The First Cut

by Sisters in Crime Australia

  Lane Cove? Leafy, law-abiding Lane Cove? Nope.

  Gulargambone? Nothing for a million miles in any direction but peace and quiet and DUIs? Nope, again.

  Kings Cross, maybe? Crime, grime, drugs and thugs? You got it! I guess the committee thought I'd blend right in here.

  "Ruakuri?" they probably said. "The one that got shot in the leg? The black lezzo? Send her to Kings Cross. Nobody's going to notice her there."

  Well, it's true. I do seem to blend right in. You have to be nine-feet tall with a couple of extra limbs to stand out from the crowd around here. But, I kind of like it; the passing trade tend to be a bit of a pain but the regular clients aren't that much different from what you'd find in Community Services except that nobody expects you to turn them into the Brady Bunch.

  It's quite relaxing, actually. Senior Sergeant Donnelly takes the view that as long as we do our best to stop the street girls and the boys on The Wall from getting themselves murdered, keep the dealers and the junkies out of the main thoroughfares, and periodically round up anyone who looks under about twelve and doesn't seem to have a home to go to, that's about all anyone could realistically expect.

  I get to know some of the regular workers quite well, especially the parlour girls. They seem to last a bit longer than the street kids, but they're still in and out of the station often enough, and I've been known to get quite upset when one of them gets sliced up or makes an irrevocable error in her choice of pharmaceuticals. They're much friendlier now I'm a police-person than they were when I worked for good old Community Services. I guess they know I have no intention of taking their babies away or trying to make them see that virtue is its own reward.

  So… it could be worse. And here I am. It's a quiet Wednesday night; well, as quiet as it ever gets around here. There's a 14-year-old called Shonelle having the screaming meemies in one of the cells, something of a regular occurrence just lately. I make a note to explain to a couple of the managers that we are not a free detox centre and, if they don't want us hanging around their clubs on a regular basis checking on whether or not their staff are old enough to be legal, then they'd better exercise a bit more quality control in what they give them to stay happy. There's a madwoman at the counter demanding over and over again that we take her home to Daisy; there's a couple of drunks who've spewed up everything they ever ate in their entire lives and are wishing there was some way they could just be switched off until it was all over; and a couple of boys waiting for their dad to turn up with a lawyer.

  I'm also trying to draft a report for my latest committee. As the most junior member - and, of course, the only woman - I tend to be the one who gets to do the drafts. And a source of great joy it is, too.

  This one is on snuff movies, and the party line is that it's all a load of bollocks. See, every time a young person goes missing, which happens about eight times a week in the fair State of New South Wales, large numbers of concerned citizens are convinced that they've been abducted, raped and horribly murdered on video for the titillation of the perverted few. But Assistant Commissioner Hooper - the head of this committee that I'm on - he keeps saying that nobody on the committee has ever seen a snuff movie, nobody has ever met anyone who is willing to say they've seen a snuff movie, and those people ought to know. Besides, he says, where are all the bodies? Bodies are notorious for their habit of turning up inconveniently, just when you think it's safe, no matter how carefully dismembered, weighed down, treated with acid, or coated with shark bait.

  Now, we know that; but we also know that nobody ever found Christopher Flannery. Or Azaria Chamberlain. Or Juanita Neilsen. Or the Beaumont children.

  Assistant Commissioner Hooper isn't stupid; and besides, I remember once going to an in-service on crime and other nasty stuff back when I was a District Officer for Community Services and he was the speaker, and I distinctly remember him saying that if you could imagine it, there was somebody out there doing it.

  That was years ago. Something seems to have happened to Hooper, but a girl with any sense of self-preservation is not going to ask what. It's a whitewash and, well, normally I'd think, fine; makes a change from hysterical accusations and seeing who can come up with the name of the most unlikely public figure.

  But I have to say I've got a funny feeling about this one. I've made a list of everyone who's been reported missing in the past three months and then sorted them into those who turned up okay, those that turned up hacked to death by their nearest and dearest, those whom we know have pushed off to New Zealand on false passports, and so forth. There are about six names left over. All girls. All disappeared from our patch.

