by JD Nixon
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Nah,” he said, plonking down next to me. “Too much to think about to sleep properly anyway. Did you have another nightmare?”
“Yep.”
He peered over the rim of my mug. “That looks nice.”
“It’s just plain old milk,” I smiled. “Are you angling for some?”
He nudged me with his shoulder. “Maybe.”
I handed him my half-empty mug. “You can have the rest.”
“I can’t drink out of your mug.”
“Sure you can. Just turn it around to the other side. I don’t have any girl germs.”
“Of course you have girl germs. You’re a girl, aren’t you? All girls have girl germs. It’s a scientific fact I established beyond any reasonable doubt during my boyhood.”
“Oh well, I guess it must be true then, seeing how it’s been scientifically proven and all,” I smiled again.
He took a cautious sip. “I’m not tasting any girl germ flavour yet.”
“The germs sink to the bottom. The flavour will hit you in a rush at the end.”
He laughed softly. “You’re cute. What nightmare featured tonight? Your grandmother? Your mother? Abe’s wife?”
“No, it was a new one,” I admitted reluctantly, not wanting to talk to him about it.
“Something about Miss Greville?”
“Sort of,” I replied vaguely. “It was definitely inspired by events of the day.”
“Poor Tessie. It must have been a terrible shock for you to find her.” He slipped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. I leaned on him and closed my eyes, after first surreptitiously checking that his neck was unmarked and whole.
He was a naturally affectionate man, much more of a touchy-feely type than me. That had taken me a while to become accustomed to, not being someone who liked people I didn’t know placing their hands on me. But we’d grown close over the nine months we’d worked together, and unless I was angry with him, now I didn’t mind his friendly embraces. And sure, sometimes I even needed them.
“Do you want to talk about what happened to Miss Greville?”
“Nah,” I said, mumbling into his shoulder. “I did before, but Kevin and I discussed it for a long time earlier tonight.”
“Okay, but if you need to talk, you know I’m here. Talking it out might even help stop some of your nightmares about it.”
“It might.”
We relaxed against each other for a while, not speaking. And maybe it was that nice state of drowsy comfort that made him open up a little.
“Do you think Melissa will leave in the morning?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Probably. And then she’ll expect me to chase after her so we can have a big screaming match followed by some wild sex. It’s what she lives for.”
“Sounds emotionally exhausting.”
“It is. To be honest, I’m rather tired of the constant melodrama. I hoped she’d grow out of it by now. But it’s the same thing every time she comes here or I go there. It was fine in the beginning when I thought the volatility made our relationship passionate and exciting – so different to any other relationship I’d ever had. And I’m almost ashamed to say the sex often made up for everything else. But these days . . .” He shrugged and my head bobbed up and down with the movement. “I suppose I don’t want a marriage based on an endless cycle of fighting and sex.”
“No, it’s not enough to sustain a lasting relationship,” I agreed, feeling suddenly sad myself thinking of Jake. We didn’t fight much, but it did sometimes feel that sex was the main driver of our relationship. We didn’t do a lot of ‘couple’ things together, virtually leading our own lives separate from each other. I spent more time with the Sarge than I did with Jake.
“I want her to grow up, get a job and take on some responsibility in her life. I just wish she was more like . . .”
I yawned hugely. “Like what?”
He withdrew his arm and stood up. “Nothing. I’m going to see if I can catch a couple more hours’ sleep. Why don’t you do the same?”
I stood too, yawning. “Okay. See you later, Sarge.”
He tweaked my nose in exasperation. “Finn!”
“Sorry, Finn,” I said sheepishly, returning to my bed.
Chapter 10
I managed a fitful sleep for an hour, tossing and turning every ten minutes, no more refreshed afterwards than if I’d stayed awake. Everyone woke up early and I made the two men breakfast, which we ate at the battered table in my large kitchen. After he washed up for me, Kevin showered, his melodious and surprisingly booming voice drifting from the bathroom as he sang lustily.
