Blood Ties

by JD Nixon

  Warily I scanned the tiny office, gun out, almost expecting a Bycraft to jump out at me at any second from thin air. I didn’t see anything astray until I cast my eyes over the safe. It was open, the door hanging crookedly from its hinges. There was a faint smell of something unfamiliar, metallic, in the air. I crouched down in front of the safe, careful not to touch anything and noticed that one hinge and the locking mechanism were now damaged. Inconceivable as it seemed, someone had blown our safe and I was reasonably sure that it wasn’t a coincidence it had happened the same day a very large amount of money had been handed into the station.

  The Sarge would turn up at any minute, so I didn’t bother ringing him. I’d show him when he arrived. It wasn’t as if the safecracker had got away with anything, because the Sarge had taken the money and Stacey’s little gun to Big Town yesterday for safer keeping and there had been nothing else inside. So I put my gun back in my belt and spent ten minutes righting the room and sweeping up the potting mix mess on the floor I’d made. Finished, I went to the kitchenette to make some tea, not even sure if I’d be able to sip a hot drink through my busted lip. Today it felt ten times bigger than normal. Closing the back door, I caught a glimpse of myself in the age-spotted mirror fixed to the rear of the door. It wasn’t a pretty sight and I regretted coming into work. It would have been smarter to hide under my bed for a couple of weeks until I looked better.

  I filled up the kettle and switched it on. When I opened the cupboard for a tea bag, I was greeted with a marvellous surprise. The whole top shelf was now crammed with packets of Tim Tams. There must have been thirty packets in there at least, every variety known to humans – the double chocolate, the rocky road, the mint, the caramel, the white chocolate, the honeycomb, as well as the very delicious and perfect original. Laughter exploded from me and I couldn’t stop for ages even though it made every sore part of my body complain. I leaned helplessly on the sink, tears rolling down my cheeks, my body aching badly with each laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” a voice asked from behind me. I jumped in fright, my laughter drying up immediately and spun around, gun out before I could even think. I hadn’t heard anyone coming in, which I reminded myself, was exactly how I was ambushed yesterday.

  It was just the Sarge. I leaned back on the sink heavily in relief, my hand up to my thudding heart. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I snapped at him angrily. “You scared me half to death. I nearly shot you.” I re-holstered my gun.

  “I’m sorry, Tess,” he said, hands up in appeasement, realising how much he’d frightened me. “I wasn’t sneaking around I promise, but you were laughing so hard I don’t think you heard me come in.”

  “I didn’t mean to bite your head off,” I apologised. “I’m a bit jumpy at the moment.”

  “Understandable,” he said, leaning on the sink next to me.

  “I was laughing about the Tim Tams.” I turned back to look at them again. “Thanks, Sarge. That’s so nice of you.”

  “I felt guilty about eating your last one.”

  “So you bought me thirty packets to make up for it?” I smiled. “That’s a bit of overkill, wouldn’t you say?”

  He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Only seemed fair. It was the last one, after all.”

  “You must have cleaned out the supermarket.”

  “I never do things by halves.” He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper, his eyes shifting from side to side. “But I’ve heard on the grapevine that there is now an official Tim Tam drought in Little Town.”

  I giggled at his unexpected silliness and he smiled at me warmly as if pleased that he’d lightened my life for a small moment. I appreciated the effort and felt a tiny crack forming in the thick Antarctic ice sheet of our relationship. I wondered if he felt it too.

  If so, he didn’t show it, so I pushed aside my fanciful thoughts and told him about the safe. We crouched down together to examine it and he rang up the Big Town forensics leader and asked a team to come and dust the door and safe for prints. She couldn’t tell us when a team would be available but promised to log the job straight away, piggybacking on the other two jobs we’d already logged.

  “You did the right thing taking the money to Big Town yesterday, otherwise it would have been stolen,” I said to him.

  “No, I didn’t,” he argued, with that same strange, closed expression on his face he’d had last night. “I left you alone when I should have stayed. If I had a choice, it would have been for the money to be stolen rather than you being attacked.”

