False

By Robert Emmett

He often wished police work was more like television or the movies
because most of the time it was boring and sometimes disheartening like it
was today. As Ben drove away from the old womans house he daydreamed
about a typical Hollywood-style investigation where a disenchanted
ex-special forces cop catches wind of a totally random crime thats
occurred, and drags all around him into a dramatic and adrenal-fuelled
ride, which ultimately gets solved due to the said ex-special forces cop
determination. The obligatory car chase and shoot out topped off by a
cunning twist, which the main character had worked out long before
everyone else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493137206

Robert Emmett

Author Biography coming up soon

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Robert Emmett.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014905756

ISBN:      Hardcover     978-1-4931-3718-3

                Softcover        978-1-4931-3719-0

                eBook             978-1-4931-3720-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 03/26/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

615579

CONTENTS

Chapter One: The Undignified

Chapter Two: The Call-Out

Chapter Three: The Scene

Chapter Four: The Interview

Chapter Five: The System

Chapter Six: The Trap

Chapter Seven: The Outcome

Chapter Eight: The Cycle

Epilogue

CHAPTER ONE

The undignified

He often wished police work was more like television or the movies because most of the time it was boring and sometimes disheartening like it was today. As Ben drove away from the old woman’s house he daydreamed about a typical Hollywood-style investigation where a disenchanted ex-special forces cop catches wind of a totally random crime that’s occurred, and drags all around him into a dramatic and adrenal-fuelled ride, which ultimately gets solved due to the said ex-special forces cop determination. The obligatory car chase and shoot out topped off by a cunning twist, which the main character had worked out long before everyone else. All wrapped up an in hour minus ad breaks. Instead he had just told an old woman that her only child was dead—the flesh of her flesh was gone. She had taken it well, as the old always did. He wasn’t sure whether it was years of experience dealing with death or their own closeness to it, which appeared to make older people better at it, but they always accepted loss easier.

It had started with a ‘concern for welfare’ pretty standard really but always with the potential for so much more. Ben had gone to the house it was a run down tired old weatherboard place, they were everywhere around here. The grass had been overgrown and it was surrounded by junk. The iron roofing was peeling away and the weatherboard was flaking it had been painted at some stage, loved at by someone at one stage but no more. After knocking and announcing his office several times Ben had decided to break in although that had been unnecessary as the place had been wide open. Inside Ben had been faced with a rabbit warren of junk—old newspapers, shoddy furniture and dusty pictures on the wall. The pictures were old but the faces in them were young. As he stood there he tried to guess what the people in the pictures would look like now. There were young children and parents reveling in their youth and potential. He was brought out of his revere when he thought he heard movement from out the back of the house in the vicinity of the shed.

Ben smelled the body before he saw it through the cracks in the wrought iron walls of the shed. There were flies commuting in and out of the partially open door and a solid wall of them buzzing against the single dirty window of the structure. It was a busy freeway of little black dots flying in and out of the shed. Wrenching back the door of the shed the odor of the body struck him like a wave while the tiny black bodies of the flies struck him as they escaped out of the new opening he had created. Instinctively he flinched as the buzzing missiles struck his face before continuing their flight on to the freedom of the open air. He was reminded of a line from a Mike Meyers movie, ‘That stench could choke a maggot!’ Maybe the flies were as repelled by the stench as he was.

‘Oh mate why did you do this? How did things get this bad?’ he said out loud.

He could not tell what the man’s face had looked like or what body shape he would have been because of the bloating of the body. What had once been a man was now hanging by fencing line from a ceiling strut inside the shed. He was only wearing undies and there were beer bottles littering the dirt floor of the shed all around the body as well as under the kicked over white plastic outdoor chair. The marbling and mottling of the body was a stark contrast to the white undies. The blood had pooled in the legs and they were engorged stretching the skin to the point it would burst at the lightest touch. He had seen bodies like this before and the contractors would have to be careful removing the body to prevent it exploding all over them. Nobody wants to be covered in a dead guy.

The balls of the man’s feet were resting on the dirt floor and there were scuffmarks in the dirt from the final throws of the man’s life. There was a churning mass of maggots on the dirt floor around the dead man’s feet where they had fallen off the body. As Ben watched more of them fell from the body and added to the pile at the dead mans feet. They had found their way into the soft tissue areas of the body such as the natural openings and skin folds. The maggots writhed and rolled on the ground heaving as a great mass while they fought each other for dominance. Painful and sad was all Ben could think. The deceased was only wearing a pair of faded old white undies that had slipped down while he had thrashed about with the crack of his arse showing through. They were pulled taught now from the bloating caused by the decomposition of the body. As Ben stood there and surveyed the body hanging in the shed he thought there was no dignity in death.

