Sister-In-Law Surveillance

Our ice-creams finished, we went for a walk and into Colley Reserve, a nice park opposite the marina and full of towering Norfolk Island Pines. Daniel produced from his backpack a football, and he, Paul and Dad were playing around with the kids having a bit of a kick. Fiona and Mum stood talking not far away.

Emma and Liam were having fun as were Heaven and Neveah, and they seemed to show plenty of talent. Sporting genes ran through our family, Daniel obviously a professional cricketer and having also played Australian Rules football at a high level. At school, Fiona and I were good at netball and athletics. Mum, her sister and brother were good at sports, and Dad and his brother played high level Australian Rules football and cricket, our aunts and uncles on both sides producing plenty of sports-minded cousins.

Sports were also popular in the Philby family, Paul and his sister both very athletic and married to Fiona, Emma and Liam were showing their sporting potential. Sammi-Jo had been a cheerleader as were her sisters so obviously athletic talent there to master the routines, and with Sammi-Jo married to a professional cricketer sporting DNA should be prominent in their kids' genes.

This was true for Heaven and Neveah, the girls' seemed very interested in their Dads' cricket career and I had seen them playing with a cricket bat and ball, the sporting talent passed down from Daniel very obvious. It was the same now with the football, the girls just had that X factor about them. In the past, Sammi-Jo had dressed up the twins in miniature cricket outfits and had them pose for tons of photos to be posted online. While generally I thought Sammi-Jo posted too much about her kids online, I had to admit these photos of the girls were cute, and clearly they loved it, not only dressing up as miniature cricketers but playing the game too.

Inexplicably though, I had never once seen Zayden show any interest or talent in sports. True, he was only three and probably just a late bloomer, but his discomfort and a clear distaste for playing with the football was obvious now.

"Come on buddy, kick the football to Grandpa," Daniel smiled patiently, Dad holding up his arms to mark the ball.

"You can do it mate, kick the ball like your Dad and Uncle Paul showed you," said Dad encouragingly.

Zayden looked at his father, uncle, sisters, cousins and grandfather, dropped the football on the ground and began to cry. "I want Mummy, I want Mummy," he sobbed through his tears.

I thought that he was probably just tired, and while probably this was true, I had also seen this type of thing every time Daniel tried to get his young son interested in sports, especially cricket. It was like the sporting genes had missed him altogether.

Zayden wouldn't be the only kid in history not to pick up a talent running through a family, in our case sports, and there would always be black sheep in every family, but this was quite odd especially given his active dislike of sports. Maybe Zayden would be one of those kids who would grow to be a teenager who did the opposite of their family? Or then again, maybe sports would just 'click' in a few years' time and he would be a champion footballer, cricketer or good at another sport?

"Mummy, Mummy, I want Mummy," Zayden continued to wail, and I looked for Sammi-Jo, spotting her a long distance away at the other end of the park, near the Anzac Highway roundabout underneath a Norfolk Island Pine, and talking on her phone.

It was unusual for Sammi-Jo to go away and talk on her phone, normally she would talk loudly and in front of everyone about anything but she had done so today. And I noticed Mum standing rigid staring at her daughter-in-law in the distance, clearly displeased by the events of today, which seemed to be winding up with her youngest grandson making quite a scene sobbing for his mother.

*

Monday brought work, and work for me meant dealing with weird people. Lots of weird people, even weirder than my relatives. However, in my profession it was par for the course and I wouldn't have wanted to be doing anything else.

When I left high school, I knew what I wanted to do and my application to join the police force was sent in without delay. I got in and was delighted, and had ambitions of becoming a detective and working my way up through the ranks. After several years in the job and reaching the rank of Senior Constable I did train as a detective and got an acting role as a Detective Senior Constable for nine months, but unfortunately I had to return to uniform when this ended and was stuck at a police station which was uninspiring at best. My attempts to return to detective work or transfer were stymied and my abrasive boss was not supportive of my attempts to take my sergeant's exam, so I became a bit jaded.

