by JD Nixon
“Why aren’t you kids at school?” demanded the Sarge.
“It’s a holiday,” drawled Chad.
Jade sniggered. “Yeah, a Bycraft holiday.”
“Have you kids been drinking?” I asked them.
“None of your fucking business, piglet,” sneered Larissa.
The Sarge shot her a steely stare and turned to me. “Senior Constable, can you please ring the parents of these kids and let them know that they are truant.”
I nodded, pulled out my mobile and rang Lola Bycraft, smiling sweetly at the complaining teenagers. As soon as she heard my voice though, she hung up on me. I redialled but didn’t even get two words into my explanation of why I was ringing when she let loose a stream of invectiveness so loud that I had to hold the phone from my ear. Then she hung up on me again.
“One Bycraft mother clearly doesn’t care what her offspring are doing. Maybe I should ring Jakey instead?” I threatened. Jake gave Larissa and Mikey some pocket money every week to stay at school and finish twelfth grade. It was a very generous thing for him to do because he wasn’t all that well paid as a prison officer and had a huge bank loan on his ute to pay off, not that his brother and sister ever showed any gratitude. They would miss his cash though if he withdrew his offer.
“Fucking bitch,” said Mikey viciously.
The Sarge stepped up close to him, towering over him and poked him in the chest, leaning down to speak right in his face. “I don’t want to hear any of you talking to Senior Constable Fuller like that again. You’ll call her Senior Constable or Officer Fuller and nothing else. You’re going to start treating the police officers in this town with some respect. Understand?”
“Or what?” Mikey asked insolently, but took a telling step backwards. The Sarge stepped forward again.
“Or you’ll spend some time in the lockup.”
“You can’t lock up kids,” Larissa spat out. “We’ve got fucking rights.”
“Who’s going to stop me, girlie?” asked the Sarge in a nasty voice. He turned to me. “Senior Constable?”
“Certainly not me,” I said mildly, shaking my head.
“Anyone else in town?”
“Doubt it,” I responded, smiling. They’d probably applaud him, given half the chance.
While they stared at him in silent, sullen rage, I took that time to ring Jake. He picked up straight away.
“Hey, Tessie darling. Ringing to thank me again for last night, are you, babe?” I could hear the conceited smile in his voice.
I laughed. “No, I think I thanked you enough already, Mr Ego. But now that you mention it, when will I see you again?”
“Not for a while, unfortunately. I’m rostered on for the next two weekends. And before you complain, that’s so I can have the weekend after that off to take you to the city for your fun run.”
“I know, Jakey. Thank you. Look, I’d love to chat all day, but I did ring you for a reason.” And I looked over to his rebellious siblings. “The Sarge and I have Larissa and Mikey with us as I speak and five of your cousins too. They came wandering down Gum Street a few minutes ago.”
He swore and demanded that I pass the phone to one of them. I chose Larissa, because she was more articulate and sensible than Mikey, which to be honest wasn’t too difficult. My chickens were more articulate and sensible than Mikey and had greater brainpower as well.
“Hello, Jakey,” Larissa wheedled sweetly. I could hear his angry voice in response from where I was standing. She rolled her eyes derisively at whatever Jake was saying to her.
“It’s sports day. It doesn’t fucking matter if Mikey and I are there or not.” She sulkily listened to his angry voice again. “Fuck off, Jakey! Like you never wagged school. You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” she said angrily and we all heard his voice becoming louder in fury. “You’re such fucking self-righteous prick now. You’ve been hanging around that bitch piglet too long.” She hung up on him, slipping my phone in her pocket.
“Give me my phone back now,” I said impatiently, holding my hand out.
She snatched it from her pocket and almost threw it at me in disdain. “Like I want to keep that ancient piece of shit anyway.”
“Okay,” said the Sarge, getting out his notebook. “I want your names. You first.” He pointed to Larissa.
“Lady Gaga,” she said with a smirk. The others sniggered.
“Larissa Bycraft, seventeen-years-old. She’s Jake’s sister,” I told him, ignoring her glare. He wrote it down and then pointed to Mikey.
