Read Online Smithy's Cupboard by Ray Clift - Free Book Online Page A

Joan from working?’
    â€˜I guess not.’
    â€˜Would it have prevented the cancer?’
    â€˜I suppose not. Hell, let’s change the subject. Get me a VB.’

13
    Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen James Ireland adjusted his new glasses. Though they had cost him a lot of money, he often absent-mindedly left them in odd places and was not able to find them when required. Eyes were an essential part of his career, he thought, as he glanced at the pile of manilla folders sitting on his right. One of his family suffered from macular degeneration and was rapidly going blind. She was an accomplished piano teacher and now faced the prospect of her beloved music vanishing. She was left on her own – her husband had moved away before the onset of the blindness. Stephen’s parents had cataracts, which also disturbed him. He had black spots and sparks in his vision at night when he drove home.
    At age fifty-two his prospects of rising higher to commissioned rank with the extra paperwork involved were fading, despite the high marks he scored in all the exams which he needed to pass to improve his qualifications. And here he was shuffling through the cold case files hoping for a breakthrough – if only to satisfy the grieving. Some of the folders spoke to him because he was fond of getting inside of the head of the perpetrators as well as the poor victims. He cared for the victims, and the loved ones, and the information was frequently updated, in the hope of leads.
    He took a gulp from the cup of coffee with the Hawthorn football club stickers plastered all over it and thought about his team, hoping they would do well in the finals coming up. The buff-coloured manilla folder he had opened seemed to invite him in, even though he had had no hand in the original investigation of the killing of Paul Thomson, a bikie gang member murdered in ashack in the south-east of Victoria. A large crop of drug plants was growing in the bush nearby.
    He read the neatly prepared text of recent enquiries inside the file. Detective Graham Johns, a new member, bursting with an overabundance of ego and always ready to please, sat opposite, speaking only when asked. Everyone in the squad room knew Graham was going places.
    The report was well constructed and easy to read either by a judicial officer or an assistant commissioner. Stephen read the summary, as he had much to deal with. Let the squad read the details, he thought
    â€˜Graham, we all guessed it was gang-related or vengeance as you have reiterated.’ He studied the photos of the dead bikie. He reminded himself of the gory details flashed about by a press seeking high drama. ‘Jeez, shot with a crossbow - in the chest.’
    â€˜Went straight through, skewered him to the door of the shack. The body was just swinging in the wind till it was found by hikers – who also found the crop.’
    â€˜The bolt was scrubbed clean at the time…no DNA, you say? You believe the killer was a trained assassin?’
    Graham nodded and replied, ‘Well, it’s not the usual method of gangs is it, sarge?’
    â€˜You checked the victim’s time in gaol. Raping kids, I see.’
    â€˜Bloody mongrel. Yes, sarge.’
    â€˜Why do we bother, Graham, I have to ask. Justice has been done. Still it is unsolved—the law requires us to put in an effort.’
    â€˜Payback from gaol, I reckon. I checked gaol staff but there were no reports made about attacks there.’
    â€˜Well, that’s a blind.’
    â€˜He had mates who were concerned where his black Labrador dog went, though he used to kick it a lot.’
    â€˜Any suspects?’
    â€˜No, just a clue. A former SAS man, thirty years a vet. A sniper – best in the country. Employed from time to time by friendly forces. He was released two months before Thomson. Funny, he has no record on file.’
    â€˜What are you telling me? Where are you going with this?’
    Alarm