by JD Nixon
The file was still loading and I busied myself making a cup of tea while I waited. The station phone rang. Expecting it to be another pervert seeking saucy sirens, I was surprised when it turned out to be the Sarge on the other end. Slightly sheepish, he explained that Melissa wanted to do some shopping. He’d decided to take her to Big Town for the day and would I be okay without him?
“Sure,” I replied coolly.
“We’ll see you tonight then,” he said. Not bloody likely, I thought. “And promise me you won’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”
I didn’t respond but gently placed the receiver back on the cradle, returning to the computer. Kylie 4’s file had finally loaded and I clicked on the jpg image of her. Typically, it was taking an age to fill the screen, so I killed time by ringing Dad and letting him know that the house wasn’t going to be ready today. After expressing his disappointment, we talked about the previous evening’s accident before he changed the subject.
“So,” he asked casually. “What’s Finn’s fiancee like?” Such juicy gossip would have flown around the town in no time.
“She’s very pretty and beautifully dressed. But unfortunately, she hasn’t really taken a shine to me, Dad,” I laughed unhappily. “Three’s a crowd, you know. I’m spoiling her reunion with the Sarge.”
“Oh, Tessie love! I’m sure she didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” protested Dad immediately. I smiled to myself. The thought of someone (besides the Bycrafts, of course) being rude to me was so alien to him that he couldn’t even countenance it. “Come and stay with Adele and me if you’re feeling unwelcome at Finn’s place.”
An image of Adele’s lumpy old lounge sprung into my mind and probably into my back too, if I did sleep on it. “Thanks anyway, Dad, but don’t worry about me. I’ll be right. We should be back home tomorrow, fingers crossed.”
“You take care now, love,” he said, his undisguised affection lifting my mood.
The bell rang and I cautiously approached the counter, hand on my gun. I fully expected another menacing visit from the Bycrafts, especially as the Sarge had driven off for the day. The Bycrafts weren’t too bright, but they were persistent. I was surely going to have to shoot one of them today if they turned up again. Fiona would be annoyed with me – she hated that kind of paperwork. But thankfully, it wasn’t a Bycraft. It was only one of the seasonal farmers from an outlying property wanting to renew her gun licence the old-fashioned way. I handed over the forms and gave her some tips on completing them, enjoying the opportunity to assist a normal, respectable citizen for once.
Business done, she casually ‘remembered’ that she had a few leftover apples and lugged a three kilo bag of them on to the counter for me. I thanked her nicely for her generosity, not dreaming of turning them down, for two reasons. The first was that the townsfolk have always liked to give their police officers small tokens of appreciation now and then and it would be unforgivably rude to refuse. And the second was that free food saved me money, which was a very good thing considering the current state of my finances. The Sarge hadn’t been impressed with such ‘corruption’ when he’d first arrived, but he’d become used to it and was now as grateful as me for any surprise bounty. I’d share the apples with him equally, as was our normal practice.
We leaned on the counter and chatted idly for a while about the truck accident, the rain, her crops, Dad, my windows, and Melissa, before she took her leave.
Back to the computer again and the jpg still hadn’t loaded. I muttered a few curses under my breath, finished my lukewarm tea and answered a wrong number for the Saucy Sirens club, the mortified caller hanging up on me as soon as I mentioned the police station. It made a refreshing change from all the perverts I normally encountered.
The bell rang and I carefully approached the counter area, hand on my gun once more. There was nobody there. Puzzled, I returned to the computer, sitting down and drumming my fingers impatiently on my desk. The jpg was still loading.
The bell rang again. Tutting in irritation, I headed out again, hand on my gun. Nobody there. Temper rising, I returned to the back room. Someone was playing silly buggers with me and that bloody jpg was still loading.
Once more, the bell rang. I didn’t answer but crept to the dividing doorway between the two rooms and waited patiently. When the bell rang again, I sprang around, gun out.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted, scaring the living shit out of Chad and Mikey Bycraft, respectively Jake’s cousin and little brother. They ran out, hooting with laughter at punking me. I raced through the hatch to the door, only to watch them jumping down the stairs and running off into the rain, laughing and pushing each other.
“You boys should be at school!” I yelled after them. “I’m going to ring your principal.” They both turned to flip me the finger before heading to the gates, crossing paths with Joanna as they did, causing her to slam the brakes on her van to avoid hitting them. She wound down the window, stuck her head out and abused them. They gave her the finger too and ran off down the road.
I reholstered my gun while I waited on the verandah for her, offering her a cup of tea when she climbed the stairs carefully in very high heels that weren’t the most sensible choice for footwear in this weather. She was in a rush though, the rain delaying her rounds. We spent only a few sparse minutes chatting before she handed over the station’s mail, as well as some personal mail for Dad and me, and clattered down the stairs back to her van.
Back at my desk, I rang the high school in Big Town to report the two Bycraft absentees. The deputy principal I spoke to sighed heavily, promising to follow up with the boys’ mothers, but we both knew it was a futile gesture. Mikey’s mother, Lola, couldn’t care less about what her children did. Chad’s mother, Valerie, did care, but had lost control over her wild son when he was about three.
