Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  ‘Big Town’ as we locals in Little Town called it, was actually Wattling Bay, a regional coastal centre. It had a population of 25,000 spread out around a beautiful deepwater bay that offered great fishing for professionals and amateurs. The police station there was well-staffed and resourced, with a watch house, radio centre, detective force, showers, gym, a couple of staff kitchens and expensive coffee-machines. For the Sarge and me, it was like going on a holiday whenever we visited there.

  “Put your weapon down and your hands on your head,” the Sarge repeated loudly to Red. “Last warning.”

  “Make me, cocksucker,” he retorted. Although he sounded as self-confident as ever, I detected a slight change in his voice.

  “Sarge, he’s on the move! He’s probably heading for the driver’s door of his car,” I shouted.

  We couldn’t let him escape. I stood and ran to the patrol car to pull my bulletproofs from the boot, fastening the vest and slapping on the helmet. I would have given anything to have my gun with me, but it was safely secured at home. I never took it with me running, relying on my trusty knife for protection instead. I slammed the door, locked up, and jogged back to the action, sheltering at the edge of the fence, poking my head around. I couldn’t see Red anywhere.

  In a further sign that nature had turned against us, the heavens opened and it bucketed down with rain, so hard that our visibility was reduced to nothing.

  “Sarge?” I yelled out.

  “Tess? I’m heading your way,” he yelled back through the downpour. “Where are you? I can’t see a thing in this rain.”

  “Over here near the fence.”

  “Sing or something so I can find you.”

  Groaning to myself, I loudly and self-consciously sang a catchy little pop song that was currently on high rotation on the local radio station. He made his way towards me following my voice, stopping only when he ran smack bang into the wooden fence, cursing loudly. He felt tentatively along that fence and then along the blockwork fence until his hand landed on my arm.

  He pushed me up against the fence and moved over to stand directly in front of me, pressing his body against mine, protectively covering it. He placed his hands on my shoulders and leaned down close to speak to me. The rain was pouring even heavier and it was the only way we could hear each other.

  “I’m going to have that song stuck in my head all day now,” he complained, his mouth up against my ear. “Are you okay, Tessie? Did he really hit you?”

  “He winged me in the arm, that’s all. I’m okay,” I replied into his ear. In fact I was a little woozy, surprised at just how much being winged hurt.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “He’s going to make a run for it.”

  He disagreed. “He won’t try to drive in this rain. You can’t see anything.”

  I laughed in disbelief at his naivety. “Sarge! He’s not going to hang around waiting for us to arrest him. He’s going to piss off as soon as possible. He might be an evil bastard, but he’s never been stupid.”

  And as if to prove my point, the glow of tail lights moving through the curtain of rain caught our attention. The faint sound of Red’s revving engine cut through the thundering downpour.

  “Shit! He’s making a run for it,” said the Sarge, pulling me by the hand as we both bolted towards the patrol car, climbing in gratefully. Water poured off us – we were soaked to the skin.

  I sniffled and pulled a handful of tissues from the box I always kept in the car, used some to wipe my nose and the rest to mop my face, while he threw his helmet on to the back seat. I was freezing cold and switched the air conditioner to the warmest setting, turning it on full blast. He flicked the wipers to their fastest speed and turned on the high beam. Neither made much difference and we peered through the windscreen into the murkiness of the torrential rain.

  “Hold on tight,” he warned, activating the police lights, but not the siren in deference to the early hour, despite already waking up everyone in the whole town with it when he arrived. He planted his foot and screeched off after those tail lights.

  It was a reckless pursuit, considering the terrible weather. Had we called it in to Big Town, we would have been ordered to stop chasing because of the danger to other road users, to Red and to ourselves. But working with me and being in close contact with the Bycrafts was having an effect on the Sarge, and he was growing a little more renegade each day he stayed in Little Town. Only a little though, and I could still trust his common sense to pull us up if anything became too irresponsible.

  If I’d been by myself, I would have pursued Red to hell and back, with one arm hanging from the window trying to shoot out his tyres while I steered with the other. I probably would have killed both him and me, and maybe even some innocent bystanders in the process. And not for the first time, I glanced over at the Sarge, glad that he’d arrived in Little Town to save me from myself. He was a much needed moderating influence in my life.

  Red must have noticed our flashing lights in his rear view mirror because he suddenly sped up and those tail lights grew fainter. The Sarge sped up in response.

  “Switch the siren on, Sarge. It’ll warn others to pull over. This rain’s hellish.” I flopped back in my seat, surprising myself with my unusual caution. Perhaps he was starting to rub off on me as well.

  He flicked on the siren and raced off after Red. And maybe it was because of the rain, my adrenaline from the morning, or me being winged, but the whole chase had a surreal element to it that made me think that any minute I would wake up in bed clutching my pillow. I wasn’t excited, I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t anything. I was disconnected. My arm hurt badly and I was having considerable trouble concentrating. We reached the crossroads to the highway and the Sarge spun the car left, away from town, chasing those lights.

  “Tess?” the Sarge repeated, becoming snappy, as he always did when he was stressed.

  Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t realised he’d been speaking to me. “What?”

