Blood Feud (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  “Why did you stay at his house last night? You stay there too much.”

  “I stayed with him because your repulsive brother is on the loose, and there are some people in this town who care whether or not I’m kept safe from him. And if you don’t mind, now is not the time to bring up Red. I’m working.” He didn’t need to know I was working on bringing his brother back into custody again.

  He hung up on me, but on catching the Super’s frown, I hastily shoved my phone back in my pocket. It was utter chaos in the bush and a king-sized headache pressed in on my temples. It wasn’t up to me to call off the search, but I knew we’d lost him.

  From my pocket, my phone beeped, signalling an incoming text. Expecting it to be Jake, I viewed the screen immediately, now feeling rather combative. He had no reason to be questioning the nature of my relationship with the Sarge all the time. I’d said all I wanted to say on the matter to Jake, but I’d never turn down the chance to say it to him all over again. I took a second to stand still to read it.

  The text read: thank yr mates tessie! best laugh ive had in yrs. love red xx

  I showed Red’s message to the Super, but it didn’t seem to sway her into discontinuing the search. If I knew the Bycrafts – and nobody knew them better – someone would have driven to the end of the escape route to pick up Red. They were probably halfway to the border by now. But instead of setting us free, the Super stubbornly insisted we needed to redouble our efforts and it was a lot of hot, cranky, and tired cops who scoured the bush again, going over the same trails we’d already gone over. The fact that the Bycrafts had given up their efforts to disorient and distract us, and were drifting away back to Lola’s house laughing, only confirmed my opinion that Red had already escaped safely.

  After another thirty minutes of fruitless searching, tired, dusty, over-heated, and thirsty, the Super called off the search, grudgingly admitting defeat.

  Chapter 15

  Later back at the station, we debriefed – or rather, we listened to the Super tearing strips off us all. Afterwards, the Big Town troops dispiritedly drove off to return home without Red, all the men probably worried about the future of their precious dangly bits. I stood at the sink and greedily polished off another glass of tap water.

  “For such an uncivilised rabble, the Bycrafts are well-organised and good at planning,” commented the Sarge, leaning back in his seat, his boots on his desk. I felt hot, sweaty, and incredibly dishevelled. He, on the other hand, looked calm, relaxed, and remarkably untouched by our exertions.

  I washed out the glass, left it in the rack to drip dry and splashed my face with the tepid tap water. “They’ve had generations to perfect their escape routes.”

  “They’re good at mobilising on short notice too. It’s quite impressive, if you think about it.”

  “God, Sarge, sounds like you’re about to recommend we hire them as team-building consultants for the force,” I laughed. “Can you imagine that?”

  “How do they communicate with each other so quickly?” he pondered.

  “They don’t. They use tribal groupthink. They sense when one of them is in trouble and act collectively and instinctively. Anthropologists would wet themselves with excitement over them. They’re like some lost tribe on an undiscovered island.”

  “I wish they’d stayed there, undiscovered,” muttered the Sarge, reactivating his computer. “Who’s going to write our report about the events of this morning?”

  I hastily scarpered for the back verandah, pulling out my phone. “That would be you. I need to ring Jakey.”

  Closing the back door on his scowl, I leaned on the verandah railing and punched in Jake’s number. When he answered, we spent a sweet five minutes apologising to each other. I only gave him the briefest outline of my morning and why I hadn’t been able to talk to him longer. I didn’t normally discuss police business with him, particularly anything relating to his family, which in truth formed the bulk of my work. In any case, he’d already heard most of the story from his relatives and knew that Red had successfully escaped.

  And though Jake categorically denied knowing where Red was holed up, I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. It was always sensitive ground for us. I secretly remained convinced that he often knew more about Red than he ever told me, and of course he knew all the Bycraft boltholes. I also believed that he was in frequent contact with Red, even as a fugitive, but we had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that helped us segment my work and his family from our relationship. And I understood why a lot of other cops were suspicious of that.

