by JD Nixon
“Hey!” he yelled, running for the back door. “Stop!”
Not able to see past his broad back, all I caught was a flash of someone fleeing my kitchen – someone who definitely wasn’t a Bycraft.
“Hey, I ordered you to stop!” shouted the Sarge, jumping down the ramp. He chased after the intruder, me hot on his heels.
“Sarge, it’s the same guy who was at Miss G’s place,” I puffed, pounding across the open expanse of my backyard.
The man turned back to check on us, his unwashed, tangled hair brushing his shoulders, his jeans and shirt filthy, still barefoot. He accelerated, heading for the thick bushland of the lower foothills of the Coastal Range.
“I’m directing you to immediately stop!” tried the Sarge again.
“We’re going to lose him in the bush.”
The Sarge doubled his speed in a burst of energy, closing in quickly on him. For a big man, he could really move when it counted. He threw himself forward in a classic tackle manoeuvre, managing to clutch the hem of the man’s dirty, frayed jeans. The two men fell heavily to the ground, snapping branches and crushing plants on their way down.
The man twisted around, and I’ll never forget the desperate, hunted, wild expression on his face as he crunched his free foot into the Sarge’s face.
“Oh, shit,” the Sarge groaned, instinctively loosening his grip on the man. He scrabbled to his feet and hared off, faster than I could catch, faster than I would have thought possible for someone who was barefoot. I chased him for a further few hundred metres before conceding defeat, out of breath.
He’d escaped me again.
I returned to the Sarge. He lay on his back cupping his nose, his face screwed up with pain. Blood poured from between his fingers. I helped him to his feet and back to my kitchen. I made him sit forward pinching his nostrils together, while I held cold compresses on his forehead and the back of his neck.
“Do you think it’s broken?” I asked after about ten minutes when the blood flow stemmed. I hovered with concern, dabbing at the blood that had dried around his nostrils. “Will I take you to Dr Fenn?”
He gently felt it, moving his fingers over it carefully, wincing. “No, I don’t think it’s broken. It hurts like hell though.”
I rubbed his shoulder in consolation. “You’ll end up with some nice bruising.”
“Makes a change from it being you all the time.” He glanced down at his t-shirt. “I’ll never get this blood out.”
“Yeah, you will. Hand it over and I’ll spray on some stain remover. Then we can soak it back at your place overnight. It will be as good as new.”
Gingerly, he peeled off his t-shirt and handed it to me, pulling out his phone. While I tended to his laundry, he reluctantly rang the Super to tell her our double bad news. She made a snap decision to send some dogs to town first light in an attempt to flush our unknown man and Red Bycraft from their hiding spots.
“How was she?” I asked when he hung up.
“The usual, how do you think? Obnoxious, abusive, questioning whether we collectively possessed the intelligence and policing skills of a dried up old dog turd.”
I smiled grimly. “So, par for the course then.”
“Yep.” He stood and glanced around the kitchen. “What was our man up to in here? He’s left a mess.”
Realising that I hadn’t even thought about that, too caught up in my ministrations, I took an audit of our surroundings. We’d obviously disturbed him in the middle of raiding my fridge, packets of food and vegetables hastily dropped on the floor in his hurry to escape.
“I’m becoming extremely fed up with people treating my place like an open house,” I fumed. “I don’t even know who this guy is! I had a better look at him this time, but I didn’t recognise him. Did you?”
“Nope. Never seen him before.”
“So what does that mean? We have a possibly murderous stranger in town who’s apparently living wild and surviving from petty thefts?”
“It would appear so.”
“Why here of all places?”
“God only knows. We should call forensics.”
“No way. I’m not having them tramping all over my house, dusting for prints, and making an even bigger mess. They’re not going to learn anything except that he was in my house, stealing my food. Big deal. We both saw him. It was the same guy I saw the other night.”
He rubbed his nose, cringing in pain. “How did he get in?”
We wandered over to examine the back door lock. “It’s still intact. He must have picked it.”
“Great,” he complained. “That’s all we need – a lock-picking petty thief slash possible murderer on the loose who runs faster than any of us.”
“While at the same time we have an escaped fugitive on the loose who delights in taunting us.” My stomach grumbled again.
“Welcome to Little Town,” he said with a wry smile that caused him to wince again. “Nothing we can do here if you don’t want to involve forensics. Let’s go back to my house. I need some painkillers.”
“Can I just see to my girls first? All that shouting and running has probably disturbed them. Plus they won’t be happy having not been let out of their run today.”
“Sure. I’ll clean up in here while you do that.”
Although I’d collected their eggs and fed them that morning, the girls rushed forward at my appearance, eagerly seeking more feed. The dominant hen, Lady Sara, a handsome strawberry blonde, strutted forward, gazing at me expectantly, her head crooked at a proud angle.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told her gently. “You’re not supposed to have more food.”
She tilted her head in the other direction as if considering my words before clucking at me with loud indignation.
“Oh, all right,” I surrendered. “No need to get all cranky about it.”
I threw them another handful of feed and watched them scrabble for a little while, conscious of the Sarge in pain. When they’d had their fill and proceeded into the coop for the night, I left them to their sleep.
