A Question of Trust

A Question of Trust

by Ian Lipke

A droplet of rain trickles down Deborah's nose and pauses momentarily
before splashing on to her uniform jacket. It is another soggy, foggy
day in Sutton. Overnight rain has left its detritus in the gutters and
on the pavements. The sky lowers over the nearby hills and fog tendrils
its way through the alleyways and winding streets of the town. Buses
belch their cargo of diesel fumes into the sodden air to join the mist
that finds its insidious way through thermal underwear to permeate the
bones and chill the tiny frame of Deborah Passfield, as she begins yet
another day at Herefordshire's police station. A fine spray of errant
sunlight, its strength long forsaken, intrudes upon her office to taunt
her freezing body and mock the kerosene heater at her feet.

No day really begins without a visit to the restroom. Deborah
scrutinises her face and muses over its reflection. Someone has
attempted to clear the fog from the glass but has succeeded only in
smearing it. There is much depth in those liquid eyes but, in her
innocence, she fails to notice. She knows her eyes are her best feature
- many have told her so. She grimaces at her long, straight nose and
wonders anew at the ancestry that cursed her with it. She cannot
believe that he had loved her nose and reflects with quiet regret on a
relationship that had once blossomed so vigorously. "The man's mad!"
she thought. "It's just a nose. He sees these things. Darned if I
can!"

Ringlets, damp from the journey to work, tumble uncontrollably about
her face. Stepping from the shower this morning, Deborah had felt once
more the pang of parting with the man who had drifted so casually into
her life. An image of her tight buttocks and flat stomach had reminded
her of how he had loved them. She recalled examining her full breasts
and smiling at her secret. "There will be time to share" she reflects,
but unbidden, her thoughts creep wistfully back to that last
conversation.

"It's not all that far, Deb! A quick flight and we're together ? for
always. You'd have to leave your job but you'd soon get something
else!"

Like a fool, she had clung to the life she knew and begged him to stay
with her - but he was adamant, as stubborn as herself. He could not
live in what he called "that royal duck-pond". She cursed herself for
not having trusted her feelings.

Gazing into the mirror in the old police station, Deborah's loins ache.
How could one man have made her feel so complete, so satisfied ? and
now that he was gone, so unfulfilled?

This morning a late trickle had burst from the shower rose and struck
her recently dried back. Remembering, she shivers. She had been wet
when she had first met him - she'd been trying to rescue a puppy that
had fallen into a storm-water drain. She'd been in danger of being
herself swept away when firm, heavily-calloused hands had plucked her
and the puppy effortlessly from the drain. Those same hands had later
loved her, had stroked with a wondrous lightness of touch that had sent
shivers of delight through her eager, young body and she had fallen
hopelessly in love.

Now he was gone and she is empty.

Work for the day begins. Detective Sergeant Allen barges his way into
her corner office and slams a folder on her desk. Allen is a large man,
somewhat running to fat. Once he was a boxer, but he has long given up
any pretensions to fitness. A pedestrian approach to detail has limited
his opportunities for further advancement in his profession and
frequent visits to the pub compensate for his frustrations with his
world. His only way to cope with responsibility is to distribute tasks
to others and then lash out in anger if the work is criticized. He was
married once but his wife had run away from his bullying and he had
never sought another relationship. He has borne a grudge against
Deborah since Chief Inspector Morton's predecessor had given him a
severe bollocking once for incomplete paperwork. Allen had needed a
scapegoat; a means of saving face; she was nearby.

"Here, Passfield! Get on to Perth! Follow up this information and see
if the colonials have got any further with this drugs business. Look
sharp, now!"

"Yes, sir!" replies Deb. "Is there anything in particular you'd like me
to check on?"

"Use your brain, woman! You're not paid to sit there doing your nails!
Get your backside into gear right now! If your nose can't sniff out
what's important among all that stuff in those files, then you'd better
think about a different job! Baby-sitting, maybe! You women are pretty
good at wiping small bums!

"Sarge!" Deb began, but was interrupted.

"Don't Sarge me, girl! And don't look all innocent at me with those
brown eyes. You think the rest of us'll do your work for you! Well, you
don't fool me ? discipline and hard work never hurt anybody! See about
your business, girl! And let me know tomorrow morning what you've found
out. If I'm not in my office, I'll be at the Criterion around the
corner. Someone's got to meet the crims on their own ground. And if I'm
with someone, don't burst in on me. I'll be talking to a snitch of
mine!"

