Blood Ties (45 page)

I shrugged. “I’ll live. They’re all in the watch house in Big Town. You can ask them yourself later this morning.”

“No! I can’t be locked up with animals like them.” He began panicking again.

“Why not?”

“I’m not a criminal like them.”

“I’m not seeing much difference between you and them from my point of view.”

“I’m a paralegal, not a criminal,” he confessed, leaning against his cell wall in despair, tears springing to his eyes once more.

“And yet again, at the risk of being repetitive, what’s the difference between you as a law breaker and the Bycrafts, regardless of your occupation?” I asked calmly as I watched the man slowly unravel in front of me.

“Officer, please!” he begged.

“Who do you work for?” I asked coldly.

“I refuse to speak,” he insisted, blinking away his tears. “You can’t force me to. It’s a violation of my human –”

“All right,” I butted in. “Good night.”

“Don’t go!” he screamed in fear. The panic in his voice grabbed me by the heart and squeezed.

“See that buzzer on the wall. Press that and I’ll come to see what you want. Otherwise, I’ll check on you every half-hour. Have a good sleep, Mystery Man.”

“No! Officer! Please don’t do this! You said you’d stay. Please stay with me! Please!” he begged. “Don’t turn out the light.”

“I said I’d stay if you cooperated. You don’t want to, so I’m going,” I said. “Anyway you need to sleep. I don’t want anyone saying that you were questioned unreasonably or unlawfully.”

“No!”

“I’ll turn off the cell light, but leave the veranda light on. Okay?”

“Thank you,” he sniffled unhappily.

I walked down the stairs, blocking out his sobs of agony. Back in the office, I locked the door and sat in the chair placing my feet on my bare desk. I sipped my coffee and wished I’d brought a book with me. I looked over at the pile of paper I’d bad-temperedly dumped earlier in the day.

The buzzer rang and rang. I ignored it.

I looked over at the pile of paper again and sighed hugely. If I didn’t have the time now to tackle it properly then when would I, I reasoned with myself. I did hate mess and it had bothered me for months. Reluctantly, I commenced the tiresome task of sorting it out, ignoring the buzzer the whole time.

Each half-hour I checked on the man in custody, carefully writing notes in the observation book afterwards.

“You said you’d come if I pressed the buzzer,” he accused tearfully at my first check-up.

“I guess it’s busted,” I lied. “What’s your name and who do you work for?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I want a lawyer! You’re violating my human rights!”

I turned towards the stairs.

“I hate you!” he yelled petulantly.

“I don’t care,” I said over my shoulder and left him alone again, heading back to my paperwork. By the time the sun poked its head over the horizon, I’d checked on him and asked him the same question five times and had filed or dumped every piece of paper. I was extraordinarily proud of myself as I ran the final unwanted piece of paper through the station’s ancient shredder. My chickens would have nest linings for ages now.

The last time I checked on the guy, he was asleep on the lumpy mattress, snoring loudly, so I knew he was still alive. And that was more than I could vouch for myself, being half-asleep at that point. I tidied up the station a little, dusted, swept the floor and cleaned and restocked the kitchen and bathroom. By the time I’d finished doing that bit of housekeeping, the sun was up, the dew on the grass was glistening prettily and a chorus of birdcalls was brightening the morning.

I was sitting on the back steps of the station, drinking another coffee, yawning hugely, when the Sarge returned in uniform. He had a quick check on our man who was still sleeping, made himself a coffee and joined me on the back steps. From a bag he handed me one of the muffins left for us yesterday and took out a tub of yoghurt and a banana each as well.

“Thanks Sarge! This is nice,” I said, appreciating his thoughtfulness, biting into the muffin. It was blueberry and strawberry, made with fresh berries, and was delicious. We ate in silence and when I’d finished, I stood up and brushed muffin crumbs off my jeans, picked up the rubbish and took it to the bin at the side of the station.

The Sarge stopped in surprise when he spotted my workspace. “What happened to all those papers?”

