CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Detective Casey put down the receiver and swung back to her desk. Another dead end. G2 had no information on Sammy the Shark or Gino Ngata. He was unknown to the Gardai.
If he was anybody at all.
Theo Petrakis wasn't making her life any easier and as excited as she had been to have the famous European policeman come to Dublin it could have happened at a much better time. In fact, it could hardly have happened at a worse time. Melinda was young, beautiful, fit and athletic, poised for a successful career in law enforcement, but for the past three weeks she had been struggling just to get through each day. It took longer and longer to get out of bed each morning and eventually she had been forced to do her make-up in the car on the way to work one day. A practice she abhorred and was correspondingly inept at due to lack of practice.
Tom Dunne, her partner and senior had of course commented. He was the type who always would.
"Did you do your hair on the back of a motorbike this morning? Ha, ha." He said. She gave him a look from hell.
"Eh, only joking of course. You look lovely." He checked their surroundings quickly and then leaned in to give her a peck on the lips. She pulled away from him. "Ah come on babes, it was only a joke. You always look gorgeous to me!"
That was ten days ago and there had been several in-car make up sessions since then. She was getting better at it. Monday and Tuesday morning she had made it out of bed early and done her make-up at home. Only later she realized why.
Theo Petrakis.
She hadn't met him yet, not face to face, but eventually he would make an appearance at their office. She was 27 years of age. Could she really be acting like this over some guy she had never met? Without a personal appearance from the police superstar the effect had soon worn off and already this morning she had found herself in the same funk as in previous weeks. Now Theo was asking her to do impossible things with no evidence and the great policeman seemed more like the crazy lucky fluke policeman from professional hell than the impeccable agent of the law she had expected him to be.
There was a beep on her phone. A text message from Tom Dunne. 'We have to talk.' It said. They had already had coffee together, mostly in silence. Why would he text her now? She had a sense of foreboding and with listless energy tapped the screen to return the call.
"What is it?" She said.
"Babes." He always called her 'babes' when he had something to feel guilty about. She hated it.
"What is it Tom, I'm busy with this Sunnyvale stuff."
"Yeah, yeah, me too, I know. It's not that it's... it's us."
Oh Jesus Christ. Not again. Not now.
Tom was a tough guy. She was attracted to him because of that. But he was a loser boyfriend and a total loser relationship. It was inappropriate, against the rules and worst of all, the idiot was married. Melinda had done it again. The golden girl, so talented, good looking, the envy of all her friends in looks, talent and career. Only one thing never went right and Tom Dunne was the perfect example. She had even stopped telling her friends about her bad relationships any more
Nevertheless, somehow she had thought that this time, just maybe, because he was a policeman too, it would make a difference He would understand the crazy career, the obsessions, the dark humor, the dark lows and the soaring highs of success that couldn't be shared with anyone else.
"Please Tom... not now...."
He ignored her. "It's not working out babes." She ended the call and didn't answer when he called back. She almost ran to her bosses office. "Have to go. Not feeling well. I'll call later." She didn't give him a chance to respond. Tom managed to catch a glimpse of her leaving the car park. He protested uselessly as she drove away.
"Bleedin' birds." He muttered.
Melinda drove for nearly two hours, going far up into the Dublin mountains until her fuel gauge began to get low and then returned to her flat in the Dublin suburbs. She picked up a training bag and headed to the city's Southside and Ireland's only full roller derby rink. The 1960's iconic American sport was her way of relaxing and releasing aggression safely. It also gave her a killer body and the opportunity to use some of her more interesting covert martial arts moves when opponents got nasty. There would be an open training session on at this time of the morning, she could join in, maybe see a few friends unrelated to work. One great thing about roller derby; you could forget all about your real life and just be your alter ego for an hour or two. Melinda's derby name was WMD: Woman of Mass Destruction. She certainly felt like destroying something that morning.
She put on her league strip with the focus and intent of an undertaker. There was only one other woman in the locker room, a girl really. Another late arrival for the training session. Melinda didn't recognize her. She trained mostly evenings and weekends so there were plenty of daytime women she hadn’t met. This girl was striking though. She had the kind of looks you couldn't ignore; statuesque, blonde, athletic figure and dressed to kill. In fact she wore a long leather coat, a little incongruous for the summer day outside. She was fully dressed in roller derby outfit underneath and had travelled through the streets with her skates on. Melinda mumbled a hello but the girl ignored her. She looked keen to get into the rink. Melinda noticed a stain on her shorts. They were red but there was a dark bloody spot in the crotch, right between the legs and running down an inch or so on her left thigh. Must be having a heavy period, Melinda thought. She considered stopping her to let her know. After all, she would want someone to do the same for her.
"Excuse me." She said. The girl rolled by her. Melinda noticed an odd tattoo on the back of her neck; a small eye at the centre of a spider web. "Excuse me." She said a little louder. The girl turned to look at her. She was smiling, but not in a friendly way, more dazed or trance-like. In fact, she looked a little tweaked to Melinda if the truth be told.
