“Yes, how did you know?”
He shrugged. “I’m a detective. We can tell these things. Actually, it’s kind of obvious. You’ve got hardly any furniture, and you’ve still got a dent on your ring finger.”
Tammy sat down with her own coffee. “Well anyway, yes, it was a divorce, not very nice and I’ve come up here to start over. I’ve got this house and a job, well a sort of a job, it’s pretty awful but it’ll put food on the table until I find something decent, and, well I almost thought I was going to have a cat until...” she trailed off miserably, remembering why he was there.
“So you and Tom hit it off pretty well, hey?”
“Oh yes, I love him, he’s the most beautiful little cat. It’s been wonderful having him here, you can’t imagine what it’s like, just having someone else there....” She felt herself getting teary, and cast about for a diversion. “Um, sorry I don’t have any biscuits, I don’t keep any in the house, too much temptation on the long evenings if you’ve got a packet of Tim Tams in the cupboard, you know.” Stop it, she told herself. You’re babbling again. Talk about something sensible, for God’s sake. “So, how come the police force have got a cat? I never heard of that before.”
For the first time, Jackson seemed ill at ease. And was that a blush? Yes, it was! A tide of red swept up his neck and suffused his face, making the grey eyes look almost green. Tammy put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. She knew she was about to hear something really good. Was Tom a private cat, that he’d registered to the police for some weird reason?
“It’s a special operation. Quite new. It’s called, um,” his voice trailed off into a mumble.
“What? Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Jackson cleared his throat, looking shifty. “Operation Tomcat,” he said defiantly.
Tammy couldn’t help herself. She roared with laughter. “Operation Tomcat? What do you do, go round and spray on the crims?”
Jackson was crimson now. “I know, I know, it’s hilarious. This is my life now,” he added bitterly. “No, it’s ok, go ahead and laugh, everyone else does.” He grinned ruefully. “Used to myself till I got posted to it.”
“Well come on, you can’t leave it there, I want to know all about it.”
Jackson took a deep breath and a swig of coffee, and seemed to square his shoulders.
“See, it’s a new department. Experimental. Using alternative surveillance and investigation techniques.”
“What’s it called?”
Jackson, whose colour had receded slightly, reached a new depth of scarlet intensity at this question. He stared down at the table. “Tactical Watch Alternative Taskforce,” he said miserably.
This was too much for Tammy. She completely lost it. When she managed to get her breath back, she repeated, “Tactical Watch Alternative Taskforce. Oh my God. So... you’re The Man From TWAT.” She dissolved into hysteria, only getting a grip when she realised Jackson’s hunched posture and silence indicated real misery. Snorting a little, she caught her breath and reached out a sympathetic hand to pat his wrist.
“I’m so sorry, Senior Constable Jackson. You must get this all the time. It must be awful, and I’m really sorry I added to it.”
He pulled himself together. “Nah, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it. And I’ve got to admit, it is funny. Just not so much when you’re in it yourself. Anyway, it’s Ben, call me Ben. And you’re Tammy, right?”
Tammy nodded. “So tell me about this new operation. I promise I won’t laugh again.”
“Well, the thing is that some bright spark at Headquarters reckoned the crims are pretty good at avoiding all the usual means of surveillance, and the idea was to develop new methods of gaining police intelligence that aren’t known or suspected. You know, wacko stuff.”
“What, like that TV show? Fringe?”
“Kind of. That’s what Operation Tomcat is. See Tom there, you might have noticed he’s got rather a fancy collar on.”
“Yes, I did notice. It seemed a bit unusual for a cat that roams around the streets.”
“Well, let me tell you, Tammy, that collar is a marvel of technology.”
“The collar? How?”
“Miniaturised electronics. That collar has a tiny camera and voice recorder in it, with a transmitter that sends on a tight beam back to the receiving station. We can track him using GPS and know exactly where he is, and everything he sees and hears, we see and hear.”
Tammy digested this in silence for a few moments.