“I filed the ones we need to keep and the rest have been shredded.”

“You’ve been busy,” he commented. “Good work, Tess.”

“I had to do something to keep me occupied and awake last night,” I shrugged. I told him that our guest hadn’t been very forthcoming during the night and the only thing I’d learned was that he was a paralegal with a law firm.

“And what’s the bet that he works for a certain Stanley Murchison? That’s one gentleman we need to speak to urgently.” I nodded in agreement. “Go and wake up our man. We’ll give him some breakfast and take him to Big Town straight away.”

He wasn’t very happy to be woken up, complaining that he’d only just got to sleep and was tired. I gave him a muffin and a bottle of orange juice. He begged me for a cup of coffee and as I left to make it, he yelled through the bars that he liked a cafe latte made with fresh medium-ground Arabica beans, but not too milky and not too strong, with two level teaspoons of demerara sugar.

“I’m not a bloody barista,” I yelled back over my shoulder. “You’ll get it how I make it.”

And while I carelessly dumped instant coffee and white sugar into a mug and poured over the boiling water, the Sarge escorted him to the bathroom and back to the cell again. He held the door of the cell open for me to bring in the mug of coffee. I entered the cell, my concentration on the mug that I’d filled to the brim in my usual impractical way. The man jumped up from the bed and suddenly lunged at me, flipping my hand up so that the hot coffee spilled over my t-shirt. As I shrieked in pain, he shoved past me violently, pushing me in the chest, forcing me to stumble back against the cell wall. He made a run for the door, shouldering past the Sarge desperately as he did.

The Sarge automatically reached out an arm and managed to grasp the man’s t-shirt, brutally hauling him backwards, almost choking him in the process. I righted myself and ignoring my scalding, grabbed his other arm and we manhandled him, struggling and kicking out at us, back into the cell. The Sarge slammed the door hard.

“You’re a very stupid man,” he said sharply, through the bars, breathing heavily. I was holding my burning t-shirt out from my body. He turned to me and threw me his house keys. “Quick, get up to my house and get into a cold shower.”

I didn’t wait another second, but jogged as best I could to his place and headed straight into the bathroom, not even sparing a second to look around at his furniture. I threw off my clothes and jumped into his shower, letting the cool water play over the reddened skin on my chest and stomach. I stood for a while until the stinging went away, then thought while I was there I’d have a proper shower using his expensive, handmade soap. It was lemony and lathered up with luxurious silky bubbles. Lovely. I had just rinsed off the last of the soap when there was a knock on the door. I turned off the taps.

“Yeah?” I asked, anxiously trying to remember if I’d locked the door behind me.

“There are towels in the tall cupboard next to the basin,” the Sarge said through the door.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve left a clean t-shirt for you outside the door. Are your jeans okay?”

“Yes. It was just the shirt that got wet.”

“I’ve left burn cream with the shirt too.”

“Thanks, but it’s not too bad. Just a bit red. I’ll be fine.”

I stood on the fluffy bath mat and leaned over to the cupboard to grab an even fluffier soft white towel with a label that told me it was hideously expensive. But, oh boy, it felt nice on my skin. I dressed in my panties, jeans and shoes again, and wrapping the towel carefully around me, I opened the bathroom door, leant down and grabbed the t-shirt and cream, and quickly shut it again. I rubbed on some burn cream even though I didn’t really think that I needed it and slipped on his designer t-shirt. But I had a little dilemma that he wouldn’t be able to help me with – my bra had been soaked in coffee as well as my t-shirt. I was forced to go bra-less until I could go home to get another one and I’d been blessed with a generously portioned pair of boobs, so it was going to be quite noticeable.