I turned my attention to the station mail, none of it exciting, and all of it going straight in the bin. Dad’s and my mail consisted of nothing but bills – electricity, phone, and car insurance. Through the window I pondered the Land Rover sitting forlornly in the rainy carpark, the makeshift window coverings flapping in the breeze, wondering briefly if our car insurance covered Acts of Bycraft. Taking a personal moment, I sat at my desk, opened another tab on my browser and looked up our bank account.
Oh boy, I thought dismally. It was even worse than I recalled. With some careful juggling of funds, I would be able to pay these three bills on time and still be able to put some food on the table, but it wasn’t going to leave much money over for the windows. I hoped Freddie’s idea of paying in installments included the next twenty years.
It didn’t take an economic guru to work out what the problem was – we spent more than we earned. Dad and I weren’t prolifigate and I wasn’t a shopaholic by any means, but what I earned simply didn’t cover our basic living expenses. Dad had a small disability pension from the government, but I wanted him to spend that on a few little luxuries for himself, because he’d worked hard his whole life and his time was running out. It usually was spent on something or other to do with the house though, despite my protests.
Of course my forthcoming weekend with Jake was an indulgent extravagance that I could ill afford. He would have been just as happy with a small gift and a nice home-cooked dinner, followed by a night of romping with me in my bed. Jake was uncomplicated, easy-going and grateful, appreciative of the little domestic indulgences in life. He hadn’t had many growing up in such a big poverty-stricken family with a mother like Lola Bycraft who always put herself first. And that was one of the reasons that I’d really wanted to spoil him for his birthday. He never asked for much in life and in my opinion, it was those people who especially deserve to be given a lot.
Thinking about the weekend made me think of Melissa’s request. Normally, I would do anything for the Sarge, and naturally I was very thankful to him for all his support and kindness since he’d arrived in town. But I had prepaid for the accommodation a
nd dinner package, and I wouldn’t be refunded my money if I cancelled at this late stage. The whole incident had left me feeling like the worst kind of ingrate. I could see her point of view, but thought she was being unreasonable to expect me to drop all my plans to accommodate her desires.
Personally, I failed to see why she needed to go somewhere fancy to discuss her wedding plans. Wouldn’t the Sarge’s house do just as well? If I was in her situation, I’d be happy to discuss my wedding plans sitting in the station’s lockup, the rain pounding on the roof, the freezing wind blowing through the barred doors, as long as I had my fiance next to me. Which all just served to depressingly remind me again that I wasn’t likely to be getting married any time soon.
During those troubled musings, I’d failed to notice that the jpg of Kylie 4 had fully loaded. My heart jumped into my mouth when I looked up and saw her photo filling the screen. It was our Kylie, dyed blonde hair and blue eyes, no doubt about it. According to her date of birth, Kylie Elizabeth Barnett had only turned fourteen a bare month ago. My immediate response was to call out to the Sarge to tell him the exciting news, before I remembered that he wasn’t there. Second thought was to get on the phone to the Super and organise a team to storm the bikies’ retreat and rescue her from their evil clutches.
Stop and think, I told myself. What would the Super’s reaction be if I rang her right now? She’d say, in a very scathing voice, so what? A fourteen-year-old runaway girl was living with a bunch of bikies. Big deal! Maybe one of them was her uncle. Where’s the crime?
I needed more. I needed hard evidence that they were treating her indecently. I needed some photos or video to convince the Super that it was serious. But I couldn’t see any possible way of accomplishing that without returning to the retreat and doing some more snooping. Problem was though that the Sarge would never go for it – especially not after the other night’s adventures. I didn’t really want to go without him, but I was determined to somehow make the Super interested in this case. She’d told me too, after all.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to do anything foolish during daylight hours, so I had a lot of time to kill before nightfall. My eyes fell on the ‘Lucy’ printout. Because the Super had interrupted me, I hadn’t had time to refine my search to girls under twenty and had the entire 122 missing Lucys to work through, including the variants Lucille, Lucinda and Lucia. I began by crossing off those too young or too old to be my Lucy. Then I checked the police database and Googled the remaining fifty-eight, trying to discover anything I could that would enable me to eliminate them from the list.
The bell rang. Swearing under my breath at the constant interruptions, I went out to front room, finding flower and herb farmer Liz Lavering standing at the counter. She tapped her fingers edgily, her umbrella dripping water all over the floorboards.
“Hi, Liz. How you going?” I asked politely.
“Not bad, Officer Tess, not bad. How about this rain, hey?” She placed some bunches of rosemary, basil, oregano and thyme and a beautiful bouquet of native flowers on the counter. “Bumper crop this season. Couldn’t fit these in the restaurant boxes. Thought you and your father might be able to use them.”
I was touched by her unexpected kindness. “Aw, gee. Thanks. That’s really nice of you.” I sniffed the flowers. “Mmm, absolutely beautiful. Hang on a sec and I’ll put them in water.”