  When I returned, the Sarge was busy typing. He watched me as I settled down at my desk. “The lovebirds reconciled?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied politely.

  “Good, glad to hear,” he said, equally polite, but with an unmistakable sardonic hint in his voice that I ignored.

  The next hour flew by, the Sarge and I spending the time tapping on our keyboards, writing up incident reports. I only broke off to make us a cup of tea and answer the phone to two more calls for the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club. I’d grown tired of receiving calls from men desperate to arrange romps with a saucy siren or two and more often than I liked, I was mistaken for one of them. Not today though, both embarrassed callers hanging up as soon as I informed them they’d reached the Mount Big Town police station.

  The phone rang again and I answered. “Mount Big Town police station. Senior Constable Fuller speaking.”

  “Did you get my text message, Tessie lovely? It was such fun today. Let’s do it again soon.”

  “Drop dead, Red,” I replied angrily and hung up on him. The phone immediately rang again. I snatched it up. “I told you to piss off!”

  “I beg your pardon?” came the outraged response.

  “Oops sorry, Mrs Villiers,” I cringed, pulling a now-I’ve-gone-and-done-it face at the Sarge. He grinned, enjoying my discomfort. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “If that’s the standard of service we are now to expect from the town’s police force, then I will be complaining most vehemently to Superintendent Midden,” she thundered down the phone line.

  Blah, blah, blah! I made a face at the phone before assuming my most polite voice. “A regrettable incident and you have my deepest apologies. It certainly won’t happen again. Now how can I help you today?”

  “Somebody has been defacing my re-election posters and I want them stopped.”

  Sighing, I reached for my notebook. “Defacing them in what way, Mrs Villiers?”

  “Drawing on them.”

  “What are they drawing? A moustache? A Frankenstein scar? Horns? Blacking out your teeth? The usual kid stuff?”

  There was an embarrassed silence. “Not quite that . . .”

  “Hmm?” I prompted, pen poised over the paper.

  “Penises.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  She became strident. “You heard me. Penises.”

  I dutifully wrote down penises in my notebook, underlined it twice, and put two exclamation marks after it. “Um . . . so they’re giving you a penis?”

  The Sarge looked over at me in surprise. I shrugged at him.

  “No, no! My posters are all headshots. They’re drawing them coming out of my forehead.” I clamped my hand over my mouth and held the phone away from me for a second, trying to maintain my professionalism. When I felt able to continue, I spoke into the receiver again.

  “So let me get this straight. You have penises coming out of your forehead?” I repeated, writing down dickhead!! in my notebook, underlining it three times.

  “Erect penises,” she clarified.

  I wrote down erect and stifled an immature giggle. “Erect penises coming out of your forehead.”

  “With testicles.”

  “With testicles.” I wrote down plus balls.

  The Sarge sniggered and I had to hold the phone away from my mouth again. I threw him a warning glance; I was barely holding it together myself.

>   “Yes, and also they’ve drawn erect penises next to my mouth so it looks as though I’m performing a very lewd act.”

  My face contorting with a desperate need to shout out loud with laughter, eyes watering, I sketched a quick picture of an erect penis complete with testicles next to a smiling mouth. I had the same doodle scratched into the old varnish of my desk at least fifty times by various bored constables who’d served their time in town over the last hundred years. It seemed some graffiti never goes out of style.

  She continued, building herself into a froth of fury. “I know who it is. It’s that Caravani man. It’s obvious. He’s trying to derail my election campaign.”

  “It doesn’t sound like something Mr Caravani would do, Mrs Villiers. It’s very childish. Most probably it’s some of the local kids. Probably some of the young Bycrafts. It’s the sort of thing they’d find funny.”

  “You better find out who it is and stop them,” she demanded.

  “Sergeant Maguire and I will look into it today for you.” Yeah, because it wasn’t as if we had a fugitive and a murderer to track down.

  “I’ve taken all the signs down. You’ll have to come to my house to investigate. It would suit me if you came right now,” she insisted imperiously.

