Blood Sport (Little Town)

by JD Nixon

  Pinky was finally ready and the proceedings commenced, taking their usual course. Led by careful questioning from Pinky, I summarised what had happened between Red and me over the past few days. He stared at me relentlessly as I spoke, a faint air of bored amusement around him. I had to hand it to him for his casual attitude.

  I nearly lost it talking about my chickens again, but Pinky quickly steered me away from that emotional minefield before I became soggy. None of us mentioned what had happened at Lola Bycraft’s house afterwards.

  Red’s snake eyes burned into me as I gave my testimony and when I’d finished, they tracked me the entire way out of the courtroom. As I passed him, he blew me a kiss.

  “I’ll be thinking of you every day in prison, Tessie. Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone,” he laughed softly.

  “I’ll be sharpening my knife waiting for you.”

  “No contact with the defendant!” snapped the magistrate, earning me a frown from Pinky.

  “Sorry,” I mouthed sheepishly and hastily left the courtroom, inhaling and exhaling with huge silent breaths after I shut the door behind me.

  I waited patiently outside until the Sarge had finished with his testimony and then we both waited for the verdict to be given. At the end of the hearing, the Super told us that Pinky had done a fine job finalising her case, showing the court why Red Bycraft should be committed to trial and why he should be denied bail. Unbelievably, Red’s lawyer had the audacity to request bail for his client, citing his extreme injuries as mitigation. Fortunately, the magistrate didn’t entertain that prospect for more than the few moments needed to remember that Red had been a fugitive at the time of the assaults and was most certainly a flight risk.

  So Red was denied bail and remanded in custody for a forthcoming trial on a number of counts, including the original assault charges against me from months ago and all the new charges he’d since accumulated. Of course he’d plead not guilty to all the charges, but he’d be going down for a long time if he was found guilty at his trial.

  He was whisked away back into custody without a chance to talk to anyone in his family, and there were a lot of pissed off Bycrafts in the courtroom afterwards. It wasn’t safe for me to hang around and the Sarge and Bum, assisted by court security, hustled me out the front door around the back to where our cars were parked.

  I was very quiet on the drive home despite the Sarge’s best attempts to engage me in conversation. The thought of possibly having Red put away for decades should have made my heart lighter, but I had a bad feeling about something that I couldn’t shake.

  “Let’s have some lunch, then we’ll visit those bikies,” the Sarge suggested.

  “Okay, but let’s go back to my place so I can make us some sandwiches. I don’t have any money to buy my lunch.”

  “No, not your place. Your kitchen will still be leaking. We’ll go back to my place.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting at his kitchen table regarding a tuna salad sandwich with a glum lack of enthusiasm.

  “Not tuna again,” I complained ungratefully. “How many tuna do you eat in one year, anyway? No wonder they’re becoming scarce. You’re eating them into extinction all by yourself.”

  He smiled. “It’s good for you. Lots of omega-3.”

  “Humpf,” I grunted sceptically, my mouth full of food. I was positive there was loads of omega-3 in a Big Mac.

  He chewed his sandwich contemplatively. “We have to do something about your financial situation. It’s impacting on your life.”

  I took a sip of juice and stared at him. “What do you mean ‘we’? It’s not your problem.”

  “Your problems are my problems,” he replied calmly.

  “My problems are my problems,” I insisted. “I just need to earn some more money. Maybe I should move back to the city and go for my sergeant’s stripes?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he shot out.

  That surprised me. “Why not? Don’t you think I’d be a good sergeant?”

  “It’s not that,” he clambered to explain. “You can’t leave yet – your father wants to stay in Little Town.”

  “True,” I sighed.

  “Maybe you could earn some extra money on the side closer to home.”

  I laughed suddenly. “Great idea! Maybe I could do some exotic dancing at the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club?”

  He didn’t approve of my levity. “I don’t think that’s very funny, Tess.”

