by JD Nixon
The chickens rushed over when they saw me at the back door, hoping for a treat. I very gently nudged them away with my boot.
“I’m in a shooting mood, girls. Don’t get in my way,” I warned them and calmed myself by breathing in and out. Then I loosened my shoulders by rotating them and clipped on, then hauled out, a target on a pulley system that Jake had rigged up for me. When it was at the maximum distance prescribed in police training, I started shooting.
It was a reasonably safe operation. Behind us there was nothing except the gentle rise of the lowest part of Mount Big and there was nobody to either side for at least an acre. If Denny Bycraft popped up unexpectedly one day and I shot him, then the entire town would stand up to applaud me. God knows, I’d warned him enough times that I practised shooting in my backyard. My only difficulty was the weather. If it was windy, I had to bail – it was too difficult to shoot at a flailing target, though I tried on occasion to test my skills.
I aimed and shot rapidly at the target, then pulled it in towards me. Almost perfect. I was a good shot. No, like the Sarge said, that was being modest. I was an absolute sharp shooter, a natural talent for judging distances, conditions and velocity finding its perfect match in weapons training. In a war situation, I’d have made an ideal sniper. I’d topped my year at the police academy for shooting. In fact, I still held the record for the highest score in shooting for any female recruit at the academy, and was ranked third overall for all recruits in the whole history of the academy.
I shot at a few more targets in the same calm, measured way and felt calmer and more measured myself in response. The concentration, the control, the coolness needed to be a good marksman had always proven itself to be excellent therapy for me since I’d first started learning on the range at twelve years of age. Finished, I packed everything away safely and threw my girls an extra handful of feed for scaring them with the shots. After I’d hustled them inside their safe run, I rang the Sarge back.
He answered the phone immediately, as if sitting next to it waiting for my call. “Tess, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so bad-tempered with you.” A pause. “Especially after everything else. It was the last thing you needed.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow,” I replied and went to hang up.
“Tess!” he stopped me. “What were you shooting? Not your dinner, I hope?”
I frowned to myself, not quite over it yet. “I’m not sure if you’re making a joke or patronising me again.”
“It was a joke,” he said. “Or was it?”
I laughed reluctantly and offered an olive branch. I had to work with the man, after all. “Why don’t you come for dinner and see if I have buckshot bunny on the menu tonight?” In fact, I had planned a lamb casserole and Fran’s lovely focaccia. “There’s enough for three.”
“Sounds good,” he said doubtfully, “but maybe next time. Thanks anyway.”
I laughed again. “Bye, Sarge.”
Another pause. “Don’t forget that you can call me Finn now and then,” he said, conciliatory. “When nobody’s listening and it’s just you and me.”
“I won’t. Bye, Sarge,” I said deliberately. “See you tomorrow.”
“You’re a very hard woman, Teresa Fuller.”
Smiling to myself, strangely pleased, I hung up on him and went to prepare dinner, regaling Dad with the day’s activities. Afterwards, we played two games of chess, winning one each, then he spent a frustrating hour trying to tutor me on the guitar before we jointly decided to give up and chatted over a last cup of tea. Before long, we both started yawning and headed to our beds.
Chapter 22
I was a soldier in World War I, stuck in the horrible mud somewhere in France, a full battle raging over my head and around me. I was sinking first to my knees then quickly to my stomach and shoulders. Either side of me, Jake and the Sarge knelt on duckboards and leant down to grab one of my arms, each trying to haul me out of the morass. But instead of working together, they were bickering so much about which way to pull me that I was sinking lower and lower into the thick, cloying, diseased, stinking mud. It lapped over my chin and began to fill up my mouth. I called out in alarm to the two men, my voice smothered, but neither noticed in the heat of their argument. The mud clogged my throat and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t shout out to them to help me anymore. Then the mud rose over my nostrils and eyes . . .
I woke up at that point, jolting upright in bed, afraid, wide-awake. I was breathing heavily, choking and coughing as if I’d really been swallowing mud. My eyes darted wildly around my room, my heart pounding and my hand on my knife.
I sensed something and went to my window to fling up the blind and yell at Denny Bycraft. But instead of haring off in a scared panic at being caught out like Denny always did, this person remained perfectly still, nothing seemingly out of place as I peered intently into the darkness. I left the blind up, not convinced I’d imagined anything. I lay down again for ten minutes, pretending I’d fallen back to sleep, listening keenly. I heard the faintest crunching of the gravel that I’d deliberately landscaped under my window and knew that I’d been right – I had an unwanted night time visitor. Again.
I slipped out of bed, grabbing my gun and mobile as I did. I had nowhere to stow either in my short nightie, so held the gun in my right hand and thrust my mobile uncomfortably into the waistband of my panties for safekeeping. I opened the back door and silently crept up on my intruder from behind.
I could see him in the luminous beam of the moonlight. Bastard! I didn’t recognise him, so knew he wasn’t a Bycraft and it definitely wasn’t the Sarge this time either. My visitor was trying to grab on to my windowsill and find a foot purchase in the tiny gaps of the timber lattice battening covering the lower part of the house between its stumps.