  Frigging dictator! I thought as I hung up. The Sarge shot me a quizzical look.

  “Someone’s been drawing knobs all over Mrs Villiers’ re-election posters,” I told him.

  “What were you up to last night when I thought you were sleeping?”

  I laughed. “It wasn’t me! Although you have to admit, it’s bloody funny.” I stood up. “Come on. She wants us over at her house to investigate pronto.”

  “Doesn’t she know we’re not allowed to investigate?” he smiled, putting his computer on stand-by.

  “Will we hand it over to the Big Town detectives?” I smirked, throwing him his cap and putting mine on, pulling my ponytail through the hole. “The Mysterious Case of the Doodle Doodles.”

  He laughed, fishing the car keys out of his pocket. “I don’t remember reading that one.”

  “You’ll never guess who the culprit is,” I smiled, closing the station door behind us.

  “Let’s see,” he pondered. Our boots crunched on the gravel as we walked to the car. He leaned on the top of the car, looking over at me. “Is it the mousy, respectable woman who lives quietly in the end house tending her rose garden but who is secretly Mrs Villiers’ half-sister who will inherit a fortune if Mrs Villiers dies of shock on seeing many penises without having made a valid will? Or is it the underaged Bycraft lout who spends all day joy-riding, drinking grog, shooting up, and vandalising election posters instead of going to school?”

  “I don’t want to spoil the ending for you,” I teased, climbing into the passenger seat. “You’ll have to work it out for yourself like a real detective.”

  It took barely two minutes to drive to Mrs Villiers’ house. One of her cats, Carrie, batted a clawed paw out at the Sarge’s ankle as he walked past. He would have copped a scratch if he hadn’t been wearing boots. As it was, he didn’t notice, but I did, shooting the cat an evil look as I walked past, daring it to have a go at me too. It sullenly glared back at me, before slinking away into the undergrowth.

  Vern showed us to Mrs Villiers’ study without saying a word, and just as quietly disappeared, leaving us to her mercies. She was seated at her desk, two of her cats lying at either end like sentinels, eyeing us malevolently, their tails swishing back and forth. Charlotte and Samantha, I thought. Mrs Villiers shuffled papers for a few minutes, making us wait before deigning to notice us. Without a greeting, she nodded to where she’d stacked the posters up against a cupboard door.

  “There’s the evidence, officers,” she said coldly.

  The Sarge held them up one by one for us to examine while I took notes. Every poster had been defaced with the crude, childish drawings.

  “Yep,” said the Sarge, his lips trembling with the effort not to laugh. “That’s definitely a lot of penises.”

  I spun away from him, afraid that the giggles welling up inside me were going to unwillingly volcano out. Mrs Villiers stopped writing and frowned over at us.

  “I hope you officers are taking this seriously,” she snapped, unimpressed.

  “We take doodles very seriously, Mrs Villiers,” assured the Sarge, deadpan. I giggled loudly before unconvincingly turning it into a cough, drawing the ire of the aggrieved woman and her cats.

  “Are you all right, Senior Constable? Do you find the vandalism of my property amusing?”

  “Certainly not, Mrs Villiers,” I said, pinching my thigh viciously to stop myself from laughing, blinking rapidly all the while.

  The Sarge distracted her smoothly. “I suggest that in future you only place your posters where you can be sure that they won’t be vandalised. Perhaps in the windows of the local shops. Or even some more here on your own property to join the others. I’m sure there are a few patches of lawn free.”

  I hid another smile, appreciating the way he managed to have a dig at someone while always sounding so polite.

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?” she blustered. “That’s not good enough. I want you to catch those responsible. Bring them to justice.”

  “That’s going to be almost impossible, I’m afraid,” said the Sarge. “Not unless we catch someone in the act.”

  “Aren’t you even going to mount an all-night guard on my posters?”

  The Sarge was polite, but firm. “No. We don’t have the resources to do that, Mrs Villiers. There are only the two of us, as you know, and our resources are prioritised at the moment towards the recapture of Red Bycraft and the capture of Miss Greville’s murderer.”

