Blood Ties

by JD Nixon

  And knowing that I’d just detonated World War III in that household, I hummed happily to myself, pushed past the Sarge who appeared rather traumatised after his ordeal, and ran down the stairs. Mr Sparkles’ malevolent glare followed me. I washed my hands thoroughly in the station bathroom, secured the building – the station wasn’t open on the weekend – and jumped in the driver’s seat of the patrol car to join the Sarge, who was waiting patiently and quietly in the passenger’s seat.

  He glanced at me, his face expressing a multitude of emotions, but obviously none he felt able to put into words at this stage. I revved the engine, reversed like a hoon and squealed out of the parking lot, skidding and spraying gravel everywhere, before slowing down to the speed limit when I hit the street, like a model citizen.

  “Fuller!” he shouted in alarm, clinging on to the door’s armrest.

  “Just my bit of fun, Sarge,” I said, grinning to myself. “I love that gravel carpark.”

  He shook his head and turned away to look out of the window. He was probably calculating how long it would take him to drive back to the city if he left right now.

  I drove down the Coastal Range Highway. It had been an act of unwarranted generosity by the state’s founding fathers to gazette this place as a town way back in 1889. To be brutally honest, it wasn’t up to scratch as a village and barely even passed muster as a hamlet. If pressed, I would probably refer to us as a cluster.

  Little Town was nothing but a tiny dot in the district road guide and a mere fly speck on the state road map. It was the kind of place that people drove through to get somewhere else, quickly. But the town had a few things going for it – it was situated at the base of Mount Big, with easy access to the good angling at Lake Big; there was access to the delights of the Pacific Ocean via its sheltered beach cove; and it also had exceptionally fertile soil. Otherwise, everyone would have drifted away eventually and the town would have died a natural death like so many other little towns. But the tourists, the government facilities nearby, and the increasing numbers of small seasonal farmers kept the town’s pulse alive. In fact, we were one of the few small rural communities in the state to have grown in population from the last census. It was just a pity that neither the town’s police force nor its budget had grown along with it.

  I began the tour, knowing that it wouldn’t take very long. “This town was built on a crossroads. The road to the north leads down the Range to the prison and to Big Town. You came in that way when you arrived from the city. You would have passed the turnoff.”

  He nodded in memory of passing the prison and the turnoff to Wattling Bay.

  “The road to the south leads down the Range to the hippy commune and the mental health clinic. The road to the east leads past the secret bikie retreat and the nudist community, then heads down to the beach. And the road to the west leads up to Mount Big and Lake Big.”

  “Mount Big?” he criticised. “That’s not very imaginative.”

  I shrugged. “I guess all the good names were already taken by the time the explorers reached here. It is pretty big though – second largest mountain in the state and largest mountain in the Coastal Range. People get lost on it all the time. Hope you like bushwalking because you’ll be doing a spot of it now and then.” I smiled. “In the worst possible weather, of course.”

  Out the window I spotted a woman talking on her mobile, pacing back and forth in agitation outside the post office/newsagency, gesturing wildly with her free hand. It was Stacey Felhorn, and she was either arguing with her best friend, Dorrie Lebutt, Sharnee’s younger sister, or with her boyfriend, Rick Bycraft, Jake’s older brother. She was always falling out with one or the other, sometimes with violent results that required my intervention. Maybe she’d just discovered what everyone in town already knew – that Rick and Dorrie had been sneaking around together behind her back for months. I continued to talk absent-mindedly as I watched her. “That’s why this town is named Mount Big Town. But we locals all call it Little Town.”

  “Okay, you’re doing my head in,” the Sarge complained. I turned my attention back to him. “Let me try to get this straight. This town is really called Mount Big Town because it sits at the base of Mount Big, but you all call it Little Town, and you all call Wattling Bay, ‘Big Town’, because it’s the biggest town close by.” I nodded. “That’s very confusing.”