During my stint in plain clothes I had encountered a man who ran a private detective agency named Ian Cairncross, who was a former police detective himself. Our paths had crossed during an investigation into a smash repairers, where the couple who owned it had become concerned that their son-in-law - a fat, sleazy, unpleasant guy with greasy skin and a pony-tail despite balding - was ripping off customers and re-birthing cars, and had engaged the private investigators to confirm their suspicions.

The police of course had become involved when the suspicions were proven to be true, and on top of that it was discovered that the son-in-law was using some of his ill-gotten gains to purchase illegal pornography the contents of which were disgusting beyond belief. It was of great satisfaction to see the sick nonce found guilty of all charges relating to his dishonest business practices and his reprehensible sexual tastes in court, and loaded into the back of a van to drive him to jail where he would find out the hard way what happened to perverts and rock spiders in prison.

At the time, Ian Cairncross had said that if I was ever looking to leave the police force I would make a first class private detective and he would be glad to have me working in his agency. By luck he was still interested in taking on another investigator due to increased workflow when I contacted him, so it was goodbye police, hello life as a private investigators.

Our office was in the trendy suburb of North Adelaide, and there were two female - myself and a girl named Claire Wake - and three male private investigators, including Ian himself, plus the receptionist Linda. It was a good job but with this type of work it was not usually 9 to 5 and therefore rare to find all seven of us at the office at the same time.

The main work we did was catching people fraudulently claiming insurance or benefits, investigating dishonest business partners and employees suspected of embezzlement, due diligence and of course outing cheating spouses. We could also take on cases that involved tracing people, but this was rarer nowadays due to the internet and social media and we were also cautious about involving ourselves in these due to stalkers.

Several weeks ago a man had tried to engage our services to trace his sister and two nieces, saying that he had recently been diagnosed with cancer and wanted to find his sister, explaining that they had had a falling out over an inheritance and he wanted to reconcile with her in the short time he had, regretting the estrangement and wanting to put things right. Nothing about this story was true. He was in fact a cruel and violent man who had served time in prison for domestic abuse, and the 'sister' and 'nieces' were in fact his ex-wife and two daughters, and since his release from prison he had been stalking them in an attempt to find them without success. We obviously saw through the lies quickly, and advised the police of the matter.

I had a pretty busy schedule this week, often the case the week before you go on holiday. I wasn't going away anywhere, just relaxing week at home going out a few places around Adelaide. On Monday I found myself at West Beach, keeping tabs on a young guy who was on leave on workers compensation and chasing a big fat payout from his employer's insurance company.

The injury was so severe that he could only spend two hours racing around on a jet-ski rather than three, and the next day his back seemed perfectly fine as he purchased a slab of beer at a liquor store in West Adelaide, carrying it out to his car on his shoulder. He then noticed a ten dollar note on the ground - how could I have dropped it there so carelessly? - and bent over to pick it up. I had it all filmed and photographed, and this slacker was not going to get any of his insurance payment, but his employment terminated and a prosecution for fraud.

On Wednesday I did some surveillance at a restaurant in the Norwood area where the proprietors were concerned about the number of 'runners' who had left without paying their bills in recent months, and feared that their niece and nephew who worked there were behind this, as all cases had happened when they were rostered on. Their suspicions were right, the niece and nephew were indeed allowing friends to eat at the restaurant and leave without paying in return for cash, then reporting that these customers had left without paying. I had it all recorded, and ready to go in my report.

On Thursday morning I was at the office, and entered the tea room to find my colleague Claire Wake standing at the sink, fixing herself a cup of tea.

I hadn't seen her in a couple of days, with both of us out on surveillance jobs and I greeted her. "Hi Claire."

Claire turned around and smiled. "Oh, hi Rachel."

If a toymaker was making a doll of a perfect human, my colleague Claire Wake could well be the result. Slim and with a beautiful figure, blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes, Claire was a picture of perfection, and the long pants and short-sleeved blouse she wore accentuated her wonderful figure. I also wore a short-sleeved blouse and trousers, and between my legs I could feel my knickers getting damp as my vagina responded to the sight of my stunning colleague.

