Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  “Let’s make out in the sand dunes like we all did when we were kids,” he suggested, drawing me close and kissing me. I looked up at him with a sad face, pushing out my bottom lip in misery, which only made him laugh. “Well, everyone except St Teresa the Pure, of course.”

  I poked my tongue out at him. “Don’t be so mean. Anyway, you couldn’t possibly do it again.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I laughed.

  “That’s what you reckon, is it?”

  “Yeah, it is. You’re an old man now. You’re twenty-nine.” I backed away from him as he walked towards me, smiling with intent. I spun around and started running again, giggling. He chased me up and down the beach, making me squeal in delighted fright. When he caught me, he picked me up fireman-style over his shoulder and purposely strode towards the sand dunes, smacking my butt. I screamed and laughed and kicked my feet and pounded his back.

  “That’s how you treat a woman, Jake! You show her,” called out Rafat Singh, laughing as he strolled past, earning himself a thump on the arm from his wife Gwen, who ran the local craft shop.

  “Put me down Jacob Bycraft or I’ll arrest you!” I shrieked.

  He let me slide down the front of his body until I was on my feet again, slipping his arms around me. “Arrest me for what?” he asked, kissing me lingeringly.

  I swallowed. “For being dangerously sexy. You’re a terrible threat to my health and safety.”

  “You better handcuff me then, Officer, and I don’t mind if you’re a little . . . rough.” He grabbed my hand, then frowned, playfulness melting away. “Tessie, you’re icy cold. Time to go home.”

  I didn’t argue. Clouds obscured the sun again and a cool breeze sprang up. It started sprinkling and we ran to the carpark holding hands as it turned into a downpour.

  “Oh goodie, more rain,” I said sarcastically as we sped home. “And my roof hasn’t been fixed yet.”

  “Yes it has, baby doll.”

  “Jakey! Thank you so much.”

  “No worries. You know I’d do anything for my girl.”

  “I know and I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”

  We took turns in the shower when we returned home and passed a wonderfully quiet evening. I cooked Dad and Jake dinner, enjoying being back in my own kitchen. After dinner, while Dad read, Jake suggested that I resume my guitar practice. He’d been trying to teach me the guitar for months and I’d recently graduated to “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes on his bass guitar. But I was an unworthy student for such a patient and talented tutor, barely progressing in all that time.

  Inside I groaned loudly at his suggestion, but forced myself to appear disappointed, reminding him of my injured arm. Genuinely disappointed himself, he tried to console me with a promise to continue practice in earnest once I’d fully recovered. I suddenly was no longer in such a hurry to mend.

  I followed him into the house’s formal dining room that I’d converted into a music room. The room had never been used for dining as we ate all of our meals in the huge kitchen. It now contained Dad’s old upright piano and a couple of Jake’s guitars. He took his favourite off its stand, slipping the strap around his neck.

  “I’ve written a song about you. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Of course I do!” I sat on the piano stool and listened expectantly.

  He strummed the guitar, producing a lovely tune and started singing. He had a very pleasing voice.

  Tess, Tess, the girl I love to undress.

  Tess, Tess, your boobs I want to caress.

  Tess, Tess, your butt was made to impress.

  Tess, Tess, the girl who always says yes.

  Tess, Tess, you make me hard, I confess.

  Tess, Tess, it always ends with a mess.

  I was laughing helplessly by the end.

  “You like my song?” he asked, grinning.

  “No! It’s the worst song I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” I giggled. “You’ll have to start again. And try to be more romantic next time.”

  “I thought that was very romantic,” he mock-pouted, leaning over to kiss me. “I worked for hours on those lyrics. They sum up all my feelings perfectly. Let me show you what I mean.”

  He placed his guitar back on its stand and dragged me to my bedroom where we retired early, yawning after all our exercise in bed and at the beach. We managed to make love one more time, both of us falling asleep immediately afterwards in each other’s arms, and neither of us stirred until morning.

