YOU HAVE to hand it to the Coroner’s
Office – they’ve made the identification of the dead a damned sight less
traumatic than it used to be.
Those of us old enough to
remember the original morgue at the seedy end of Flinders Street still give the occasional shudder. Back then, it was just like in the movies –
you were led drymouthed into a dank, harshly-lit room which had one metallic
wall subdivided by row upon row of pull-out cadaver-sized trays. The pervasive
odours of chlorine and Air-O-Zone failed to disguise the fact that here was
death.
Not that the attendants
left anyone in any doubt. The
pasty-faced sadists would yank out the tray, whip the sheet off the corpse,
then stand there straightfaced while the poor bastard doing the identification
either fainted or went into hysterics.
I ought to know. Thirteen years previously, I’d had to
identify my fiance, run down by a drug-crazed moron fleeing from a smash-and-grab. Poor Kathy. So beautiful, so vibrant, so full of life,
and then so suddenly, horribly dead.
They say that time heals all wounds, and that’s true, but they don’t
mention the scars, scars that never go away.
It was one of the reasons, probably the reason, I became a
copper. Not that I’d admit that to
just anyone.
In those days, the requirements of
the law took little account of the sensitivities of the relatives. The bodies were much as they were when they
arrived. Which, in most cases, meant
ugly. It didn’t help that the first
priority of the homicide investigator was to confirm the victim’s identity, and
quickly.
Now it was different. The new building was less forbidding, the
staff more understanding. They took the
relative or friend through the legal formalities in gentle fashion, helping to
gird them for perhaps what was the toughest task of their lives.
They no longer had to confront that
filing cabinet of the dead. The viewing
took place from behind a curtained window in an adjacent room, insulated from
the atmosphere and smell. At the
attendant’s touch of a button, the curtains would draw aside to reveal the
shrouded body on a gurney. Only when
the relative indicated that he or she was ready would a second attendant reveal
the body’s face. That and no more,
unless absolutely necessary. And the
body would be clean.
Nevertheless, the process
was still harrowing. I’ve had my share
of breaking bad news and accompanying people to make the identification. It’s nearly always the same – the person
hoping against hope that you’d made a mistake, that the body they were about to
see was not who you said it was. It was
only with the viewing that the awful finality struck home.
So it was for Des Aston. The ex-copper stared into the chalk-white
face of his daughter for no more than a second before his shoulders betrayed
his resignation. He flung me a look of
utter helplessness, then stared back at Jodie.
It was probably the first time in his life that he didn’t know what to
do.
The attendant with us was
gentle. “Mr. Aston. Do you confirm that this is Jodie Elizabeth
Aston?”
Aston nodded. He pointed into the room beyond the
glass. “Can I..?”
The attendant
hesitated. It was an unusual request and,
in the circumstances, a no-no. The
attendant looked to me, as if the police ID hanging out of my pocket gave me
overriding authority. It didn’t, but
what the hell? I nodded, and both men
left the room. Moments later, Aston
appeared alongside the second attendant, who diplomatically withdrew.
For several long moments,
Aston stared down at his daughter. As
he stood there, impassive, I wondered what he was thinking. Then, as he stroked Jodie’s cheek and his
eyes suddenly moistened, I realised it was none of my damned business. I left.
Forty-five minutes later,
I had Aston in the lounge of a local pub.
Being a weekday mid-morning, we had the place to ourselves. He’d been close to collapse and what he’d
needed was what he now had – a large Scotch, held in shaking hands. He was yet to say a word, but I was in no
hurry. The shock would diminish; the
words would come.
I was struck by the
frailty of the man. He was in his early
fifties, but looked ten years older.
Most of his hair had vanished, and with it any colour his complexion
might have possessed. He no longer had
the posture of an inspector of police.
Nor the appearance. Looking at
him, swimming in a dark blue that he’d probably filled to excess when he was in
the job, it seemed to me he was shrinking.
I knew how he felt.
A Scotch and a half
later, I found myself suddenly pinned by grim, angry eyes.
“Do you know who did it?”
The voice was gravelly,
the tone harsh. I wondered how many
suspects Aston had quizzed during his career and how many had been scared
shitless. Probably all of them.
“No, sir. Not yet.”
He accepted the ‘sir’ as
his due. “Anyone in your sights?”
I’d anticipated this and
decided not to let on about the videotape.
Right now, he had enough grief.
“Afraid not.”
It was my time to
bowl. A loosener to start with. “You talk to Jodie recently?”
Aston glowered. “Sergeant, if Jodie had mentioned to me,
even obliquely, that she was in danger from someone, you’d already have his
name.” He tossed down his Scotch and
signalled the waiter for a refill.
He hadn’t answered my
question. Deliberately? I pitched another loosener on the same
line. “But you did talk to her?”
Aston’s temper began to
flare, then just as quickly subsided as he remembered that I had a job to
do. “About a week ago, just before she
went on some country trip with the Cabinet.
Then the day after she got back.
She said the trip was uneventful and she felt fine. Terrific, in fact. OK?”
“So you knew she was with
the Parliamentary Protection Unit?”
Aston’s gaze over the top
of his Johnny Walker would have withered most people. I have asbestos for skin.
