by JD Nixon
“I don’t know what Jake said to you, but I’m sorry if he offended you. He’s very protective of me.”
“So are most people who know you, Tess. Including me,” he replied evenly, shooting me a loaded glance that I couldn’t meet.
I sighed and stared at my boots. “I know, and I appreciate everybody’s kindness, please believe me. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful in any way, because I’m not.”
He sighed as well. “I know. Come on, let’s go. I’ve cancelled everything and Jake told me that he’s organising a working bee to fix your house tomorrow. I’d like to help, but I don’t think I’m going to get an invitation.”
“I’m inviting you, if that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“Thank you. From Dad and me.”
“Got to keep my partner happy.”
“It’s not such a hard thing to do really. Somewhere safe to sleep and a Tim Tam now and then keeps me happy.”
“It sounds so easy, but it’s proving incredibly difficult to deliver for you,” he commented dryly. “The safe sleep bit, not the Tim Tams, I mean. The Tim Tams are easy.”
“We’re running dangerously low at the station though,” I hinted gently. “Less than ten packets remaining.”
His smile was tight. “I’ll get right on to it.”
Reluctantly leaving my house a complete disaster zone, knowing there was nothing I could do, I spent the drive to the station trying to piece my phone together again. It beeped with incoming text messages and rang, but frustratingly I couldn’t respond in any way, even though I guessed that some of them were from Jake. I came to the final and much unwelcome conclusion that I would have to buy a new phone. What with? I asked myself. How the hell would I know? I answered myself with a lot of attitude. My tassels were in grave danger of being twirled in Big Town next Saturday night in return for some cash if I didn’t think of something fast.
Back at the station, the Sarge bolted up to his house to grab some large rubbish bags. We spent the next sodden half-hour blocking all the windows of the Land Rover with them in a vain attempt to keep any further rain out of the already drenched interior. I swept as much glass up from inside the vehicle as I could in the terrible conditions. Looking back at it from the refuge of the station verandah, it was a poor patch job, but it would have to do until I could arrange for someone to fix the windows for me.
Still damp, I sat at my desk and watched with amusement by the Sarge, performed an emergency operation on my phone by sticky-taping the two halves together. Surprisingly, it seemed to do the trick and I was able to use it, although the reception wasn’t great. It rang almost immediately and I answered quickly after checking the caller’s identity.
“Jakey, I’m sorry –” I started.
Simultaneously he said, “I’m really sorry, babe.”
“I didn’t mean to be so snappy.”
“I know. It’s a hard time for you at the moment. You’re stressed. I thought you weren’t answering me on purpose.”
“No, my phone broke.”
“How?”
“I threw it at the wall,” I confessed sheepishly.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Tessie . . .”
“I’ve fixed it with sticky-tape.”
“That’s not something I can help you fix more permanently, baby doll. I don’t have those kind of skills. But I wanted to let you know that Harry and Two Dogs will come over to your place this afternoon to board up your windows.”
Harry and Two Dogs were Jake’s best friends, and two nice guys who I liked a lot. Harry was tall, gangly and freckly and worked with Jake at the prison. Two Dogs, nicknamed for owning pet identical twin dogs when he was a kid, was dark, tubby and balding and worked in payroll for the Council in Big Town. They openly admitted that they loved hanging with Jake because he attracted a lot of female attention, and some of it even rubbed off on them on occasion. In return, they gave him a level of loyalty and brotherly camaraderie that he’d never experienced from his own brothers. He was one of the only Bycrafts who had friends outside his family circle.
“That’s so sweet of them.”
“Harry’s cousin’s boyfriend runs a glass repair business in Big Town and he’s promised to give you a good deal on replacing the windows in the house and the Land Rover.”
“How good a deal?” I asked, suspicious.
“Half-price. And you can pay him off in installments, if that’s easier. He’ll try to reschedule to get to your place as soon as possible, although it probably won’t be for another couple of days.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. “Oh, Jakey, that’s so lovely, and I don’t even know him.”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe sometimes, Tessie, but there are a lot of good people in the world who like to help others.”
“I know that, because you’re one of them.”
His turn to be silent. “I do what I can,” he said quietly. “Especially to try to make up for . . . well, everything that my family does to you.”
His simple words touched me deeply and I felt terrible that I’d been so sharp with him earlier. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Take care. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Although he was pretending not to, the Sarge had been listening in on my phone conversation. I couldn’t complain though, because his desk was situated adjacent to mine so it was pretty hard for him to work and avoid eavesdropping. I should have stepped out to the back verandah if I’d really needed privacy.
“Everything lovey-dovey with the boyfriend again?” he asked, a hint of something unpleasant in his voice.
“Yes,” I said, regarding him steadily, thinking that it wasn’t any of his business and wondering what his problem was. He busied himself at his desk and didn’t make eye contact until everything on his desk was tidied up and neatly aligned. Only then did he look up, but his expression was business-like and bland.
“Good. Let’s get cracking on investigating that girl then.”
I connected to the state’s police database and punched in ‘Kylie Francine Petroff’. Nothing came up. Then I tried the driver’s licence database and it coughed up the same information that we’d memorised earlier and the same startled animal-in-the-headlights photo of little Kylie as well.
