Blood Tears (5 page)

My mouth fell open.
“No! Are you saying Fiona had some cop wrangling in her time?”

He didn’t reply, but
winked, touching his index finger to his nose. “You never heard a
word about it from me.”

“
But
you’re not that much older than her.”

He sighed in happiness.
“Tezza, I had a calling that was recognised early on in my career.
A certain somebody was a constable at the time of our interaction,
and I was an acting-sergeant.”

I finally decided to
broach something that had been puzzling me since I’d met him. “Baz,
if you’re so great as a cop wrangler –”

“
Which I am.”

“
And
were recognised as such early in your career –”

“
Which I was.”

“
And
were an acting-sergeant when Fiona, our superintendent, was just a
constable –”

“
I
was.”

“
How
come you’re
still
a sergeant? That’s
ages
being a
sergeant.”

“
Decades,” he corrected gently. “I’m happy being a sergeant
and wrangling senior constables and constables. And sometimes the
occasional more junior sergeant lands on my plate too. If I
advanced, I’d have to start wrangling the senior sergeants and the
inspectors, and worst of all, the superintendents. Can you imagine
trying to wrangle Fiona today?”

We both instinctively
shuddered at the thought.

“
No,
thanks. Not for me. It’s a sergeant I’ll stay until I retire. I
like my job,” he said with the decisive happiness of a man who
knows his place in the world. “And speaking of that, what did the
Super actually want?”

After I told him, we
discussed the deceased teen for a while, deciding on strategies to
try to determine his identity. No doubt Mr X and Zelda would be
doing the same, but we – well, I did anyway – had the advantage of
local knowledge and trust. In agreement, we spent the entire
afternoon hitting the phones.

I rang every shopkeeper
in town to see if the boy had visited any of them, enjoying giving
Mr Grimmell a rather unsympathetic second grilling over whether
he’d seen him before. He was a sleazeball who’d made my life
difficult when I’d worked for him as a teenager, so I didn’t mind
hassling him.

I also rang Adele, one
of Grimmell’s employees, and Dad’s long-term girlfriend, privately
on her mobile phone. Still extremely distraught, she managed to
confirm that the boy hadn’t been a previous customer before the
unfolding of the tragic events of the previous day.

Baz rang Abe, the
town’s publican, to see if he or his staff had overheard any
drivers – truck, car, motorbike – talking about giving a teenager a
lift into town recently. We always officially discouraged
hitchhiking, but that never stopped anyone from doing it.
Particularly as the Big Town to Little Town bus service ran either
way only once daily, fitted primarily around the school timetable
conveying high school-aged students to Big Town. Little Town was an
inconvenient place to be without some form of private
transport.

With no luck from our
early enquiries, we discussed the possibility that the teen had
cycled into town. It was not unheard of, though the steep ride up
the range to reach Little Town, sharing the narrow, winding road
with huge trucks all the way, discouraged most. And usually, the
cyclists who made it were reasonably well-off enthusiasts, happily
flashing their tightly lycra-clad bodies and fancy bikes to the
unimpressed townsfolk. But remembering the boy’s red checked
flannel overshirt, t-shirt, none too clean jeans, dirty runners,
and sheer desperation, cycling didn’t seem a very likely
option.

By the end of the day,
we hadn’t advanced a mite.

“
That’s enough for one day, Tezza,” Baz declared, stretching
his arms, his uniform shirt threatening to burst open again. He
winked at me. “And besides, I have a date with the delectable
Foxy.”

“
You
should be glad I didn’t mention
that
to the Super,” I
snarked, shutting down my computer.

“
A
man must have his desires,” he merely smiled. “And she is one
desirable woman.”

“
Foxy?” I wondered how much of her history she’d disclosed to
him. I hadn’t said a word to fill him in, figuring it was none of
my business.

“
Mmm-hmm. That is one classy lady.”

“
Are
we talking about the same Foxy? Because there are many things I
might call her, but classy isn’t one of them.”