  On Thursdays.

  Well, how likely is that? We're into evidence-based practice these days and I think about presenting this evidence at the next committee meeting, but I know it's a waste of time. They never set up commissions such as this unless they've already decided what the outcome will be, and I know perfectly well that I'd need a signed confession witnessed by JC himself before Hooper would bother to look at it. There's no point in antagonising important people like him, especially when they also sit on the police promotions board and your hearing happens to be scheduled for some time next week, and I can imagine how Assistant Commissioner Hooper will react to the suggestion that someone around here is making a habit of picking up a do-it-yourself stiff with their Thursday night's grocery shopping.

  So, I'm trying to say as little as possible as politely as possible, while all around me drunks, thieves, tarts, muggers and Senior Sergeant Mick Donnelly are clamouring for my attention.

  It's Mick that finally gets through.

  "Stiff in a back alley, Rima," he says cheerily. "Get down there."

  "Why me?" I ask.

  "She's a pro," replies Mick. "You're good at that sort of thing."

  "You mean, pros mean sex, I'm a lezzo, lezzos mean sex, so I can sort her out. Is that it?"

  "Near enough," says Mick. "Off you go."

  Shit. Sometimes I think I was put on this earth in order to explain to people that lesbians don't spend their entire lives having sex. Mick's okay; he feels approximately the same way as I do about men who abuse women and who think if they're prostitutes, it really doesn't count. But, like most blokes, he can't get past the fairly minor point that, at least when things are going well, I go out with other women.

  Things aren't going well at the moment.

  Anyway, off I go and, sure enough, there's a dead prostitute in a back alley. I don't know her, which usually wouldn't mean much because those street girls have a pretty short shelf life and the Recording Angel himself would have trouble keeping up with who's doing what to whom behind which garbage bin in the big city on a hot summer's evening.

  But this one's not your usual teenager with a Gosford bus pass in her back pocket, either. This stiff looks nearer 40 than 14 and I'm a bit surprised I don't recognise her. Up from St Kilda on a job exchange, perhaps? She's got about a dozen scars on each wrist, running across, not down, which is enough in itself to set a suspicious policeperson to wondering. At her age she ought to know what she's doing. But anyway, she's crawling with track marks; it looks like a fairly straightforward OD, so I call the boys with the van and have a look around. She can't have been here long because she's still warm and besides, her bag's still here. I scrabble through it for ID.

  There's a packet of tampons, a packet of cigarettes, a packet of condoms, and a packet of Panadol Forte. There's a purse with $21.75, a couple of wadded-up tissues, a syringe, a bottle of silver nail polish, a ticket to tomorrow night's performance of Nabucco at the Opera House, and a one-year diary in a black plastic cover.

  I look at these last two items and I am frankly puzzled. For one thing, here we've got someone who's come out without a front door key, suggesting to the thinker that she very probably hasn't got a front door to call her own, and she's carrying a $75 ticket to the world's dreariest opera. And this diary; well, how far ahead does a person need to plan if she's a prostitute whose ho
bbies are injecting smack and attempting suicide?

  The guys are taking their own sweet time so I flick through her diary. There's not much there, just a few names. Nicki. Shantal. Brandi. I've seen those names before, I think, as the boys screech to a halt in the truck. I look at the current week-to-an-opening page and I notice the name Shonelle. It's on Thursday. I flick back again and I notice that Nicki, Shantal and Brandi were on Thursdays, too.

  The boys are distracted, taking a few perfunctory photographs and trying to keep the citizenry at arm's length, so I drop the diary and the ticket in my shirt pocket and limp off up the alley to the squad car.