“So that licence is real?” queried the Sarge, nose crinkled with doubt.
“That’s what the system’s telling us. It’s hard to believe though, isn’t it? But maybe she’s just one of those lucky women who look younger than they are?” After everything I’d been through over the past few days, I felt a hundred years old and probably looked twice that. I tried not to sound too resentful.
He wisely ignored my self-pity. “There’s no way that she’s eighteen. But how did she get a proper licence? You can’t just waltz up to the Department of Transport and demand that they hand one over without evidence that you’re eighteen. Something weird’s going on.”
I shrugged. “So, she has a fake birth certificate or something similar?”
“Let’s see what you need to get a licence these days. It’s been a while since I went for mine.” He tapped on his keyboard and peered at the screen. “Look at that. You need at least three different forms of ID, including something with your current address and something with your signature on it, like a credit card. She has a lot of fake ID to get a real licence. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble on her behalf. But why?”
“It can only be because she’s involved in something illegal.”
“I agree, but what can we do? She has official ID showing she’s eighteen. And even if she’s not, all we’ve seen is that she’s living with some bikies, dressed like a street walker, but so what? Half the fifteen-year-olds I see these days are dressed like street walkers. And we saw an older man kissing her. Again, so what? One of my uncles used to try to kiss all of my young female cousins at family gatherings when he’d had a drink or two, but he was otherwise harmless. We don’t have any evidence of a
nything wrong, just a sixth sense of something not being right.”
I frowned at him. “I’m surprised at you saying that, Sarge. You’re not giving up on a young girl who could be in some trouble, are you?”
“Of course I’m not! But we just can’t barge in there, demanding answers to questions we haven’t even thought of yet. We need to think about it some more.” He leaned back in his chair. “So throw me some questions, Miss Marple.”
I thought for a moment, staring out the window at the downpour, brow furrowed, lips pursed. The rain was like a sheet of water. I couldn’t see two metres outside. “What was really on the films they were burning? Kiddie birthday parties, puh-leeze! I don’t think so. I’ve never even seen a peep of a kid living with the bikies the whole time I’ve been back here in town. The retreat seems strictly an adults-only area.”
“Porn?”
“That was my first thought.”
“Underage porn?”
“That was my second thought.”
“How old was the last girlfriend you saw?”
“If she was legal, then she was barely legal. She was pretty wasted the day I saw her, with huge hickeys all over her body. I didn’t ask her for ID. I was by myself and the bikies were being disgustingly rude towards me. I just wanted to serve the order and get the hell out of there. But I wished I’d asked her for ID, I really do.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You weren’t to know.”
“One thing though – Rusty, the leader, called her his ‘bitch’, so I’m guessing he had the same relationship with her that he now has with Kylie. But is he a pimp or is he a pervert?”
“God, what a choice. Maybe he’s both? They’re not mutually exclusive.” He stood up and prowled around the room. “So, just say the Vypers are making porn movies at their retreat, using an underage girl as their main attraction. They’re probably shooting it digitally and uploading it to a website. Perhaps one of those websites that people pay to view that kind of porn? Or maybe they’re making it to order?”
“It wouldn’t be for pedophiles though, would it? The age of consent in this state is sixteen, so there’s no thrill for a pedo in watching porn with a sixteen-year-old surely? Wouldn’t they prefer noticeably younger children?”
“Don’t ask me!” he said, stopping in front of me and taking his seat again. “I wouldn’t know what they like.”
I smiled. “Sorry, Sarge. Just thinking out loud.” I went over to the kitchenette and filled up the kettle before switching it on, grabbing two clean mugs and plonking two teabags into them without even asking him if he wanted one. “Loads of sixteen-year-olds are having sex these days anyway, so it’s probably no big deal if she is sleeping with that bikie, no matter how personally repugnant most people might find it.”
“That’s true. I was sixteen when I lost my virginity,” he confessed, smiling self-consciously at the memory. “Emily Groves. Perky, brunette, and as cute as hell. Her family owned the beach house next to ours and I hung around with her and her brothers and sisters a lot. She was eighteen at the time and I was madly in love with her. After that first time, I swaggered around like I was a man who knew everything. Our ‘relationship’ lasted for a whole three weeks, then she went off to university and I never saw her or heard from her again. She didn’t even give me a second thought. The rest of my summer was miserable.”
“Oh well, there you go, my point proven,” I said, flustered, turning back to fuss with the cups of tea.
“How old were you on your first time?” he asked casually, leaning back in his chair, one boot on his edge of his desk.
It took me a while to respond and then only reluctantly. “Old enough that you’d expect me to choose more wisely.”
He sat up with interest. “You didn’t?”
I poured the boiling water and jiggled the teabags vigorously. “I didn’t.”
“Tell me about it.”
I turned around to face him again, bright expression forced on to my face. “Not a chance. Here’s some tea for you. We need to think about Kylie again.”
He frowned. “This is not the end of our conversation.”
