Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Family Business
    Family Business
    Family Business
    Ebook251 pages4 hours

    Family Business

    By Greg Tuck

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs of the Queensland police was returning to Cairns when he was witness to the horrific slaying of a young motorbike rider. Cradling the dying young woman in his arms he made a silent vow to find the assassins. In investigating the death with the aid of colleagues, Acting Detective Sergeant Nat Johns and Constable Liz Rhodes, he finds an extraordinary web of criminal activity hiding just below the surface. Real estate fraud, extortion, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking and people smuggling are all somehow linked to the death of this bright young university student. Border Force and the Australian Federal Police become involved and assist Sarge and his team in solving the murder.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Tuck
    Release dateJan 21, 2019
    ISBN9780463611760
    Family Business
    Author

    Greg Tuck

    I am a former primary teacher and principal, landscape designer and gardener and now a full time author living in Gippsland in the state of Victoria in Australia. Although I write mainly fictional novels, I regularly contribute to political blogs and have letters regularly published in local and Victorian newspapers. I write parodies of songs and am in the process of writing music for the large number of poems that I have written.

    Read more from Greg Tuck

    Related to Family Business

    Related ebooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What If?

      Aug 13, 2019

      What If?
      17 min read

    • Article

      Cristina Rivera Garza

      Jun 15, 2018

      She would remember everything, out of the blue and in full detail. She would see the jade ring wrapped around her ring finger and, immediately, she would see the other jade ring. She would open her eyes wide and, without knowing why, would fall silen

      13 min read

    • Article

      Dublin Area Rowdy Teens

      Mar 10, 2023

      Of course, later on he would tell the police and anyone who would listen that what had happened was symptomatic of a larger problem—disaffected youth, fear of stabbings, the bystander effect, the growth of unmanned train stations, the loss of conduct

      7 min read

    • Article

      Sleeper Hit

      Feb 5, 2024

      Sleeper Hit
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Missing Limousine

      Sep 28, 2021

      The Missing Limousine
      21 min read

    • Article

      Bahrain on Horseback

      Aug 14, 2019

      Bahrain on Horseback
      12 min read

    • Article

      Crime Wave

      May 10, 2019

      Crime Wave
      13 min read

    • Article

      I Met Myself Coming Back

      Oct 6, 2022

      I Met Myself Coming Back
      6 min read

    • Article

      One Thousand and One Nights

      Sep 9, 2019

      One Thousand and One Nights
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Man In The Photograph

      Aug 24, 2021

      The Man In The Photograph
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Formula

      Jan 10, 2023

      “Birthday boys!” The shouts of the young men echoed through the small space, bouncing off hardened plastic and safety glass. “This is going to be too good, man!” “When do the girls arrive?” “Not till tomorrow afternoon. Tonight’s all about the lads!”

      8 min read

    • Article

      Cycle Of Life

      May 26, 2021

      Cycle Of Life
      2 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Scenes

      Oct 18, 2021

      Behind The Scenes
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Hard Man To Forget

      Jan 8, 2024

      A Hard Man To Forget
      4 min read

    • Article

      Chuckles

      Mar 17, 2023

      Fancy yourself a joker? Email original jokes to [email protected] or send them to Chuckles, YOU, PO Box 7167, Roggebaai 8012, and we may publish them on this page. A speeding motorist is caught by radar from a police helicopter in the sky. An office

      2 min read

    • Article

      Choose

      Dec 10, 2021

      “Wake up.” The words shuffled through the darkness of her mind, tugging at her. “Wake up.” Firm, persistent. A trickle of light invaded her senses, growing into a blinding glare as her eyelids fluttered. “Where… Where am I?” Myrah asked groggily, her

      13 min read

    • Article

      A Bump In The Road

      Jul 26, 2023

      A Bump In The Road
      4 min read

    • Article

      Anatomy Of A Search

      Mar 17, 2023

      Anatomy Of A Search
      13 min read

    • Article

      Frangipani

      Oct 30, 2017

      Frangipani
      5 min read

    • Article

      Freedom

      Aug 6, 2020

      Freedom
      7 min read

    • Article

      We’ll Never Get Over It

      Aug 11, 2023

      We’ll Never Get Over It
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Straw Hat

