The first and foremost thing that was immediately apparent about Harlough Hill Police Station was its appearance. Stacks of ‘70s red bricks were packed in under the orange terra-cotta tiled roof. A grey wood veranda snaked the way around its unusually square base, squeaking stairs complaining upon each step taken. From the front door swung a slapdash fly screen shielding the thick cobalt blue door.
Many years ago, the council had bought the estate — near new, after the homeowner passed away in '79. From then on the house was elected for the Harlough Hill police force. Little had changed since.
The interior barely deviated from the outside — tired fluorescent light tubes lining the roof and cluttered clusters of office desks cascading files of paper. Dawson's office had been partially segregated at the front left of the building, with wide tinted glass windows, his lethargically balding head visible as he bent over the latest tragedy.
Keira was already pacing within the interrogation room, her restless shadow in dim light slotting through the room's barely closed blinds. Next door shielded the surveyors — patiently analysing the subjects behind the guise of the two-way mirror. He contemplated pushing the door open. Maybe he could impassively waltz in and amaze them with his non-existent theories. Though really, by now, Dawson should have mentioned something — distinguished a link, and warningly growl, “Keep off the case.”
Cash sighed, and slouched into his riotous spin-chair. It expeditiously slid away, receiving an irked 'humph' upon capture. The desk seemed the same as its normal chaos, yet it seemed somewhat different. Had it been tidied? He frowned, spinning a pen in his fingertips. That was it; a new file sat proudly with a crisp yellow post-it note taped to its breast.
I didn't give you this...
Tell Dawson about Mariah.
(Now, not later)
Keira. One day, he'll buy a hundred packs of that favoured idiosyncratic item. For her next birthday, perhaps. They had to be yellow — eight centimetres squared and somehow emanate the razor-sharp scent of chemicals. Any larger and they would be instantaneously branded useless.
Cash snapped his attention back to the task at hand. 'Irrelevant,' he chided himself. 'Irrelevant.'
The thick yellow folder rustled as it was picked up, slightly off-white papers clambering to escape to the floor. They spilled in a mess onto the desk — people, places and dates amassing like shiny novelties in a magpie's nest. Jaleel Santiago's file stared bleakly forward as the sheets cleared away to reveal a high-contrast black and white scan of the features that looked all too much like Melody's.
There were those same wide lips. The identical nose which turned down ever-so-slightly at the tip. His expression, albeit dour, shamelessly screamed snatches of Mariah's character. Yet the eyes — oh, the eyes. Thin and narrowed with crow’s feet faintly stamped in the corners. Nothing like Mariah's.
Cash scanned down the sheet, searching for a mere insinuation of information. Male. 39. 183cm. African American. No prior convictions. He flipped the page over with the vain hope of more. Nothing.
Mr Santiago seemed like that kind of man. A Nothing. The kind that worked the average nine-to-five job and caught the average five-oh-five-pm bus. The man who would turn up in a business suit to type important reports with practiced keystrokes, yet the words would be the same. Day in, day out. He would have a briefcase — Cash imagined — a Nothing briefcase filled with equally paramount Nothing sheets. Like everyone else in the world (apart from the sparse few that loitered in those elite tea-and-coffee societies), the nothingness is and was his life. Yet, it wasn't like the world wasn't busy. There was the Nothing phones and the Nothing Internet sites. There was shopping and haircuts and texting and typing. Fancy CEOs with scintillating Bluetooth headsets plugged into an ear while their black-suit encased hands thrashed about on the sea of keys to drawl out words on profitability.
People liked to keep themselves busy. That used to attract Cash to gaming, too, then policing. It was all about action. But now there were these masses of Nothing people, who were equally, if not more, dissatisfied with their monotonous Nothing lives. Who wanted more action than games or policing could provide. It was these Nothing people that caused the stir.
They were keeping themselves busy, but in a more-than-Nothing way. Now there were closet paedophiles and rapists, murderers and hormonal teens. The public screamed outrage at minor hiccups of celebrity melodramas yet turned a blind eye to the desperadoes corrupting impressionable youths.
