Blood Sport (30 page)

“Yep, it sure was. I recognised other women there as well. I saw Jake’s sister, Rosie, and his cousins, Jade and Kristy.”

“You’re honestly not surprised that the Bycraft women would offer sexual services for payment? It seems to be completely in character to me.”

“No, it’s not that, although I bet Jakey doesn’t have a clue about what they’re up to.” I peered at him over the edge of my mug as I sipped. “Sarge, Kristy’s only fourteen and Jade’s thirteen.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed. It’s definite evidence of criminal activity. The problem is that we witnessed it while we were trespassing.”

“That
is
a slight problem,” he acknowledged.

“Also, I didn’t see Kylie anywhere. Wouldn’t she be part of the action? And another also, I wonder why I didn’t see Jake’s little sister, Larissa, there? If Rosie, Jade and Kristy were making some money offering their services, I’m positive Larissa would have been in on it as well. Those cousins are tight.”

“I can’t answer your questions. Perhaps they were in a different room?”

“Having a private party?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible.”

“And what about that Mickey guy? I reckon we could lean on him to spill his guts about what he knows.”

He didn’t answer, but stood up yawning, collected both mugs and rinsed them out, leaving them to drain.

“Go to bed. We can talk about everything in the morning.”

“But Sarge, I feel as if we should be going back there right now and taking Jade and Kristy away. It’s not right for young girls to be treated like that.”

He sighed. “Tess, did they look as though they were under duress or being held against their will?”

“No,” I admitted. “They looked like they were happy partying.”

“Is there any chance that tonight would have been their first sexual experience?”

I snorted. “I doubt it! All the Bycrafts become sexually active once they hit high school and Jade and Kristy have both already had a number of boyfriends that I know about. And Bycraft girls have a certain, um, reputation that makes them very popular with teenage boys. Not to mention . . .”

“What?”

I wasn’t sure whether I should tell him or not. “Kristy’s been done for soliciting in Big Town a few times.”

“Good God! How old did you say she was?”

“Fourteen.”

“And you really think that they are going to thank you for ‘rescuing’ them tonight?”

“Sarge, you know as well as me that no Bycraft would thank me for anything, even if I saved their life.”

“Tess, I know we should act because there’s a law being broken and it’s our duty to uphold the law. Not to mention that a situation like this involving young girls is something that most people would find abhorrent. But I can’t possibly put you in the line of fire in your condition, especially with Bycrafts involved. And I can’t take on thirty bikies by myself when we have no idea about their fire power.
That
would be nothing but a suicide mission. And as for any back-up, I seriously doubt that I could convince the Super to send out a team tonight on the basis of what you’ve seen. We’ll just have to look through the ashes tomorrow, hopefully uncover something solid that we can take to the Super and build some support for a raid that way. Okay?”

“I guess,” I agreed reluctantly. I could see the sense in what he was saying, but I wasn’t pleased about it. “Sarge?”

“Mmm?”

“Would you think differently if the girls weren’t Bycrafts? If it was some other young girls from town? Ones without reputations?”

He gazed at me steadily. “Yes.”

I was saddened by that. “Those poor girls have never had a chance in life. For being born Bycrafts, they’re condemned to nothing more than dropping out of school with teenage pregnancies and no futures. And they keep repeating the whole vicious cycle over and over. Lola Bycraft was only fifteen when she had Red. Rosie was sixteen when she had her first kid. Larissa’s made it to seventeen without being knocked up yet, but I don’t hold much hope for Jade and Kristy if they’re going to carry on like they were tonight.”

“I can’t believe you feel sorry for them,” he shot back heatedly. “They’ve made their choices and they’ve taken the easy path in every way.
You’re
the one who’s had it hard in life, with everything that’s happened to you. And all just because you were born a Fuller. But you’ve managed to educate yourself, maintain a career, care for your father and contribute to society. You don’t sit around moaning about how hard life is for you and how the world’s against you and how you never had a chance.”

“I do sometimes,” I confessed lightly, trying to defuse his passionate anger. “That’s when the Tim Tams become so important.”

He stopped and his anger deflated. “Let me see your injuries,” he demanded mildly, changing topic completely.

I rolled up the sleeve of my pyjama top and let him examine them. “I thought I’d broken the stitches on my stab wound again, but they seem okay.”

“Has the painkiller kicked in yet?”

“Just getting there now,” I smiled happily at him.

He rolled down my sleeve and turned me around, giving me a light push in the middle of the back. “Off to bed with you, Tessie. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

And I trooped off to bed obediently, although it took me a while to fall asleep, thinking about what could be happening back at the bikie retreat.

Chapter 17

Tuesday dawned dull, gray, cold and rainy. I cracked open one eyelid, saw the sky out of the window, and closed it again. I decided that I just wasn’t interested in participating in Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday, but definitely not Tuesday. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but I was lying on my sore arm and the Sarge was rattling about in the kitchen, disturbing the peace.
I could arrest him for that
, I thought sleepily.

I should have slept with my door shut, but Dad had always insisted I kept my door open when I was growing up, in case someone came for me during the night. He wanted to be able to hear if I was screaming or struggling and it was a habit from which I’d never been able to wean myself. You never knew when you’d need to call for help during the night. Of course though, the big disadvantage was that you were woken up by inconsiderate housemates who apparently never needed to sleep.

I rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom where I splashed cold water on my face. My reflection staring back at me only confirmed that I looked like someone who’d been creeping around a bikie retreat in the middle of the night in the freezing rain.

I made my way to the kitchen and plonked down on one of the kitchen chairs, leaning my head on the table and closing my eyes.