In the lounge room where we were watching the morning news on TV, I raised my eyebrows at the Sarge, grinning.
He nodded, grinning back. “He sings every time he’s in the shower.”
“Nice voice.”
“You could duet with him.”
I pegged a cushion at him, which he caught deftly. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I shower with Kevin?”
He gently threw the pillow back to me. “It would be all his birthdays rolled into one if you did.”
“Not going to happen.”
He opened his mouth to speak, when the singing stopped, replaced by shouts of angry shock.
“Hey!” yelled Kevin, bursting from the bathroom, dripping wet, and dressed only in a towel tied around his skinny waist.
I jumped to my feet in alarm. “What’s the matter?”
“Someone . . . through the window . . .”
“What are you trying to say, Kevin?” asked the Sarge patiently.
He took a deep breath, his voice indignant when he attempted to speak again. “Someone was looking at me through the window. Someone was peeping on me!”
“Oh, is that all?” the Sarge dismissed. We both flopped back on the lounge, uninterested.
“But . . . aren’t you going to do something?”
“No point,” I told him, eyes on the TV screen. “It’s just Denny Bycraft. He’s always spying on me. He’s mostly harmless.” I laughed. “In fact, he probably received a bigger fright than you. He would have been expecting to see me in there.”
Realising that we weren’t going to take any action over his peeper and remembering he was virtually naked in front of us, Kevin scurried back to the bathroom, leaving a trail of puddles in his wake.
Later, his car packed and ready to leave Little Town, Kevin offered a less-than-eager Sarge a lift back to his own house on the way.
He shook my hand with touching enthusiasm, gushing over how much he’d enjoyed working with me, thanking me for my guidance and support. I squirmed with guilt. All he’d learned from me was what not to do in a car chase or murder investigation and how to survive a bollocking from a superintendent.
“Um, Kevin, you really should make sure you apply what the Sarge taught you, not me. Please remember that. You still have to graduate.”
“I hope when I graduate I can be posted here as a probationary constable. I’m going to ask especially to be sent here.”
That would be the first time in history anyone had ever requested that, I thought, rather disconcerted by the young man’s apparent keenness to join us in this hellhole of a town. I wasn’t sure he’d quite grasped the extent of the Bycraft plague we suffered here. I didn’t even want to be in this town and I’d been born here.
I watched them drive off and spent an hour drudging through routine housework. I turned on the ancient stereo someone had donated to us after ours was smashed to pieces by some Bycrafts, and blared out equally ancient and scratchy punk music from one of Dad’s old cassette tapes as I worked.
When I finally turned off the vacuum cleaner, I heard my mobile phone ringing and scrabbled around, trying to remember where I’d left it the previous evening. I picked it up at the last ring, frantically pressing the ‘answer’ button.
“Oh hi, Tess. This is Gwen Singh. I know you’ve been tied u
p with this terrible business about Miss Greville, so just wanted to say not to bother about following up on the complaint I made yesterday.” I desperately searched my brain, trying to recall what her complaint had been about. Ah, that’s right – missing food! “It really wasn’t important. Just some items missing from my fridge and pantry that I know were there.”
“Perhaps Deepak ate them,” I joked. “You know teenage boys.”
She laughed. “Though it’s true that Deepak could put a swarm of locusts to shame, he assures me it wasn’t him. And it’s not so much the food going missing, it’s the thought that someone might have been in my house. Especially after what’s happened to Miss Greville.”
“Can you swing by the station sometime this morning, Gwen? I’m about to go there to write up my notes about yesterday and I’d like to file an incident report for you.”
“Really? You still want to investigate it?” She sounded surprised.
“Yep,” I said, thinking of the food-guzzling at Miss G’s house. Maybe there was a connection. Probably not, but it couldn’t hurt to rule it out.
“Okay. I’ll be there around ten. Is that all right?”
“I’ll make sure I’m there. See you then.”
