Blood Ties (7 page)

“And that’s pretty much it,” I concluded. I was right – the whole tour had taken less than five minutes.

“Where’s the watch house?” he asked, looking around him without much enthusiasm.

“We don’t have one. We only have a lockup.”
Hmm, this was going to be awkward
, I thought. “It’s, um, out the back.”

“Show me.”

Reluctantly, my heart sinking, I led him up a cement path to a small, freestanding timber building on low stumps with a tiny veranda, also painted puke-green. It had two cells, both with barred windows and sturdy barred iron doors, currently standing open. He stood for a moment taking in the scene before turning to me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a chicken.”

“Yes, I know it’s a chicken, Fuller. I’m not completely ignorant about the country. I mean, what is the chicken doing in the lockup? In fact, what are all these . . . two, four . . . What are all these five chickens doing in the lockup?”

I didn’t want to answer him. I rubbed the back of my neck. I glanced up at the sky hoping to find inspiration for a believable story, then I glanced down at the ground, scuffing my feet. There was nothing for it but the truth. “Well, they kind of live here.”

“You’ve turned the lockup into a chicken coop?” His eyes burned into me, but his voice was insultingly slow and patient.

“Yes,” I admitted, grabbing a handful of feed from the nearby bin and scattering it on the ground for my girls. I refilled their water container and collected five eggs, holding out three of them to him. “Des and I usually split them.”

He stared down at the eggs, but didn’t take them. “The chickens have to go.”

“But we never use the lockup.”

Incredulous, he asked, “What do you do when you arrest someone?”

“I try not to arrest people here much,” I confessed.

He blew out an angry stream of air. “Explain yourself.”

“It’s complicated,” I mumbled, turning back to the chickens, hoping that he’d accept that as a response. He wouldn’t.

“I’m perfectly capable of understanding complicated situations, Fuller.” I almost got a brain freeze from the iciness of his voice.

I sighed. “I usually give people a warning or a penalty notice for minor infringements and for major infringements I take them to Big Town to be processed.” I suddenly wished I was anywhere in the world but here having this conversation with him.

He clenched his jaw and lifted his eyes to the sky. “Big Town?”

“That’s what we locals call Wattling Bay, the nearest regional centre. It’s about a ninety minute drive north-east to the coast. They’ve a proper watch house there and the personnel to staff it twenty-four hours a day. It’s not practical for us to keep people here. We don’t have the resources.” A squabble among the chickens for the feed drew his attention back to them. I pleaded with him. “The chickens are used to living in the lockup, Sarge. They’ve lived here their whole lives. It would be traumatic for them to move.”

“The chickens are going,” he repeated, making it quite clear by his tone of voice that he wouldn’t take any nonsense from me today, or any other day for that matter. “Either you move them or I will eat them. One by one.”

I stared at him rebelliously. “You wouldn’t do that.” It was a barbaric threat – they were my pets.

“I have a whole cookbook full of delicious chicken recipes, Fuller.” His dark blue eyes blazed with intent.

Fury robbed me of speech.

“Hmm,” he pretended to ponder, “that one will be the first, I think. Maybe even tonight. I have a sudden desire for
coq au vin
for dinner.” He’d pointed right at my favourite hen, Miss Chooky. She was the prettiest, the best layer and had the strongest personality.

“I’ll move them,” I spat out, burning up with incredible anger at the thought of him eating my little Miss Chooky in a wine and mushroom sauce. “I’ll need a few days to organise things.”

“Okay,” he agreed, placid now that he had his own way. I loathed him intensely at that moment and spun around to stalk back to the station. I was going to walk home. He could find out about the town by himself. I had better things to do with my Saturday than hang around with him – like cleaning the toilet, for example. He grabbed me by the arm and spun me back around. I shook off his arm angrily. I couldn’t stand people I didn’t know touching me.

“Now you need to show me the town,” he said in a cool voice. I struggled for self-control, wanting desperately to slog him one – he had threatened my precious girls. Expressionless himself, he watched the emotions flying across my face in quick succession, my hands clenching and unclenching by my side. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and willed myself to calm down.

