This is the 69th story concerning Detective Joseph Lind of the Murder Squad: his homicide cases and his partners…some of many years, others but weeks or months duration.

Again he is mentoring two young female Officers. Detective-in-Training Catalina ‘Tally’ Evans who impressed all her Tutors at the Police Academy and Detective 2 Angelica ‘Angie’ De Longo who was an adult-in-training Detective transfering from White Collar Crime…she required more reasons to remain a copper than what White Collar Crime gave her.

There was little activity at this time causing many of the Detective Teams to transfer to other areas of the Force with remaining partners given ‘Cold Cases’ to investigate. Detective Lind was handed a Case which was one of the first he shared with his then Boss Senior Detective Inspector John Church aka ‘Abbey’. For some reason the man could see something genuine in Joe Lind. He had over the years given his Boss great satisfaction for his initial suspicion that the young man would make an excellent Murder Dee…one day. The pair becoming more than a boss and subordinate; more of a father figure and son.

This first Case Detective Lind did not remember with fond memories…it was his first ‘failure to solve’ Homicide case!

Excerpt:CHAPTER ONE

I casually swiped at a few flies who had decided that the corners of my mouth were hiding a delectable feast of some sort! Here it was in the middle of Winter in the New England High Country when flies should not be so prevalent…unless it was cattle country. I didn’t have a clue either way to it being cattle country or not but to my way of thinking it was too cold for me, so flies had to be wearing heated thermalwear under their puffer jackets!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t! From my waist down I had to be suffering from frost bite…either that or the blood flow had iced up from the waist down…and I could be expected to suffer the humiliation of being sliced in half to prevent the frostbite from spreading further up my torso.

I pointed down off the shoulder of the road. The bottom of the ditch was some one point five metres below the road surface. I looked around me to make sure I was right…yep, those two tall Gums were still beautiful noble trees, another closer to the road having long ago died but failing in its duty to fall across the road or across the nearby boundary fence. Closer to our position but on the other side of the property line, a grove of healthy gum stood tall where cattle snoozed out of the summer heat…when it was summer, and you could then complain about the heat…not the cold!

“That’s where his body was found. At seven-thirty on a cloudy, grey morning. June ten, Nineteen Ninety-four…by a local Cockie…heading into town. He lost his breakfast but managed to phone it into the local Armidale cops”.

“That’s almost thirty years to the day!” My young partner murmured, rugged up to the eyeballs in two puffer-jackets and a woollen beanie with an enormous pom-pom on top pulled well over her forehead. Only young females could get away with the outfit.

She scratched her chin unaware of my thoughts.