I took a quick shower and dressed casually in jeans as usual, I drove to the station. Working on a Saturday again, I thought with resignation, trudging up the stairs of the station. I couldn’t seem to keep away from the place, no matter that the Sarge now took a lot of the burden off my shoulders. But I did have a report to write and it wasn’t as if I had any other plans for the day. After all, only people with lives made plans for the weekend.
Before I unlocked the door, I glanced up at the police house. Melissa’s small car was no longer parked in front. She might have just popped down to the grocery store for some Tim Tams, but I didn’t really think so. More likely she’d joined Kevin on the long trek back to the Big Smoke.
I turned on the radio, made myself a cup of tea and settled down in front of my computer. After thirty minutes of hard labour pounding my keyboard and turning the traumatic experience of discovering Miss G’s body into bland and factual police speak, the grating roar of the police house’s old mower ripped through the morning peace. The Sarge, in sunglasses, a t-shirt, long shorts and work boots, plied the mower back and forth across the vast expanse of lawn encompassing the police house and station precinct.
I watched him for a while, mesmerised by his progress creating neat strips of shorn lawn. A couple of magpies, not bothered by the racket, already picked around the freshly mown grass looking for exposed juicy bugs. The police department really should have coughed up for a ride-on mower by now as it was quite a job to mow the yard the way he was doing it. I should know because I’d mowed it a hundred times myself. But as we sometimes had trouble convincing any of the brass to supply us with even the most basic policing equipment, ‘luxury’ wishes such as that stood little chance of ever being fulfilled. And despite the time consuming chore, I’d never once heard the Sarge complain about it. Perhaps he enjoyed the thinking time it gave him. He certainly had a lot to ponder at the moment, especially about his relationship with Melissa.
I forced my eyes back to my screen and continued writing my report. Engrossed, the ring of the back door startled me and I half-jumped to my feet, my fingers sliding towards my knife. False alarm again – it was just the Sarge.
“Thirsty,” he explained, grabbing a bottle of cold water from the fridge and gulping it down. It was an unseasonably warm spring day and at some point he’d stripped off his t-shirt, his bare torso glistening with effort.
“Eww! You’re all sweaty,” I complained, scrunching my nose, and trying mightily to keep my eyes on his face instead of roaming over his broad shoulders and chest. He’d been doing a lot of weights lately, and it showed.
He grinned, holding his arms out wide. “Want to give me a hug? I’m good and slippery.”
“No thanks!” I laughed. “And besides, even if I was remotely tempted, Melissa will only catch us out again and then you’ll really be in the doghouse.”
He turned his back to me and splashed his face with tap water, grabbing some paper towels to wipe it down. “She’s gone back to the city.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. “I’ll cover for you if you want to go after her.”
He faced me again, his face neutral. “No, it’s fine. I’m not going anywhere. The dees and forensics will be here soon, so I need to be around to deal with them.”
Happy to distract him with work matters, I said, “Do you remember Gwen Singh making that complaint about missing food? I have her coming in at ten to file an incident report. It might prove more important than anyone first thought.”
He leaned his butt against his desk and crossed his arms. I caught a whiff of his sweat. It was more masculine than unpleasant. He inclined his head as he thought, his blue eyes fixed on mine.
“Maybe Mrs Villiers’ missing blanket is also connected in some way? Someone doing a spot of petty pilfering around the neighbourhood is caught by Miss Greville, so he kills her?”
I considered. “You might be able to argue that if she’d been killed in her kitchen or lounge room, but she wasn’t. She was apparently asleep in her bed when she was killed. What’s the rationale for that? This pilferer hasn’t tried to kill anyone. And there’s still that weird message on the wall.”
“I know. None of it seems to fit together. Maybe the dees might have a better idea.” He glanced out the window at the lawn without much enthusiasm. “Better get back to it, I suppose. It’s not going to mow itself.”
I smiled at him. “Now there’s an invention you could make a mint on – self-trimming lawn.”
“Ha! If only! I’d be the richest man in the world.”