In the meantime, the Sarge had cleaned up the kitchen mess with his usual efficiency. I packed some clothes and other things in my old backpack. He allowed me to keep a store of basic toiletries and clothes at his house for emergencies, an agreement that probably hadn’t endeared me to Melissa. Jake and I’d had a minor spat when he found out about it, him calming down only when I pointed out that having a toothbrush, deodorant, moisturiser, a clean set of undies and a change of clothes at your work partner’s house was hardly a reason for jealousy. It wasn’t as if I’d moved in with him.
“You must be in a lot of pain. I’ll drive,” I offered solicitously, but with shameful opportunism.
“Thanks anyway, but I’m sure I’ll manage.” He tightened his grasp on his keys.
“Just trying to be helpful.”
“Sure you were.”
“You have a suspicious mind.”
“You’re a suspicious character.”
I laughed, opening the front door. The sun had fully set and velvety darkness had fallen around us. A rustle in the bushes closest to the house had me striding to the side of the verandah, leaning over the railings.
“Denny Bycraft!” I hollered. “I know it’s you. Get lost!” A crashing noise that receded as he ran down the side towards the backyard only served to confirm the identity of my latest visitor.
“You’re a popular woman.”
“I’m going to start charging people to set foot on my land.”
“Maybe we should have questioned him? He might have been hanging around for a while. He might have seen your earlier intruder.”
“Did he look as though he wanted to stay to answer our questions?”
“I guess not. Do you think he’s the one who delivered that note from Red Bycraft?”
“Maybe, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Red delivered it himself. It would give him a real kick to be creeping around my house during daylight.”
&nbs
p; “Lucky you weren’t home.”
“Lucky for him.”
Back in his car returning to town, my phone rang.
“Hello, Tessie lovely. Did you get my note?”
I didn’t speak.
His soft laughter filled my ear. “Aw, don’t I even get a ‘hello’? After all this time? Didn’t you miss me even a little bit?”
“No.”
“I’m loving being free again.”
“Enjoy it while you can. You’ll be back in custody tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, I doubt that. The cops around here aren’t too bright, no offence. I pissed myself laughing after passing through the roadblock with those two rookie idiot cops.”
I didn’t respond. I should have hung up on him, but I wanted to see if he gave me some hint of where he was staying or what he was going to do. The Sarge leaned over, intently trying to listen. I switched my phone to loudspeaker.
“It’s nice seeing everyone again, but I’m looking forward to catching up with you the most.”
“I’m looking forward to banging you up again.”
More laughter. “I’m just looking forward to banging you, Tessie. We’re going to have a lot of fun together. It will be heavenly.”
“And you can just go to hell.” I angrily pressed the ‘end call’ button, briefly meeting the Sarge’s eyes. “I hate that man.”
“Believe me, no one blames you for that.” He turned into the driveway of the police house.
While he showered, I set myself up in his guest room, taking my turn in the shower after he’d finished. When I emerged from the bathroom, he’d made a start on dinner preparations, presumably well-fortified with painkillers. He looked up when I ambled into the kitchen, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.
“In your pyjamas already?” He checked the kitchen clock. “It’s only quarter-to-seven.”
“Saves time, and we’re not going anywhere tonight. You don’t mind, do you?”
He laughed. “Make yourself at home.”
“I will.”
“I noticed.”
“How’s your nose?”
“Painfully painful.”
“Do you want me to cook?”
“No. It takes my mind off it, but you can help if you like. There are a couple of potatoes that need peeling on the bench over there.”
“I can do that.”
We worked in companionable silence for a while. He poured and deposited a chilly glass of white wine on the bench before me. I paused from peeling to take a small sip.
“This is nice,” I said, pretty sure I wasn’t successfully masking the note of wistfulness I could hear in my voice.
“What is?”
“This.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Being hounded by Red Bycraft again is nice? Tessie, now I’m really starting to worry about you.”
“No! Not that! This!” I swept my arms around the room. “Being in my pyjamas, enjoying a glass of wine, and helping to cook dinner. It’s sort of . . . I don’t know. Satisfyingly domestic, maybe? You know, apart from Dad, I’ve never lived with a man before.” I shrugged. “I mean, Jakey stays over, but it’s not the same as living together, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
I sighed, absently sketching a sad face into the condensation on the outside of the wine glass with my finger. “I’ve never had that experience of building a life with a man, creating a home with him. Of being a real couple, not just a boyfriend and girlfriend who have sleepovers now and then. I’m probably not making myself very clear.”
“I understand what you mean,” he assured quietly. “Since Melissa first went overseas, I’ve really felt the lack of that . . . togetherness, myself.” She doesn’t seem to feel the same way, I thought uncharitably. “And frankly I miss it, especially now she’s actually back home. I’m becoming very tired of living by myself.”
“Why won’t she move here to be with you? I don’t want to be rude, but I just can’t understand her thinking on this. You should be together.”
He was silent long enough for me to think he wasn’t going to answer, busying himself with the chicken breasts he was preparing. I regretted offending him by criticising his fiancee and was about to open my mouth to apologise when he spoke, keeping his back to me.