  Without any warning, he stepped in closer to me and grabbed my chin in his hand, gazing intently into my face. I was startled and disconcerted by his intimate touch. I was about to push him away violently and tell him in no uncertain terms that he could bloody well keep his hands to himself, thawing ice sheet or not, when he turned my head one way then the other, peering closely with detachment the whole time. He let me go and stepped backwards.

  “You’re bruising up nicely around the eye and nose. You’ll look like a rainbow tomorrow.”

  “Oh joy,” I said sarcastically. “Every woman’s dream.”

  He was about to move away when he stopped and turned back towards me, peering closely at me again. He slid the collar of my shirt aside slightly, his fingers warm on my skin, and frowned.

  “Tess, you didn’t tell the Inspector that one of them grabbed you around the neck.”

  “Yes, I did. Red tried to throttle me.”

  “No, I can see those bruises – they’re finger-shaped. This is lower. You have a series of little bruises on the bottom of your neck. They must be from yesterday. You didn’t have them earlier.”

  My cheeks pinkened. Dear God, I thought, how embarrassing.

  “They must be from the fight,” he persisted. “We should ring up the Inspector to tell her. I’ll take some photos for evidence.”

  I wished the ground would swallow me up and save me from this awkward situation.

  “Sarge . . .” I began. He stared at me expectantly. “No need to ring. They’re not from the Bycrafts. Um . . . crap, that’s not quite true. They’re from one Bycraft. Oh God, this is so embarrassing.” I took a deep breath. “Jake stayed over at my place last night.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “I took the Inspector’s advice.”

  He frowned in puzzlement. He wasn’t making this easy for me.

  “Her advice about taking my mind off what had happened to me yesterday?” I reminded him desperately. “Jake was a little . . . um . . . over-passionate.”

  Comprehension dawned slowly on his face, swiftly followed by embarrassment and another couple of emotions I couldn’t decipher.

  “Oh,” he said. I could feel my cheeks flaming. “Sorry.” We stood there ill at ease with each other for a moment. “Guess you don’t want me to take any photos?”

  I giggled uncomfortably and turned to make us both a cup of tea, kicking myself for not checking my neck before I came to work. If I’d noticed that Jake’s little love-nips had left me with bruises, I’d have applied some concealing makeup. I hope that Jake had noticed if he had any little bruises from me before his workmates did. They wouldn’t be embarrassed and drop it like the Sarge – they would torment him mercilessly about his wild sex life.

  To avoid the whole awkward situation, the Sarge strode over to Abe’s computer that was still lying on the floor where it had landed yesterday morning. I placed his mug of tea on his desk and took mine over to my desk, clearing a small spot to deposit it safely.

  It wasn’t right for one of the town’s police officers to be parading around with hickeys on her neck, so I took my little makeup bag to the bathroom and covered up those bruises with my concealer and pressed powder. I thought briefly about trying to do the same with the ones on my face, but decided that it wouldn’t be subtle enough and would only draw even more attention to them. I would probably need three truckloads of makeup to do it properly anyway.

  The Sarge
had moved the computer back up on to his desk again and was reconnecting it. As I sat down, his eyes lingered for a moment on my newly covered neck bruises, but he didn’t say anything.

  He turned the computer on. Nothing. He swore under his breath, checked all the cables and turned it on again. Still nothing. I sipped my tea carefully, watching him.

  “Is it broken?” I enquired, a question that his withering glance told me was an annoyingly stupid one for me to ask. He pulled all the cables out and reconnected them again, then flicked the switch. Nothing.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath. The counter bell rang. I didn’t move. He looked over at me expectantly.

  “Tess? The counter?” His voice was stroppy.

  “I don’t want to go out there. I’m ugly.”

  He stopped to smile at me briefly. “You’re not ugly, but it doesn’t matter what you look like anyway. You weren’t employed to be beautiful, but you were employed to serve the public, so off you go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Go on. You’re not going to hide away. We’re not going to let those Bycrafts win.”

