by JD Nixon
“Yes.”
“Mortgages can be killers, can’t they?” I said knowingly, even though I’d never had a mortgage in my life and judging by my current bank balance, would never be eligible for one either. I understand you have to have a decent deposit first before the bank would lend you any money and that ruled me out straight away. Dad and I pretty much lived hand-to-mouth, my pay coming from the government into our bank account and then straight out again to cover all the bills.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said, smoothly overtaking a slow moving vehicle in front of us. “I’ve never had one.”
What the hell did that mean? He paid cash for a city apartment? Who on earth can afford to do that? I was dying to ask him a million questions, but I didn’t think he’d answer any more about his financial situation. So I changed the subject.
“You have the softest, fluffiest towels I’ve ever used.” I hoped I didn’t sound as wistful or envious as I suspected I did. I thought I could get away with a few more questions if I kept them less personal. “I’m sorry, but I’m very nosy and my attention was captured by your photographs before I left your house. Are the elderly couple your grandparents?”
“Yes.”
“Was that your fiancee with you in the group photo?”
“Yes.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Yes, she is.”
“What’s her name?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Melissa.”
“Were they your parents with you in that photo?”
“My mother and stepfather.”
God, squeezing information from him was like squeezing a tip out of a pensioner, I thought in frustration. He should have been a spy, he was so tight-lipped.
“Your mother looks familiar, but I can’t think why. What does she do?”
“She’s just a public servant, like us.”
“Oh. I could have sworn I’ve seen her face somewhere before,” I said. “It’s a lovely photo though. You’re all so happy in it. It must have been a very happy time in your life.”
“Our engagement party. Almost two years ago.”
Bingo! I was a good cop, I congratulated myself smugly, doing a small victory dance in my mind. Then what he said struck me. Two years! That was a long engagement period. I wondered why they hadn’t married already. I really wanted to ask more questions, but I sensed he was tiring of my third-degree already. I was a patient woman though, and let it go for now.
“We want to interview him ourselves, don’t we?” I asked, moving away from his personal life and indicating our guest in the backseat.
“Definitely. We’re not handing this case over to Big Town. They can deal with your Bycraft assault because there’s a conflict of interest involved with us dealing with it, but the Little Town peeper is all ours.” He glanced at me. “You agree?”
“Yep. Especially after that coffee incident. I want to nail his butt to the floor,” I said and noticed with interest his shoulders relaxing. Hmm, had he started caring about my opinion? That might be a promising development.
We pulled into the parking lot of the police station in Big Town for the umpteenth time this week and again we drove around the back to where the watch house entrance was located. When the Sarge killed the ignition, our man in the back decided to be difficult again. As we opened the door, he thrashed and fought us furiously. I stopped fighting against him, took my hands away and leaned my elbows casually on the roof of the car, watching him. After a minute the Sarge noticed me and did the same, so we ended up with the spectacle of our man wriggling and fighting nobody. He was loudly screaming about police brutality and human rights, wrestling and struggling with himself, eyes tightly shut. The Sarge and I both raised our palms to the heavens in a ‘wtf’ moment, much to the amusement of the curious audience that had gathered at the ruckus.
Eventually the man opened his eyes and realised that neither the Sarge nor I had our hands on him. He stopped fighting and screaming, looking around him sheepishly.
“Police violence,” he complained in a small, unconvincing voice. The cops nearby shook their heads contemptuously and moved on with their business.
“You ready to get out, Johnny Depp, or do you want to finish Scene Four?” I asked sarcastically.
He huffed, “I’m not an actor.”
“We can tell that,” I said unkindly. “But your cellmates might enjoy some entertainment.”
“No! Don’t. I’ll talk,” he promised, as the Sarge dragged him from the car.
“Oh, you’ll talk, sunshine. No matter what we do to you,” I threatened.
“No! Please. Not in the watch house. No Bycrafts. They won’t warm to me. I’m not like them.”