“
It’s
all a matter of taste, isn’t it?” he said, pushing his chair in
under his desk and neatening up some piles of paperwork. I left my
desk in the mess it had been at the beginning of the day.
No
point trying to tidy up now
, I rationalised to myself. “See,
I’d only touch a Bycraft with an electrified javelin pole, but you
and that Bycraft –”

“
Jake,” I interrupted. “His name’s Jake. And you’ve met him,
so you know that.”

“
It’s
all a matter a taste. Give me a full-bodied, experienced
firecracker like Foxy any day.”

“
She’s all yours,” I said sourly, stung by his implied
criticism of Jake. I was getting pretty sick of people questioning
my romantic judgement. “Nobody else wants her.”

“
Tezza, you really need to add a dollop of honey to that
vinegar sometimes. It makes a real difference for a woman. Have a
chat to Foxy about it one day. She said she’s more than happy to
help you out.”

Pissed off at that
comment, I left him to lock up, slamming closed the front door of
the station extra hard (because I usually slammed it everyday
anyway), more than a few flakes of paint floating to the veranda
boards as a result. I span off in the gravel of the carpark as
speedily as I could in our ancient Land Rover, which wasn’t
anywhere as near as fast or furious as I’d like.

There were a multitude
of reasons why Baz annoyed me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger
on why any criticism, overt or implied, of my relationship with
Jake bothered me the most. My only answer was that I hated being
judged. None of them had bothered to get to know Jake as I had, so
I didn’t know what made them think they were qualified to judge me
for being his girlfriend.

But how well do you
really know Jake?
My mind taunted me, internally voicing one of
the main current worries in my life. After all, he’d admitted to
visiting Red in jail twice without telling me. And today I’d
learned he’d obviously told Lola of my intentions to attend Denny’s
funeral, otherwise how could she have known? Jake was the only
person I’d discussed it with, apart from Dad, and I knew Dad and
Lola had
never
been on any kind of speaking terms. And then
there was still that lingering doubt about who’d installed that
hatch in Lola’s ceiling through which Red had escaped a few months
ago.

So many questions, and
yet I couldn’t seem to overcome my hesitance to demand real answers
from Jake for once.
Why?
I suspected it revolved around my
deep-seated fear of failing at another relationship. That would
make it three from three in my entire, almost twenty-eight-year-old
life. I knew I’d never have the confidence to become involved in
another romantic relationship if something happened between Jake
and me. It would just prove to myself that some people were born to
be alone – especially Tess Fuller.

Depressed by those
thoughts, I arrived home to find it empty, a note from Dad saying
he was spending the evening with Adele as she remained so upset
about the accident. Sighing to myself, I opened the pantry, noting
I hadn’t found time to go shopping for far too long. I settled for
a lonely dinner of peanut butter on crackers, a tub of strawberry
yoghurt, and a glass of orange juice.

I turned on the TV and
plonked on the lounge to munch on the crackers, having to brush the
crumbs off myself every minute or so. Our home phone rang. I let
it, not budging a centimetre from the lounge. I didn’t feel like
speaking to anyone, and we had no answering machine, so I was safe
from being bothered.

Fat chance.

My mobile, which I’d
instinctively placed on the coffee table, buzzed next. Groaning, I
picked it up. Some folk just didn’t know how to leave other folk
alone.

“
Tess
Fuller.”

“
Hi,
Tess,” said a hesitant voice. “Um, it’s Harley here. You remember
me? Finn’s friend, Harley?”

“
Yeah, I remember. I just met you yesterday,” I replied,
rolling my eyes. “How did you get my number?”

“
Um,
Finn gave it to us.”

“
Ookaay
,” I said, dragging the word out to make my
disapproval blatantly obvious. “What do you want? Have you
remembered something about yesterday?”

“
No.
Um, geez. Um. Oh boy. You make me so nervous.” A longish pause. “We
thought you might like to have dinner with us tonight at the
bistro,” he burst out in a rush.

“
I’m
already eating dinner, thanks anyway,” I said with a clear
conscience, hanging up without another word.

