The Call That Warned Him

“Some warnings don’t sound like alarms—they sound like someone saying your name.”

Approaching Gladys's car, I heard the faint whirr of the electric window motor as the glass slid down. The sound had a strangely anticipatory quality—like the drawing of a curtain before a scene you weren't sure you wanted to watch unfold.

"Gladys," I began, my voice carrying a tone of disappointment, "why were you texting whilst you were driving?"

The question was carefully phrased, couched in traffic enforcement rather than suspicion of criminal activity. It gave her room to answer without feeling cornered. Let the premise stay civilised, for now. There was no need to trigger defensiveness—not yet.

I leant in slightly, close enough to read her expression but maintaining professional distance. The car's interior smelled of air freshener—something floral, probably jasmine. The bag had shifted during her erratic driving, one bottle now visible at the top. Red wine. Expensive label. Not the cheap plonk you grabbed for a casual movie night.

"I wasn't texting," Gladys responded quickly, her tone sharp.

The denial landed too fast. No hesitation, no processing—just immediate dismissal. That alone was enough to set off alarm bells. People lie about speeding. About drink-driving. But when they lie that quickly, that decisively, they're usually guarding something more than a minor infringement.

Her breathing had quickened slightly. Not obvious, but there—the subtle expansion and contraction of her chest, the faint catch in her throat before she spoke. Fight-or-flight response beginning to activate. The body preparing for conflict even as the conscious mind attempted to project calm.

"But you were," I said, my tone calm but resolute. "My partner and I saw you. We watched you almost run off the road. You could have done yourself some serious harm, or worse, gone over the embankment."

Even as I said it, I felt a flicker of genuine concern beneath the accusation. The road was lethal this time of year—oil-slick with fallen gum leaves, shoulders soft from weeks of intermittent rain. That bend she drifted through had taken lives before. I'd attended one such accident three years ago—a teenager who'd overcorrected and gone through the barrier. The recovery operation had taken hours, the body identification longer.

"I already told you. I wasn't texting anyone," she insisted, her voice tightening around the words like they were the last line of defence.

The insistence made it worse. People who were only trying to avoid a fine usually backed off after a warning. They shrugged, admitted fault, apologised. But this? This was the kind of pushback that only made sense if the truth was costlier than the alternative.

Frustration prickled at the edges of my restraint. She was hiding something. Who was she protecting? Jamie? Kain? Someone we hadn't clocked yet?

"Gladys," I said, my tone hardening slightly, the civil veneer thinning, "Who were you texting?"

I kept my gaze level, trained directly on hers. No judgement. No aggression. Just presence. Stillness could do more than shouting ever did.

Under the weight of my stare, her composure faltered. Subtle but unmistakable. Her left eye twitched—an involuntary flutter that betrayed rising pressure. Her pupils shifted rapidly, scanning—not meeting my gaze now, but flicking left, right, like she was searching for an exit she hadn't already discounted.

These were the signs—the tells. Not the words, but what wrapped around them. The body betraying the mind's frantic work. I'd seen them in interview rooms, in lounge rooms, on front porches and hospital beds. People lying to protect others always looked the same: defiant on the surface, but silently unravelling beneath.

"I told you. I didn't text anybody. Here, check my phone for yourself," she snapped suddenly, thrusting the device toward me.

There it was. A calculated gambit, thrown down like a card she hoped would change the game. But it came too quickly, too emphatically. A move made under duress.

She unlocked the screen with a swipe, jabbing it into my hands before I could reply. The phone was warm in my palm, still carrying the heat of her skin. That simple, human trace made it feel strangely intimate—like holding a page torn from someone else's diary. These weren't just messages. They were windows into private corridors I was now invited into.

I hesitated—only briefly—but enough to register the weight of what I was about to do. She'd offered. Voluntarily. That was the legal bar cleared. But there was still a line, however faint, between what we could do and what we should.

The law was clear on this point: consent rendered the search lawful. No warrant required. But the ethical dimension remained murky. What level of duress invalidated consent? At what point did a voluntary offer become coerced? These were questions that kept legal scholars employed and gave internal affairs investigators endless material.

I tapped through to her messages, eyes scanning for anything out of place. And then I saw it.

Beatrix Cramer—top of the list.