“Sarge, we have a right royal prince here. He can’t be locked up with the common peepers, perverts and flashers where he belongs. He’s special,” I said sarcastically.
“I’m not a pervert!” he yelled and struggled again. Two bored uniforms came over to help subdue him and bundle him into the watch house, glad to have something to do. I thought resentfully that we could have used the extra manpower back in Little Town.
We followed them into the receiving area. In charge of the watch house that day was a uniform that I liked – Senior Sergeant Daisy Yu. I introduced the Sarge to her.
“What’s he here for, Tess?” she asked, indicating our man, fingers poised on the keyboard, ready to enter data.
“For being an arsehole, Senior Sarge.”
She laughed – a hard, sharp yap. “That would cover all the men we know, darl. But there’s no law against that, unfortunately. One day, let’s hope.”
“I caught him peeping on me in my bedroom and he’s resisted us about four times now and thrown hot coffee on me. I’ve been scalded and I was just trying to be nice to him! Look!” I demanded and unfastened the top two buttons and pulled my shirt apart to show her a glimpse of my pink chest skin. All the men nearby leaned over to have a good old look too, including the Sarge.
“That’s just unforgivable,” Daisy said as I rebuttoned, shaking her head sadly at the bad manners of criminals these days. “Don’t you have a mother?” she snapped at the man.
“Of course I do,” he protested.
“She’s rolling in her grave at your awful deeds.”
“She’s not dead!” he protested again.
“Are you contradicting me?” she asked with practiced menace.
“No, ma’am,” he said immediately, his voice shaking at her contemptuous stare, Adam’s apple bouncing up and down like a tennis ball at Wimbledon.
“Don’t call me ma’am! I’m not an officer and I never want to be one of those butt-kissing brown-nosers either. Your mother is turning in her grave over your terrible crimes. First, peeping on the Senior Constable here for a cheap porno thrill.”
“I never –”
“I’m talking now!” she shouted. He recoiled in fear and I seriously thought for a moment that he’d soon cough up his Adam’s apple it rose so high in his throat. “You peeped at the Senior Constable through her bedroom window, am I wrong?”
“No. Yes. Well, I was trying to see –”
“Did you hear that everybody? Condemned by his own tongue as a pervert!” she shouted, looking around the room, making sure everybody in the vicinity was listening. And when Senior Sergeant Yu shouted, you listened. Our man flushed a dark red again.
She continued her rant, tapping on the keyboard as she did. “Not only did you try to peep on poor, injured Senior Constable Fuller, when she was at her most vulnerable, you then resisted her and her partner trying to arrest you. That’s a mountain of offences, right there.” She looked up and pinned him with her black eyes. “Let’s get some details on you, sport. What’s your name?”
“I’m not saying anything until I get a lawyer.” He crossed his arms, his face set in stubborn mode.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “We’ve got one of those, have we?” She turned to us. “Have you searched him yet?”
“No,”
the Sarge admitted, exchanging an embarrassed glance with me. It was the first thing we should have done. I blamed the late hour of his apprehension for our negligence.
She scalded us with a scornful look that said a lot about what she thought of the abilities and brainpower of country cops. “Take him into that room and search him. He might have a driver’s licence on him or something. I can’t process him without a name.”
The Sarge grabbed him by the arm and dragged him towards the room.
The Senior Sergeant called out after us. “There are gloves in the cupboard if you need to do a full cavity search.”
The man shouted out at that and continued to shout the couple of minutes that the Sarge spent patting him down.
“Can you shut up for a while?” the Sarge asked him, exasperated. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“You’re violating my human rights!” the man shouted at the top of his voice. “I want a lawyer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Sarge responded impatiently. “Anyway, you’re the one who violated Senior Constable Fuller’s rights by peeping on her and scalding her with hot coffee.”
He pulled out a wallet from the man’s pants pocket and threw it to me.
“That’s stealing! I want a lawyer!” he shouted again.
I opened his wallet and looked inside.