  “I do. You haven’t seen me dance. It would be embarrassingly funny. It would be a solid gold comedy act.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I’m not. Don’t you want to watch me shaking my booty and twirling my tassels?”

  “Oh God . . . um . . . I have absolutely no idea how to answer that without causing a lot of difficulties for everyone,” he stumbled, my question clearly throwing him. I laughed softly to myself while he regrouped quickly. “It’s just that I don’t want to have to sell everything I own to get you out of trouble.”

  We looked at each other, the only sound the soft ticking of his kitchen clock. I leaned my head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully. “You would sell your things for me?”

  “If you desperately needed the money.”

  “Even your Beemer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even your apartment in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even your investments?”

  “Hmm, exactly how much financial trouble are you in anyway?”

  I laughed. “Not that much! But you’re safe, because I would never ask you to give me any money in the first place.”

  “I know. That’s why I offered.” He winked as he stood up, gathering his plate and glass.

  “Sarge,” I admonished, smiling.

  He patted my cheek. “Finish up, kiddo. Those bikies are waiting for us.”

  “Not literally, I hope,” I prayed, gobbling down the rest of my sandwich and handing him my plate and glass to wash up while I used his bathroom.

  As I washed my hands at the basin, I considered my face in the mirror and wondered what made Red so obsessed with me? The face staring back at me was ordinary – two eyes, two eyebrows, one nose, one mouth, two ears, cheeks, chin, forehead. I had inherited my mother’s dark-blonde hair, nice skin and dark grey eyes. I’d also inherited Dad’s tallness, lean build and shooting skills. I had good teeth, which was fortunate because Dad didn’t have too much spare money for expensive dental treatments. But nothing was perfect, nothing was stunning, nothing was interesting. Not that I could see, at least. Jake and my friends and family told me that I was beautiful all the time, but of course they would because they were biased. They were my loved ones and their opinions were best taken with an entire truckload of salt, let alone a pinch.

  Maybe I should ask the Sarge what he thought? But instead, I impatiently dismissed the whole subject from my mind. I had much more important things to think about in my life than what I looked like.

  Chapter 14

  We drove away from the Sarge’s house, stopping at the pedestrian crossing outside the primary school. My close friend, Gretel, one of the school’s two teachers, and her class trooped across back to the school after a damp excursion to the mobile library that visited once a week from Big Town. She waved enthusiastically at us and smiled brilliantly at the Sarge from under her umbrella as she ushered her wards carefully across the highway. She was very keen on him, unfazed by his complete indifference to her or the fact that he had a fiancee.

  The little kids were excited by the sight of the patrol car as usual, screaming in delight when the Sarge startled them all by suddenly sounding the siren and flashing the lights while they crossed. I didn’t envy Gretel’s job in settling them down again after that as we drove off once they were safely on the other side. She shot him possibly the least admiring glance I’d seen her send his way since they’d first met.

  “That was really sweet of you, Sarge,” I said. “Th
e kids love it when we do that.”

  He slowed down again to courteously allow the owner of the town’s small overpriced supermarket to make a left turn on to the highway in front of us. Mr Grimmell waved his thanks, then sped off in his elderly mint green Mini.

  Grimmell was a sleazy, married creep who spent ninety percent of his work day leering at and propositioning his female staff. I knew that first hand, not only because Dad’s girlfriend worked for him, but because I’d also worked for him myself for two years during high school.

  When I’d first started, he’d followed me incessantly around the shop every shift while I tried to earn the pathetic wage he paid me. He’d offer to help me reach up to a high shelf in the storeroom when I was restocking, his hands around my waist, even though I was taller than him. Or he’d invite me to take my tea break with him away from the other staff, in his tiny, windowless office at the back, that for some inexplicable reason always smelled of wet dog. Or he’d propose that we should meet in his small flat above the supermarket after hours, when his wife was off at a CWA meeting, to discuss ways of reducing stock reduction through shoplifting. He’d been taken aback when, as I neatly aligned tins of soup on the shelf, I’d flatly suggested that he could do that in one hit by nuking the entire Bycraft family. Voila! Shoplifting problem solved.

