by JD Nixon
The two uniforms helped me drag Red into the watch house and up to the counter. We had to wait a while as the place was buzzing, probably because of the party riot. The Senior Sarge, the second fiercest woman in the station and not one to give away smiles for free, lit up when she clapped eyes on him.
“A present for me? Excellent. Long time no see, Redmond Christopher Bycraft,” she smiled, tapping on her computer keyboard with enthusiasm. “Thanks, Tess. You’ve just made my night.”
“Seeing him in a cell again will make my night too,” I said, suddenly feeling lighthearted. Red Bycraft was back in custody and I could stop looking over my shoulder.
“Happy times for all of us then.” She proceeded to process his charges, peering over the top of her monitor at me. “He looks a bit roughed up, Tess.”
“His victim fought back,” I said blandly.
She stared at me, her sharp black eyes narrowing. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s bullshit!” Red shouted, struggling again. “She let the bitch beat on me. She encouraged her to.”
“Yeah? That’s what Tess just said – the victim fought back. Good for her. Hope she gave you a hiding.”
“You’re not listening – they held me and let the bitch do it.”
“Look buddy, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop referring to the victim like that. It’s demeaning. And I’m hearing you loud and clear. The victim fought back. And there isn’t a woman in this building who isn’t cheering her for that.”
He continued to protest. The Senior Sarge nodded to a couple of watch house officers.
“I’m done with him. Take him away so he can stop polluting the area with his rottenness. Put him somewhere I don’t have to see him again for the night. Hope you enjoy your sleepover.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “That offer turns my stomach.”
The watch house officers hauled him off through the doors into the holding area where the cells were situated.
“Bye, Red,” I taunted sweetly. “See you in court.”
“Fuck you.”
“Right back at you, sport.”
“You haven’t seen the last of me, Tessie Fuller,” he threatened as he disappeared through the doors. “I’m going to make you regret what you’ve done tonight.”
“My only regret about you is that you were ever born in the first place!” I shouted after him, receiving a smattering of applause from the other cops around.
“Well said, Tess,” approved the Senior Sarge. “I’ve never met a man who’s proven himself to be a bigger oxygen thief than Red Bycraft.”
The two uniforms who’d helped me bring in Red reluctantly trailed away to rejoin their colleagues at the party riot. I took a few quiet minutes to use the facilities to wash my hands and face, and try to restore a little respectability to my appearance – a futile endeavour.
When I returned to the counter, the Sarge strolled in, giving me an amused once-over in the bright light of the watch house reception area.
“What?” I asked defensively.
“You’re filthy,” he said smiling. “You need a shower and a change of clothes.”
“I know, I know. But why aren’t you filthy too?” Although Katie’s blood smeared his shirt and the knees of his pants were dirty, he was otherwise his usual neat self.
He slipped his arm around my shoulders and propelled me towards the entry doors. “Because some people are just natural magnets for dirt, mud, weirdos, and Bycrafts, and some aren’t. Now let’s get out of here before we’re sent to the riot.”
We’d almost made it to the door when the Senior Sarge called after us, placing her phone back in its cradle. “Not so fast, dynamic duo. The Super wants to see you upstairs.”
We groaned in unison, immediately detouring over to the lifts.
“We should have moved faster,” I complained.
“I’m not going to the riot,” insisted the Sarge, his chin set firm. “We’ve done out bit for the night and if she doesn’t like that, she can just lump it.”
I smiled at him inside the lift. “I love it when you talk tough.”
He jabbed at the button for the station’s foyer. “I love it when you find anything to love about me.”
I laughed. “It’s a struggle, but I’ve found one or two things.”
“My incredible wit?”
“No, that’s not one of them.”
“My superhuman physique?”
“Nope.”
“My impressive culinary skills?”
I pulled a face. “Definitely not.”
“My manly good looks?”
“I’ve seen better.”
“My endless tolerance for disobedient, reckless and disrespectful senior constables?”
“What’s not to love about that?”
“My provision of a continual supply of Tim Tams?”
“It’s a guaranteed way to a woman’s heart.”
“If only it was that easy.”
As the lift travelled up a floor to the foyer, the Sarge told me that Kieran had been subdued, barely uttering a word the entire drive to his house. He’d scooted from the Sarge’s car with a mumbled thanks and not even one glance back. I didn’t think he’d be planning a career in the police force any time soon.
Despite the late hour, the station was hopping, cops rushing in and out, yelling into their phones and slurping coffee. The party riot meant that everyone was working overtime. We could hear the Super before we even took one step outside the lift. She was at the counter, screaming at a group of three uniforms who all wore identical expressions of sulky terror.
“. . . and if any of you syphilitic gonads speak to that arsehole from the paper about that riot again, I’m going to rip off your fucking heads and shit in your skulls. Understood? Or do you want me to fucking demonstrate?”