“Harry Potter,” he said. They sniggered again.
I sighed wearily. “That’s Michael Bycraft, known as Mikey. Jake’s brother, fifteen-years-old.” He pointed again.
Before any of the rest of them could get a smartarse response in, I named Timothy (Timmy, fifteen), Kristy (fourteen), Sean (fourteen) and Jade (thirteen). “And that,” I said, pointing to Chad, “is Chadwick Bycraft, Jake’s cousin, sixteen-years-old.”
“Chad,” he insisted sullenly. It was my turn to smirk because I knew how much he hated being called by his full name. He cut me a look bursting with hatred. I was almost positive that he was the one who had stolen my little car and driven it into the quarry lake. In the normal scheme of things, it should be me who hated him, not the reverse.
“Right,” said the Sarge, finishing writing. “I suggest you kids either get yourselves off to school or get home straight away. I’ll be ringing your principal to report your truancy and visiting your mothers to remind them of their legal responsibility to send you to school.” He regarded them all coolly, one by one. “What I don’t want to see is any of you on the street again today. Now, scram.”
They all stared back at him, none of them moving.
“You heard me. Move it!” he bellowed suddenly, making them (and me) jump in fright. And with insolent slowness they eventually slouched away, back in the direction from which they came. We stood and watched the entire way. They turned around a few times, but kept going, and there was not even one flipped finger in response from any of them. Progress!
When they had disappeared from view, I turned to him and couldn’t hide my approval. “Very impressive, Sarge.”
He flashed me his here-and-gone smile. “Always pleased to impress a lady.”
“I’m incredibly glad to hear that, Sergeant,” purred Lavinia, silently sliding up to him, further into his personal zone than he preferred. “I, for one, am always ready to be impressed by a handsome man.”
He was uneasy at her interest and not sure how to respond, so I immediately stepped up for him. “Lavinia, back off. The Sarge doesn’t want to impress any of us ladies here in town. He’s engaged, remember?”
“Such a pity,” she said, but stepped out of his personal space. “But maybe the Sergeant would like to share a cup of coffee with me upstairs in my lair and I’ll fill him in on the psychic atmosphere in the town. It’s incredibly important to be aware of that in a town full of so much tragedy and emotion.” She paused for an impolitely long moment, before throwing out indifferently with a shrug, “Oh, and you too, Teresa.”
“That’s a kind offer,” I said insincerely. She made the worst coffee I’d ever tasted in my life. “But we have to go visiting some Bycraft mothers to advise them of their children’s absence from school. Let’s go, Sarge.” And he followed after me to the patrol car, leaning back on the driver’s seat with a big sigh.
“That woman scares me,” he admitted.
I giggled guiltily. “She scares me too. All that psychic rubbish. It’s so crazy.”
He smiled at me. “Not a believer in the supernatural?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s just say when it comes to the supernatural, I need more proof,” I replied. “Like personally seeing a ghost or being warned about a Bycraft attack by Lavinia well in advance.”
“She’s never exercised her ‘special powers’ to help you that way?”
“Never. She just wants to tell me in gruesome detail about my horrible, viol
ent death at the hands of a Bycraft.”
“Tess! Don’t say that!” he protested, genuinely shocked.
I laughed at the expression on his face. “Why not? It’s true. She’s obsessed with the Fuller family. She’s been predicting my murder since she got here. She’s hoping to be proven right eventually and make her reputation. But I refuse to play along and I won’t let her read my fortune.”
He regarded me gravely for a long while. It was warming up uncomfortably in the car in the day’s heat. Just when I could feel sweat trickling down my back and was about to crack open a window, he started the patrol car and the air con blasted out a welcome wave of iciness. But he didn’t drive off.
“What are you afraid of hearing if she did give you a reading?”
I laughed again. “That I’m going to meet a horrible, violent death at the hands of a Bycraft. What else?”
