by JD Nixon
“My eyes! They’re full of dirt. I can’t see!” he called out, coughing and choking. “Water! For God’s sake, get me some water!”
I climbed off him and hauled him to his feet. Stumbling together, I forced him towards the house, roughly smushing his face up against its weatherboards. He turned his face to the side and I saw that his eyes were streaming, grit-induced tears flooding his cheeks. I patted him down quickly, searching for any concealed weapons. He was clean.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing creeping around my house?” I yelled into his ear, furious and pumping with adrenaline. “I’m arresting you for suspected break and enter.”
He gasped for oxygen, coughing some more, and sniffing loudly. His nose was running freely by now. Swallowing a pile of dirt couldn’t be considered a dignified experience for anyone.
“My name’s Finn Maguire. I’m the new officer-in-charge at the police station,” he was able to splutter after a few further minutes of choking. “Check my wallet. Rear right trouser pocket.” The pocket he’d been reaching for when I’d stopped him. “Then get me some water. Please! For the love of God.”
A heavy knot of dread settled in my stomach. I slid my hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, flipping it open. Unfortunately, he wasn’t lying. The unsmiling face of Sergeant Fintan Liam Maguire stared back at me from both his police identification card and his driver’s licence. I stepped backwards away from him, releasing his arms, appalled at this unpromising turn of events.
Oh dear.
I’d just tried to arrest my new boss.
Chapter 2
We didn’t speak for the next ten minutes. Hurriedly, I uncuffed him and marshalled him into my house to the bathroom where he stood at the vanity basin splashing his eyes liberally, with no regard for the expensive tailored shirt he was wearing. I watched him silently, guiltily, handing him a large glass of chilled water that he gulped down without breathing.
He thrust the glass back at me without looking my way, busy splashing. “More,” he demanded.
I brought him another glass that he also drained in one gulp, leaving the empty glass on the counter. When he had washed all the dirt from his eyes, he gently patted down his face with the clean towel I handed him after another brusque demand, and tried to mop up his wet shirt as well. Hanging up the towel neatly afterwards, he finally turned his sore, red-rimmed eyes to me, giving me a slow once-over.
His eyes widened as he took in my short nightie, bare feet and tousled bed hair. His eyes grew even larger when he noticed the utility belt I still had slung around my hips and the knife strapped to my thigh, before returning to my face, carefully considering my every feature as if he needed to memorise me for a future identikit picture. I endured his scrutiny with increasing edginess, beginning to fidget, but reminded myself that he had no idea who I was and a good cop always eyeballed a suspicious stranger.
“I thought country people were supposed to be friendly,” he said finally, in a snide tone. He had a posh voice, typical of the graduates of one of the city’s elite private schools.
“I’m sorry that I restrained you,” I said sincerely. “But I did warn you not to move. A number of times.” And that was as apologetic as I was going to get. He could take it or leave it. He was the trespasser after all, and as a cop himself, he should have known better than to disregard a police directive.
He regarded me silently for a moment, before frowning and pulling out a torn scrap of paper from his pocket. “I was looking for Senior Constable Fuller. I was told he lives at this address.”
“Looking for him in my backyard in the middle of the night, were you? Thought he might be in my kitchen, did you?” I asked tartly, not caring for his automatic assumption that his new work partner was a man. God only knows who he thought I was in that case, running around barefoot in the darkness with a gun and a knife, tackling men. Some kind of vigilante wild woman?
He had the grace to redden slightly. “I was told that he’d gone home not so long ago, so I was hoping to find a room with a light still on before I woke up the whole household.”
I put my hands on my hips and drew myself up to my full height, a respectable five-eight (and a quarter), noticing as I did that he was considerably taller – maybe even six-three or six-four.
“I’m Senior Constable Fuller,” I enlightened him.
He stared at me some more, confused, then frowned again. He’d be giving himself wrinkles soon if he kept that up. “I was told I was looking for a Terence Fuller.” And he held out the scrap of paper. A name and address was scrawled on it in Maureen’s notoriously illegible handwriting.
“I’m Teresa Fuller. Tess for short,” I informed him, with a little less acid. Maureen’s ‘Teresa’ did look a lot like ‘Terence’.
“Oh,” was all he managed to say. I hoped he wasn’t one of those men who have a problem working with women, because he seemed at a loss for words at that news, still staring at me rudely. You would have thought that he’d learnt better manners at that fancy school of his. I hadn’t at my humble public school though, so I stared back.
He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but he had a commanding presence enhanced by his height, muscular body and impeccable grooming. His hair was black and curling and his eyebrows equally black and nicely arched. His eyelashes were long and lush and his eyes a lovely but moody dark blue, deeper than an ocean. He had a patrician nose, a shapely but serious mouth and a determined jaw, his chin having one of those cute clefts in the middle. But overall, his features combined into a formidable expression that was probably intimidating to a lot of people. He didn’t look as though he was going to be a lot of fun to work with. He was elegantly dressed, but now appeared tired, scuffed, and extremely pissed off.
