Black Ice Read online

  'I'm fine,' she said.

  Levine paused. 'I don't really know how to ask the next question, Jill,' she said.

  Jill waited. She didn't either.

  'I believe,' continued Levine, 'that there's general acknowledgement that undercover operatives may have to take drugs at times during covert operations in order to divert suspicion?'

  Jill said nothing.

  'Have you had to do that?'

  'No,' said Jill. She'd been told to lie if asked that question in court. She wasn't in court now, but she was being taped. She uncurled her legs from the chair and sat up straight. She'd had enough. 'Helen,' she said, 'I'm really hungry. I've been working all day and it's, what, six o'clock? Is there a lot more we have to do? I've still got to report in to Superintendent Last.'

  The psychologist read the top sheet of her notepad, then flicked the page over.

  'Actually, Jill, they were the most important questions. I understand that you're tired. Thank you very much for your time.'

  Jill stood.

  'Before you go,' said Levine, 'could I just give you my card? I'd like you to call me if you need any help, or even if you just feel like talking.'

  Jill took the card. 'Will do, Helen,' she said. She moved to the door of the office and waited.

  The psychologist stood, uncertain.

  'Could you please open the door for me, Helen?' said Jill. 'This is going to have to look as though I'm still under arrest.'

  'Oh, of course, I forgot.'

  Helen Levine opened her office door. Adam Clarkson stood there, grinning. The hall was otherwise empty.

  'Alrighty then, Krystal,' Clarkson said to Jill. 'Let's get you over to the booking room.'

  'Ready when you are, pig,' said Jill.

  The door closed on Helen Levine's somewhat startled face.

  Jill dropped the card into the first rubbish bin as Clarkson steered her down the corridor.

  6

  Monday 1 April, 6 pm

  'All right, if I could ask you to take a seat, please? Most of us are due to knock off now, and I know people are keen to get home.' Superintendent Lawrence Last stood at the front of the booking room, his grey suit and face rumpled with the day. Jill figured that when he'd reached adolescence and his height of six foot seven, he must never have felt the need to develop any brash aggression or male bravado. He towered over most of his colleagues in the police force, and with his height and his hushed, serious tone of voice, he could settle hostility in both cops and civilians faster than anyone she knew.

  The other four occupants of the room took seats in front of their commander. Jill sat closest to the wall, with Adam Clarkson to her right.

  'First up,' said Superintendent Last, 'I would like to offer congratulations and my gratitude for a superb job this afternoon. The operation was flawless, and that is due to the professional way in which all of you conducted yourselves.'

  Last turned towards Jill.

  'A special thanks to Detective Jackson here. Her status remains undercover, and although I know it's unnecessary to say this again in present company, I will do so. While Jill is in this building, she is Krystal Peters, today being questioned in relation to items stolen from the Priceline chemist. She will be released without charge this evening, immediately following this meeting.'

  'What'd ya steal, Krystal?' said Clarkson. 'Some make-up? You could use some; you're looking a little rough tonight.'

  Jill smothered a grin. Clarkson had asked her out three times. She liked him. But not that much.

  'Nope, treatment for my lice,' she said, and reached out with a hand to lightly brush his shoulder, as though flicking something off.

  'Okay, okay, let's get on with it, please, people.' Last spoke quietly and the banter died quickly. 'I'm preparing an application to extend this operation for another three months. This meeting will serve as an operational debrief for progress thus far, and the notes will be included as part of the application,' he said. 'Before we review the paperwork, I'd like to point out that the covert monitoring has been highly successful so far. In addition to the drugs seized, raids have netted two shotguns, a .22 handgun, a thousand dollars in counterfeit cash, and ammunition. Remember that Jackson's brief is to observe and befriend people with the aim of netting us the major dealers where possible. We don't bring anyone in unless we can get them under the Trafficking Act.'

  Last handed Jill a slim bundle of papers. 'Please take one and pass it on,' he said. 'Obviously, these cases have yet to go to court, so the verdicts and sentences have been left blank, but this will give you an idea of our progress to date.'

  Jill reviewed the typed table in front of her. It looked pretty impressive and she stifled a private smile as she bent over the paper. She read along as Last went through each case.

  Drugs – Amphetamine/ Methylamphetamine – multiple supply: s.25A.s.25A(1) Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW) – supply prohibited drug on 3 or more occasions during 30 consecutive days – maximum penalty 20 years

  Case Drug Amount Priors Facts

  Acardi s.25A .37 g

  .49 g

  .86 g

  26.7 g Priors

  including

  drugs Engaged in small-scale, but systematic, business of supplying drugs from garage. Small amounts typically sold, but informed undercover police officer he was prepared to sell larger amounts if required.

