Blood Feud (40 page)

“I’ll do what I want.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I want to be alone.”

I jogged off, but had barely run one hundred metres before the patrol car crept up beside me, keeping pace with me. I stopped. It stopped. He rolled down the window.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

“Sticking with you like I’ve been told.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I don’t really care what you want.”

“You’re such a pain in the arse.”

“God, look who’s talking.”

Ignoring him, I continued my jog, shadowed by the patrol car the entire way, raising the eyebrows of everyone we came across. Back home, I locked him out again, fed my girls, showered, ate breakfast and dressed in my uniform, taking my time about all of it. I also packed more clothes to take back to his house.

He waited impatiently in the patrol car for me, strumming his fingers on the dashboard. We drove to the station.

“Why were you there last night anyway?”

“I received an urgent call about gunshots coming from your house, so I ran every red light in town to get there as soon as I could.” My smile at that joke was small and reluctant. “First thing I noticed was Jake standing on the veranda looking puzzled and his ute missing. I didn’t even stop at your house but kept driving knowing that I would find you up to something that could get us both fired.”

“I suppose you’re waiting for me to apologise?”

“We both know I’ll grow old and die before that will ever happen. But pulling a stunt like that not long after the Super warned you isn’t smart behaviour, Tess.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for anything. I’m really pissed off with you.”

“I’m really pissed off with you.”

“What did I do?”

“Picked a fight with my boyfriend.”

He snorted. “That wasn’t a fight. That was merely a disagreement. It was over in a blink.”

“A disagreement with fists.”

“It happens,” he shrugged. “Emotions were running high.”

“Brainless testosterone was running high, you mean. I suppose you think it makes you look macho.”

“No. I’m ashamed of myself actually. It’s not the way I prefer to settle differences of opinion.”

“Well, I can’t stay pissed off with you if you’re going to be all reasonable like that.”

“I, on the other hand, will never stop being pissed off at you for what you did last night. I’ve been given this thankless task of trying to keep you safe and you pull a stunt like that. It was incredibly stupid and dangerous, not to mention you went off on your own when I distinctly remember telling you . . .”

He carried on in the same vein for another couple of minutes, but I switched off.

“I could have caught him if you hadn’t stopped me. I know I could have,” I said when he took a breath and pulled into the station carpark.

He sighed in frustration. “Did you listen to anything I just said?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Tess,” he said under his breath. He turned off the engine and we sat in the car in silence. He faced me. “Look, I understand how much you want to recapture Red Bycraft and how important it is to you. But it’s important to me to keep you safe and alive, no matter that you don’t seem to care much about that yourself sometimes.”

I experienced an unusual sensation of defiant misery as I stared at him.

“You could help me by at least not actively seeking out trouble.”

“I’m not actively seeking it. Things just happen sometimes.”

“All the time,” he muttered as opened his door. He abandoned me to go for his own breakfast and shower.

I fired up my computer and spent a while writing up a report about Phoebe and adding an addendum to my report on Young Kenny. I rang the Greville detectives and tried to persuade Gil that there was a link between the graffiti in Miss G’s bedroom and the experiences of Young Kenny and Phoebe.

He tutted with a patronising chuckle. “Oh, that town of yours. Full of eccentrics.”

“This guy’s not an eccentric. He’s dangerous – probably a murderer.”

He laughed indulgently. “What an imagination you have, Tessie. You just leave the investigation to us and concentrate on doing what you do so well – looking pretty.”

Ugh! He probably thought that was a compliment.

“Have you at least logged what I’ve told you?”

“Typing it into the system as we speak.” I couldn’t hear any keyboard tapping at his end. “Now don’t you worry your pretty little head about it any further. We’ll look into it.”

When we finished speaking, I slammed the receiver down in frustration. “Numbnut!”

The counter bell rang. An elderly man I didn’t know too well waited patiently. He lived in one of the town’s furthest outlying properties and wasn’t a sociable man by nature. I was on nodding acquaintance with him, and Dad, who knew everybody well, had barely held a half-dozen conversations with him his entire life.

“Mr Krysztofiak,” I greeted, wondering what could be important enough to have brought him into town and into the station.

“Officer Tess,” he acknowledged in a slow, gravelly voice that didn’t sound as if he used it very often. He approached the counter, a grimace of pain creasing his face as he moved. He was paler than the last time I’d seen him and appeared thinner, older and infinitely more tired.

“Are you okay? Why don’t you take a seat on the bench and we can chat there instead of making you stand at the counter.”

Gratefully, he lowered himself down onto the bench with evident pain.

“Do you want a glass of water or a cup of tea?” I asked, joining him on the bench.

“No, no. Don’t go to any trouble. I’ve been in hospital for the last fortnight having an operation and I just arrived home today. I’m a little sore still. I should be in bed resting, but I really needed to talk to you.”

“You could have rung and we would have been happy to come to your place,” I scolded mildly.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss over something that might be nothing.”

“Well, why don’t I hear you out and then we’ll decide if it’s something or not?”

“It’s my great-nephew, Dylan. Dylan Krysztofiak. He’s twenty-two. He’s been living with me for about six months now.”

“I didn’t know you had a relative living with you.” I didn’t know he had a relative.

“He doesn’t come into town.” He took a deep breath. “Dylan’s a good person, but he has some problems.”

“Problems?”