One thing that made Claire so attractive was her Irish accent, she had a Northern Irish accent less commonly heard than the Southern Irish accent, her family from Belfast originally. Like me Claire was aged in her early 30s, but unlike me she wasn't a lesbian, and had a boyfriend. However, even if Claire was single and had Sapphic sexual tendencies, a romantic relationship with a work colleague was never a good idea, especially in our line of work.

"I haven't seen you around for a few days," I commented as I made myself some tea.

Claire shook her head. "No, I was down on Kangaroo Island on a job."

Kangaroo Island, about a two hour drive from Adelaide down the scenic Fleurieu Peninsula was one of my favorite spots in South Australia. "I love Kangaroo Island, it's such a nice place."

Claire smiled. "The guy I was following sure liked it. He told his wife he had to go back to Mount Gambier for work at the mines two days early, but instead he went dogging on Kangaroo Island."

"Dogging, where they meet up for group sex in cars and out in the open and perverts come and watch?"

"That's right. I was trying to get the photos, and there's these pervs and weirdos hiding in the bushes watching, and thinking I'm there to watch too and asking me if I wanted to have sex with them. I just told them I had my period so no thanks. Two of them backed off, but this other young guy said it was hotter when girls had their periods."

Claire and I laughed. "Next time, tell them you've got number threes," I advised.

"Number threes? I've never heard anyone call their periods that before. That's weird." Claire looked most dismayed.

I smiled. "You haven't met my brother's wife. And good luck getting that out of your head."

Again, Claire laughed. "Well next week I'll definitely be thinking that."

Our boss Ian Cairncross entered to make a cup of coffee. "Hi Claire, hi Rachel," he said.

"Hi Ian," we both said. Ian was a tall and fit man, and although aged in his mid-50s still a very good looking man, dashing and handsome, his light brown hair now starting to turn grey.

"Now, remember the meeting with our favorite client at 9.30," Ian said. He smiled. "No running out on jobs at short notice."

"Don't worry, I won't forget," I said.

"Me either, I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it," Claire said, rolling her eyes.

"I wish I could forget it and go and play golf instead," agreed our boss, as we went to go to work.

I was typing up my report on the Compo King and his antics on a jet ski, carrying the slab of beer and picking up the ten dollar note and thought that next week there would be a new Compo King to replace him, then when he was dethroned there would be a Compo Queen to take his place, then when she was dethroned a new Compo King would take the crown. And so on ad infinitum.

As was the case with the restaurant, there would always be dishonest employees and there would always be cheating partners, like the miner Claire had followed to Kangaroo Island and observed him go dogging, when he told his wife he had to return to work early in Mount Gambier.

I had followed up many cheating cases, and some were straightforward, man thinks his wife is cheating and she is; wife thinks her husband is cheating and he is. Usually these were straightforward cases of an affair, but sometimes there was a twist to it, like with Claire's recent case involving dogging.

One case of mine last year was a nerdy sort of guy who contacted us thinking that his hot girlfriend was cheating on him. I duly did the surveillance and found out that she was indeed cheating, but in the most bizarre way, belonging to some sort of fetish group where men dressed up as dogs and the women treated them as dogs, such as walking them on leads, feeding them dog food in a bowl on the floor, playing typical dog games with them such as fetch with the men running around on all fours barking, brushing them and allowing them to lick their faces, with the men dressed as dogs and the women treating them as dogs getting their rocks off in the process.

The poor boyfriend simply stared into space, unable to comprehend what I had seen and put in my report, and when he finally found words had said that he couldn't believe that he had broken up with a previous girlfriend because she kept six cats whom she dressed up in costumes for photos and who made him sleep on the couch because the cats slept on the bed with her when he stayed the night and there wasn't enough room for him too. She suddenly seemed so normal now. I thought perhaps this guy might be one of those people who might just be happier being single in life.