  I’d reluctantly put up with his harassment, like millions of other women in the world have to in the workplace every day, because I needed the money. I’d been saving up to go to university. But I made sure that he’d noticed that I had my knife with me during each shift and reached for it every time he touched me or crossed the line verbally. I’d also asked Nana Fuller, Dad or Abe (when he was my boyfriend) to come into the store to pick me up after my shift, even though I could easily have ridden home on my bike. They’d all eyeballed Grimmell with the clear unspoken threat of causing him serious internal trauma if he didn’t back off. After that he’d been on his best behaviour with me, especially when it was Nana Fuller who came to pick me up. He’d been terrified of her.

  I was sure that he’d wanted to fire me when he’d realised how unreceptive I was to his advances, but he’d had no reason. I’d always been there before my shift started, often worked fifteen minutes more after my shift was over and kept myself very busy during the interim, serving customers in a friendly and efficient way that he couldn’t fault, no matter how much he’d wanted to.

  One day, he’d tried to tell me that my knife was off-putting for customers and I wasn’t allowed to wear it to work anymore. He’d ordered me to remove it, there and then. “Make me,” I’d dared him coldly, reaching for it. He’d backed away, hands up in ungracious defeat. Fortunately for both of us, I’d headed off to the city and university a couple of weeks later. These days he treated me with polite distance, like someone who’d arrived in Little Town a mere couple of years ago, as if we had no history together at all. And that was fine by me.

  The Sarge made the left hand turn into Beach Road from the highway. “You’re okay being back here, Tessie?”

  “Sarge, if I was spooked at every place I’d been attacked by a Bycraft in town then I’d be huddled under my bed.” I thought about that for a second. It wasn’t such a bad idea. Being pushed under my parents’ bed had saved my life once when I was a toddler.

  We pulled up outside the secret bikie retreat and ran through our usual routine of checking our utility belts, making sure we had everything. He called our position into an uncaring Big Town, just in case.

  “This is a straight enquiry, Tess. Nothing fancy. We ask them about the complaint, check out the response, then retreat, no matter what. We’ll call it into Big Town afterwards if we’re concerned about anything. I’m not prepared to take on thirty-something men with just two of us, especially with one of your arms out of action.” His lips lifted at the edges. “Although if you had two good arms, that would be another matter altogether . . .”

  “Stop teasing me,” I demanded, laughing and slapping him on his forearm softly. I didn’t really mean it though. I loved it when he teased me.

  That moment of flippancy over with, he became serious again and so did I. There was nothing funny about heading into unknown territory with an unknown number of people with unknown amounts of weaponry.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yep. Let’s do it.”

  I’d only ever visited the bikies once and that was before the Sarge had arrived in town. A nervous Council worker had turned up at the station late one morning when I’d been alone as usual, Des busy ‘investigating’ Foxy Dubois. He’d asked for police assistance in serving a Council order regarding the overgrown lawn at the retreat. For him though, ‘police assistance’ meant me handing over the order while he waited in comfort at the station, eating all my Tim Tams.

  I’d approached the retreat with all the cop bravado I’d learned to fake after working in the toughest suburb in the city. The front yard of the retreat had been unkempt, no doubt about it, the grass caressing my elbows as I made my way to the door. The house itself was enormous, rambling and ramshackle, having been a guest house in a previous incarnation. The bikies had usually maintained it in enough repair, keeping the paint up and the roof and windows fixed, to stop nosy officious bureaucrats and police officers from bothering them. Until then. Their mistake.

  There had been about six bikies present lounging on the verandah at the time I’d visited. They were big tattooed men, shirtless, who’d already been drinking despite the early hour. They’d been maliciously tickled at the sight of a sole young female police officer fronting up to serve them a Council order to tend to their lawn or be taken to court. They’d mocked me by being extravagantly over-polite, shown the way by their leader, an ugly, bald man with a budding paunch and a missing front right tooth. He’d had an intricate tattoo of two snakes winding their way up from his shoulder blades around to meet at the front of his neck, facing each other, fangs out, their tongues twisting together – a replica of the Vypers motif.

