Free Roll With It by Nick Place Page B

for it, ask what everyone in the squad wanted to know but was too chicken to ask: ‘So what’s it like to shoot someone?’
    Laver smiled, acknowledging her bravery. Then frowned, looking for words. ‘It’s … surreal,’ he finally managed. ‘It’s one of those moments that you can’t believe is happening, even as it is. Like you’re watching a movie but you know you’re not. It’s real. But your brain can’t quite compute that reality.’
    She took it in. Was back seven years, telling her older sister, hearing herself say the words, that their grandmother was lying dead in the bedroom. ‘Yes, that makes sense.’
    Laver suddenly stood, stretched and then grinned down at her. ‘I’ll bet your nickname is OJ. You know, like the orange juice.’
    What? Grasping for the conversational change of gear, she stared at him.
    ‘Valencia orange juice? No?’
    She rolled her eyes, getting it now, and laughed. ‘Oh god. You men and your nicknames.’
    As the morning progressed, Cecy felt more and more conflicted. Go-by-the-book recovery Cecy was struggling with her partner’s often complete disregard for the job – but there was another part of her, that other part, that couldn’t get enough of hitting the road with Laver. At lunch, she asked Slatts if she could have more shifts with the newbie, and watched her boss put his head in his hands.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Your caffeine intake been down? Life getting too comfortable so you need a grenade thrown into the mix?’
    ‘I just find his approach to police work … interesting.’
    ‘That’s what worries me.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    Slattery sighed. ‘Cecy, I’ve watched you develop as a police officer with great potential, doing everything by the book, cutting no corners, exceeding all KPIs. And now you want to join our five-minute freak show?’
    ‘It’s hard to explain. You know I love the job, the rules. But it’s fascinating to see a cop with so many years on the road, knowing what’s worth pressing and what isn’t.’
    ‘I don’t want him to take you down with him, Cecy.’
    ‘Well, how about we’re partnered semi-permanently rather than permanently?’
    Slatts sighed again. ‘For the nanosecond he survives here. Look, I’ll give you a few shifts together. It’ll help keep Laver away from Standish and Ollerton. They might kill him if I let them get their hands on him.’
    ‘Thanks, boss.’
    ‘Your funeral.’
    ‘I’m a big enough girl to take the risk. Either way, it won’t be boring,’ she smiled.
    Slattery had to admit she was right about that.
    So Cecy rode out with Laver from that afternoon, getting to watch him first hand – someone with more than a decade’s experience as a cop in the murkiest end of the criminal pool. She knew enough to give him space when his face darkened and he got silent, but loved it when he broke free of whatever was consuming him and started to talk.
    He told her the story of how inhumanely tough the selection process for the Special Operations Group had been, how he’d known he was in for a hard time the moment he finished climbing one of Victoria’s steeper mountains only to find makeshift hospital tents and drips waiting for them – the day not even half over. Candidate after candidate had ended up on those drips; one was even hospitalised from being pushed far too hard for far too long. Laver had been close to delirious, not even sure how he survived it, his body operating on memory by the end. He watched a mate crumple next to him, a mate who had remorselessly trained physically for three years for this one test.
    Telling her how, once he got into that squad, he’d been king of the world. Cecy open-mouthed as he sipped coffee and recalled the stories.
    Like him and his mate Dolfin drinking in a King Street nightclub at about 11 pm, partying hard on a day off, when Dolfin got a call that there was a siege, a gunman in a house, and they needed to get there. Dolfin explaining to the