A real detective is always on duty. Her father had always said.
But her father had been a criminal and she loved him no matter what, despite everything, despite her own career.
"You have some blood on you." She said. The girl gave her a confused look, still smiling. Melinda pointed to the stain in her crotch. "In there." She said, and gave an awkward smile. The girl's eyes opened wide, she threw her head back and gave a long, loud laugh. Then she straightened up again and looked directly at Melinda.
"You want some?" She said.
Melinda was momentarily taken aback and before she could answer the girl was gone. Inexplicably, she felt like she was coming to tears. She had only been trying to help. It had been a difficult morning already. A difficult week. Why couldn't someone just be nice to her? She wiped her eyes, took a deep breath and stood up to face the mirror on the wall next to her locker.
I should arrest that little tweaker's ass right now. She thought.
But she wasn't here today to be a policewoman. Just for today she was WMD. Woman of Mass Destruction. No responsibilities other than to slam that girl a mile out of the rink.
A text beeped through on her phone. It was from Tom. 'Hey Belinda,' it began. Not again, she thought, can't that idiot even send a text without screwing up.
He had sent it to her instead of to the new young detective Belinda Cochrane who had started in the department last month, 'are you free for that drink tonight? I got rid of some baggage today and feel like being a naughty boy.'
Her breath went for a moment. She thought about texting him back. She thought about bursting into tears. She thought about smashing her head into the mirror beside her. Finally she hissed to herself: "Come on Woman of Mass Destruction. Let's go start a fight." She grimaced at her reflection, making her pretty face as menacing as she could and then thought of the girl with the stain in her crotch.
"Yes I fucking want some you dirty little bitch."
She turned and skated down the hall to the roller derby rink.
The teams were just assembling. A girl gestured for her to come over. "Hey, I know you." She said. Melinda didn't recognize her. "We need a jammer and you're it." She pushed the double-starred Jammer's cover over Melinda's helmet and pushed her back to the jammer line, 30 feet behind the already formed line of blockers. The girl with the stain in her crotch from the locker room was wearing the pivot helmet cover. This meant she could be turned into a jammer mid-play. She stared at Melinda, stuck out her tongue and gave a long lick in her direction.
OK crotch stain, you picked the wrong day to mess with WMD. She noticed the letters VD printed large on the locker girl's t-shirt.
Original. Not. Skank.
When the whistle blew Melinda shot through the engagement zone almost immediately and past the jam, beginning to lap right away. The opposing jammer was also good, losing the pack soon after Melinda. But this wasn't the girl she was after. She wanted to punish crotch girl. She allowed the other jammer to catch her up, pass her out and then pulled a favorite trick. She crashed herself and the other girl to the ground in a heap and faked a foul. The other jammer was sent, shouting the obligatory obscenities, to the penalty area. VD took over as jammer. She grinned, ran her finger up her crotch, took a good long sniff and then blew it over to Melinda like a filthy kiss.
Keep trying little girl. Melinda thought. She had always been a master of bottling up anger, an emotional handicap that found its only useful outlet in the pain and revenge of the roller derby. The girl wouldn't know what hit her when it happened. When the jam kicked off again VD got ahead of Melinda and stayed there, just out of reach, taking her to her furthest extreme of speed and anger but always outpacing her.
You're fast dirty crotch, I'll give you that.
Melinda was super fit but this girl was making her look like a turtle on roller-skates
Wait 'till I get you.
Melinda knew she was slowing down as the rest of the pack began to get closer to them. Then VD, out of nowhere, seemed to stumble and Melinda went in for the kill as she had hundreds of times before; a barely visible side-swipe would slam the girl face down into the boards.
"Eat this." She said as she closed in.
When she opened her eyes the girl was on top of her, the stain of her bloodied crotch pressing into Melinda's gagging mouth. Her arms were twisted painfully over her head in a submission hold she couldn't imagine and didn't want to. It felt like she had been there for hours, she was exhausted, more exhausted than she had ever been before in her entire life. She couldn't tell if it was concussion or not but there was an eerie electronic glow coming from underneath the girl's shirt. And she still looked tweaked. But how could a high meth-head possibly have done this to her? Suddenly they were surrounded. The girl was making elaborate explanations and apologies. The other woman were shocked.
"A here love, it's only a bleedin' game." One tough inner city lady said. "Do you want to leave her bleedin' paralyzed?"
"She surprise me. I was down and then she come at me from on top, like to attack, not for pass me. Just my reaction Not want to hurt her."
"Well you did a fairly good bleedin’ job of it anyway."
Melinda tried to get up.
"Don't you move love. You wait until the ambulance boys have you braced up."
Now the tears started in earnest. "Ah here love, come on, it's only a precaution, you'll be all right. The silly bitch didn't mean it. Her and her sister a out of their heads. Sure the other one was told not to come in any more."
Melinda was too upset to explain why she was crying. Even to herself. The other women released VD who gave a quick glance down to Melinda. A sneer crossed her mouth for a micro-moment and then she was gone.