Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  A contingent eventually turned up from Big Town – the Super and Bum, Mr X with his new partner Zelda Mills, a tall and thin ebony-skinned woman, earnest and ambitious, with a severe Cleopatra-style haircut and shrewd eyes. A team of forensic officers trooped in after them. Despite the dreary day and pouring rain, every single one of them was wearing dark sunglasses and walking with the slow delicate tread of people who were suffering massive hangovers.

  The Sarge led the forensics team, Mr X and Zelda straight to the kitchen while the Super sought me out in the lounge room. Bum, as usual, followed the crowd.

  “Must have been a hell of a party after we left,” I said to Fiona with reluctant amusement.

  “Can’t fucking remember,” she said, flopping down into an armchair. “Woke up in the backyard, soaking wet, wearing Ronnie’s underdaks. And Christ only knows what happened to him because I couldn’t find him anywhere this morning.”

  “Sounds like you had a great time, ma’am.”

  “Be a darling, Tessie, and make me a coffee. My brain’s pounding harder than the bedhead of a sailor in a whorehouse.”

  I flatly refused. “I’m not going back in that kitchen. Anyway, it’s a crime scene.”

  “Bum!” she yelled, then winced in pain as she did. “Fuck! I’m going to kill Red Bycraft myself just for making me come all the way here to Shitsville at fucking dawn.”

  “It’s 10 AM, ma’am.”

  “I’m listening to my body clock, not my watch. And it’s telling me I should be fast asleep still.”

  Bum came into the room, an upset expression across his broad, dense face. “It’s horrible what Red Bycraft did. I’m real sorry about your chickens, Tessie. He’s a monster.”

  “Thanks, Bum, that’s really sweet of you,” I acknowledged, surprised and touched by his unexpected kindness.

  “I had a puppy when I was a kid and it was hit by a car and died. I still remember how sad I was about that.” He paused emotionally for a moment. “I just love animals.”

  I regarded him with new eyes. It was a whole sensitive side of Bum that I never suspected existed. But of course he went and spoiled it straight away.

  “I can help you sort through your panties later to see if anything’s missing, if you like.”

  I blinked at him, startled by the offer. “I don’t like, Bum, not one little bit. You can just keep your hands off my panties, thank you very much.”

  The Sarge, Mr X and Zelda entered the room just as those words came out of my mouth. The Sarge glanced at me sideways, eyebrows raised, while Zelda smirked.

  “Always good advice for a pretty young woman to give a man, especially to Bum,” said Mr X, easing himself down on to the lounge with a groan of delight.

  “Maguire, you and Bum go find me some fucking coffee somewhere. I want it hot, strong and black.”

  “Don’t we all, honey,” muttered Zelda to herself, sighing wistfully and also sinking on to a chair.

  “The bakery will be open by now. You can go there,” I advised the Sarge.

  The Super shoved a pile of money at him. “Get us all one and get us something to eat too. Something good for hangovers.”

  “Ask Frannie when you get there, Sarge. She’ll help you decide.”

  “Tessie, where do you keep your paracetemol?” Fiona asked, standing up. I directed her to the bathroom cupboard.

  “Time to be interviewed, Tessie,” proclaimed Mr X, but opening his notebook with no signs of enthusiasm.

  “Take off your sunglasses first. You look ridiculous,” I insisted. “You’re not in Men in Black.”

  He took them off, but after one glance at his puffy, red-rimmed bloodshot eyes, I told him to put them back on again.

  “What time did you get to sleep?” I asked him, unimpressed.

  “I didn’t. I came straight here from what’s-‘er-name’s bed.” He thought for a second, grimacing with the pain that concentration gave him. “God, what is her name? Rochelle? Michelle? Rachel? Something like that. Zelda?”

  “Haven’t got a clue,” she murmured, head resting against the back of the chair, eyes closed.

  I threw him a small, unwilling smile. “You better remember before you see her again. Women are very particular about that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll just call her Blondie next time I run into her at the station,” he said flippantly.

  “You had a good time with her?”

