Blood Sport (54 page)

To date, the second body remained unidentified – a Jane Doe, nothing left of her but a heartbreakingly small pile of immature, mostly decomposed bones and a cheap gold-plated charm bracelet that everyone hoped would one day find her a name and reunite her with her family.

Detectives from the city who worked for the child protection unit – some of the only police authorised to access illegal pornography for investigative purposes – tracked down the snuff films of the other two girls. I never saw those films and I never wanted to, but the Super did and later told me that both girls had died terrible deaths. They had also both been filmed in that same white room – incontrovertible evidence that all three deaths were linked to the Vypers.

“Sometimes I’m really hopeless at being a cop,” I moped to the Sarge, after we’d heard that news. We sat side-by-side on the back steps of the station, drinking a cup of tea and enjoying the sunshine. It was a beautiful late winter’s day, the promise of spring in the air – clear blue sky, crisp air, mellow sunshine and contented birds. But I barely noticed. I was gutted by the thought that three, almost four, girls had been murdered in this town and nobody had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Particularly me.

“Would that be your recruitment campaign slogan?” he teased gently, refusing to feed my brooding mood. “
Join the force today and you too could be as hopeless a cop as me.
It’s not very catchy. I think it needs a bit more work.”

That made me laugh, reluctantly. I shoved him with my shoulder and he shoved me back with his.

“No, but I should have known something was wrong. I know this town back to front.”

He slung his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Tessie, I think that if she ever had the chance, Kylie would tell the world that she’s glad you’re a cop in Little Town.” He let go of me and stood up, reaching his hand down towards me.

I glanced up at him for a moment, then gave him my hand. He hauled me to my feet. We faced each other. “I’ll go with that,” I said at last.

“Good choice,” he said, giving me a gentle push in the back between my shoulder blades. “Now, get back to your desk. You have a mountain of paperwork to get through and I want it all done by the time you leave.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’ll be here till midnight,” I grumbled loudly, heading back inside, hiding my pleasure at having a partner who cared enough about me to give me pep talks when I needed them.

“Oh, and Tess?”

I turned. “Hmm?”

He smiled at me. “Not so many typos this time, hey?”

Epilogue

Although the Sarge and I lost control of the case against the bikies, the Big Town detectives did as well. Much to the Super’s anger, they were forced to hand it over to the city detectives for the follow up on the Vypers members.

And while I thought there was enough evidence to throw the book at them, the city police prosecutors were much more cautious. They were comfortable prosecuting the men shown in the Kylie film, as they had the eyewitness accounts of both Kylie and me, as well as the corroborating film itself as evidence. But when it came to linking Rusty to Kylie’s abuse, they worried that a crack defence lawyer would argue that his guilt was circumstantial.

Yes, he was present at the location, but his lawyers might argue that was natural as he was the property owner. Yes, he was caught on film potentially discussing ordering the deaths of Kylie and me, but his lawyers could argue that was circumstantial and a misinterpretation of the conversation. And neither side could use Rusty’s partner in that conversation as a witness, because he had disappeared. Yes, he had been filmed whacking me over the head, but his lawyers would only argue that I’d been an intruder and he’d been defending his property, unaware that I was a police officer.

Bloody lawyers!

If only that explosion hadn’t conveniently destroyed all trace evidence, the forensics team might have been able to find some DNA from the murdered girls in the retreat, which would have firmly linked them to the bikies. As it was, there was only Kylie’s and my word that the filming room had even been located in the bikie retreat in the first place. The Bycraft girls, who could have corroborated our statements, refused pointblank to cooperate with police, all with innocent faces claiming that they’d never set foot inside the retreat. The lying bitches.

The police prosecutors were also concerned that a good defence lawyer would downplay Kylie’s reliability as a witness because of her history as a troubled teen and the fact that she was doped up a lot of the time she had been abused. They might also cast doubt on my reliability, because I’d been on the premises without the knowledge or authority of my superiors.

Bloody lawyers!

A dawn raid on Vypers members’ homes by city cops turned up only some firearm and drug contraventions – there were no more frightened young women to be rescued or, frustratingly, any evidence of their involvement in illegal and violently fatal porn. I had a brief phone conversation with the lead city detective and she told me it was now much harder to gather evidence because the Vypers had allegedly moved their activities online and had destroyed their hard copy film.

The film fragments the Sarge and I had found couldn’t be used as evidence because they hadn’t been recovered in accordance with the law. The website flogging the disgusting movies the bikies had made was owned by a company that was owned by another company, owned by yet another company that was listed offshore.
Et cetera, et cetera.
The bikies had become modern, sophisticated criminals.

The best the city dees were able to do was to track down and arrest some of the men who’d appeared in the movies, most of them easily identifiable by their tattoos, including the man with the gold snake ring. But none of them would squeal either.

It all seemed impossible to solve until Kylie remembered that the man who’d arranged her fake licence had been a Department of Transport employee. That was one consolation at least to the Sarge and me – the licence had appeared real, because it
was
real, but filled with fake information. And thank goodness for public service accountability, because he was easily tracked through audit trails. He cracked under pressure, admitting to being a purchaser of snuff porn and an associate of the Vypers, grassing on a number of them, including Rusty Fontaine.

Investigations continue. In a disappointing development, Rusty took flight overseas before he could be questioned, his current whereabouts unknown.