  Lam s.25A 13.53 g

  27.6 g

  27.4 g Prior

  convictions,

  including

  drugs Sold amphetamine to undercover police officer on three separate occasions during one-month period. Drug of very low purity.

  Vrancic

  and

  Fencott s.25A

  Four

  related

  offences 26.24 g

  63.38 g

  (85% pure)

  9.13 g

  Vrancic:

  Lengthy

  record, including

  possession

  and supply,

  and assault Vrancic: Eleven separate sales worth $30,000. Drug equipment found at premises. Fencott: A runner.

  Jill zoned out at some point during the review, lost in memories of the things she'd had to do and say to aid in these apprehensions. The work was satisfying and exhilarating, but she also felt saddened by the plight of many of the users she'd befriended in the line of duty. From her years in the job, she knew their stories well: many of the women were incest survivors who'd escaped home with the first man possible. A man whose possessiveness seemed adorable to begin with – a true sign of his love. But the months would wear on and she would find herself increasingly estranged from friends and family; trying desperately to please this person who was now never happy, who had taken to belting her when she dropped a glass, or arrived home a little late from the shops. She'd just have to try harder, of course, she'd tell herself, but he was so angry when she had no money for speed, and she'd taken a liking to the goey too. When he pissed off with her best friend, there'd be another man, more violence, and the speed was no longer enough. Valium, Serepax, pot, and the piss of course, but if she fell in love with heroin, as many of these women did – so good for making everything feel like nothing – then DoCS would take the kids and she'd take up with a pimp.

  Jill understood that everyone has choices, but she was also aware that some have more options than others. Although she was hardly a true friend to these women, she knew that what she was doing was right. Drugs screwed people's lives and she was making it harder for the poison to get around.

  When the meeting wrapped, Jill left the station – theatrically spitting on the pavement out the front for the punters – and walked back the couple of blocks to her unit. She tried not to be dispirited by the sight of some of her new neighbours – a filthy couple screaming at each other in front of the takeaway shop, a youth on the nod at the bus stop. Every day gave her another chance at pulling in someone big, and in the meantime she was putting a lot of mid-level dea
lers out of action for a while.

  7

  Monday 1 April, 9 pm

  'Would you listen to the little bitch?' Crash strode the confines of the cell, each pass by Seren's bed causing her to contract involuntarily. At any moment, the woman could swing and strike. She'd done it before, and God knew Seren was long used to blows beginning for no reason, with no warning. She shrugged a little closer to the wall.

  'Je-sus, honey, it's not like we can hear anything else, is it?' Little Kim sat spreadeagled on the toilet, her fat, white thighs parted, picking at an ingrown hair on her shaved vagina. 'The little whore just won't shut up.'

  The screaming ranged in pitch and tone, but the volume rarely dropped. From piteous wailing to screeching fury or shrieking terror, the woman in the cell next door was living in her own kind of hell, locked somewhere inside a mind deranged by drugs. Seren had watched a couple of people coming down off ice before, but it had never gone on this long. On the outside, junkies were never very far from a dealer, and a pension cheque, a hot sat-nav stolen from a four-wheel drive, or a quick blowjob in a car park would get them what they needed to shut the demons up for a while.

  'Fucking bitch! How are we supposed to sleep?' Crash's gaol-issue tracksuit pants sat low on her hips; she'd pushed the bottom of her tee-shirt up through her bra so her flat, dark-brown stomach lay bare. She'd rolled the sleeves up too, exposing chiselled shoulders and the mostly gaol-drawn tatts that covered them. She passed Seren's bed again and stopped at the cell door.

  'Shut the fuck up, cunt!' she yelled. 'You wait till this fucking door opens!'

  Seren put her head in her hands when the screaming intensified, magnified by the shouts of the other inmates, inflamed by the cries in the night. Little Kim chuckled quietly on the toilet, at home in the din, desensitised to the soundtrack that had played her whole life.

  It wasn't like Seren hadn't also grown up with the screams and the threats, the sobbing and begging. It's just that she'd never grown used to it. She tried now to take herself back to the time when the nights had been quiet and she'd fallen asleep to the sounds of Neighbours on TV and her mum and dad talking quietly. She dived into the world of her past, each sight, sound and smell rubbed raw from use. This was where she came to try to stay sane when the world around her howled with madness; back to twenty years earlier, when Serendipity was five.

  Little Seren Templeton tiptoed barefoot in pyjamas down the corridors of her memory. Soft flickering colours flared and vanished from the TV in the lounge room as she padded away from the tinkle of Mummy's laughter. Sometimes she wondered whether it had really happened, if Daddy had really existed and Mummy had smiled all the time. There was nothing left to prove it had been real.

