by JD Nixon
“That’s what it was, right?”
“Right.”
“Never again?”
“Never again.”
“Are you moving on with Maguire?”
I sat up in the bath, disturbing the bubbles. “What?”
“Nothing.”
I sank back down into the bubbles again. “Jakey, I’ve been thinking. You should move right away from here. Right away from your family. Divorce Chantelle and find a lovely woman who isn’t tainted by Little Town. Build a life a million miles away from here.”
He thought about it for a moment. “There is that new prison opening soon up north. I know they’ve been scouting for experienced prison officers. Maybe I should apply there?”
“That’s a great idea.”
We talked about that more over a dinner of the goodies from the fridge before Jake had to leave to start a shift. We kissed goodbye, both of us with a lot of regret, but both glad to be parting on good terms as friends.
The Sarge rang just as I was getting ready for bed.
“Hope you weren’t too lonely today,” he enquired.
“No. Jakey kept me company for most of the day.” There was a deafening silence from the other end. I thought I’d lost the connection. “Sarge? Sarge, um, Finn? Are you there?”
“Getting back together, are you?”
“Definitely not. He’s probably going to leave town. Get a job at that new prison up north.”
“Oh, okay. Good. I mean, good for him. It would be best for him to get right away from his family.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“I’ll be home the day after tomorrow. Have you missed me?”
“Missed who?” I teased.
His warm chuckle tickled my ear. “I’ll see you then. Night, Tessie.”
“Night, Sarge, um, Finn.”
“Is that my new name? Sarge-um-Finn?”
“Consider it a transition period.”
He laughed again. “Keep practicing.”
“I will, I promise.”
*****
We were both on duty on New Year’s Eve. Thankfully, if the Bycrafts were partying, they were doing it in private and didn’t bother us for once. We had a few call-outs – a couple of minor domestics, three overly drunk people to escort home, and a sheep that had managed to work a keg, consequently going on a drunken rampage. And I can say I hadn’t laughed as hard at anything all year as I had at the sight of the Sarge trying to round up a sloshed and belligerent sheep.
Most of the action was at Abe’s pub, and we walked through there a couple of times to keep an eye on things. Gretel, propping up the bar and rather tipsy by now, became a little frisky with the Sarge when he wasn’t looking.
“Someone keeps pinching me on the arse every time we go into the pub,” he complained after our third circuit. “I’m not going back in there again. You can go in by yourself next time.”
I laughed, but didn’t tell him who his secret groping admirer was. “Do you think we’ve done enough beat walking for now? It’s almost midnight and my feet are killing me.”
“Yeah, let’s go home. If anyone needs us, they can call us.”
We walked away from the pub towards his house, jostling each other good-naturedly over sharing the footpath.
“Shove over,” I said to him, ramming him sideways with my body. It was like pushing on a mountain. “You’re hogging the footpath. You’re too big for us to walk side-by-side.”
He rammed me back, but with less force. “Women like big men. Consider yourself lucky to be working with me.”
“If you say so, Mr Modest,” I laughed.
I was walking with one boot on the footpath and one on the grass, so I rammed him harder to make him move over.
He rammed me back, but he was a little too strong. My feet tangled together and I fell over on the grass, giggling.
He laughed, holding out a hand for me. “Drunk on duty again, Fuller? Tsk, tsk. What would the Super say?”
“She’d say ‘cheers’,” I smiled up at him from where I lay on the ground.
I accepted his hand and he yanked me up. I was brushing the grass off my cargo pants when the countdown started. When the revellers shouted out, “Happy New Year” from the pub, we looked at each other.
“Happy New Year, Finn,” I said.
“Happy New Year, Tessie. This year is going to be great for you.”
It should have been an air kiss, or a quick peck on the cheek between colleagues to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, but neither of us moved our head to the side. Our lips touched. We pulled back and searched each other’s eyes for a few moments. He leaned down until our lips pressed together again in a kiss. He drew me in tight against him, his arms around me, and I softened against his hard body. I slid my arms around his neck and we kissed again. And it was good.
He certainly wasn’t a boring kisser.
But then I panicked. What the hell was I doing? I asked myself. He was my boss.
I pushed him away, and with wild eyes, I fled without saying anything, sprinting all the way back to the police house, jumping up the stairs, and fumbling with my key to open the front door. I ran to my room and shut the door, locking it and barring it with my body, my heart beating a million miles an hour.
I heard him pounding up the stairs before he rapped on my bedroom door.
“Tessie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t . . . Don’t . . . Oh, God.”
I didn’t say anything, but sank down until I was sitting on the floor in the darkness, my back against the door.
“Tessie, please talk to me.”
I kicked off my boots, dropped my utility belt carelessly on the floor and crawled into bed, still in my uniform. I curled up into a ball listening to him trying to talk to me on the other side of the locked door. Eventually he gave up, but I still didn’t sleep. And as soon as it was light, I changed out of my uniform, packed a small bag, appropriated the keys to his Beemer, and drove to Fiona’s.
