by JD Nixon
“Everything’s just peachy, thanks for asking, Officer Tess,” he mocked.
I persisted. “I want to check on Sharnee.”
“Was it her old bitch of a mother who rang you?” he demanded, losing some of his cool, his mouth tightening unattractively. His eyes shifted from my face, past my shoulder into the darkness of the night. Sharnee’s mother and two sisters lived directly across the road.
I didn’t answer.
“Sharnee’s asleep.” He moved to slam the door in my face. I stuck my boot out to prevent him.
It was my turn to look over his shoulder. “No, she isn’t. I can see her moving around in the kitchen behind you.”
Anger swept across his face as he turned around to shout into the house, “I told you to get off to bed, you stupid fucking slag! You better fucking well do what I tell you to next time if you know what’s good for you.”
“No need for that kind of language. Ask Sharnee to come to the door. When I’m satisfied she’s all right, I’ll be on my way. And make it snappy. I’m very busy tonight.”
We faced off for a moment before he backed down. “Sharnee! Get your fat, ugly arse out here so that piglet can see you’re okay.”
She scuttled to the door and poked her head around timidly, looking up at Red with an equal mixture of fear and devotion in her soft brown eyes. Sharnee Lebutt was only thirty and had once been a pretty woman, but hard years of life with Red as his on-again, off-again girlfriend, casual punching bag, and the mother of three of his five children, had marred her prettiness with premature wrinkles and a permanent expression of anxious despair. Why she let him return to her again and again was beyond me. He was an uncaring father to their kids and an unfaithful sponger who treated her like dirt. What sane woman would want that in her life? Perhaps she had never given up her dream that he would marry her? Everyone in town knew that’s all it would ever be for her though – a dream. Red, like most of the Bycrafts, was not the settling down type. And he’d proven that to Sharnee thoroughly by also knocking up two of her three sisters.
At thirty-five, he was the oldest of the Bycraft generation I’d grown up with, and in my opinion he was the worst of a very bad bunch. He had only been released on parole a few months ago after serving four years for the aggravated sexual assault of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was his fourth stint in the slammer for similar crimes and you could tell from just looking at him that he was already planning his next attack on some unsuspecting vulnerable young woman he’d pick up at a nightclub. Most of his assaults were never reported, and any woman courageous enough to make a complaint against him usually withdrew it soon after, in fear of her life after being personally threatened by him. The only reason he hadn’t gone down for longer after his last attack was because his poor little traumatised victim had flatly refused to give evidence against him in court.
“You okay, Sharnee? What happened here tonight?” I asked her with concern.
“What happened, lovely piglet,” butted in Red, not giving her a chance to speak, “is that we had a tiny disagreement over the fact that the useless bitch didn’t have enough rum and smokes in the house for me tonight. I might have raised my voice a little and given her a light slap on the wrist to remind her of her duties to me, but that’s all. Nothing more.”
More like a fist in the face than a slap on the wrist, I thought, turning to the silent woman. “Sharnee?"
“That’s right, Officer Tess. Just like Red said,” she confirmed softly, watching him with wary eyes.
“Let me see you properly.”
Her eyes still fixed on Red, she unwillingly stepped out from behind him into the verandah light.
“Is that bruising around your right eye?”
“N-no, Officer Tess."
“Yes it is, you stupid cow,” hissed Red impatiently, prodding her ungently with his elbow. “Don’t you remember? One of the kids opened the bathroom door suddenly and the doorknob hit you in the face.”
“That’s right. I forgot. Thanks, Red.” She looked up at him again, clearly afraid.
“Which kid?” I asked, glancing from one to the other, not believing a word I was hearing.
“Kyle,” Sharnee said.
Simultaneously, Red said, “Teagan."
“I meant Teagan,” Sharnee corrected instantly, flustered. “I meant Teagan. Silly, stupid me! I can’t get anything right these days.” She smiled weakly at me, not quite meeting my eyes. “Everything here’s fine, Officer Tess. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to do what Red told me to and go to bed. It’s very late and I have to get up for the kids in the morning.”