  Easy for him to say, I thought, reluctantly dragging myself out to the counter, only to find Rick and Rosie Bycraft. Just brilliant! As soon as they saw me, they both laughed.

  “What do you two want?” I asked with a level of hostility that probably wasn’t textbook for best practice client-focused service.

  “Nothing,” said Rosie cruelly. “We just wanted to laugh at you.”

  I looked coldly from one to the other. “Okay, you’ve had your laugh so you can piss off now.”

  “Red and the other boys did a good old job on you,” sneered Rick. “That’ll fucking teach you for locking up our mum, piglet.” And they laughed at me again.

  “I’ll lock her up again today if I have to,” I told them.

  “Then you’ll fucking get the same treatment again, won’t you, you dumb slag?” Rosie threatened scornfully, leaning over the counter, her horrible overlarge plastic boobs almost spilling out of her Barbie-pink tank top. “And I’m coming for you next time.”

  “Probably, but then we’ll arrest you and whoever comes for me. And when I lock up Lola the following day too, we’ll arrest whoever comes for me then as well. And after a few weeks of that, there won’t be one Bycraft left in Little Town. You’ll all be in the watch house up in Big Town.” I smiled at them both sweetly. “And that’s what I call a happy ending.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” spat Rosie in disgust.

  “It sure helps around here,” I said, smiling again.

  “Everything okay, Senior Constable?” the Sarge asked from the doorway. I didn’t even bother turning around.

  “Sure, Sarge. Rosie and Rick just popped in to wish me a speedy recovery and to apologise for their family members’ reprehensible behaviour.”

  “Fuck you, piglet,” Rick sneered.

  In a blink, the Sarge vaulted the counter and pinned Rick to the wall with his baton across his neck. “You don’t talk to the Senior Constable like that again, understand?” he hissed into Rick’s face.

  Upper lip snarled back enough to show teeth, Rick stared defiantly at the Sarge until increasing pressure on his windpipe from the baton encouraged him to back down. “Yes,” he said sullenly, and the Sarge let him go. Rick rubbed his throat resentfully. He and Rosie left, throwing both of us aggressive backwards glances as they did.

  “Very athletic of you, Sarge,” I complimented and opened the hatch in the counter for him to return.

  He flashed me his transient smile. “What did they want?”

  “To laugh at me.”

  He stopped and stared at me. “Seriously?”

  “Of course. That’s one of the Bycraft family’s favourite past-times. Second only to causing me pain.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  My mobile rang. It was Gil, the lead detective from my hit-and-run case, telling me that I wouldn’t be needed in court today after all. Both sides had agreed to a full handup committal hearing, so witnesses weren’t needed at this stage. He warned me that the prosecutor wouldn’t oppose a bail undertaking for Dorrie because she had small children to look after.

  “You’ll probably see her back in your town this afternoon,” he advised.

  “As long as she stays away from me.”

  “She’d be stupid to go anywhere near you, or she’ll find herself back in custody. Nobody’s that stupid.”

  I laughed. “Have you actually met her yet?”

  “Tess, she’s genuinely sorry. She hasn’t stopped crying the whole time she’s been in the watch house.”

  I snorted in disbelief. “She’s just sorry she got caught. She’s not sorry she did it.” We made our farewells, and he promised to let me know what happened in court.

  “Then I think we’ll walk the beat again for a while this morning,” the Sarge said as we sat back at our desks. I took a sip of my tea and grimaced. It had cooled down, but still stung on my busted lip.

  “I don’t want to go out in public,” I complained.

  He sighed impatiently. “Tess, you have to show your face so the Bycrafts see how tough you are. You handled those two then really well. Very calm, not fazed in the slightest.”

  “Everyone will stare at me.” I knew I sounded whiny.

  “Nobody’s going to stare at you. Come on, finish your tea and we’ll head off.”