  “I will be complaining to the Superintendent about this matter,” she said spitefully.

  The Sarge shrugged. “That’s your prerogative, Mrs Villiers, but there’s nothing more we can do. Don’t bother about showing us out. We’ll find our own way.”

  Back in the car we laughed for a good couple of minutes. I whacked him on the arm.

  “We take doodles very seriously. Honestly, why the hell did you say that? It did me in.”

  “Sorry,” he chuckled. “Do me a favour and read me your notes.”

  I flipped my notebook open to the page I’d been writing on, giggling all the while. “Poster one with penis on head. Poster two with penis near mouth. Poster three with penis on head and penis near mouth . . .”

  That set us both off again, and we were still laughing as we pulled away from the curb. We drove further down Silky Oak Street, past Teddy and Lee’s building site. Teddy was standing on his footpath, shaking his head at something.

  “Pull over, Sarge,” I demanded, and he did. We climbed out to find Teddy with his hands on his hips looking at one of his election posters that he’d placed at the front of his site. It was a smart move considering the traffic the site was generating, but it had also been vandalised with coarsely drawn male genitalia.

  “Hello, officers. Look at this! Someone’s expressed their political opinion of me. Calling me a dickhead, wouldn’t you say?” he laughed.

  “Don’t take it personally, Mr Caravani,” I said. “Mrs Villiers’ posters have also been vandalised. With, um, genitalia as well.”

  “Glad to hear that. Gotta love democracy, don’t you?”

  “We’re thinking it’s some of the local kids,” smiled the Sarge. “Not a voter.”

  “Even better!” laughed Tony, his warm brown eyes twinkling appealingly. “I was worried that it was one vote I wasn’t going to get, and this contest is going to be tight.”

  “Do you want to make a complaint?” I asked.

  He stared at me in surprise. “And waste your time? Nah, wouldn’t dream of it. Kids will be kids and we wannabe politicians are just asking for it putting up our self-important posters everywhere.” He laughed again.

  “Okay then, we’ll see you around,” said the Sarge and we moseyed back t
o the car.

  “Thanks for stopping. I love the personal attention I receive in this town. Beats the city hands down,” Teddy said, waving at us as we drove off.

  “I’m going to vote for him,” I decided as we pulled back into the station. “He’s nice.”

  “What about his policies?”

  “Who cares?”

  “Tess,” he objected, climbing out of the car. “That’s not very politically engaged of you. Your vote is a privilege and should be used wisely.”

  I smiled at him. “Sarge, my long-standing policy has always been to vote for anyone up against Mrs Villiers. And I don’t care if they’re advocating compulsory cannibalism, I’ll still vote for them.”

  He laughed. “Sorry for preaching. I come from a very political family.”

  “Really?” He hadn’t told me anything much about his family and being such a nosy creature, it was killing me not knowing. All I knew was that his mother was an attractive, well-groomed woman who was a public servant, and that he had an equally attractive, well-groomed, stepfather. And I only knew that because I’d seen a photo of the two of them in his house.

  “Yeah. I grew up talking about politics at the dining table.”

  “I grew up talking about organic fertiliser and rainfall,” I said wryly. “Politics didn’t come into the conversation much.”

  “We didn’t talk about fertiliser much. Not unless it was the kind sprouting from politicians’ mouths!”

  “Good one, Sarge,” I laughed. “They’re all full of shit.”

  “Not all of them. Some of them go into politics genuinely wanting to make a difference to the community.”

  “Sure they do,” I rejoined cynically. “And the generous superannuation and lifelong perks have nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I’m not,” I smiled at him. “Not about politics anyway. I couldn’t give a toss to be honest. Different pollies, same old rubbish.”

  He tutted about my lack of interest in our country’s leaders as he unlocked the station door. “Just for that indifference to your hard won civic responsibilities, you can do the incident report on the poster vandalism.”