Allen lumbers self-importantly away.

*********

In Western Australia, it is dry. The drought has lasted two long years.
Open blue skies enshroud the Kimberleys in sunlight; a pitiless
November sun blisters the scorched earth. Waterholes have dried, their
mud cracking in the heat and a quilt of spinifex alone indicates that
life once flourished here. Coolibah trees cast a lone band of shade in
the old dried up river bed. Here a mob of hungry wallabies
instinctively conserve their energies in the seemingly never ending
battle against the heat and dust. Like their forebears, they know that
tough times will pass. They will survive.

In the kitchen of an old transported Queenslander due west of the
coolibahs, a telephone shrills its raucous cry and sets a flock of
shrieking galahs to flight. They have become cheeky of late; stealing
bore water from a leaking garden hose is not tolerated by the station's
cook. Big Jack Johnson retrieves the hand-piece from its place beside
the pantry door. Jack is a huge man with a red, weathered face,
patterned with character lines by the harsh northern sun. Soup plate
diminishing hands, a belly of beer barrel proportions, a head whose few
hairs are inconsequential - this is Jack, station cook on Granville
cattle station for years beyond counting.

"Granville!" he barks. "Yeah, he's here! Who wants him? Uh.. oh .. OK
constable! Keep your shirt on ... he's here! Hang on, I'll find
him!"

Mumbling that cooks should not have to answer bloody phones and run
bloody messages for bloody coppers, Jack bellows from the
verandah.

"Hey, Blue! You're wanted. It's some copper in Perth ... somethin'
about Herefordshire ... well, somethin' like that! Thought Herefords
were bloody stock animals!"

A tall, slim but muscular man emerges from the shadows of the cattle
yards. He has been enjoying smoko with a gang of itinerant ringers who
had made their way to Granville the previous week. Distinguished by a
shock of red hair, "Blue" Sanderson is well liked by the people of this
western country he calls his home. The son of a drover and his
aboriginal lubra, Blue has inherited the practical skills of his father
and the quiet intelligence and instinct for the land from his mother.
Their early deaths had recalled him from England and he had decided on
a career in the police force.

"Sanderson speaking. Hold on a moment, please. Jack, take a walk will
you? This is police business. Thanks, mate! And shut the door! OK ...
how can I help you? Who? Did you say a Deborah Passfield? Oh! Well,
patch her through will you? Wonder what she wants? It's the middle of
the bloody night there! Yeah, I know her! Put her through, OK?"

"G'day, Deb. Didn't expect a call from the Antipodes today. Oh, you're
in Herefordshire now? That's the Mary, Queen of Scots place, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, that's right! Derbyshire. Yeah. I read about it in school.
Cold as the inside of a dead fish from what I recall! Yeah. As you say
- cold and bloody wet. Yeah! Your weather can be a real bastard. Oops!
Sorry! You've heard worse from your boss? That's too bad. Here? It's
dry, mate! We've had to send the pot plants out on agistment, it's so
dry! Even the bloody frogs reckon if we don't sprinkle them, they'll
croak!"

"Anyway ... how can I help? Oh, yeah! That drugs business! Yeah, I've
done a bit of work on it. I caught a bloke up in the Gulf last week -
stinking of pot, he was! I fed him a few beers and he let slip that his
haul came from a fishing boat. We came to an arrangement. If I didn't
pinch him he'd tell me how the drugs are distributed. Some courier on a
liner chucks an oilskin package overboard and the fishermen collect it.
I haven't figured out how they get it through to Perth yet; I suspect
the ringers might be involved. At your end, get that boss of yours to
check on a feller called Larsen ... yeah, Sid Larsen. That's the name.
You know him? Well, he's close to the source. ...oh, cobbers with your
sergeant, is he? Well, go carefully, Deb. These are mean buggers!. By
the way, when are you coming out this way? It's a bloody side warmer
than over there! Come in June ... the bloody weather's marvellous then.
I'll take you barra fishin'. Come any time! It'd be good to see you.
Can't wait to show you Broome, it's a bloody bonzer place!"

Blue replaces the phone carelessly, his mind reliving memories of a
girl in a village far away. "I was a bloody fool!" he mutters. "Should
have done what I thought was right then and married the girl."

"What's that, Blue?" asks Jack from his listening post behind the
kitchen door.

"Aah! Forget it, Jack! Chalk it up to experience!"