The second he left, I pulled out my phone and texted two of my good friends, Gretel, one of the town’s two school teachers, and Romi, younger sister of the town’s publican, Abe. I wrote: sarge is mowing shirtless – i repeat, sarge is shirtless.
Five minutes later, Gretel screeched up in her car, lurching to a stop, parking askew. She jumped up the stairs and pushed past me when I opened the hatch in the counter for her, not even saying hello. Standing at a window, she gazed out, a dreamy look on her face. The ding of Romi’s bicycle bell drew me to the opposite window in time to watch her carelessly throwing it to the ground, flying up the stairs and inside the station to join Gretel. It was fair to say they were both admirers of the Sarge.
“Oh gosh, he’s so hot,” drooled Romi, a very pretty seventeen-year-old. “Check out those muscles.”
“He’s looking exceptionally buff these days,” said Gretel, not taking her eyes off him. “Has he been working out a lot lately?”
I glanced out at him. “He has. I guess it burns off his frustration.”
Gretel pressed her nose up against the glass, filming him with her phone. “I’d be glad to help relieve his frustration any day of the week. He only has to ask.”
I laughed. “I don’t think he’s the hanky-panky type.”
“And isn’t that the world’s greatest pity? Such a shameful waste of prime hunktacular manhood.”
I smiled. “Hunktacular? That’s not even a real word.”
“Don’t you think the man deserves his own word? I mean, look at that chest. Those pecs are lady-killers.”
“And just the right amount of chest hair,” agreed Romi.
“The perfect amount. I like a man to look like a man with a bit of chest hair and lots of muscles.”
“Me too.”
Gretel smooshed her nose right up against the glass. “I want to be able to imagine a man sweeping me off my feet and easily carrying me to his bedroom with lustful intent.”
“I bet Finn would be able to carry you all over town.”
“If he had a forklift,” I laughed, earning myself a thump on the arm from Gretel.
“Shut up, you. I’m mostly interested in him carrying me to his bedroom, though any other room
would do in a pinch.”
I shook my head, sitting back down at my desk. “You two are pitiful. He’s engaged, for heaven’s sake. Plus, he’s a really nice guy and you should stop objectifying him. We women hate it when men do it to us.”
“I don’t,” retorted Gretel. “I love it when men stare at my body.”
“Well, I don’t,” I shot back.
“We know,” she drawled. “Have you even noticed you have a body?”
“Ha ha. Just because I don’t flaunt myself like some women in town.”
“Some call it flaunting, others call it justifiable pride in my sizzling assets.”
“Oh, brother! Romi, don’t listen to her. She’s not a good role model. She’s nothing but a bimbo.”
“And proud of it,” laughed Gretel. “Romi, you’ll have a lot more fun in life as a bimbo than as a Miss Prissy Pants like Tessie.”
“I’m not a prissy pants,” I insisted indignantly.
“How long did it take Jake to get you into bed?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Forever, that’s how long. I would have jumped him the second he showed any interest.”
“You’d jump anything.”
“Only if it had a pulse. Although, there was that one time . . .”
“Close your ears, Romi. Gretel’s being vile today.”
“Yeah, you better listen to Miss Prissy Pants, Romi.”
“I’m not a prissy pants!”
“I bet you don’t even own a dress.”
“I do so! I’m going to wear one tomorrow night.”
“Me too.”
“Me three.”
I shot a look at Romi. “I know for a fact you’re not invited. You’re too young. You have to wait until you’re eighteen to go to a hen’s party.”
“See what I mean,” said Gretel, shaking her head sadly. “What a prissy pants.”
“I’m not a prissy pants. I’m just one of the girls,” I said, knowing that would only be true if every other woman in town started wearing a hunting knife strapped to her thigh under her dress on a party night out.
“If you say so. But anyway, you have no right to criticise us. You’re the one who sent us the text about Finn in the first place,” Gretel concluded triumphantly. “Admit you were perving on him too. Go on.”