by JD Nixon
“God damn!” cursed the Sarge, dropping his arms, then said to Mr Murchison, “Where does that lead?”
“It’s the garage,” he informed us at the same time that we heard the unmistakable slam of a car door and the rattling sound of a garage door opening automatically.
The Sarge and I exchanged glances and both of us bolted to the door.
Chapter 28
It was locked of course – we’d heard him fastening it. The Sarge lifted his foot and rammed it against the door in an attempt to kick it in. I abandoned him and ran out the front door, around the path to the entrance of the garage, just as Graham came squealing out in a late model silver Toyota, its tyres spinning up smoke in his haste to escape.
“Stop!” I yelled at him, but it was pointless. He couldn’t hear me and I had to jump out of the way or risk being hit by my second car this week. He roared down the driveway and on to the road at the same moment that the Sarge kicked the door open and stumbled into the garage.
I wasn’t finished with Graham yet and knelt down on the driveway on one knee to steady myself, pulling out my Glock. Aiming it carefully with both hands, I pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession and blew out his right rear tyre.
“Great work, Tess!” the Sarge shouted, jogging down the driveway.
The car immediately swerved and smashed into a red Mitsubishi parked at the side of the road, stopping its momentum. The Sarge and I sprinted over to it.
In a panic, Graham threw the car into reverse and freed it from the tangle of twisted metal, before putting it into forward again and driving off, his speed limited by the shredded mess of black tyre at his rear. I caught up with the car first and it was going slowly enough for me to jog up next to it and smash a hole in the driver’s window with my baton. I quickly cleared enough glass away to reach my left hand through, my fingers making contact with the ignition key. My plan was to turn the car off so we could arrest Graham. But looking back on the whole incident later, I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t the smartest plan I’ve ever had in my life.
Graham clamped his right hand around my wrist and pulled it away from the key. He was being careful and driving slowly, finding it tricky to steer the wonky car with only his left hand while he held on to me with the other. We could go on like this all day, I thought, jogging easily next to the car.
A neighbour came running out of his house towards the car, arms waving, perhaps thinking to stop Graham. But that only frightened him and his foot instinctively pressed down on the accelerator in response. The car thrust forward at double the speed it had been doing. My arm was caught inside the car, Graham’s fingers still clutching me.
“Let me go!” I shouted in panic, struggling to run fast enough to keep up with the speed of the car. He stared out at me with huge dumb eyes, immobilised by wild fear.
My hip sent a horrible stab of pain down my leg and my right knee buckled under me. I lost my footing and couldn’t recover it, the car starting to drag me beside it down the road. Graham let go of my hand and fumbled for the automatic window button, perhaps thinking to make it easy for me to free my arm by lowering the window. But I’d made a hole in the glass with my baton and had slipped my hand through that hole, so when the window lowered all it did was succeed in fully trapping my arm between the glass and the door. Desperately I clung to the side mirror with my right arm, trying to keep my body off the bitumen while my feet, clad securely in my strong boots, dragged uselessly on the road.
“Graham!” I screamed. “Stop the car, for God’s sake! You’re going to kill me!” I briefly registered more neighbours scrambling to the footpath, alerted by the crash and my screaming, their shocked faces a blur in my side vision. I began to panic about slipping under the tyres of the car. I didn’t want to be run over.
Flustered, Graham pressed harder on the accelerator instead of the brake and, helpless, I was towed next to the car, the road flying beneath me at an alarming speed. Simultaneously, I tried to keep calm, wrench my arm free from the window and make sure that the only part of me in contact with the road was my boots, while I clung to the side mirror, my right arm straining with my weight. I prayed that my boots would bear up under the friction. They were tough leather, but they sure weren’t designed for this sort of action.
I slipped once, falling down, my knees scraping on the bitumen of the road, making me scream in pain as the material from my cargo pants and the first couple of skin layers were forcibly removed by its roughness.
