The fleeting glimpse I caught of my car as it flew by was like seeing a girlfriend on a train with another man; except I was not on a train and nor was my car. It was driving west along Bell Street, having been stolen a month earlier.
I noted the registration plates which had obviously been stolen from another vehicle, went home and looked them up on the VicRoads public database. Then I rang the police.
Can you still see the car, they asked me.
No, I said. I saw it going down Bell Street. Was I supposed to chase it?
No good then, said the police. Can't do anything. That was kind of obvious, I thought, but the important thing was that telling them what plates the car was wearing would help identify it.
Well, here's the registration number, I carried on, imagining the cop noting it down on a scratch pad.
He put me on hold for five minutes while I listened to something that sounded like twenty people wearing crystal-soled shoes learning to dance on parquetry.
Looks like it's not your car, he said when he came back on the line. It's a 2003 model, silver. You said yours was a 1999 green one.
I took a breath. It was going to be one of those conversations. Well, it already was. I could tell by his bored tone of voice, with pauses that were slightly too long, that he considered there were far too many old Camrys in the world for someone to correctly identify one supposedly bearing the wrong plates.
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