My fingers remained crossed that eventually justice will be served for those girls.

~~~~~~

Kylie recovered surprisingly well. She’s shown an unexpectedly steely spine and a genuine determination to get her life back on track again. She cut her long dyed hair, grew it out to its natural colour and went back to school as a normal fourteen-year-old. She returned to the city to live with her mother again, but the relationship remained tense at best.

We keep in constant contact and I guess I’ve become an important role model in her life. She’s decided that she wants to be either a cop or a social worker when she grows up – someone who can help other girls in need. She’s endlessly grateful for the chance to grow up in the first place.

Every school holiday since those terrible events, she comes to stay with me to get away from her mother and the city and we’ve grown incredibly close. She’s like a little sister to me and gets on so well with my other ‘little sisters’, Romi and Toni, that I save like mad to take all four of us to Big Town to stay in a nice hotel for a girls’ weekend every four months or so. Sometimes even Romi’s best friend, Tina, joins us when she can be spared from her family’s avocado farm.

That gives us all the opportunity to be ridiculously girly together, go shopping, go to the movies or rollerblading or fishing and for the older girls to spy on some different boys to the ones they see every day in Little Town. It also gives Abe a much welcome break from his parental duties and a chance to spend some quality time with Jenny. He shows his appreciation by generously subsidising the weekends away, which is a big help to me. Jake and the Sarge chip in as well, which also cuts costs significantly, and I usually only end up carrying a quarter of the total expense. It’s a good break for all of us.

~~~~~~

I set up some self-defence courses in Big Town on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. They were partially sponsored by the Big Town police force, which meant that the Super paid for the venue, advertising, equipment and insurance for me. In return I covered the refreshments and any notes I wanted to distribute and handed over a third of my takings to help cover some of the costs. I had to acknowledge the police as a sponsor, which I actually thought lent my training a certain authority, so I didn’t mind.

I wasn’t prepared for the success of my training though and both courses quickly booked out. I even have a waiting list for the next one.

~~~~~~

I haven’t seen Melissa in town again so far, although I’ve spoken to her on the phone a couple of times when she’s rung the Sarge at the station and I’ve answered. She hasn’t been very friendly, frosty and abrupt, not wasting her time on any small talk with me.

The Sarge has made a few trips to the city to spend the weekend with her. But it’s a seven hour drive just to get there and I couldn’t always cover for him, especially after I started the self-defence courses. The travel’s taken its toll on him personally and the constant separation is taking its toll on their relationship. He’s never returned from one of his city trips with the same silly smile that I had after spending time with Jake, but was instead brooding and short-tempered. I asked him once after one trip if they’d set the wedding date yet and he snapped at me that it was none of my damn business and why didn’t I spend more time on my paperwork and less time gossiping about his private life? Scorched, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t ask him anything about his weekends away after that.

~~~~~~

Ironically enough, the skull that I’d woken up next to didn’t prove to be one of the bikies’ victims, after all. Instead, forensics placed it as a male, aged in his thirties, deceased for well over one hundred years. Speculation in town was rife after that bit of news.

The popular opinion was that it belonged to Ned Bycraft, who was lynched in 1888 by the townsfolk for murdering Elizabeth Fuller, and so beginning the Fuller-Bycraft feud. Although I refused to express an opinion one way or the other, when I thought back on that newspaper clipping I had from that era, microfilmed from the
Wattling Bay Messenger
, it never did confirm that Ned Bycraft had been buried by his family. Perhaps the lynchers, one of whom was my ancestor, had thrown his body in the bush after he’d died? Nobody would ever know unless Fiona paid for forensics to test the skull against the current Bycrafts. But after one look at her face, I knew that was never going to happen.

~~~~~~

I returned home from one of my self-defence sessions on a Saturday afternoon, only to find Dad grinning like a fool. I immediately demanded to know what was going on. I was tired and smelly and just wanted a shower and some dinner.

He refused to answer, bursting with suppressed eagerness. Irritated, I looked through every room of the house suspiciously. Nothing seemed any different. I went to the back door and threw it open. It was dark outside by then, but I could hear a beautifully familiar contented clucking noise and saw something standing where something so precious had recently been destroyed.

My heart wrenched as I went outside to look at the new setup. I couldn’t tell in the darkness, but it looked like another five chickens and a state-of-the-art chicken coop. I crouched down quietly, not wanting to startle them as they roosted in the darkness, getting used to their new home. I softly promised to look after them and make them happy.

I didn’t need to ask Dad who was responsible for such generosity. There was only one person I knew who had the readies to cough up for such a set-up in one go. I went straight to the phone to ring him.

“Sarge . . .” I said, not able to continue.

“Hello, Tessie,” he said casually.

“Thank you so much. I don’t know what to say. It’s so lovely of you, but I can’t possibly –”

“Don’t be silly. I didn’t buy it for you.”

I hadn’t been expecting that. “What do you mean?”

“It’s for me. I miss having fresh eggs every day. The ones from the shop just aren’t good enough for me anymore.”

“The money you’ve spent on this new set-up could buy you a lot of fresh eggs straight from one of the neighbouring farms, you know,” I argued. “They’ll even home-deliver for a regular customer.”

“No, they have to be produced with your loving care. I’ve become used to them that way. I want it to be you who’s done all the feeding, nurturing, mucking out and egg collecting.”

“Oh, that’s nice thinking, isn’t it?” I asked with mock-umbrage. “You buy me something just to get me to do a whole pile of extra work, so you can reap the rewards?”