“But why? I mean, what’s the point of watching him hunt mice or whatever? Surely you don’t sit there watching him just in case he sees a burglary or something?”
“Ah, well, that’s the fiendish cunning of it, see.” Ben’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “We direct him to the place where we want him to go by rubbing aromatic substances.”
“Aromatic substances?” Tammy could feel the pressure of laughter building in her chest, but sternly reminded herself that she’d promised. “So what, you go round the crims’ lairs and spray Old Spice on the doorknob? Don’t they tend to notice that?”
“No, we use a special catnip spray they developed in America. It’s undetectable by humans. And delivery is achieved by means of unsuspected personnel.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, there are always people who go places and don’t get noticed. The postman, for instance. Nobody notices the postman delivering letters. You see the guy in his yellow kit stop at your letterbox, you don’t really look at him, do you? Well, see, sometimes that won’t be the regular postman. If you’re on our list, that is. And while he’s shoving letters and junk mail in the box, he delivers a little squirt of this stuff. And that attracts Tom to the house.”
“Does this actually work?”
There was a silence.
“Work... well, it sort of worked in the field trials. Up to a point.”
“But in practice? In real life? I mean, have you caught any criminals this way?”
“Well, not exactly, not as such, no, not yet. But it’s early days. And we’ve obtained some very interesting information. Very interesting indeed.”
“Like what?”
Ben looked smugly triumphant. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“So how did you get into this special division? Have you always been interested in alternative police techniques?”
The red tide was rising again. There seemed to be no limit to the amount of embarrassment she was inflicting on this poor man. Tammy felt a little sorry, but not sorry enough to dampen her curiosity.
“Not so much... I was a normal detective before. Well, it’s a small town, you’re bound to hear sooner or later, I suppose. See, the thing is, nobody wants to go in TWAT. I mean, would you? So it’s more or less... not exactly disciplinary, as such, but when you’ve fucked up. People get sent there when they’ve screwed up big time, and I guess I did that right enough.”
Tammy patted his wrist again. He looked so unhappy that it didn’t really seem funny any more.
Ben raised his head and looked her in the eyes. “It was a servo robbery. That big service station on the Bentsville road. It would have been okay, the guy working there had one of those alarms under the counter, and the call came out on the radio – thing is, I was right there. I mean, I was filling up my car when the call came through. The radio was turned right up and the getaway guy heard it and started blasting his horn, the armed guy came belting out to jump in the car and there was just no time, no time to wait for backup or anything, they were getting away and I yelled Stop Police but they didn’t, and... I drew my weapon.”
He sighed and scrubbed at his face with both hands.
Tammy felt tears of sympathy pricking the backs of her eyes. She clutched his hand.
“Did you... kill someone?”
Ben barked out a laugh. “Not hardly. I tripped over the air hose and shot myself in the leg. The robbers got away. They got twenty grand, and we never managed to
pick them up. Whoever they were, they just got away clean.”
“I don’t get why that’s your fault, though. I mean, you did what you could, there was only you, surely that could have happened to anyone?”
“You don’t get it. I had the police radio turned right up, because I’d been listening to music in the car. We’re not supposed to do that, it’s not to be heard by non-members. So I was the one who tipped them off, by doing that. There were a couple of other units on the way, if they hadn’t heard the radio we’d have probably caught them. So you see, you’re looking at a royal screwup, and that was my ticket to TWAT.”
Tammy didn’t know what to say. She was filled with a sense of the inevitability of events. If her yoga class hadn’t been cancelled that day... if she’d done the shopping instead of going straight home... and Jen Miles had wanted her to go round and visit, but she hadn’t felt like it... if she’d only been a better friend, she’d still be happily married. If poor Ben had not listened to his music on the job... her head spun thinking about it. Best not to think about it. You had to do what you could, where you were, with what you had, that had always been Tammy’s philosophy.
“So who are you after now? The Mr Big of Crime?”
