by JD Nixon
“Did I ask for your opinion, Maguire? I’m fully aware of how to come to a reasonable conclusion and it’s not by listening to you,” she snapped, blowing on the top of her coffee. She took a tiny sip and immediately pulled a face. “Jesus, how much coffee did you put in here?”
“Five tablespoons, ma’am. Just the way you like it.”
She set it down on my desk, slopping some darkest brown liquid over the side. It stained the glossy annual report from the Police Minister which had arrived in the mail the other week. Only the Sarge had bothered reading it.
“You know I like it strong, Tessie. Make me another, and this time put some coffee in it. This tastes like I’m drinking angel’s piss. Make sure the spoonfuls are exactly that – full.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured, even though the coffee was already almost sludgy enough to freely support a standing spoon. I quickly made her a fresh brew – strong enough to knock over a horse or two – and set out the coffee, tea, milk and sugar for everyone else to help themselves. I wasn’t offering to play tea lady, particularly as I was the only female uniform in the room and acutely attuned to the sexist views that lingered in certain pockets of the police force. But I did concede by making the Sarge a cup of tea, as it was something we often did for each other anyway.
After the general clamour for caffeine subsided, we settled down to a strategy discussion while we drank.
“Heads or tails? Red Bycraft or the Yeti first?” asked the Super, shuddering with disgusted enjoyment as she imbibed her foul brew. I could almost see the caffeine coursing through her body and she closed her eyes in intense pleasure, reaching for her handbag. She pulled out her cigarettes and lit one, inhaling with every bit as much enjoyment.
“Ma’am,” I protested, waving my arm around melodramatically to disperse the so-far non-existent smoke. Disapproval radiated from the Sarge as he abruptly stood and stalked to the nearest window to fling it, and its neighbours, wide open.
“Get over yourselves,” she offered mildly, blowing smoke upwards to the ceiling in that way that smokers think is being considerate.
“I thought you’d given up,” I said without thinking.
Those sharp blue eyes landed on me. “And why would you think that?”
Oh dear, what had I done now? “Um . . . because, you know . . . you’ve been so . . . lately you’ve been a little . . . you know,” I faltered to a stop before I sounded even more like Kevin.
“No,” she said in a dangerously quiet voice. “I don’t know. But do tell me. I’m all ears.”
My eyes darted back and forth, seeking some support from my colleagues, but they all studiously found other, obviously more pressing matters to which to give their attention, like their watches, their boots, and their phones.
The Sarge jumped in, directing her attention from me to him. “I think we should search for the intruder first, ma’am. We know Bycraft is in town, but we don’t know anything about this other man. He should be our priority.”
She flicked ash on the floor as she considered him. She puffed hard for a quiet minute, stood up and crushed out her cigarette on that now-stained report from the Minister. Draining her mug of its soupy contents, she slammed it down on to my desk. “Okay. Get your arses moving off to Tessie’s place. That’s the freshest scent for this Yeti. Let’s go find ourselves a whacko, people. Tessie, you can come with Bum and me.”
Sitting in the back seat of her unmarked, and although she wasn’t especially approachable this morning, my curiosity got the best of me. “What’s with all the blokes this morning, ma’am?”
“The pampered princesses at my station don’t like getting up so fucking early,” she replied. Predictably, I immediately opened my mouth to protest. “Aw, don’t go all women’s lib on my arse, Tessie. Lighten up. It was a joke.” We drove out the gates. “It’s just how the rosters fell. You know I have three times as many men as women working in Wattling Bay. Just can’t seem to attract the female cops. Don’t know why, but they seem to want to stay in the city for some reason that eludes me.”
“Who can imagine why?” I pondered sarcastically, thinking about the excitement, the variety, the shopping, the cafes, the cinemas, the theatres, the nightclubs, the men. If it hadn’t been for Dad, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a rural placement. I’d grown up in the country and frankly, I’d had enough of it.