I approached him. He didn’t hear me because he was swearing under his breath in a continuous soft stream of obscenities as he held precariously on to my windowsill and flailed around for foot grip.
I pulled out my gun and aimed it at him. Then I smiled to myself. I loved this bit.
“Police. Don’t move,” I said quietly. “I have my gun out and you better believe that I know how to use it.”
He stiffened so much in fright that he released his grip and fell back on to the ground, scrabbling instantly to his feet. Then he foolishly made a run for it.
Luckily for me, I knew this yard back-to-front and chased him until he tripped over the stockpile of firewood that Dad had bought half-price at Christmas for winter this year and had dumped inconveniently at the side of the house. My tackle was quick and painful for both of us. I sat, straddling his back, my gun trained at his skull. I reached into my panties, bringing out my phone and calling the Sarge.
“Tess?” he asked sleepily. “What’s up?”
“Sarge! I need you at my place now. Got an intruder, and for once it’s not a Bycraft. Or you.” I couldn’t resist, even at this hour of the morning. “I’m down the left side of the house as you face it.”
He didn’t even say goodbye before hanging up. Ten minutes passed, during which the man squirmed, struggled and resisted the whole time, trying to buck me off his back. I was seriously considering knocking him unconscious with a piece of firewood when the Sarge finally arrived in the patrol car, squealing to a stop in the gravel drive and jogging over to me, puffing slightly. He was wearing crumpled jeans, a plain black cotton t-shirt that was probably part of his pyjamas, runners with no socks and had a shocking case of bed hair that made him look much younger, almost cute. He had his gun out in one hand, torch in the other. Tucking his torch in his armpit, he hauled the intruder to his feet, put away his gun and pulled his cuffs out of his back pocket. He cuffed the man, advising him that he was under arrest on suspicion of breaking and entering.
“Who’s this?” he asked me, as we dragged the shouting guy into the back of the patrol car.
“No idea,” I said, baffled. We sat in the front seats, while the man banged on the separator fu
riously.
He checked his watch. “It’s three in the morning. Down to the station or off to Big Town with him?” he asked, yawning.
“If we take him to the station, one of us has to stay with him for the rest of the night. But if we go to Big Town, both of us will be caught up in paperwork for hours and hours. Let’s lock him up here, one of us on guard, and then interview him in the morning before we haul him off to Big Town.”
“Are you tired right now?” he asked.
“Not right now,” I admitted, adrenaline pumping through my veins.
“Let’s interview him now then, since we’re already both awake.”
I looked down at my nightie and bare feet. “Can I have a minute to get changed first? I’m a little underdressed for work.”
He nodded in amusement, so I ran up around the back of the house and quickly changed into some jeans and a t-shirt, tied my hair up and grabbed my runners, some socks and my utility belt. I left a short note for Dad letting him know where I was and sprinted down the stairs, throwing myself into the front seat. While he drove, I pulled on my shoes and socks.
“Fill me in on what happened,” he said.
I told him about waking up to hear the noise and sneaking up on the man.
“But you don’t recognise him at all?”
“Never seen him before.”
“Maybe he’s Mrs Villiers’ peeper, deciding to find someone younger and prettier to peep on.”
“Younger and prettier than Mrs Villiers?” I repeated with a smile, peering up at him from where I was contorting myself to tie up my shoelaces. “Aw Sarge, you say the nicest things sometimes.”
He grinned for a split-second. “Not that I’m convinced for a minute that we have two peepers. That’s just too much to believe, even for this town.”
“So maybe this guy in the back here is our one and only peeper, making him also the person who tossed Miss G’s place. But why would he be creeping around my place?”
“Maybe he was genuinely peeping this time?” he suggested.
I gave him a withering glance. “I think he’d pick someone who looked a bit better than me to peep on if he was.”
Back at the station, we had some trouble getting him out of the car and he struggled and fought us the entire way up the stairs and inside the building. The Sarge handcuffed him to the leg of his desk, where he twisted and thrashed and swore at us.
“Sit down and shut up!” the Sarge yelled at him in frustration, having had enough. “It’s three-thirty in the morning and I don’t want to be here, and my partner certainly doesn’t want to be here, so you’ve pissed off both of us straight away. And that’s not a good start to an interview.”
The man shut up and sat still, his eyes shifting nervously from the Sarge to me and back again. He had the look of a small furry wild animal caught in a trap, the image enhanced by his large front teeth, big timid brown eyes, trembling mouth, bushy unfashionable sideburns, pointy ears and overall frightened demeanour.
“Good,” said the Sarge and pulled up a chair in front of him. I smothered a yawn and went over to the kitchenette to make us coffee, pleased to notice that all the fresh produce I’d left behind earlier had been taken. The Sarge had decided to cave into corruption and bribery in a small town after all.
The Sarge politely waited until I’d finished. I handed him a cup of coffee and cradling my own, pulled up a seat near, but not too close to, the handcuffed man. He introduced the both of us to the man, repeated why he’d been arrested, and told the man his rights. I took out my notebook to record what he told us.
“What’s your name?” the Sarge asked.
The man didn’t speak, just glared at both of us defensively.