The name hit me like a drop of cold water down the spine.

Of course. Of course.

How the hell had I missed it?

Cramer. Gladys. Beatrix.

The pieces slid into place with sudden clarity, and I felt a pang of embarrassment twist in my chest. The name had been there the whole time—just out of reach, buried beneath years of other cases and other names.

Beatrix Cramer. A case from years ago. Distinct, memorable. She'd left an impression—one of those people who made a mark whether they meant to or not. Her presence had lingered, even after the paperwork was filed that declared the tragic death of her partner an accident, and the case closed. Soon after, she was forced to hand the keys of her antique shop over to the bank, and I, for reasons I preferred remained buried in the past, had slipped her another.

And Gladys... Yes. I had met her. Once. Briefly. Back then, she'd been leaner, younger. Her long, black hair had framed a face far more striking than the woman before me now. The intervening years had softened her features, added weight to her frame, just enough to disguise her from that mental photo I hadn't revisited in years.

The connection snapped into place. Sister.

It changed everything.

Not just in terms of identity, but context. This wasn't random anymore. Tasmania's population wasn't large. And in police work here, past cases had a way of resurfacing—old names threading into new mysteries, like an island-wide spider's web.

The weight of that realisation settled on my shoulders. We weren't just chasing after Jamie now. We were unpicking a network I hadn't even realised was being woven.

And I had no idea where the thread might lead.

The implications multiplied. If Gladys was Beatrix's sister, and Gladys was connected to Jamie, then what was Beatrix's role in all this? Was she even aware her sister had become entangled in whatever was unfolding? Or was she part of it—perhaps even orchestrating it?

Forcing my attention back to the task at hand, I wrenched my focus away from the sudden weight of the past. The old connections—the Cramer sisters, the half-faded memories—they could wait. Intriguing, yes. But they wouldn't solve the immediate puzzle pressing against my chest like a thumb on a bruise.

Gladys's phone was still warm in my hand, the screen smudged with the residual oils of its owner, as personal as a breath. I scrolled through her message history, each name a thread waiting to be pulled. Then I found it.

Jamie.

There it was—no picture, just the plain, unadorned contact entry. I tapped it open, expecting something recent. Urgent. But the last message surprised me.

Gladys: Sorry to hear you don't feel well. Call me when you wake up. G.

The message was dated five days ago. The timestamp showed 11:47 AM. Sent on the day Jamie was last confirmed to have been seen. The same day Louise had started trying to reach him. The same day everything had apparently gone quiet.

I read it twice, maybe three times, letting the words settle.

Innocuous on the surface—casual concern, the kind you send to a friend nursing a hangover or flu. But the timing... that was harder to ignore. Dated precisely to when Jamie was last seen. A quiet message on a noisy timeline.

"I see you haven't messaged Jamie for a few days," I commented aloud, eyes still scanning the short exchange, careful to keep my tone neutral—just a detective stating facts.

The content didn't scream cover-up, but it didn't sit comfortably either. If Jamie was simply unwell, why hadn't he reached out to his family? To Louise? Why had he dropped out of view entirely whilst someone else drove his car?

And what had prompted Gladys to send this message? Had Jamie contacted her first, explaining he was sick? Or had she been checking on him for some other reason?

"Did he call you?" I asked, letting the question hang in the air, the edge of suspicion threading into my voice.

Whilst Gladys started to respond, I switched screens quickly, fingers navigating through the phone's call history before she could second-guess her impulsive generosity. I scanned the list—mostly routine entries. Unknown numbers. A few names I didn't recognise. Nothing suspicious.

Then I saw it.

Luke Smith. Duration: 13 seconds. Timestamped only minutes ago.

The pieces rearranged themselves in my head with sudden clarity. The moment we'd hit the lights, she'd been on the phone. And not to Jamie—but to Luke. The call had been too short for anything meaningful. Barely enough time to say more than one sentence. But that's all a warning needed.

"Police are here. They're following me to your house."

A few words. Five seconds to speak. The rest of the thirteen seconds would have been connection time, maybe a brief acknowledgement from Luke. Enough to alert him. Enough to prepare.

A spike of adrenaline surged up through my spine.

"Of course he did," Gladys snapped, pulling me out of my thoughts as she snatched the phone back. "I'm on my way to his house in his car, aren't I?"