We regrouped at the back of my place, the sun only starting to show signs of returning to the sky, red-tinged fingers reaching out from the horizon. The dogs had little trouble picking up the man’s scent as he’d been wearing no shoes and didn’t appear to have bathed for a good while (though strangely caring about his dental hygiene judging by his interest in toothpaste). Things seemed promising as the dogs headed off strongly into the rolling foothills of the mountain range. But as soon as we hit the edge of the densely foliaged bushland, the dogs both halted at the base of a smallish paperbark tree.
We all stood around it peering upwards to where surrounding paperbarks interlaced in a web of branches and leaves, vying for sunlight.
“Give them a chance to pick up the scent on the ground again,” the Super ordered.
The handlers led the dogs to areas past the tree, but to no avail. They continued to return to the base of that particular tree.
“What the fuck?” muttered the Super. “Now we have fucking Tarzan on our hands? Am I supposed to believe he’s scarpered up the tree and then swung on vines from tree to tree to evade detection?”
“He wouldn’t have to use vines, ma’am. He could just climb from branch to branch and from tree to tree,” noted Senior Sergeant Wynne. “The cover here is thick enough to allow him to travel some distance with a bit of luck and agility.”
“Just fucking brilliant,” she said, rubbing her temples and grimacing as if her head was pounding.
After a request from the handlers, she allowed the dogs to unsuccessfully sniff around the general vicinity for another fifteen minutes before giving up hope of finding the scent again and calling off the search. Our mystery man had seemingly disappeared up a tree into thin air. I wondered if we’d ever find him. I wondered again who on earth he was.
We conferred, standing in the brightening sunlight while we swatted away midges and mosquitoes. The native grasses made one of the uniforms sneeze uncontrollably until he caught the Super’s baleful eye. After that he nearly gave himself an aneurysm trying to suppress his further sneezes.
“Right, I’m giving up on Tarzan. Fucking waste of our time. It’s probably one of the innumerable whackos that live around here. One who just happens to like climbing trees because there’s nothing else to do,” said the Super with contempt. “What we’re going to do now is split into two teams, each taking a dog. We’ll hit Lola Bycraft and Sharnee Lebutt at the same time. Tessie, you can come with me. We’ll do Lola. I know how much you love her. Maguire, you and Bum can go with Wynne and take the other team to Sharnee’s house.” The Sarge and Bum looked at each other with little enthusiasm. The Super glanced around at the fidgetting group. “Any questions? No, good. Let’s get moving and take those Bycraft fuckers by surprise. And if Red Bycraft isn’t being escorted back to Wattling Bay by lunchtime, I’m going to de-knob every one of you, including the dogs.”
No skin off my nose, I thought cheerfully, checking my utility belt. I was a knob-free zone. The Sarge winked at me as I left and I gave him a wry smile in return. He was going to have a painfully excruciating time dealing with the fathomless depths of Bum’s idiocy. Still, better him than me.
We performed a quick car shuffle and the Super drove me to Lola’s house in her unmarked, followed by a patrol car with three uniforms in it and one of the dog vans. It was now six-thirty and the beautiful colours of the dawn had faded, replaced with sunlight that promised another warmish day. Inside Lola’s house all was quiet. It was a standard timber home with only three bedrooms and one bathroom, but sometimes there would be up to sixteen people temporarily living there.
We
silently disembarked from the vehicles and wasted no time springing into action. The uniform with the battering ram headed the party and we jogged across the bare earth of Lola’s front yard, up the dilapidated timber steps. Huge peeling strips of ancient green paint hung from the front door.
The Super partnered me with Lok Wong, a gaunt young constable I didn’t know well and who didn’t look old enough to drive, let alone be entrusted with a gun. She sent us around to the rear of the house to guard the back door against any retreat. In doing this, she chose to keep the other two burly male uniforms with her, an act designed to immediately get up my nose. Lok seemed pretty ticked off about the snub as well.