  Chapter 30

  I woke up groggily, thinking I should go for a jog, but hoping that it was still raining so I had an excuse not to. I padded over to the window and lifted the blind to look straight into the face of Denny Bycraft. I didn’t scream – he’d popped up out of nowhere in my life a million times already so I was kind of over the surprise factor of seeing him. I did become angry though, as I did every time. It was never right to be blase about stalking, no matter how long it had being going on, nor how harmless the stalker.

  “Piss off, Denny Bycraft!” I shouted, covering my breasts with my arms and waking Jake up with the commotion. He stormed to the window and flung it upwards, shouting abuse at the fast retreating back of his younger brother.

  “He’s a bloody nuisance, that boy,” Jake commented, as if Denny was fourteen not twenty-seven. He slammed the window shut.

  “I haven’t missed him during all that rain,” I said, flopping onto the bed. “It was nice knowing he wasn’t spying on me for once.”

  “He can’t help himself, Tessie. He’s crazy about you.” Jake always made excuses for Denny’s obsessive behaviour.

  “He’s crazy, full stop,” I muttered to myself. However, as my eyes slid up and down Jake’s body, I lost interest in Denny. Jake’s morning glory was impressive. I leaned back on the bed, showing my assets off to advantage and smiled, beckoning him to me with a crooked index finger. “Come here, big boy. Let’s see if you can help yourself around me.”

  “Geez, Tessie! And you reckon I’m the one who’s dangerously sexy,” he growled, desire flaring in his face immediately. He climbed on to the bed and we didn’t speak again until we separated a while later, sighing, happily fulfilled. He gazed into my eyes, stroking my cheek. “You should be classified as a drug. No matter how much I have of you, I keep wanting more and more.”

  Reluctantly I rose, smiling. “There’s plenty more where that came from, honey-boy.” I stretched languorously and yawned. “I have to go to work, Jakey. You sleep in a bit. You don’t have to get up for a while.”

  He instantly snuggled back down under the blankets and I was sorely tempted to join him. Instead I dressed quickly, gathered my uniform and kissed him goodbye.

  “Bye, babe. Stay safe,” he murmured sleepily, his eyes closed. I allowed myself a few moments to look down at his beautiful, peaceful face, grateful that for whatever reason, this wonderful, loving man had decided that I was the one for him. I kissed him again gently on the forehead and headed for the shower.

  I ate a quick breakfast, cleaned up and left for work, realising as soon as I shut the front door that I didn’t have any transport. Crap! It wasn’t raining at least, so I dragged the ancient family bicycle from the back shed, found an equally ancient helmet, spent ten minutes pumping up the tyres and wobbled off to ride the five kilometres to work. Unfortunately, the bike had really reached the end of its useful life and after replacing the slipped chain three times, the tyres deflated completely halfway to town. I tried to pump them up again, but it was useless – they were irredeemably flat.

  Cursing under my breath, I propped the bike against the nearest barbed wire fence and abandoned it, walking the rest of the way to the station. As I turned into the station carpark, I was thrilled to see that the windows of the Land Rover had been repaired as well. I had transport again! Now all I needed was to buy a new phone and a new knife and I’d be back where I started before last week began. Except considerably poorer.

  Youn
g Kenny was waiting for me and I greeted him cheerfully, letting us both into the station. He headed for the bench seat while I headed for the kettle, detouring to turn my computer on. Tea made, I took Young Kenny his mug and carried my own to the computer, logging in. I had a whole pile of incident reports to write and file. Taking a sip of tea, I had just put my hands on the keyboard when the bell rang and the Sarge stepped through the back door, carefully wiping his boots. Although the rain had stopped, it was still awfully muddy outdoors.

  “Morning,” I sing-songed at him with blinding cheer.

  “Looks like you had a good weekend,” he commented, expressionless.

  “I had a fantastic weekend.”

  “I can tell. You have that silly smile on your face.”

