by JD Nixon
“You already did. Go away.”
“I’m going to stay in your spare room tonight.”
“No, you’re not. Go away.”
“I’m staying.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
“Just go away.”
“No.”
“Go away.
Instead of responding, he spun around and flicked on the light. We faced off for a moment before he deliberately flung himself into an armchair, switched on the TV with the remote, and put his feet up on my old battered coffee table.
“Go away!” I yelled at him, frustrated. “I don’t want you here!”
“Don’t care,” he responded coolly, returning his attention to the TV.
I deflated instantly, briefly considering forcibly evicting him from my house. But I was weakened by injury, and he was a tall, muscular man who weighed a lot more than me. It was too much of an unequal match to even attempt. Fuming at being so helpless to control the situation, I stormed off into Dad’s room where I collapsed into his bed. I didn’t want to sleep in my room after Red’s visit the previous evening.
I listened angrily to the soft murmur of voices from the TV and the sounds of him in my kitchen, until the painkiller I’d taken finally took effect. I fell into an uneasy slumber, not willing to acknowledge to myself my last fleeting thought about how much of a comfort it was to have him stay.
Chapter 12
I woke up bleary and unwilling to face the day. I hadn’t slept much, despite being cocooned in the familiar scent of Dad’s sheets. And when I had managed to snatch some sleep, my dreams had been disturbing and chaotic, filled with images of blood, knives, guns, rain, chickens, photos, angry bosses, unsmiling stubborn dark-haired men and beautiful golden-haired men who kept morphing from good to evil and back again, grinning all the while. Instead of getting up, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but unfortunately my mind started buzzing with activity.
I considered staying home to rest, but it would only depress me being in this cold house, alone and feeling sorry for myself. I was much better off doing something, no matter how tired and sore I felt. And although I knew Red was finally in captivity and I was relatively safe, a quiver of uneasiness that I couldn’t explain disturbed me. Maybe something else was brewing in Little Town?
That thought alone made me roll out of bed. As I grabbed clean clothes from my bedroom, across the hallway I noticed the door to the spare room was half-shut. Through the gap I could see the Sarge’s feet and legs under the covers of my guest bed. I peeked in the room to find him still asleep, black hair curling on the pillow, arms thrown asunder across the coverlet, his profile much softer in repose. I watched him sleep for a few beats then retreated quietly, closing the door so I wouldn’t disturb him.
After a shower, I wandered into the kitchen looking for breakfast. But being back in that room, so soon after everything that had happened there, listening to the multitude of drips from the leaking ceiling and smelling the bleach, robbed me of my appetite. I couldn’t even remember when I’d eaten last. Perhaps it had been the Sarge’s great pancakes for breakfast yesterday morning.
I dressed in my uniform and headed off to work, lightheaded but with no hunger for food. It poured with rain still and I dashed to the Land Rover, dropping the keys in the mud once, getting wet in the process. I turned the wipers and headlights on full, yawning until my face nearly spilt in two. The radio blared the musings of some idiot with a neolithic view about women in the workforce that made me yawn even harder. To tell the truth though, this morning I’d be more than happy to be permanently taken out of the workforce by some lonely, rich guy. I only wished I knew one.
I pulled into the station and climbed out, replacing my sling and quickly locking the Land Rover. That involved my keys as there was no electronic locking on that old beast. I rushed up the stairs to the shelter of the police station verandah. The station was primitive, there was no other word for it. It had been built in 1889 and was a timber rectangle on stumps, currently painted a puke-green with a leaking rusty tin roof. The station consisted of a small front and back verandah and two internal rooms.
I opened the front door. The first room contained the counter area with little in it but a timber bench and small adjacent table, both bolted to the floor. A timber counter split the tiny room in half. I unlocked the hatch in the counter and walked out the back into the second room, yawning again. Too lazy to bend down, I used my boot to flick on the floor heater, noticing with alarm that I was just in time to empty the full bucket of water in the corner that was catching the latest leak before it overflowed. The Sarge had managed to organise for some of the leaks to be fixed, but new ones had only sprung up in their place. The whole roof needed replacing. Come to think of it, the whole station needed replacing.
