This is the 49th Novella in the Series detailing the life and career of Detective Joseph Lind and his partner Detective Shelley Anne Shields.
While Lind had been in Hospital recovering from a massive Heart Attack and a head injury suffered as he had collapsed, Shelley Shields became the mentor of a promising young Probationary Detective, Frederica Stonefield who had just completed her stint at the Police Academy in Goulburn as Dux of her Intake Year.
She remained under the tutelage of the pair even after Lind returned to his post.
Joseph Lind has been severely affected by the brutal homicide death of his long-time friend, Brendan ‘Knackers’ Waszackinack. An AFP Officer who had spent the majority of his career in undercover work, most of it overseas. The AFP Officer was preparing to retire and relocate to Perth with his Life Partner to be close to two of his kids and families. This involved the selling of his water-front property at Fairlight on the Northern Arm of Sydney Harbour.
While Lind assessed his death as being connected somehow to the Auction of the home in Sydney, the AFP had not proceeded that far on the Case.
And, while Australia had so far escaped the brutal attempts and loss of life experienced by most overseas countries at the hands of Muslim Radicals, the experts are always warning the Public it was not a matter of if…but when!
Sydney is gripped by two brazen attacks by young Jihadist radicals that paralyses the city and places all the City’s emergency Services into overdrive and stretched to the limit.
These attacks rail-road Detective Lind’s attempts at trying to solve the matter of his mate’s death, but it fortuitously brings together the AFP Lead Detective on the Case and Detective Lind into several brain-storming sessions that aid in the eventual solving of the murder.
Excerpt:
I tried to open my eyes but they seemed to be stuck shut with the eye-lids refusing to obey my command. That, or they had a mind of their own and wanted to remain tightly shut as though the outside world was not a great place to view! I thought I tried to turn my head but it remained stock still. It wouldn’t seem to obey the command though I didn’t seem that fazed about the situation as I dozed right off again…or that is what I thought the ‘nothingness’ was!
Was that what death was like?
Nothingness!
No light shining brightly? No heavenly visage of a set of Pearly Gates just visible through a cloudy sky? Constantly striving to arrive but even with superhuman endeavour, never getting any closer?
Or was it just nothingness?
Time was not a factor in this ‘nothingness’ world. It was if ‘time’ itself had been relegated to another world where it was considered important. Slipped through a crease…a fold into a parallel Universe.
I thought I recognised Tellie’s voice saying something softly to me with her mouth close to my ear but it floated away in the darkness. I thought I got a whiff of her familiar perfume and I tried to catch her attention, failing dismally, so it seemed.
It would have been a little while later I suspected, when I managed to blink a couple of times but I could not focus my eyes. Again, I seemed to drift away without any conscious effort, not even sure where I was or what was happening.
This feeling of nothingness was strange. I wondered whether this was how death was supposed to feel like…but if that was the case, I should not register anything…even thoughts…or being able to hear familiar voices…or smells, the odours of people close to me.
I saw bright pin-pricks of light and a clash of voices. A kaleidoscope of noise, laughter and loud voices asking me whether I could hear them. A piercing sound of some type of alarm, so I thought groggily…and then nothing. This seemed to occur several times in a regular cycle before again, there was nothing.
Several times I thought I heard some-one scream out could I hear them.
“Mister Lind? Mister Lind? Can you hear me?”
I could, but my response seemed to drift off into the blackness…and then I wasn’t too sure whether I heard anything at all as it was all a figment of my imagination as I could hear nothing.
An occasional glimpse of a conversation, some-one holding my hand, a little voice crying out for her Daddy…a pleasant voice welcoming me back to the land of the living … and then nothing.
