Blood Sport (50 page)

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.

Young 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 veranda 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 onto 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, not 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!”

“Not
always
,” replied the Sarge cautiously and tactfully, implicitly chosen by the others to take the hit.

I glared at him for a long few beats and started the footage again, sulking. We watched as I herded the naked men to the wall, threatening to shoot their balls off if they didn’t move. I was out of camera range in the right screen at that point, before turning up again in the left one, leaning over Kylie taking her pulse and telling them all that they were sick and she was only fourteen.

The camera caught me hefting the naked, unconscious girl over my shoulder, then me turning around before Rusty whacked me on the back of the head with a crowbar, knocking me out. I slid to the floor and poor Kylie fell back onto the bed again.

“So it was him who did that! The bastard!” I said, heated. “That frigging hurt. He could have killed me.” I had been lucky my skull hadn’t been crushed.

Someone had forgotten to turn off that camera and it kept filming through me being trussed and pushed out of camera range. There was then a long period where nothing happened.

“I was knocked out for ages,” I told them and we sped up hours of footage, Kylie’s occasional stirrings on the bed the only action. On the right screen, the door opened and Rusty and the other man stepped into the room, the second man arguing against killing me because I was a cop.

“I kind of want to thank that man,” I said sincerely. “He probably saved my life.”

Those two men conducted their conversation and left the room on the right screen. The camera thankfully hadn’t captured me throwing up nor me cutting myself free. Not long afterwards, I could be seen hiding behind the door before the next three men turned up and I fought against them. The big guy told me to bring it on again on screen and then we watched my failed escape bid. The three of them took their revenge on me, and I winced watching that thug breaking my finger.