The back room was reasonably-sized, with two desks pushed under side sash windows, each with a computer, sharing a printer and phone – all new, thanks to the Sarge. A row of ancient, rusting filing cabinets filled the opposite wall, except for two windows that looked out to the station’s small gravel carpark. A tiny kitchenette filled half the back wall and the back door led to a small verandah where the bathroom was located.
We didn’t have a watch house in Little Town, only a lockup – an equally old separate timber building with a tiny verandah and two bare cells. Before the Sarge had arrived, I’d used the lockup as my chicken coop and thinking about it made the tears spring into my eyes again remembering my beautiful girls. I blinked them away furiously. Work was not the place to cry.
I usually tried to be in the station on Monday mornings for forms to be lodged, complaints to be made in person, or other issues to be sorted out face-to-face. Sometimes I even managed to look at my emails.
The Super was always on our backs about not responding to emails from Big Town, but she didn’t realise that the Sarge and I spent ninety percent of our time out in the field. We were hardly ever at the station. In fact, we spent more time at the Big Town police station than at our own.
My nose twitched. I had a visitor. I went to the front room and leant on the counter waiting for a very smelly, elderly and damp man to shuffle his way up the stairs into the room and then settle himself on the bench seat.
“Good morning, Young Kenny. Where are you sleeping in all this rain?”
Young Kenny, over eighty-years-old at least, was Little Town’s only homeless person. He didn’t need to be homeless though because his niece and her husband were more than happy to accommodate him in their nice home on Pine Street. But he’d slept rough since he was young and I guess some habits are too hard to break, no matter how uncomfortable.
“School,” he mumbled to himself, not making eye contact.
I nodded and left it at that. There was plenty of shelter from the rain at the primary school, although not from the cold.
“You warm enough?” He nodded. He wasn’t much of a one for chatting. “Got enough blankets? I can get another blanket for you if you want.”
He waved me away with his hands, so I didn’t press. He had visited me every Monday morning since I’d returned to Little Town. He didn’t say much, just sat on the bench and watched the comings and goings with interest until I shooed him away when I locked up again. I gave him a couple of mugs of tea and a few of his favourite sugared plain biscuits while he sat there. We’d built up a relationship of sorts.
He’d always worn the same clothes since I’d known him and obviously didn’t bathe much, hence the awful stench that accompanied his visits. His old grey jacket had been clearly inadequate for the winters in Little Town, and I’d spent my own money buying him a brand new ankle-length jacket that was warm and waterproof. Although I’d argued with myself about the hefty price, knowing that so much needed to be done on my house, his joyous gummy smile as he instantly dumped the horrible jacket on the floor and donned his new one, made it all worthwhile. Unlike so many people today, he owned absolutely nothing and had a real appreciation f
or receiving something new. Especially a gift.
I went to the kitchenette and made us both a cup of tea, noting as I opened the cupboard for the teabags that our stock of Tim Tams was low. Sure, there were still about eight packets there, but normally it was jampacked with at least thirty packets. The Sarge was terrified of me reaching PMS time one month without Tim Tams on hand. He was thoughtful (and cautious) like that.
Dunking the teabag one last time in the brown mug with ‘Kenny’ written across it in golden letters I’d bought especially for him, I tossed it in the bin and poured the tiny dash of milk Young Kenny liked into the brew. I carried it out to him, yawning again as I did, placing it carefully on the counter. It was going to be a long day.
He looked at my arm in the sling with consternation as he shuffled over to collect his mug, his eyebrows pushing together in silent query.
“Red Bycraft,” I told him. His eyebrows pointed downwards for a moment as he took that in, nodding eventually and settled back down to the important business of blowing on his hot tea.
