chinese whispers

When a crime occurs in a country town it really gets the gossip and the rumours running wild.

I live in a pretty violent town I think. For a population of under twenty thousand, there's plenty of murder and mayhem going on. In fact last month the town had what the local paper called a Crime Spree.

Spree. Makes it sound like we're all out having a fun old time. Of course that didn't include the murder. That was this month. Just general spree.

So Daz rings me up one morning last week and said

there's a crime scene at the brothel

what happened?

don't know, I'll go find out.

So off he went to question the policewoman guarding the scene. She said

I can't tell you what happened, but there's been a lot of crime this end of town since the nightclub opened.

He said

We need more police in town on weekends

She said

You need more taxis

Well, thats one way of looking at it I guess.

So off he went to his next reliable source. The panel beater.

Oh yes, some guy tried to set two other people alight, then went around the corner and set a house on fire.

Hmm. Off to the next source. The windscreen repair man

A beating he said. A gang of teens belted up two guys. One dead, one on life support.

Holy shit, thats bad.

Then later on he's at the bottle shop and the woman who works there tells him

It was a shooting. A gang of kids (well known in town) shot two guys. One dead.

Now Daz does work at the brothel. Hang on, fixing the airconditioning that is! So I said to him

Just go over there and do something dodgy to the airconditioners so they have to call you in, then ask what happened.

Can't, they're on the roof.

Then wouldn't you know it, my most reliable source of information came home from school. Lizzie. I tell you, if you want to keep up to date with whats news, breed yourself a teenage girl.

Turns out it was the bashing that happened. No one dead thank god. But two in hospital. And everyone in her group knowing who did it. I asked her if she thought there could've been a totally unrelated shooting somewhere else in town. She said no, but there had been a house set on fire, but not by these boys.

Anyway turns out Chief Wiggum is not running our police force like I feared. I was thinking they may be the only ones in town that didn't know who did it. I was contempleting an anonymous phone call today if there wasn't some news in the paper. But they're onto it. And I believe they've even solved the murder.

You know, these young men, with their fists and feet ready and willing really worry me. I read in the paper yesterday that two guys were walking home late one night and they were beaten badly. A car stopped and two guys and a girl got out with bats and, what was it, something like stakes and belted them. Now you don't carry bats around in the car unless you're planning on hurting someone with them. We had a guy killed here a couple of years ago in a bashing/kicking episode. I wonder where all this anger has come from. It's not really anger, just a willingness to hurt someone, badly, for no reason, with no thought of the consequences. 

You may remember that last year Lloyd travelled overseas spending a lot of the time on his own. England, Europe, America and I didn't worry about him half as as much as I do when he's here on a friday night walking home from the pub.

Just another reason for me to save hard to get my little house, away from the world, where I can become a recluse.

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