She hurriedly darted back inside, leaving Red smiling at me, slyly triumphant.
“I don’t want to hear of any more disturbances here tonight, understand? And that includes the music,” I warned him and reluctantly headed back to the patrol car.
I hated leaving Sharnee with him because he would probably rough her up again the second I left. But there was nothing I could do if she refused to complain about him. And she was inexplicably loyal to him, despite everything he did to her, so I had no real hope that she would ever complain. Especially to me.
“Bye for now, lovely.” Red stood on the verandah and watched me get into the patrol car, kissing the air in my direction and grabbing his crotch again when I looked up at him, an arrogant smirk creasing his features.
I muttered to myself about him as I switched on the ignition and nosed away from the curb.
But as I did, music blared out at ear-shattering volume from his house again. I jerked the steering wheel and pulled the patrol car back to the curb, switching on its rooftop flashing red and blue lights to warn him that my patience was wearing wafer thin. I hadn’t been joking when I’d said I was busy tonight. I waited for a minute. His silhouette filled the front window, checking that I’d noticed his defiance, and when he saw I had, the music abruptly stopped once more. Red was only delivering his usual, “fuck you”, in farewell, but being on parole, he couldn’t afford to provoke me too far. I waited for another minute of blissful silence to make sure that he’d behave himself, watching as the lights in his house were extinguished one by one before driving off again.
I hadn’t even drawn a breath though when I received a phone call from Abe Stormley, owner of the town’s only pub, The Flying Pigs. He wanted to know when I was returning, because “we have a situation with Des”. Five minutes later, back at the pub, I was confronted with an unpleasant spectacle.
“Des, for the last time,” I said patiently, “if you want me to give you a lift home, you have to put some clothes on.” I paused a beat, looking him up and down. “At least put your pants back on. I can’t have you bare-arsed in the patrol car. It’s unhygienic.”
Des swayed in front of me trying to focus, then without a word opened his mouth and projected a stream of vomit that landed like a homing missile right on my boots.
“Aw, shit,” I complained mildly, glancing down at the mess. “I just cleaned those this morning.”
“Sorry, Tessie love. You see, it’s like this . . .” he slurred, index finger up to make his point. Then he slowly dissolved in front of me until he was lying collapsed in an unattractive naked heap on the sticky carpet.
I rubbed the back of my neck with tiredness and exhaled heavily while I thought. I nudged him with my soiled boot a few times. He didn’t move. I didn’t want to pick him up. He was starkers for one thing and not a lightweight anymore, for another. There were parts of my job I really hated sometimes – usually they involved the Bycrafts, but tonight was an exception.
“Does anyone know where Des’ clothes are?” I shouted out at the happy-drunk crowd milling around me, bending down to give my boots a perfunctory wipe with some paper napkins I pinched off the nearest table. A few of the crowd pointed helpfully over at a far corner of the room. Others pointed to the opposite far corner. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling in silent supplication, sighed again and headed towards the first corner.
“Anyo
ne seen Maureen?” I shouted again over my shoulder. Didn’t matter who I directed my question to; there were usually half-a-dozen people willing to listen and help me. There was always someone to look out for you in this neck of the woods. My mother used to call the townsfolk insufferable sticky-beaks. She never got used to country life. Or so Dad told me.
“Maureen took off about an hour ago,” boomed Abe from the bar where he was perfecting the head on a fresh pint. He was probably the only other sober person in the room besides me. “She went home. Said she’d had enough of it.”
I turned to throw him a grateful glance. I was with Maureen – I’d had enough of it too, especially at this time of the night. He winked at me in sympathy, but didn’t volunteer to help me wrestle Des into his clothes. There was a limit to citizen cooperation I had found, especially when it involved drunken naked men.