      Aug 2, 2018

      The Straw Hat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Get Into The Sea, He-karens

      Dec 17, 2020

      Get Into The Sea, He-karens
      3 min read

    • Article

      Something About Her

      Feb 2, 2019

      Something About Her
      5 min read

    • Article

      Better Left To CHANCE

      Apr 28, 2021

      Better Left To CHANCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

      Apr 7, 2020

      In today's edition of featured fiction, we present an excerpt from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's latest novel, Starling Days. The post ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Family Business

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Family Business - Greg Tuck

      Chapter 1

      He looked around him and the first thing that came to mind was that he had never seen as much blood before. His mind however, trying to grapple with the situation, was playing out its usual analytical process. That was not quite correct it came back at him. In high school he had run around a corner directly into the PE teacher who was doing exactly the same. Sarge was a big student even then, over six foot and weighing fifteen stone. No fat hung from his frame. He was all solid muscle. His PE teacher was a similar build but fractionally taller. When Sarge’s forehead hit the teacher's nose the noise was a loud popping sound but the spray of blood and its constant flow had scared both combatants. They both dropped the fire extinguishers they were carrying and forgot about the blaze beginning in the sports shed and sat down next to each other as blood, mainly from the teacher pooled around them. 

      The blood that was in front of Sarge this day that sent his mind into automatic response was not his but now it was all over him and he began to shake uncontrollably. 

      He had seen it all happen in slow motion. The girl on the motor bike ahead, the oncoming car and at the last minute the shotgun barrel protruding from the car window. The Bruce highway north of Innisfail had little traffic and Sarge was just enjoying the drive back to Cairns and keeping pace with the motorcyclist. He had a pretty mundane morning. He’d collected two statements about a break-in at Innisfail. All the forensics had been sent to his office in the Cairns police station but he wanted to check the scene out himself and talk to any witnesses. He enjoyed the hands-on approach. Now it was hands-on in a very big way. The blast from the shotgun had tossed the rider like a rag doll off to the side of the road. The bike, almost undisturbed, continued on before it slid off to the side. The car carrying the driver and two passengers sped past Sarge who was staring open mouthed through the shattered front screen of the police divisional van. The blast that had hit the rider, had also caught the front of his car and he had a few minor cuts on his face and shards of windscreen in his lap.

      He hit the lights and sirens and called on the radio as he had been programmed to do. He swung the van around and across the road protecting as best he could the accident scene and the rider. Oh God, the rider he thought. Her blonde ponytail was half hidden under the black crash helmet but the visor was up. A startled look was on her face. Sarge looked down and her chest covering had been blasted clean away. He could clearly see one collapsed lung with a rib protruding from it, the other lung was struggling but the heart kept pumping. Amid all the confusion and dismembered parts, her heart kept pumping. If only it would stop because it was forcing all the life blood out of her, sending blood to unneeded areas only to spill on to the road surface and begin to congeal. There was no chance of saving her. His mind had already calculated that, but he held her all the same. The light faded slowly in her eyes and gratefully the heart gave one last surge and then it stopped for the final time.

      Sarge kept looking at the relaxed body now limp in his arms. There had been no time or thought to put latex gloves on and so when he finally composed himself enough, his bloodied fingerprints were on the visor as he carefully and almost reverently pulled the visor down. He wiped the tears from his eyes, leaving further traces of her existence and bloody death across his face. He lowered her to the ground as if she was the most fragile and priceless porcelain. That wasn’t logical his mind tried to explain because she was beyond feeling any pain and the most ultimate of all damage had already been done to her. A methodical man, he nevertheless when pushed was able to let his heart do the thinking sometimes.