  He sighed with suppressed impatience but didn’t respond immediately, swerving sharply around a slow tractor that imprudently pulled out on to the main highway without checking. The rain had eased slightly, but the light remained gloomy.

  “I said we better call it in. He’s heading out of town. He’ll be across the border soon.”

  “No!”

  “We’ll have our arses handed to us, gift-wrapped with shiny paper and a bow, if we don’t and something happens.”

  “No, Sarge! Keep driving. Drive faster! We can catch him,” I urged.

  He was silent for a beat, daring to throw me an evaluative glance as he drove at one hundred kays over the speed limit. When he clocked the determined expression on my face, he said flatly, “Call it in, Tess. Now.”

  Damn. I’d gone too far and set off his ‘Tess alarm’, as he called it. He knew I was angry – too angry to be coolly rational, too angry to be anything but wildly out of control. I’d rarely called in anything before he arrived, but he was a stickler for protocol, and made me do it at least half the times we should have.

  Sullenly, I picked up the radio and called the situation in to the cops in the radio room at the station in Big Town. A bored woman answered. I didn’t recognise her voice. She must be new because I knew all the cops who worked in Big Town and they all knew me very well. I explained our situation to her.

  “Where are you from?” she asked for the third time.

  “Mount Big Town,” I repeated impatiently, rolling my eyes.

  “Never heard of it,” she said, tapping loudly on her keyboard. She was probably buying something on eBay.

  “We’re ninety minutes away from you. To the south. Slightly inland.”

  “I don’t like the country,” she informed me, then said she’d have to consult her boss. She took a long time to do that, forcing me to listen to uninspired muzak and making me think she’d also taken the opportunity to go for a pee and a cafe latte.

  “Cease pursuit,” she s
aid when she returned, then yawned noisily and tapped once more, giving a small snort of laughter. Not eBay – she was definitely on Facebook.

  “Ask your boss again,” I demanded through gritted teeth. “It’s Redmond Christopher Bycraft we’re pursuing. B-Y-C-R-A-F-T. Look him up on the system. He’s an escapee from custody. He’s on the wanted list.”

  “Cease pursuit,” she repeated, uninterested in my explanation. She snorted with laughter again, tapped some more and then hung up on me.

  I threw the radio back in its cradle in temper. “Abort.”

  The Sarge pulled over to the side of the road and we both watched in frustration as the tail lights of Red’s car disappeared into the distance, heading for the border.

  “Fuck,” he said quietly. And with that one word, he succinctly summed up both our feelings.

  I remained silent, arms crossed, an unhappy rebellious pout front and centre.

  “Tessie,” he turned to me, a placating expression across his face. “Think about it – it’s better this way. Nobody was hurt and Big Town are responsible for the decision to stop the pursuit. Not us. They let him get away. Not us.”

  I threw open the door of the car and stood out in the rain, burning with fury. I kicked viciously at a few tall weeds growing on the side of the road, but not finding any satisfaction in that, I pulled off my helmet and drop-kicked it twenty metres into an adjacent field. But even that didn’t make me feel better. I repeatedly kicked the tyre of the patrol car, shouting out every swear word I knew.

  The Sarge stepped out of the car and approached me, his curling black hair plastered to his head with the rain. Hands on his hips, he watched me with the same expression of amused exasperation in his deep blue eyes that you’d have watching a toddler throwing a cute tantrum.

  “Finished yet?”

  “No,” I sulked, continuing to kick the car. I’d run out of swear words and had to start repeating them. I didn’t know as many as I’d thought.

  “There’s nothing you can do, Tess. You’re a cop and you have to obey orders. Once in a while at least.”

  I stopped kicking and looked over at him. He managed to coax a reluctant half-smile from me. “I live to fight another day?”

  He smiled. “I’m happy about that.”

  “I am too, I suppose,” I admitted, unwilling to give up my rage so easily.

  “I’ll make you breakfast,” he tempted.

  “You can’t cook for nuts,” I retorted rudely, but he’d succeeded in distracting me. It was an old argument between us – who was best in the kitchen? I knew I was, but he stubbornly insisted that he was.

  He blew a raspberry at me. “Everybody knows my omelettes are far superior to yours. They’re fluffier, tastier, and eggier.”

  “In your dreams, Maguire,” I scoffed. “Eggier is not even a real word. Just like your omelettes aren’t real. They’re simply not made with the authentic French touch like mine are.”

  It was his turn to scoff. “You’re not French.”

  “I could have been.”

  “How?”

  “If I’d been born in France.”

  He laughed. “You’re an idiot, Fuller.” He headed back to the driver’s side. “Pick up your helmet and let’s go dry off.”

  Smiling to myself, I climbed the wire fence and sloshed through the freshly ploughed field to retrieve my helmet, my hideously expensive and almost new runners bogged deeper in the mud with each step. As I bent down to pick up my helmet, I was flooded with dizziness and had to stand still for a few moments until I could be sure I was going to remain upright. Slowly returning to the car, I leaned against its side, clamping my hand on the towel still wrapped around my arm. There was fresh blood on it, which surprised me, because it had only been a glancing wound that should have stopped bleeding by now.