When I opened them, I was tranquil again. “I want to make sure Des pulled up all right this morning, first,” was what I finally said and detoured off up the cement path leading to the police house at double pace, leaving him in my dust.

Chapter 3

I ran up the front stairs, impatiently fended off Mr Sparkles’ impertinent nose and knocked politely on the door. Maureen opened it and gave me her ‘friendly’ smile, which was faker than a counterfeit Mona Lisa finger-painted by preschoolers.

“Tess, my dear, thank you so much for bringing Des home last night,” she gushed and clutching my arm, dragged me inside the house. She shut the door behind her, but wasn’t able to fully close it, an obstacle in the way. Confused, she let go of me and again slammed the door shut hard. A shout of pain sounded from the other side. Cautiously, Maureen opened the door to the Sarge, his foot jammed in the doorway, agony imprinted on his face, Mr Sparkles’ nose buried in his private parts.

“
Jesus!
Get this bloody animal away from me!” he shouted and pushed Mr Sparkles away roughly before shouldering the door. He shoved it open until it slammed against the wall and forced himself inside.

“We do
not
take the Lord’s name in vain in this house!” Maureen shrieked in fury and commenced swatting him on the arm with both hands. Mr Sparkles barked loudly in sympathy. “And we certainly do
not
use curse words in this house, either!”

Des gave immediate lie to that statement by staggering out of the bedroom, still in his stained pants, his gray hair a frizzy halo around his head, his face as wrinkled as an elephant’s butt. “What the fuck is going on out here? Can’t a man get some sleep around this place without all this fucking noise?”

Maureen shrieked again and abandoned the Sarge to start on her husband who was in no shape to defend himself. Sparkles upped the ante on the barking a couple of notches.

“Oi!” I shouted into the melee. Nobody listened.

“Everybody,
shut up!
” bellowed the Sarge. There was immediate silence, Des and Maureen as still as statues. Even Mr Sparkles cooperated. He had a really loud voice. I was impressed, despite myself.

“Christ!” he shook his head and said unwisely into the silence, because he instantly set Maureen off again and she flew at him, her hands flapping away, slapping him everywhere she could reach.

“You’re a heathen! You take the Lord’s name in vain
and
you knocked over four of my Jesus figurines last night when you tried to burgle us. You broke the head and one of the arms off my favourite figurine. You broke Jesus! You’ll burn in hell for all eternity for that!”

Mr Sparkles started barking again.

“For God’s sake . . .” he tried, but that only threw petrol onto the fire of Maureen’s religious rage.

Des and I exchanged glances. He sneaked off to the bathroom, away from the fray, and I thought about heading for the front door. However, I felt a reluctant obligation to look after my new boss on his first day in town even though he was pig-headed and unfriendly and he’d threatened to eat my favourite pet and deserved everything he got as far as I was concerned.

“I’m going to arrest you if you don’t stop hitting me right now!” he threatened Maureen, struggling against her furious onslaught.

“Oh yeah? You just try!” she screamed at him, slapping him across the face and aiming to knee him in the groin. Maureen had a real temper on her – she was truly God’s little warrior. Unfortunately at that point, Mr Sparkles became over-aroused by all of the excitement and reared up to start humping the Sarge’s leg, clutching him around the hips with his paws, barking excitedly all the while.

“
Jesus Christ!
” he shouted as he tried to push the amorous dog away, which propelled Maureen into an increased frenzy of anger.

I didn’t intend to, but it was so funny that I started laughing and once I started I couldn’t stop. The Sarge shot me a poisonous look that promised me a slow and painful immolation if I didn’t do something and do it soon. I wanted to help him, but I hadn’t laughed like that for years and it took a while to control myself. Finally though, with only a few renegade snorts of laughter remaining, I threw myself into the melee. I grabbed Maureen gently around the neck with the crook of my arm and dragged her off the Sarge, pushing her down into one of the lounge chairs.

