There Is More Light Than Dark

Chapter Twenty Six

Thursday July 21

Melody Newman walked briskly behind her son Jayden as they entered the Camberwell Police Station. It was a school day and she had work to get to but some lessons in life took precedence over those sorts of things. Plus, she couldn't have the tennis girls tut-tutting at her across the net if she let her boys start to run wild.

She was annoyed her husband had left this up to her, especially after he'd been the one to see the skateboard first and not bother to question Jayden about it.

'Hello, I am Melody Newman and this' she shoved him forwards to bear the brunt of what she hoped would be the attending officer's wrath, 'Is my son, Jayden.'

The young female officer smiled at the kid as if he was bringing her in some birthday cake. Melody breathed deeply and prompted her. 'I phoned just last night? About the skateboard?'

Constable Wilson looked down at the skateboard and nodded, clearly not having any indication at all why the mother and her son were there.

'We 'found' it at the train station a week ago and thought we might just keep it, didn't we Jayden?'

The young constable caught on. 'Oh, right. Yes, well if we find something we have to let adults know straight away, don't we?'

Jayden nodded at the floor, not daring to look up at the blue shirt telling him what his mother had done last night, only at forty times the volume of this lady. She looked at Melody and rolled her eyes gently.

'OK, well I'd better get you to come through. Bring the board Jayden, we will need to take this into...' She stopped at the thought of the word 'evidence' or custody' but Melody wished she hadn't.

Constable Wilson took the information from young Jayden as Melody sat and checked her watch periodically, beginning to question the length of the lesson she had thought might be a little more succinct. Christ, she could have bought him half a dozen skateboards but this was an attempt at principle.

When they were finished she took the board down to the room where they kept evidence, stolen goods and goods returned to them without owners. Constable Fern Wilson might have placed it in the back of the pile of cricket bats and scooters that littered the part of the room where the male officers would come to look for something to amuse themselves at lunch time on a summer's day but for her phone beeping as she opened the steel mesh door.

As she checked the message her face dropped on account of the reminder to submit her report on the break in three nights before at the local pony club. The president's daughter had her saddle and boots stolen and it seemed Senior Sergeant Frank Young needed this to be a priority on account of his daughter needing a place at the stables for her horse. Fern Wilson knew how the system worked, even though she'd only been there for just over twelve months.

She left the board just inside the door and locked it quickly as she strode back up the stairs to finish her report.

And this local hierarchy of horses and people, the very real embodiment of the class aspiration that drove all those from vets and doctors to Senior Sergeants, would lay the tinder dry evidence in a place where any detective might trip over it and cause a spark.