      He raced back to the van and turned the sirens off. He didn’t need the distraction. Grabbing the emergency iridescent plastic bollards kept in the boot along with some police tape and emergency lights he ran south for about fifty metres and effectively blocked the highway to northbound traffic. The incident - already he was in police speaking mode even to himself, was on a straight stretch that was notorious for accidents. Vehicles often ran off the road after the sweeping curves which had kept their driver’s concentration high, were left behind. The relaxation was what caused mistakes. Sometimes it was truck drivers, drugged to the eyeballs. Other times it was a family, perhaps towing a caravan, trying to get to their final destination less than fifty kilometres away. His computer like mind was flashing the obverse situation where on the Nullabor Plain the road was so straight that the first bend was often the scene of an accident. This was no accident though.

      Trying to do the same operation fifty metres north of the site was his next task. He almost made it. However, a car pulled up. It wasn’t another cop car, nor ambulance or fire vehicle. It was the worst kind of one. He wasn’t in the mood for this and he felt his muscles tense as a news reporter and her camera and sound crew piled out. They had been lucky enough to be just passing by, probably heading off to some location for a ‘filler’ in the local news. Already Sarge could see the camera being raised to the shoulder of one of the men and a microphone being snatched from the hand of the sound technician. Sarge was angry. He knew that they were only doing their job and that they would be sacked for not doing it, but there was no decorum, no sense of human decency in some of them as they shone a light on the tragedies of the human condition in the name of public, or as he like to call it, self-interest.

      Detective Inspector Downs, what a pleasure to see you here, the plastic mouth filled with too perfect and too white teeth and surrounded by refined makeup erupted in some hideous ultra-rehearsed tone. Can you tell our viewers what has happened?

      Sarge, covered in blood gave her a disbelieving stare and used his body to shield the incident from the cameraman. He had already been zooming in on the body and the bike. Sarge replied his voice steeled with suppressed anger, If you would mind stepping back to at least fifty metres away so that we can preserve the accident scene please. He had been very careful, or his brain and not his heart had, to state that it was an accident rather than a crime scene. He knew these subtle inferences could be seized upon. The cameraman stepped to the side and began filming the scene again. Sarge regretted not covering the body up. It had been next on his list. He stopped short. He couldn’t believe that he had just thought of this beautiful human creature as just a body. His mind and heart were at odds. Sarge put his hand over the lens of the camera and leaned in to side of the man’s head and whispered. If you have taken a shot of the body and of the bike, especially its numberplate, they will be pixelated anyway. If the image is used to contact relatives or identify the person involved, I can personally guarantee that in Far North Queensland you will never work again. That is not a threat; that is a promise.

      The reporter seeing that Sarge was distracted began to walk over towards the accident victim. She was halted in her progress not by Sarge but by the sound recorder who chose humanely not to pay out any more cable to her microphone. When she glared at him, he savagely pulled the cable back and the microphone spilled from her hands and dropped to the ground, breaking itself into pieces on the hard surface of the road.

      Sarge having regained some control of the situation and indeed of himself, body-pressed them back into their car and ordered them to reverse well out of the area just as the first of two ambulances flanked by police pursuit vehicles arrived. The rest was a blur for Sarge. He had attended accidents in the past and had seen corpses but had never actually been involved directly in one. He was now one of the head detectives in the Far North Region based in Cairns. He had involvement in drugs, serious crime and homicide was now the chief liaison person with the specialist task forces based in Brisbane. It was a long way from being just a desk sergeant which he was only a few years ago. He had done that for nearly ten years. Not interested in advancement and enjoyed the nickname that everyone knew him by, Sarge. It had stuck even after his fast and steady promotion following some lucky occurrences. His superiors didn’t believe in luck and had rightly assumed that this huge mountain of a man had a lot more to give, even if he preferred the name Sarge to Bernard Wilfred Downs.

      The ambos had checked him out after attending to the girl. The couple of cuts had some tape over them. One had a butterfly clip because it was quite deep. They had wanted to wipe the blood from his face and were quite surprised when he angrily refused their offer. The traffic incident controllers were sending traffic, now banked up for over a kilometre, on different routes. The temperature of the day was rising as was that of the impatient drivers who probably didn’t give a thought to the victim and the repercussions her death would have into her family and local community. Sarge stayed at the scene. He had given his account to senior officers but had already earmarked the crime as his baby and had made that known in no uncertain terms. He received a call from his superior and was advised to hand it on to someone else because it may become personal. Sarge assured him that it was fine, that he was only a witness, but his boss was right, it was personal. All his cases were personal but this was even more so.