  “It’s a local thing, which is why I’m giving you the heads-up,” I said. “It’s not that difficult to understand. This is Little Town. Wattling Bay is Big Town. Easy peasy.”

  He glanced at me, reluctantly curious. “That dog earlier? Did you really squeeze its –”

  “Yes,” I cut in, matter-of-fact. “And it’s not the first time I’ve had to either. It seems cruel, but he won’t respond to anything else when he gets himself into that state.” I laughed. “Mr Sparkles is a real public nuisance. Des should have had him seen to years ago. He’s as horny as a bunch of politicians at a showgirl conference.” The Sarge raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Sparkles, that is, not Des.”

  He studied me for a few moments. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “No worries.” My eyes remained straight ahead, but I smiled to myself. We drove in silence for a while.

  “So with all those local names for everything, what do you call the city?” he asked.

  “The city. Why, what do you call it?” I smiled to myself again. He shot me a withering glance.

  My mobile rang and I answered it, speaking while I drove.

  “Miss Greville –” I started and then listened some more. “Really? Another one?” I suppressed a sigh. “Okay, I’ll be right over. Keep your doors and windows locked. I’ll be there soon.”

  I pulled a u-turn in the main street and sped off to Miss G’s house on Pine Street, filling in the Sarge as I did. He frowned at me, not listening.

  “Police should lead by example in the community,” he said, butting in to my explanation about Miss G and her imaginary peepers.

  “Huh?” I asked stupidly, my mind on Miss G. His words sunk in. “Oh yeah, that’s so right, Sarge. I totally agree with you.”

  “That means police obeying the law themselves.”

  “Absolutely. If we don’t, who will?” I agreed absently, keeping my eye on some of the younger Bycraft kids racing along the road on bikes, without helmets. There was no point trying to pull them over to reprimand them. They’d only scatter to the four winds and I’d be left looking like ten kinds of a fool trying to chase them down in every direction. I’d learned that from personal experience as well.

  “And that means not talking on a mobile while you’re driving or doing u-turns over unbroken double lines,” he continued in a pointedly cold voice.

  He caught my attention then. “Oh,” I said uncomfortably. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am, Senior Constable.”

  Oh brother, I thought, barely stifling a massive eye roll. This guy was going to be a barrel of laughs to work with. Fortunately for the both of us at that point, I arrived at Miss Greville’s house and rattled up her pothole-pocked driveway.

  Her house was typical of the oldest houses in town – timber built, timber stumps, tin roof, verandahs on all four sides, lovely wrought-iron details on the railings, cream-coloured paint and deep green trim, peeling with age and weather. We climbed the front stairs, me warning him about the final, rotten third tread. I knocked on the door, loudly announcing our arrival so as not to alarm her. She was a jittery bunch of nerves by the time she answered the door, which wasn’t like her. She started in alarm when she saw a strange man at her threshold.

  “Miss G, this is Sergeant Maguire. He’s Des’ replacement. I was just showing him around town when you called me,” I explained quickly.

  Her eyes lit up when she heard that. “Oh, Sergeant Maguire! Welcome to Little Town,” she trilled, forgetting her fear in the excitement at taking in his tall muscularity and nice eyes. He was quite the change from Des, who hadn’t
visited her or anyone much personally for years. I’d done all the running around and all the community service in town since I’d returned. She was obviously impressed to have the town’s senior police officer attending to her in her hour of need.

  I took her to the kitchen and made us all a cup of tea, making sure that hers had plenty of sugar and leading her gently to her well-scrubbed kitchen table to drink it.

  She told us in her clear and lucid manner that she’d risen at seven, had a leisurely breakfast and read the Big Town paper, the Wattling Bay Messenger, slowly. She had cleaned up her breakfast dishes and gone to her bedroom to change out of her nightie, when she saw a man peeking in her window. It had given her such a fright that she’d taken a full half-hour to settle before she felt able to call me. Everyone in town knew that I had the station phone permanently redirected to my mobile because I was rarely at the station, being busy in the field most of the day. Des had never answered the phone on the few times he’d ever showed his face in the station.