  “It was okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Yes, just okay. She’s too young for me. She never shuts up. She giggles all the time and she tweeted her friends straight after we’d done the dirty deed. I don’t really want everyone in the world knowing what we got up to.”

  “Bit late for that. You weren’t exactly being discreet last night,” I half-smiled.

  His phone rang and he winced at the noise. It took him a while to remember which pocket he’d put it in. When he found it, he frowned, not recognising the number calling and answered tentatively. “Shit, it’s her. She must have found my number when I was having a shower,” he whispered to me. “I didn’t plan on giving it to her.” He didn’t get any further than “hello” before we could all hear a shrill voice, punctuated liberally with giggles, resonating from the phone.

  “What?” he asked into the phone in disbelief. “Do I want to come to your family lunch and meet your parents? Why the hell would I want to meet your parents? I never want to meet your parents. I never want to meet anyone’s parents.”

  There was wild giggling from the phone. He put his hand over the receiver and rolled his eyes at me. “She thinks I’m joking,” he whispered again, before speaking back into the phone, “Look, I’m working at the moment, um, er, um, Blondie. I have a very serious crime to solve . . . Yes, okay! I’ll ring you later . . . What?” He hung up hurriedly and slumped back into the seat. “She just told me that she loves me. What the hell’s that all about? We only spent one drunken night together!”

  “She must be attracted to father figures,” I teased. He threw me a withering glance.

  “Can we get on with it, please?” demanded Zelda, pressing her fingers on to her forehead. “I need to lie down in a dark room for about twelve hours. I swear to God I’m never drinking again.”

  “Me either. But you have to admit that it was a helluva party though, wasn’t it?” reminisced Mr X.

  “Sure was. I can’t wait till the Super gets promoted again.”

  “Well, one of you useless fuckers better recapture Red Bycraft soon then,” snapped out Fiona, returning to the room, crunching on a handful of paracetamol taken without any water. “Because I can tell you that nobody’s getting promoted while he’s still running around free, terrorising poor Tessie and waving his dick in our direction.”

  I told them everything that had happened since the Sarge and I arrived at my house. Mr X and Zelda exchanged loaded glances when they learned that I’d spent the night at the Sarge’s house, but the Super cut their speculation short by telling them that she’d ordered the Sarge not to leave me alone for a second.

  The terrible heartbreak at losing my girls washed over me again as I recalled the facts. I swallowed hard and looked away, trying to regain my composure. When I looked up again, the Super was texting someone and Zelda was leaning against the back of the chair, her eyes shut. Mr X was yawning widely, looking out the window, his notebook closed, the hand holding his pen dangling at his side. Their indifference pushed every button I had and I lost my cool, jumping to my feet.

  “Why don’t all of you just piss off back to Big Town?” I shouted heatedly, startling them into alertness. “None of you could care less about what happened to my girls or what happens to me and you’re all too smashed to do anything useful even if you did. I’ll sort this out myself. Like I always do.”

  Without another word, I spun on my heel, snatched the keys to the Land Rover from the hall table, detoured quickly to grab my utility belt and headed out into the rain, slamming the front door behind me.
/>   Chapter 10

  It was still teeming with rain. Uncaring, I sloshed through the mud barefoot, fixing my belt to my hips. I climbed into the Land Rover, threw my sling on to the passenger seat, spun the old tank around and drove down the driveway as fast as I could. On the road into Little Town, I passed a very surprised Sarge and Bum as they returned with the refreshments. I sped up even faster before someone tried to stop me from doing what I was planning on doing.

  I drove on, hands clenched on the steering wheel, jaws also clenched, ignoring the screaming pain from my injuries. I guided the car to Jarrah Street, where Red’s and Jake’s mother, the Lilith of Little Town, Lola Bycraft lived. She was a tiny woman, scrawny, sun-spotted, wrinkled, golden hair turned to dry straw with age, never without a cigarette clamped between her lips. Her husband had been incarcerated for much of their unholy alliance, but released often enough to impregnate her ten times. I loathed her and the feeling was extensively mutual. She was the one who had helped Red escape from custody in the first place and I knew with every fibre in my being that she was sheltering him on a regular basis. He was her firstborn and her most loved.

