Book 50! Huge thanks to Peter C Byrnes for writing FIFTY fantastic Murder Squad stories and sharing them with us free of charge.
This is the 50th Novella in the long-running series of mystery novels that tell the story of the Murder Squad Detective Joseph Lind. His career, his partners and colleagues and his family.
The NSW Police Force, along with elements of the AFP and ADF have just completed their most demanding and perilous combined undertaking when seven young Jihadist Radicals orchestrate two suicide attacks in different parts of Sydney, within the CBD and a western suburbs educational facility.
Thankfully, the well-orchestrated but ill-devised raids only cost the lives of the young Terrorists themselves.
During operations to evacuate neighbours from around the suspected location when two of the remaining seven Terrorist have gone to ground, the stench of death is unmistakable. However, the house in question is too close to the suspected burrow of the young Jihadists and the whole area had to be hurriedly evacuated.
It is two days before Lind, his partner Shelley Anne Shield and their young Probationary Detective Frederica Stonefield have a chance to examine the source of the odour.
A Labrador dog that has had its head belted in and its stomach split open leads to another gory find.
The immediate two suspects, the former husband and the existing De Facto Husband have both gone missing, strengthening the suspicion around one or both for the callous and bloody scene that confronts the three when they break into the small Housing Commission suburban home.
Exctract:
Several days after the multiple Terrorist Attacks on Sydney Harbour and Meadowbank TAFE.
We lost several days as everything seemed to freeze with absolute priority given to the attempted Terrorist Attacks on the Harbour at Circular Quay and twenty minutes later, the attack on Meadowbank TAFE College.
For all of us, everything else stopped!
Replays of the Interviews held between some high-ranking guy in the AFP and his Deputy and the Federal DPP Deputy and the surviving member of the Meadowbank Shooting was available for us to view. The lone survivor to the Harbour attempt was still under Doctor’s Orders. The sole survivor of the Meadowbank attack was however, being unmercifully interviewed over and over again. He had just turned eighteen years of age, and as such was being treated as an adult.
Along with a mass of Officers from the Police Building and a select few from the Media, we sat through three recorded interviews with the young bloke conducted in the twenty-four-hour period two days after the coordinated terrorist attacks. This to wear the young guy down, to make him more pliable. To rub raw his nerves and his ability to resist.
“They are trying to make him squirm a bit…three long interviews. A lot of repetition…just to get him off-balance…to give him the shits.”
“Isn’t he a minor?”
“No! Apparently, he has just turned eighteen, several weeks before he and his brothers and cousins wanted to annihilate several thousand people, so they believed. The youngest guy was sixteen. He was the guy who shot himself in the foot and bleed out, dying like a dog in the middle of the road at Meadowbank…and his two older brothers left him there…no honour amongst thieves, eh?” I replied, a disgusted tone of voice.
Shelley shook her head…
“They want the names of his Mentor…or Mentors…or Handlers for want of a better name. That is why they are leaning on him. I suspect they may already know but they want corroboration.”
“The guy is what? Eighteen…a bloody kid. That’s a little heavy, isn’t it? This whole scene? What makes a kid of that age want to do such a thing?”
“I reckon if they knew this wasn’t going to be replayed and viewed by hundreds of people including the Media, they’d have him up against the wall, walloping into him. The AFP have far greater leniency over Interviews than we do…just look at these replays. We would never be permitted to replay such information before the Preliminary Court Hearing or Court Proceedings…and the AFP usually hold those matters in camera. They want this to be a ‘show case’ as a warning to any other twit who thinks he can make Nirvana…or whatever they call it. Their Heaven…up there. Under the new Terrorist Laws that have only just been passed…they can just about do what they like…and besides, those two raids could have gone another way with thousands of fatalities…pure luck their Intel was so amateurish. I’d want to keep the little bastard off-balance with several interviews on the same day as well.” This I stated with anger.
It was the following morning that the father of the young lads who carried out the Attacks, shot dead two Mosque Officials who the AFP suspected had been the lad’s Handlers.
Shelley, Rickie and I were handed the Case in the initial stages. Me knowing full well once the ‘Shooter’ in this case was identified and his Victims possibly those who had turned seven young kids into blood-seeking Terrorists, the AFP would claim the Case, saying it was connected to the Terrorist Attacks and therefore should be handed over to them, leaving me seething.