‘Oh yep, okay, no worries.’ The guy took up the computer mouse, glanced at his screen. He was a constable, his name badge read Carras. ‘What can I get for you, sir?’
‘I don’t want you to get anything for me,’ I said curtly. ‘I want to take a wander. Buzz me through.’
The guy shuffled uncomfortably, swung back and forth in the desk chair, a weathervane blown about by winds of uncertainty. I was relying on the swiftness of my movements, on the self-consciousness the senior sergeant’s badge might be inducing in the guy, my unexplained unfriendliness. Channelling my brother. I bashed the steel-meshed door beside the counter with a palm so that the metal roared. ‘Today sometime, constable.’
‘I’ll need you to sign in, sir.’
‘No shit,’ I said. I was buzzed through. Felt the camera above the counter on my face, red hot laser eye glaring. ‘Give me the book.’
I signed in.
‘Can I direct you where to go, sir?’
‘No. I don’t need your help.’
‘I’m … Well … I was just being polite, sir.’ The guy actually blushed. ‘I will have to accompany you into the stacks.’
‘Keep up, then,’ I said. I marched ahead. The guy fell into step behind me. We walked through the aisles, east to west, climbing backwards through years of horror and sorrow. Shelves of boxes passed us by, boxes I knew were filled with bloody clothes, knives, ropes, guns and a sundry of other usually innocuous items people chose to kill each other with: blind cords and stockings and coathangers and screwdrivers. The boxes changed style every couple of decades. The most recent boxes were transparent plastic tubs sealed with black clips and taped at the seams. The labels were crowded with information, from the last detective to access the box to the boxes’ entire itemised contents. The boxes went to cardboard then, stiff and bright and square, in the nineties, still labelled with computer-printed forms not even yellowed with age yet. I glimpsed names, years, suburbs where the crimes had occurred, collections that were tightly aligned according to date, with barely a week missing in any given month. After a while I was walking past evidence from crimes committed in the eighties, and the labels on the boxes became handwritten or stamped, some in blue ink, some in black or red, the information scrawled on an angle, some labels full of words, some labels scarce and patchy. Now and then I glimpsed an assigned lead detective’s name, recognised many who were retired. In the seventies, I started to see the names of dead officers. Here, I slowed, seeing boxes that were squashed and crumpled and stained, sitting on their shelves in nervous huddles, the last animals in the rescue centre. Three boxes for a month, then nothing for an almost six-month period, then a couple more. A box sat lonely on a dusty steel shelf, halfway down a row, and I saw therewere few boxes beyond it, heading into the late sixties, before the shelf space became dedicated to the evidence holding facility’s fire safety equipment and tubs of office supplies.
The box readSPECIAL, L. JULY 1973. I stepped back, glanced up the aisle a year, which was about ten metres, and sawRICHLEY, M. MARCH 1974. Once I’d seen that the boxes were there, I let my eyes dart away, focused on other boxes. The box directly across the aisle from Special’s was crumpled and old, looked like it had been dropped, the bottom corner soft and wrinkled.PINKERLY, T. 1972. The security camera at the end of the aisle was affixed to the wall, dead centre, staring at me.
‘Did you need to …?’ Constable Carras asked, gesturing to the Pinkerly box, like I wasn’t capable of taking the thing down by myself. I knew the process from here. We should, according to protocol, take the box back to the desk together, take out a processing form and complete that form in tandem—me identifying myself and describing my reasons for accessing the evidence box, and Carras signing off on that access. Carras and I would then go to a nearby room, where Carras would slit the unique branded tape that sealed the box and observe me going through the box’s contents. Here, at the holding facility, I would be allowed to do little more than observe what was in the box. To note the number and contents of the packages that lay within, which would be wrapped in paper and individually labelled. A whole separate set of forms, a whole new ceremony, would be needed to remove the individual items from their bags and packages. Gloves, a trip to the forensic examination offices across the street with the box and a witnessing officer in tow, to provide chain of custody. I had done this exhaustive dance hundreds of times across my career. Today would be different.
‘I don’t actually need to access the box’s contents,’ I said, taking out my phone. I pretended to photograph the Pinkerly box where it sat. ‘I just want to know that the box is there. I’ve got a journalist asking if there’s anything on a couple of cold cases. But he’ll have to go through command and get approval if he wants to actually get a look inside them.’
‘Oh. Right.’
I bit my tongue as I mocked snapping more photographs. As I did, I tapped through my contacts list and found the number for evidence holding, keeping the screen tilted away from Carras. ‘Just a couple more pictures,’ I said as I dialled.
The phone rang back at the front desk. Carras turned his head that way but didn’t move. I swallowed several internal screams, sweat beading on my ribcage, pretending to take my phone close now and read through a list. ‘I just need to chase down another case now … ah, yep … says here … 1976 …’
The phone rang and rang. Carras shifted his weight on the concrete floor.
‘Sir, would you mind accompanying me to the front desk, please?’ he said. ‘I really should get that. Because it’s a Sunday, I’m the only one here.’
‘Just go.’
‘I can’t leave you unattended in the stacks, sir.’
‘What am I going to do?’ I whirled on the guy, insulted. ‘The boxes are sealed. There’s a camera right there. You can frisk me on the way out if you need to, constable.’
‘It’s just protocol, sir.’
‘Fuck your protocol. If anyone asks, tell them I said you were to go and answer the damn phone. It could be an emergency.’
The guy thought hard. The phone. Ringing. Ringing. My brain was on fire. I went back to my work. Hoped the young constable couldn’t see my hands were shaking. ‘I need to see if there’s a case here … ah, yep, Doyle, H. 1976. I need a picture of that one. Hmm. Who else?’
Carras finally went. I put my phone away, slipped my car keys from my pocket, dragged Linda Special’s evidence box down onto the floor and flipped it on its side. I slashed the bottom of the box open with my house key, through the black-and-yellow tape, and slid the contents out. Though I knew footage of what I was doing in those very moments would soon cease to exist, I felt the eye of the camera on me. On my soul. I slid the contents out onto the floor. Parcels wrapped in brown paper. A picture frame. A collection ofbroken glass or china, crunching shards inside what I guessed was several layers of the brown paper. A long package of what felt and sounded like sections of wood, wrapped tight and rectangular, like Christmas presents. There were folders inside the box. Prints of the crime scene and hand-drawn sketches, probably. I left the paperwork where it was, shoved the flaps of the box shut and lifted it back onto the shelf. I crossed the aisle and drew down the first box my hands fell upon.DOWNES, A. 1976. I turned the box on its side, slit open the bottom, and shoved the parcels from the Special case into the Downes case. I replaced the now extremely heavy Downes box on the shelf where it had sat, realigning the corners with the dust marks on the shelf. I stepped back and looked at my work. Halfway there. I went further along the aisle and took Marian Richley’s box down. I heard a faint voice in the distance, and the same voice, stronger, on the phone I had tucked into the breast pocket of the flannelette shirt of my murdered father.
‘Forensic Evidence Holding, Pemulwuy. This is Constable Carras.’
I whipped the phone out of my pocket and put it to my ear, trying not to look at the camera above me. I let my voice rise a little higher than usual. Smoothed it out. Hoped Carras couldn’t hear it reverberating with terror. I looked at the evidence box next to Marian’s. ‘Hey there. This is Constable … Frankston. I’m calling from uh, Parramatta station. My sergeant is wanting to look up a couple of case files and see if you’ve got anything in holding?’
‘Is it urgent? I’ve just got another officer here and—’
‘It’s urgent, yes.’
‘Oh, okay. Yep. No worries. What’s your service number, mate?’