Hungover, she didn’t blink an eye at me turning up early on New Year’s Day in the Sarge’s car, but welcomed me into her home without a word. I dumped my gear in my usual bedroom and fell asleep.
That afternoon, Ronnie and I sat on their back deck, him with a hair-of-the-dog beer, me with a glass of wine. Fiona wisely made herself scarce.
“It was nice of Finn to lend you his car. It’s such a sporty little thing. Must be fun to drive,” he said.
“Um, he didn’t exactly lend it to me. I kind of stole it.”
“You stole his car?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Not really what you expect from a cop.”
“I had to get away in a hurry.”
“Okay,” he said, his eyes quizzical. “Has he rung you about it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t checked my phone since I left.”
“Hmm. Fiona has our home number on automatic voicemail, so he wouldn’t get through here either.”
“Oh, well. That’s probably for the best.”
“Tessie, darling, what’s going on?”
I wiped the condensation off the side of my glass. “At midnight, we kissed.”
“So what? It was New Year’s Eve. Everyone kisses everyone. I think I kissed a few guys last night. I can’t even remember.”
I smiled at that. “But he’s my boss, and it was a real kiss. Ronnie, for one moment, it felt like I could melt into him and forget myself in him, and just let him deal with all my problems. I panicked about that.”
“Why?”
I stood and strode around the deck. “Because I have to deal with my problems myself. I can’t expect someone else to sort out my sorry life for me.”
“He’s a good man. You know he’d help deal with your problems.”
I sat and sipped my wine. “He is a good man. And he does help me a lot. But he’s not like me. He comes from a fancy family, and he has real prospects in the force. Not like me.”
“I doubt he’s think
ing about that. He’s single. You’re single. Why not consider him?”
“I don’t really think of him like that. He’s my boss. And I just broke up with Jakey. I’m not ready for anyone else. And I’m still getting over Dad. And I have to sort my life out.”
“That’s a lot of excuses. Who are you trying to convince?”
I glared at him. “I just don’t want to deal with anything like that at the moment.”
He threw me a sly glance. “Was it a good kiss?”
I didn’t answer, busying myself with drinking the last sip of wine in my glass. But he read a lot into my silence.
“Interesting,” he said with a playful smile. “You know, I hear that rebound sex is the best kind.”
“Ronnie!” I protested, smacking his arm. “This whole situation is going to be awkward enough. I don’t need that in my mind. I have to work with him.” I poured myself another glass. “And besides, Fiona would kill both of us if we did something like that while we worked together.”
“I’ve lived with Fiona for a long time. Some of her threats are merely bluffs, and others are deadly serious. It’s just a matter of being able to tell which is which.”
“I haven’t learnt how to do that yet.” I pondered for a few minutes, enjoying the cool breeze that had sprung up. “Fiona hates him. Do you have any idea why? I can’t work it out.”
“I have a theory. Might not be right, because she won’t talk about it. We weren’t able to have our own children, so you’re like a daughter to us, Tessie. Normally, it’s a father who feels conflicted when his little girl grows up and finds another man to love. But in this case, it’s Fiona. Simply put, she sees Finn as a threat.”
“A threat?”
“Yep. I think she’s afraid he’ll take you away from her.”
I sat back in my chair, a bit shocked. “Wow. That’s just . . . so weird. I don’t know why she would think that. I really don’t. She didn’t feel that way about Jakey.”
“She never saw him as a threat. You were never going stay with him forever. Even you knew that. But, like I said, it’s just a theory.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Sensing my discomfort, and always being a considerate man, he changed the subject to something light-hearted, and we spent a few more pleasant hours chatting about inconsequential things.
After dinner, I went to my room and finally found the courage to check my phone. There were a lot of missed calls and messages. I rang the Sarge.
I didn’t say hello to him. “I’m sorry I stole your car. It’s perfectly fine in case you’re worrying about it.”
“I don’t care about the damn car,” he snapped in his stressed voice. “I’ve been worrying about you. I’ve rung you so many times. Where are you?”
“I’m at Fiona’s. I’m okay.”
“Can we talk about what happened last night?”
“It’s just . . . You must think I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“I want you to know I didn’t plan it. It was just the moment.”
“I know. I was there too.”
“So you’re coming back?”
“Fiona said I should take a week off. Get away from Little Town for a while. Take a break after everything that’s happened.” He didn’t say anything. “I thought I might go to the city and visit my friend, Marianne, but I don’t know what to do about your car. I can’t leave it here. You might need it.”
“You can drive it to the city if you like.”
I was silent, sure I’d misheard him. “Pardon? Can you please put Finn Maguire on the phone to confirm that?”
He laughed. “You can drive it there, Tessie. I’ll let you.”
“You do know I have your precious Beemer, right? Not some old shitty clapbox you’ve been storing out the back?”
He laughed again. “No. You can drive the Beemer.”
“Wow.” I had to put the phone to my chest for a moment so I could drink in that permission. “Just, wow. You’re letting me drive your Beemer? Really?”
“Really.”
“I think we just took a whole new step up in our relationship.”