So eventually, the jail cells and honourable judges would be filtering through diaphanous court cases backed by money-oiled lawyers with slick tongues to worm confusion out of the jury. These Nothing people would have a wife, two kids and three cars, yet become seduced; intoxicated by the grunge of an alleyway with a five-dollar hooker and a six-figure attorney to back them up. There would be those Nothing teens with wealth and popularity at ease, yet would stain the streets with their low-rise jeans, backwards caps and cans of spray paint to claim ‘turf’ in another bloody massacre.
The women – they were really what caught Cash’s tongue in a mousetrap. Gone were the days of romance and candle-lit dinners. Gone were the roses and holding the door open as they walked past. Women wanted someone to tie them to the bed, to abuse them and scream words of torture and pain in the vanity of love. Women wanted the mafia image with the romance of the royal family. And men were all too happy to give it to them.
So of course, when these pruned-to-degradation women waltzed in with accusations of rape, abuse and torture, the court would give out that pitying tsk-tsk, and throw them out like used and abused Barbie Dolls.
But — and Cash had debated this many-a-time when he was awaiting the breath of movement — there was always crime and injustice. Inevitable, like the rain on a funereal day. There had been the coveted bushrangers to challenge the whims of the wealthy; the modernistic cyber hackers to corrupt the online buccaneers. The rebellion of society stroked the young virgin hands of innocence into felony.
That birthed the purpose; to chase, to capture, to right the multi-faceted wrongs of this world. There were no shortcuts; no CTRL+Z function to any mistakes. There were lives upon lives upon lives wherein mere words, mere actions could be the differentiation betwixt community service and 25-to-life.
He used to think of himself in that way. A hero. Superman. Harlough’s knight in shining armour boasting morality and justice. A steely look would send crooks at rest. The idea would puff his chest out just that little bit more with the throbbing of an ego (now inevitably tarnished by time). Yet, after the first case a little more major than shoplifting, the fantasy died with it. The chest deflated somewhat, for it really was little more than a job; an inevitable obligation.
And that was all he really was here for, if anything was existing. For it was more of a drift. A drift of a person; a life. And the threads — long and whimsical like yarns of wool, intermingled with the shining threads of others to form a dewy gossamer web. A web of connectivity. And one of these threads, metaphysically beautiful and enchanting, strengthened with the whims of attraction with Mariah.
But Mariah was not here-and-now and there were pages to read, scenes to memorise. Cash sighed, turning to another paper, savouring the sheer crispness of the sheet, the tendrils of its subtle scent.
Take a deep breath in; take a deep breathe out.
Sigh…
Another page caught his eye — the timeline. Cash drunk in the words, dates and times faster than the ignorant devoured drugged wine. Again and again and again the words echoed out to carve a sequence. The evidence was circumstantial — it was immediately obvious. Innocence could be argued through lack of lucidity.
CCTV footage placed the hazy image of a black man at the scene — debatable racism certainly. The motive craved clarity and evidence; faded foot prints on the dirt matched more than one pair of shoes. Little more than shared buses linked Jaleel to the slaughtered man.
“Davies. Great. You're here,” a voice boomed from in front of him.
Shit. Cash jumped, dropping the papers. Dawson. Oh shit.
Haphazardly, Cash shoved the sheets into the folder, maintaining nonchalance as they crumpled up like an empty wrapper. Dawson stared at him questioningly for a few seconds before letting his gaze wander. Nothing was said, the silent air awaiting a response. A sigh; then, the nervous reply of yes slipped from cautious lips like a dark cat slinking down a back alley.
Cash systematically slid the sparse free sheets into the folder, and snuck the folder into his drawer. Dawson didn't bat an eyelid.
And then they were talking. The words seemed garbled; the answers barely deviating from faux yeses. Dawson's hands tucked into his pockets, gaze steadily on Cash. The words felt bitter on his tongue, Dawson's steady flow of small talk leaving little room for interjection. He sighed, and then the line was delivered in a rush of words.
Dawson frowned, before agreeing.