He was lost for words at that and nosed the car silently into the street. We didn’t engage in any further chat except for me reminding him where Lola Bycraft lived with her youngest children. Often she had other people living there as well, assorted family members who needed somewhere to kip for a while, and usually one or two of her oldest children who had broken up with their partners or who had just been released from jail. Sometimes there could be fifteen people living in that rundown three bedroom, one bathroom house. Jake never complained to me about the cramped conditions during the odd times he stayed there overnight, content to find any spare corner of the house to bunk down in. And that only served to convince me further that the Bycraft family was more a pack of wild animals than humans.
The seven teens had returned there, hanging around on the front verandah, smoking and hastily hiding a bottle of something as we parked. We stepped out of the patrol car slowly and I reminded the Sarge to lock it. After all, Chad Bycraft was only six metres away.
We sauntered up the path and the teens snarled silently at us.
“Put out those cigarettes and hand over the bottle, Kristy,” I directed, holding out my hand. The Sarge looked at me in surprise. He mustn’t have noticed their furtive movements.
“What bottle, piglet?” she asked with a sneer.
“What did I tell you about addressing the Senior Constable?” yelled the Sarge, startling both them and me again. “You want to be the first in the lockup, little girl?” She turned her malevolence from me to him.
“Don’t you fucking call me that! I’m not little,” she said, provocatively pushing out her chest, making herself stagger in the process. The others giggled, stupidly drunk. She looked up at him, her lips pouting. “You want a feel of my tits? Only cost you five bucks. Thirty for a head-job.”
“Give me the bottle, Kristy,” I repeated patiently, ignoring her vulgarity. “And don’t go offering to sell yourself to a man again. You’re better than that.”
I didn’t know why I tried, but it really bothered me to see yet another generation of Bycraft girls heading down the same slutty path. Surely one of them could rise above her birth curse, have a career, maybe even go to TAFE or university, and not get knocked up when she was fifteen, living off welfare for the rest of her long, fertile life. I had high hopes for Larissa. She was in her last year of school, doing okay in her studies despite her repeated truancy, and had reached the advanced aged of seventeen without becoming pregnant. Yet.
Kristy, only fourteen, was confused by my supportiveness, not experiencing much of it in her short life. Despite the protests and scornful swearing of the others, she reached behind the smelly, mouldy lounge that had sat on Jake’s family home’s verandah since he was born, and held out the half-empty bottle of bourbon to me.
“Who nicked this off Abe Stormley? And what happened to the rest of the bourbon and the beer?” I asked, taking it from her.
“We fucking drank it, didn’t we?” slurred Mikey, and laughed so hard that he fell off the lounge. The others ragged him and kicked him gently as he rolled on the verandah, laughing.
The Sarge stepped over him, disgust on his face, and banged his fist on the door. “Mrs Bycraft. Police,” he yelled.
After a long wait, Lola Bycraft opened the door a crack and peered around, the smoke from the cigarette clamped between her lips obscuring her face.
“What the fuck you want?” she demanded. “My shows are on.”
“Step outside, please. I want to talk to you about your truant children. And the fact that they’re all clearly intoxicated,” the Sarge said firmly. When she hesitated for one moment too long, he grabbed her by her scrawny, sun-spotted arm and dragged her outside.
“Get your fucking hands off me, arsehole!” she screeched, struggling frantically against him.
In a flash, he had her up against the house, bending her arms behind her, forcing her to drop her cigarette or risk having it shoved down her throat as her face pressed up against her wall. He yelled in her ear loud enough not just for her children and nieces and nephews to hear, but the entire neighbourhood to hear. “Address me like that again and you’ll spend the rest of the day in the lockup. You call me Sergeant and nothing else. Got it?”
She nodded and so he let her go, thinking he had subdued her. His mistake, because the harridan immediately turned on him and spat a glob of saliva into his face.
“I’ll call you whatever I want, Sergeant Arse-licking Shit-sucking Motherfucker,” she screamed at him, incensed at being challenged. Her offspring and relatives showed their support with ear-splitting enthusiasm.