      Sarge! The voice seemed somewhat distant as he sat on the side of the road reflecting, contemplating and planning. He was known as Sarge by all cops despite his rank. He refused to answer to anything else. His aunt and uncle and sometimes his partner Sarah would call him Bernard but he was either Sarge or Inspector Downs to everyone else, except of course to his eighteen-month-old daughter whose first word of ‘Da’ had rocked his world.

      Sarge! The voice came again and he looked up. The tech boys were out there measuring with tapes and theodolites. He had given them the information he had. the speed he and the the motorcyclist were travelling, just where on the road the vehicles were at the time of the shooting and they had the final positions of the rider, the bike and where he had skidded to a halt. What more could they want? He rose and slowly ambled over to the lead nerd.

      You know Sarge, with the cyclist in the shadow of the sugar cane on the side of the road, the person firing the shotgun may not have seen her.

      The voice stopped not offering further explanation. He realised then that the beautiful young girl may have been an innocent victim. What was the shooter aiming at? There were no signs on this straight stretch of road. Not even a tree in sight. Rarely were roos seen. What was he shooting at? He turned around and looked at the van and the shattered windscreen. Suddenly his legs became quite unstable and his hands began to shake. The ambos got to him before his head hit the ground.

      Chapter 2

      Sarah for the tenth time in less than a minute checked the time. Where the hell was her partner? She had a lecture to give that afternoon and a couple of tutorials. She knew his role was prone to awkward and lengthy delays but not even a bloody phone call. She felt the blood boil and tried to remain calm in front of her child, her and Sarge’s child. Bugger him, how dare Katherine’s first word be Da. He wasn’t here now looking after her like he should be, like he promised. She could arrange a babysitter at the crèche at James Cook University where she was based and where she was supposed to be right now! One more minute she’d give him and then he’d find himself coming home to an empty home, admittedly a luxurious home with its own private beach that the two of them had designed, but it would be bloody empty. She considered bunking in with their friends Nat and Jess for the night just to teach Sarge a lesson.

      The TV was on in the background. Katie found the noise and the flickering colours entertaining and for someone who had never believed in young children being exposed to television until they were 18, Sarah had succumbed quite easily. Things had changed dramatically for her in the past four years. At the age of 32, she had been young unattached and possibly she admitted quite desperate. All that had changed when as a research assistant at the Cairns hospital, she had bumped into a not so young but entirely charming and hilariously naïve police sergeant. Bumped was the right word. He had been seeking an escape route from a formal meeting that he didn’t want to be at. He opened the wrong door, bumped her and test tubes were sent scattering. Less than ten days later she had asked him out by fronting up at the Cairns police station and refusing to leave until he took her out for dinner.

      So many things had happened since that first awkward meeting. She had caught her supervising professor out stealing her idea and plagiarising her research and presenting it as his own. She’d been offered an associate professorship at James Cook, presented to a world-wide conference in Hong Kong and never been as happy or as constantly surprised by what her husband got up to, often by accident. Just as the word accident was passing through her mind, it was spoken aloud on the screen that filled the entire wall of the lounge room. Sarah had chided Sarge over his poor eyesight when he had the huge monstrosity installed, but he argued that they were independently wealthy, both didn’t have to work and if she could have her curved walls, he should at least have the choice of television.

      On the screen there was breaking news about an accident on the Bruce Highway between Innisfail and Cairns. Sarah’s breath caught in her throat. Sarge was driving back from Innisfail this morning. As she rounded the kitchen bench into the enormous lounge room, she heard the on-the-scene reporter say. Detective Inspector Downs, what a pleasure to see you here. Then the vision of Sarge was there for an instant and a brief panning sweep before some long distant shots. From the glimpse she saw of Sarge he was covered head to foot in blood. Sarah clutched the back of the lounge chair, her hardened painted nails digging in deep into the fabric. Meanwhile the ever-observant Katie had pointed to the screen and said, Da!

