Senior Constable John Franklin had been cooped up with Paul Wells for hours. Too long without a smoke or coffee because Constable-fast-track-Wells was driving and he didn’t pay much attention to those who wore fewer than three stripes on their epaulette.
But that wasn’t why Franklin wanted to throttle him. It was because Wells measured time, distance, temperature, power poles and countless other things. Plus he was a rigid perfectionist with as much personality as a dead carp. Franklin’s workmates rated the bloke’s neurotic traits with fingernails scratching down a blackboard. His two consecutive rest days relegated to distant memories by the OCD freak, he ruled it much worse.
‘Four and a half minutes,’ Wells said. He tapped his watch.
Franklin groaned. So today’s general patrol took fi