I eventually tracked down Des’ clothes to where he had carelessly discarded them in the pub’s function room. I smiled for the first time that evening as I picked them up. I must have missed a doozy of a speech from him. He had been a lazy cop and a negligent boss, literally counting down the days to his retirement, crossing them off in red marker on his wall calendar each day. I’d done most of the crime fighting in the couple of years I’d been back in town, and while in his favour he’d given me a lot of freedom, he’d also taken most of the credit for any successes, leaving me to wear the blame for any failures.
It was hard to be angry with him though because he had kissed the Blarney Stone when he was born for sure, and I reckon he’d be able to talk underwater buried in a cement coffin, gagged, and following a laryngectomy. I’d barely got a word in the whole time we’d worked together. He had the gift of the gab, was a real charmer, and his speech would have been a work of art. Well, it should have been, because he’d laboured over it every day for the last six months instead of doing any real work.
I wish I’d been at the pub to hear it, but I’d been at old Miss Greville’s house, half-heartedly searching her dark overgrown garden by torchlight for the third peeping tom she’d reported that fortnight. She’d clutched my hand gratefully, if a little shakily, when I’d assured her that there was nobody there. I hadn’t wanted to remind her that if there was even the remotest chance of a man peeking on ladies in our small town, he’d be heading straight for the nudist community which was only a couple of kilometres away.
Failing that, he had the option of waiting around until eight on a Sunday night when, as regular as clockwork, the town’s good-time girl, Foxy Dubois, gave an impromptu free striptease performance in her lounge room after spending the afternoon drinking at Abe’s pub. There was always a crowd at her window on Sunday nights. But what a peeping tom patently wouldn’t be doing in Little Town however, was wasting his time spying on Miss Greville, a ninety-three year old spinster who had confessed to me with breathless confidentiality that she always bathed with her underwear on, “just in case”.
Of course I had wanted to attend Des’ retirement bash. He’d been my boss, after all, and I’d known him for the whole twenty years he’d lived here. But we were a two cop town, and when one cop is the guest of honour at his own party, the other one hasn’t got much choice but to be on duty, even if she’d been on duty every day for the last month while her boss was busy organising the big event. The evening hadn’t been too onerous though I had to admit, with most of the townsfolk, with the exception of the Bycrafts, gathered at the pub for Des’ send-off. Much of my activity tonight had been confined to ferrying drunk people back home.
I didn’t normally run a blue light taxi with the town’s only patrol car, but it was a special occasion, and I didn’t want to make myself unpopular by booking people for being public nuisances or for driving under the influence. Especially after I’d spent the morning manning the radar gun on the highway approaching town from the south. That was where the long mountainous climb finally levelled out, and people let their speed rip just as they came to a sixty zone. A lot of interstate drivers, as well as a few locals, would receive an unwelcome penalty notice for speeding in the mail soon. The locals should have known better though. There was always the chance that I’d be lurking behind that thicket of overgrown oleanders on the side of the road just past the ‘Welcome to Mount Big Town’ sign, because that’s where I always perched doing radar duty on that side of town. So I spared no sympathy for those townsfolk who I’d clocked over the speed limit today, but tonight I conveniently looked the other way and lent a helping hand where I could.
I had warned Des about running an open bar until midnight at The Flying Pigs, and as usual he’d listened courteously to my advice and then patted me on the head as if I was his much-loved golden Labrador, Mr Sparkles. But soon after our chat he had left the station with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, loudly arranging for Abe to have beer, wine and spirits generously on tap until the stroke of twelve for all his guests and after that the “fucking freeloaders” could pay for their own, he laughed uproariously into the phone. I didn’t get mad at him for being so patronising though, because when I thought about it, I’d rather that he treated me like Mr Sparkles than like his long-suffering and much-ignored wife, Maureen. At least Des pretended to listen to me. And there was the pat on the head, after all. The rumour around town was that he hadn’t touched Maureen for fifteen years.
But right now I had a drunk, unconscious and naked former boss on my hands. With a great deal of disagreeable (and hopefully forgettable) effort, I managed at least to get Des panted up, commando-style admittedly, but as long as his bare butt wasn’t touching any of my patrol car seats, I was satisfied. With the help of some of the more sober guests, I walked Des to the car, manhandled him into the back seat and secured him. He lurched immediately to the side, held only in place with the seatbelt. I really hoped he wasn’t going to throw up again.