"Yeah, right!" remarks Jack, understanding nothing, but knowing
instinctively that there's only ever one cure in this country for any
ailment. "How about a cuppa tea?"

*************
Deborah's brow sinks into a worried furrow. Larsen is a drinking mate
of Sergeant Allen. A former cop, released from policing duties after
whisperings of sexual advances to a witness in a drug investigation,
Larsen has continued his friendship with Allen. Deborah considers the
implications; her hair, now tousled with her worrying hands, cascades
over her face and angles its way past her ear on its way to her neck.
Pulling her dressing gown about her, she opens the window and gazes out
into the night. She thinks again of Blue Sanderson. A wisp of fog, lost
in the tortuous alleyways of Sutton finds its way to her window and
into the limits of her vision. She shivers, closes the window, and
attempts to gather another degree of heat from the ancient heater at
her feet. This is Herefordshire in February; in Western Australia it is
warm and dry. She feels the familiar pull of temptation. She remembers
her lover who went away to Western Australia. A warm glow from within
merges with the remnants of the fog and she sighs as her decision is
made. She and her unborn baby will join him and they will be a family.
But tomorrow she has to say something.

Chief Inspector Morton is worried. Heavily built, with hair graying at
the temples while receding at the crown, he is well aware of the
public's insatiable interest in crime statistics. Robberies and assault
numbers are down but there has been little improvement in major crime.
A spate of murders, apparently drug-related, plagues his district. He
needs a strategy to forestall the questioning that will surely come.
Clever and quick to take opportunities, ruthless in the pursuit of his
own interests, Morton's progress through the ranks has been rapid. No
colleague or newspaperman has ever suggested impropriety in his
actions. He is highly intelligent, street-smart and cunning, and
ensures that any such allegation is vigorously defended. A knock at his
door interrupts his thoughts.

"Come in! What is it, constable?" he barks.

Nervously, Deborah clears a throat that is suddenly dry.

"Sir, I was speaking with Blue Sanderson last night and ?"

"Yes, constable. ?and how is that young fellow of yours these
days?"

Encouraged, Deborah continues.

"He's fine, sir! But he's passed on some information that I thought
?"

"Well, what does D.S. Allen think of it?"

"I haven't told him, sir!"

Morton's eyes are hard as he scrutinizes the constable before him. He
knows there will be a good reason why P.C. Passfield has breached
protocol.

"You'd better tell me why, Passfield!" he comments in his calm, brittle
voice.

Nervously, Deborah tells him of the suspicions attached to Larsen.
Morton interrupts, "And you know he is a drinking crony of D.S.
Allen!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Say no more, constable! Say nothing to Allen and nothing to anybody
else - is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Leave it all to me ? you were right to bring it to me ? now leave it,
OK?"

"Yes, sir!"

As the door closes behind her slim figure, Morton thinks deeply,
weighing up all the options that come to him. Finally, he sighs,
"There's only one way to go. Damn! This won't look good on my report!"
He collects his coat and umbrella and makes his way out.

After the fog outside, the Criterion is a warm and welcoming place.
Allen is in his usual corner, Larsen's empty glass on the table before
him. Morton sits down and takes a satisfying pull on his lager. He eyes
Allen for a long moment and then remarks:
"That drugs business ? stay away from Larsen for awhile. The girl,
Passfield, knows. We can take no risks. You know what to do. Damn
shame, it'll bugger up my statistics!"

Allen hesitates, squirms in his seat and finally nods. He continues,"
I've got a twenty on Blue Lady in the fifth tomorrow. What do you think
of her chances?"

Morton swills his beer and discusses racing with Allen, before
returning to his office and the omnipresent paperwork.

The fog continues its swirl about the feet of pedestrians making their
way home after another long day in their offices. A dark figure emerges
from out of the gloom; Deborah feels a sudden sharp pain, a deeper more
urgent pain, and then there is nothing but blackness.

It is morning and the fog continues its inexorable way though the
alleyways and winding corridors of the town and the buildings of
Sutton. Morton stamps his feet and shivers as he makes his way past
Allen's desk. He cocks an eyebrow and Allen nods. "Everything's OK ?
except I did my dough on Blue Lady." Morton chuckles at Allen's
discomfiture and whistling brightly, moves off to his own office and
the ever present crime statistics.

A slim folder nestles on Sergeant Allen's desk. Someone has written in
an angular script "Active File: Investigation into the death of Police
Constable Deborah Passfield".