“Understood, ma’am,” they mumbled miserably, shuffling their feet and glancing at each other sideways. Every other cop in the vicinity pretended to be busy, but was avidly and gleefully listening and enjoying the bollocking, glad it was someone else copping it. Even I, a veritable veteran of getting in trouble and therefore someone who should empathise, felt a frisson of sheer joy at not being the target of the Super’s vitriol for once.
“Good. Now fuck off back to work and don’t any of you dare open your fucking mouth to that shitbag again, not even when he offers to let you blow him for free.”
And with that final public humiliation, she turned away from the three men and was about to stalk back upstairs when she spotted the Sarge and me.
“You two,” she barked. “In my office. Now!”
We followed her silently and obediently up to her office on the fourth floor. She flung herself into her chair behind her desk and reached for a cigarette, lighting up and taking a deep drag.
“Sit down.” We sat down. Her bright blue eyes moved from the Sarge to me. “What the hell have you been up to, Tessie? You smell worse than Young Kenny.”
I gave her the good news first. “Red Bycraft’s in custody downstairs, ma’am.”
“So I heard. I also heard he attacked another young woman tonight. I thought you were watching him. What happened?”
“We didn’t have enough help . . .” started the Sarge.
“Stop!” she demanded, holding up her hand, a tiny cylinder of ash flying off the end of the cigarette, landing on her desk. She brushed it to the floor impatiently. “Nobody has enough fucking help around here at the moment, Maguire. Sing me another song. That one bores me.”
“He escaped out the back door of the nightclub, ma’am,” I confessed, fighting a sudden urge to yawn, “while we were busy watching the front.” There was no point trying to gloss over it.
Her eyes burned us in turn with their iciness. “You fucking idiots.” We sat silently, fuming at the unfairness of it all. “Why didn’t you stay inside keeping an eye on the bastard?”
“Because I was spotted by Denny and Ma
rk Bycraft, ma’am. It was too risky.”
“I’ll tell you what was risky – letting Red Bycraft walk out of a nightclub with a young woman. That was fucking risky.”
“You can blame me, ma’am. I made the call to put Tessie’s safety first by removing her from that nightclub. And I’m not apologising for that. I’d do it again every time we’re in a similar situation.”
She stared at him and ran her spare hand through her mangled hair, making it stick out in an even more unsightly mess. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to mention that to her.
“No one was asking you to apologise for looking after Tess, Maguire. It’s your job.”
I protested. “I don’t need looking after. I can look after myself.”
“Don’t go all Femzilla on me, Tessie. I’m not arguing with you.”
I stood up. I was tired and filthy and I wanted to go home. “Well, why are you bollocking us then? We recaptured Red Bycraft, which is exactly what you told us to prioritise. We didn’t stop that poor woman from being attacked, but we arrived in time to make sure it wasn’t as bad an attack as it might have been. So, thank you to us.” I turned to the Sarge. “Good work, Maguire.”
“Good work, Fuller.”
“We make a great team.”
“We do indeed.”
“A great night’s work serving the public. Let’s go home.”
“Let’s.”
“Oh, and before we leave, ma’am, when is someone going to show some interest in what we’ve discovered about Dylan Krysztofiak? The dees haven’t returned our messages. We should be setting up a search party and organising the dogs. We have to find this man before he hurts someone or himself.”
She sighed heavily. “I don’t have unlimited resources. All the dees are working multiple cases at the moment. They’ll get to you when they can.”
Her response didn’t impress me and I guess I didn’t hide that too well. “Anything else before we leave, ma’am?”
She faltered at having control of the conversation taken away from her for once. “Er, no.” We almost ran for the door. “Wait!” We stopped and turned back to face her. “Good work tonight, you two.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” I beamed. It had been a hard-earned gesture of appreciation.
“Yeah, yeah, Now, fuck off home before I change my mind and make you help us with that riot,” she said, waving us away with her hand. “You have a town to look after and you look dead on your feet.”
“So do you,” I retorted. “You should take your own advice and get on home to Ronnie. All this mess will still be here in the morning.”
She stared at me narrowly, her face breaking into a rare beautiful smile. “Go on, off with you, you silly girl.”
Her phone rang and she answered, immediately yelling into the receiver. I knew she’d stay at work all night, or at least until the riot was quenched. She was a driven woman in a man’s career, a complete contrast to her easy-going, domestically-minded husband.
“I can’t believe I got away with that,” I marvelled outside her office.
“I love it when you talk tough with her,” he smiled.
I yawned. “Do you think we should go to the hospital? Katie’s probably asleep by now or they’ve sent her home.”
We didn’t need to think about that for long because in the foyer we ran into my favourite dee team – Mr X and Zelda.
“Tessie!” exclaimed a delighted Mr X. “I was hoping we’d run into you here tonight. We’ve just come back from interviewing Red Bycraft’s latest victim.”
“Is she still at the hospital?”
“No, we interviewed her at home. There wasn’t much they could do for her at the hospital. Fortunately none of her injuries are terribly serious, and after they checked her out and patched her up, she indicated she’d prefer to go home than stay overnight.”