“Melissa’s social group is incredibly important to her. I hesitate to call them her friends really, because to me it seems as if they’re all more competitive with each other than friendly. Her status in that group matters to her.”
“Not to you?”
He snorted. “Why would I care about what a bunch of vacuous twenty-somethings think of me?”
I smiled. One of the things I liked about him most was his disinterest in brown-nosing and big-noting himself. It wasn’t because he lacked ambition – I was sure he was quite ambitious – but more that he had such quiet confidence in himself to achieve his goals that he didn’t much care about people’s opinions of him.
“Melissa has always wanted me to give up policing and return to practising law as it’s a more prestigious career according to her. I don’t want to because I hated being a lawyer. So in the city, it’s easy for her to pretend I’m not just a general duties cop. There, I used to go off to work like any other guy. I changed at the station, our weapons and belts were kept there, and I never brought work home with me.”
I popped the potatoes into a saucepan of water and jostled some space on the stovetop from him.
“But here, she can’t escape the fact that I’m a cop. My uniforms are hanging in the closet. I live next door to the police station. I have the police car in my driveway. People call me Sergeant Maguire all the time. I’m called out at all hours of the day to attend to police matters.” He looked over at me. “I spend a lot of time with my partner.”
“Which you enjoy.”
“Which I sometimes enjoy,” he smiled briefly before it faded away again. “I think that’s part of the reason she hates it here so much. But only part. Obviously she misses the city too when she’s here.”
I kept my eyes on the saucepan, which wasn’t really doing much to warrant such keen attention. “Maybe you should just make her happy and move back to the city.”
“Nope,” he replied firmly, and I sensed his eyes resting on me. “I’m quite happy here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I still kept my eyes on the pan, not quite sure why I was so reluctant to look up and meet his glance.
Chapter 14
It only seemed like five minutes after I fell asleep that I was woken by my alarm. And although we’d both retired the previous evening at a reasonable time, I groaned, reluctantly rolling over to blearily peer at the clock on the bedside table. Five in the morning. It was an hour earlier than my normal waking time, but the Super had warned us the dogs would be here at first light, and she was not a woman I wanted to upset at the moment.
Before I headed to the shower, I detoured up the hall to peek in on the Sarge as he’d left his bedroom door half-open. He was still sleeping, not woken by my alarm. He looked kind of cute, his face relaxed as he slumbered, his curling black hair contrasting with the crisp whiteness of his pillowcase. I let him sleep a bit longer while I showered and dressed in my uniform, yawning the whole time.
He stumbled out of the bedroom as I stepped out of the bathroom, as bleary-eyed as I’d been. By the time he joined me in the kitchen for a quick breakfast, he was marginally more alert. I examined his nose while he munched on toast, relieved to hear there hadn’t been any further bleeding during the night. He had some good bruising developing, but as he insisted that he was fine, I dropped it.
We arrived at the station a minute before an armada of vehicles from Big Town poured through the gates, filling the station’s entire carpark.
“Tessie, make me a coffee,” the Super ordered as she stomped up the couple of stairs to the station, Bum right behind her. She’d brought with her the two dog handlers I’d met a few months ago and their German Shepherds, as well as a team of
six male uniforms, headed by a very capable but virtually silent, senior sergeant, Bill Wynne. I didn’t think I’d heard him ever utter more than one sentence at a time.
Everyone piled into our back room, despite inadequate space and seating for so many big men.
The Super looked up and noticed the Sarge’s bruising. “Holy hairy nutsack! What the fuck happened to you? Bit of rough sex with an unwilling goat last night?”
“Of course not, ma’am,” he replied with irritated embarrassment, glaring at the others as snickers rippled around the room. “As I previously explained to you, we had an encounter with the man who’s possibly our murderer.”
Those sharp blue eyes shifted from him over to me as I bustled at the kitchenette dutifully piling spoonful after spoonful of instant coffee into a mug. “Who you let escape.” She paused a beat. “Again.”
Neither of us responded, sure she wouldn’t be sympathetic to any defence we mounted for ourselves.
“We got fuck all out of Greg Bycraft. He kept his mouth shut tighter than a clam’s clacker – the first time he’s ever shown any spark of power in that lump of grey jelly he calls a brain. Fucking lawyers and their my client has nothing to say bullshit! We should be allowed to shoot the lot of them. And now Pinky doesn’t think we have enough evidence to make a case against Bycraft, even if forensics come back confirming his fingerprints are everywhere.” She stared at us unblinkingly. “But I’m still not convinced that this . . . wild man, hobo, Yeti, whatever it is you keep letting escape, is our man.”
“But what about that graffiti, ma’am?” I asked, carefully carrying the steaming overfull mug to her. “He must have written it.”
She eyed me coldly. “Must he have? You’ll never make detective if you jump to conclusions like that.”
I couldn’t escape the feeling that she was finding my recent work performance somewhat less than stellar. I blushed as she took the mug from me.
“It’s a reasonable conclusion to come to, ma’am,” defended the Sarge. I shot him a grateful glance. “He was spotted running from the scene and the graffiti certainly hadn’t been there earlier in the day – which you know, because you were in that bedroom too.”