A pause at his end. “So do I, Tess. So do I.”
And afterwards, I snuggled up in bed, supremely happy at the thought of driving his car for a whole week, his warm chuckle the sound that lingered in my mind as I fell asleep.
Chapter 40
Before I set off the next morning, Fiona came into my room and sat on my bed as I packed the few things I’d brought with me. Townsfolk had been kind enough to donate clothes and shoes to me, for which I was very grateful, but it was rather an eclectic mix of colours, patterns, ages, and sizes. There was no getting around the fact that I’d have to buy an entire new wardrobe of clothes. Marianne would enjoy helping me with that.
“I’m not even going to ask why you’re driving Maguire’s car.”
“I stole it.”
“You probably shouldn’t tell me things like that,” she said mildly.
“He’s given me permission now, so it’s okay. It’s all legit. I’m driving it to the city.”
“He likes doing favours for you, doesn’t he?”
I looked up, straight into her eyes. “Yes, he does. He’s nice like that.”
“Hmm,” was her only comment. “Tess, a while ago your dad entrusted me with some documents that he only wanted you to have after he’d gone.”
I stopped packing. “What documents?”
“Fuller family documents. I only gave them a quick scan, but they mostly seem to be ordinary family papers like old letters, cards, birth certificates, insurance papers, things like that. I think there’s even an old hand-written recipe book in there from Nana Fuller’s mother that you might find interesting. I suppose Trev gave them to me to look after because he was worried something might happen that could destroy them.”
“Something did happen,” I said sadly.
“But there was one particular set of documents that Trev insisted I give you when he’d gone.” She handed me a large aged envelope.
“What’s in it?” I said.
“Just read it.”
“Why did Dad specify these particular documents?”
“He didn’t really want you to read them, but he equally thought you had a right to know. So he decided to wait until he was gone for you to read them. I suppose he didn’t want to talk with you about the information in them.” She stood. “I’ll leave you for now. But come and chat to me when you’re finished.”
I delayed my departure to spend the next thirty minutes turning my life upside down. I read documents that I wished Dad had burnt before I’d had a chance to set eyes on them.
When I’d finished, I tracked down Fiona. Ronnie, seeing my face, left us in peace, but not before bringing us each a cup of coffee.
“You know about these?” I asked, throwing the envelope on her coffee table.
“Yes. It was part of the investigation into your mother’s murder.”
“It wasn’t the normal type of Fuller/Bycraft murder like all the others.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I knew Bobby Bycraft murdered my mother and almost killed me too, but I had no inkling that they were having an affair at the time.”
“It had been going on for a couple of years.”
“But I was two when she was killed.” A sudden thought sliced through me with burning heat. “I’m not a Bycraft, am I?”
She patted my knee. “Fuck, no. Do you look like one? No, you belong to your father. There’s no doubt about it.”
I breathed out in relief. “Thank God for that.”
“But the baby your mother was carrying when she was murdered was a Bycraft.”
“Oh my God.” I was shell-shocked. “Poor Dad. Did he know?”
“I don’t know if he knew before her murder, though he obviously found out afterwards. Their marriage had been rocky for a while, so he might have had his doubts. He was our top suspect at fi
rst, but he had a watertight alibi. He was out in the fields all day with five witnesses. He couldn’t possibly have done it, but he suffered through a few unpleasant interviews with the dees at the time.” She tapped the small pile of letters. “It was finding these hidden in a drawer that led us to Bobby.”
I stared at the explicit love letters from Bobby to my mother that I’d read with loathing. “She really hated Dad by the end, didn’t she?”
“She was young, beautiful, and bored. Remember she was from the city and not used to country life. Your mother and Trev weren’t a good match, but he tried to make it work.”
“She didn’t, not if she started screwing around with Bobby. He was married with children. Children who’ve tried to seriously assault me on a couple of occasions.” I took a sip of coffee. “I always wondered why Dad never visited her grave.”
“He was very bitter about it for a long time, but he had you to help him through.”
Tears filled my eyes again. “I’m glad he found Adele. She genuinely loved him. But now I understand why he didn’t marry her.”
“She was a good woman, but he’d been badly burned by Leonie.”
“Why did Bobby kill her?”
“She wanted to end it. She was going to have an abortion.”
“She was reconciling with Dad?”
“No, Tessie,” she said, rare pity on her face. “She took up with a young farmer she met at a dance. Bobby Bycraft couldn’t handle the rejection.”
“It was such a vicious murder.”
“He was an angry kind of man. And you know the Bycrafts. They’re obsessive to a fault, especially about Fuller women.”
“I dream all the time about trying to save my mother and I’m always too late.”
“Don’t ever doubt that she loved you, Tessie. She saved your life remember. You were the entire reason she stayed with Trev.”
I pushed the envelope over to her. “Can you get rid of these for me, please? I never want to see them again.”
On the drive to the city, I thought about the fact that I could have ended up with a Bycraft as a half-sibling. I couldn’t stomach that. It sickened me. My mother sickened me. Dad was too good for her.