Blood Tears (10 page)

“
Great! You done here for the day?”

“
Nah.
Still have some things to do before I knock-off. Why don’t you come
over about six-thirty or so? I’ll make you dinner.”

“
Deal,” he agreed, clasping my hand and bringing it to his
lips. “I’ll bring the dessert.”

Desire rippled through
me at his touch. Sex was still good between us; maybe not as
dynamite as it had been at first, but still very, very good. I had
no complaints about that. “You always bring the dessert.”

“
Hey,
what can I say? I’m good at dessert.”

“
That’s lucky, because I really, really love
dessert.”

“
I
know. Sometimes you need two or three helpings before you’re
satisfied.”

“
I’ve
always been greedy.”

He laughed and kissed
his fingers, reaching across to press them against my lips. “Okay,
babe. You better get back to work if you’re ever going to finish.
I’ll see you later tonight.”

“
Bye,
honey-boy. Looking forward to it already.” I watched him leave
before returning to my desk, which sadly hadn’t improved since I’d
left it.

This time I managed
five minutes of desultory work before the front door bell rang,
followed by the counter bell.

“
I
heard you. I heard you,” I muttered, finding a stranger standing at
the counter, looking around him with a small amount of
interest.

“
Oh,
hello,” he said when he noticed me.

“
May
I help you?” I asked politely, giving him the once-over.

An unattractive man by
any measure, he stood about five-seven at most, gaunt but wiry,
with thin, wispy red-brown hair hanging to his shoulders. A
scraggly moustache and goatee beard surrounded a mouth with barely
existent lips. A long, strong nose hung over the lot. It was his
eyes that caught my attention though – an intense, pale blue.
Almost hypnotic.

His dress sense was
eccentric, to be kind. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, a scruffy thick
long jacket despite the warm weather, and a scarf tied jauntily
around his neck – all of which had seen much better days.

It was hard to
determine his age. His face was weathered and wrinkled, either from
age, or from suffering through a very hard life. He could have been
in his sixties; he could have been in his forties. I couldn’t
tell.

“
I
hope I’m not wasting your time, Officer.”

“
Why
don’t you tell me why you’re here, and I might be able to let you
know if you are or not.” I didn’t want to hurry him up, but I had a
desk to clean, and a bed buddy to seduce.

“
It’s
my son. I’ve been looking for him for ages. Jamie.” He stopped,
scratched his beard, and took a deep breath. “I’m not doing this
right. Let me start from the beginning. My name’s Bill Mansfield,
and I’ve been trying to track down my son, Jamie. He’s sixteen, and
ran away with his girlfriend about a month ago. You can only
imagine how upset my wife and I are about that. We told him she
wasn’t a good influence, but young guys these days . . .” He
shrugged. “They think they know everything about relationships. My
wife has been telling me I need to come here after we read about
that boy who . . .” He turned away, his head buried into his
shoulder. “I hope I’m just being fanciful, and that it wasn’t
Jamie.”

“
Ah,
that
boy. Do you have a photo of Jamie, Mr Mansfield?” I
asked, scrabbling under the counter for an incident report form and
a pen. “Or even his girlfriend?”

He didn’t look like a
time-waster, and seemed genuinely distraught. And there was that
missing teenaged girl we’d yet to find, after all.

“
I
do,” he said, after first clearing his throat of emotion. He
reached into his jacket, and pulled out a dog-eared photo of
himself with his arm slung around the shoulders of a teenaged boy –
a teenaged boy wearing a red checked flannel shirt.

He rummaged around some
more in his pockets. “I also found this in his bedroom,” he said,
sliding another photo across the counter, and there was no
mistaking his disapproval as he did.

A picture of the young
boy with an equally young girl, arms around each, love shining from
their happy faces. She was extremely pretty, with a huge smile,
holding her body with an awkwardness that made my heart pang for
her – I remembered only too well that exquisitely painful mix of
pride and embarrassment at my developing body.

I couldn’t be one
hundred per cent sure, but the boy looked like the kid I chased out
on to the highway. I guess my thoughts showed on my face, because
Mr Mansfield honed in on me like an eagle.

“
You
think my Jamie was the boy who died?” he demanded, his voice
cracking.

“
I
honestly can’t say, Mr Mansfield. I only saw him briefly before . .
. Well, you know.”

“
I do
know . . .” He leaned forward to read my nametag. “Senior Constable
Fuller. I’m extremely worried about my son’s welfare. Please, any
information you have about him is so important to me.”

“
I
know that, Mr Mansfield,” I tried to soothe. “But there’s nothing I
can really tell you at the moment.”

“
But
you know about them? Where is he? Where is he?” he asked,
increasingly upset.

“
I
don’t
know
anything at this stage –”

“
Tell
me where he is. Tell me where he’s been staying.”

I had to put on my cop
voice. “Mr Mansfield, I understand your distress, but at this point
there is nothing I can tell you.” Or would dare to tell him,
especially with Fiona on my back.

“
At
least tell me where they were staying. I’m worried about his
girlfriend. She’s not a country person. She wouldn’t know how to
survive on her own. I need to find her.”

“
Could I please have these photos to give to the detective
team investigating the death of that, as yet,
unidentified
boy?” I hoped by emphasising that, it would draw his attention to
how much he might be able to help us in this
investigation.

But he moved to slap
his hand down over the two photos. I beat him, pulling both back
towards me.

“
They’re my only copies.”

“
I’ll
just scan these if you don’t want to give me the originals. I’ll
send them to the detectives working on the case.”

“
I’ll
contact the detectives myself,” he said. “I’m not sure you’re being
that helpful, Senior Constable. Can you give me their names and
phone numbers?”