  “It’s too early to do the beat, Sarge. We’d be better off doing it late morning or early afternoon. There will be more people around then. Maybe even some Bycrafts, for greater community impact. If that’s what you’re after.”

  “Tess! I said I wanted . . .” He stopped and glanced over at me. We duelled with our eyes for a moment, deep blue verses dark grey. Stormy ocean battling stormy sky. He caved first. “Maybe it’s better to go later when there are more people around.”

  In my mind, I punched the air in victory. In real life, I plastered on my blandly innocent face. “Good idea, Sarge,” I chirped, sweeter than caramel.

  “You can spend the time until then getting all that paperwork on your desk sorted out,” he ordered, ignoring my Oscar-worthy groan. My eyes roamed over the small mountain of documents without enthusiasm. It would take hours and hours to get through it. I dragged my feet over to my desk and picked up the first sheet. It was a circular memo from the Commissioner about uniforms that had been issued over six months ago. I threw it in the shredding pile without reading it. Well, that was one piece of paper down, I told myself with forced cheerfulness. Only three billion to go.

  The phone rang. I sprang over to answer it with unprecedented eagerness, earning myself a surprised glance from the Sarge.

  “Good morning, Mount Big Town police station,” I said politely, expecting another Saucy Sirens call.

  “Officer Tess, it’s Mabel Greville speaking.”

  “Miss G! How are you?”

  “I’m well, dear, but how are you? Someone told me that Red Bycraft shot you dead. I knew that couldn’t be true. You’d never let that happen.”

  “No, Miss G. I’m still here, but I did have some trouble with the family yesterday. We took Lola Bycraft into custody and her family weren’t happy about it.”

  “Goodness me! That was a foolish thing to do. It would have been that handsome new sergeant of yours who made that decision I think, not you, dear. You know better than that.”

  I couldn’t respond to that with the Sarge in the same room and so changed the subject. “Now, Miss G, where have you been? We’ve been trying to contact you since Sunday. Your house was broken into. It’s a bit messy, but nothing has been taken as far as the Sarge and I could tell. It was as if the intruder was looking for something. Do you have any idea what that could be?”

  “No idea, Officer Tess, as I told you before. I live a simple life with no secrets.” There was more than a hint of regret in her voice about that. “But I rang you to tell you that I looked over that list of Greville properti
es that have been sold off and there were a couple that I simply don’t remember. I know that I’m getting on, but I pride myself on my excellent memory and I just can’t remember signing any paperwork for those two properties.”

  “This might be important. Can the Sarge and I come to visit you today to talk about it?”

  “Certainly dear, we’re now back in Big Town. We had a lovely little trip to the city to visit Bessie’s other daughter. We went shopping and took in a marvellous show at the theatre. I had a wonderful meal at a very fancy restaurant afterwards. The waiters wore white gloves! Have you ever heard of such a thing? White gloves! One even rushed over to put the sugar cube into my coffee before I was able to pick up the sugar tongs! And the maitre d’ squeezed my hand as we left.” She giggled prettily. “A very handsome Italian man too! Goodness, this has been an exciting time in my life!” She took a deep happy breath before sensibly calming herself down. I chuckled discreetly to myself at how sweet it was for someone to find such joy in the little things in life. “Before you come to see me, Tess dear, I wonder if you could do me a favour?”

  “Of course, Miss G.”

  “I keep a daily diary and I write down everything that I do or see in it. I’ve kept it since I was young, so all the property sales I signed off on will be recorded in one of the volumes. I just need to refresh my memory – perhaps I’ve forgotten one or two. Could you bring my diaries to me please, dear? I keep them in my bedroom. In the bottom drawer of my wardrobe there’s a false compartment, and all my diaries are stored in there.” She giggled again, such a youthful, light-hearted tinkling sound. “I had to hide them from my mother. There are some very personal thoughts and wishes in them and she was an absolute dragon about propriety. Even worse than your Nana Fuller,” she confessed, sighing.