This wasn't the first or last time that I had worked a cheating case which had a strange outcome. There was one where a skinny girl was wondering what her equally skinny boyfriend was getting up to and as it turned out he was a secret pervert, hanging around female toilets or hiding in sand dunes at the beach or in the bushes at park, leaping out at fat girls, and only fat girls, to flash his penis at them. And on the subject of fat people, one of my investigations took me to Melbourne when a wife suspected her husband was cheating on her with a mistress during his frequent business trips there. As it turned out he was indeed cheating, but with a fat gay man young enough to be his son rather than a woman.

Like with the gay cheater in Melbourne, I did get to travel interstate on other assignments. Not all of our investigations involved cheating spouses, some involved family problems and these cases could get messy when kids were involved. Some were straightforward, tracking deadbeat dads and mooching mums not paying child support. Some were more complex. One was a guy from Darwin who was concerned that his ex-wife in Adelaide had brainwashed their young son into believing he was transgender, and that on visits to Darwin the boy insisted he was a boy and that his mother kept telling him he was a girl. A bit of surveillance from me in both Adelaide and Darwin confirmed the father's previously disregarded claims, and the final outcome was the boy climbed onto a plane with his Dad for a new life in the Northern Territory, happy to be a boy and with his father now the custodial parent.

Another involved a case where donations flowed in for a woman who claimed her daughter was sick with terminal leukemia, and this allowed her to fund life-saving treatments plus an all-expenses-paid trip to Queensland, supposedly the girl's dying wish. There were reasons to doubt the claims, and I followed them to the Sunshine State, trailing them around tourist attractions in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, soon finding proof that this mother was shaving her daughter's head, reinforcing that she was sick with cancer and dying and giving the child medication to induce lethargy and nausea and emulate the symptoms of cancer, brainwashing her son that his sister was terminally ill at the same time. The mother of course was arrested, charged with and imprisoned for fraud and child abuse and lost custody of the girl and her younger brother.

Some of my adultery cases turned up nothing, in some the 'cheating' partner was doing nothing wrong at all and innocent things were misconstrued. In others they were hiding something from their spouse, but there was nothing sexual. Like one case where the allegedly cheating husband was in fact secretly going to race meetings to bet on horses, more punting at the TAB or playing poker machines and spending hours at the Adelaide Casino trying to recoup his many losses brought on by a serious gambling problem. There was also a man who had lost his job and was trying to hide this from his wife, and another man whose secret drug problem was the issue not infidelity. Another case where a husband thought his wife was an adulteress turned up a different outcome, and she in fact had a problem with a shopping addiction.

Then there were the cases that completely fell off the Venn diagram and right off the distribution curve, and the recent case Claire and I had worked on and where the client was coming in to discuss this morning was just such a case.

I braced myself as the time of 9.30 arrived, and escorted by Linda the receptionist into the office walked the six-feet-two formidable form of the woman who had engaged us to keep tabs on her husband whom she believed to be cheating on her. Claire and I cringed at her loud voice, and we and Ian went to greet her and take her into the meeting room, where Claire closed the door.

The client's name was Barbara Blunt, and her surname could not be more appropriate. The old battle-axe sat in her seat, scowling through her large glasses, her face framed by grey hair, cross and unwelcoming. True she might have felt apprehension at what she was about to hear, but her demeanor was always the same. She reminded me of my horrid teacher in Year 6, who had started at the primary school in Woodville I attended fresh out of teachers' training school in the late 1940s, and was still there in the mid-1990s a number of years past retirement age. Fiona had had her, and Daniel suffered the same fate two years later.

"So, would you like a cup of tea Mrs. Blunt?" Ian asked.

Mrs. Blunt scowled at him. "I might say yes, only no doubt your secretary would prepare tea made with hot water from the tap and some generic brand tea bag. And I would prefer to get straight down to business Mr. Cairncross. Show me the evidence that Herbert is carrying on an extramarital affair like I have paid your agency to do."

Ian smiled. "As a matter of fact I have some excellent news for you Mrs. Blunt, and that is that we have uncovered no evidence that Mr. Blunt is being unfaithful to you."

Barbara Blunt looked angry and disappointed. Mostly when we found no evidence of cheating the partner would be relieved, but some were disappointed. Mrs. Blunt obviously fell into the second category, not to my surprise given my previous dealings with her.