The casualness appealed to him much more.
As usual the station was humming with busyness. Uniforms were dragging in a drunk and disorderly, who seemed to be putting up a fight, and there was a woman in one of the interview rooms as he walked by. The low drone of people working and computers humming filled the air.
‘Morning.’ He nodded at Tez and Claire who were poring over a witness statement.
‘Dave, how goes? Good weekend?’ Claire asked around the pen in her mouth.
‘Great. Yours?’ He switched on his computer and put his coffee cup down on his desk.
‘Fine,’ she answered before Tez said, ‘Hey, you don’t have a lead on your stiff down the mine, do you?’
‘Nah, not yet. Hoping to have all the info this morning. Shannon would have done the PM on Saturday at the earliest, and she mightn’t even get to it until this morning. She did say that John Doe would have the priority.’
‘It’s all round town.’
‘Course it is.’ Dave sat down. ‘Wouldn’t expect any less. What’s the deal here?’ He nodded towards the woman in the interview room.
‘Looking at a fraud,’ Tez said.
‘Fraud?’ Dave turned around and looked at the well-dressed woman who was sitting with a straight back, her hands linked together in front of her on the table.
‘Yeah.’ Claire grinned and rubbed her hands together. ‘But it sounds worse than it is! Between you and I, I’d say she was being entrepreneurial, but I’m pretty sure the people who have made the complaints about her wouldn’t see it my way.’
‘Sounds interesting. What’ve you got?’
‘She runs prospecting tours. The complaints against her are they never find gold.’
‘Them and the rest of the world, I would have thought!’
‘Turns out one of the tourists she took out saw her hide a piece of gold in the ground. What she does is charges to take them out into the field and lets them loose with detectors. Part of the deal is the first nugget they find is hers. From then on in, they keep the rest. They only ever find slivers of gold—not worth ten bucks—but because they find something big the first time, they recommend the tour to others.’
It took Dave a moment to work it through. Then it dawned on him and he grinned. ‘She’s planting the gold and pocketing the money and they never find anything worth much?’
‘Spot on. Clever, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That’s gold!’ he said in a tone which was half laughing and half amazement. Then he realised what he’d said and groaned. ‘Sorry, pardon the pun!’
Claire cracked up laughing. ‘I hope your jokes are better than that!’
Dave held his hands up in surrender. ‘Melinda would say they’re not, but I don’t think they’re that bad. Here, let me tell you this one: what do you call a man who lies under leaves?’
Everyone in the room looked at him blankly. Then Claire dropped her head into her hands and said, ‘I think my ears are going to hurt.’
‘Drum roll…’
‘The suspense is killing me.’ Tez’s sarcasm was like water off a duck’s back.
‘Russell.’ Dave held out his hands, waiting for applause.
Tez looked at him deadpan, while Claire peered at him from between her fingers. Neither of them had a smile on their face. They hadn’t even groaned.
‘Yeah, that’s not good,’ said Tez, turning away.
‘I’m not giving you the job of organising the entertainment for the Christmas party,’ said Claire. ‘You might hire yourself and we’ll all be crying into our beer within the first five minutes.’
Laughing, Dave said, ‘Okay, okay, I admit it. Telling jokes is not my forte. My brother told me that years ago.’
‘You surprise me,’ Tez answered in the same deadpan tone.
‘Okay, so back to Barrabine’s newest hotshot entrepreneur. Got any ideas on how you’re going to prove it?’
‘Thought she could sweat it for a bit. We’ll go and have a chat in a couple of hours, probably caution her. Maybe put out a warning to the tourist bureau so it shuts her little business down. Don’t think we need to charge her with anything.’
‘Never ceases to amaze me how crims evolve,’ said Dave. ‘They just keep coming up with new ways of ripping people off.’
The phone rang and Claire picked up it, while Dave grabbed his empty paper coffee cup and threw it across the room and into the bin.
‘Better basketballer than you are comedian,’ Tez quipped.
Dave harrumphed good-naturedly and turned to the computer and put in his password. He could hear Claire on the call.
‘Uh-huh.’ Pause. ‘Right, and when was it supposed to be returned?’ Pause. ‘And your name?’ Pause. ‘Right, right. Can you give me the details: who hired it, plate number, et cetera?’
Dave could hear Claire’s pen scratching across the page as he scrolled through his emails, hoping to see something from Shannon. Nothing with her name on it. Damn. He really wanted to get going on this. Maybe he should check the fax. Emails were so new, Shannon might have sent it by fax instead.
‘Look, I think we’ll send a detective out to see you. Might match up with an investigation we’ve got going on already.’ Pause. ‘Detectives Burrows and Brown.’
Dave looked up at the sound of his name.
‘Yes, sir, they’ll be out there shortly. Thanks for calling.’
Claire put the phone down and looked at Dave. ‘Just got a report from the Avis mob at the airport saying there has been a
