The House on Hill Street by Judy Nunn Page B

running gag amongst his colleagues for the past twenty years had been ‘give ‘em Curry’, and they weren’t altogether joking. But Curry himself was the first to admit that he and young Luke made an excellent team. They had the ‘good cop, bad cop’ interrogation routine down to a fine art.
    It was late afternoon as the two plain clothes detectives approached the house on Hill Street. The street was deserted and, having parked their car around the corner out of sight, they made their approach on foot. Their demeanour was casual – people could be watching from nearby windows.
    There was no sign of movement within the house – the front door was closed and the curtains drawn – so the officers made their way down the side path to the rear of the property, their plan being to check the layout of the place.
    Away from prying eyes, they took stock of their surrounds. They were in a small garden with a potting shed; a head-high fence separated them from the adjoining terrace house. There were windows either side of the back door and, creeping to the nearest one, Curry peered into what was obviously the kitchen. The room was deserted, but there had clearly been a great deal of recent activity.
    ‘Holy shit,’ he muttered.
    Luke joined him and, gazing through the window, his gasp was audible.
    Both men drew their weapons.
    They glanced at each other. The look in Luke’s eyes spoke multitudes, and Curry’s responding look said exactly the same thing. In all his years as a police officer, he too had seen nothing like this.
    They crept to the back door. Very slowly, very gently, Curry tested the old-fashioned knob of its handle. He expected to find the door locked, but it wasn’t. The knob turned, the door opened, and the two men stepped into the carnage.
    The walls, the benches, the floor, even the ceiling – all was awash with blood. Strewn about on surfaces were weapons and tools of every description, each bearing evidence of recent use: knives, meat cleavers, an axe, a hacksaw, and, most repulsive of all, sitting in a corner by the power outlets, an electric blender as bloodied as its surrounds.
    Luke wanted to throw up, but he couldn’t – he was too terrified. The adrenalin was pumping through his body at an alarming rate. Who was responsible for this massacre?
    Curry jerked his head towards the open door opposite that led to the hallway and the rest of the house. Revolvers at the ready, they started towards it.
    Then, to their right, they heard the flush of a lavatory.
    They whirled to face the sound, their .38s trained upon the door to the side, which they now realised led off to the bathroom. The seconds ticked heavily by, a full minute that felt like an hour. Then the door opened and a man appeared. In his early fifties, of average height and build, with thinning grey-brown hair, there was nothing remarkable about Bradley John Jameson.
    ‘Good heavens, what on earth are you doing here?’ he demanded. Nothing remarkable, that is, except his demeanour. Bradley John Jameson was not only unperturbed by the weapons trained upon him, he was plainly affronted by the presence of two strange men in his house.
    ‘Police,’ Curry barked. ‘Are you Bradley John Jameson?’
    ‘I am indeed.’ The professor’s face was a picture of outraged innocence. ‘What is the meaning of this invasion? I take it you gentlemen have a warrant?’
     
    Word sped via the grapevine in typical cop fashion. The more grisly the case, the quicker news of it got around, and this case was undoubtedly one of the grisliest.
    ‘He what!’
    ‘He flushed his wife down the toilet.’
    It wasn’t long before Bradley John Jameson became the talk of every police station in Tasmania.
    ‘You’ve got to be joking!’
    ‘Nope, it’s a fact. He chopped her up, boned her out, fed the meat through a blender and poured her down the bog.’
    ‘What did he do with the bones?’
    ‘They haven’t been found yet, but he put her head in the