“Not exactly, but it is rather an important operation. See, someone’s dealing meth in all three of the high schools. We don’t know who it is or how they’re delivering, but we think we know who the distributor is. So we’re hoping to get something on the scumbag.”
“Someone around here, then? God, you didn’t suspect me, did you?”
“No, although we do like to check out the new arrivals, but you had no record or anything. No, this character’s a few houses down from you. He’s actually listed as the owner of this house, that was why I asked if you knew the former tenants.”
“Oh my God, Fred Steiner. He’s still my landlord, I’m waiting for my divorce settlement to come through so I’ve got a temporary rental agreement pending settlement on the property sale. And he’s the worst, he won’t do anything, fix anything – I know perfectly well he’s supposed to be responsible for repairs until settlement goes through, but look at that pane of glass in the front door, that happened at the start of last week, and he still hasn’t done anything about it. That’s how Tom’s been coming in.”
Ben flashed her a cheeky grin. “No rain without some sunshine, then. I wouldn’t have met you.”
Oh my God. Was he flirting with her? Could it be?
“So then, if you’ve got this aromatic spray and all that, how come he’s been coming here instead?”
“Dunno.” Ben scratched his head. “That’s a bit of a mystery, that is. Only thing I can think of is, well this house is kind of fragrant, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice clean smell, but I’m just wondering if that sort of overrode the other stuff.”
“It’s tea tree oil. The place smelled terrible when I moved in. The matting in the front room stank of pee, and someone had been sick in one of the bedrooms and not cleaned it up – I basically spent the whole first week scrubbing everything with Domestos and tea tree.” She looked ruefully at her still-scruffy cuticles.
“Domestos, that’s bleach, isn’t it? That might explain it. Ammonia. As it breaks down, it gives out a smell that to a cat, resembles cat urine.”
“I suppose.”
“We might have to adjust our formula.”
“Yeah.”
A silence fell.
“Well,” said Ben, getting to his feet, “It’s been really great chatting, but I’d better get Tom back to where he’s supposed to be. Duty calls and all that.”
At that moment, a thought struck Tammy with the force of a tornado.
“Hang on a minute. You said he was beaming transmissions all the time. But he’s been here all the.... Oh. My. God. He was in the bathroom with me. He likes to sit on the edge of the bath and dip his paws in the water– oh, shit. Have you been watching me in the bath? You pervert!”
Once again, the crimson tide rose. He wouldn’t be much good at undercover work, Tammy thought. Gave himself away far too easily. But then, it didn’t seem like he was all that great at police work generally, so the problem would hardly be likely to arise.
“No way known, no way, we didn’t watch that. No, soon as we saw he was in the wrong house, we stopped watching, honest.”
“Who is WE?”
“Well, me and my mate. There’s always two of us on an op, one to drive, you know, and one to work the equipment. You know us cops always work in pairs. There’s got to be an informant and a corroborator, when we make an arrest, and stuff.”
“And another thing,” Tammy continued, hitting her stride. “You said you had GPS on that thing. Why didn’t you come and tell me as soon as you knew where he was? Why did I have to trap him inside and get his microchip scanned and ring you up to find all this out? I had to pay for that, you know. And another thing-”
Ben was backing away, hands raised in surrender. “I fully realise how you’ve been inconvenienced. The Department will reimburse you for the vet’s bill, if you just give me your receipt, I’ll take care of it for you. I promise you, we didn’t look at the footage, we turned it off every time.”
“Why didn’t you know where he was?”
“The GPS isn’t that accurate with just one station, we’d have had to have a second car to narrow it down to a particular house. We knew he was around here somewhere, we’ve been releasing him from just around the corner. And then we call him back with the dog whistle. He’s been trained to respond to that.”
“God! How did you train a cat to come to a dog whistle? I bet it was cruel. You bastard.”
“Calm down, Tammy, it wasn’t cruel, we train him using treats, little dried fish, that’s all.”