I didn’t receive flowers very often and never having a need for vases at the station before, we had none. Instead I put the flowers in a couple of rinsed plastic milk containers that were waiting for someone (me) to take them to the recycling bin. Looking around, I decided the best place for them was on my desk. They immediately brought a welcome and cheerful splash of brightness to the rain-gloomed room. Returning to the counter, we exchanged small talk for a minute about the rain, her crops, the accident last night, and Melissa, before I encouraged her, “What can I do for you, Liz?”
“I want to make a complaint,” she said, arms crossed resolutely.
“Hmm?” I prompted warily, about to remind her that I wasn’t the consumer affairs department.
“I want to complain about my arsehole of an ex-boyfriend and his lack of sperm.”
“Sorry? His lack of sperm, did you say?” I repeated, unsure if I’d heard correctly.
“Yes,” she replied adamantly. “He guaranteed me a pregnancy and he didn’t deliver. And I reckon that’s got to be a crime.”
Chapter 23
It took me a few minutes of confused discussion with her to work out that she wasn’t talking about him and her personally, but about their horses. It turned out that her former boyfriend, potato farmer Brett Cusack, and Liz had made an arrangement where he would stud his horse to hers. But it appeared that the mating had been unsatisfactory and nothing had eventuated, even though Liz had already paid Brett for the ‘goods’. While she explained all this to me, the phone rang twice, two minutes apart, but I let it go to the answering machine both times.
“It really sounds like a civil matter, not a criminal matter,” I suggested tactfully when I was able to interrupt her for a second. “If you can’t work it out with Brett, you need to contact the Small Claims Tribunal and take him to court to get your money back.”
“He refuses to talk to me about it,” she said flatly, seating herself on the hard wooden bench. “And I’m not leaving until you get that arsehole down here so we can sort it out once and for all.”
She glowered at me stubbornly. It would be difficult to shift her. She was a notoriously hard, obstinate woman. A passionately avowed bachelorette, the pairing between her and the placid kindly Brett had surprised everyone. Not in the least because there were more than a few in town who’d secretly suspected Brett of being gay because he’d never had a girlfriend and didn’t date. There had been much sniggering and terrible jokes at first about how Brett’s ‘desiree’ had tamed Liz’s ‘golden delight’ or how his ‘stamen’ had opened her ‘bud’. Cringeworthy I know, but that’s about as witty as it gets in Little Town, believe me. Especially amongst the farmers who weren’t renowned for their subtlety and tended to stick to agricultural terms for their innuendos.
The odd couple had blossomed (groan!) together until they’d suddenly broken up a few months ago, neither caring to share any details about the split. Idle speculation had rippled through the town, but nobody had yet discovered the real reason they’d parted.
I sighed, giving in. “I’ll ring him, but I can’t force him to come to the station.”
“Do your best,” she demanded brusquely. “That arsehole has to talk to me sooner or later.”
Sure, because I have nothing else to do, I thought sourly and went to the back room, looked up Brett’s number and rang it. He answered promptly, listened politely, quietly declined my invitation, and hung up gently.
“No good,” I told Liz, poking my head around the doorway. “He’s refusing to come here.”
“Make the arsehole.”
I protested. “And how do you propose I do that exactly?”
“You’re the one with the gun. Come up with something.”
“I’m not shooting him and I’m not arresting him. It’s a civil matter, Liz. It’s a breach of contract, not a crime.”
“I refuse to budge from here until that arsehole speaks to me in person. He keeps hanging up on me.”
“Well, maybe if you stopped calling him an arsehole all the time, he might be more willing to listen to you,” I counselled with increasing testiness.
“But he is being an arsehole,” she maintained mulishly. “And I’m not moving.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, shrugging and returning to my Lucy list. It was no skin off my nose if she wanted to sit out there all day. In fact, she’d be doing me a favour by acting as a human scarecrow to frighten away any Bycrafts that came calling.
Settling back at my computer, I had precisely one minute of peace before a horrible caterwauling made me jump up and rush to the counter, gun out. It stopped as soon as I arr
ived, and I glanced around puzzled.
“What on earth was that?” I asked Liz, eyes wide. “It sounded like someone being tortured.”
She was affronted. “I was singing, thank you very much.”
Bloody hell! Her singing voice was so caustic it could unblock drains. “Well, stop it. I’m trying to work.”
“I’m bored.”
“Go home then.”
“Not until you get that arsehole down here to talk to me.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.” I suddenly found myself on Brett’s side of the dispute.
She narrowed her eyes and threw down the gauntlet, opening her mouth and heartily commencing the national anthem. I cringed at the sound. She was obviously of the school of thought that believed that the louder you sang, the better you sang. She was sadly mistaken, but feeling that it was vaguely unpatriotic to ask her to shut the hell up, I retreated to the back room again, wishing I had some earplugs stored in my desk drawer.
Back to the Lucy list. The blinking of the answering machine distracted me though and I hit play, hearing the Sarge’s voice on two consecutive messages, sounding a little strained. Apparently, Melissa wasn’t impressed with the variety of shopping outlets in Big Town or the constant rain, and they were returning earlier than he’d expected. He’d be coming into work when he got home, after they lunched at Cybele.