So we cooled our heels out the back, resentfully missing out on the fun. The Super knew there was nothing I loved more than annoying Lola and from what we could hear inside, that was happening in bucketloads. All we heard were shouts, screams, random barking, and boots thumping around on the timber floors louder than the entire Roman army mobilising. A crash of something fragile breaking caused us to tense, followed by angry, foul-mouthed yelling, most of it from the Super. Lok and I exchanged frustrated glances.
“No one’s coming out the back,” I decided. “If Red Bycraft was inside, he would have made a run for it by now. Let’s go in.”
“The Super said to stay here,” he squeaked, wide-eyed with terror at even the thought of disobeying her.
“You stay here. I’m going in.” And I didn’t give him a chance to argue, but held my Glock up in front of me and opened the back door, cautiously stepping inside.
The dog handler was arguing with the Super, their raised voices the first thing I heard. It didn’t take me long to locate them, standing eyeball to eyeball, watched silently by the two uniforms and also with sullen amusement by the ten or so Bycraft clan members present. The loathsome Lola was front and centre, a ciggie dangling from her bottom lip as usual.
“The dog’s rarely wrong, ma’am,” he said between gritted teeth.
“So another arsewipe, made of flesh and blood like the rest of us, has just disappeared into fucking thin air? Is that what you’re trying to sell me, Senior Sergeant? Because I’m not fucking buying it. One disappearing man I can scarcely swallow, but two? Is this town in the Bermuda Triangle or something?”
“I’m telling you, ma’am, the trail ends right here near the bathroom,” he insisted, digging his heels in stubbornly.
“This is bullshit,” she said to herself, turning away in disgust.
“Did you check the ceiling?” I suggested, waiting to be yelled at by both of them for stating the obvious.
The Super didn’t disappoint. “Of course we checked the fucking ceiling. There’s no manhole.”
“Well, then why are there all those oily handprints concentrated in that one spot,” I persisted, cricking my neck to peer up. “Maybe it’s a false ceiling or something? This is the Bycrafts we’re talking about here. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had escape routes in their own house, because you can’t tell me those prints came from anyone cleaning up there.”
They both froze and looked upwards again.
“Someone find a fucking stepladder now!” the Super shouted.
I helped in the search and it wasn’t long before we found a rickety stepladder hastily stowed in the bathroom. To me, that indicated it had been used recently because the bathroom was small and the ladder took up precious space. It wobbled dangerously as soon as the bulky uniform put his weight on it.
“Careful,” I warned as he climbed the treads. The other uniform and I held the base of the ladder to steady it.
He pressed on the ceiling around the vicinity of the prints until part of it opened upwards. It was such a cleverly concealed manhole that it seemed almost impossible to believe a Bycraft could have built it. There was only one member of the family who had any sort of carpentry skills, and that was Jake. The uneasy thought that my Jake may have been responsible for constructing a concealed manhole to assist his siblings and cousins evade capture made me start wondering how many secrets he kept from me. I knew how many I kept from him.
My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden rumpus in the ceiling.
“Get your arse up in there now!” the Super shouted at the uniform, and with some difficulty he hoisted himself up into the ceiling space, the other uniform and I boosting him.
He disappeared from view and we heard him shouting something indistinct several times, before thumping across the ceiling beams. He thumped his way back and his legs reappeared dangling wildly for the stepladder. The other uniform and I grabbed his legs and guided them to the stepladder that promptly collapsed underneath him, sending him sprawling and clutching wildly for support. The first thing he grabbed was the front of the Super’s uniform, knocking her over and landing on top. He ended up straddling her, his hands clasping her boobs. It was hard to tell who was more shocked.
The dog handler and I swapped glances, but only for a second as his smile widened into a huge grin and his shoulders started shaking. I couldn’t risk someone setting me off, but the situation was unbeatably funny. My eyes watered with the effort of not screaming with laughter at the sight.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Constable?” the Super screeched, flailing beneath him. The poor man was so frozen with terror he couldn’t remove his hands from her love-bubbles no matter how many desperate instructions his brain sent him. Feeling sorry for him, the dog handler and I hooked our arms underneath his armpits and dragged him off the Super, his hands still clenched in a claw formation. He may need some physio to help, I thought with sympathy. Not to mention extensive therapy. And probably a new career.