“And what about the voice recordings? Oh God,” Tammy wailed as memories of the conversations she’d had with her little friend surged up in her memory.
Ben sniggered.
“Oh my God! Are you laughing? Those were private conversations, you had no right....”
“Look, calm down, please, we didn’t listen to any of it. We knew he was in the wrong place, so we just scrubbed the recordings.”
Tammy narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t have known he was in the wrong place the whole time unless you looked at it all.”
“Only on fast forward, honest.” He sniggered again. “Your secret is safe with us.”
“Secret? What secret?”
“About the prawns in the curtain pelmets. You don’t have to worry about that. You didn’t commit any offence as you were still residing in the premises at the time. Sounds like the cheating fucker got what he deserved anyway. You’re a bit of a hero down the watchhouse actually.”
Tammy sank onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. Tom, waking from his nap, hopped onto her lap and nosed at her fingers, emitting small chirps of affection.
Ben sat next to her and patted her back. “Look, I really am sorry, you’ve had your privacy invaded and it wasn’t our fault, but I’d like to make it up to you. How about dinner on Saturday night? There’s a really flash Italian restaurant just opened in town, it’s supposed to be fantastic. Whatta ya say?”
Tammy blinked. “You’re asking me out? Just to say sorry?”
“Well, yeah. I feel like I ought to make it up to you, and also to thank you for taking good care of our little operative here. Come on, it’ll be nice.”
“Well, alright. As long it’s not a date date.”
Ben looked shocked. “Of course not. Just community relations, cross my heart. Well, come on, Tiger.” He scooped up Tom and dropped him into the carrier. “Duty calls.”
He turned at the door. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty Saturday. Wear something special.” He waggled his eyebrows and was gone, leaving Tammy feeling shell-shocked.
***
Tammy had been to the hairdresser, and her normally unruly hair hung in shining, ordered waves past her shoulders. She’d finished unpacking and dug out her sexi
est dress, the one, she bitterly remembered, that had always got Neville into such a state. A fresh set of porcelain nails adorned her newly conditioned fingers. The credit card would never be the same again – in fact it was a wonder it hadn’t spontaneously combusted – but she’d wanted everything to be right for this, her first evening out in more than eighteen months. Of course it wasn’t a real date, she reminded herself, but she could pretend, couldn’t she? And Tammy was pretending for all she was worth. This was Her Night.
The waiter fluttered about, draping starched napkins, mindlessly reciting the special dishes and chattering away. Tammy tuned him out and looked at Ben. In the candlelight, he looked even more enticing. She felt parts of herself that had lain dormant for many months stir into life.
“So, did you-”
“I was wondering-”
“Oh, sorry, go on.”
“No, that’s ok, you go.”
It was the usual First Date Awkwardness. FDA, Tammy and her friends had called it at uni. If he kissed her goodnight, probably their noses would clash, too. If he kissed her.... Tammy dragged her mind back to the present. She had to stop thinking like this, keep in mind that however much she wished it to be otherwise, this was definitely not a date, it was, what had he said? Yes, community relations, he was just taking her out to make up for having video-recorded her in the bath and eavesdropped on her private gutspill conversations. No, don’t start thinking about that again. Get your mind off that, you’ll get nervous and probably spill wine everywhere or something. Say something intelligent, for God’s sake. Something classy.
“I don’t think it’s him.” Shit. What was that about? She’d meant to say something clever, not just blurt out the first thing that came into her mind.
“What? Him who? What’s not him?”
“The drug dealer. I don’t think it’s Fred Steiner.”
“Why not?”
“He never goes anywhere. He just sits on his front verandah all day drinking beer. I went over there yesterday to remind him about fixing the door, and he was already three sheets to the wind at five o’clock. He just wouldn’t be together enough to do drug dealing, he wouldn’t be able to count his change or measure powder or anything. And another thing. He never has any visitors or goes anywhere. So how would he be getting it?”
Operation Tomcat Page 3
