Snapshot by Garry Disher

Author:Garry Disher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Police Procedural, Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9781569474600
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2004-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

31

Tessa Kane worked late, stewing about the tone of her interview with Ellen Destry. Interview? Interrogation was more like it. Destry had been clearly hostile. Now it was after ten o’clock and she was locking up for the night, and had just returned the keys to her bag when a voice growled, ‘Stay out of my private life.’

She jumped, convinced that her stalker had waited for her. He was escalating, making personal contact and not relying on hate mail and stones through windows any more. Swallowing, she forced herself to turn around. ‘Mr Mead,’ she said, oddly relieved.

It was short-lived.

‘You called on my wife unannounced.’

He wore a heavy overcoat, his shoes gleamed, and drops of misty rain dotted his face, granting him a look of powerful emotions held barely in check. He took a step towards her, passing out of the range of the nearby streetlight. She glanced past him, seeking helpful passersby or escape routes, but the entrance to the Progress building was at the side, not the front, and screened by bushes. There was no comfort from the steady stream of traffic on the main road, and at that moment no pedestrians on the footpath.

‘I’m not going to attack you, stupid cow,’ Mead said. ‘But I’m warning you to stay away from my wife.’

‘I merely—’

‘Well, don’t, okay?’

There was a spasm of something in his face, not anger but doubt. Tessa felt her courage returning. ‘Another perspective, that’s all I want.’

‘Ask me, if you’re so keen to know.’

‘I have asked you. I get nothing useful.’

Now Mead was his old self again. His lip curled. ‘I don’t do special favours. The information I give you is the same as the information I give the Melbourne and national media.’

‘It’s public relations bullshit, that’s what it is. I write my own stories, not a rehash of some press release. You still haven’t answered my specific allegations regarding falsified staffing levels and falsified reports being filed by your section heads. There are lots of irregularities that I intend to follow up on.’

‘Go your hardest.’

‘And what do you intend to do about the self-mutilations?’

Charlie Mead showed her his sharp teeth as he turned and walked away. ‘My officers have all been offered trauma counselling.’

That was enough for Tessa. When she got home she fired up her laptop, a glass of red at her elbow, and began to trawl through the internet for what it could tell her about Charlie Mead.

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