Killing for Pleasure by Debi Marshall

Author:Debi Marshall [Marshall, Debi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2006-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

It will take a few hours for Schramm, Patterson, Swan and the forensic team to get up here, so the detectives wait in their cars. It is unusually warm on this May afternoon – 27 degrees Celsius, markedly above the average – and they wind the windows down a fraction and try to look unobtrusive. They don’t want to alert the locals that anything unusual is afoot. It is, they know, the calm before the storm.

33

With military precision, Schramm mobilises his troops, starting with the phone call to the forensic unit. ‘They’ve found bodies at Snowtown’, he tells Superintendent Andy Telfer. ‘Can you organise your team?’ He keeps his voice impartial, controlled, using the professional approach etched with warmth for which he is renowned. He guesses there are four bodies in there, but there could be more. It is vital that forensic is there from the beginning to ensure that no evidence is tainted. Soon, unmarked police cars are on their way, travelling out of Adelaide CBD towards the Clare Valley region and on to the rural hamlet. The mobile phone never leaves Schramm’s hand as he hangs up from one call and immediately goes on to the next. Gut instinct warns him this case is going to be huge. He has a hunch that the identities of whoever is in those barrels will match the names on the Missing Persons list his colleagues have been investigating for over a year, and he knows for certain that the families of those people are about to take a roller-coaster ride to hell.

It is late afternoon when the cavalcade of vehicles rolls into the town. Businesses are starting to close for the day, and the officers jockey for positions in the main reception area at the local police station, waiting to be briefed. They don’t need to be told that what they are about to face will be horrifying; a sense of expectancy hovers over proceedings. One of their immediate problems is staying one step ahead of the media, who they know will swarm. They’ve also got to decide how to deal with the locals if they start nosing around: the sudden arrival of about 20 police officers in a small town like this will hardly go unnoticed.

‘What do we tell people if they ask?’ a detective inquires. They need a game plan, and with the speed that this is moving, they need it fast. ‘Tell them we’re just making routine inquiries’, Schramm responds. ‘A drug bust.’

As surreptitiously as possible, the officers stroll down the street at the end of their meeting, reconvening in the bank’s backyard that offers the protection of a high fence. There is none of the usual banter between them. ‘Shit’, a young detective murmurs under his breath as he stamps out a cigarette underfoot. ‘What the hell have we got here?’

By nine o’clock, the forensic team starts the grisly task of collating evidence. They move around the vault, dressed in protective overalls, their hands covered with specially designed gloves.

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