.
I was promoted to Inspector.
And I got no joy from any of that either.
Don was appointed Commissioner.
At the end of it all, Mr. Driscoll took me to dinner.
‘I have to tell you, Bart that I’m the honorary Austrian and Bassenburg consul in our city and I know about you and the Princess Tessadonna, and jillaroo schools, brown snakes and all that. Have you been in touch with her since that event?’
‘No, and I wouldn’t expect to be. We came across each other, liked each other and then she left for home. I’m a copper and she’s a princess. End of story. What have you heard of her?’
‘Nothing. She’s dropped out of sight. Totally. Nothing seen nor heard for 12 months or more. I thought you two might have been in touch because of the fight she put up here at the airport when they were about to fly her home. She’s a determined girl and she wouldn’t leave until she saw you to say goodbye and thanks for the snake rescue. But they seemed to want her away from you and, in the end, she left. She said to me, ‘Please say to him that I’ll remember him always. ‘And that’s why we’re here. I’m not sure what went on…’
‘…nothing!’
‘Well, it did as far as she was concerned and, from the look on your face when I first mentioned her name, it did as far as you’re concerned. Coppers aren’t the only ones who can read expressions, you know, young Corrigan.’
And now the perspicacious lawyer had opened things right up for me again. Oh, Tessa! What’s going to happen to us? It just can’t end in nothing!
****
I was given some leave to get over all the dramas, although I didn’t need it. I was told to expect a new assignment when I returned in four weeks.
I drove to Monto and headed straight for the hospital.
The Matron wasn’t hard to find. She stopped dead in the long corridor when she saw me approaching and, as I got close, opened a door to a room and walked in, with me following. It was the same room that she’d taken Paula to, to search her.
I said, ‘Nothing’s going to happen. You hid the razor blade in Paula’s hair for her, didn’t you? Why? I was going to look after her.’
She was a severe looking white-haired woman of spare build and now she was teary.
‘She was terrified, despite your caring for her. She was terrified of jail, of the courts, of the Police and the cells. Just everything. She was my best friend. She begged me and I had to help her.’
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