Chapter 5

In January 2093, I was sent to Cairns for my First Year Constable (FYC) training.

As a new constable, we only did dayshifts, and we were babied everywhere we went. After breezing through the recruit course, I ran into a bit more trouble as an FYC. I had to spend three months in four different sections before I was offered my first posting.

Senior Constable Doug Mc Barker, the old guy I was put with for the first three months, damn near drove me insane with boredom. He hated being a first responder and was more than likely to turn up after the shooting or stabbing was done. I was not surprised that he had never made Sergeant.

We seemed to get mostly domestic and burglary cases. Our beat wasn’t one of the better suburbs, and we also did a lot of minor drug busts. Doug liked burglary after the fact best, as apprehending druggies was as unpredictable as domestic situations.

However, he made me write up the scenes, the interviews, and our findings and then submit the evidence to forensics. The information was then sent to one of the detectives in the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) to determine if follow-ups were required.

Doug got pissed at me when he learnt that I added my own pages of observations and listed evidence that he hadn’t seen as important. I was supposed to do this as his support officer, plus it was part of my training.

Doug didn’t agree with me because he said that my reports made him look bad at his job. I wasn’t silly enough to tell him that he was. I did point out the regulations covering me as an FYC, and he just grumbled and stomped off.

What got me in trouble was because I’d mentioned in one report that the last case, we had looked at had similarities to several other cases that Doug had investigated. I also listed them.

What had happened was that some very specific printers had been stolen from each of the businesses in question. They were all new, and they had been imported through the same company before being sold on.

Doug got really pissed that one of the detectives investigating a drug-smuggling operation had accessed several of my reports. They had come up in his searches for past cases. He had also followed up on the forensics that I’d sent away. As a result, he had used the information to solve a huge smuggling case.

The detective even came and thanked me, but not Doug.

I was surprised to find the detective was Kyle Reed.

Kyle and I had a bit of history. He used to work as a detective in Port Douglas. When I started studying for my Criminal Law Degree, I often went to work with Dad. He would let me access their archives that were available to the public to find local examples to use in my assignments.

Dad also had a good collection of law and criminology books that he kept at work in a small library for his people to use. They were a great help to me, and I’m sure I read every one of them.

I was a few months short of eighteen at the time and Kyle, for some unfathomable reason, took a fancy to me. He was charming in his own way and not a bad looking bloke. He was even a few centimetres taller than I was.

However, I did find his attention a bit annoying when he started touching me. It wasn’t as if he groped me or anything bad, to begin with, but he liked getting into my personal space. He also didn’t seem impressed that I wouldn’t go out with him.

The fact that he had a reputation for being attracted to the new female office staff and constables didn’t help him in my case. He was also reputed for not staying with his conquests for very long. For him, the chase was as important as the conquest.

Dad’s secretary, Vera North, passed on a lot of the gossip to me, even if she didn’t mean to. She knew anything she told me was safe, as I didn’t tend to repeat gossip myself. I’ve also known her for the eight years she has worked for my dad.

Kyle was also ten years older than I was and too old for me as far as I was concerned. I told him I didn’t date, but I guessed that he didn’t believe me. Things came to a crunch when he tried to kiss me one day. He had found me alone in the small library.

I didn’t mind the flirting and mostly ignored him as I didn’t take him seriously. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the correct message from my body language and pushed the friendship.

He wasn’t a bad kisser for my first kiss, but I knew I couldn’t let it slide and had to make sure he did get the message that I wasn’t interested. Kyle’s cussing after I kneed him in the balls, attracted my dad’s attention.

Two weeks later, Kyle shipped out to go to Cairns. I felt terrible about his reassignment, knowing I was the cause. Dad had been training him and said he had potential. I don’t know what Dad said to Kyle, but he took the reassignment.

I did hope his unscheduled transfer didn’t affect his career.

Kyle grinned at me when he came to thank me.

He checked if he could give me a hug like an old friend, and I let him. He did keep it friendly, and I felt no animosity from him, so I was glad he held no bad feelings.

He told me that he had to see what I was up to when he saw my name on the reports. He was pleased that I still intended to become a Police Officer, and he hadn’t frightened me off my course. We agreed to let bygones be bygones.

He then shared his case with me. It was when he was reading through my notes that he realised I’d picked up on something that had been missed, and he was able to chase down my leads. The forensics I’d sent in were able to be matched to the people he was after, and so he and his partner had solved the case.

The good thing was that he didn’t seem to hold a grudge. He also told me he had met a girl here and had settled down. They were even talking about marriage. Also, thanks to his transfer and the training from Danial, my dad, he was doing his dream job.

Kyle and I did part friends, even if Doug and I didn’t.

My next three-month assignment was a bit more interesting.

I got assigned to Senior Constable Zoey Lilliman. She was part of the Child and Disability Protection and Investigation Unit (CDPIU).

Most of our jobs revolve around taking calls for missing persons and assisting the Social Welfare people with collecting kids, checking up on old people and people with disabilities when their kids couldn’t get hold of them, and they live away from them.