Cash sighed with relief, stretching awkwardly on the chair. It has been stupid to worry about such trivialities. Mariah might be irked, although — but that was inevitable.
Dawson had reassigned him the 'Hash-Tag' case. Predictably, Keira would stay hot on the heels of the Jaleel Santiago murder enquiry; Oliver Fishmorr, David Lau and Catherine Donovan were digging up information for the marijuana and heroin that permeated the entities all too many Harlough residents.
Under the pseudonym, 'Hash Tag' a local drug dealer sold dope made from an amalgamation of arsenic, tobacco, grass, rat poison and a small percentage of marijuana – hardly a safety net for the dazed oblivion of the druggies and drunken teens that would smoke the bong haphazardly. The bodies had begun accumulating; more than usual were the retching or unconscious teens being wheeled into the emergency ward with red, puffy-eyed families clustered together in the waiting room. All refused to talk. All left the case wide open, with as many holes as Swiss cheese’s bullet-hole façade.
Moreover, it was the police force’s inherent lack of information. The crooks (Johnny Maverick, Tyanchi Leod and Rob “Sterling” Stewart) were innocently gambling when the Harlough Police Force was supposedly springing a ‘drug bust’. Flimsy accusations would be washed off (the dirt still sticking to the undersides of their nails), permitting (and Cash mentally spat this word out as if it was the bitter coffee that Ma was notorious for brewing on cold winter nights) them to walk out of the station with that smug, cocky smile on their lips and that deplorable ‘swagger’ in every overconfident step.
It was that sort of feeling – the stigma, moreover, that chased cases such as these that would steer Cash off any notion of righteousness. For all it really became was the act of a dog chasing its’ own tail to lead to an inevitable position of nowhere, and again, this inescapability of the tails of the new and old cases that lead to entire departments being fired; managers replaced, yet nothing – even, less than nothing, changed. The years would go by; nag at weary police officers (fired, then reinstated), who could no longer lift a finger to these cases, or snap at the taunting tails that promised faux hope.
And it wasn’t like Cash was about to preach Satanism or immorality, yet the sheer immensity of these drug lord crimes seemed to overwhelm the pitiful system running Harlough. For it had been proven that the three thug gamblers were all interconnected, yet lacked the intrinsic cunning or malice to continually evade capture and persecution. No – they had a manager. An ulterior force, which drove forward the industry with the creed of squalor trailing after it and an endless tail for the police force to nip and bite without grabbing onto a few stray hairs.
If it wasn’t for the subtle clunk of the interrogation doors as they swung open and the click-clacking of exactly five pairs of shoes on the carpeted grey floors, then Cash wouldn’t have realised that Dawson had, in fact, wandered off to analyse Jaleel Santiago who was now sauntering out of the glazed glass push/pull doors. Again, Cash saw the smile that sent his stomach churning; the all-too-familiar half-leer, like a hook had been dragged into a corner of the mouth and dragged upwards. The yellowed gleam of the lighting caught on the slight sheen of sweat lining his forehead, the whites of his eyes slinking back and forward to sneer at his surroundings. For a millisecond, the eyes focused on Cash. Stay away; the command was implicative.
It would be purely unprofessional to respond – satisfying, most likely, but unprofessional. So Cash kept a straight face, uninterested. “Jaleel was innocent,” he would assure Mariah later on. “The evidence against him didn’t really stick. They call it ‘circumstantial evidence’, where the proof is loosely based on witness accounts, past history, etcetera.” Yes, etcetera. Cash could almost fit in a thousand other words on Jaleel Santiago after that fleeting encounter which was fittingly more than etcetera. But of course, the moment was here and now, not a day or two in the future, leaving Cash in front of a pile of papers that needed reading, a nakedly insubstantial ten-year-old drug case and the irked straight-set frown upon Keira and the other’s faces as they watched their single person to point the finger at waltz back onto the streets.
Ok guys, I am well and truly sorry for taking forever (again, I know). Anyways, I will try and avoid this lethargicness and instead focus on writing and all that jazz.
By the way, the magic word is "pumpkin".