Out in Nowhere, page 3
Yanking the little girl out of the highchair, she climbed onto the desk and watched as the snake continued to slither and slide and spread blood across the floor.
‘Ugh,’ Hallie groaned, realising she was crying. Her chest heaved as the adrenalin left her and she held her little girl tightly to her, rocking back and forth.
Once in her mother’s arms, Ruby started to calm, and Hallie hung on for dear life, taking as much comfort from her daughter as Ruby was from her.
Minutes passed, maybe longer. Hallie didn’t know. It took king brown’s body to stop moving before they both became calm enough to speak.
‘Mumma?’ The little girl’s voice was quiet. ‘Okay, Mumma? My ears sore.’
Another few moments passed before Hallie could answer.
‘Mumma?’ The little girl touched her mother’s face.
Gulping air, she put her hand over her eyes and leaned her head onto Ruby’s. ‘Yes, darling?’
‘Dadda dere.’ She pointed at the computer and they watched as Alex leaned down from the ladder to wave to them then continued up and out of sight towards the top of the windmill.
CHAPTER 3
‘Um, hello. My name is Constable Mia Worth.’
‘Good morning, Constable Mia Worth,’ the children from Barker Primary School chorused.
Mia tried to smile through the butterflies flapping in her stomach. Kids were the hardest of audiences. Unforgiving and merciless. If she didn’t catch their attention in the first three seconds of her talk, then she’d have to speak over fidgeting, whispered conversations and kids calling out interruptions. The impact she was hoping to make wouldn’t be there.
Trouble was, she didn’t know much about kids and she wasn’t really even sure how old these Year Fives were. Maybe she should have asked the teacher before she started. Her partner, Detective Dave Burrows, usually attended the career days for the kids in high school but he’d insisted she do this talk to the primary-school kids. Looking at the wriggling, squirming, talking bundles of energy, Mia was fairly sure she understood why now.
Maybe she should have brought some props other than her taser gun. Not that it was a prop, more a necessity on her work-issued belt.
Linking her fingers through the loops of her police pants, she found the handcuffs on her belt and touched them for comfort.
‘Can we try on your handcuffs?’ a boy yelled. His friends giggled while casting wide-eyed glances at each other.
Mia swallowed and removed her hands, grasping them firmly behind her back for two seconds, before deciding she needed to adjust her hat. In doing so, she locked eyes with a little girl at the back of the room who was staring at her like she was a goddess. That was pretty good for her share price.
Smiling at the girl, Mia gave a little wave and the girl dropped her gaze to the floor. But not before Mia caught a large grin on her face.
Damn, she wished she knew how old these kids were. Eight? Nine? Perhaps as old as ten or eleven. Okay, who did she know that was eight or nine? Or ten.
For once, Mia’s brain went blank, other than to register that she didn’t recognise one face in this classroom. Not surprising, though. Since she’d been in Barker, the whole twelve months, the only kids she’d had anything to do with were the Stapleton twins and they’d been four last year and a handful and a half when she and Dave had been investigating an elder abuse case in their family.
Miss Travenski held up her hand. ‘No calling out, thank you, Michael. You need to put your hand up and wait until you’re asked to speak. And the rest of the class, please be quiet and respectful towards our guest.’ The teacher was standing at the back of the classroom and had obviously realised Mia needed help.
Mia waited until the teacher nodded at her before speaking again. She summoned a smile.
‘I’m a police officer here in Barker and I work with Detective Dave Burrows.’
‘He’s a good bloke,’ another boy said, repeating what he’d obviously heard his parents say.
‘James,’ Miss Travenski warned. ‘The same goes for you. No talking without your hand up.’
‘Yeah, a real good bloke,’ a girl said this time.
Miss Travenski sighed and motioned for Mia to continue.
One girl decided she’d had enough of Mia’s stuttered start. ‘What’s a police officer do?’
