Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  “Oh, Red Bycraft, you’re mine this time, matey,” I promised myself and sprinted after him, sloshing through the mud.

  He was limping badly from the stab wound I’d given him at the hospital, throwing desperate glances over his shoulder as he tried to outrun me. But it was futile – Red Bycraft’s luck had finally run out.

  I caught up and tackled him into the mud. He scrabbled in the soft, soaked ground with his hands and his feet to get away from me.

  “Sarge!” I yelled and leapt on to his back, my knees pushing him further into the morass. I pinned his arms to his body with my legs and pulled out my gun, shoving it to his temple. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and dragged his head up, leaning down to hiss furiously in his ear, “Will I rip your head off too with my bare hands, like you did to my Miss Chooky?”

  His beautiful face contorted in agony and he twisted around to look up at me. He made a valiant effort at bravado. “I wish you’d been home last night, Tessie. I had such plans for you. I was going to take my time. Those chickens were so . . . unsatisfying.” And he even managed a laugh.

  I jerked his head up by his hair again and he gasped.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t just plug your brain with a bullet right now, Red Bycraft.” I ground the muzzle of my Glock viciously into his temple.

  He grinned, his white teeth bright in his muddy, brown face. “Too many witnesses. You wouldn’t get away with it. Maybe next time, lovely.”

  The others ran over to me, the Super complaining loudly about the mud on her expensive Italian leather shoes.

  “Teresa Fuller, have you gone completely batshit insane?” she shouted at me. “Haring off when I just told you to get home, like a fucking –” She stopped abruptly when she saw who I had.

  “Red Bycraft,” she laughed, turning to the others. “Look and learn, officers. That is how you catch a fucking fugitive – by going completely batshit insane. Well done, Tessie. Brilliant work.”

  I pulled out my handcuffs, clapped them on to Red’s wrists and climbed off his back. The Sarge and Bum hauled him to his feet. He was covered in mud, his face clenched with pain. I checked him over quickly. The stab wound I’d given him in the back of his thigh was bleeding profusely, leaving a large, red damp spot on his dirty jeans. Whatever his family had done to patch it for him hadn’t worked.

  “I can’t walk,” Red groaned, his leg collapsing under him.

  “Try harder,” said the Sarge nastily, dragging him upright again.

  “I need an ambulance, you stupid fucking pigs.” His leg gave way again and he fell to the ground again, moaning in agony. He squinted up at me between eyelids half-closed with pain. “Oh God, it hurts so bad. I’m going to kill you for this, you bitch.”

  “Shut up, deadshit,” scorned the Super, kicking out at him as he laid in the mud. “Tessie, where’s the nearest doctor?” She looked down at Red with hatred. “Or vet.”

  “The prison, ma’am. Dr Fenn.”

  “Ring him and tell him we’re bringing a prisoner in for treatment. You can come too and get yourself fixed up at the same time.”

  “Yes ma’am, but perhaps the Sarge could ring because I don’t have my phone on me. I left the house in a bit of a hurry, you might remember.”

  “X!” she snapped, jolting him awake. “Take over from Maguire.”

  It was a telling pointer to just how precarious life in Little Town was for me on occasion that the Sarge had Dr Fenn on speed dial. While he explained our situation to the doctor, I noticed the crowds of Bycrafts gathering at the back door.

  “Ma’am, we have to move Red out of here fast. His family’s real angry that he’s being arrested. They’ll turn ugly any minute.”

  But it was sooner than a minute that the first projectile was thrown at us. The empty beer stubby missed Zelda’s head by millimeters. She jumped in fright.

  “Get him to the car,” Fiona instructed, copping a rock in her back. “Fuck!” She spun to Bycrafts. “Don’t any of you wastes-of-oxygen even think of obstructing us arresting this fugitive.” An empty Coke can hit her in the arm. “I will order a truckload of cops down here to bust your fucking heads in, if you don’t stop doing that right now!” she shouted at them in the voice that always loosened the bowels of every cop in the vicinity. It didn’t faze the Bycrafts though.