“Fair enough. We were thinking about visiting her, but we’ll just mosey on home instead.”
“Good job on recapturing Red Bycraft,” congratulated Zelda, as usual looking uncrumpled and statuesque in a skirt suit, despite the late hour. I felt a little lacking in the elegance department standing next to her.
“It’s a relief for Tess to know he’s in custody again,’ said the Sarge, nudging me towards the door.
I resisted. “How are things with Blondie?” I asked Mr X, not without a small dose of mischief.
He rolled his eyes and groaned. Zelda smirked discreetly, her eyes on the floor. “Terrible. We’re moving in together. I don’t know how this has possibly happened to me. But she somehow gets me to agree to these things when I’m at my most vulnerable.”
“He means when they’re in the middle of shagging,” interpreted Zelda.
“I don’t expect you to understand, but it’s a very vulnerable time for a man, Z.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times not to call me Z.”
“Why not? I like it. X and Z. It’s fitting. We’re a team.”
“You make us sound like an episode of Sesame Street.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous. They’d never have X and Z on the same show in Sesame Street. What kind of show would that be?”
“They could have zebras playing xylophones.”
“Or xenophobes climbing ziggurats.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous? They wouldn’t have xenophobes on Sesame Street.”
And they drifted away, bickering good-naturedly. The Sarge placed his hand on the small of my back and virtually pushed me out the doors of the station over to his car.
On the way back home, desperately fighting a major adrenaline slump, I decided to try again to grill the Sarge on his life.
“Your mother seems very nice.”
“So you said before.”
I abandoned subtlety. “I need something to keep me awake during the drive. Tell me about her.”
“Why?”
“Why not? What’s the big secret? I’ve spoken to her. I’ve seen a photo of her, so why be so secretive?”
He was silent for a moment. “I’m very boring. Why don’t you tell me something about yourself instead?”
“You know everything about me.”
“Not everything. Tell me about all your boyfriends.”
“There haven’t been very many.”
“It won’t take long to tell me then, will it?”
I studied his profile, trying to decide whether or not to be totally open with him. I wasn’t really comfortable talking about myself, and there was a lot of pain still wrapped up in one of my previous relationships. But he was my partner and I trusted him with my life every day. Maybe I should trust him with my secrets too?
I took a gamble. “If I tell you that, you have to tell me something about yourself in return. Something I choose.”
“Sounds fair.”
“Okay. Well, I’ve only ever had three boyfriends.”
“Abe was your first.”
“Yes.”
“And Jake is your latest.”
“I’m surprised you’re not a detective yet,” I smiled.
“So, what about boyfriend number two?”
I stared out the window into the darkened landscape speeding past. “It was an unhappy experience for me.”
“What happened?”
“After Abe, I didn’t have a boyfriend for years. I was twenty-three, almost twenty-four, working in Benara in the city at that point. I’d been on a few dates at the police academy, but none of them ever progressed to a second date. I guess my winning personality and my knife put men off.”
“You’re a strong, self-sufficient woman. Some men might be intimidated by that.”
“Maybe,” I smiled wryly. “I’ve felt like a freak my entire life, and let’s just say that my fellow recruits didn’t make me feel any less freakish during my time at the academy. They didn’t call me Tess the Ripper for nothing. But I survived and graduated, going to work at the station in Benara for a few years, pretty much resigned to the thought that I’d be single for the r
est of my life. It made perfect sense to me – just one more unchangeable negative outcome of being born a Fuller woman in Little Town. I kept myself busy with studying and working and didn’t encourage or seek any attention from men. I actually turned them down if they did ask me out.”
“But you still hoped, deep down?”
“I tried not to be envious of the relationships of my friends and colleagues, but I’m only human. I kept telling myself that some things are just not meant to be.”
“But then this man came into your life?”
“Yes. His name was Mitch. I honestly didn’t pay much attention to him at first. He was a police prosecutor, and I met him in a professional capacity during a court case where I had to give evidence. I’m not very good with relationship stuff and it took me a while to realise he was taking a personal interest in me. In fact, it was only when my sergeant started teasing me about him that I even noticed. And I guess after that, I couldn’t stop noticing him.”
“A good looking man?”
“Yes, and well aware of it too. He had a reputation as being a bit of a player, so I thought it would be best to steer clear of him. I’ve never been interested in being a notch on someone’s bedhead.” I slid my eyes his way, blushing a little. “Not that I was a notch on anyone’s bedhead at that time.”
There was a surprised silence. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Not even at university?”
“No.”
“So he was your first man.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so he eventually won you over and you went out with him.”
“Yep. We started dating. He was a lot of fun, very charming. He introduced me to his friends and his family. His parents were lovely and gladly welcomed me into his large family.”
“Big contrast to the Bycrafts.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“This Mitch must have been stunned to find out you were . . . um . . . inexperienced.”