Blood Feud (22 page)

The Super didn’t disappoint. “Of course we checked the fucking ceiling. There’s no manhole.”

“Well, then why are there all those oily handprints concentrated in that one spot,” I persisted, cricking my neck to peer up. “Maybe it’s a false ceiling or something? This is the Bycrafts we’re talking about here. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had escape routes in their own house, because you can’t tell me those prints came from anyone cleaning up there.”

They both froze and looked upwards again.

“
Someone find a fucking stepladder now!
” the Super shouted.

I helped in the search and it wasn’t long before we found a rickety stepladder hastily stowed in the bathroom. To me, that indicated it had been used recently because the bathroom was small and the ladder took up precious space. It wobbled dangerously as soon as the bulky uniform put his weight on it.

“Careful,” I warned as he climbed the treads. The other uniform and I held the base of the ladder to steady it.

He pressed on the ceiling around the vicinity of the prints until part of it opened upwards. It was such a cleverly concealed manhole that it seemed almost impossible to believe a Bycraft could have built it. There was only one member of the family who had any sort of carpentry skills, and that was Jake. The uneasy thought that my Jake may have been responsible for constructing a concealed manhole to assist his siblings and cousins evade capture made me start wondering how many secrets he kept from me. I knew how many I kept from him.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden rumpus in the ceiling.

“Get your arse up in there now!” the Super shouted at the uniform, and with some difficulty he hoisted himself up into the ceiling space, the other uniform and I boosting him.

He disappeared from view and we heard him shouting something indistinct several times, before thumping across the ceiling beams. He thumped his way back and his legs reappeared dangling wildly for the stepladder. The other uniform and I grabbed his legs and guided them to the stepladder which promptly collapsed underneath him, sending him sprawling and clutching wildly for support. The first thing he grabbed was the front of the Super’s uniform, knocking her over and landing on top. He ended up straddling her, his hands clasping her boobs. It was hard to tell who was more shocked.

The dog handler and I swapped glances, but only for a second as his smile widened into a huge grin and his shoulders started shaking. I couldn’t risk someone setting me off, but the situation was unbeatably funny. My eyes watered with the effort of not screaming with laughter at the sight.

“
What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Constable?
” the Super screeched, flailing beneath him. The poor man was so frozen with terror he couldn’t remove his hands from her love-bubbles no matter how many desperate instructions his brain sent him. Feeling sorry for him, the dog handler and I hooked our arms underneath his armpits and dragged him off the Super, his hands still clenched in a claw formation.
He may need some physio to help
, I thought with sympathy. Not to mention extensive therapy. And probably a new career.

Leaving the young cop to his fellow officer, I hauled the Super to her feet.

“He escaped out the roof,” the traumatised officer managed to splutter. “He’s gone out the back.”

We didn’t need telling twice and the dog handler and I sprinted to the back door. Red Bycraft dangled from the gutter, landing with a sickening thump on top of Lok, who’d unwisely decided to wait directly underneath. He’d probably thought he’d capture Red the minute he landed and consequently would be feted as a hero. Instead, he was crushed to the ground, Red leaping up, using Lok’s chest as a springboard. Lok exhaled a loud “
Oof!
” and curled into the foetal position. Red sprinted off.

Torn between Lok and Red, I chose Red. I hotfooted it after him as he ran into the bushy scrub located behind his mother’s house. The hound had her nose and followed him eagerly into the bush, me snapping at their heels. I wanted Red so badly I could taste it.

Red had a plan for where he was going, running in a sure line, desperation making him faster. Although I knew this town back to front, for obvious reasons I’d usually avoided hanging around the Bycraft houses when I’d been younger. So I was less familiar with this rugged piece of uninhabitable scrub than I ought to have been as a local girl and one of the town’s cops. Lola’s house had always been a safe-haven for the Bycrafts, not just because she couldn’t give a rat’s arse about who was sheltering in her house or what they’d done to need sheltering, but because of the surrounding scrub.

The Bycrafts had been escaping into that scrub since the town began. They had tracks, hiding spots, cubby holes and tree retreats. There was no shortage of places Red could be heading to and he was a master at covering his tracks.

“I think he’s aiming to reach the creek,” I shouted, my lungs bursting. A small meandering creek ran through the bush not far from where we were. It was currently torrential after the unusually wet winter we’d just had. Red would use the water to obliterate the trail of his scent.

The dog handler didn’t even respond because he was labouring so hard with his breathing. He wasn’t a young man anymore and his dog, Blossom, a beautiful dual-trained general purpose/cadaver dog, was experienced, but also nearing the end of her working life.

Just to make things even more interesting, every male Bycraft in the area ran from the house into the bush as well. Blossom became confused when they crisscrossed our path, often right in front of us, blowing whistles and banging saucepan lids together. Rick and Mark took it a step further, wearing some of Red’s used clothes, including his shoes. I yelled at them to piss off and brandished my gun at them, but it was no use. They swarmed us and the poor dog became stressed and snappy. So did we, spinning around every time one of us caught a glimpse of golden hair through the trees.

The Super called the other team to join us and though they were here in no time, only being a street away, it didn’t make any difference. The two dogs ran in circles, confused by the multiple trails Rick and Mark made with Red’s clothes. Blossom picked up one strong trail and we were momentarily excited as she led us to a thick clump of bushes. But instead of Red, it was Rick who stumbled out, a huge shit-eating grin on his face, his hands on his head as instructed.

Frustrated and strained, and well aware the whole operation risked turning into a farce, we laid into each other, arguing about what we should do next and bitching about the orders given. One disagreement between the Super and Blossom’s handler almost ended in a fist fight when she accused him of not pushing the dog hard enough. It took Bill Wynne and a constable to separate them, Blossom growling and barking protectively at the Super the whole time.