  I’d asked him to show me some identification so I knew that I was serving the order to the registered owner of the property. He’d smiled at me with snide amusement as he slowly reached to his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and handed over his driver’s licence. Russell Fontaine, aged forty-two, resident of a very nice suburb in the city. I’d returned his licence without comment, but had run a check on him at the next opportunity – a couple of minor drug offences, some speeding fines, nothing serious.

  He’d suggested that I call him Rusty and promised me promptly that he’d get his ‘bitch’ to mow the grass that very afternoon, indicating a glazed-eyed young girl lolling drunkenly on a deckchair. She had been barely eighteen, if even that, dressed in next to nothing. Huge, unattractive hickeys had adorned her pale neck, shoulders and thighs. She’d had waist-length black hair that was greasy and matted and bad skin covered up with too much makeup. I was pretty sure that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She hadn’t looked sober or smart enough to operate machinery, even a mower, and I’d coldly said as much to Rusty’s enormous delight.

  I hadn’t shared in his laughter. “Is she okay? She doesn’t look too good.”

  “She’s hungover, isn’t she? The dumb whore can’t party as hard as she thinks she can. She’ll be right by this evening though and ready for some action again, won’t she, lads?”

  They had all laughed disagreeably at that cryptic comment. Feeling sick to my stomach, I had ignored them, and despite my misgivings at putting myself within striking distance, I’d invited myself up the stairs to the verandah. I’d edged past the men over to where the young girl had been lying on the deckchair on her back, her head turned away from us all. As I went closer, I heard her humming a soothing melody to herself.

  “You okay, sweetheart? I’m Officer Tess from the local police. Are you all right here with these men? Do you need any help?” I’d asked, concerned.

  In slow motion, she’d rolled her eyes to me and I’d almost recoiled from their soulless black
depths. Whatever this young girl had been through, it had scarred her irrevocably. She had been a damaged person. But then she had smiled and she suddenly became beautiful.

  “You look like an angel with the sun behind you,” she’d said to me dreamily. “You’re so lovely.”

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” I’d repeated. “What’s your name?”

  “Why would I want to leave, Angel? These men are my friends,” was all she’d said to me before turning her head to the side again, resuming her humming.

  I’d persisted. “Sweetheart, if you want, you can leave with me right now and I’ll take you away from here. My police car’s out the front. I’ll take you somewhere safe, without these men around.”

  With languid irritation, as if resentful of being disturbed from her meditative humming, she’d turned to me again. “They’ll look after me. They promised. I don’t need you now, Angel. Come back another time.”

  And I hadn’t been able to coax another word from her or even catch her attention again. As a final statement, she’d stood up, stretched and yawned, pulling down her micro-mini so that it covered her bare butt again, before sauntering back inside the house, all skinny legs and arms. She’d copped a few stinging slaps on her bum and thighs from the laughing men as she did, leaving ugly red marks behind on her pale skin. She didn’t even flinch or turn back.

  With an approving glance towards her, Rusty had placed an ungentle hand on my back and almost pushed me down the stairs.

  “I think our Lucy said it all with her actions. You’re a very suspicious person, Officer.”

  “I usually have good reasons to be, sir,” I’d said, shrugging off his hand impatiently. I hated it when people I didn’t know touched me. “Especially of men who try to rush me from their homes when I start asking inconvenient questions.”

  “I think we’ve answered all your questions, pretty police lady, except the one that you’re too shy to ask.” He had smirked back at all his mates and winked at them. “So I’ll just tell you bluntly.” He’d patted his crotch area twice. “I’m eighteen centimetres of hot loving. It’s not as big as the other guys, but it knows what it’s doing, I guarantee.”