I pointed my finger at her. “Stay there and quieten down or I’ll tell Des about the bottle of gin at the back of the pantry, behind the tinned tomatoes.” She paled, her eyes widened and she shrunk back into the chair, suddenly afraid and instantly silent. She relied heavily on her piety for superiority in her relationship with Des. Being discovered as a secret soak would cast a very long shadow over that, in her mind.

I moved over to Sparkles and glared him in the eye. “Let him go now, dog,” I demanded in a low, mean voice. He ignored me, his face filled with ecstasy as he kept rutting, lips wide in a happy grin, tongue lolling, eyes rolling back in his head. I reached down and grabbed Mr Sparkles by his testicles and squeezed them tightly. I immediately had his attention. He yelped in pain.

“Back away, Sparkles, or I’ll get my knife out and cut them off right now,” I threatened and squeezed them even harder. He stared at me and I stared at him, and then he let go of the Sarge, fell back on four paws, whined pitifully and limped back to his bed. I turned around, breathing heavily, wiping my doggy-ball hands on my shorts and screeched with ear-splitting shrillness, “
Des?
” The Sarge jumped in fright beside me.

A sheepish Des emerged from the bathroom, cleanly bathed, wrapped in a bathrobe but worse for wear, obviously carrying a massive hangover and terrified of me. “Yes Tessie, love?” he asked in a placating voice.

“Get packing! This poor man,” and I nodded my head over my shoulder at the Sarge, “wants to move in. You have to be out tomorrow. Understand?”

“Yes Tessie,” he agreed immediately.

I turned to his wife. “Maureen? Is that doable?”

“Yes Tessie,” she said, scared stiff.

I relaxed and smiled, my good humour restored. “Excellent. Everybody’s happy. Could you both please excuse me? Now I know that you’re okay, Des, I have to show the Sarge around the town. See you later.” I walked to the door and turned. “By the way Maureen, you owe the Sarge an apology. It was Des who broke your Jesus figurine.”

And knowing that I’d just detonated World War III in that household, I hummed happily to myself, pushed past the Sarge who appeared rather traumatised after his ordeal, and ran down the stairs. Mr Sparkles’ malevolent glare followed me. I washed my hands thoroughly in the station bathroom, secured the building – the station wasn’t open on the weekend – and jumped in the driver’s seat of the patrol car to join the Sarge, who was waiting patiently and quietly in the passenger’s seat.

He glanced at me, his face expressing a multitude of emotions, but obviously none he felt able to put into words at this stage. I revved the engine, reversed like a hoon and squealed out of the parking lot, skidding and spraying gravel everywhere, before slowing down to the speed limit when I hit the street, like a model citizen.

“Fuller!” he shouted in alarm, clinging onto the door’s armrest.

“Just my bit of fun, Sarge,” I said, grinning to myself. “I love that gravel carpark.”

He shook his head and turned away to look out of the window. He was probably calculating how long it would take him to drive back to the city if he left right now.

I drove down the Coastal Range Highway. It had been an act of unwarranted generosity by the state’s founding fathers to gazette this place as a town way back in 1889. To be brutally honest, it wasn’t up to scratch as a village and barely even passed muster as a hamlet. If pressed, I would probably refer to us as a cluster.

Little Town was nothing but a tiny dot in the local Referdex and a mere fly speck on the state road map. It was the kind of place that people drove through to get somewhere else, quickly. But the town had a few things going for it – it was situated at the base of Mount Big, with easy access to the good angling at Lake Big; there was access to the delights of the Pacific Ocean via its sheltered beach cove; and it also had exceptionally fertile soil. Otherwise, everyone would have drifted away eventually and the town would have died a natural death like so many other little towns. But the tourists, the government facilities nearby and the increasing numbers of small seasonal farmers kept the town’s pulse alive. In fact, we were one of the few small rural communities in the state to have grown in population from the last census. It was just a pity that neither the town’s police force nor its budget had grown along with it.