I was alone in the house when I opened the door to the bathroom, and this time I did give myself some time to satisfy my curiosity. I prowled around his house shamelessly. He had nice furniture, very modern and probably as costly as everything else he owned. It would have suited a smart city apartment much more than it did the old timber police house, because it looked out of place in these modest surroundings. He had the largest wall-mounted flat screen television I’d ever seen, but it wouldn’t be much use out here because we only received three channels, sometimes four if the weather was absolutely clear and the mountain wasn’t interfering with reception. There were framed photographs set out on the side table that the Bycraft boys had tried to steal. And being the nosy creature that I am, I was inevitably drawn directly to them like a shopaholic to a Myer sale.

The first photo was of him and two other men, all very young in their early twenties, and all dressed in university robes, smiling with self-satisfaction towards the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders. I recognised the background in the photo as the same university that I’d attended, the state’s premier sandstone. A graduation photo? One of the other men had straight fair hair and was shorter than the Sarge with an attractive square face and nice smile. The other guy was gangly and even taller than the Sarge with freckles, long ginger dreadlocks and a patchy ginger goatie. Perhaps they were his besties? I smiled at how young he was in that photo. He looked pretty cute.

The next photo I picked up was of him and a handsome older man with the same dark curling hair, nose and chin as the Sarge. But the older man also had an incredibly cheeky smile and an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. Their arms were fondly around each other’s shoulders, at some kind of celebration. I wondered who the man was. Some kind of relative, I’d bet. The photo next to it was of a beamingly proud, overdressed elderly couple, with the Sarge towering in the middle of them, at what appeared to be his police academy graduation. They were presumably his grandparents.

The last photo was the most interesting to me and I examined it closely – it was of him and a pretty young woman, arms around each other’s waists, smiling happily at the camera, with an older couple standing either side of them. Everybody was dressed formally and I wondered if it had been taken at his engagement party. I peered intently at the couple standing next to the Sarge and could see a resemblance in the woman, so thought perhaps it was his parents. His mother looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The Sarge’s fiancee was barely medium-height, with a rounded figure, lush, long dark hair and huge brown eyes. She looked quite young and I wondered what the age gap was between them. They certainly made an attractive couple, despite their difference in height. Everyone in the photo looked perfect – well groomed and expensively dressed. He obviously came from a moneyed background, so what on earth was he doing in Little Town? And why on earth was he a cop in the first place? It wasn’t a career that normally appealed to the well off.

I put the photo down and kept prowling. The police house was set out in an identical plan to a lot of the houses in town, including mine, but reversed to my plan. There was a hallway that ran from the front door straight through the house to the kitchen with three bedrooms, a lounge room, a bathroom and a dining room directly off the hall. The kitchen ran the width of the house at the back, allowing for a generous eat-in area. He had set up one of the three bedrooms as a gym, and had an impressive array of equipment, including a bench press and treadmill. The other bedroom was a spare, well furnished with a queen-sized bed and silky oak dresser. His bedroom, one of the large rooms at the front of the house, was stylish with a king-sized bed made up with smart, masculine sheets and cover. The bed, bedside tables, dresser and wardrobe formed a matching bedroom suite also in silky oak. The other large room was his lounge room. Like Dad and me, he’d set up his dining table in the huge kitchen and was using the dining room, not as a music room as I did, but as an office, with a desk, filing cabinets and bookcase. Not to mention a laptop and what looked like a brand new printer.

The whole house was neat and clean, calm but with a reserved feeling, not revealing a great deal about his personality. Feeling guilty about being such a stickybeak, I gathered my dirty clothes, gave the bathroom one last check to make sure I’d left it in pristine condition, hanging my used towel up neatly to dry and headed back to the station. I carefully locked the front door of his house behind me.

Back at the station, I asked if he would mind if first I dropped home before we headed off to Big Town with our man, keeping my arms securely across my chest the whole time I spoke to him.

“Why? You’ll be fine to go as you are. Come on, let’s just head off. It doesn’t matter if you’re in jeans. I don’t want to waste any time.”

“Sarge,
please
,” I implored, trying to sway him with my eyes, not wanting to be forced to explain myself.