  My smile widened. “I do not.” I found it hard not to grin like an idiot after spending an evening with Jakey.

  “Believe me, you do.”

  I chose not to argue further. “Did you ring Melissa?”

  He sat down at his computer and turned it on before he responded. “Nope.”

  “Sarge!” I remonstrated, some of my good mood melting away at his stubbornness.

  “She rang me.”

  “Oh. Great! Everything’s good again?”

  “Everything’s calmer,” he admitted cautiously. “But I might need to visit the city for further peace talks. Soon.”

  “Hey, I’m happy to cover for you.”

  “I know you are, but I feel uneasy leaving you alone. I just know you’ll get into the most terrible trouble without me around.”

  If he’d been closer, I would have thumped him. “I get into trouble with you around, so go to your lady love without even a second thought about me.”

  “I’d like to,” he grumbled, “but I always seem to be thinking about you. Or worrying about you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I did the best thing and ignored it, turning back to my computer and calling up my work email. I sifted through the spams, the circulars, the personals, and the waste-of-times until there were only three emails of any interest remaining. They were all from the same Hotmail address and all had large attachments.

  I opened the first email, read the message and yelped in shock.

  Senior Constable Tess Fuller

  I know your email address from the card you gave that girl when you visited the Vypers’ house. You might remember me – I’m the one who rang you the other night. I have sent some things that may be of interest to you. DO NOT EVER TRY TO CONTACT ME!!!!

  There was no name to the email and the Hotmail address was a generic one that gave me no clues, but I knew it was from Mickey, the unwilling IT guru to the bikies. He’d obviously set up a transient account to send the emails to me that he’d probably already closed down. The sent time on the three emails was early Friday morning. He was probably safely back in the city by then.

  I called the Sarge over and let him read the email.

  “Open the attachment,” he instructed, so I did and we waited patiently while it loaded. It was a movie file and when it started playing, I immediately recognised the decor as the top room in the bikies’ retreat.

  “That’s the filming room!” I shouted out excitedly.

  The footage was unedited, a direct feed from two cameras, one facing the bed and the other facing the door. The screen was split down the middle between the two views, and I remembered the weird double-headed fixed camera at the foot of the bed. The bed shot was of a reclining naked man, arousing himself. I recognised him as one of the men that night.

  “Tess,” the Sarge complained with distaste, as if I’d filmed it myself.

  “That’s one of the guys who abused Kylie,” I told him quietly, pointing at the left hand screen. The other screen showed the closed door.

  The left hand screen continued to show the bed and the naked man and on the right hand screen the door opened and Kylie entered the room hesitantly. She wore too much makeup and a shamefully short low-cut dress and ridiculously high heels on which she wobbled, throwing a glance over her shoulder as if seeking reassurance.

  What unfolded before us then was a heartbreakingly awful ‘seduction’ scene between the naked man on the bed and Kylie, who was obviously trying her hardest to be alluring as instructed, but only ended up appearing awkward and inexperienced. I had to shut my eyes after a while because it was so disturbing to watch her performing sexual acts on a man twice her age.

  “Tessie, we have to take this to the Super or whatever dee team she’s assigned to the case. Let’s go straight to Big Town.”

  “We could just email it to her.”

  “Yeah, but you need to be there when they watch it, so you can tell them what’s happening.”

  “Okay, you ring her. I have something to do first.”

  Puzzled, he watched me as he rang and explained to the Super what we had received. I quickly made another cup of tea, neatly placed three plain sugared biscuits on a plate and went to the front counter to hustle Young Kenny from the station. He was understandably disgruntled at his routine being so badly disrupted and refused to look to me. I felt like a monster.

  I resettled him on the bench seat on the verandah and told him we’d be back as soon as possible. He deliberately looked the other way. I cajolingly indicated the mug and the biscuits. He gave them a disdainful glance before looking away again. The Sarge watched us curiously, before shaking his head, locking the front door and jogging down the stairs to the patrol car. With a last regretful look at Young Kenny over my shoulder, I jogged down to join him.