The Sarge sprinted after us, pulling up and running alongside me. He slipped his right arm under my chest, providing my body with much appreciated extra support and frantically tugged on my trapped arm with his left hand in an attempt to free it from the window. All this while running madly next to me.
“Wind the window up!” he shouted at Graham, who looked back at him with a stunned rabbit expression. “The window! Wind the fucking window back up, you dickhead!”
He ran hard for another hundred metres next to me, between us managing to keep all of me except my boots off the road, while his words finally penetrated into Graham’s frozen brain. He hastily reached for the electronic window button, pressing it. The window slowly made its way up and the Sarge and I yanked my arm free from the hole, scraping it badly as we did. The car continued on its path, but we both fell backwards on to the road in a jumbled heap, panting wildly with adrenaline and exhaustion.
Without thinking, I freed myself from him, rolled over onto my stomach, pulled out my Glock again and aimed it, shooting off five rounds before I hit the front right tyre. It exploded noisily and Graham veered crazily right, jumping the curb over the grassy footpath, ploughing through a beautiful patch of snapdragons before crashing into a brick letterbox. Both the car and the letterbox fared badly from the impact.
Graham flung open the car door and made a run for it. The Sarge and I both jumped up to chase him, but I wasn’t capable of anything faster than a painful limp and reluctantly let the Sarge bring him down and cuff him. Another patrol car turned up at that point, called by the concerned neighbours. We left those two constables to deal with the smashed cars and shocked witnesses while we frogmarched Graham back to our patrol car, shouting and struggling all the while.
Mr Murchison had wheeled himself to the front yard and stared with utter desolation at the destruction in his neighbourhood, his ruined car, and then at his nephew.
“Graham, how could you defraud Miss Greville? And how could you disappoint me like this, after everything I’ve done for you?” he asked sadly, disillusioned.
“Just shut the fuck up, Uncle Stanley!” Graham shouted at him with bitter hatred. “It’s all right for you! You have this beautiful house, respect, a good career and money to burn. I have nothing!” Selfish tears of frustration fell from his eyes. “And I wanted my share. I wanted my dream life.”
“For once, you should shut up if you know what’s good for you,” snarled the Sarge and manhandled the still shouting Graham into the back of the patrol car. “You need a lawyer.”
Mr Murchison was clearly devastated by the ingratitude and blatant greed shown by his nephew. His face crumpled with emotion and I could see the glint of tears in the wrinkled creases of his face. The poor man, I thought. It was never easy to find out that someone you cared for was untrustworthy. I’d learned that myself from bitter experience a few years ago.
I glanced down at my shredded cargo pants and bleeding knees with resignation. They were stinging like a bitch, and I couldn’t possibly look worse if I tried. Fiona would be proud of me in court later. I only hoped there weren’t any photographers or TV cameras hanging around outside the courthouse. I wouldn’t want any reminder of today.
“I’m so sorry, Senior Constable,” I heard Mr Murchison say hesitantly. “I swear that I didn’t realise what Graham was up to.”
I shrugged, looking down at him. “You’ll have to convince us of that, Mr Murchison. And Miss G as well.”
“I’ve been ill. Very
ill.” He sighed. “I suppose I was too proud to admit that to my clients, and instead trusted a lot of my work to Graham, even though I wasn’t completely convinced that was the right thing to do.”
“You let Graham look after Miss G’s trust account?” I couldn’t hide my disbelief.
A pause of shame. “Yes. I thought it was a safe assignment for him. Nothing in it had changed for years. Years, Senior Constable! I thought all the property was sold. It was merely a matter of administering the interest each year and delivering it to Miss Greville’s bank account and answering any queries she had. I had that account audited carefully every year as well.”
“Graham found more Greville property to sell, Mr Murchison. How do you account for that? He set up a company using his deceased father as the director. This is not somebody who’s lacking in forethought or brainpower.” We were both silent for a moment. “Maybe you’ve underestimated Graham too. Just like his parents.” Just like the Sarge and I had as well, I thought humbly.
