Details started filtering in as I woke: the numbers on the alarm clock that softly ticked over to 6.00 am, the crackle of the radio as it came to life, the insistent rattle of the back door. My feet hit the floor and I rubbed the stubble on my face, shuffling towards the kitchen, opening the door and bracing myself against the cold. Shithead circled my feet, curled her tail, and meowed as I emptied a can of cat food into her bowl.
Music filtered into the kitchen. The Skyhooks were on the radio again.
Horror Movie.
Bloody hell, I thought, mixing a cup of Nescafe and looking out the kitchen window. The garden of the station house was wreathed in fog. I grabbed a pack of Peter Stuyvesant ciggies from the kitchen table, thumbed open the lid, and held an unlit cigarette between my fingers as I sipped the coffee.
It was that time of year again.
The dreams always returned about now. The box was taped up in the back of the station and I let myself open it once a year. I’d review the case files, go back over the witness testimonies, read the notes from the crime scene. And, every year, I’d tape it up and put it back on top of the old filing cabinets.
Might as well get it over and done with.
My regular patrol down the main street could wait.
In a small town like Holbrooke, it paid to be visible. I wander down the main street every morning, chat to Peter at the news agency and give a noncommittal wave to the other businesses as they opened.
Friendly but not friends.
That’s what it’s like when you’re the only cop in a small town.
That and you’re a bloody Jack of all trades.
I’m the traffic cop, the crime-scene man, the marriage counsellor, the search-and-rescue unit and the tactical response team. I’d be the dog handler, too, but the station doesn’t have a K9 unit. Instead, we’ve got Shithead, a calico cat that turned up one day and has steadfastly refused to leave. I feed her regularly and make sure she’s got somewhere comfortable to sleep. I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals. Plus, she’s kind of adorable.
Unfortunately, Shithead doesn’t provide much in the way of operational support. At least, not when I’m faced with domestic disputes or drunken and disorderly behaviour.
The other stuff?
Well, that’s an entirely different story.
Shithead has an innate talent for detecting the sort of weird and disturbing bullshit that happens around here. The sort of things that would scare the shit out of most people. The sort of things that, particularly this time of year, keep me awake at night.
Holbrooke seems to attract weird and disturbing bullshit.
On the radio, the song ended in a fading whirlwind of guitars and the DJ excitedly announced that Errol Hodges was on the line with some dramatic news from his farm.
This ought to be good, I thought.
It was a well-established fact that Errol, who had a thin neatly groomed moustache in the style of his namesake, was completely full of shit. The unfortunate newspaper article last month about my investigation of the unexplained lights over his farm, appeared above the fold in the Holbrooke Herald. There was a large photograph of Errol—with his bloody stupid moustache—pointing at the sky where the mysterious lights had appeared. The article noted that local police were taking the matter very seriously. In truth, I’d spent about ten minutes trudging around a muddy paddock in my gumboots and swearing under my breath. The ‘investigation’ had been a complete, embarrassing waste of time. And I hadn’t heard the bloody end of it.
“You’re on the air, Errol!”
“Good morning, Holbrooke,” he said in a voice that reminded me of Orson Welles introducing an episode of Suspense.
“What spooky news have you got for us today?”
“Well, Archie, you know there have been some mysterious and frankly disturbing occurrences of the, uh, paranormal variety out this way lately. Occurrences, I might add, that our local constabulary are taking very seriously.” I groaned inwardly. “Things are starting to get out of hand. Today, my prize heifer—”
“That would be Marjory?”
Marjory had become quite the talking point during Errol’s routine calls to the breakfast show on 3HFM which was broadcast from a small room above Thommo’s Fish’n’Chips.
“Correct, Archie. This morning, I found Marjory floating three inches above the ground.”
“A levitating cow! I bet the local cop shop is going to be very interested in that.”
There was an irritating honking sound—the sort of sound that was only ever made by eighteenth century cyclists and FM radio announcers—and Archie introduced the next song.
Draining the last of the coffee, I returned the cigarette to its packet and left it sitting on the corner of the kitchen bench.
This morning, Holbrooke could bloody well wait.
A cardboard box full of painful memories was waiting out the back of the station.