  We moved quickly around the house towards the vehicles. Mr X and Bum propped up Red with their arms, virtually dragging him to the car. The single projectiles became a hail of all sorts of things – cans, bottles, rocks, bits of brick, shoes, fruit, plates, dirty nappies, basically anything the Bycrafts could get their hands on.

  A putrid tomato hit me hard in the side of the head, knocking me off balance and causing me to slip over in the mud. The Sarge gave me a hand up and sheltering me under his arm, rushed me to the front of the house. The crowd of Bycrafts followed us there on the inside and continued to bombard us with detritus from every available broken window.

  “Put Bycraft in the back of your car,” Fiona directed Mr X and Zelda. “Maguire, you get in the back with him and give him some first aid. Make sure he doesn’t fucking bleed to death on the way. Tessie, you get in the back of my car.”

  “No,” I defied. “I’ll drive my Land Rover. I’m not leaving it here with them. They’ll trash it. And I’m going home to have a shower first. I’m dirty and freezing.”

  But before I did any of that, I had some things to retrieve. Taking a deep breath, I dashed back towards the house, shoulders hunched. I threw one arm over my head to protect me from the rain of rubbish while I held my gun in the other hand.

  “What are the hell are you doing?” yelled the Sarge in a panic after me, the others echoing his call.

  The Bycrafts never expected me to do something that incredibly stupid, so I took them all by surprise when I ran up the rotting verandah stairs into the midst of them.

  “Tessie, for fuck’s sake, get back here!” screeched the Super in fury.

  I knew she was going to hand me my arse on a plate after this little stunt. I didn’t want to be disobedient, but the Bycrafts had some things of mine that I wanted back. I wasn’t going anywhere until they were returned.

  I was totally focused on my goal and when I saw her, I wasted no time heading straight for her. Someone tried to grab me and I elbowed them fiercely in the face, feeling something crunch as I did. I kicked out at someone else, making them fall backwards into a couple of the others. I reached Lola Bycraft at the doorway, easily seizing the little woman around the neck with my right arm and holding my Glock to the side of her head with my left. I was a passable ambidextrous shooter, as the Bycraft clan all knew.

  Her cigarette fell from her mouth to the ground as I tightened my grip on her neck.

  “Teresa Fuller, you are in such a shitload of trouble!” screamed the Super, turning to the others. “What the fuck is the crazy bitch doing now? Is she deliberately trying to get herself killed? Who has weapons? X? Bum?” They both nodded. “Good. X, you and Bum go and cover Tess. I’m going to kick that girl’s arse from here to fucking Timbuktu when she gets back out of that house.” She exhaled heavily. “Maguire and Zelda, take Bycraft to the prison doctor. Now! Full speed with siren before he exsanguinates in the car.”

  “Ma’am –” the Sarge protested, itching to be heading into the house as part of my back-up team.

  “Don’t argue with me, Sergeant!” she interrupted him, bellowing. “Just do what you’re fucking told!”

  “But I want –”

  “I couldn’t give a bee’s dick about what you fucking want, Maguire! Get that fucking prisoner to a fucking doctor now or you’ll fucking find yourself as a fucking constable again doing fucking school crossing patrols for the rest of your fucking life! Do I make myself fucking clear?”

  He glared at her for an instant, before jumping into the back of the unmarked car where Red lay groaning on the seat, slamming the door with unmistakable attitude. They sped off, siren and lights on.

  The Bycr
afts jeered and cursed me loudly but they had no choice except to admit that I held the upper hand. I was soaking wet, muddy, barefoot, with wild hair, a dirty face, and a bleeding arm, but I was in control of the situation. The Bycrafts were very protective of Lola and would never do anything to endanger her. She was the powerful and influential matriarch of a rotten family where most of the men were dead or in jail.

  “I want my photos back, Lola. Be a good girl and show me where Red was sleeping, and nobody will get hurt. Not even you, no matter how tempted I am.” I poked her in the temple a few times for emphasis.

  “Look at yourself, piglet,” hissed Rosie Bycraft, Jake’s eldest sister. “You’re fucking insane.”

  I considered her statement, head to one side. “Mmm, probably. But I still want my things back. Red stole them from me and I want them back. I’m not leaving here until I get them.”