“Yes,” he said regretfully. “I always knew he was a feckless lad, but I didn’t expect him to be so conniving and dishonest. I’m distraught at the thought of Miss Greville believing that I’ve been robbing her. We’ve known each other all my life. Will you please tell her that it wasn’t me? I doubt she’ll feel like talking to me for a while.”
I told him I would and advised him that some detectives would be in touch soon to question him.
He nodded. “I must admit a certain reluctance to give evidence against my only nephew,” he replied sadly.
“You can’t choose your family, Mr M,” I consoled sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder, before heading at a snail’s pace to the patrol car.
The Sarge was leaning against the car, talking to someone on his phone, paying no heed to Graham who was yelling and banging on the divider in the back seat of the car. He looked up when I approached and wrapped up his phone call, walking over to me.
“We have to get you to a doctor, Tess,” he said, concern on his face. I told him that I’d get myself patched up back at the Big Town station. I was fairly sure I didn’t need medical attention. It was only a couple of grazes.
Although not forgetting how angry I’d been with him earlier, I felt a flood of warm gratitude towards him. I looked up at him earnestly, “Thank you so much, Sarge. You just saved my life.” I closed my eyes briefly and exhaled heavily. “That was a terrifying experience. I felt so helpless.” I breathed in and out again. “And I hate that.”
His eyes searched my face, his hand reaching up towards it before lowering again without making contact. He shrugged, embarrassed, not sure what to say or do. We stood in front of each other awkwardly, uncertain if we should embrace each other in sheer relief or not. So we didn’t, keeping our hands firmly to ourselves.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked solicitously.
I avoided his glance, eyes on the ground, suddenly feeling shy, every part of me reminding myself that I was no oil painting at the moment. “I’ll –”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he interrupted rudely. “You’ll live.”
I smiled reluctantly at his knees. “I’m pretty sure that I will.”
“Your shooting skills are very impressive,” he complimented.
It was my turn to shrug as I peered intently at the paving in the driveway. There were weeds poking through the pavers. “So are your running skills,” I mumbled.
“I’m worried about something now, though.”
I spoke to my ruined boots. “What?”
“I’m worried about what the Inspector will say to me when she finds out that I was trying to arrest an innocent, sick old man in a wheelchair,” he said, with surprisingly charming self-mockery.
Despite myself, I laughed and peeked up at him. “Don’t forget he was an innocent sick old man in a wheelchair armed with a box of tissues.”
He pulled a miserable face. “You’re a cruel woman, Fuller, you really are.”
I laughed even harder, feeling better already.
He gave me a half-smile and held out his hand. “Truce?”
I regarded his hand thoughtfully, before reaching out to take it.
“Truce,” I agreed and we shook on it.
“I didn’t mean to be such a jerk before, but –”
“It just comes naturally?” I suggested, with a smile.
“Tess,” he complained in an injured tone. “I was going to say that I will answer your question when I know you better. It will change the way you think of me permanently, so that’s why I don’t want to answer just yet.”
Whatever, I thought to myself dismissively, as if finding out about my mother’s death and my near-death hadn’t changed the way he thought about me. Noticing that he still had a firm grip on my hand, I extricated mine from his and turned to glance unenthusiastically at Graham. He was still carrying on in the back seat, banging on the window.
“We’d better get Graham down to the station before he bursts a blood vessel with all that shouting. Do you think we’ll have time to interview him ourselves before I have to go to court?”
“If not, he can just wait for us to return. I don’t want to hand him over to the dees yet. I want to hear firsthand what he has to say for himself.” He climbed into the car and I followed suit, wincing when I bent my knees. “Oh, by the way, I was talking to forensics when you came over. They managed to lift one fingerprint from our safe-cracking job and you’ll never guess who it belongs to.”
“Is it our little friend in the backseat, by any chance?”
“It certainly is. Doesn’t he have a lot of interesting questions to answer?”
