August 1, 2018 AD
The Roadside Admission
Driving Gladys Cramer to Hobart Police Station, Sarah Lahey tried to learn what the handcuffed woman in her back seat knew. Gladys insisted Sarah had been at the Berriedale house. On the roadside Sarah offered a lenient interview in exchange for answers, then admitted she had found the body but had not killed him. Gladys gave the dead man's name, Cody Jennings, and told Sarah that Luke Smith knew none of it. The two women reached the station bound by each other's secrets.
Sarah Lahey drove Gladys Cramer from the Berriedale house towards Hobart Police Station in a patrol car, with Gladys handcuffed in the back seat. Neither woman had told anyone what she knew about the body hidden beneath Luke Smith's staircase. Each suspected the other of knowing. Only Gladys was certain.
Her certainty had a simple source. She had been inside the cupboard the night before when Sarah opened it, found Cody Jennings' body and pushed it back in, shutting the door on both of them. Sarah never knew anyone else had been in there. In her jacket pocket for the whole drive was a small device she had taken from Cody's body, which she believed to be a USB stick. It was his Portal Key.
Sarah opened by telling Gladys that she had arranged for the broken window to be replaced, presenting the removal of evidence as a courtesy. Gladys said nothing for several minutes. Then she asked whether it had been Sarah. Sarah denied it. Gladys said that Sarah had been there all the same.
Rattled, Sarah asked whether Gladys had known the dead man, and in asking admitted that she knew there was a dead man to know. Gladys turned to the window without answering. When Sarah asked why she had not reported the death, Gladys said only that it was complicated, and Sarah agreed that it was.
Short of the station, Sarah pulled onto the shoulder and turned in her seat. She offered a deal: answer a few questions now, and the formal interview would be gentle and end in Gladys's immediate release. Gladys stared back and gave her nothing. She was still weighing whether a detective who had accepted a glass of wine from her while on duty could be trusted when Sarah lost patience and confessed.
Sarah admitted she had been at the house and said the man had already been dead when she found him. It was true as far as it went. She did not say that she knew Karl Jenkins had killed him.
The admission turned Gladys from silence to anger. She demanded to know what Sarah had been doing there. Sarah flushed, faced the road and pulled back into traffic without answering. By the time she was driving again she had worked out where they both stood: Gladys could not reveal a detective's presence at the scene without explaining her own, and her silence about the body was as damning as anything Sarah had done.
Gladys broke the second silence. She gave the dead man's name, Cody Jennings, and cried as she said it. Sarah thanked her, more gently than she had spoken at any point on the drive.
As the car turned into the station car park, Gladys added one more thing: Luke did not know. When Sarah asked what he did not know, Gladys said any of it, and explained nothing further. Keeping Luke out of it was the one protection she could still offer him.
Sarah got out, opened the rear door and helped Gladys from the car. Detective and prisoner walked towards the station entrance together, each holding enough of the other's secret to ruin her, and neither sure whether she had just gained an ally.