‘Well,’ Mia said, ‘I check that people are driving at the correct speed—’
‘You pulled my dad up the other day,’ another child said. ‘He was angry with you.’
Heat flooded through her cheeks. She’d known the conversation today would be difficult, but not this hard. Damn Dave!
‘Did I? Well, he must have been going over the speed limit. See, it’s very important that you drive at the speed limit. If you don’t, there’s a higher chance of an accident.’ Mia knew she was babbling and using words that probably weren’t suitable for the Year Five kids, but if she kept talking, they might stop. ‘And accidents aren’t very nice to attend. I’ve been to quite a few now, and sometimes people get hurt in them.’
‘My dad’s a good driver.’
‘My mum is a better driver than yours.’
‘Enough!’ Miss Travenski called, clapping her hands together.
‘It doesn’t matter how good a driver you are’—Mia raised her voice—‘the fact is that if you speed, then you’re putting not only your own life but also that of others at risk. People could die. That’s a very irresponsible attitude to have.’
Mia saw Miss Travenski stiffen when she mentioned dying, but she couldn’t stop. Not when the room was finally quiet.
‘Often, when people ask me if they should become a police officer, I ask them two things. Firstly, are you prepared to kill someone?’
There were gasps across the room. Shocked faces and wide eyes told Mia she’d definitely overstepped the mark.
‘Officer Worth, I wonder …’ The teacher stood and looked around, but three boys shot their hands up in the air.
‘Do you get to kill bad people?’
‘Is that why you carry a gun?’
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’
Mia shook her head. ‘Hold on, I’ll answer your questions in a minute. The second thing I ask them is if they’re prepared not to go home after a shift.’
‘Why wouldn’t you go home?’ a girl wondered. ‘Don’t you need to have some dinner and go to bed?’
‘You’re an idiot, Susan,’ Michael told her. ‘They die when they’re out working. A baddie can kill them. Sometimes they get hit by a car. I saw that on TV once.’ The boy got to his feet and within seconds had put his shoulder to the floor and executed a perfect roll, pretending he’d rolled from the bonnet of a car.
‘Well, thank you, Officer Worth,’ Miss Travenski interrupted, moving towards the front of the classroom.
‘Can I ask a question?’ It was the girl Mia had smiled at earlier. A small girl with bright red hair and vivid blue eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on the carpet and started to bounce on her bum. ‘Please, Miss Travenski, I’ve got a question.’
Mia realised the teacher was looking at her warily. The previous statements were true, even if they were too confronting for primary-school kids. To become an officer, you had to be prepared to change. The police see a different side of life that the public doesn’t, and it’s a life that a recruit may not be prepared for. You might be put in a situation where you must protect or defend yourself. In the academy, one of the lecturers had said to the cadets: ‘Are you willing to shoot someone?’
Her words had given Mia pause, but not as much as the ones that had followed.
‘Are you prepared not to come home from your shift? Are you prepared to die? See, when people join the army, they expect at some stage of their career they will see active combat. That is not something our police cadets give enough thought to. Consider whether you are prepared to not come home from your shift. Because that’s how policing is these days.’
Biting the inside of her lip, Mia gave a tiny nod, acknowledging the teacher’s warning glance. ‘What’s your question?’ she asked the girl gently.
‘What made you want to be a police officer?’
Mia linked and unlinked her fingers again. Why indeed? ‘Well, um, what’s your name?’ she stalled.
‘Skye. I’m Skye Maddison.’
‘Well, Skye, being a police officer is a whole lot of fun, but it can be a bit dangerous.’
‘Is that why you have a gun on your belt?’ James asked.
Deciding to ignore him, Mia kept her eyes on Skye. ‘Because we chase, ah, baddies.’ She grabbed a word already used. ‘We have to be prepared. But as to why I chose this as my job? Well, every day is different. One moment I might be patrolling the highway for speeding cars and the next I might be here at the school, giving a talk, like I am today. Sometimes I get to go and visit other towns and talk to other police officers.’