Just then he heard a noise at the back of the shed and he inched further into the dilapidated building to see what had made the noise. In the back corner of the shed was a mangy old dog. He spied a small scrawny white and tan terrier looking undernourished, scruffy and flea bitten. Ben tried to coax it out but it refused to budge from its spot. He headed back out to his car and grabbed a sandwich from inside the car. He took the ham from the sandwich and held it out to the tired old mutt feeling sorry for it. He sat there talking to the old dog feeling a bit silly for it. While he sat there talking to the dog he noticed a patch of grass pushed down just outside the opening to the shed, there was a trail leading from this patch through the long grass to a bucket of water sitting under a tap near the front door.

‘So old fella you’ve been waiting for me? I guess you’ve been looking after him still. What good old boy.’ he said.

The dog wouldn’t let Ben touch him still but seemed more at ease letting Ben feed and bring the bucket of water to him. After a while Ben realised he had been sitting there talking to the dog for too long and the radio was squawking at him for a welfare check. Ben got straight onto the radio and told them of his find requesting forensics and detectives.

He sat for hours waiting for them to arrive chatting quietly to the dead man asking him questions of his life and how things had got so bad that he had needed to end it. The dog provided some amusement as he would get the urge to make friends with it from time to time but its stubbornness would win over and Ben would stop trying after a while. He thought to ring Jo his wife and have her come and pick up the dog but two things stopped him. The first was he didn’t want her exposed to the scene of the hanged man and the second was that he wanted to give the dog the opportunity to say goodbye. Half arsed psycho-therapists on day time television might call it ‘closure’ Ben just knew the dog deserved as much time as possible with his owner before he was removed by the body snatchers. It was about loyalty. By the time the detectives and forensics had arrived he was sitting in ball soup with perspiration soaking his entire back as well, where he had been leaning against an old Jacaranda tree. His hair was soaked with perspiration, which made his cap cling to his head. The detectives and forensics went through the motions of taking notes, recording the scene and speaking to the neighbors. There had been no note, no reason left behind to explain such a drastic course of action. The neighbors hardly knew him, kept to themselves could not explain anything or tell police when they had last seen him. Ben knew how it would go—a report would be prepared for the coroner and that was that. He had the task of rummaging through the house trying to find ID or a note, something, anything that would show what motivated a man to kill himself. Usually the reasons were benign, a woman or a man, money problems or the onset of old age.

When Ben had first been transferred to the country the area had been in ten years of drought and farmers were offing themselves left right and centre. It had seemed like he was going to suicides nearly every second shift as pressure of losing their livelihood and identity had become too much for some. People can be proud and pride forces people to do things they would normally abhor. The house was pretty stock standard for a man that lived alone, dirty dishes; shitty fridge old bills all the man’s most private of private possessions laid bare. However the man had been a hoarder and every space within the house had been filled with newspapers and other oddments that had one stage caught the dead mans eye. It had the smell of sweat, cigarettes and detritus that he had come to associate with people who lived like this. There is no dignity in death.

The detective who attended looked about sixteen and Ben knew he had been in the job for all of about five minutes before he had got the job upstairs. He knew nothing of life and needed a serious dose of the streets before he would have any credibility in Ben’s eyes. He could see he had no interest in this job and his mind was working overtime trying to find a way out of taking the job on. Overtime was the only time a detectives mind worked. Ben could have offered to do the job but he preferred to see him squirm and try and think of a good excuse.

‘You’ll be right with this one won’t you?’ the detective had said while climbing back inside his air-conditioned car.

‘You came all the way out here for nothing then?’ he had replied.

He had wound down the window after starting up the car.

‘It’s just I’ve got a bit on at the moment that’s all you understand.’ the detective said.

Taking silence as consent he had driven off back down the dirt driveway towards the main road. Leaving Ben to ponder his tail lights in the dust kicked up by the tyres. That wasn’t very original. Detectives are dicks. He could say that because he had been once not so long ago.

*     *     *

Dear diary,

I never thought I would have a diary but I never had anything good to write about. I have met man and I am in love with him. He is married and I am married but I just know we are soul mates. He came to the house and looked after me when Darren was having one of his black moods. He is my knight in shining armour. He has been back to visit me and rung me several times since and I think he feels the same way too. Things are going to change for me I just know it. He is my future.

*     *     *

Startled out of his revere he