Chapter 10

My dad was the Chief Superintendent of the Daintree Regional Office.

We patrolled from Wangetti in the south, which included the Spaceport, to the Daintree National Park area in the north and out to Mt Carbine in the west and Southedge in the southwest. Our region included three national parks, fifteen small rural towns, plus Mossman, Port Douglas and Oak Beach as our three main stations.

We had eight small, three-man stations spread out in the inland regions of the Cape to cover the small towns. Dad has three Supers under him, and they all look after one of the big stations and several of the smaller stations in their region.

Mossman had twelve permanent officers, and so did Oak Beach. We have twenty-four regular cops plus the six detectives who had to go to any of the places in our region when required. We were supposed to relieve the officers in the other depos when needed.

During winter, we also get an extra five constables from the south. Most of them are useless, as they have no idea about being Country Cops. They generally get traffic or policing the resorts and caravan parks with one of us. Most of them think that they are on holidays themselves.

Since I was still a FYC, when I got home from Cairns, Dad had sent me to Mossman for a month as a relief. Vinay had a house here, and he was happy to put me up. I had plenty of studies to catch up on, so I wasn’t so bored.

I also knew Mossman and the other officers stationed there reasonably well. I wasn’t surprised that I got put on the nightshift. It’s either the most boring or the most exciting shift. For me, it was study nights.

Being December, the crocs were active, and they had come up the Mossman River to make nests. I’d been in Mossman for three weeks when Carl, a tourist from Victoria, went missing, and the crocs were blamed. People still swam in the river, even knowing there were crocs in it.

James and my dad came up to investigate when my Super reported to dad that I suspected foul play and not by the crocs. I’d had to laugh at James as he had never seen Vinay and Danial in their element.

While it was true the crocs ate the tourist, they didn’t get to kill him first. The killer hadn’t cleaned up the man’s Villa at the Caravan Park very well, and I had found traces of blood in it. So, Dad assigned me to James as his assistant since I was the rooky, and we had a lot of fun chasing down the leads.

One of the Barmaids at the Exchange Hotel told James that good ol’ Carl had been chatting up some of the women. It turned out that one of the women had a husband, and he took exception to his wife spending time in Carl’s bed.

At the time, we also learnt that she was missing, and she and Carl had last been seen at the Caravan Park. The husband admitted to killing them both and feeding them to the crocs when Dad and James let me question him. Apparently, he’d told his wife that he would feed her to the crocs if she played-up on him again.

He was at least a man of his word. The fact that he was of Aboriginal descent didn’t cut it with the local Judge, especially since the woman had been the Judge’s sister-in-law. The case had to be shifted to the Cairns department due to possible bias by the Judge.

Dad did try to make sure I wasn’t part of the news story since I was supposed to be staying out of trouble.

I then spent a month in the office in Port Douglas.

I had to learn the ins and outs of our patrol area. James has asked me out at least once a week since. As much as I had enjoyed spending time with him on the case in Mossman, I didn’t think it wise to be seen out with my dad’s prodigy.

I had to sigh at James’ unhappiness with me.

When something major happens that involves an officer, we get a detective from Cairns or Townsville assigned to the incident.

The assigned detective then looks after the forensic side of things and oversees the investigation. With me killing the thieves, it was going to cause a headache for my dad. He had to try to stay impartial.

In this case, because it involved a shooting and a constable, we would get a detective assigned, and I wondered who it would be. I was a bit surprised that dad had told James to bring me home.