“Jackpot!” I smiled triumphantly. “Sarge, this troublesome man’s name is Graham Mundy and, by some strange coincidence, he lives at exactly the same address as Stanley Murchison himself.”
“Graham Mundy, huh? Son of Lionel Mundy, nephew of Stanley Murchison.”
“I want a lawyer,” was all he would say. We took him back to Daisy to be processed into custody, advised that he was being charged with unlawful stalking and assault of a police officer. We tried again to interview him when that was done, but he refused to cooperate without a lawyer present, so we had to cool our heels until a duty lawyer was dug up for him and he had time to consult with her.
In the end, finding him a lawyer turned out to be a good thing, because the level-headed woman who turned up in a plain brown tweed suit, sensible shoes and with a conservative brown bob, convinced Graham Mundy that it was in his best interest to start singing for us. She stared at me curiously as we all settled into one of the station’s interview rooms, probably hoping that her client hadn’t been responsible for my injuries.
And once Graham started talking, he couldn’t stop, his nervousness making him garrulous. We soon learned that he worked for Stanley Murchison, who was indeed his maternal uncle, as a paralegal even though he didn’t have any formal qualifications for the job. Uncle Stanley had instructed him to find both Miss G’s diaries and a particular land title. He admitted spying on Miss G on four occasions in an attempt to determine where she hid her diaries with no luck, being foiled by Miss G’s sharp eyes and my subsequent searches each time. He admitted breaking into and tossing Miss G’s place, looking for the diaries and the title.
“Title to what?” asked the Sarge.
“A property on Mountain Road.”
“We were told that all the Greville properties had been sold,” I commented.
Graham squirmed evasively. “I don’t know anything about that. Uncle Stanley looks after all that side of things. He’s the trustee for the family.”
“Why was this title at Miss Greville’s house and not in safe storage with your uncle?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” His eyes flitted from the Sarge to me nervously and back again.
“I think you know more than you’re telling us,” said the Sarge bluntly, leaning back with his arms crossed.
I pressed him. “You must have known that peeping on a frail elderly woman and tossing her house when she wasn’t there are both unlawful activities.” I frowned at him. “Not to mention despicable.”
He flushed, sighing, and glanced desperately at his lawyer, who nodded at him encouragingly. He looked down at his hands that were twisting together anxiously and sighed again heavily as though he had come to some difficult inner decision.
He talked again. “Look, Uncle Stanley thought he might have misplaced the title to the Mountain Road property and didn’t want to ask Miss Greville directly if she had it at her house.” At the Sarge’s raised eyebrow, he hastened to explain. “Because that would be admitting potentially incompetent behaviour, and you don’t want that kind of reputation when you’re a lawyer, especially an ageing one like him. So he came to me with his problem. He suggested that I go to her house and see if I could find the title, without her knowing anything about it. But she was always at home, and I only got the chance to go through her things when you took her away.”
So he had been watching us.
“And you believed Uncle Stanley when he gave you that reason for breaking into Miss Greville’s place – that he didn’t want to seem incompetent?” I asked sceptically. “You didn’t think that sounded rather weak?”
“He’s my uncle. Of course I believed him,” he defended strongly, but slightly less sure now that I’d raised the doubt in his mind.
I pushed on. “And what reason did he give you for wanting Miss Greville’s diaries?”
Graham was flustered by that question. “He . . . he didn’t really give me one. He only said he didn’t want to appear incompetent.”
“So did you find the land title?” asked the Sarge.
“No.”
My turn again. “Why did you trash Miss Greville’s lounge room? That wasn’t a very nice thing to do. You left her with a terrible mess to clean up and you ruined her furniture too. She’s ninety-three years old. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I . . . I was frustrated when I couldn’t find the title. I didn’t want to let Uncle Stanley down.” He flushed and glanced sideways at his lawyer. Her eyes lowered to the legal pad she had open in front of her, professionally covering her disgust with him. The Sarge and I didn’t bother to hide ours.
“Why did you peep on Mrs Villiers too?”