Her tone was brittle—defensive enough to rattle. She was pushing back hard now, too hard for someone with nothing to hide. Her logic was flawed, too neat. As if proximity equalled proof. But all it really did was confirm the need to keep pressing.

The phone disappeared into her lap quickly, screen going dark. Her hands returned to the steering wheel, gripping it with renewed intensity. The knuckles were white again, tendons standing out like cables under skin.

Her irritation hit with more force than her words. If she were simply concerned for Jamie, I'd expect confusion, anxiety, maybe even relief that we were looking into his whereabouts. Instead, she bristled—dug in. As if the real threat wasn't that Jamie might be missing, but that we might uncover the wrong kind of truth.

I made a mental note, sealing it behind the calm of my expression. That brief call to Luke was a flare. Something was off—very off—and my gut twisted with certainty that Luke Smith wasn't just tangential. He was active. Involved. Possibly orchestrating.

Luke Smith—Jamie's partner of a decade. The man who should have been the first person to report Jamie missing if something was genuinely wrong. Instead, he'd received a warning call from Gladys that police were coming. What did that suggest? That he had something to hide? That he knew more than he'd told anyone? Or that he was actively involved in whatever had caused Jamie to disappear?

But I didn't let it show. Poker face. Always.

"Our mistake then," I said smoothly, slipping back into that practised tone of polite indifference. I gave her a nod, just enough to suggest closure. "Shall we continue?" I gestured up the road toward Jamie and Luke's house, tone light, casual. Just two citizens resuming their day.

It was a tactical move. Keep her calm. Keep her talking. The less she thought we knew, the more she'd show us.

Gladys nodded, a silent, taut acceptance.

Her shoulders remained rigid, her breathing still elevated. But she'd accepted the narrative I was offering—that we were satisfied, that we'd move on, that the phone examination had revealed nothing of concern. The lie we both maintained for different reasons.

I turned from the car with a sense of controlled urgency. My stride back to our vehicle was brisk, my boots striking the bitumen with deliberate rhythm. Beneath the steady cadence of my steps, adrenaline coiled through my veins like an electric current. Not panic—focus. My body already knew this was about to matter.

Sliding into the passenger side, I barely registered the creak of the seat beneath me. I felt sharp, wire-tight, every nerve attuned to what came next. Each second felt loaded, the air thick with the anticipation of something just out of sight.

We were closing in.

"Did you give her a ticket?" Sarah's question came almost immediately as I settled into the seat.

"No, just drive," I responded, voice low and clipped, focused on the road ahead more than the conversation. My mind was still parsing the implications of what I'd seen on Gladys's phone—each piece slotting into place with quiet menace.

Issuing a fine was the furthest thing from my priorities. Protocol could take a back seat. What mattered now was momentum—keeping it. Holding the thread before it slipped away.

Sarah didn't argue. She registered the shift in my tone—the sharp edge of urgency—and said nothing more. No sigh, no follow-up. Just the slight tension in her posture as she slipped the car into gear and eased us back onto the road, falling in behind Gladys's silver Mazda once again.

That kind of professional silence wasn't learned in training. It was earned through time—hours, months, years of partnership. She knew me well enough by now to recognise that I wasn't being dismissive. I was working. Thinking. Connecting dots at speed.

I could feel Sarah's curiosity radiating from the driver's seat. She wanted to know what I'd found, what had shifted in that brief phone examination. But she held her tongue, trusting that I'd share when the moment was right. That trust was hard-won, built through cases where timing had mattered more than transparency.

Passing through the roundabout, we dropped speed. A dog barked in the distance—high, repetitive, territorial. My stomach tightened.

This wasn't investigation anymore. It was contact. Engagement. We weren't building theories now—we were walking straight into them.

And whatever we found waiting at the end of this road, we wouldn't be able to unsee it.

The cream-coloured brick house appeared ahead, exactly as I'd seen it this morning when I'd broken in. The same pristine facade. The same drawn blinds. The same careful presentation.

But now we were approaching through the front door.

With permission.

With warning having been sent ahead.

Whatever Luke Smith had been preparing for the last five minutes, we were about to discover.

I straightened in my seat, every sense on high alert.

This was it.