“A little bit tired this morning after our big adventure last night, are we?” the Sarge smiled.

I mumbled something indistinct in reply, keeping my eyes firmly closed.

He placed a mug of coffee on the table near me and guided my hand over to it. “This will help clear the cobwebs.”

I sat up, cradling my coffee, watching him blearily as he confidently moved around the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making porridge. A perfect breakfast for a rainy day.”

“I miss cooking,” I complained sadly. “I wonder if the glazier will be able to make it to my house today.”

“You can stay here another night if he doesn’t.”

“Thanks Sarge. It’s really nice of you to put up with me for so long.”

“Isn’t it just? Especially with the way you look each morning.”

I pouted at him and raised my hand to smooth my hair down into some semblance of civilised humanity. “Jakey’s never complained before.”

“You’re probably pretty chirpy on the mornings that he sees you, after he stays the night.”

I smiled at the thought. “I probably am.”

“And of course he’s right next to you in bed, not experiencing the whole frightening sight at a distance like me.”

I giggled. “That’s true. Poor Sarge.”

He placed a bowl of porridge in front of me and I started thinking that I could easily become used to being looked after. We argued over breakfast about who would be the one to tell the Super what we’d been up to. But first we decided to wait until after we’d sifted through the ashes to see if we came up with anything that might distract her from our misbehaviour.

Later, the breakfast dishes washed and dried, both of us dressed in uniform ready to tackle another day, he spread a tarpaulin down on the cement floor of his carport. He hauled the two garbage bags of ashes from the boot of his car. The sound of the endless rain was deafening on the thin tin roof of the carport and we had to raise our voices to be heard by each other.

He opened one bag and carefully spilled the contents onto the tarp. Then he did the same with the other bag, until we were left facing a small mountain of ashes. The smell wafting upwards was beyond horrible and I suddenly understood why George Harrison felt the need to complain about the noxious odour.

The Sarge took down a small gardening rake from a nail in the wall where his gardening implements were neatly stored. He knelt down on the tarp and commenced meticulously raking through the ashes, moving any large pieces of rubbish caught by the rake over to one side. A five-centimetre piece of film was swept out and I picked it up carefully by the sides and blew on it gently to dislodge loose ash. I held it up towards the sky. Unfortunately it was not a neat cell, but half of one and half of the next, both with jagged burnt edges. It was difficult to tell what the subject of the film was, although I thought I could see legs in the top cell and arms in the bottom one.

The only other decent-sized fragment was an almost perfect cell. Holding it up to the light showed that the entire frame consisted of a close-up of a woman’s face.

“That’s disappointing, considering the effort it took to get them,” grumbled the Sarge.

“Yeah, I’d hoped we’d find more than this.” I kicked around at the ashes. “We need some kind of a projector so we can see them properly.”

“I have a light table.”

“A what?”

“A light table. It’s used for examining negatives. I dabble in photography now and then.”

“Do you? I didn’t know that.”

“I haven’t had much time for hobbies since I arrived in this place. I seem to spend all my spare time keeping a certain senior constable out of trouble.”

I pulled another gargoyle face at him and knelt down to pick over the ashes once more, fruitlessly hoping to discover an entire reel of unburnt film that had passed unnoticed so far. He watched with bemusement for a moment before giving up on me and returning to the house. I spent another futile minute digging through the ashes before also conceding defeat, following him back inside.

Hands washed clean of the soot, I joined him in the lounge room where he was setting up his light table. I wandered off the kitchen while he did and made us both a cup of tea, taking the time to ring Dad while the kettle boiled. Satisfied that all was well with him, I also tried to ring Jake, but caught his voicemail instead, so left him a message. Tea made, I returned to the lounge room to find the table all set up and the Sarge frowning over the remnant of film with the split frame.

“This isn’t nice,” he warned quietly.

I sat on the arm of his chair and peered over his shoulder at the image. His light table not only illuminated film, but magnified it, so the image was now large enough to see the detail. Only the bottom of the top cell had survived the flames and the image was of legs as I had initially seen. It was a shot taken from the rear of the action and I counted quickly – seven pairs of bare men’s legs surrounded a pair of bare, pale white, thin, blood-streaked female legs, her toes dangling in vain towards the floor. Her legs were spread wide, held apart by ungentle hands and a pair of men’s legs was up close and personal at the front and at the back of her. The anonymous woman was either the recipient of an affectionate twin hug or was being used by two men at the same time and I wasn’t about to bet what little money I still had on the hug theory.

“That’s nasty,” I commented, before casting my eye over the bottom cell. Only the top half of it had survived. It was the next frame in the scene, except in this shot we could see arms and heads. The woman’s arms were tied together, suspended above her, tied to something that wasn’t in shot. Because it was filmed from the rear, her face was not visible, but the angle of her head and the tenseness in her neck left me in no doubt that she was suffering badly. The man at her rear had a shaved head and a huge tattoo of a devil across his back, which only the uppermost portion could be seen. He had his hands tightly around the woman’s neck. The man at the front of her had his head down, concentrating on what he was doing, his face not seen. The other men standing around were either laughing or had that goofy expression that men have when they’re masturbating. And yes, I know that from personal experience, because there were certain male members of the public who believed that was an appropriate way to behave in front of a female police officer. And most of them were Bycrafts.

I exhaled noisily, disturbed. “Okay, so we have some kind of rough gangbang happening on this film. What about the other piece?”

Cautiously he removed that fragment of film and replaced it with the close-up. I recoiled when the face came up in the light, jolting my hand and spilling tea on my legs.