“It didn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“A bit ironic, don’t you
reckon? Here’s you who got the flick
for stepping on political toes, then a couple of years later, here’s your
daughter keeping tabs on bloody pollies.”
I sent down a deliberate long hop.
“Whose toes were you stepping on, anyway?”
He shrugged. “Dunno for sure. Whoever, it was someone with crims for
friends.”
“Crims like the
Romanos?”
“They fit the general
description.”
The statement was made
with contempt but no great rancour. I
discounted the thought that had been exercising the neurones – that perhaps
Aston had taken advantage of Jodie’s position, using her as an agent-in-place
to do some extra-curricular snooping and perhaps a little vengeful
blackmail. But the more I spoke with
Aston, the more certain I became that he was not a man who’d ask his daughter
to demean herself on his behalf. I
reverted to the view that Jodie had been doing the Mata Hari thing for
herself. While I was coming to this
decision, Aston’s memory stepped up a gear.
“You’re the bloke who got
suspended for blowing away that Glover bastard, aren’t you?”
“I have that,
ah...distinction.”
“Then how come you’re in
Homicide?”
I explained how I came to
be pinch-hitting and how I was waiting for the Coroner to make up his mind if I
had a case to answer.
“Has he?”
I gave him my stock
answer. “You have to understand that my
opinion is subjectively coloured and therefore not worth a damn. At least, that’s what the Commissioner
reckons.”
“That sounds just like
Evans,” Aston reflected, and there was no mistaking the bitterness. “Let me guess – he referred it to the
Coroner himself.”
Yep. Wants to hang me out to dry. An example.”
“Little prick. Showing his political masters how he’s in
control.” He attacked his Scotch, then
added, “Do the troops still despise him? Him and his bunch of yes-men?”
“Just about the same as
you do.”
I don’t think I was
straying too far from the truth. Evans
had been appointed over the heads of some good candidates, men who could run
rings around him, administratively as well as operationally, and men who
wouldn’t tolerate pressure from above.
That had to make it a political appointment, which straight away put him
behind the eight ball of resentment. It
was a ball that grew larger with his obsession over matters that most of us
considered minutiae – fancy decorations on uniforms, a new and largely unloved
“image” for correspondence, and the introduction of a customer service branch
to teach us how to suck eggs. We
weren’t impressed, either, when he expanded Internal Affairs. Overnight, it became the largest single
congregation of detectives in the entire Force, a development that didn’t go
unremarked by the media. As one
editorial noted, “This enhancement, as the Commissioner calls it, is nothing to
boast about. We are not convinced that
moralising and more in-house spying is conducive to anything other than enmity
and distrust. We should prefer to see a
renewed esprit de corps, the type inspired by the dynamism, respect and
selflessness that the lower ranks expect of their leaders.” Talk about your misplaced expectations.
Aston grinned
humorlessly. “I’ve got more reason than
most.”
He probably had. I went exploring. “I heard you put up a good fight. Ahead on points until he brought in the
legal big guns.”
Aston glowered.
“Not that you were scared
off,” I hastily added. “Just that you
knew when you were outgunned.”
“Is that what they say?”
I nodded.
He didn’t. “That’s bullshit. But if that’s what they want to
believe….” He returned to his Scotch.
I’m not bad at this interrogating
caper. Probably more from experience
than from any inherent ability. I
waited, knowing that a question here would be getting ahead of myself. Aston would consider it intrusive. A masterful silence was called for.
“Two reasons I pulled the
pin,” he eventually began. “Neither of
‘em anything to do with backing away.”
He gathered himself. “Firstly,
Jodie was only a couple of months out of the Academy and she was already
catching flak.” His glower, to which I
was becoming accustomed, recycled.
“There are some vindictive bastards around.”
“Tell me about it. So you sacrificed yourself.”
“Yeah, but there was
nothing noble about it.” He hesitated,
then let it come. “Found I had cancer.”
Cancer! Shit, no wonder he’s shrinking.
“Christ! I am sorry.”
He nodded
acknowledgement. “Bowel. The quacks said I’d need all my
strength. No point wasting it on
Evans.”
“And…”
“Surgery, radiation,
chemotherapy…the lot. Bloody rugged, I
can tell you.”
I looked carefully at
Aston, and he at me. We were of like
mind, we decided. Both tough, both used
to unpalatable facts, and both with no use for hop-scotching around the edges.
“How long?” I asked.
“Two months, maybe.” He grinned.
“One if I’m lucky.”
I nodded at the whisky. “That help?”
“What, are you a fucking
medico now?” He was not really
offended. “As a matter of fact, it
does. One of the few things I can keep
down. Hell of a diet, eh?”
I drained my glass and
offered him another round of calories.
He accepted, then became contemplative, staring at the tabletop while
the waiter did his thing.
I did some contemplating
of my own, taking in the bloodless face, the emaciated hands, the resigned
posture, the sad eyes. A dying man
grieving for his daughter. What a hell
of a way to finish up. And me with no
way to comfort him except ply him with booze.
Then, suddenly, he had my
wrist, and those bony fingers still had some of the old steel. While I tried not to flinch, his eyes
blazed.
“Mark,” he hissed. “When you find this…this bastard, I
want to know.”
I reflected again that he must have scared just about everyone he interrogated. In that moment of fury, he scared the shit out of me.