  Back at the station, I sink an orange juice and a felafel sandwich, a last remnant of my old Community Services persona, thinking (as I always do) that I really must try to get a taste for diet coke and hamburgers if I'm ever going to blend in properly, and then I deal with a couple more drunks, a citizen who's been mugged, and a partridge in a pear tree. Then it's back to the desk. Just as I thought. Nicki, Shantal and Brandi are all names on my missing-teenagers list, and the dates in the diary match the last dates that anyone whom we could lay our hands on is prepared to admit having seen them alive. I wonder how many Shonelles there are in Kings Cross and then I limp down to the cells for a bit of community policing.

  Sure enough, Shonelle's got an appointment tomorrow with some woman whose name she doesn't know, who wants to introduce her to some bloke whose name she doesn't know, either. What she does know is that he's after someone who'll do something rather special and can be discreet about it.

  Well, 'something special' could be anything from golden showers to nude wrestling in baked beans, but somehow I've got a gut feel about this one.

  I think it through and decide that I definitely do not want to be the sole repository of this information if there is anything more than the faintest chance that it is in some way connected with dead bodies. I've seen too many movies in which the glamorous heroine decides not to tell her boss about the gang of murderous jewel thieves before setting out to right wrongs single-handedly, and I know that the chances of Al Pacino turning up at the crucial moment to rescue me would have to be on the slim side. I decide the best thing is to take precautions.

  I ring Assistant Commissioner Hooper and say I seem to have something of a new angle on this snuff-movie business, and can I have a spot of backup for a bit of a poke round, see if I can turn up something a bit more definite? Predictably, he tells me that I've let my imagination run away with me, that prostitutes and junkies are notorious for their lack of respect for the rules of evidence, and that there is such a thing as getting to close to one's job. He's on the point of saying 'going native' when he remembers to whom he's talking to and manages to turn it into a rather nasty sounding cough.

  But I must be on to something, because next day I get a signed letter saying I'm being promoted to Senior Sergeant and transferred to Gulargambone, effective immediately.

  That might have been that, if it hadn't been for good old Mick. Say what you like about blokes, they do have their uses, and when I put my side of the story to him, he turned out to be unexpectedly quick on the uptake.

  The only thing I regret, really, is that I wasn't there when Mick walked into the Opera House thirty seconds before the lights went down. I would have loved to see Assistant Commissioner Hooper's face as Mick took the empty seat beside him.

  BIRTHING THE DEMONS

  Josephine Pennicott

  For the hand that rocks the cradle

  Is the hand that rules the world.

  William Ross Wallace, What Rules the World

  We're still blaming mothers

  Joyce Flint (Jeffrey Dahmer's mother)

  There is no escape.

  When you realise that fact, there is a small measure of acceptance. A slight, cooling breeze of relief.

  No escape. No escape. No escape.

  Tears can flow then. Anger can escape at different times, but at least these states are preferable to the early shock. The numbing denial.

  No escape. Even the night is not a friend. Odd little memories come creeping, whispering malevolently into your ear, waking you up, screaming.

  I'm as much a prisoner as he is.

  Jim refuses to discuss it with me, as he has refused to discuss so many things over the years, but I know that the same demons embrace him in the night. I've heard the agonised sobbing into the pillow in the early hours before dawn.

  Last night I walked into a room. It felt like a room from my childhood, but it was not familiar to me. Fresh flowers were in the vase, there was a fire in the grate. The hearth … there was something on the hearth, cold, dark and wet. An icy, wet communication spurts in my veins. I know, I know what the horrible thing is. Her. Bits of her. Skull and hair and brains and blood, all over my nice clean hearth. Then I wake up with a rush and I begin to cry quietly. But not quietly enough, for Jim hears.

  'Leave it, Evie,' he says wearily.

  I spend the rest of the night listening to the sounds of traffic gradually increase, cats fighting on the roof next door, a light shower of rain around 4 am. Then light, gradually breaking.

  No escape.

  I lie there, trying not to cry, trying not to think, to remember her. Him. Her. Her. Him.

  I wait for dawn.