      Sarah immediately forgot her anger towards her partner. She stared at the screen and tried to concentrate on the report that accompanied the long-distance footage. The vision showed a motorbike on its side in reasonably good nick. Further back was a figure lying on the ground partially hidden by a screen and surrounded by ambos and police. The camera zoomed into take into view the police divisional van and its shattered windscreen and then on to the large shape, a very familiar shape to Sarah, of a man sitting down head in hands looking quite disconsolate. A close up shot showed his bloody clothes and just before it blurred, she thought she saw, or perhaps just imagined, tears on the face of the man she loved.

      The news report didn’t formally ascribe blame but the inferences were out there already - a lone motorcyclist, a smashed police vehicle and a blood-stained police officer. Sarge was already tried and had judgement passed. The only thing she knew for sure, from living with Sarge, was that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed at first glance. She reacted automatically. She rang and cancelled her university commitments and began to gather everything that was needed to take Katie anywhere. She had half started that in preparation for a crèche stay so it didn’t take long this time. The car was loaded and Sarah placed Katie in her carseat in the back of the old Landrover and drove out of their idyllic beachside property just south of Cairns.

      She breathed deeply. There was no rush. She needn’t cause more concern for her distraught partner by having her own accident. The road ahead was filling up with cars seeking alternative routes. Some had just pulled off to the side. She was not prepared to wait though and was grateful that Sarge had installed the flashing lights in the grill. Lights blazing, more people moved aside and were probably somewhat surprised when a bespectacled dark-haired woman with a child seat behind her, passed them by. Sarah was stopped and was about to be directed down a detour when the police officer with his arms outstretched, recognised either Sarge’s preferred vehicle or Sarah’s ‘don’t you think about stopping me, you bloody moron’ look. He hastily waved her through, unsure whether that was protocol, but definitely he assured himself, the best thing to do regarding career advancement and probably for his own personal safety.

      The taped off area was now well back from the accident scene. There were still a few gawkers hanging around. Even the TV crew had gone. The story filed and another to be done. Somewhere someone else’s misery was up for grabs. Sarah was amazed out how a line of blue chequered plastic was so powerful. She too stopped and taking Katie out of the Landrover, ducked under the tape and with confidence that she didn’t feel, strode towards the cars in the distance. Two ambulances were still on site and lights were flashing on the police cars. One of the ambulances had its doors closed and was just heading off. There was no sign of the screen anymore and the figure on the ground. Sarah anxiously looked around for Sarge. Several police officers were chatting and photographers and forensic people were examining the site.

      Sarah found her shivering partner in the arms of a couple of ambos who had wrapped him in a silver shock blanket. They were checking his vital signs and Sarah’s heart almost stopped. She had read so much about the circulatory and nervous systems in humans as part of her studies but here she was witnessing it first hand for the first time in a real-life situation. The impact of shock on the nervous system easily transfers across to the circulatory system with dire consequences in some cases. Her brain was taking in all the information and computing all scenarios. She shook her head and realised that she was becoming more like Katie’s father. Katie had spotted her dad and was calling out loud to him.

      Sarge had been pretty much out to it and everything in his being was doing everything it could to shut down any thoughts about what had happened and the things around him. Suddenly he heard his daughter’s voice and that was the reality he was searching for. He lifted his head and through the glare he spotted his daughter in his beautiful partner’s arms. He shoved the ambos aside and raised his huge frame, stripped off the blanket and almost ran to embrace the two most favourite people in his world.

      Sarah had a strong aversion to blood which may seem strange in her choice of career which involved the studies of neurological toxins found in creatures and plants and their possible benefits to humans. She didn’t know where or how to hug Sarge. Katie had no such qualms and already had her arms out ready for her ‘Da’. Sarge, seemingly oblivious of Sarah’s discomfiture, just wrapped his huge thirty-eight-year-old arms around both of them. The ambos came over to check that their patient was alright and hadn’t lost his marbles as part of the shock he had received. Sarge apologised to them and thanked them for looking after him and treating the young girl with the respect that she definitely deserved. One of them

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1