The box was sitting, where I’d left it twelve months ago, on top of the filing cabinets at the back of the station. The filing cabinets contained what I liked to think of as the real files. If you wanted information on the burglary, arson, public intoxication or nudity, check the filing cabinets at the front. The truly toe-curling stuff was kept out the back. Of course, even that was written with a degree of bureaucratic brilliance. I like to think that fastidious paperwork is the cornerstone of good policing and felt an obligation to keep a record of what I have unofficially labelled ‘weird and disturbing bullshit’. The paperwork was full of creative euphemisms. Aggressive cephalopod. Clinical lycanthropy. Unruly manifestation. These files were the sort of thing that I didn’t want to fall into the hands of the sceptical and incredulous. On one occasion, they had. Residents past Eagle’s Point had seen strange shimmering lights in the sky. Colin—the utter bastard—had leafed through that file when he’d stopped in last year and I hadn’t heard the end of it, particularly when the local newspaper had misquoted me in an article about the sighting.
I cleared the paperback novels and medical textbooks from the front desk and was about to peel the tape from the cardboard box when the phone rang.
Answering, I fought back a sigh when I heard the voice of a small boy on the other end.
“I’m calling to report a grave and serious crime,” the voice said.
“Grave and serious are exactly the same thing, Nigel, what is it this time?”
“It’s something that you need to investigate. A matter of utmost importance.”
There was a moment of silence.
“It’s The Bayside Lady,” he whispered. The Bayside Lady was a cafe I frequented whenever I couldn’t be bothered stirring my own cup of instant coffee.
“What about it?”
“It’s their breakfast,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “they’re serving unidentified frying objects.”
“A pleasure as usual, Nigel. Time to piss off to school, don’t you think?”
I dropped the phone in its cradle and pulled back the tape on the cardboard box.
The phone rang again.
I sighed and waited for it to stop. It didn’t. Frustrated, I picked up.
“Listen, you little dickhead,” I replied, trying to sound jovial but not really feeling it, “this is a police station and I’ve bloody-well got work to do so bugger off.”
The phone line crackled.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice.
“Holbrooke Police Station, Sergeant Steven Night,” I said recovering quickly and hoping she hadn’t noticed. “Everything okay?”
“It’s Daphne Cuthbert,” she said, “it’s about my daughter—”
She faltered for a moment before going on.
“She didn't come home last night and I’m worried.”
“Sandy?” I asked, searching my memory for everything I knew about the Cuthberts. They lived on Butcher’s Place, out near Drake’s Timber Yard, rough as guts but basically decent people. Her father was a bit of a prick who shot through a couple of years ago. Probably for the best. Sandy, who was still in high school, had won Miss Holbrooke in 1973. Her mother had pushed her to enter the pageant. It was probably the eyes that did it. Miss Holbrooke was a pageant that typically attracted the vapid and shallow. Sandy had piercing, intelligent eyes that gave the impression she was always thinking. Bloody good at school, too, from what I remembered.
Daphne’s voice faltered for a moment and she stumbled forward. “She’s been hanging around with this boy,” she said. “I don’t trust him.”
“I’m not sure this is my area of expertise, I’m sure she’ll be home soon enough.”
“You’re not listening to me,” she hissed. “He’s not normal.” That got my attention. The phone continued its whispered crackle as I waited for her to speak.
“I’ve heard about you,” she said softly, “you help people. This town is different and I know you’ve handled this sort of thing before.”
She was talking slowly now, choosing each word carefully, inching the conversation forward.
“Isn’t Sandy eighteen now? She’s an adult, capable of making her own decisions, I’m sure she’d fine and she’ll be home soon.”
“She’s still in school, Steve.”
Another silence.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look into it.”
There was an audible sigh of relief.
“I’ll help find her but, in the eyes of the law, she’s an adult and I can’t make her go home if she doesn’t want to.”
She told me where the boy was living. I could picture the house. It was a large, white federation building that was impeccably maintained, obviously owned by someone from the city.
“His name?” I asked, holding the receiver with my chin and shoulder, reaching for my notepad.
“Julian Grey,” she said, and I neatly wrote his name down. We said goodbye and I put the phone in its cradle, the clack of Bakelite against Bakelite.
Shithead was pacing nervously and staring through the glass of the station’s front window.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered, grabbing my jacket, and heading out into the foggy morning.