  The Sarge came back around to my side of the car, watching me anxiously. “Are you still bleeding?”

  “Yeah, but I’m okay. It’s just a flesh wound,” I insisted, but I did want to sit down all of a sudden. I fell heavily sideways on to the passenger seat of the car, my legs sticking out of the open door, leaning up against the back of the seat even though that was pushing on my wound.

  “Let me look at it,” he insisted.

  I shrugged uncaringly, eyes shut. He leaned into the car, unwound the towel, peeling it away carefully. The blood spurted out from my arm.

  “Tess! This isn’t just a flesh wound. You’ve been shot right through the arm!”

  “Oh. That explains why it hurts so damn much,” I mumbled. “I thought I was going soft.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t hear any more as I slid off the seat and into darkness.

  Chapter 3

  I flitted in and out of consciousness, quick dioramas imprinting themselves in my mind – the Sarge leaning over me, face grim, wrapping my arm tightly in the towel again; him arguing heatedly with someone on the police radio about an ambulance; me lying in the back seat of the car as it sped along a road, lights flashing and siren blaring; the Sarge carrying my limp body into the emergency department of the Big Town hospital, yelling out in his loud voice for urgent assistance, both of us dripping water and in my case, also blood, on to the clean white-tiled floor.

  The next time I roused I was lying in a bed, very groggy. I half-opened my eyes to look up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Where on earth was I and why did I feel so wasted? It must have been a hell of a party. Why didn’t I remember it?

  A movement at the door drew my attention in that direction and I slowly rolled my eyes towards it. A flash of wavy golden hair jolted me awake, jerking me upright in bed, screaming and reaching in vain for my knife. Red Bycraft was in the room with me and I couldn’t find my knife!

  The Sarge burst through the door, gun in hand. Red turned around to face me, but it wasn’t Red at all – it was Jake. My beautiful boyfriend, Jake. I collapsed back on to the pillow, heart pounding, breathing heavily, adrenaline racing through my veins.

  “Oh God, Jakey! I thought you were Red for a second.” I was no longer groggy.

  He came to my side and kissed me on the lips, smoothing back my hair. “I don’t look anything like Red,” he pouted. “I’m taller, my hair’s shorter, and I’m twenty times better looking than him.”

  Despite my fright, I smiled at his well-deserved narcissism. He was twenty times better looking than Red. And taller. And had more muscles. And was smarter, nicer and more successful. “Sorry, honey-boy, I was only half-awake. You know I wouldn’t usually mix up any of you Bycrafts.”

  We hugged tightly and I winced when I moved my left arm. I looked down to see a thick bandage around my entire upper arm and also that I was now hooked up to an IV.

  “What happened?” My eyes swivelled from Jake to the Sarge.

  “Red Bycraft shot you in the arm, Tess,” he said, cutting Jake an unfriendly glare. In his view, Jake shared the guilt of everything the Bycrafts did to me because he was related to them. “You passed out and I raced you here, to the hospital in Big Town.”

  “Red escaped,” I reminded myself. “Big Town called off the chase.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was angry.”

  He smiled nicely. “A little.”

  “You threatened to make me one of your heavy, stomach-churning, unauthentic omelettes for breakfast.”

  He smiled again. “Oui, ma cherie. C’est vrai.”

  I giggled. “Une autre heure, mon cher?” And that pretty well exhausted my terrible schoolgirl French.

  “Mais oui, ma belle.”

  “Settle down, you two,” warned Jake, regarding us both suspiciously and tightening his arm around my shoulders. He had left school when he was fifteen and consequently hadn’t learned any French.

  I patted his thigh in assurance, before addressing the Sarge again. “Did you see that gun he used? It had a pink handle! It’s embarrassing to be shot by a weapon like that. It’s like something your grandma would own.” Well, maybe his
grandma, but not my Nana Fuller – her weapon of choice had always been her favourite double-barrelled shotgun, despite the fact that it was almost as long as her. “God only knows where he got it from. Or more likely, who he stole it from.”

  “You should be grateful that he stole a grannie gun and not a weapon with a higher velocity,” the Sarge censured gently. “It saved your life. The bullet passed straight through your arm and didn’t hit any veins or bones. And apart from the small entry and exit wounds, it caused surprisingly little damage. You’ve been very lucky today, Tess.”

  “Luck’s my middle name,” I smiled up at him.

  He rolled his eyes. “There’s not a lot more they can do for you here, so you can probably come home tomorrow. They want to keep you in overnight for observation though, because you lost a fair bit of blood.”

  “Tomorrow?” I complained and shifted in the bed to move closer to Jake. I noticed as I did that I was completely naked except for the thin hospital gown I was wearing.

  I stared at the Sarge accusingly. “Where are my clothes? And who undressed me in the first place? I had clothes on when you brought me here!”

  “It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he laughed. “It was probably one of the nurses. You were soaking wet, remember?”

  “You’re all dry. And in your uniform.”

  “I’ve been back home, had a shower and changed. You’ve been out for a while and when Jake turned up to sit with you, I took the chance to dry off myself. There are some fresh clothes and toiletries for you in that bag over there. Your father packed it for you.”