My phone rang and I fished it out of my cargo pants, snapping a very hot, bothered and fed-up “hello” into it.

“Tessie, would you care to explain why Maguire left your house with you only half-dressed yesterday?”

I sighed quietly, cursing Denny Bycraft and his spying. He never failed to keep Jake informed of my activities. “Jakey –”

“What the hell were you doing together that he had to take off his clothes?”

My temper rose. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Jacob Bycraft! If you must know, I had an intruder who nearly broke the Sarge’s nose. He had blood all over his t-shirt so I offered to clean it. That’s all there is to the story.”

“Why did you stay at his house last night? You stay there too much.”

“I stayed with him because your repulsive brother is on the loose and there are
some
people in this town who care whether or not I’m kept safe from him. And if you don’t mind, now is
not
the time to bring up Red. I’m working.” He didn’t need to know I was working on bringing his brother back into custody again.

He hung up on me, but on catching the Super’s frown, I hastily shoved my phone back in my pocket. It was utter chaos in the bush and a king-sized headache pressed in on my temples. It wasn’t up to me to call off the search, but I knew we’d lost him.

From my pocket, my phone beeped, signalling an incoming text. Expecting it to be Jake, I viewed the screen immediately, now feeling rather combative. He had no reason to be questioning the nature of my relationship with the Sarge all the time. I’d said all I wanted to say on the matter to Jake, but I’d never turn down the chance to say it to him all over again. I took a second to stand still to read it.

The text read:
thank yr mates tessie! best laugh ive had in yrs. love red xx

I showed Red’s message to the Super, but it didn’t seem to sway her into discontinuing the search. If I knew the Bycrafts – and nobody knew them better – someone would have driven to the end of the escape route to pick up Red. They were probably halfway to the border by now. But instead of setting us free, the Super stubbornly insisted we needed to redouble our efforts and it was a lot of hot, cranky and tired cops who scoured the bush again, going over the same trails we’d already gone over. The fact that the Bycrafts had given up their efforts to disorient and distract us, and were drifting away back to Lola’s house laughing, only confirmed my opinion that Red had already escaped safely.

After another thirty minutes of fruitless searching, tired, dusty, over-heated and thirsty, the Super called off the search, grudgingly admitting defeat.

Chapter 15

Later back at the station, we debriefed – or rather we listened to the Super tearing strips off us all. Afterwards, the Big Town troops dispiritedly drove off to return home without Red, all the men probably worried about the future of their precious dangly bits. I stood at the sink and greedily polished off another glass of tap water.

“For such an uncivilised rabble, the Bycrafts are well-organised and good at planning,” commented the Sarge, leaning back in his seat, his boots on his desk. I felt hot, sweaty and incredibly dishevelled. He, on the other hand, looked calm, relaxed and remarkably untouched by our exertions.

I washed out the glass, left it in the rack to drip dry and splashed my face with the tepid tap water. “They’ve had generations to perfect their escape routes.”

“They’re good at mobilising on short notice too. It’s quite impressive, if you think about it.”

“God Sarge, sounds like you’re about to recommend we hire them as team-building consultants for the force,” I laughed. “Can you imagine that?”

“How do they communicate with each other so quickly?” he pondered.

“They don’t. They use tribal group-think. They sense when one of them is in trouble and act collectively and instinctively. Anthropologists would wet themselves with excitement over them. They’re like some lost tribe on an undiscovered island.”

“I wish they’d stayed there, undiscovered,” muttered the Sarge, reactivating his computer. “Who’s going to write our report about the events of this morning?”

I hastily scarpered for the back veranda, pulling out my phone. “That would be you. I need to ring Jakey.”

Closing the back door on his scowl, I leaned on the veranda railing and punched in Jake’s number. When he answered, we spent a sweet five minutes apologising to each other. I only gave him the briefest outline of my morning and why I hadn’t been able to talk to him longer. I didn’t normally discuss police business with him, particularly anything relating to his family, which in truth formed the bulk of my work. In any case, he’d already heard most of the story from his relatives and knew that Red had successfully escaped.

And though Jake categorically denied knowing where Red was holed up, I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. It was always sensitive ground for us. I secretly remained convinced that he often knew more about Red than he ever told me, and of course he knew all the Bycraft boltholes. I also believed that he was in frequent contact with Red, even as a fugitive, but we had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that helped us segment my work and his family from our relationship. And I understood why a lot of other cops were suspicious of that.

When I returned, the Sarge was busy typing. He watched me as I settled down at my desk. “The lovebirds reconciled?”

“Yes, thank you,” I replied politely.

“Good, glad to hear,” he said, equally polite, but with an unmistakable sardonic hint in his voice that I ignored.

The next hour flew by, the Sarge and I spending the time tapping on our keyboards, writing up incident reports. I only broke off to make us a cup of tea and answer the phone to two more calls for the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club. I’d grown tired of receiving calls from men desperate to arrange romps with a saucy siren or two and more often than I liked, I was mistaken for one of them. Not today though, both embarrassed callers hanging up as soon as I informed them they’d reached the Mount Big Town police station.

The phone rang again and I answered. “Mount Big Town police station. Senior Constable Fuller speaking.”

“Did you get my text message, Tessie lovely? It was such fun today. Let’s do it again soon.”

“Drop dead, Red,” I replied angrily and hung up on him. The phone immediately rang again. I snatched it up. “I told you to piss off!”

“I
beg
your pardon?” came the outraged response.

“Oops sorry, Mrs Villiers,” I cringed, pulling a
now-I’ve-gone-and-done-it
face at the Sarge. He grinned, enjoying my discomfort. “I thought you were someone else.”