  “We’ll take a look around outside for you,” I soothed, and the Sarge and I spent the next ten minutes fruitlessly searching her large unkempt yard for any signs of the phantom intruder.

  “Does she have any family?” he asked, his cheek bleeding where he’d been scratched by an overgrown rose bush. I repressed a strong urge to reach up and wipe away the trickle of blood.

  “No, she’s the last of the Grevilles,” I said, dragging my eyes away from him.

  “Maybe she’s doing this to get some attention?” he suggested. I glanced back at him. Nope, no good. I still wanted to wipe the trickle away.

  “She’s not really that type of person. She’s fairly sensible,” I said instead. To escape before I embarrassed myself, I decided to take a quick look under Miss G’s bedroom window and forced my way through the wild growth, peering down at the ground. I turned back to him. “Sarge? What do you make of these?”

  He pushed his way through as well to examine what I’d found. In the bare dirt directly underneath the window were a couple of scuffed footprints. We stared at each other.

  “Looks like we have ourselves a peeper, after all,” he said.

  *****

  We searched around the other windows, but didn’t find any more evidence of someone peeping on Miss G.

  “That’s the only window that has dirt underneath it. Is this the first time she’s reported him at her bedroom window?”

  I nodded. “He was at the lounge room window twice and at the kitchen window once.”

  “Anyone in town known to be a peeper? Someone we can talk to now?”

  “There’s only one that I know of, but he’s my own personal peeper. He doesn’t bother anyone else.” He raised an eyebrow at that and I continued, “Anyway, nobody needs to peep in Little Town. It’s much easier to head down to the nudist community and climb the mango tree next to the fence. You cop a real eyeful from there.” Both eyebrows were raised now. “So I’ve heard,” I added hastily.

  “Maybe our peeper prefers the more mature woman?” he suggested.

  “Eww! Sarge!” I protested. “Miss G’s ninety-three.”

  “It takes all types, Fuller. You should know that by now.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s right though.” I strode away from him towards the house again, thinking hard. I stopped suddenly. He ran smack bang into me knocking me off balance, he was following me so closely.

  “Sorry,” he said, slightly sheepish, his hands briefly on my upper arms righting me. “What’s up?”

  “There’s a pattern,” I answered hesitantly, looking up at the wide blue sky for inspiration. “Last week he peeped on a Friday night and a Saturday. This week, it was a Friday night . . . and now a Saturday again.” I turned to him. “It’s a pattern, but what does it mean?”

  “What do you think of when you think about Friday nights and Saturdays?” he pondered. “Nothing springs to mind.”

  “Only someone who works,” I said automatically, speaking as a working woman with responsibilities. “It’s the only time you get to have any free time.” Well, obviously I meant every other working person in the world except for me because here I was on a Saturday, working again, after also having worked on the preceding Friday night.

  “So,” he said. “Maybe someone who works full-time and has decided to use Friday nights and Saturdays to peep? It’s not much of a hobby.”

  “Maybe they’re not peeping, but scoping?”

  “Anything worth stealing in there?” he asked, regarding the house doubtfully. I had to admit that it had seen better days, the paint peeling, roof rusting badly and timber warping in many places. But it had been a beautiful colonial homestead in its time.

  “The Grevilles were the original settlers in these parts.” Followed closely by the Fullers. “They built up a huge fortune at one point from forestry and then sheep farming.” Unlike the Fullers, unfortunately. “Don’t know how much is left now though.” My fingers twitched when I saw that blood still trickling down his face. He finally noticed it himself though and swiped at it impatiently, surprised when he pulled his hand away to reveal blood. He wiped it again carelessly and turned his attention back to me.

  “What’s the rumour in town?” he asked, a question that I gave him a lot of credit for – town talk was invaluable in local investigations.

