Inside the Law. Vikki Petraitis

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СКАЧАТЬ The would-be rescuers tried desperately to shield the trapped infant with blankets but were soon driven back by the flames.

      Field shrugged sadly. ‘There was nothing anyone could do.’

      In another accident, a man lost control of his car on a corrugated country road, and careered into a small bridge where he was trapped. A private security officer saw the accident and stopped to help. He couldn’t free the man’s leg which was caught under the dashboard, so he began running to get help at a nearby farmhouse. He heard the man yelling and turned back to see smoke coming from the car’s engine. The security man continued running to the farmhouse but help didn’t arrive in time.

      When Field attended the scene, the driver’s charred body was found with his arms raised defensively in front to shield his face.

      The security man told him, ‘I would have given a million dollars for a fire extinguisher that day’.

      Not all road fatalities are added to the state’s annual road toll – some are suicides and some are murder – but any involving a car or a road may be investigated by the accident squad.

      Field said investigators must have an open mind.

      ‘It is easy for experts to tell the difference between someone who has been hit by a car, and someone who was run over to make it look like an accident.’

      Pedestrians hit by cars typically suffer similar injuries, quite different to someone who is run over while already on the ground. Damage to the victim’s legs at the height of the car’s bumper bar is usual, as are head injuries where the victim is thrown up onto the bonnet and perhaps smash the windscreen.

      Investigators get the occasional case of murder. Field says it is not unheard of for a husband to line up his car with the biggest power pole or truck he can find and, just before impact, unclasp his wife’s seat belt, ramming only her side of the car. He kills her but walks away relatively unscathed.

      These cases are difficult but not impossible to prove.

      Chris Field says that the function of the accident squad is to investigate any road fatality with three or more victims; any case involving police – on or off-duty; and any case of criminal negligence. Field said police are just as accountable as everybody else and the accident squad is always called in as an independent investigator when police are involved in serious collisions.

      Field occasionally lectured at the police academy and told new recruits bluntly of their responsibility on the roads. Field called it ‘double jeopardy’ if police are involved in a collision. He said not only are they investigated by the accident squad, but they are also investigated by the police internal investigation department. The case is then passed to the state Ombudsman for independent review.

      Field said these exacting standards meant that the public could be assured that police neither receive nor expect special treatment.

      The success rate of the accident squad is high. In fact 95 per cent of hit-and-run cases are solved with the examination of physical evidence and the help of witnesses.

      Senior Constable Chris Field was understandably cynical about the general messages of road safety. He conceded that innovations such as speed cameras have slowed traffic down, but sadly concluded it was the ‘hip pocket’ effect rather than drivers behaving better because they should.

      ‘Road safety is ultimately society’s responsibility. If society believes that drink driving is wrong, then its members will actively encourage each other not to drink and drive.

      ‘I remember when it was considered normal – even humorous – for a drunk to stagger to his car and drive home. This attitude has clearly changed. Death on the roads is no longer considered an inevitable part of driving.’

      But one thing that Chris Field was certain of: as long as people continue to flout road rules, drink and drive, speed, and drive while tired, the accident squad will never be short of customers.

      7. The Cover Girl & the Serial Killer

      My second book Victims, Crimes and Investigators came out in early 1994. I wanted to call the book Cops because essentially it was about policing and the personal experience of cops. The publisher, however, wanted a title to match a picture they’d found for the cover. It was a woman walking nervously down a dark alleyway.

      Even though I didn’t like the cover or the title, I wasn’t about to argue with my new publishing house. My first publisher had told me what was on the inside of the book was mine and what was on the outside – cover image, title, tagline – was marketing.

      I had my first ever author photograph taken for the back cover. I also met Shirley Hardy-Rix who was to be my publicist for the book. I visited Shirley at her home. In the room where we chatted, she had a bookshelf that contained multiple copies of her own books. She said it was important to keep a handful of copies for yourself because books went out of print and disappeared. My own library had hundreds of true crime books from overseas and on Shirley’s advice, I added mine to the collection.

      Shirley was a great publicist and got me a cover story on The Australasian Post.

      A Post photographer and journalist came to my house. While the photographer was taking what would amount to nine rolls of film, my husband chatted away to the journalist. From my posing position, leaning at weird angles, I couldn’t signal to him that he wasn’t just ‘having a chat’ he was being interviewed. Sure enough, he was quoted in the article.

      When the magazine came out, it was in every supermarket in multiple racks at the end of each checkout counter. Shopping with my seven-year-old daughter was embarrassing.

      ‘There you are, Mummy!’ she’d say loudly every time she saw a copy of The Post. ‘There you are again! It’s Mummy!’

      Being on the cover of a magazine so widely available seemed to drive home to people close to me that writing wasn’t just a quirky hobby that I worked around my real job. It was something important, something worthy of recognition. Something people around the country were interested in.

      This realisation was a little jarring for me too. I hadn’t been writing for fame. I had become a writer because there were stories I wanted to tell; worthy stories, important stories.

      Such public exposure meant it was a little harder to keep my writing and teaching life separate. In the days before true-crime stories were popular in Australia, I could understand that a parent might not necessarily want their child taught by someone who spent their leisure hours writing true crime stories. I worked at a primary school – a land far, far away from the writing I did.

      The world of public opinion was also something I had to learn to navigate. I had to learn to cope with comments about my books, or their subject matter, not all positive, from people I knew. One person made a point of saying to me, ‘Oh I would never read that kind of book.’ Never lost for words, I replied, ‘Lucky for me and my book sales, thousands of people do read that kind of book.’

      In an episode of Dr Phil, he performs an intervention on a woman and she calls him a quack. Dr Phil replies with words to the effect: ‘Aren’t I lucky that no part of my self-esteem is dependent on your opinion of me.’ I loved this – he was saying exactly how I felt. A writer’s self-worth has to come from within, not from СКАЧАТЬ