  I pulled up outside her dilapidated and neglected timber house. With the exception of Jake, the Bycrafts weren’t known for their handyman skills and when something broke, it usually stayed broken forever. The yard, normally a dustbowl, had turned into a mud bath in the rain. Someone in the family had thrown down some fragments of concrete to act as stepping stones across the morass.

  I looked at myself in the rear view mirror. Last chance to not do this, I told myself. What am I waiting for? I replied.

  I slammed the door of the Land Rover and locked it. I swung the old steering wheel lock that Dad had bought in the early 1990s over my shoulder as I climbed up the steps of the verandah. There was a noticeable sag to the floorboards and the rank, squat lounge that had been sitting on the verandah since Jake was born was definitely listing to the left. The smell of musty water damage emanating from the timber was twenty times worse than at my house. The Bycrafts were prolific, but poverty-stricken. It was their own fault though – they were lazy and allergic to honest work.

  I pulled out my gun, holding it in my left hand and banged on the door with my fist, tucking the lock under my arm.

  “Lola Bycraft!” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Lola Bycraft!”

  A window to the right side of the door filled with faces, but no one moved to open the door to me. I hadn’t expected to be welcomed with open arms. Not in this family.

  “Lola Bycraft, I want Red and I want him now!” I yelled.

  Lola’s sister-in-law, Valerie, who lived across the road and who had married two Bycraft men in her life, opened her front door and peered out at the racket I was making. Seeing it was me, she retreated with speed, slamming her door shut.

  There was no answer at the Bycraft house. I moved over to the window flanking the other side of the door, away from where the faces had been and raised the steering wheel lock. I smashed the glass in, closing my eyes and turning my head away as I did. I swung my arm over and over until every piece of glass was dislodged and shattered.

  Sticking my head through the glassless hole, I shouted, “Bring me Red! Now!”

  There was mad scrambling inside the house and the faces disappeared from the window. I waited for half a minute. Nothing. I moved over to the other window and smashed that in as well.

  “I want Red!” I screamed at them.

  I gave them another half-minute. More nothing. I turned and jumped down the stairs of the verandah heading to the window at the far front of the house. Climbing the battening underneath it, I smashed that window in as well. A baby and a small child started crying inside the room with fear. I didn’t care. They would only grow up to try to hurt me anyway.

  With methodical coldness, I continued around the house, shattering every window I came to, one by one, yelling out for Red, until I found myself at the rear of the property. The back door was very flimsy, half glass and half timber, the lock easily broken.

  I smiled to myself.

  I raised my club lock and smashed the glass to pieces. Then I leaned my arm in and unlocked the door. The Bycrafts had been too stupid to even take the key out.

  “Tell Red I’m coming for him, Lola! And tell him I’ve brought my gun this time,” I yelled. I was angry, really angry.

  I kicked the door open so hard against the wall that it rattled for a good minute, the tiny tinkle of small slivers of glass falling to the floor the only sound over the wailing children. Then there was panic inside, people rushing around, hushed voices whispering furiously.

  I stopped at the threshold instead of barging in. It would be beyond foolish for me to go inside a house full of Bycrafts by myself, no matter how angry I was – even if I was armed. I knew Red now had a gun and possibly some of the other Bycrafts had weapons as well. So instead of going in, I leapt over the small railing of the back verandah to the next window and smashed that in. Then I smashed the next one and the next one. I could hear Lola Bycraft screaming obscenities at me as I moved around the house and that made me smile. Every time one of them even looked as though they were going to approach me or try to stop me, I pointed my gun at them. They all knew I was a crack shot. And crazy to boot.

  I didn’t even know if Red was inside, but I felt so much better about my poor little dead girls every time I broke one of those Bycraft windows that I couldn’t stop until I’d finished every window in the house. Back at the front again I paused for a minute, breathing heavily with exertion, pain shooting up and down my arm while I put my gun away. It poured with rain and I was drenched and chilled, but I looked on the destruction I’d wreaked with satisfaction. Miss Chooky had been revenged.