The rain kept the good citizens of Little Town subdued for once, all of them more concerned with their domestic rain-related problems than causing me any trouble. The phone didn’t ring and nobody came to the counter. I was able to settle down to some paperwork for once, writing incident reports about Red Bycraft until I was sick to death of typing his name.
“Screw him!” I said loudly, standing to carefully stretch my arms.
“Hope you’re not talking about me?” asked the Sarge, coming in the back door and shaking out his umbrella. He’d obviously returned to his place from mine to shower and dress.
“No, Red Bycraft.” Although . . .
“Good. I don’t want to face that first thing Monday morning.”
It was hardly first thing in the morning, I thought sourly – it was almost ten o’clock.
“I guess Sunday evening was enough for you then, was it?” I asked coolly.
We faced off again.
“How did you sleep?” he asked with unexpected mildness, throwing his phone on his desk. “I made you some dinner, but you were already asleep.”
“Not that well,” I admitted, pointlessly busying myself shuffling papers.
“You called out a few times during the night.”
“Did I? I don’t remember. My dreams weren’t very coherent.”
He walked over and looked down at me, frowning. “What are you doing at work anyway? You’re very pale. You should be resting.”
I was honest with him. “I didn’t want to be alone at home.” Then a little less honest. “And I feel fine, really.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t believe me. “Don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me if I tell you to go home and get back into bed?”
“No, I suppose not.”
He sighed. “Didn’t think so. But can you at least promise me not to go berserk today?”
Despite myself, I laughed. “I’ll try not to, but you know us crazy people – we’re very unpredictable.”
He smiled. “Are you glad I stayed in the end?”
I avoided answering, flipping through those unimportant papers again. “You couldn’t get out of my house fast enough yesterday afternoon.”
“Tessie, I’m sorry for that. It’s only because I was really pissed off about –”
The counter bell rang.
He stopped talking and nodded towards the counter. “You better see to that.”
Annoyed by the unwelcome disruption, I went out to the front room to find George Harrison standing at the counter, his nose wrinkling at the smell of Young Kenny.
“Hello, Mr Harrison. Everything okay at the community?”
I was worried that he’d come to complain about some damage after my encounter on his premises with Red. I couldn’t pay for it personally and I wasn’t sure that the Super was in the mood to cover my expenses at the moment, considering my recent misbehaviour.
“Yes, yes, everything’s fine there,” he assured. “Except we’re still waiting for you to take up your membership, Officer Tess.” He didn’t exactly leer at me, but the look of anticipation he threw me made me uneasy.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied, noncommitted.
His face creased with happiness. “Excellent.”
“And your problem today?” I prompted politely. I didn’t want to rush him unnecessarily, but he’d interrupted me in the middle of a fascinating conversation with my boss.
“It’s those bikies,” he said bluntly. My heart sank. I’d had a close encounter with them a while ago and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. Although the Sarge hadn’t been here then, I reminded myself.
“What about them? They’re usually quiet.”
“It’s not a noise problem. It’s a smell problem.”
“Sorry?”
“They smell.”
“Smell? As in haven’t taken a shower for a while?” I cut Young Kenny an awkward glance as I said that. He didn’t notice, his attention firmly focused on his tea.
“No. Smell, as in foul odour issuing forth from their secret retreat.”
“What kind of foul odour?” I was hoping like hell it wasn’t the decomposing body kind of smell.
“Hard to say really.”
“Try, Mr Harrison,” I urged, grabbing an incident report form from under the counter and jotting down a few pertinent details.
“Sort of a chemical smell. Last night and again this morning. It’s disgusting. We’re all gagging at the community from it. Even with our windows shut.”
“And you’re sure it’s coming from the bikie retreat?”
“Positive.”
“Okay. The Sarge and I will pay them a visit this afternoon. All right?”