  There! It is there. Soft, deep breathing. She walked, mesmerised, towards the crack of blue light at the end of the corridor. Bradley's room. She pushed at the door softly. The breathing stopped. Seren shuffled towards his bed, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. She could see the yellow baby blanket that used to be hers, hear his soft chortle, like a smile set to music, and smell the sweetest, warm scent, better than lollies.

  And there. His hand! A chubby little star, reaching out from the sheets, smooshing at her nose. But she could never see his face.

  Little Bradley. Daddy. A mummy who smiled. Serendipity Templeton. Had they ever really existed?

  On the hard mattress in Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre, Seren didn't know for sure, but she wrapped the memory tight around her to try to make it through another night.

  8

  Monday 1 April, 9.15 pm

  Cassie Jackson straightened at the bathroom vanity, the remnants of a few deep-fried canapés sliding down the drain in front of her. She blasted the refuse with a spray from the cold tap and washed the offensive food from her life. Holding her hair back in a ponytail, she ducked her head under the tap to rinse her mouth. She checked her teeth in the mirror. Perfect.

  Wiping at a smudge of charcoal eyeliner, Cassie searched for that crease under her right eye. She'd spotted it a week before, but it had been only intermittently present since, mostly when she woke up, typically late in the afternoon.

  Must see Dr Teo about that, she told herself. Fuck knew it was already hard enough battling the fifteen-year-olds for jobs without showing up at a shoot looking like a wrinkled old bat.

  Cassie grinned at herself and her eyes glittered. The woman staring back at her was hardly an old bat. What had that reporter called her hair colour last week? Burnished toffee, that was it. A new, heavy fringe hung over her kohl-rimmed green eyes. The scattered freckles across her turned-up nose were a trademark feature and never hidden by the make-up artists. At thirty, she was still booked eight months in advance and got more work than ninety per cent of her peers.

  Her body got her the jobs, but her friends kept her there. She'd had to call in favours a few times too often recently. She'd turned up late, sometimes with bloodshot eyes, a cold sore and even a black eye last month. Nothing that a little blow shared around wouldn't cover. Plenty of people in the business searched their letterboxes daily for one of Cassie Jackson's inspirational greeting cards. The cards were always beautiful – cherry blossoms on fragile silk from Taipei; heavily embossed fabric from Milan; ochred desert scenes on hand-pulped paper from Darwin – but the little snap-locked baggies inside the cards always brought the widest smiles.

  Speaking of which . . . Cassie took a quick glance at the bathroom door and reached into her clutch bag. Her hand found the small crystal vial immediately. Looped around the neck of the petite, stoppered bottle was a thread of gold chain securing a minute golden spoon. Cassie smiled as she held the pretty little object up to the light. Along with its contents, it had been a perfect gift from Christian. She scooped the white powder up with the spoon, raised it to her nostril and snorted.

  Lovely.

  Ready now, Cassie took a last long look over her shoulder at herself in the mirror and sauntered from the bathroom.

  9

  Monday 1 April, 9.15 pm

  'Now this is gonna be one for the road, okay, Templeton?'

  Crash pulled her tee-shirt over her head and began to peel off her tracksuit pants, all the time staring hard at Seren. Crash, it seemed, had never been taught the basics of hygiene; Seren could smell sweat and worse from the other side of the room.

  No. No way. I'd rather take a bashing, Seren promised herself. Bad enough she had to listen to these two sucking and moaning every night – she was not going to join in now.

  She got up on her haunches, ready to fight, and scanned the room. Little Kim still squatted on the toilet, but her close-set eyes now focused on the scene in front of her.

  The wailing from the cell next door continued. The screws wouldn't come running to anything tonight.

  'Fuck off, Crash. That is not going to happen,' said Seren, one hand behind her back.

  'Oh, it's going to happen, Templeton, and you're either going to enjoy it, or you're not.'

  'If you come near me, I swear to God I'll kill you.'

  'You can swear to God, Allah and the freakin' Buddha for all I care, bitch. This has been a fucked-up night, my head hurts from that screaming cunt next door, and you're going home tomorrow. You owe me.'

  Crash threw her dirty bra into the corner of the cell and walked naked towards her. Seren's eyes darted around wildly. Suddenly, she became aware that something was different. Little Kim. Ordinarily the big woman would've been right behind her girlfriend, ready to step in should Crash have trouble with one of her victims.

  Little Kim hadn't moved.

  At that moment Crash seemed to notice this too.

  'Come on, babe,' she called over her shoulder. 'You gonna come get some of this?'

  Nothing.

  Seren tried to think. Her sight was pinpoint-focused on the threat in front of her and her heart scuttled madly in her chest. She tried her voice. 'What? Little Kim not good enough for you anymore, Crash?' she said.