Blood Ties (51 page)

“Calm down, babe,” Jake soothed, smart enough to know that he was treading on dangerous ground. “He was just being a tool. He knows how to press your buttons.”

“That’s not
pressing my buttons
, Jake!” I hissed into the phone angrily. “That’s threatening me with rape and a brutally violent death.”

How dare he try to brush off that kind of threat? I hung up on him. I just could not be reasonable about something so personal.

“What was that all about, Tess?” asked the Sarge, curious.

“I think that you’re very nosy,” I replied furiously, mimicking what he’d said to me only minutes before, “and that you’ve just asked me another question, Sergeant.”

He gave me a wry glance. “Ouch! Did I really sound as much of a pompous prick as that?”

“Yes, you did.” I was raging from Jake’s badly chosen words. My phone rang. It was him, but I didn’t answer. I was still too heated to talk to him. He knew the topic of Bobby and Craig Bycraft affected me strongly. And I would never talk to a Bycraft about it anyway, not even him.

“Your phone’s ringing.”

“I know,” I bit back irritably. “I can hear it.”

We pulled into the carpark of the station and I jumped out of the car. My phone started ringing again. I yanked it from my pocket and flung it with passion onto the grass lawn that surrounded the carpark. I stalked up the stairs to the station, unlocking the door and throwing it back so hard that it smashed into the wall with a loud bang, loosening flakes of paint and leaving behind a dent. I clamoured over the counter, not waiting to unlock the hatch, heading straight for the cupboard in the kitchenette. Opening the door, I snatched a packet of Tim Tams from the shelf, ripped it open carelessly and jammed three of them into my mouth at the same time, munching them greedily and with some difficulty. And when the Sarge cautiously came into the back room with my phone in his hand, he was greeted with the sight of me, my cheeks bulging and crumbs on my chin and shirt, struggling to chew on my enormous mouthful with half the biscuits poking out of my mouth.

The startled expression on his face made me laugh suddenly and pieces of unchewed biscuit flew out of my mouth like missiles. I had to run to the sink to spit out the detritus, taking in a deep breath and unfortunately inhaling a piece of chocolate-coated biscuit as I did. I choked and coughed, my eyes streaming and my face turning lobster red as I gasped for oxygen. He banged me firmly on the back until the caught piece dislodged.

“Thanks Sarge,” I gasped as I hung onto the sink, turning on the tap to wash the evidence of my greed down the drain.

“How many Tim Tams did you have in your mouth then, Tess?”

“Three,” I confessed, laughing again, my good humour restored. “What was I thinking? They didn’t even fit.”

“You’ll never beat the world record with just three of them, you know,” he said lightly before turning serious again. “You need some lunch.”

“Yes. I guess I do.”

“Do you want your phone back?”

“Is Jake still ringing me?”

“Yes.”

“Then no, thank you.”

“I’ll put it in my pocket for a while, will I?”

“Thanks Sarge.”

While I cleaned up my mess, he went to the bakery and bought both of us a salad sandwich and a juice. We ate our lunch sitting on the back steps, staring at the rising slopes of Mount Big as we did.

“You’ve really seen me at my worst since you’ve been here, Sarge. I’m not normally this temperamental, I can promise. I have to apologise to you,” I said ruefully, mortified about my immoderate reactions to everything that had happened in the past few days. I suppose I could have blamed PMS, but I was reluctant to talk about something so personal with him. I barely knew him.

He stared at me in amazement. “Tess, are you serious? I’m only surprised you haven’t curled up into a corner yet, a screaming mess, after what you’ve been through since I arrived here.”

“I don’t like being too emotional,” I admitted, not wanting to meet his eyes, suddenly finding something compelling in the ancient iron nails holding down the wide floor boards of the back veranda.

“Neither do I, but sometimes I can’t help it because I’m only human. We can’t be robots, no matter how much we might want to. And no matter how much it would make life simpler for us.”

I glanced up and we met each other’s eyes. There was so much sympathy and understanding in his face that I felt overwhelmed with unwanted emotion again. I began to wonder if he was much warmer and kinder than I’d ever imagined possible and jumped to my feet in discomfort at the thought. So did he. We faced each other.

“Do you want your phone back now?” he asked, breaking the awkward silence. He fished it from his pocket and held it out.

“Thanks,” I said coolly, taking it from him and moving to the end of the veranda to ring Jake. We made up over the phone, but I could feel his longing to be with me in person as we did. I felt the same with him. I found it difficult to do things like that over the phone or email, because it was never the same. I wanted to touch Jake, to see his face when I talked to him and to kiss him – which made me think of the Sarge and his fiancee. How did he handle her being on the other side of the world, not being able to see her or touch her? And how on earth did he survive for so long without sex with the woman he loved? Maybe that was why he was always grumpy? Maybe when she returned, he’d become a different person? Maybe happy and relaxed?

I would never dare to ask him those questions though, so instead I took our rubbish to the bin at the side of the station, before joining him in the office.

“Tess, we have to force Stanley Murchison to talk to us tomorrow, no matter what.”

“Agreed.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for you. Are you going to be okay in court?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “It depends on how the Bycrafts behave.”

“I’m sure you can safely assume that they won’t behave, and prepare yourself to be abused and threatened.”

I smiled grimly and busied myself at my desk. I wasn’t looking forward to the following day at all, hoping my worry wouldn’t stop me from getting a good night’s sleep. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

The counter bell and phone rang simultaneously. The Sarge reached for the phone, only to impatiently tell the caller that, no, it wasn’t the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club, while I headed out to the counter to find an outraged Gwen Singh wanting to report the theft of her son’s expensive bicycle by one of the Bycraft boys.