  It is hard to believe that one act can alter so many people's lives, that your routine can change so quickly overnight. And how, after that one act, all the old rules of the game have been replaced, but nobody has told you what the new ones are. Yesterday, I walked into the butcher's on High Street, thinking that Jim might like a nice roast. I couldn't remember the last time I had cooked him a proper meal. There was once a time that I wouldn't have gotten away with that. If a clean cloth wasn't on the table, butter in the butter dish, fresh bread rolls and a cooked meal with four veg, he would have been complaining. Now he doesn't seem to notice or care. We sit with trays on our knees in front of the TV, eating scrambled egg, fish fingers, finger food.

  In the butcher's the conversation ceased as soon as I entered. Enid McKillop and Rita Davies were there. I went to school with Rita. They said hello. Their faces had that half- interested, half-embarrassed look, and they hurried out together, clutching their bundles of white-papered meat, as if I was a bad smell.

  I cooked the lamb and vegetables. They were too soggy, and we ate on trays in front of the TV. Once, I looked over at Jim, and he was sitting there, quietly crying.

  That night I stood in the darkened sunroom, looking out the window at the house across the street. Shadows surrounded it. The 'For Sale' sign, dim in the moonlight, mocked me of the change to come. I watched the shadows move silently around the house for hours, remembering another distant night, when those shadows had come to life and entered that house...

  I asked the house for answers, for I had long given up on asking God. I could feel the lamb sitting heavily in my stomach. I would have to take some Normacol before I went to bed tonight. Steam from my breath frosted the glass, and for a wild moment I thought I saw Joy sitting on her floral outdoor sofa, a pile of glossy magazines beside her. She would often cut out little recipes for me that she imagined we would like to try.

  'Here's an easy recipe for Thai coconut soup, Evie. Do you think that they will carry the ingredients for it down at Warrens?'

  'Bloody interfering old busybody,' Jim never failed to complain. 'Probably only hoping for a free feed at our house.'

  But I enjoyed the little ritual, that small attention. My parents had long retired to the warmth of a Queensland retirement village, and Joy's little clippings had made me feel nurtured.

  Our son Leslie had never taken to her. 'She's a snob,' he'd say if I tried to encourage him to do chores for her. 'She has evil eyes,' he would add.

  A part of me knew what he meant. Joy did have unusual eyes. Vivid blue, hardly the eyes of an old woman approaching her 84th birthday. Perhaps there had always been some ominous warning in those young girl's eyes that I had failed to see
. Then a darker thought. A memory I had once - for I had been there - but had blocked out. What did those eyes look like when they had found her? Were they open or closed?

  It had been the flies that had warned me. A great swarming mass of them. I could hear them as I stood behind the screen door. 'Joy?'

  Jim had been furious at me for not listening to him, for ignoring his commands to stay home and not cross the street to see if Joy was alright. I hadn't seen her for days. Jim sulked in front of one of his wildlife specials; gorillas in the wild, or chimps; some kind of monkeys, anyway.

  Leslie had screamed at me when I voiced my concerns out aloud. 'Leave it Evie!' he said. 'Don't go interfering and encouraging the old bitch. You do too much for her now!' He hadn't forgiven me for telling Joy that he would mow her lawns and do some handiwork around the house. He'd been sulking for weeks over that one. Jim and Leslie were like two peas in a pod at times. It was depressing.

  It had been the flies on that hot, summery day. I could hear them buzzing as I wondered what to do.

  'Joy? I've made you some caramel slice,' I called, trying to balance the slice and the weekly magazines I had finished with. The door behind the screen was ajar. Without thinking, I pushed it open and stepped into the cool hallway I had been in a thousand times before. There was a faint smell. Something rotten. Oh, God. I had been preparing myself for this for years. I had always known when I had befriended Joy there would come a day when I would visit her to find her lifeless body in the bath, or in bed.

  'Joy?' The flies buzzed angrily back at me. I could hear the loud, annoying tick of Joy's antique grandfather clock. I walked into the small lounge room, placing the plate of caramel slice down carefully on the table. God, the place was such a mess. Drawers were pulled out, a broken glass lay on the fire hearth. I pulled my cotton T-shirt up over my nose. I knew, but I had to see. The rotten smell intensified as I approached the bedroom.