“Yes, it is,” I replied firmly, sitting down, sipping my tea and looking out the window. The gloom outside was rapidly darkening as the evening closed in. “It’s almost time to go home and I don’t feel as though we’ve done anything useful today.”
“What can you remember about the first girl you saw?”
I sipped my tea again. Slowly, over the last few hours, my wounds had started aching again until they were beginning to distract me from thinking. If I was going to carry on, I needed painkillers. I pulled a face and went to my bag to rummage around for them.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned.
“Pain,” I said briefly, popping a few pills from the blister pack and washing them down with some tap water.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Tess. I’m being selfish. You must be worn out. It’s been a hell of a day for you.”
I twisted my mouth in a poor imitation of a smile. “No worse than Friday, Saturday or Sunday so far.”
“Poor Tessie,” he said sympathetically, but I wasn’t feeling receptive to kindness at the moment.
“Don’t pity me, Sarge. You must have noticed that I bring half my problems on myself. I’m my own worst enemy.”
He thought about what I’d said seriously before responding. “I guess we could argue that if you hadn’t smashed Lola Bycraft’s windows, yours wouldn’t have been smashed in return,” he acknowledged. “But then, we are talking about the Bycrafts, and knowing them it’s reasonable to think that they would have smashed your windows in for some other reason. For example, you giving one of them a speeding ticket or arresting them for shoplifting. And we have to remember that, although your response may have been over-the-top, Red Bycraft started the whole situation, firstly by stalking and attacking you and then by killing your pets. And also, if you hadn’t gone to Lola Bycraft’s house, we wouldn’t have recaptured Red. I don’t think you’re your own worst enemy, Tess. I actually think that you are your very best chance of surviving this vendetta. You’re smart, you’re skilled, you’re gutsy, and you’re a die-hard. You’ll never lie down and give up.”
He made me smile, despite myself. “Sarge, you’re just saying that to make me feel better about everything.”
“No, I’m not. I mean it. I’m on Team Tess, remember?”
I met his eyes for what seemed like a very long time. “I know. And thank you for that.” The atmosphere was getting a little too charged for my liking, so I switched my voice to deliberately hearty. “I’ve had enough of playing cops and robbers today. Let’s go to your place and you can make me dinner.”
“That sounds comfortably domestic,” he said lightly, making moves to shut down his computer.
“No matter how unpalatable it turns out to be.”
“Uh-oh. That sounds uncomfortably like a domestic.”
I giggled and wondered, not for the first time, why he never showed this more playful side of himself to anybody else? All the cops in Big Town thought he was serious, sober and deadly dull, and not-so-secretly commiserated with me for having to work so closely with such a boring partner as him. They laughed me off as predictably loyal whenever I tried to convince them that he actually did have a great sense of humour.
With the euphoric numb bliss gradually enveloping me from the strong painkillers, I felt happier than I had for ages.
“I love these painkillers. I’m beginning to think that I should take one every day. I’m going to have a glass of wine and a nice dinner and a hot shower and maybe watch some mindless television before falling into a warm, comfy, dry bed. And I’m going to sleep for eight hours straight and not think about anything else all night.” I stopped in my tracks as something struck me. “Wow!”
“What?”
“That sounded so . . . normal. Just like something an ordinary woman would do after a busy day at work. Like something I would choose to
do on a work night in a perfect world. Or a parallel universe. A place where I’d never heard of the Bycrafts.”
“Then let’s go crazy and be absolutely normal tonight,” he said, smiling. I spent the next few minutes locking up the station while he went out to the patrol car for my bag. We made a mad sprint up the cement path from the station to his house.
Luckily for once, nobody in Little Town needed either of its police officers that evening. He worked tirelessly to give me everything I’d asked for – a gloriously hot shower; delicious dinner, despite my cruel and disparaging criticisms (although I had seconds and barely stopped myself from licking my plate clean afterwards, which he noticed with a sly smile); and a glass of a very nice red wine that he selected. I took an affectionate phone call from Jake. I reluctantly confessed that I was staying at the Sarge’s place, dreading his response, only to find out that he already knew because the Sarge had told him. I suspected that piece of information had contributed to their heated words earlier in the day.
After dinner, dressed in the cute Hello Kitty flannelette pyjamas that Marianne had bought me back from a trip to Japan a few months ago, I sprawled on the Sarge’s chic but comfortable leather lounge. Together we watched an unbelievably boring show that the Sarge chose. It was the fifth in a series about the engineering feats of Victorian-era Britain and this episode featured Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary sewer system in London. Snug in my warm pyjamas with my head buzzing from the wine and arm soreness dulled by the painkillers, I struggled gamely to stay awake. My eyelids drooped dangerously while the monotone-voiced host droned on and on about the construction of a pumping station at Deptford.
I drowsily woke up when he moved a while later, only to discover that I’d since turned into a koala hugging a gum tree. I was pushed up against him, my head nestled into his neck, one arm loosely across his chest and one knee bent up and resting on his legs. He had one arm around my shoulders and the other hand gently on my knee, still watching TV and looking pretty relaxed and happy with life.
When I realised what I was doing, I sat upright like I’d been jabbed with a cattle prod.