  “The rumour in town is that there’s a pile of money hidden somewhere in this house. But everyone in Little Town knows that’s a bunch of hooey, because old Mr Greville, Miss G’s father, was the town drunk and blew it all on whoring and boozing.” I smiled dryly. “I mean he blew what was left after his ancestors made some exceedingly bad land investments. Those folk from Big Town though, well, they’re greedy and they probably believe the story. It’s bound to be someone from there, I guarantee.”

  I remembered old Mr Greville from when I was a kid. I’d visit the pub with Dad and Nana Fuller for the cheap Sunday roast lunch. That was a real treat, always much better than what Nana Fuller could make because, not to be disrespectful to her memory, she’d been a bloody awful cook. And there Mr Greville would be, propped up in a corner, stinking of his pipe, booze and piss. He’d been a scary figure for a little kid and I’d sometimes have nightmares about him chasing me, his greasy long grey hair flying behind him, toothless mouth gaping at me, dirty claw-like fingernails out ready to snatch me. Or stab me. I gave an involuntary shudder at the memory. I hadn’t thought about him for years.

  “You mentioned that the family made bad land investments. Was that locally? Because to me it seems as though there’s a lot of interest in land around these parts. I mean, you have two big government complexes here already – the prison and the mental health clinic.”

  My eyes rested on his face, impressed again. “You’re right, Sarge. We have a lot of folk wanting to set up base around here, especially the government. Can you imagine the fuss there would have been if they tried to build a prison or mental health clinic anywhere near the city? Little Town is perfect for those kinds of things. We’ve the space and we’re glad for the jobs. Unfortunately for the singles though, the extra men and women around usually choose to live in Big Town, not here. And they don’t mingle much with us in town.” Little Town was not a matchmaker’s paradise and I thought he might be interested in that bit of information, not having a clue about his relationship status. “There could be something in those rumours after all.”

  “This will require some new-fashioned police work, Fuller. Computers, computers, computers,” he said dryly.

  “We might need to visit Big Town then, because our computers are ancient. Mine’s been buggered for weeks.”

  “What kind of internet do we have here?”

  “Intermittent slowest broadband speed on a good day. We’re a long way from the exchange,” I advised, noting with a smile the dismay crossing his face. “Welcome to the country, Sarge.”

  He bit back what he was going to say when Miss Greville poked her head out from the back door and asked us if ev
erything was all right. I turned to the Sarge then and smiled again.

  “We don’t need a computer. We have Miss G.”

  Chapter 4

  When we advised Miss G that we needed to speak to her further, she invited us to share her lunch. I insisted that she sit down while I quickly made us all some sandwiches with the bread, sandwich meat, mustard, cheese, onion, tinned beetroot, lettuce and tomato I found in her pantry and fridge. The three of us sat around the kitchen table to eat, the Sarge discreetly screwing up his nose at the white bread, cheap meat and plastic cheese. We ate the sandwiches, brewed and drank another pot of tea, and then we got down to business. By tacit agreement, I spoke for the two of us.

  “Miss G, there have always been rumours circulating around town about a big fortune hidden in this house,” I began.

  She giggled charmingly. “Tess, my dear, I’ve spent over eighty years looking for that fortune. But do I look as though I’m roaringly rich?”

  I smiled with her. No, it certainly did not look as though she was living the high life. Her clothes were patched, her food plain, and her furnishings were very old, probably the original pieces her family had shipped over from Dear Old Blighty in the early 1880s.

  “Did you ever think about any land holdings that the Grevilles might still own?” I coaxed.

  That took her by surprise and her sharp blue eyes enlargened behind her spectacles. “Well, I don’t know, dear. I wouldn’t think we had any left, but you’d have to speak to the family lawyers about that. Murchison and Murchison. In Big Town.” She thought for a few moments. “We have sold off bits of land over the years to various folk, but I’ve no idea what happened to that money. I leave all the details of that sort of business to my lawyer, Mr Murchison.”

  The Sarge and I glanced at each other.