5

good times, bad times

Coventry Street, South Melbourne, was the scene of a murder late at night. They found the victim, a woman in her thirties, in the lounge room of her modest two-bedroom home. She’d been bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument, but by the time the cops got there the murderer was long gone.

She was naked from the waist up, however there were no obvious signs of sexual assault. Word came down the line that forensics wouldn’t be there until the morning so the crime scene had to be preserved. Nick and two other detectives were rostered on as one team, while a second uniformed team in a divvy van was also sent, just in case there was an arrest and they needed somewhere to lock the suspect up. Sergeant Chris Tainsby drove the divvy van while Probationary Constable Claudette Morgan rode with him in the passenger’s seat.

It looked like being a long, hot night. An hour into the wait, Tainsby got a call that his wife was sick and he had to get home to look after her. He gave Claudette the keys and said he’d be back in the morning.