Doing my bit for the boys in blue

I always thought I’d be a good police detective. Then I found out that you have to actually work your way up from humble beat cop and do a lot of study, and potentially be attacked by sunburned drunks with mullets who will later puke on you on the way to the station.

I would have much preferred to just sit a single 3 hour exam with questions that could all be answered by those seriously committed to the Crime and Investigation Channel, such as ‘loosely describe the most famous ricin murder ever (no hard dates or details necessary, just demonstrate that you dig the whole vibe of it)’.

6 days ago a taxi driver was murdered on my street. The police have caught two young suspects, but are apparently still keen to gather more hard evidence, because they were still out and about in the neighbourhood as recently as yesterday evening.

I was walking home from the gym, and spotted a cop standing on the pavement looking toward some houses. I never know whether to smile and say gidday to them, because that is also what I’d do if I had a large cache of drugs up my arse and was overcompensating with friendliness. I figure every cop thinks like this and if they don’t they shouldn’t be on the force for reasons of sheer naivety.

So rather than stare at my feet and look classically guilty, I generally tend to go half way and make eye contact with a slight pencil-thin grimace of a smile, as would an IRA militant in the 70s lusting for vengeance for his fallen brother.

As I pass him, the policeman looks at me and says ‘how far have you come along this street?’. My immediate thought is, ‘I’m going to bust this case wide open, about fucking time they got me involved.’ So I say ‘I’ve come all the way from the square’.

At this point I should say that I’ve come straight from the gym, having not showered there for obvious reasons. I have enormous sweat patches all over my body, and probably look like I’ve just run straight from knocking off a petrol station.

The cop says ‘could I ask you to do something for me?’. I immediately realise he needs me to cover him, or to go through a window for him because clearly I have the athletic training for such a mission.

‘Could I ask you to walk on the other side of the street, we’ve got a sniffer dog out’.

‘Yeah no worries’.

So I’m proud to have done my bit, which was in many ways as important as actually arresting the suspects.

And I’m glad I didn’t permanently maim the sniffer dog. The cop must have been thinking ‘my God, look at this sweaty bastard, he could ruin Jasper’s finely-tuned sense of smell for all time, or at the very least cause a complete retraining.’

Bloody pigs.