The Plot – Chapter 8
Graveyard Shift
Pravesh spotted his wife on the other side of the blue-and-white tape, her face lit in the dark by alternating blue and red flashes from the ambulance and patrol cars. She looked anxious. He bounced on tiptoes to attract her attention over the heads of the small group of onlookers, gave her a cheery wave.
Catching the stern eye of a police officer, he composed his features into an expression more in keeping with the gravity of the situation.
After all, a man had died.
An hour before, he’d been at the living room window, giving the street a last quick look before bed.
Then a car drew up. A figure got out. The lights of the vehicle died, the figure stood for a while at the gates to the Plot before going inside. A torch beam wandered down the path; trellises and foliage were silhouetted momentarily against its faint glow. It reached the inky bulk of the Big Tree and disappeared beneath its canopy as if snuffed out.
It was odd.
This was the seventh night in a row that he had witnessed nocturnal goings-on across the street. He sat in the dark and wrestled with his curiosity.
It was an unequal contest.
He could hear Jamna splashing in the ensuite. It was his usual habit to follow his wife to bed after a decent interval, giving her time to settle. He had maybe twenty minutes before his absence would be noticed.
He pulled on boots and jacket, took the heavy rubber-armoured torch from its place atop the switchboard and murmured ‘Just going out for a moment, Dosi,’ at a volume calibrated to be inaudible to a spouse engrossed in the application of the mysterious potions and lotions which appeared a necessary prelude to her sleep.
For the spouse, if she heard, was likely to call back: ‘No, Doso: you are not.’
He could maintain truthfully that he’d informed her of his intentions.
As lightly as his stout boots allowed, he stepped out into the stair well, eased the door shut behind him.
Downstairs, on the ill-lit street, he briefly reappraised the wisdom of his course of action. When all was said and done, he had a responsibility. If there were any impropriety in progress in the community garden, it was his role as caretaker, albeit an unpaid, self-appointed caretaker, to put a stop to it.
He squared his shoulders, crossed the street to where the sleek, silver-grey lines of the car gleamed expensively in the torchlight. Not the car of a community gardener. Whatever that meant, exactly. It just wasn’t.
The gates were unlocked, half open.
‘Hello? Anyone there?’
His voice sounded a lot less stern and commanding in the night-time garden than he might have liked. Reedy and apologetic, in fact.
Advancing cautiously, swinging the torch in wide arcs, he was startled to see the clubhouse suddenly blaze into light. As he drew closer, he could hear voices, though not what they were saying. One voice was masculine, gruff. It sounded like that old fellow, Vince Russo. The other was younger, female.
Well. A lovers’ tryst?
Scruffy, grumpy old Russo hardly seemed the type, but you never can tell.
It was not his car, mind you. Hers?
He would just take a closer look, confirm his suspicions, then leave them be. No need to embarrass anyone. Or find himself accused of perving. Turning the torch off, he advanced swiftly across the pool of darkness under the Big Tree, eyes fixed on the clubhouse. His boot came down on something soft, rubbery.
Stumbling, he dropped his torch. Anxious moments were spent scrabbling in the mulch. Torch found, he turned it on, directed its beam at the obstacle.
A mass of leaves and branches. Extending from beneath it, an arm, a hand, palm down, fingers extended. It was the hand that he had trodden on.
‘Oh. Sorry.’
It was his first impulse to apologise, bending down to address the hand, as if afraid to inconvenience it further.
Then it occurred to him that the hand and arm must be attached to a body, a head and other limbs – a person – somewhere under the heap of branches, twigs and leaves, and that the person had not responded as you would if someone came along in the night and stepped on your hand.
The person had not responded at all.
Delving into the foliage, he found a face twisted sidewards at an odd angle, eyes wide, mouth agape in amazement. The back of the head was a wet mass of blood and hair and something else he didn’t care to look at too closely.
The person, the man, was obviously dead. Crushed by the large bough which lay diagonally across his back. A terrible accident.
Pravesh’s first impulse was to phone for help, but fumbling through his pockets he realised that he had left his phone indoors.
He stumbled towards the clubhouse, thoughts of apprehending wrongdoers or disturbing clandestine lovers quite forgotten.
DS Mel Hanrahan yawned. She hated the graveyard shift. And now this. It was a bloody nuisance.
She looked out across the floodlit area where the deceased had been found. The witnesses had buggered her incident scene, good and proper. Footprints and scrapes everywhere, as if they’d held a footy match over the corpse. The body had been moved, turned, the heavy branch which had probably killed him dragged aside.
They’d have had a hard job trashing more evidence if they’d tried. Then the ambos had done the rest. Just in case the man lying eyes open, back of head smashed to porridge, not breathing and without a pulse might still be alive. Forensics were going to whinge, when they got here at last.
Still, it seemed straightforward. Accidental death. The branch had torn itself from the tree above – just when this poor sod happened to be walking underneath. Crunch.
When your time’s up, it’s up, and no mistake.
The plates on the Tesla indicated that the deceased was Mr Dmitry Kapanadze. Next of kin would have to be informed. Could she palm that off on uniform? Probably not wise.
It could wait. The more urgent matter was to conduct preliminary interviews with the witnesses.
They were tired and over-emotional, and that was the best time to catch them: fresh after the event. Come the morning, after a night’s sleep, they’d have dreamed up all kinds of bullshit. And that was just the ones who didn’t insist on a solicitor, or clam up altogether.
Members of the public were more helpful while traumatised.
She trudged towards the porta-cabin where her witnesses awaited. Hopefully over mugs of hot, sweet tea and a packet of Tim Tams. Small kindnesses went a long way in these situations.
Next week in The Plot:
Chapter 9: Where’s the Catch?
Vince feels misunderstood. Ray makes a discovery.
Disclaimer: The people, organisations and events described in this story are entirely the product of the author’s imagination; they bear no intentional resemblance to real-life people, organisations and events. Some locations are based on real places, however the City of Corymbia and its localities are inventions of the author.