Operation Badger

By Tabitha Ormiston-Smith

Detective Senior Constable Ben Jackson is handsome, kind, diligent, dedicated and a total mensch. He's also as thick as two planks.
His girlfriend, Tammy, is clever as anything, but sillier than a wet hen.
And then there is Tom. Tom is a cat.
Follow this unlikely crime-busting trio as they bucket from one disaster to another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tabitha Ormiston-Smith
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370373529

Tabitha Ormiston-Smith

Tabitha Ormiston-Smith was born and continues to age. Dividing her time between her houses in Melbourne and the country, she is ably assisted in her editing business and her other endeavours by Ferret, the three-legged bandit.

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OPERATION BADGER

Tabitha Ormiston-Smith

Copyright Tabitha Ormiston-Smith 2016

Smashwords edition

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CHAPTER ONE

A wide, happy smile rose to Ben’s face as he stepped out of the bakery, the flat box carefully balanced. It was a new week, he was on afternoons, his favourite shift, the sun was shining and he had on a brand-new suit. He was on his way to work at a job he loved, and later he would go home to the most beautiful woman in the world. Everything in Ben’s life was just about perfect, he reckoned, and so on this perfect day he had detoured to the bakery on his way back from court for a box of fancy doughnuts to treat his mates in the squadroom.

Ben’s shoulders squared and his chin lifted as he stepped onto the wide pavement. Look at all those citizens going about their business. He was their protector, one link in the Thin Blue Line that separated the good people from the Bad Guys. Ever since he could remember, Ben had always wanted to be a policeman; it was his life’s dream come true. He was Living His Dream. Not bad for twenty-seven.

A klaxon shrieked and he almost dropped the box. Hell! It was the bank down the street. Two men ran out and piled into a rusty old vehicle, roaring away in a cloud of smoke. Shit! A robbery! Heart pounding, Ben raced to his car and fumbled to get the key in. The suspect vehicle was turning the corner at the Carrington Street intersection. If he got right after them.…

And then it happened. The keys dropped from his fingers, and as he grabbed for them his hand just grazed them, knocking them away, and as time slowed he seemed to watch in horror for an eternity as they sailed gracefully away towards the kerb.

Towards the stormwater drain.

As Ben launched himself in a flying tackle, right arm extended vainly grasping for his keys, he had an instant in which to reflect that he must look just like Superman flying through the air, and then he was down on his belly in the gutter, trying to suck in air against his winded diaphragm, watching as the keys slid slowly, but inexorably, out of sight.

***

Tammy stood up with a sigh, stretching her aching back. That was Coat Five. She reached to pull the door closed. How sick she was of the whole thing. The fumes gave her a sore throat even with the paper mask.

She had been at this in every spare moment since she’d finished the bedroom floor, scraping and sanding away until her whole body vibrated in sympathy with the belt sander, then layering on coat after coat of the thick, glossy lacquer. The horrible fumes could be smelt all over the house; they had even prevailed over the lingering scent of tea tree oil that she had once believed would never air out.

She cleaned her tools carefully, ever mindful of the expense if any of the product should be allowed to dry in brush or roller. The final coat on the sitting room floor would mark the end of two rooms completely painted and renovated, and she’d done it all out of her tiny salary from the supermarket. Not that she had had any option; the savings she had managed to squirrel away were in a folder marked Do Not Touch, kept for the dreaded day when something would go wrong with her car. Ben had offered, time and again, to help pay for renovations, but Tammy’s disastrous marriage had left her obsessively independent, unwilling to depend on a man for the slightest thing, even a man as perfect as Ben. She would do it herself, by God, or it would not be done.

***

She needed a holiday, she thought. A nice, relaxing holiday where she could just veg out. Perhaps the beach. Somewhere with a lot of nature, she thought vaguely. Maybe a waterfall.

She sighed and put away her tools. There’d be no holiday away for a long, long time on her income. Make the best of it, she told herself. You own this house and it’s getting better all the time.

In the bedroom, Tom stirred and opened one eye in his nest on the unmade bed. He chirped and rolled onto his back, exposing a long streak of white stomach for rubbing. Tammy dropped to the floor to comply, her sore knees protesting a little. She ought to get to buying some furniture, she thought vaguely. The unsupported mattress and the card table and folding chair looked sad and pathetic in the beautifully painted room. She looked over to the card table, where her laptop sat unused, next to a thick stack of paper. Her first book, finished. Well, a first draft finished. She’d got Ben to print it off at work to save paying for it at Officeworks. There would be hell to pay if he got caught doing that, she thought guiltily. She should buy a printer. You could get a cheap inkjet, she thought, for not very much.

The little travel clock on the still-packed box of books that served as a bedside table told her she still had five hours before she needed to leave for work. She could get a start on the proofreading.

***

Ben flared his nostrils, trying to get a deep breath without seeming to sigh, which would set Senior Sergeant Donoghue off on an even more vicious rant than he was currently enjoying. His knee and the heel of his hand hurt where he had skinned them on landing, the stinging growing to intolerable discomfort as the grazed flesh dried out. He wanted to get away to the men’s room to wash his injuries and see how badly the knee of his new trousers was torn, but bitter experience told him it would be at least another half an hour before Donoghue started to run out of steam. He braced his knees and stared straight ahead, standing at attention in front of Donoghue, who in his passion had risen up behind his desk into a semi-crouch and was chewing the end of his moustache and pounding his fist on the desk. He tuned in again to see where the lecture was up to.

‘… the worst police officer I have ever had the misfortune to work with. How you ever passed the exam to become a detective I will never know...’

Yes, thought Ben, there’s about twenty minutes left. Savlon and bandaids, here I come.

Then he caught something sinister. Surely Donoghue hadn’t said–

‘… in the Tactical Watch. Clear out your desk and report over there immediately.’

***

‘TACTICAL WATCH ALTERNATIVE TASKFORCE,’ the sign on the door said. Ben sighed deeply, scrubbed his hands over his face and went in.

The T.W.A.T. headquarters were even more shabbily appointed than the C.I.B. room, having been the recipient of everything old and worn-out that was replaced in the station ever since its inception two years previously. Ben felt his spirits ebb even lower as he crossed the all-too-familiar brown lino.

Macka was at his desk, filling out a long form. He had a row of test tubes in a rack in front of him, and looked deeply depressed. He looked up as Ben’s shoes squeaked on the lino, and came around the desk to shake hands, his left hand grasping Ben’s shoulder in a brief squeeze of sympathy.

‘Geeze, mate. Heard about your trouble. Bummer.’

Ben shook his head wordlessly. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak just yet. Macka tactfully busied himself with his test tubes for a few minutes while he transferred his belongings from the hastily assembled cardboard box to his old desk, which seemed to have remained vacant for the months he’d been away. He put everything tidily into the desk drawers and sank down into the beat-up old chair. Nothing seemed to have changed. It was as if his brief respite from this awful job had never even happened. He’d never get out of T.W.A.T. now. He’d been dead lucky the first time, nicking that big drug pusher on information supplied by Tammy. Breaks like that only came along once in a lifetime. He sighed. Best grasp the nettle. Find out whatever bloody stupid thing they were doing and get into it. Last time he’d been here, he’d spent six months sitting in an unmarked car watching through a remote camera attached to a cat’s collar, as the cat wandered about the streets. The whole exercise had been absolute bullshit. He dreaded to think what they were up to now.

‘So, Macka. What’s this you’re doing, something chemical, eh?’

Macka heaved a