“After you came to see him, Uncle Stanley told me to spy on some other women in the town to make it look as though it was a genuine peeping tom, not just someone targeting Miss Greville in particular.”
“So that’s why you made it so obvious that you’d been peeping on Mrs Villiers?” Sarge asked. Graham nodded.
I asked, “Is that why you peeped on me as well?”
“No. Uncle Stanley told me to. He wanted to know if you had Miss Greville’s diaries at your house.”
“Do you do everything that Uncle Stanley tells you to?” derided the Sarge. “How old are you? You must be about thirty-five. Why don’t you grow a pair of your own?”
“He’s been very good to me,” Graham replied in a small, self-conscious voice. “He gave me a job and somewhere to live. I didn’t get along with my parents.”
I asked, “Why don’t you live in your parents’ house? It’s standing vacant.”
“My mother won’t let me. She says I need to grow up and stand on my own two feet for a change,” he said, jumping up in agitation.
“Sit back down again!” barked the Sarge.
When he’d resettled himself, I asked him sweetly, “Got a few mother issues, have you, Graham?”
“I don’t want to disappoint her,” he answered in that small voice before becoming angry again. “I love my mother! What’s wrong with that? You make it sound wrong!”
“Your mother is going to be very disappointed in you when she finds out what you’ve been up to.”
“You . . . you can just shut up!” he shouted at me, half-standing. I smiled at him innocently. He lowered his rear to the chair again, calming down slightly when his lawyer placed a restraining hand on his arm. He eyed me with loathing. “I don’t like you one little bit. You’re . . . you’re,” he turned to his lawyer beseechingly, before back to me. “You’re a . . . a female dog!” His skin mottled red at his daring.
“Aw, you’ve hurt my feelings now, Graham,” I mocked. “And here I wa
s hoping we could be friends.”
His lawyer shot me a jaded glance and restrained Graham again with that hand on his arm. “Can we please return to questions relevant to the matter at hand?” she requested in a cool, efficient tone. I shut up for a while, suitably chastened.
The Sarge changed direction. “What do you know about a company called Traumleben Pty Ltd?”
Graham looked at him blankly. “Never heard of it.”
“Your father is listed as the sole director.”
He snorted with unamused laughter. “My father running a company? Don’t make me laugh! He was completely gaga for the last five years of his life and he’s been dead for three years, so somebody’s pulling your leg if they tell you my father is the director.”
The Sarge glanced over at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. “I wasn’t aware that ASIC had such a devilishly cheeky sense of humour, were you, Senior Constable?”
“No, Sarge, I had no idea. You live and learn.”
We didn’t think we’d get much more from him after that so ended the interview, adding another charge of break and enter on Miss G’s place to his charge sheet.
“Do you think we’ve got enough ammunition to apply for a warrant for Murchison’s arrest on suspicion of fraud?” I asked doubtfully when we debriefed afterwards.
“We haven’t got any evidence that Murchison is the one behind Traumleben Pty Ltd. But one thing I do know is that the whole story about him wanting that other land title and diaries because he was afraid of being seen as incompetent is a load of horseshit as far as I’m concerned. Maybe Graham Mundy believed him, but I sure as hell don’t.”
“Yeah, Graham doesn’t strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed. He’s very trusting of his crafty lawyer uncle. But if Murchison’s the one behind Traumleben, then he probably wants to buy that land cheaply and sell it to the government for a massive profit as well.”
“Hmm,” he pondered. “If you think about it logically, Murchison has to at least be facilitating the sales because he’s the one with his hands on the titles and intimate knowledge of the properties. He’s acting fraudulently in some way.”
“Let’s try Google again and see if there is any mention of a government department being interested in land on Mountain Road,” I suggested, and bagged the use of one of the receiving area’s computers for a little while, typing a number of combinations of words into the search engine, hoping to hit the jackpot. I wasn’t that lucky but I did find an interesting little article from the Wattling Bay Messenger.