Miss Travenski’s body relaxed slightly as Mia talked, and she realised she was on the right path.
‘And with every day being a bit different, the other big reason I wanted to work with the police is that I get to travel a lot. If I didn’t want to stay here in Barker, then I could ask for a transfer to another town or even another state. I asked to move to Broad River for a while, because my nana was there, then I was assigned to help Detective Burrows here in Barker. So you see I can ask for a transfer to anywhere in South Australia, really.’ She cocked her head to the side. ‘I could move interstate, but I’d have to get clearance and do some more training.’
Skye was staring, transfixed. Mia felt the weight of expectation in her bright eyes. Maybe she wanted to join the force and what Mia said today might sway her for or against.
Taking a breath, she tried to remember the day she had decided she was going to apply to the academy.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Mia said as she moved from the edge of the teacher’s desk to the floor. ‘Here, let’s sit in a circle.’ She made a circle with her finger and sat down as all the children shuffled around. Her cuffs were sticking into her side, so she adjusted them, just as a little hand reached out to touch the badge on the arm of her shirt.
Mia caught the look from another girl, who seemed fascinated with her uniform.
‘Why do you have to wear all of that stuff?’ the girl asked.
‘This is so I have tools to help me when I’m chasing the baddies,’ Mia said. ‘I’ll tell you about all these things in a sec, if you like.’ Mia realised she should use the same sort of words the kids were using because that’s what they’d understand. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Chloe.’
Mia smiled. ‘Hello, Chloe.’
‘What’s the story?’ one of the noisier boys asked. He was leaning back, arms crossed, assessing her—one of the cool kids for sure. Someone Mia would have avoided when she was in Year Five.
‘I wasn’t very old when I had to move from Barker to Adelaide.’
‘Did you live here when you were a kid?’ someone asked.
‘Yeah, I did. With Nana and Mum—’ Mia opened her mouth to continue with her story, but another kid got in before she could say anything.
‘Where was your dad?’
‘He, uh …’ Mia’s mouth twisted as she caught the teacher’s eye. Nana had always told her to tell the truth, which sometimes seemed to get her into a whole lot of trouble, like before. And because people didn’t like it when the truth called out their bad behaviour. Inwardly she sighed. ‘Well, my dad died when I was just a baby, so I don’t remember him at all. But as I was saying—’
‘Why did he die?’
‘Did someone shoot him?’
Mia’s mouth went dry. A few moments passed before she answered. ‘He hadn’t been very well for a while.’
That was a sort of truth. Enough to get the kids off her back. The fact that her father had a severe mental illness was too hard to explain, especially when Mia herself had only found out a year or so ago and the story of his life was still raw.
‘Back to why I wanted to be a police officer. Like I said, I was still young when I moved from Barker to Adelaide, and it’s a big move for a young kid. I was a bit older than you guys, but not a whole lot. And the city is a lot different from Barker, too. Who’s been to Adelaide?’
All the kids’ hands shot up.
‘I went to the zoo once,’ a boy who hadn’t spoken before said.
‘Well, then you know there are lots of people and cars. Buses and noise. Trams! On this particular day, I got lost. I thought I knew the way home from the park, but I didn’t. All the corners and streets looked the same. Not every kid had a mobile phone back then, so I couldn’t call my grandmother, then I remembered from when I was at school in Barker, a teacher told my class that if things weren’t going right, we should never be frightened to approach a police officer.’
Now the classroom was silent. Every single face was turned to her, listening. Even the most fidgety child was still.
Mia leaned forward with a smile. ‘I wasn’t frightened to ask a police officer in a uniform for help because all the ones I’d known were nice and kind to us kids. I’m not sure how I did it, but I found a police station and went inside, and the lady behind the counter took one look at me, got me an ice cream and a drink, then organised for a couple of officers to drive me home. Because you see, I knew my address, so I could tell the police, but I didn’t know where the street was.’ Mia paused and looked at every single child in the circle. ‘I wanted to be like those officers. Helping kids who needed help. Being kind to families. Those two constables who took me home, they were awesome.’ She gave the kids a large smile. ‘They turned the siren on so I could hear it, even though they weren’t supposed to. They showed me the switch inside the car that made the lights work, and let me flick it. I thought I was the coolest kid ever!’