“I wasn’t expecting you until next week,” I said, wondering if I should offer to shake his hand or whether it was now too late for such niceties. What on earth was the proper etiquette when you’d just mistakenly tackled someone? Nana Fuller had never given me any advice about that specific social situation.
“It seems there was a miscommunication somewhere. I was assured that the police house would be ready for me to move into today.”
“But Des and Maureen are still there. They’re not moving out until Sunday.”
“So I was told by the very angry woman who flew out to attack me when I opened the door to the house fifteen minutes ago. When I finally managed to calm her down and convince her not to call the police . . .” He stopped. “Which would be you, I presume? She ended up directing me to your place anyway. So, one way or another we were destined to meet tonight, Senior Constable.” His lips compressed with displeasure. “I just didn’t expect it to be in such personally painful circumstances.”
I remained quiet. I had no intention of apologising to him again.
“And I don’t know what procedure manual you were working from tonight,” he reprimanded, “but it wasn’t the one that I’m used to. We don’t threaten suspects with knives in the city.”
I continued to regard him silently. I had good reasons for being so aggressive with someone creeping around my house at night, but I wasn’t going to tell him on our short acquaintance.
Suddenly I realised that he was bone-weary and had probably driven from the city straight after work that afternoon, a good seven hours drive.
“You’re welcome to stay here until they leave,” I offered. He took a while to respond, giving it some thought.
“If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it,” he said reluctantly. “There don’t seem to be many accommodation options in this place and everything is booked out.”
“There was a big party in town tonight,” I explained. “For Des, who just retired. You’re his replacement.”
We both tried unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn.
“Follow me,” I said without any further conversation. I just wanted to get back into bed.
I showed him to our spare bedroom that was directly across the hall from mine.
It wasn’t luxurious or modern, but it was clean and much more comfortable than sleeping in his car. His gaze wandered around the room, taking in the timber hardwood floorboards, cream-coloured VJ walls, sash windows, high ceiling and ornate cornices. It was simply furnished with a cast-iron double bed covered by a white broderie anglaise bedspread, two bedside tables with lamps, a combined dresser-wardrobe, a plain timber chair and a threadbare rug that had been in the family for yonks. While he brought in his luggage, I stowed my Glock and belt away again. When he was done, I unwisely asked him if he was hungry. He admitted that he was.
I subdued my sigh. I’d had a load of practice in patience since I’d returned home. I led him to the kitchen and used the microwave to heat him up some of the food I’d left for Dad that evening. When I realised that Dad hadn’t even touched his meal, I determinedly swallowed my distress at that unwelcome piece of information. He was eating less and less each week. I’d especially made his favourite lamb casserole to tempt him, but instead I fed it to the stranger sitting at my old, battered kitchen table.
I sat there for a while to keep him company, head propped up on my hand, despite the fact that he didn’t speak a word to me, busy forking up the food at double rate. He must have been starving. I think that my eyes closed and my head drooped, because he suddenly spoke sharply to me, shaking my arm as my head nudged towards the table. I sat up, instantly alert, blinking furiously.
“Go to bed, Senior Constable. You don’t have to wait up with me.”
“Sorry, Sarge,” I said, yawning. “I’ve had a long day. Don’t worry about the plates. I’ll wash them up tomorrow morning.” And I stumbled back to my bed and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I didn’t stir until my alarm went off at seven.
Unwillingly, I forced myself out of bed, which I really didn’t want to do, but if I slept in any longer it would screw up my biorhythms. The house was silent and I guessed that both men were still asleep. As I padded to the fridge to pour myself a glass of juice, I noticed that the dishes the Sarge had used last night had been neatly washed and left to drain.
Dad wasn’t someone to be alarmed by the sudden appearance of a stranger, so I decided not to wake him to tell him about our visitor. I hit the road for my customary morning jog, admiring the cute midnight-blue sporty BMW now parked in our driveway next to the patrol car as I walked down the stairs. My new boss travelled in style.
I headed off on my favourite route that took me past the secret bikie retreat and nudist community to the beach cove that was reached by a set of steep stairs leading down from the road. The morning air was already warming up and I soon fell into a nice rhythm jogging along the road, waving to the surprising number of people up and about at this time on a Saturday morning. It was always reassuring to see people around when I jogged by myself because it made me feel safer. For that same reason, I never listened to music when I jogged. I negotiated the stairs down to the sand and ran on the beach for a couple of kilometres, some of it in the soft sand because I like to torture myself sometimes, before turning back.
I was in training for an eight kilometre fun run that would be held in the city in less than a month’s time. I was part of a four-person team, composed of all the female cops in the vicinity I was able to round up and force to participate. There was me, self-appointed team captain; Fiona, a veteran detective of thirty years who smoked two packets a day and had a huskier voice than a phone-sex operator; Jenny, a probationary constable uniform who was over-keen to do anything to lift her profile with her colleagues; and Eliza, a senior constable uniform, who was battling a weight problem after having her third baby and thought doing a fun run would be the motivation she needed to finally start shifting those unwanted twenty kilos. The three of them worked together in Big Town, a ninety minute drive away from me, so we hadn’t had the chance to train as a team yet, and to be honest, I wasn’t convinced that any of them were doing any training at all.
