High Beam

by SJ Brown

  “That’s the logical conclusion. He was unlucky that his battery was drained. Help probably wouldn’t have arrived in time anyway. He had quite a few bites on his forearms. And that would normally be it.”

  “But?”

  “Someone tried to be a bit too neat. Bit too calculating. Are you with me?”

  Kate was now very interested. “Yes, Jane Watson. But how?”

  The waitress re-emerged and Mahoney ordered two more of the same and requested a carafe of water. Kate took the opportunity to use the toilet. Upon her return, the requested drinks were in place.

  “Thank you.” She sipped some water. “Jane Watson?”

  “Right. You’ll need the sequence of events a bit clearer. The delivery guy discovers the body. Calls for the ambulance and our boys. They both arrive within twenty minutes. The paramedics determine they’re too late: nothing they can possibly do. The attending officer calls it in to make sure everyone is covered. The medical examiner eventually gets there as does Mrs. Watson. Her name was listed as next of kin on the emergency card in his wallet. So far all as per normal. Agreed?”

  Kate nodded. “Perfectly. A death in slightly unusual circumstances so all concerned stick to procedure. As you say quite normal. What’s the sting?”

  “Sweet Lady Jane, to corrupt Mick and the boys. Here’s what the ambulance officer and Senior Constable Douglas both agree on.” He proceeded to tick off on his fingers. “One: she gets from Tranmere to Acton in police pursuit time. Two: at the body she does the full final act of a tragedy anguish. Three: she has to take a fair while to compose herself before she can even speak. Now, does that match with the woman we met at Oceana Drive?”

  “Not in the slightest. She must have been whacking it on. Sounds like a parody of despair. So that’s spooky. What else?”

  “Something she didn’t have to do at all, when you think about it. The ambo guy remembers her going off to the far side of the building to have a few quiet moments. Fair enough. Then she comes back around, wanting one of the police officers. Says she’s perplexed. Shows him the electricity meter box. Right there is an epi-pen. This is where he knew it would be, she says. Why didn’t he just come and get it. It would have saved him. Cue more tears. And why indeed didn’t he grab it?”

  Kate waited for a few suits to pass by on their way to a stylish new restaurant at the end of the quay. “Because it wasn’t there. She’d just replaced it.”

  “Most likely. And that’s what’s odd.”

  “How so? Because it throws up other questions?”

  “Yes, I think that’s the problem. She need not have alerted anybody to the hidey-hole. She could simply have said that her husband usually carried one with him and he must have forgotten or something. Play dumb. But she can’t. She’s shrewd so she believes she has to play cunning. I’d bet that there was usually an epi-pen in that meter box. A fairly secure spot that’s readily accessible. You’d always know it’s there no matter what car you bring etc. One day she takes it away hoping for just such an eventuality as occurred. If it’s ever noted as missing by her husband he’d hardly think to ask her, just assume it’s been nicked.”

  “Would others know it’s there or should be there?”

  “Possibly, but that still doesn’t impinge on her method. All she has to do is plead ignorance of what he did to ensure his safety on site and that would be credible. But, and it’s a great but, she wants to have a clever finish so she surreptitiously replaces the epi-pen. Too clever by half. In seeking to muddy the waters, she overplays her hand and casts suspicion where it need not have been. If she’d acted in character, i.e. calmly, at the scene and not ‘found’ the epi-pen, nobody would think to question the death. Unusual, yes, suspicious, no.”

  “So her plan comes to pass as she’d hoped. With the element of random luck, there doesn’t seem much we can prove.”

  Mahoney leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I told her.”

  Kate was momentarily taken aback. “When was this? You’ve interviewed her?”

  “Not formally. I worked through the possible scenario last night and this morning we met at the Acton site.”

  “You and the Watson woman? No one else?”

  “That’s right. Man versus Amazon. There’s no point in bringing her in because a juggernaut could fit through the holes in any case we could construct. I just wanted to let her know we knew.” He paused to finish his glass of water. “And to let her know exactly what I thought of her. In no uncertain terms.”

  “So without another officer you don’t have to worry about one of us feeling obliged to lie about you calling her a scheming bitch.” Kate smiled at her superior. There was a wide streak of passion beneath his cool exterior after all. “How did she take it? Bit like Fotheringham?”

  “No, true to former type. Played a cool hand but she was not happy to face her duplicity.”

  EPILOGUE

  Friday 26th March

  And so here he was, standing on the old wooden jetty at Gordon. The wharf was shaped like an elongated capital block T and, on a fine day, plenty of recreational anglers would perch on the grey railings while every so often pleasure craft tied up for a time to allow people to disembark or embark.

  Today Mahoney was relieved to be the only presence on the baulking, weathered frame. The soft-dying day suited his present mood. The high banks of light grey clouds that loomed overhead were turning the body of water in front of him a steely hue. Behind him, the mellow sun was retreating behind the thickly wooded hills. He gazed out upon the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to the green patchwork quilt of paddocks on Bruny Island. Like the East Coast, the nomenclature of this area was testimony to the remarkable vagaries of history. Captain Bruni D’Entrecasteaux had sailed into this body of water and then up the East Coast of Van Diemen’s Land.

  Dutch mariners led by Abel Tasman were the first Europeans to hit the island in the seventeenth century. Seeking warmth and valuable spices, they showed little subsequent interest: too cold, too bleak and too far south. In the latter half of the next century the two superpowers either side of the English Channel had jostled for control of Terra Australis. Playing out a smaller version of the larger theatre of conflict in the Old World, Captain James Cook, on his third antipodean voyage of discovery, had landed at Adventure Bay on the eastern side of Bruny Island.

  Mahoney wondered if Cook or D’Entrecasteaux or Tasman felt anything like the sense of wonder ascribed to the Dutch sailors who encountered the New World of the Americas for the first time. Not too much would be dissimilar if they cruised the sound now. Sixty kilometers from Hobart, there was some signs of habitation and domestication of the environment but mostly what one saw from the water was swathes of eucalyptus trees interspersed with patches of green fields. With a bright sun on a clear day, the reflection of the landscape on the water was so clear as to seem almost real. A parallel landscape.

  So much akin to Mahoney’s experience. The world the majority of people witnessed was seemingly characterized by regularity, order and fairness or at least a show of it. But the reflection the detectives worked in was a chimera: it disguised dark cold depths where accountability, integrity and compassion were treated as punchlines for a series of sardonic jokes. Mahoney acknowledged the inevitable existence of the parallel world: he dealt with the corruption, violence and deception almost every day. He could not change it.

  If history demonstrated anything, it was that the human condition tended just as much toward dysfunctional dystopia as any Arcadian utopia. But he would not ever begin to believe that that should be the natural order of things. This just required him to wade in the mucky shallows and murky depths of his society but that had to be done to ensure many people could enjoy some cleanliness in a normal world.

  He had decided to press on as a detective. He was drawn to the battle. And, moreover, he was relishing life. There were prospects.

 
Now he was in the present it was time to experience a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SJBrown (Stephen John Brown) resides in Tasmania where the D.I. Mahoney series is set. His passion for crime fiction determined his choice of the police procedural format as a means of exploring the challenges of modern life. A former teacher and sports coach, he drew on his travel experiences and observations of Australian society for the writing of HIGH BEAM. The sequel to this debut novel, DEAD WOOD, is to be published in early 2015. Negotiations for the production of a TV series set in the Apple Isle have commenced.