Blood Sport (5 page)

“Sarge, he’s
lying
to you,” I lied to him. “He wants you to look away. He’s trying to distract you and then he’ll shoot you. Don’t listen to him. I’m
not
dying. Do I sound as if I’m dying to you?”

“I hope you’re in a lot of pain, lovely,” Red taunted, keeping up the pressure. “Just as much as I was when you shot me all those months ago. Hope your last thought is of me when you die.”

“Tess?” the Sarge wavered. He wanted to believe me, but he also knew that I’d say and do anything to win against the Bycrafts.

“
Sarge!
He’s trying to psyche you out.
Don’t
listen to him. Please!” I implored. It could prove lethal to him if he was distracted by his concern for me right now. I would be devastated if something happened to him because of me.

I turned my attention to Red, and if we’d been under heat-sensitive lights, my whole body would be glowing red with anger. “Red Bycraft, if I’m dying this morning, I’m bloody well taking you with me, matey,” I yelled back at him.

And despite the rain, his resultant laughter was freakily echoed by the sudden raucous and hilarious call of a pair of kookaburras from a nearby gum tree.
It was as if nature had taken up against me in this town as well
, I thought sourly. Red laughed even harder at the unexpected avian support. As usual, he was having a great old time.

I stretched out to grab the keys, pulling them towards me with my extended fingers. Clutching them in my hand, I quickly crawled backwards, not sure what Red could see through the rain. In a normal police situation, this would be where I radioed from the patrol car requesting urgent back-up from our colleagues. But our nearest support was that ninety minute drive away in Big Town. And to be perfectly honest without being disloyal, that support was always grudgingly given and slowly delivered whenever I’d been desperate enough to ask for it in the past. They had
important
cases to deal with, didn’t we know, and it was a nuisance for them to be called away to deal with our ‘petty little town’ problems.

‘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 onto 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 onto 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 said 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.