“Couldn’t ask more from Little Town’s finest,” he smarmed, before faring me well, casting a disparaging glance at Young Kenny as he did. Young Kenny watched him leave silently.
He had barely shut the door before Rick Bycraft and his girlfriend, Dorrie Lebutt (Sharnee and Chantelle’s sister), opened it again. They were both reportees, Rick on parole and Dorrie on a good behaviour bond. They had to clock in with us once a week and I didn’t give them much choice about when. It was either Monday morning or back before the magistrate in Big Town to explain why they’d breached their conditions.
Rick had been done for armed robbery of a 7-Eleven in Big Town and was released from jail about six months ago. Dorrie had been lucky not to go down for some time for trying to run me over with her car a few months ago. It was only the fact that she had young children (all Bycrafts) and had discovered she was pregnant to Rick (or possibly his cousin Mark, unbeknownst to Rick), that had saved her from jail.
Her tummy was well-rounded now and she stared at me with her customary look of contempt as she leaned on the counter.
“How’s the pregnancy going, Dorrie?” I asked politely, not that I cared in the slightest. It was just one more Bycraft brat being born to make my life miserable.
“I feel like a real woman when I’m pregnant,” she replied, tossing her long dyed black hair behind her shoulders, her heavy black eyeliner making her small brown eyes appear harder and meaner. “Not that you’ll ever know because who’d ever want to get a freak like you pregnant? How old are you now anyway? Forty-five?”
“I’m the same age as you, as you well know,” I said patiently, not rising to the bait. We’d been in the same class at school. “Twenty-seven.”
“I feel sorry for you. I’m on my fourth kid and you haven’t even had one yet.”
I snorted with laughter. That attitude you find in some women, as if there was some special skill in getting knocked up other than opening your legs to the nearest willing man, always cracked me up.
“That’s because I have a job, Dorrie. Ever heard of that word? J-O-B. Look it up in the dictionary next time you’re near one.” Then I deliberately chuckled loudly at the very thought of Dorrie Lebutt anywhere near a book, let alone a dictionary.
She star
ed at me sullenly, but didn’t insult me like she normally would have. And that was because I recorded her behaviour in the station’s ancient attendance book each week. I dragged it out from under the counter, noted the date, the time, wrote a general comment on both Rick and Dorrie’s behaviour during the week, signed it and turned it around for them to sign as well.
Rick was quiet, but clearly angry. Red’s recapture and my rampage at Lola’s house was going to cause me a lot of grief with the family for some time to come. Strangely though, no matter what happened in the future, I didn’t regret what I’d done, still remembering the revengeful satisfaction I’d felt as I’d smashed those windows. When I looked at Rick’s furious features, I thought about Miss Chooky’s limp body and the mud falling on her as I’d buried her in the pouring rain, and my heart hardened to stone again.
“Thanks for coming, guys. It’s been a pleasure as usual. See you next week,” I called out cheerfully as they left. I lived to give good customer service.
Dorrie turned and I could tell by the way her fingers twitched that she really wanted to flip me off. She restrained herself though, slamming the door behind her instead. I smiled to myself. Young Kenny and I exchanged a glance and he graced me with a faint smirk. He knew exactly what a sarcastic bitch I really was – he’d been watching me closely in action for well over two years now, after all.
The Sarge was on the phone when I re-entered the back room, impatiently explaining to the caller that it was the Mount Big Town police station, not the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club. We had the same phone number as an illegal brothel in Big Town, except for two transposed numbers. We were forever getting phone calls from eager men looking for saucy sirens. I was forever being mistaken for one.
The Sarge slammed the handset back onto the phone. “Who the bloody hell goes looking for a sex worker on a rainy Monday morning?”
“Someone who works shifts?” I suggested, sitting down at my desk.
“Who was at the counter?” he asked, tapping on his computer keyboard.
“George Harrison from the nudist community is complaining about a horrible smell coming from the bikies’ secret retreat. An unpleasant chemical smell.”