It was only later in
bed that night that I thought about what Dad had said, and what Baz
had said. Perhaps I had been a little ungracious to the two
visitors. I suppose it wasn’t
their
fault they were friends
with Maguire.

I rolled over and fell
asleep, promising myself to spend some time with them tomorrow. But
I almost didn’t get the chance.

Early at the station
the next morning, my first callers were Trig and Harley.

“
Enjoy your dinner last night?” I asked politely, leaning one
arm on the counter.

“
No,”
Trig said bluntly. “Frankly, we haven’t enjoyed anything about this
place since we arrived.”

“
Welcome to Little Town,” I said dryly.

“
We’re leaving now,” Harley blurted out. “Going back to the
city.”

I was taken aback at
that. “
Now?
But you were staying today too, weren’t
you?”

“
Why
would we bother?” Trig shot back. “We lied about being the hiking
kind of people, and you’ve made it clear you don’t want us here.
We’ve assured Finn you’re okay, so our job here is done. Plus, that
whole accident was just so . . .”

“
Yeah, just so . . .” Harley agreed quietly, shaking his
hanging head.

All my misgivings about
my behaviour last night swamped me. I was ashamed of my
inhospitality and lack of sympathy towards them.

“
Well,” I said slowly, looking down at the crude graffiti
scratched into the old counter. “I’d definitely have dinner with
you
tonight
if you were here. I didn’t last night because I
had prior plans.” I lifted eyes to each of them in turn, gauging
their reactions to my abominable, and I thought rather transparent,
lie. Trig’s eyes were sceptical, so I honed in on Harley, judging
him to be the easiest make of the pair. “Maguire used to take me
out to dinner a lot, probably because he made the worst food I’d
ever tasted.”

“
Finn?” Harley asked in surprise. “Really? He’s a great
cook.”

“
Ghastly cook. Totally inedible food.”

Trig shook his head,
smiling. “You really
are
a piece of work. Finn warned
us.”

“
I
don’t know what you’re talking about,” I proclaimed, all innocence.
“But I’ll happily have dinner with you tonight at the bistro.” I
turned to leave to the inner office, before spinning around again.
“But only if you’re here, of course.”

“
We’ll be here,” piped up Harley.

“
You’re paying.”

“
Of
course,” he promised.

“
You’re nice. I like you,” I said to him, allowing the ghost
of a smile on my mouth. My eyes flicked to Trig. “Haven’t decided
about you yet.”

I left them at the
counter, a slow delighted beam spreading across Trig’s face.

Chapter 4

The rest of the day
dragged on interminably. With a tiresome methodicalness that I
hoped Baz noticed, I rang all the outlying farmers to see if anyone
could help us identify our accident victim. But I had no
success.

Baz, convinced that
someone in the pub had to know something, hauled his butt off there
for some direct questioning of patrons. Had he been Des, I would
have resigned myself to that being the very last I saw of him for
the working day. But Baz would return, as he advised me at least
three times when he hesitantly left me alone in the station to
undertake my farmer phone calls. Despite what the Super had
demanded of him, he was beginning to face the stark reality that in
a two-cop station, it wasn’t always feasible to stick together when
a serious matter arose. I had to virtually push him out the door to
make him leave.

Having no luck with the
farmers, I wracked my brains trying to think of another possible
avenue of enquiry. A quick phone call to Mr X, which Zelda picked
up, revealed the sad fact that they hadn’t advanced much in their
investigations either.

The kid had to have a
name.

The counter bell rang
and it was Dave, a strawberry farmer, standing there, waiting for
attention. Dave, a quiet man who lived with his elderly mother a
way out of town, had been charged with indecent exposure after an
unfortunate misunderstanding between him and some vigilant parents
of children from the local primary school. He’d been lucky not to
have a conviction recorded for that offence, instead sentenced to a
probation period, which he’d since served out. I was surprised to
hear from him, because after that mortifying experience, he’d kept
the lowest profile of anyone in town.