He was instantly furious himself, his nostrils flaring, lips pinched together until they were thin and bloodless, taking everything too personally. He grabbed her viciously by her arm again, wiping her spittle off with his sleeve, his face a study in raw anger. He slapped on his cuffs and pushed her down the stairs.
“Open the car!” he yelled at me and I hurriedly reached in my pocket to unpop the locks, thinking that this was a really bad idea. He roughly shoved Lola into the back of the car, slammed the door hard enough to make the car shake and threw himself into the driver’s seat.
The teenagers stopped cheering and began yelling at us, picking up whatever they could get their hands on to throw, Larissa and Mikey running down to bang on the patrol car.
“Let Mum out!” Larissa screamed, pounding her fist on the driver’s window of the patrol car. Mikey picked up a broken loose brick lying in a pile, the detritus of a long-abandoned handyman job, and smashed it against the side. I ran to the car.
“Let my mum go, you fucking pigs!” he shouted, denting the patrol car relentlessly.
“Get in!” the Sarge bellowed at me, and I jumped in the passenger seat and we screeched away, the brick that Mikey threw after us landing with a thump on the boot.
“You’re dead, piglet!” he screamed after us, and I didn’t doubt that for a second.
“Sarge,” I started in a low voice so that Lola couldn’t hear in the back. Not that she’d hear anything over her angry screaming and frenetic seat kicking. “This isn’t a good idea. You can’t lock up Lola. There will be terrible consequences.” Especially for me, I thought desperately.
“Nobody talks to me like that, Senior Constable!” he roared at me. “And may I remind you that I am the senior officer and I will make the decisions around here. And you ought to know that spitting on a police officer is serious assault.”
“Sarge –” I kept trying to puncture through his incredible rage to reach his commonsense. The Bycrafts were tribal. No matter how much damage their mother had inflicted on them psychologically, emotionally and physically as they grew up, they would defend her with their lives.
“Shut up, Fuller! You’ve been too soft with this bunch of savages. I’m not interested in what you have to say,” he dismissed, face hard, eyes fixed on the road. He squealed around a corner, frightening poor Freda Johansson who was about to step out on to the road to cross with her baby in a pram and her toddler clutching her hand.
That certainly put me in my place, I thought unhappily and leaned back a
gainst the seat, my stomach churning with dread. Maybe I didn’t know much in life, but I knew without a doubt that this wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter 16
It took both of us to manhandle Lola Bycraft to the cell. For a tiny woman, she had the fury and strength of a titan. While he struggled to restrain her, I quickly rushed around to find the mattress for the bed. We weren’t well prepared for someone to occupy one of the cells so quickly after I had cleaned them out. Luckily though, the smell of bleach had dissipated in the fresh air, not that Lola could probably smell anything after so many years of smoking.
The lockup’s two cells were very basic, erected in the late 1880s when the station itself was built, and nothing except the lighting and a primitive alarm buzzer had been modernised in them since. And the lighting merely consisted of the addition of glaring fluorescent tubes that dangled from the ceiling by rusting chains and flickered annoyingly, their wiring inexpertly tacked to the timber walls and painted over at least twenty times since then. The wiring led out to two round and clunky cracked Bakelite switches located outside on the verandah. The cells themselves were bare squares, furnished with only a metal bunk bed firmly bolted to the wall and floor, normally covered by a thin, lumpy ancient mattress.
One of those mattresses was possibly even the same bedding lain on by the lockup’s most notable inmate, roguish Theodore Bycraft, a local boy turned bushranger of some infamy, who once terrorised the road from here to Big Town. He was known as Mountain Ted because of his regular and notoriously slippery escapes from the police into the thick bush and rugged ground of Mount Big.
Ted had enjoyed an overnight stay in one of the lockup’s cells in 1894 after being captured by Little Town’s sole constable while naked, drunk and asleep at his temporary camp at the base of Mount Big. Humiliatingly, the constable’s own young wife had been happily and firmly clasped in Ted’s arms at the time of his arrest, also naked, drunk and asleep, her petticoats strewn around his campsite with shocking abandon.
