Leah Giarratano: Vodka doesn't freeze

Her mask slipped back into place when she reached the cordoned-off homicide site, regaining her breath quickly after the hike up the hot beach track. She took in the scene around her. The colours were exaggerated – opal blues of the ocean and sky, blinding white sand dunes, the wet red and purple smashed face of the man lying in the dirt. An ill-looking couple of kids stood a few metres away, looking everywhere but at the body.

'Gordon,' Jill acknowledged the uniformed cop who worked downstairs in their unit. 'What've we got?'

Gordon was overweight and bright with sweat. Jill took the smallest step backwards when he spoke. His breath smelled like cigarettes and constipation.

'The kids over here found the body about half an hour ago,' said the officer. 'They called it in. Looks like he's forty-ish. Killed this morning. We interviewed the kids. They didn't see anything.'

He averted his eyes from hers and Jill detected something unsaid. She waited. When nothing was forthcoming, she decided to look around for herself before she spoke to the witnesses. A chopper droned above the scene, circling lazily, a massive buzzard. She squinted into the glare overhead. Channel Nine. She tugged the rim of her baseball cap lower and walked through hot sand to the body.

She took in the camera next to some neatly packaged sandwiches on the ground; a cling-wrapped bunch of grapes. It was like a child's packed lunch. She stood next to, but not disturbing, the blood-spattered towel on which the dead man had been sitting. There were already numerous sets of foot-prints leaving and leading to the towel. Some of the sandy indentations were blood smeared. She needed to find out how close the kids had come to the body. Glancing at them through her reflective glasses, Jill thought they now looked as if they wanted to be as far away from it as possible.

Movement below the cliff face caught her eye. Kids, swimming and playing in the wading pool at the edge of the ocean. Their giggles bubbled up with the breeze. On the rocks by the side of the pool, a woman changed a baby's nappy; another slathered sunblock over the plump belly of a toddler. She squatted carefully next to the towel, her head now at sitting-height. Perfect view. Sick fuck. Her disgusted glance at the corpse revealed that his fly was undone.

Jill straightened, tasting bile, and swayed for a moment. Telling herself it was just the heat, she made her way over to where Scotty was talking to the kids who'd called in the body.

They appeared no older than seventeen. Locals probably. It looked like the girl's nose had been sunburnt a few times already this summer; her skin peeled over her freckles. Right now, she looked pale under her tan, white around her eyes and mouth. She wore long board shorts, a bikini top, and no shoes. Her boyfriend's arm hugged her shoulders. They seemed to be holding each other up. He was tall, but he still had to look up at Scotty as he spoke.

'Jill, this is Adam Harvey and Tamara Wade. They live down on Clovelly Road. Came up at about eight this morning for a walk and found the body. Tamara's not feeling too good, and I told her she could go home and have a shower before they come in to make their statements.' Scotty turned to the boy. 'Before you go, Adam, I'd like you to meet Sergeant Jillian Jackson. Could you tell Jill about the car you saw before you found the body?'

'Yeah. All right.' The boy's voice sounded like he looked, thin and shaky. 'When we got to the car park around the back of here there was this new Mercedes. Red. A coupe? Tamara said she wants a car like that, and we just checked it out a bit, looked in the windows, you know.'

'Was anyone in the car, Adam?' asked Jill.

'Nah.'

'What about other cars?'

'Ah, yeah, like we were saying before, it was pretty quiet. Surf's shithouse, you know. But there was a van, surfer's van, probably. No-one was in the van either,' he said.

Jill asked, 'Did you see anyone around, Adam? Who else was around here?'

'We didn't see anyone up here, but when we were coming up from the beach we saw two guys with their boards heading down. We can't remember anyone else.'

'Do you remember seeing anyone, Tamara?'

'No. I've already told four people that.' Tamara was teenage-indignant, but her lower lip trembled. 'Can we go now? It stinks here.'

The sun was high and hot now. A sheet of blowflies surfed air currents over the body. The smell filled Jill's mouth and had permeated her hair. She nodded, and Scotty directed the kids away, ensuring he had all their details, then came back to where Jill was standing with the uniformeds.

'Did you see the camera?' Scotty wanted to know.

'He could've been an artist.' Jill didn't believe it.

'With his pants down? This guy's a squirrel.'

Jill's silence indicated her agreement. Together they watched two men draw closer. The man leading was older, his shiny head already scorched by the sun. The officer behind him, a boy in comparison, offered his hand when the man's footing slipped in the sand. It was slapped away.

'Finally. The ME's here,' Scotty said.

Scotty and Jill walked over to join the police medical examiner and his assistant. The kid dropped the heavy bags he'd been toting.

'Could you be any more rough with that equipment, Jarred? Honestly!' The medical examiner wiped at his forehead with a lavender handkerchief. Scotty smirked at Jill while the man leaned on his assistant and emptied the sand from his shoes.

'Let's get everyone away from this area,' he snapped, motioning Jill and Scotty to follow him. 'This is a crime scene.'

No kidding, Jill sighed inwardly. She fell in behind the bristling doctor. They'd be in the sun for a while yet. Mercy Merris didn't notice the driver of the courier van screaming 'Crazy bitch!' as he over-corrected and almost lost control when she sped past. Already two lanes away from him on the freeway heading southwest, her black curls streamed with her cigarette smoke out the window of her red Mercedes CLK. Belting out Aretha Franklin, she half-read one of the files propped open on her passenger seat; files she wasn't supposed to have removed from the psych hospital. She expertly flipped open her phone when it rang and overtook two cars in the left lane. Late again. They'd want to tell her her 11 a.m. appointment had arrived and her 10 a.m. patient was becoming impatient.

She recognised the voice of an ex-patient, Lisa, crying, halfway through a sentence that didn't make sense.

'… and I wasn't there for her and I said I would be…' The voice on the phone sounded fractured, slightly hysterical.

'Lisa. Calm down. What's wrong?' Mercy was surprised to hear her so distraught. Their therapy had been over for months now, and the last time they'd talked Lisa had been functional, rational. Mercy hadn't thought she would regret giving Lisa her private phone number.

'Calm down, Lisa,' she said again, suddenly tired. 'What's happening?' She glanced at the dash clock. Shit, she swore inwardly as she saw the time. She pressed the accelerator a little harder, then noticed a cop car ahead. Great, she thought, that's all I need, another speeding fine on the way to work. She jabbed the CD off and swerved her car into the break-down lane. She braked hard and the files from the passenger seat flew forward, merging into a mess on the floor.

Mercy heard Lisa's voice from the mobile still in her hand.

'It's Carly Kaplan,' Lisa sobbed. 'She killed herself last night. You weren't there for her either.'

Mercy felt, rather than heard, a high-pitched whine begin in her head. Guilty thoughts of her last session with Carly, one of her most troubled patients, stabbed at her consciousness.

Carly had threatened suicide in her last session, as she did almost every session, but Mercy had helped her consider other options, refusing to give in and admit her again to hospital – Carly seemed to deteriorate further when in hospital. She'd seemed calm when the session ended.