Back at the watch house, Senior Sergeant Yu was in charge again and exclaimed loudly in disbelief when the Sarge and I dragged Graham, still kicking and screaming, in the door.
“Oh gawd, not him again!” she groaned, covering her ears. “Doesn’t he have an off button?”
“Apparently not,” said the Sarge loudly over Graham’s racket.
“What’s he done now?”
“He’s been ripping off a sweet little old lady and he just dragged poor Tess down the road with his car. Look at her! She’s bloody lucky he didn’t kill her.”
I wasn’t pleased that he’d drawn attention to my further injuries, everyone crowding around and tutting over my poor knees.
“You bastard,” Daisy said, staring at Graham in disgust. “Not happy with just perving on her now, huh? Now you’re trying to kill her.”
She processed him into the system, and had one of the watch house officers take him to a holding cell, him shouting all the while.
“He’ll be wanting a lawyer again, I presume,” she said.
“Probably,” I responded. “We should try to get that woman he had before. She was sensible and calmed him down a lot.”
“You two better hand this over to the Inspector to deal with, especially now you have a conflict, Tess,” she ordered. “You shouldn’t interview someone who’s tried to kill you. And don’t forget you have court this afternoon. You’ll barely have time to interview him anyway, particularly if he intends to continue carrying on like that for some time. It could also take ages before a lawyer can be found for him.”
The Sarge and I exchanged glances. I knew he really wanted to finish this case himself, but I didn’t think we had much choice. I used the counter phone to ring Fiona, giving her a brief rundown on events that morning. After listening to me with unexpected patience, she made a decision to take it over and promised to send a couple of dees downstairs to us as soon as possible.
“We’ve lost it, sorry, Sarge,” I said apologetically. “She’s sending down a team. We’ll brief them and then maybe we’ll have time to bring Miss G in to identify the suitcase.” I hesitated, unsure whether to ask or not. “Are you coming to court with me?”
“Of course I am, Tess. Did you really need to ask?” he replied, offended again.
Daisy cut off his further ire by looking me up and down scathingly, de
claring that I wasn’t fit for court and would be an embarrassment to the entire force in my current scruffy condition. She handed over to her sergeant, Roger MacNamoy, a handsome, reserved and competent man that I didn’t know well. He gave me a sympathetic smile as he took over, leaving Daisy free to bustle around me like a very bossy mother hen, finding me a clean spare pair of cargo pants that were reasonably close to my size. She pulled off my boots, throwing them to a startled probationary constable and ordering him to polish them back to some semblance of respectability. He didn’t look happy about it – it wasn’t what he’d joined the police to do. But he sure wasn’t going to argue with her.
The Sarge took me into the watch house staff room and forced me to sit down on one of the comfy sofa chairs they had clustered together in a corner. He retrieved the first aid kit from the wall, and with an unwelcome audience of cops who seemed to have nothing better to do, he proceeded to torture me for fifteen minutes by giving me first aid. He began by patching up my scratched arm and then moved on to my knees. When I flatly refused to take off my cargo pants as he requested, he was forced to cut them away above my knees so that he would have good access to my wounds. It didn’t matter though, because my pants were ruined anyway. My knees were badly grazed, gravel embedded deep in the wounds. Blood was still seeping out, now joined by some icky clear fluid as well.
When he doused the first knee in antiseptic spray and dug around to remove the gravel with a pair of tweezers, I screamed out some extremely rude words, the pain was so intense. I leaned back against the chair, eyes squeezed together tightly, teeth clenched and clutched the armrests with such a death grip that I had sore shoulders the next day and would have sworn that I left my fingerprints permanently imprinted in the material. Tears of pain sprang into my eyes and I blinked them away furiously, but a few stray ones managed to trickle down my cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, Tess,” the Sarge said regretfully, before doing it to me again with the other knee. Then he puffed antiseptic powder on the sores, watching as the liquid oozing from the grazes made it all wet again. He added more and more powder until all the liquid was soaked up and padded each knee with a non-stick gauze before expertly bandaging them.