  “Give her what she wants then we’ll all get the hell out of here,” recommended Mr X soothingly from the bottom of the stairs, his gun sweeping the crowd. He sure was wide awake now. Bum looked confused as usual – he wasn’t sure what was happening, but copied Mr X slavishly.

  “Rosie, love, show the crazy slut where Red’s stuff is,” croaked Lola, not putting up a fight for once. Well, my grip around her throat was unnecessarily and life-threateningly tight, I’ll confess. And I was much taller and bigger than her. We both knew I could snap her scrawny neck without too much effort.

  Keeping her as my hostage, we shuffled into the house together. It was a pigsty inside. Admittedly, the broken glass didn’t help the ambience much, but there were dirty clothes and dishes piled everywhere, battling with the rank odour of used nappies. It didn’t look as if anybody had cleaned for years. I wrinkled my nose at the fusty smell and tried to block out the sounds of half-a-dozen young children screaming and crying. Everyone else in the house seemed to have no trouble doing that, but I supposed they’d grown used to the racket over time.

  We entered one of the three bedrooms, which was even messier than the lounge room. A triple bunk-bed took up one corner and three single mattresses on the floor filled the rest of the small space.

  “Cosy,” I commented.

  “Shut your mouth, you stuck-up moll,” snapped Rosie. “Or you won’t get your things back.”

  “You won’t get your mother back then,” I snapped in return at her. I didn’t really know what I meant by that, but it sounded suitably menacing. And maybe I looked crazy enough to do something spontaneously fatal, because she sullenly pointed to a soiled mattress in the corner of the room. It was covered in a dirty yellow and blue doona and topped with a stained, case-less pillow.

  “That’s where Red was sleeping after Sharnee kicked him out.”

  My stomach churned when I saw that he’d taken all the photos of me out of their frames and stuck them to the walls around his ‘bed’, like some kind of shrine. And they thought I was nuts!

  “Unstick them all for me,” I ordered. Despite shooting me a glance of pure loathing, Rosie stood on the mattress and roughly pulled them off the wall, one-by-one.

  “Careful with them!” I yelled at her.

  When she’d finished I made her place them in a plastic bag for me. Then I forced her to find my pieces of jewellery and the couple of pairs of my nicest panties that Red had stolen from me and hidden under his pillow. She held them by one finger, her face screwed up in disgust.

  “Save your revulsion for your weirdo brother,” I suggested coldly. “He’s the one who took them.”

  “God only knows why. He could have any woman he wanted, so why he chases after you all the time is a complete mystery to me,” she said with contempt.

  “It’s my winning personality.” She snorted in derision. “Where are the photo frames?”

  “I have no fucking idea and even less interest.”

  I cut my losses. “Carry the bag out to the front and give it to one of the detectives.”

  She turned with a flounce and led Lola and me back to the front door.

  “You’re going to pay for this, you pig-faced bitch,” Lola seethed.

  “I didn’t hurt a hair on your head, you old bat. You ought to be thanking me.”

  “The day I fucking thank you for anything is the day you slit your wrists in front of me.”

  “I love you too, Lola.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Right back at you, honey,” I said, and shoved her hard away from me. She stumbled over someone’s muddy boots that had been dumped in the middle of the hallway and fell to the floor. I cautiously made my way out of the house, through the Bycrafts, Mr X and Bum covering me from the stairs until I made it down safely, taking my precious bag from them.

  I stooped to pick up the steering wheel lock I’d dropped when I’d taken off around the back. It was Dad’s – I couldn’t leave it behind.

  “Who’s going to pay to fix my fucking windows?” screamed Lola at me, lighting up a cigarette with a steady hand and remarkable nonchalance, considering I’d just held her hostage with a gun.

  “The same person who’s going to pay to fix my back door and clean up my kitchen,” I yelled back at her over my shoulder. “Nobody.”

  Noticing that the Super was striding towards me, black fury furrowing her face, I scrambled into the Land Rover, fired it up, turning up the radio to drown out her harsh voice. I planted my foot, spun the vehicle around in a u-turn and sped off down the street as fast as the old tank would go. Daring to look in the rear view mirror, I suddenly wished that I hadn’t, because the sight of the Super raging after me was going to haunt me for weeks.