“Yes. He’s a clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He was committed to a facility for a while after an . . . episode. But fortunately the doctors were able to diagnose him and find the right antipsychotic medication for him. So he was released back into the community six months ago and soon afterwards came to live with me. The family felt it best that he be given a chance in a quiet location to settle and get his life into order.” He stared at me earnestly. “I want you to understand that he’s basically a good person.”

I nodded and pulled out my notepad, jotting down a few notes.

“When he’s on his medication, he’s able to live a quiet and useful life helping me around the property. I haven’t had any cause to regret offering him a home. If you met him you would think him socially awkward and shy, but certainly not a dribbling lunatic as some might like to think if they knew of his illness. That’s one of the reasons he’s so shy. Unfortunately, mental illness often comes with a public stigma.”

He leaned forward with great intentness until a stab of pain made him wince.

“You have to understand, Officer Tess, that he has an illness. It’s like diabetes or dementia, but his illness is a mental illness, not a physical one. It’s not something he’s brought on himself or something he can control by himself.”

“I understand, Mr Krysztofiak.”

“I didn’t like leaving him alone when I went into hospital, but he assured me he could cope and would remember to take his medication. Lots of diagnosed schizophrenics live independent lives in the community. He’s been conscientious about taking his medication for the entire time he’s lived with me so there was no reason to think he wouldn’t continue to be so in my absence.”

I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. “But?”

“But as I said, I arrived home from hospital only today. The first thing I noticed was that Dylan was nowhere to be found, which was unusual but not unheard of. He’d taken to tramping around the countryside a lot by himself, exploring, always excited when he came home to tell me of a new track he’d discovered. It was a good hobby for him. It kept him busy and healthy. But the second thing I noticed was the cigarette butts everywhere and the stink of cigarette smoke throughout the house.”

I stopped writing. “Is that significant?”

“Yes. He stopped smoking when he started his medication. You may not know, but studies have shown that schizophrenics are two or three times more likely to smoke than the average population and they often smoke quite heavily. So it was definitely a warning sign to me to find the house littered with butts.”

I scribbled on my pad and looked up again when I’d finished.

“Of course I then checked his medication. It remains at almost the same level as when I left. And I keep a very close eye on it to make sure he’s taking it.”

“Almost?”

“I’d say at a guess he continued to take it for no more than another couple of days after I left and then he stopped.”

“What would be the consequences of a paranoid schizophrenic going without medication for almost a fortnight?”

His eyes held a mix of apprehension and sorrow. “Depends, Officer Tess. He might be fine. But if he has a violent psychotic episode, then the consequences could be dire, both for him and for others. The reason he was institutionalised was because he attacked his mother, my niece-in-law. He claimed an angel promised him that if he destroyed his mother, he would be freed from the disturbing hallucinations that tormented him throughout his later teenage years. I shouldn’t just say he claimed it, he actually wrote about it. Over and over. Notepads full of meaningless garbage phrases that made no sense to anyone except him in his delusional state.”

“Oh, my God,” I said without thinking, clasping a hand to my mouth.

“What? What is it, Officer Tess? Oh God, has something happened?” His eyes grew huge with anxiety. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Please tell me Dylan is safe. He’s a good person, Officer Tess. This illness tortures him. He’s a good person, please believe me.”

He paled so much I thought he was about to faint. I raced to the kitchenette to fetch him a glass of cold water. He spilled as much as he gulped, his hands trembling so much.

“Here,” he said, his shaking hands struggling to pull a photo from his pocket. It was a small snap of an unsmiling young man with longish hair and haunted eyes. “This is the latest picture I have of Dylan.”

The Sarge walked through the front door and stopped, eyeing us off. “Everything all right here?”

“No,” I said, looking down at the picture. “I think we’ve finally identified our mystery man.”

Chapter 27

I left it to the Sarge to bring Mr Krysztofiak up-to-date with happenings in the town since his departure. The elderly man’s grief and regret at the death of Miss G were genuine and heartfelt. He didn’t need to say it, but his feelings of guilt were palpable as he confirmed that the phrases left on the bedroom wall were entirely consistent with the type of things Dylan had written before.

“It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have left him unsupervised,” he reproached himself, wiping away the tears that pooled in the crepey skin beneath his eyes. I handed him a couple of tissues, almost needing some myself. His honest affection, and now sorrow, for his great-nephew shone through in every word he spoke.

“Mr Krysztofiak, does Dylan have any bush skills?” asked the Sarge gently.

“As I told Officer Tess, he’s very fond of tramping around the bush and became quite interested in bush survival skills. He spent a lot of time on the internet researching and then practising what he could in the backyard in his spare time.”

“So he would be able to live rough for a longish period of time?”

“Yes, I believe so. Of course he won’t be taking care of himself. He’s probably not bathing or eating or sleeping regularly. He has a bit of a thing about his teeth though, so he’ll be trying to keep up his dental hygiene as much as he can.” His frightened eyes beseeched us each in turn. “What’s going to happen to him? You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

“No,” soothed the Sarge. “We’re going to report this to the detective team in Big Town for their decision. I won’t lie to you – it’s a difficult scenario. We have to apprehend Dylan for the community’s safety and his own well-being. But he could be anywhere and there’s a lot of terrain to cover around here. I just don’t know what Superintendent Midden will decide to do.”

“He can’t go to jail. He wouldn’t cope in jail. It’s not the right place for him, no matter what he’s done. He needs help, not incarceration.”

“I doubt he’d be sent to jail. I think he’d more likely be found mentally unfit to even stand trial.” Mr Krysztofiak nodded sadly. “He’ll probably end up in mandatory detention at a secure mental health facility where he can get the care he needs.”