Chapter 502

• “Andersen’s Beat” was not one of my favourite TV shows, and I only watched about every third episode or so, but Trish Collett was a pretty good reason to watch it. She was slim but curvy, with wavy, dark hair, big brown eyes, olive skin, and a perky, pretty face, that had a kind of “sexy-girl-next-door” thing going. She sometimes reminded me of a young Annette Funicello, in those sixties beach movies, and I had recently read that she had just turned twenty-five. Her character in the TV series often did things no real cop would do, but that of course got her into dramatic situations all the time, where she had to use her wits and wiles to save herself, and she always got the bad guy. I wonder what she looks like in real life, I thought to myself. I flicked through the leaflet and read the boss’s instructions, and I thought, Sounds like an easy day.
• I had joined the state police force when I was twenty, and had been a cop for nearly eight years. I loved my job, and three years earlier, they had transferred me from Sydney to a medium sized coastal city, but my girlfriend, Isabel, had stayed in Sydney because of her job. After two years, she had broken it off, saying she just couldn’t handle a long-distance relationship any more, but next thing I knew, I heard on the grapevine she was getting around town with some young lawyer, and my source suggested she had been seeing him before she broke it off with me. My workmates were all telling me that now I was unattached again, I should get out there and fuck everything that moved, but I had seen myself having a life with Isabel, and I just didn’t feel like getting back in the arena just yet. Consequently, my love life had been zero for quite a while now. A few months earlier, I would have been unimpressed to have my weekend off cancelled, but with no woman in my life, one day was like any other, and the boss had told me I’d now have Sunday and Monday off, so it was all good as far as I was concerned.
• Saturday came around, and I went to work as normal, and they gave me a marked car to drive to the huge Crestwood Hotel complex, down by the northern waterfront, to spend my day “walking around checking things out,” as Sergeant Morrow had said. There was already a fair crowd in the reception centre, when I got there, and on the stage I saw an old guy in a suit, announcing some of the “celebrities” who were going to perform, and take turns as M.C. during the day.