  We sped to Big Town to find that the Super had allocated Kylie’s case to Mr X and Zelda. The five of us, each of us clutching a coffee, gathered in the station’s plush conference room. I greeted them all jovially as I blocked out the room’s panoramic view of the back carpark and neighbouring dodgy car yard with blinds. I logged into the room’s computer and called up my email, humming all the while.

  “Tessie!” snapped the Super, taking a greedy gulp of her coffee and rubbing her forehead as if she had a headache. “Quit being so fucking perky! Not everyone was lucky enough to have their brains scrambled over the weekend by a hot root. No need to rub it in for the rest of us.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I said, suitably abashed. I could feel a red flush creeping up my neck as Zelda and Mr X eyed me speculatively, both grinning. The Sarge stared down at his coffee, his face blank. I busied myself with the computer, but despite my best intentions, I found myself humming again as I waited for my email to load. Catching the Super’s eye, I shut up immediately.

  I gave them time to read the email that was now projected on to the screen mounted on the wall of the conference room. When they’d finished, I opened the attachment. The Sarge and I sat through the awful seduction scene again. Mr X and Zelda took notes as they watched and the Super jotted down a phrase here and there on her notepad. I closed my eyes instead of watching Kylie debase herself in front of that man again.

  “Tessie, go sit outside,” the Super ordered. “You don’t need to see this shit. The rest of us can watch it.” The Sarge nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “No! I want to know exactly what Kylie went through,” I retorted fiercely, staring at her and then the Sarge, daring them to contradict me. “We’re going to catch these bastards. This is not the end of the story. They’re not getting away with this. And I might be able to help if I watch what happened.”

  We sat through another twenty minutes of sickening footage, watching as Kylie began to struggle when more men arrived and everything turned rougher. We watched in muted silence as she was punched, slapped, cut and burnt with cigarettes, used over and over, often by two or three men at same time. We listened to her screaming and crying and pleading, smeared makeup running into the blood trickling from her split lips. I clamped my hand over my mouth, tears pricking my eyes. I blinked furiously, sniffed a few times and cleared my throat, fidgeting in my seat. The Sarge threw me a searching glance, but I pretended I didn’t see, no
t wanting to make eye contact. I didn’t want anyone to know how much the footage upset me. They all managed to watch calmly, their faces shut down and unemotional. I didn’t know how any of them did it.

  We fast-forwarded through most of it, none of us wanting to watch it unfold in real time. They beat her, they used her roughly in every possible way, subjecting her to unspeakable indignities and then injected her with drugs to make her pass out so they could take her again while she was unconscious. I found one of the worst aspects, apart from her brutally punishing physical treatment, was how the men humiliated her with their cruel taunting and laughter at her torment. They forced her to say out loud that she was a dirty whore and a filthy slut and that she loved being treated roughly and please would they give her more? “Please sir, please,” they made her beg, even as she gagged and cried and screamed and tried to escape. It was one of the most distressing things I’d ever seen in my life. I hoped and prayed that Kylie had no memory of it.

  We sped through the footage until a particular scene unfolded. On the left side screen all six men looked up and turned in one direction. On the other screen the door to the room burst open.

  “Stop it!” said the Sarge, gripping my arm. “And turn up the sound.” I used the mouse to press stop on the screen, pushed the play button back a bit so it replayed the last bit and turned up the volume.

  On the left side of the screen the six men all looked up again. On the right side of the screen the door burst open with a loud crash and I stepped through, wild-eyed and dripping with water, gun out. We heard me shout out, “Police! None of you move until I tell you to!”

  “Oh, my God!” I said horrified, stopping the footage. “I look absolutely nuts! Do I always look that crazy?”

  There was an awkward silence in the room. The four of them exchanged glances.

  “Well? Do I?” I demanded, looking from one of them to the other. “Someone say something!”