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MURDER MOST FOUL

They call around three; usually I’m awake in readiness. The bloodless body was in a dumpster at the back of a supermarket, covered in discarded vegetables, the night-feeders had found him. Back at the lab we hosed, dissected and weighed him and measured the vampiric holes dug deep in his neck. He was the night manager: fat, married, disliked. He’d clocked off at midnight, been found around two, never got to his car. The police thought robbery, some items missing, but my concern was an unexplained oily substance within the victim’s punctures.

Finally, late night shopping before going home, apples, milk, sliced ham, I watched the rotisserie dripping from steel rods, spiked. The bemused attendant served my request, a spike from a chicken’s butt, a six pronged weapon, a perfect fit. Police quickly tracked down his affair with the deli manager. No more chicken tonight.

(This story won the inaugural Melbourne Writers Festival Postcard Bandits Competition)

CHANDLER HIGHWAY

I was eating a McMuffin when the call came to head for Alphington. In a dead ordinary orange L-shape was a dead ordinary girl, hands bound, head smashed against the brick fireplace, left in situ surrounded by junkie detritus. Some unknown had called it in; the house had been vacant months. Tully found a size 11 out the back, a window smashed to open the door. Tran was the obvious local, but shaking him up got us nothing. Prints revealed her to be Emma; nice parents in Canterbury didn’t like the boyfriend, Tony.

I knew Tony from my days at armed robbery, which told me how Tran might fit in, old scores unsettled. We pulled in Vin, Tran’s offsider, size 11, thick and wide, no use pussyfootin’ it. I got in Tran’s face but he just smiled. Tony came up from the river the next day.

DITCH

Sandy was forty-eight, a farmer’s wife, mother of four. It had never been easy with Paul. The kids called when they knew he’d be out. She did what she was told, kept quiet and away from hospital. The past years had been better for their silence. Paul drank in the shed, slept in the spare room, and often went bush for days. But when the ute’s bumper was buckled, she asked, and he beat her.

She retreated and waited. After his tail lights receded she went to the shed, to his gun. She coveted it, shouldered it in rare daring. Bolder, she explored. Where the bush met the shed, she found the readied hole and turned earth. She suspected, but had to know. She exhumed the bones then waited. When the ute returned, she aimed between his eyes. He went in the hole and Sandy covered him up.