I drove off slowly, but before I could drop off Des, I had to deliver a few of the other guests who had opportunistically jumped in for a free ride after helping me get Des to the car. Some of them lived a fair way out of town, on the small-holding farms that formed the bulk of Little Town’s outlying population. I was being taken advantage of I realised, but as I said before, it was a special occasion so I didn’t kick up too much of a stink about it. I turned on to the Coastal Range Highway and headed out of town.
When I finally returned to town and reached the house where Des and Maureen lived, neighbouring the town’s police station, it was in total darkness. I presumed that meant Maureen was in a major snit with him. On the dozens of times I’d escorted Des home after a night out with the boys, she had usually left the verandah light on for him at least. He’d probably forgotten to mention her in his speech tonight, was my guess. I was willing to bet that Mr Sparkles had received a number of loving references though.
Speaking of Des’ adored and spoiled pet, Mr Sparkles let out one irritated bark at being woken up and waddled down the front stairs over to me, sniffing at my crotch in his usual disrespectful manner.
“Stop doing that,” I objected, pushing him away. “You know it’s me, Sparkles.”
He looked up at me with his gorgeous brown eyes, cocked a leg, and pissed on the back tyre of the patrol car. It was a deliberate act. He knew it was my job to wash the car.
I let out an impatient sigh. “No need to be like that. I’ve told you a million times that I just don’t like you sniffing me there. It’s nothing personal – I’d say the same to any dog.”
He shot me a contemptuous look, and then pissed on the front tyre as well. The dog sure knew how to make a statement. He sniffed at Des, flinching in disgust at the alcohol vapours coming off him, before waddling back up the stairs to his comfy bed on the wide front verandah.
With no helpers, and only Mr Sparkles as my lazily amused audience, I performed an awkward dance with Des trying to get him up the stairs and into bed. We staggered one way, halted, teetering on the edge of tumbling over together, then righted ourselves and staggered the other way.
He was a weighty man and was very drunk and it was the longest twenty metres I’ve ever traversed.
Maureen had locked the front door in her temper, but luckily I knew where the spare key was kept. So did the rest of the town. A large green ceramic frog with a comically wide mouth and the words ‘spare key here’ engraved on its chest, probably wasn’t the smartest place for anyone, let alone a cop, to hide their extra house key. I retrieved the key from the frog’s mouth and inserted it into the keyhole, opened the door and we staggered together towards his bedroom, knocking over at least four of Maureen’s tacky china knick-knacks as we did. They filled the house to capacity, perched precariously on every horizontal vantage point. Their house was a nightmare for anyone who liked to gesture wildly as they spoke.
I eventually managed to manoeuvre Des to his marital bed, letting go of him gratefully as he fell heavily on to the mattress.
“Thank God,” I muttered to myself as I stretched my agonised muscles.
“Don’t you dare take our Lord’s name in vain, Teresa Fuller!” snapped an angry voice from the other side of the bed. Maureen was very religious and, apparently, very awake.
“Sorry, Maureen. My deepest apologies,” I said insincerely, stretching again. Jesus! I thought rotating my shoulders. It was going to take me an age to recover from this.
“Did you knock over any of my treasures? I heard a lot of strange noises as you came in,” she asked suspiciously.
“No, Maureen,” I lied. They were moving out over the weekend to the city to be closer to their children and grandchildren in their retirement, so I figured I could be loose with the truth with her. Besides, she’d obviously forgotten the bit in the Bible about looking after your own damn husband.
I made a hasty retreat and closed and locked their front door, replacing the spare key in the frog’s mouth. I could already hear Des snoring from out on the verandah. Maureen was in for a noisy night by the sound of it. Mr Sparkles gave a half-hearted bark and made moves as if he was getting up to sniff me intimately again.