  Chapter 11

  Back home, the forensics guys were working in my bedroom and they glanced up curiously when I entered the house. I guess I wasn’t looking my best. I guess I was looking like a muddy, drowned rat. I was freezing cold and they took pity on me and let me grab some clean clothes from my room. I took a luxuriously long hot shower, lathering up my hair twice. I hoped that either the Super had become bored waiting for me to get out and had left for the prison, or that she had driven straight there from Lola Bycraft’s house.

  Warm, clean and dry, though still bleeding and not able to keep my mind from the thought of painkillers, I cautiously made my way to the lounge room. I pulled up short in the doorway when I set eyes on Fiona. She was sitting in one of the armchairs, arms crossed, legs crossed, doing nothing but waiting, a thunderous expression on her face. I spun around in a panic, preparing to flee again.

  “Don’t you take one more step.” Her voice was icy cold.

  I stood as motionless as a statue.

  “Turn around.”

  I turned around.

  “Come here.”

  I went there and stood in front of her. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t a coward. Better to get the bollocking over and done with while I still had a nice glow from the shower.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mr X and Bum sat forward with an equal mix of anticipation and trepidation. Nobody liked to see a colleague being ripped a new one, but everybody was always secretly glad it wasn’t them for once. It was only human nature. I’d be feeling the same in their position.

  She was fair to me. “You have exactly one fucking second to give me a reason why I don’t go nuclear on your arse.”

  I regarded her unwaveringly. “Can I show you something instead please, ma’am?”

  That threw her for a moment. “Hurry up,” she snapped.

  I went to the plastic bag I’d brought back from Lola’s place, rummaged frantically before pulling out what I wanted. I stood in front of her again and handed over the photo I’d chosen from the pile I’d rescued.

  “Red Bycraft took every photo of me from here, including this one. I just couldn’t leave it behind, ma’am. Not with them. It means a lot to me.”

  She glanced down at the photo – a family shot of Dad, Mum, Nana Fuller and me, a little toddler, about eighteen-months-old. It was a formal studio portrait, taken in Big Town barely six months
before my mother had been murdered and I’d been critically injured in the same attack. Everyone was in their Sunday best, smiling happily. I wore a beautiful white dress with a pretty bow in my hair and tiny cute pink shoes, sitting on my mother’s lap. One of my little hands was tangled in her long dark-blonde hair and the other grasped her index finger, our identical big dark grey eyes turned towards the camera. We sat next to petite Nana Fuller on a red faux antique sofa. Dad, complete with a hideous Village People moustache that I teased him about endlessly, stood behind the lounge resting a hand on each woman’s shoulder. He looked uncomfortable in his suit, but his smile was genuine. It was a lovely, heartwarming photo, although I’d always thought there was a haunted look in my mother’s eyes. Did she have a premonition about her terrible future?

  “It’s the only photo Dad and I have of the four of us. But I’m sorry I was disobedient and I’m happy to take any punishment you give me without complaining.”

  “Jesus, Tessie,” the Super said quietly. She finally glanced up. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  I frowned. “Like what, ma’am?”

  “Like you’re a kitten that I’m kicking.” She thrust the photo back at me and stood up suddenly. “Let’s get to the prison. Your arm’s still bleeding.” She strode out of the room. “Hurry up, Bum!” she shouted angrily. “I’m not waiting two minutes in the rain for you to try to open the car with your fucking house key again!”

  She was a tyrannical monster for the rest of the day. When we arrived at the prison, she strode past the first lot of security, flashing her badge and ignoring them when they wanted to scrutinise it more closely, told the second lot to go fuck themselves with their batons when they tried to search her, and pushed her way to the medical centre where Red was being treated. She burst into the consulting room, frightening Dr Fenn and his nurse, Lindsey, overriding their objections with her loud profane insistence, and slamming the door behind her. Bum, Mr X and I trailed after her in a timid entourage, catching up with the Sarge and Zelda, who had been banished to the waiting room.