“Do you know which one of them it was, Gwen?” I asked, jotting down the facts on an incident report form. We were probably the only station in the whole state that still used the forms, not having a computer at the counter.

“Tess, I wish I could tell you, but they all look the same to me. I only caught the barest glimpse of his face as he rode past me on the stolen bicycle, giving me a
very
rude gesture with his finger as he did! Those Bycrafts are absolute savages, even the young ones.”

“I’m fairly sure it will be Timmy Bycraft we’re after. He has a thing for bikes. He stole my bike tons of times before it went permanently missing and he’s taken Romi Stormley’s new bike that she got for Christmas six times this year already and it’s only February,” I told her.

“That would be because he’s mad about Romi. She’s a very pretty girl.”

“She certainly is,” I agreed.

“He’s trying to get her to notice him in the only way that Bycrafts know how. She needs to get out of town as soon as she can and never return. Those Bycrafts are obsessive, especially the males, and that’s not a good trait for people with poor impulse control like them to have. It’s just lucky there aren’t any young Fuller girls besides you left in town anymore, Tess,” she said gently, placing a sympathetic hand on mine. We exchanged a glance.

“And I won’t be here forever either, Gwen. Just until . . .”

“I know, love. And let’s hope nothing happens to you until that sad day.” She patted my hand.

“Amen to that!” I agreed again, wholeheartedly. “The Sarge and I will go interrogate Timmy as soon as we can. I’ll get back to you about Deepak’s bike when we find out anything.”

“Thanks Tess.”

Chapter 26

In the car, on our way to Timmy’s house, the Sarge turned to me. “You know a lot about the Bycraft family.”

“I’m an unwilling expert,” I admitted coolly.

“Why? And why do they harass you so much? It
is
personal, isn’t it?”

“So many questions, Sarge. You’re confusing me. I’m only a simple country girl.”

“Tess, just cut the bullshit for once, will you?” he said angrily.

“Why do you care anyway? It’s my problem, not yours.” I was pretty good at getting angry myself.

“It’s my problem now as well. That’s what being part of a team means,” he explained with insulting slowness.

I couldn’t let that go without some sniping. “Well Sarge, and maybe it’s just because I
am
a simple country girl, but you seem to switch between telling me we’re a team and telling me that I have to follow your orders because you’re the senior officer, depending on what’s most convenient to you at the time.”

“I do not.”

“Whatever,” I muttered to myself, gazing out the window.

“What did you just say?” he demanded.

I swung around and glared at him. “I said ‘whatever’.”

His voice was cold. “You have a real attitude problem, Fuller.”

“And you, Sergeant Maguire, have a gigantic stick up your –”

I stopped, barely in time to save myself from making a huge career blunder.

“You’ve something you want to say to me?” His voice could have cracked glass it was so frosty.

“Nothing Sarge. You are the source of all wisdom and I acknowledge that humbly,” I replied evenly, if not sincerely.

He banged his fist on the dashboard, making me jump. “God damn it, Tess!”

As soon as Timmy Bycraft, perched boldly on the stolen bike in his driveway, saw us approaching he pedalled furiously in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road.

The Sarge pulled a violent u-turn that had me flying in my seat and planted his foot on the accelerator. He overtook Timmy and cut him off with the patrol car, coming to a halt at an angle in front of him. Timmy, taken by surprise, had three choices – veer right, veer left or head straight on into the patrol car.

Now Timmy Bycraft wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box and faced with that massive dilemma, his tiny brain shut down. He kept pedalling straight ahead towards the car. It was going to be a head-on. I jumped out of the car and waited for him to get closer before hooking him around the neck with my arm and jerking him off the bike just as it hit the patrol car. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and would probably have slid over the bonnet and impacted head first onto the road the other side. As it was, my actions caused him to land hard on his butt, the force also bringing me down on top of him. He immediately grabbed my breasts in a painful grip, despite being winded by the fall.

“I’m touching her tits!” he shouted out victoriously to his various relatives as they ran towards us. They cheered him on as they soon swarmed around, trying to kick me, even as I struggled away from Timmy’s iron grip on my boobs. I jumped to my feet, kicking out viciously with my boots in return, hitting a few body parts as I did. I hauled Timmy to his feet. Grasping him around the throat with my hand, I pushed him up hard against the patrol car, my face mere centimetres away from his.

I was furious beyond any point of professionalism. “You ever touch any part of me again, Timmy Bycraft,” I hissed into his face, “and I’m going to take these,” I kneed him in the scrotum as I spoke, “and feed them to you.”

He stiffened in pain at the aggressive contact and tried to spit on me, but was too scared to produce any more saliva than a thick globule that dangled unattractively from his bottom lip. This was his first solo encounter with crazy old me.

“
Do you understand?
” I screamed into his face, squeezing his throat tightly. He choked and wet himself then in fear, nodding. I let him go, watching in disgust as he ran away before anyone in his family could see what had happened to him. I picked up the bike and placed it in the boot of the patrol car. It was damaged, no doubt about it, but at least we would return it to its owner.

The first person in the crowd who hassled me as I did that copped a vicious elbow to the face that made them retreat in pain, blood flowing from their nose. I didn’t even bother to turn around to see who it was. I didn’t care. When I dumped the bike in the boot, I slid my baton out and turned to the gathered crowd, brandishing it with intent and eyeing them balefully, just waiting for someone to give me an excuse to use it. The Sarge was on stand-by, everything happening too fast for him to intervene, but he pulled out his baton as well. Everyone backed away, muttering and resentful. I hadn’t made any friends with the Bycrafts today.

Back in the car as we drove away with the retrieved bike, the Sarge tried to catch my attention. I deliberately looked out the window.

“You hate the Bycrafts,” he commented simply.

I shrugged, uninterested in talking about them.