We’d agreed to call our team ‘Babes in Blue’, and planned on wearing dark blue shorts, light blue t-shirts and a dark blue cap as a homage to our police uniform. Jenny had wanted to call us ‘The Fast Fuzz’, but Fiona immediately vetoed that idea, complaining that it made us sound like twenty-dollar hookers offering quickies in a dirty alley. She was pretty big on girl power herself.
I didn’t hold any hopes for us setting a record time in the run, or even finishing as a team, but it was a fun run I participated in every year in memory of Marcelle, and I was hoping to do a personal best. Romi was going to run with us as well, but as an individual junior competitor, not as part of our team. She often joined me for my early morning jog, but had obviously decided to have a sleep-in this morning after her late night working in the pub for Abe.
Back home, I climbed the front stairs, face flushed, sweating up a storm, legs burning with effort, only to meet the Sarge at the top. He was dressed with casual style in designer jeans and an expensive t-shirt, and didn’t appear pleased to see me at all, judging by his unhappy expression. I moved past him, giving him a quick nod in greeting and did a few stretches on the verandah to warm down and relieve the tightness of my muscles.
“You left the patrol car unlocked and its windows down all night,” he accused.
Good morning to you too, I thought, but said calmly, “I know. But there’s a reason for that. I wouldn’t do it normally.”
“It could have been stolen. It could have been taken on a joyride.”
I stopped in the middle of a calf stretch and looked at him. “Sarge, I know every young person in this town. If the car had gone missing, it would have taken less than an hour to find out who was responsible,” I argued reasonably. “Someone would ring me the second they saw them driving the car.”
It reality it would probably take even less than five minutes, my thoughts straight away honing in on Chad Bycraft, a notorious joyrider. You never left your car unlocked when you visited the Bycraft family. To do so only resulted in an inconvenient trip out to the mountain lake, Lake Big, to retrieve your vehicle from its public carpark where it had been abandoned. Not to mention the bill for removing the stains left behind on the seats from the marathon drinking and sex sessions Chad had held in it while he had the chance. I’d learned all that from bitter personal experience in my first week back in town. When I’d left town to go to university, Chad hadn’t been old enough to drive. He still wasn’t when I returned, but had obviously picked up some skills during those years.
The whole Bycraft family were bad news – in jail, on parole or heading towards jail at a fast clip, like Chad. There was only one Bycraft I had any time for and that was Jake, older cousin to Chad, younger brother to Red. He worked as a prison officer at the nearby low security prison and was a real honey of a man – good-looking, easy-going, loving, kind and respectable, with a great body. He was also my boyfriend, much to the horrified disbelief of everybody I knew. I teased him endlessly that he must have been switched at birth because he was so different to all of his numerous brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. What the Bycrafts lost by being disreputable, they made up for by being ridiculously fertile. The town was overrun with Bycrafts. We had a plague of Bycrafts in Little Town.
Needless to say, because of my career choice, I wasn’t welcome in the Bycraft family as Jake’s girlfriend. That didn’t stop me from flaunting my relationship with him in front of them now and then though, because I got perverse enjoyment out of making them all uncomfortable. And God only knows that they’d made my life a nightmare over the years.
“Fuller, it’s not about if the car went missing,” the Sarge argued, snapping me out of my reverie. “It’s about preventing the car going missing in the first place. You’ve been careless with government property.”
I wanted to bite back at him, but restrained myself. “Sorry, Sarge,” I said mildly, not meaning it at all. I decided then that I liked him better when he wasn’t talking. I zoned out his further ranting, bending down to unstrap from my thigh the leather holste
r which sheathed the knife that Dad had had made especially for me. I had three holsters – two for wrapping around my thigh, my favourite and a spare, and one for slinging around my hips. Which one I put on depended on what I was wearing that day. A girl needs to have a choice in her self-defence fashion.
He stopped lecturing and watched me in surprise. “Do you keep that knife with you all the time?”
“Yes, except when I’m in uniform.”
“Is the town that dangerous?” he asked, scepticism mixed with curiosity.
“For some people it is,” I replied curtly and headed towards the door.
His expression reflected his concern that he’d been landed with a partner who was paranoid, maybe even crazy. And last night’s escapade wouldn’t be dissuading him of either, I figured with resignation. I’d grown used to people judging me without knowing anything about my circumstances though, so I didn’t dwell on it for too long. And I really couldn’t blame him for thinking that way, because on first appearances Little Town did seem to be a peaceful bucolic ideal where children frolicked in the street and people left their doors unlocked. And it would have been as well, if it wasn’t for the Bycraft family.
He stopped me at the door as I was heading for the shower, my knife dangling from my hand. “After breakfast, I want you to take me for a reconnaissance of the town and give me a tour of the station,” he ordered.
I was about to object because I’d been on duty for over thirty days straight and I needed a day off, but my complaint died a quick death when I saw his face. I swallowed my annoyance and nodded in agreement. I would probably be back home in half an hour, I reasoned to myself, trying to see the bright side. A tour of the station would take five minutes, tops. It only had two rooms. The town would probably take ten minutes, all up. We locals didn’t call this place ‘Little Town’ for nothing.