  The Super’s unmarked car pulled up in front of the house, screeching dangerously, mounting the curb and coming to a stop barely half-a-metre from where I was standing. I didn’t even flinch.

  “Fucking hell, Bum!” screamed the Super from the passenger seat, clutching on to the dashboard in fear. “Where’d you learn to drive anyway? In the dodge-‘ems at the fucking Royal Show?”

  Mr X and Zelda’s car pulled up behind them. The Sarge threw open the door to the back seat and scrambled out, frozen with shock as he viewed the scene. His eyes met mine with a mix of relief, sympathy, anger, pity and something else I couldn’t unpack at that moment.

  “Tessie, what have you done?” he demanded with understandable apprehension.

  I hefted the steering wheel lock on to my good shoulder and looked back at him unblinkingly. “What do you mean, Sarge?” I asked calmly. “I received a tip-off about a possible sighting of Red Bycraft at his mother’s house and came to investigate.”

  The Super sprang from the passenger seat and Bum from the driver’s seat, eyes wide. Mr X and Zelda joined them, umbrellas jostling. Mr X whistled under his breath when he set eyes on the damage to the house.

  “Oh fuck, Tessie. That’s a whole mess of paperwork right there,” Fiona complained, rubbing her forehead, her dark sunglasses back on again.

  I turned to stare steadily at her. “I don’t know what you mean, ma’am. Red Bycraft went on a rampage last night. Remember?” She slipped off her glasses and we exchanged a measured glance. “First my house, then here.” I shrugged. “Or maybe the other way round? Who can tell?”

  She regarded me thoughtfully for another minute, before nodding. “He did, didn’t he? Bad form of him to vandalise his own mother’s house. I thought that family was tighter than a fish’s arsehole.”

  I shrugged again. “Maybe she’s the one who tipped me off and he was angry about it? You know what he did to his girlfriend when she tipped us off.”

  “That sounds about fucking right, Tessie. I’m going with that.” She turned to the others. “Did you all hear that? Red Bycraft did this last night during a rampage.”

  Three of them nodded obediently, but the Sarge was troubled by the decision. He was an honourable cop and stitching up a suspect,
even someone like Red Bycraft, didn’t sit naturally with him. He scrutinised me intently, taking in my upset, angry features, my bedraggled appearance and the defiant tilt to my chin.

  “Maguire?” asked the Super impatiently.

  He glanced around at us all, his lovely ocean blue eyes darker than normal. But eventually he nodded as well.

  “Good. That’s sorted.” Fiona returned her eyes to me and pulled a face. “You look like a savage – dripping wet, covered in mud, barefoot and bleeding. Get back to your place and have a shower. Now.”

  Surprised, I looked down at my arm to see that, even though I’d favoured my injuries, my hard work had made both wounds start bleeding again. Damn! That would mean another trip to Big Town.

  Judging that I’d finished running amok, Lola Bycraft stormed out to the verandah, spitting with rage. Her daughters, Rosie and Larissa, stood behind her, assorted other family members crowding around her in support as well. She yelled at me, she cursed me, she accused me of vandalism and violence. She was a vitriolic virtuoso, fists clenched, her face deep red with anger and hatred, white foam specking the corners of her mouth. It was an impressive performance, but the six of us regarded her rant impassively, none of us reacting.

  However, something struck a discordant note with me as I watched her. I didn’t doubt for a second that she was genuinely pissed off with me, but she was overdoing it, putting on a show. She was too loud, too animated. She even took her cigarette out of her mouth to yell obscenities at me, which I’d never before seen. It was almost as if she was trying to distract us. A light bulb went on in my head.

  Without any warning, I took off and sprinted around to the back. As I turned the corner of the house, I glimpsed the golden hair of someone bolting off to the right into the scrub next to which the Bycraft house was situated. I ignored that decoy, although it would have tricked most other people. I knew instantly from his height and body shape that it was Rick, Jake and Red’s brother. Instead I focused my attention on the familiar golden hair fleeing to the left.