“
I
can,” I said, a little frosty to be honest, though assuming my most
bland cop face. “As long as you give me your contact details. I’ll
need your address and phone number.”

And with that hanging
in the air, I diligently wrote down his name, address, and home and
mobile phone numbers on the incident report form, swapping Mr X and
Zelda’s work numbers with him. I then took two minutes to scan both
photos.

“
The
detectives will be in contact with you as soon as possible,” I
informed him when I returned his photos to him. I’d make sure of
that by ringing them myself the minute he left.

“
Thank you, Officer. But I’ll be in contact with them myself
as you’re not able to help me,” he said, departing with a faint air
of indignation.

I watched him climb
into an elderly mud-brown car, and chug off out of the carpark with
a fume of exhaust that should have seen me raking over his
vehicle’s roadworthiness.

The instant the last
thread of exhaust smoke evaporated into the air, I rang both Mr X
and Zelda, not being able to contact either, but leaving messages.
Finally free again, and only too aware of how time was ticking by,
I returned to my filing. I ended up throwing some papers in the
bin, hurriedly pressing on the keyboard to turn off my computer. I
was done with today, and my still messy desk would just have to
wait until tomorrow.

Or so I thought.

Just as I reached for
the keys to the Land Rover, the front door bell rang again.

Oh great!
I
thought, giving myself time to wait for my computer to fully shut
down.

The counter bell
dinged.

“
Okay! I’ll be there in a second,” I yelled out, perhaps a
touch unprofessionally, but rather fed up with people bothering me
when I was trying to leave.

I stomped out to the
counter, ready to tell whoever was there that the station was
closed for the night, only to come to a screeching halt.

A man stood at the
counter waiting patiently for me to show my face.

Maguire.

Chapter 7

“
Oh,
it’s you,” I said, not able to think of a wittier or more
sophisticated comment to make.

A million emotions
swirled through me at the unexpected sight of him – so many that I
didn’t know which one to choose. I decided that disinterest was the
safest, so although my heart pounded hard enough that I could feel
it pulsing in my ears, and my mouth felt suddenly parched, I
casually leaned against the doorjamb, crossing my arms, regarding
him with steady eyes.

“
Yep,
it’s me,” he replied, jamming his hands into the pockets of his
jeans. The air almost crackled around us, the situation was so
tense, yet also awkward. His eyebrows pursed together in faint
disapproval as he looked at me. “You cut your hair. I don’t like
it.”

“
Sorry, I didn’t realise I had to ask your permission first,”
I said. As if I cared what he liked.

“
You
could have,” he smiled, obviously trying to defuse the situation.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t in a pushback mood.

He seemed to fill the
small reception area with his presence. I’d almost forgotten how
tall and big he was, and what an imposing figure he could be. He
was dressed casually in jeans, a pale blue button-up shirt that
he’d left untucked, and some classy casual shoes. His hair was
longer, and curlier, than when he’d driven away all those months
ago, now brushing the collar of his shirt. He was tanned, and
carried the relaxed demeanour of a man who’d spent a while living
it up. And even bitter old me had to secretly admit that he looked
good.

Well, he almost looked
good.

“
What’s that horrible thing on your face?” I asked, staring at
it.

He smoothed down the
hair above his lips that formed a handlebar, a strip running down
either side of his mouth to his chin. “It’s my moustache. Don’t you
like it?”

“
No,
it looks ridiculous.”

“
Don’t spare me. Tell me what you really think.”

“
It’s
ugly. It makes you look stupid.”

He stroked it again. “I
grew it for Movember. Which you’d know, if you’d read any of my
emails or friended me on Facebook.”

“
I
don’t do Facebook,” I replied, avoiding the question of the emails.
I hadn’t realised he’d noticed I’d stopped reading them. “And
besides, it’s December. You should have shaved it off by
now.”

“
I
like it. I think it gives me a certain
je ne sais
quoi
.”

“
I
can supply you with a few adjectives to describe ‘
quoi’
, if
you like.”

He smiled. “You didn’t
donate any money. It was for a good cause.”

“
I
don’t have any money to donate to anything.”

“
Some
things never change.” He grew serious, his eyes darkening. “How
have you been, Tessie?” I shrugged an apathetic shoulder. If he’d
cared about how I’d be, he’d never have left in the first place. “I
would have liked for you to have kept in contact with me, so I knew
how you were coping.”

“
Is
that why you sent your spies here?”

“
They’re not spies. Harry and Trig are very good friends of
mine, and I asked them to check on you as a favour for me. I wanted
to know firsthand how you were bearing up.”

“
What
does that mean? That you’ve been told things about me second hand?”
I demanded, immediately peeved at the thought of someone discussing
me with him.

He didn’t answer, but
instead said, “Also, I wanted to know what I was coming back to.”
Then under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, “The guys
weren’t exaggerating.”

“
I
don’t really care what they told you about me.”

“
Doesn’t sound as though you showed them much country
hospitality.”

“
I
didn’t run them out of town with a pitchfork. What more did you
want me to do?” Then his words sank in. “Anyway, you’ve now seen
what you’ve come back to. I suppose you’re here to pack up the rest
of your things to head back to the city.”

“
Nope. I’m back for good.” His eyes stayed steadily on mine.
“Just as I said I would.”

“
Is
the PIU investigation over?” I asked.

“
Yes.
I was fully exonerated, so my suspension is over. I’m back on
active duty, and ordered to return to work.”

“
Oh.
So you were ordered to come back here?” And I just couldn’t help
the acerbic tone entering my voice at that thought. Not to mention
the fact that nobody had informed me the investigation into Denny
and Dylan’s deaths was complete.

“
That’s not what I meant,” he said gently. “I was ordered to
return to work. It was my decision to come back here. With a little
help from others.”