Leaving the young cop to his fellow officer, I hauled the Super to her feet.
“He escaped out the roof,” the traumatised officer managed to splutter. “He’s gone out the back.”
We didn’t need telling twice, and the dog handler and I sprinted to the back door. Red Bycraft dangled from the gutter, landing with a sickening thump on top of Lok, who’d unwisely decided to wait directly underneath. He’d probably thought he’d capture Red the minute he landed and consequently would be feted as a hero. Instead, he was crushed to the ground, Red leaping up, using Lok’s chest as a springboard. Lok exhaled a loud “Oof!” and curled into the foetal position. Red sprinted off.
Torn between Lok and Red, I chose Red. I hotfooted it after him as he ran into the bushy scrub located behind his mother’s house. The hound had her nose and followed him eagerly into the bush, me snapping at their heels. I wanted Red so badly I could taste it.
Red had a plan for where he was going, running in a sure line, desperation making him faster. Although I knew this town back to front, for obvious reasons I’d usually avoided hanging around the Bycraft houses when I’d been younger. So I was less familiar with this rugged piece of uninhabitable scrub than I ought to have been as a local girl and one of the town’s cops. Lola’s house had always been a safe-haven for the Bycrafts, not just because she couldn’t give a rat’s arse about who was sheltering in her house or what they’d done to need sheltering, but because of the surrounding scrub.
The Bycrafts had been escaping into that scrub since the town began. They had tracks, hiding spots, cubby holes, and tree retreats. There was no shortage of places Red could be heading to, and he was a master at covering his tracks.
“I think he’s aiming to reach the creek,” I shouted, my lungs bursting. A small meandering creek ran through the bush not far from where we were. It was currently torrential after the unusually wet winter we’d just had. Red would use the water to obliterate the trail of his scent.
The dog handler didn’t even respond because he was labouring so hard with his breathing. He wasn’t a young man anymore and his dog, Blossom, a beautiful dual-trained general purpose/cadaver dog, was experienced, but also nearing the end of her working life.
Just to make things even more interesting, every male Bycraft in the area ran from the house into the bush as well. Blos
som became confused when they crisscrossed our path, often right in front of us, blowing whistles and banging saucepan lids together. Rick and Mark took it a step further, wearing some of Red’s used clothes, including his shoes. I yelled at them to piss off and brandished my gun at them, but it was no use. They swarmed us and the poor dog became stressed and snappy. So did we, spinning around every time one of us caught a glimpse of golden hair through the trees.
The Super called the other team to join us and though they were here in no time, only being a street away, it didn’t make any difference. The two dogs ran in circles, confused by the multiple trails Rick and Mark made with Red’s clothes. Blossom picked up one strong trail, and we were momentarily excited as she led us to a thick clump of bushes. But instead of Red, it was Rick who stumbled out, a huge shit-eating grin on his face, his hands on his head as instructed.
Frustrated and strained, and well aware the whole operation risked turning into a farce, we laid into each other, arguing about what we should do next, and bitching about the orders given. One disagreement between the Super and Blossom’s handler almost ended in a fist fight when she accused him of not pushing the dog hard enough. It took Bill Wynne and a constable to separate them, Blossom growling and barking protectively at the Super the whole time.
My phone rang and I fished it out of my cargo pants, snapping a very hot, bothered and fed-up, “hello”, into it.
“Tessie, would you care to explain why Maguire left your house with you only half-dressed yesterday?”
I sighed quietly, cursing Denny Bycraft and his spying. He never failed to keep Jake informed of my activities. “Jakey –”
“What the hell were you doing together that he had to take off his clothes?”
My temper rose. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Jacob Bycraft! If you must know, I had an intruder who nearly broke the Sarge’s nose. He had blood all over his t-shirt so I offered to clean it. That’s all there is to the story.”