The Year Five class laughed, enthralled with her tale.
‘The experience they gave me as they drove me home made me want to do what they were doing.’ She paused and grinned. ‘I hope that what I say to you might make you want to become a police officer, too.’
Mia leaned back, pleased with herself. Although she really wished she could take back the first few sentences of the day, perhaps her story had made up for them. How could she convey, though, the relief she’d felt when Nana had opened the door? Mia had watched the tension in her grandmother’s face ease.
How, too, could she explain the diary entry she’d found after her grandmother had died?
Thanks didn’t seem to be enough for the lovely young police officers who brought Mia home today. I mean, how do you explain to people who know this place like the back of their hand that even to an old duck like me, let alone a young girl, the streets all look the same? The houses all look the same. That the city streets don’t have the personality that the country town ones do and it is very easy to get lost.
In the country, our deep thanks would come from being practical. Dropping excess eggs around or a bale of straw if it was needed to mulch a veggie garden. Here in the city it’s harder to know what to do. Maybe I’ll cook cakes and biscuits and deliver them weekly? My veggie garden will provide produce but not soon enough for a thanks.
I guess that’s it. Cakes and biscuits. And the occasional jar of strawberry jam.
‘Do you have any questions?’ Mia asked.
‘Is there much money? ’Cause I want a two-storey house, and Mum tells me I have to pay for it myself!’
Mia smiled. ‘By the time you guys get to being a police officer, I hope the pay is more than it is now. Any other questions?’
‘What’s on your belt?’
Mia ran through all the pieces of equipment that were around her waist. She’d taken the service revolver off and locked it in the gun safe back at the station, but she still had her taser.
‘Cor, can I have a look at that?’ one boy asked, pointing to it.
‘Nope, sorry. It’s not allowed to come out of the holster unless I need to use it.’
‘Does every copper get to have one?’ another boy asked. He rolled ‘copper’ around as if it were a naughty word and he loved saying it.
‘Yes, every police officer does. And we all get one of these.’ She touched the hat she was wearing. Distraction, distraction! ‘Does anyone want to try it on?’
‘I do!’ Skye and Chloe spoke at the same time.
Mia smiled and took it off her head, placing it first on Skye’s then on Chloe’s as everyone stood and moved away from the circle.
‘I think you two will make the most amazing police officers in time to come,’ she said. Then she leaned forward and whispered to the two girls, ‘Would you like to come for a ride in the police car later on?’
CHAPTER 4
‘This “problem”,’ Hallie recited, practising her words to tell Alex when he came home, ‘has to stop. I can’t live in a house where snakes come and go as they please. This is the second time it’s happened! And the one that’s dead in the office is massive! We could all die.’
She could imagine Alex now, laidback, languishing in a chair with the dogs at his side. He would pour her a brandy to calm her nerves and ignore the fact that her hands were still shaking. He certainly wouldn’t be able to feel the nausea in her stomach, though her pale face might give him a clue.
Last time Hallie had yelled at him, Alex had looked across to where the body of another snake had lain in about one hundred pieces. Blood was smeared across the kitchen floor, the shovel still where Hallie had dropped it after massacring the creature.
‘Seems you dealt with it as you deal with all problems,’ he’d said mildly. ‘Very well.’
Hallie had wanted to smack him. How dare he bring her out here to this godforsaken joint, in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to except flies and snakes and a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler. How dare he bring her to a house that seemed to have a draught blowing from one end to the other, where dust entered from minute cracks she hadn’t yet found and the walls creaked and moved as much as the tin roof did.