“What were you doing at the Senior Constable’s place?”
Silence.
“You’re not a local, so where do you live? Are you from Wattling Bay?”
No response.
The Sarge turned to me. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a non-communicator here.”
“Chuck him in the lockup, Sarge. I can’t be bothered trying to get him to talk,” I said in an uncaring voice, then deliberately yawned before taking a careful sip of coffee through my busted lip.
“Senior Constable, that lockup is too primitive to leave a man in for long. There’s nothing in it but a lumpy ancient mattress on thin metal. And there’s nobody here when we both go home,” he said with fake concern. “What about the wild animals?”
I shrugged and stood up, giving our man the once-over. “He looks like a tough guy, Sarge,” I bluffed. “He’ll cope out there. There’s probably been enough rain this summer to provide sufficient food for the foxes. They haven’t had to start attacking humans. Well, not yet at least.”
Foxes wouldn’t go near a human, but I figured that this guy wouldn’t know that. He didn’t, and I could see his large Adam’s apple bobbing up and down nervously.
“Okay,” the Sarge agreed and uncuffed the guy from the desk, clamping the cuff on his freed wrist and hauling him to his feet. “I don’t want to hang around here all night either. We’ll lock him up until morning. He might have remembered his name by then.”
I followed them out the back of the station, flicking on the lights as I did. When the man spotted the old, badly lit lockup, he struggled furiously again and I rushed to the Sarge’s other side to grab our man’s arm and forcefully propel him forward.
“I’m not going in there,” he shouted wildly, genuinely frightened. “I’m claustrophobic. You can’t lock me up in a little room alone in the dark. It’s a violation of my human rights!”
“We haven’t got a choice, mate,” the Sarge grunted, narrowly dodging an elbow in the face. “We’ll take you to the watch house in Wattling Bay tomorrow, but until then, you’ll be sleeping here for the rest of tonight.”
“No!” he screamed as if in physical pain. “Please! I can’t!”
We didn’t have any option but to lock him up, and when the Sarge had slammed the cell door on him, we moved to the bottom of the stairs to confer, ignoring his terrified screams for a moment.
“Sarge, he’s not faking,” I decided. “I’ll stay with him. You get some sleep. I’m wide awake with adrenaline anyway.”
He rubbed his face tiredly with his hands. “Okay, you stay with him until I return, then I’ll take him to Big Town in the morning.”
“Okay. Night, Sarge,” I said as he strode away towards his house.
He turned. “Tess, you have your mobile on you, right?”
“Sure.” I held out my phone for him to see. He continued towards his home and turned around again.
“You’ll lock the station door when you’re inside?”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“What about when you go outside to the cell to check on him? You’ll take your gun and your mobile with you? And your spray?”
I sighed to myself. “Yes, Sarge. I’m wearing my utility belt.” I pointed to it so he would notice.
“My bedroom window’s just over there. Yell really loudly if you need me. I’ll sleep with one ear open, okay?”
“Okay.” Bloody hell! He was starting to annoy me. I could tell that he was torn between over-ruling me and staying himself and desperately wanting to show that he respected my competence as a colleague.
“Will you be spooked here by yourself, Tess?” His voice was so full of earnest anxiety that I felt my irritation evaporating immediately. You should never be angry with someone for caring about your safety.
“No, Sarge,” I answered patiently. “I’ve been here by myself a million times. I’ll be fine. Go get some sleep.”
He finally made it all the way to his house, although he did turn around another couple of times. I waved goodbye to him, went into the station, retrieved my coffee and took a bottle of water from the fridge. Then I went to the man’s cell and pushed the bottle of water in through the bars. I told him I would sit right outside his cell on the stairs if he cooperated. And for the Sarge’s sake, I kept
my utility belt on and took my phone with me. Not because of our man, but because there was a whole town of Bycrafts out there and I was in no shape to deal with them.
“Thank you so much,” he whimpered and gave a watery sniff. I felt ashamed, not liking to bring a man down to the level of tears, but we needed some answers, and he had been very uncooperative so far.
He looked at me through the bars with a tear-reddened face, taking a sip of water, trying to calm himself down. “What happened to you?”
“I was beaten up by some Bycrafts.”
“Oh, them. I hate that family. They’re nothing but savages. I work in a law firm and we’ve represented a few of them from time to time. They never pay their bills and they threaten to chop off your . . . you know, boy things . . . when you try to get them to.” I presumed he was speaking from personal experience as his face flushed a deep red. He took another sip of water. “Will you be okay? Why’d they beat you up?”
I shrugged. “I’ll live. They’re all in the watch house in Big Town. You can ask them yourself later this morning.”
“No! I can’t be locked up with animals like them.” He began panicking again.
“Why not?”
“I’m not a criminal like them.”
“I’m not seeing much difference between you and them from my point of view.”
“I’m a paralegal, not a criminal,” he confessed, leaning against his cell wall in despair, tears springing to his eyes once more.
“And yet again, at the risk of being repetitive, what’s the difference between you as a law breaker and the Bycrafts, regardless of your occupation?” I asked calmly as I watched the man slowly unravel in front of me.
“Officer, please!” he begged.
