A Child In Need

‘Why are you here?’ he snapped at Rob.

‘Hey, I brought the prisoner,’ Rob said, aggrieved. ‘Not that there’s any need for force. It’s Bart Commin in for shoplifting. He pinches four cans of baked beans every second Wednesday, because that’s the day before pension. It drives everyone nuts, but as soon as we make it official-try to give him the beans and dock his pension-he changes stores. We figure he likes the excitement.’

‘Great.’ Nick groaned. ‘Fourteen years’ intellectual training for this.’

‘Your tie’s crooked,’ Mary said, bright-eyed and interested. ‘You’ve never had a crooked tie before.’

‘So your sister had her wicked way with me behind the sand-hills,’ Nick snarled. ‘You want to put a two-page announcement in the local paper?’

‘Don’t reckon we have to,’ Rob said lazily, and grinned. ‘John’s done it for us.’

Nick stared. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

‘He’s spreading it all over town,’ Rob told him. ‘I’ve heard it from at least three people on the way here. Seems my sister’s thrown John over for the magistrate.’

‘Oh, great!’

‘Your hair’s not mussed,’ Mary said, in a tone saying she wouldn’t have minded if it was. ‘That means you can’t have been too far out of line.’

‘Plus they had the littl’un with them,’ Rob agreed. ‘It wouldn’t have happened.’

‘You’ll go far as a policeman,’ Nick snapped. ‘Great detective work. Do you mind? I have a court case to run.’

‘Bart won’t worry if you’re running late,’ Rob said easily. ‘I’m prosecuting and he’s defending himself. There’s hardly an army of lawyers waiting.’

‘No.’ He would have preferred it if there was-in fact he would have preferred anything to these four enquiring eyes.

‘Did she really throw John over?’ Mary asked, breathless.

He guessed he could tell them that. ‘She did.’

There was a long drawn-out sigh from the pair of them, and he looked on, bemused.

‘Do you mind telling me what’s going on?’

‘We can’t stand the man,’ Rob said simply. ‘None of us can. We were starting to worry she’d marry him through lack of competition.’

‘And now along you come,’ Mary said dreamily.

‘Rob?’ Nick eyed his arresting officer with disfavour.

‘Yes, sir?’ There was a glint in Rob’s eye that reminded Nick of Shanni, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He wasn’t the least bit sure he wasn’t being laughed at here.

‘There’s a jug of water on my bench. Fetch it and throw it over your sister.’

‘If you say so.’ Rob grinned and Mary stopped looking dreamy and gave a half-hearted chuckle herself.

‘Okay. I know I’m being stupid. It’s just… I mean you’re eligible as anything, and you’d be quite good-looking if you didn’t have the…’ She paused and Nick glowered.

‘If I didn’t have the what?’

‘Pot-belly and bald spot?’ Rob suggested, and hooted with laughter. ‘Jeepers, Mary, leave the guy alone.’ But Mary just looked helpful.

‘It’s your hairstyle and slick clothes,’ she said. ‘They make you look like a gangster.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Or one of those smart city lawyers you see on the movies,’ she added. ‘And you’re not one of those.’

‘No. More’s the pity.’

‘You don’t mind me saying it?’

‘Why should I?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Go ahead. Any more improvements you can think of while you’re at it?’

‘You don’t really have to wear those skinny ties,’ she ventured.

‘The suit doesn’t fit here,’ Rob added, joining right into the spirit of things. ‘Old Judge Andrews wore tweed.’

‘The old judge kept forgetting to take his wellingtons off, too,’ Mary said thoughtfully. ‘He had a hobby farm so he kept arriving in court smelling of cow dung. It made him…I don’t know…more approachable somehow.’

‘You’d like me to come to court without my hair combed, in a tweed jacket, a wide tie and stinking of cow dung?’

‘You have to do something. You’ll never win our Shanni like you are now.’ Rob chortled at Nick’s expression and threw up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Okay, Your Worship. I can see I’ve gone too far. Let me organise a prisoner for you and we’ll get this court case under way.’

He shouldn’t worry.

He shouldn’t give a damn what they all thought of him, Nick decided as the afternoon wore on. The cases were trivial and demanded hardly any thought at all. He might as well think of his appearance.

He might as well think about Shanni.

Which was really, really stupid.

He’d go up to town this weekend, he decided. If he left by five tomorrow night he could be back in his inner-city apartment by nine. Maybe ring a couple of friends, catch a late show, see the latest Enrico exhibition on Saturday…

‘Four hundred dollars or ten days in custody,’ he said, and discovered the whole courtroom was looking at him.

‘But…’ It was Mary, and she bit her lip almost as soon as she said it.

‘What?’

‘Fifty bucks or overnight,’ the defendant explained for her, in a voice that sounded like gravel. The old man was an alcoholic. He stank. The smell of him reached every corner of the court.

‘Overnight gives us time to see he’s fed and washed,’ Rob explained.

‘So ten days gives you longer. Next case…’

And he closed his file and glared at them all. And they glared right back. Every single one of them.

And Shanni was waiting for him when court was finished for the day. Her anger was still sky-high. He came out of court, tossed his gown aside and turned to find Shanni watching him from the corridor.

‘I suppose you know what you’ve done,’ she said bluntly.

Nick sighed. Now what?

‘Let’s see,’ he said wearily. ‘According to town gossip, so far today I’ve ravished you over fish and chips, I’ve had my wicked way in the sand-hills, I’ve broken your engagement to your knight in shining armour, and I’ve smashed the unwritten dress code for Bay Beach court. What else is there left?’

‘You’ve made Emma feed Bart for ten days!’

‘Emma?’

‘Rob’s wife. She does the meals for the custody cells. And Bart’ll dry out. We’ll have him screaming the place down.’

‘Then maybe he needs to be dried out.’ This was none of her business.

‘I thought Mary warned you. Bart’s dried out at least fifty times in living memory, all of them in the police cells, all of them with Rob and Emma not getting sleep for days and all of them totally useless as he hits the bottle the minute he’s back on the town. But go ahead. Jail him.’

‘I already have.’

‘I know.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘Smart city lawyers…’

‘I am the magistrate,’ he said mildly, and she ground her teeth some more.

‘Yeah. Well, stop filling police cells and go do something useful.’

Something useful… For heaven’s sake, hadn’t these people heard of a little respect? He was the magistrate!

But respect wasn’t in Shanni’s vocabulary.

‘The psychologist is coming to the children’s home tomorrow to assess Harry,’ she continued. ‘That’s why I’m here. Don’t get any funny ideas that I might want to see you or anything. I don’t. But Wendy needs a statement