My Island Homicide by Catherine Titasey Read Free Book Online Page A

end up a spinster.

Chapter 6
    â€˜Hello? Anyone home?’ Shay cooed into the station foyer. ‘I’ll get those checks on Mrs Bintu before we see her.’
    As I was checking my emails, Shay brought me the computer printouts. ‘Bit of history for the Bintus. Nineteen years of DV between them.’
    I skimmed the fine print. ‘This one looks interesting. Mrs Bintu got probation for an assault at the Railway Hotel in 2009. That must be the one with the barmaid Georgia told us about.’
    â€˜Here is the QP9 for that one.’
    â€˜Defendant, Mrs Alia Bintu, hauled complainant bar attendant at Railway Hotel across counter, threatening to “drill her pretty face”. Defendant headbutted complainant, splitting her eyebrow, which required three stitches. Defendant hit defendant’s husband with a pool cue.’ I looked at Shay. ‘Strange, Mr Bintu didn’t take action against his wife for assault.’
    â€˜She would probably hit him for that,’ said Shay without humour, but I laughed. ‘What’s so funny?’
    â€˜He didn’t charge her with assault because she would have assaulted him if he did?’
    She gave me a look suggesting I was demented.
    Shay didn’t get it. I wondered flatly where the humour really was. If I hadn’t toughened up and seen the lighter side of crime in almost two decades of policing, I would have been crushed by the volume of violent and evil offending I saw, including the endless spiral of domestic violence. Over the years, I’d attended many call-outs to DV incidents. I’d seen the psychological bind victims found themselves in, like Mr and Mrs Bintu. It occurred to me that maydh could be explained in the same way: maydh victims allowed their partner, the sorcerer, to overpower them and their mind, a form of submission.
    There was no way I was going to entertain any notion of maydh to explain Melissa’s disappearance, but I did wonder if Mrs Bintu was morally responsible for it. If Melissa was depressed, could Mrs Bintu’s threats have been so intimidating or forceful that Melissa was traumatised to the point of suicide? If so, could Mrs Bintu be charged with manslaughter?
    I remembered the eggshell skull cases I’d studied in criminal law lectures for my undergraduate degree. One man punches another man in the head, who crumples to the ground. The autopsy shows that the dead man had an abnormally thin skull and died as a result of a blow that would have simply knocked anyone else off balance. The defendant argues that he shouldn’t be guilty of manslaughter because the victim had a rare condition, a skull as thin as an eggshell. But the jury finds him guilty of manslaughter because an offender must take his victim as he finds him. And so, Mrs Bintu takes her victim as she finds her.
    Shay was jangling the car keys next to me.
    â€˜Hang on,’ I said. I’d just received an email from Jenny, the subject ‘Jackson Taurus, AKA Molester of Millman Hill’.
    I hoped Mr Taurus had no alibi on the night of Melissa’s disappearance. Unfortunately, according to Jenny’s email, last night he’d been rolling around on his sister’s lounge, complaining of his aching jaw and smoking marijuana to dull the pain.
    Damn it. We needed to see Mrs Bintu.
    Shay and I hopped straight into the car. In the main street near the Royal Hotel, a black and white dog bolted from the footpath and raced us until it was distracted by a poodle walking with its owner. I shook my head. This place was overrun by dogs.
    As soon as Shay pulled up in front of the Bintus’ property, I was struck by a heavy sadness. The house appeared to be newly renovated with a shiny roof and fresh pastel-green paint. But the yard was littered with broken toys, a pram frame, a white plastic chair with only two legs, two-minute noodle and chip packets, soft-drink cans and quite a few Sunnyvale Special Selection Fruity Lexia