Blood Feud (32 page)

Humming absently to myself, thinking again about my recent evening with Jake, I closed the front door behind me, yelping in fright as I did. A pigeon was pinned to my front door with a knife through its body, fresh blood trailing downwards to pool on our ragged coir welcome mat. I stared at it in horror for a moment, not able to move a muscle, not even breathing. Then I realised that the poor creature was still alive, weakly fluttering its feathers.

“You poor little thing,” I soothed. As carefully as I could, I pulled the knife from the door, cradling the bird in my hands, its blood dripping through my fingers onto my boots. The bird flapped in panic, twisting itself further on the knife.

“Hey, stop that,” I whispered. The poor thing must have been in so much pain and there was nothing I could do for it. I couldn’t pull the knife out because that would surely kill it. The nearest vet was a ninety-minute drive away in Big Town and I didn’t think the bird would last that long. I was going to have to put it out of its misery – it was the only humane thing to do. It was unlikely that this bird would ever recover from its injuries.

Just as I moved to lay it gently on the floorboards while I found a rock, the bird shuddered twice and went limp in my hands. I looked down at it sadly for a moment before laying it on the veranda and wiping my bloody hands on my cargo pants.

It was only then I noticed a note that must have been pinned behind the bird and had fallen to the veranda when I’d pulled the knife out of the door. I picked it up by the corner, the paper smeared with blood.

Tessie lovely

Why must the innocent always die in your place?

Red xx

He’d been here within the last half hour – here at my house – while I was inside changing or when I’d been out the back with my girls. And that could only mean one thing – he’d been following me. Instantly edgy, I spun around scanning my surroundings, hand on my gun. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, a slight breeze whistling through the gum trees, crickets buzzing in the distance. A sole car speeding past only enhanced the quiet isolation around me.

Fury engulfed me and I smacked the weatherboards of my house with an open palm in frustration, leaving my hand stinging.

“
I’m going to hunt you down, Red Bycraft!
” I shouted out, though nobody was listening. “And when I do, we’re going to end this once and for all. That’s my promise to you.”

Chapter 21

I took a picture of the dead bird with the phone the Sarge had lent me and stowed the blood-stained note in the glove box of the patrol car. I scooped up the little carcass and took it around to the back where I buried it under the mango tree, close to where I’d buried my other chickens. After washing my hands and changing into a fresh pair of cargo pants, I drove back to the station, slowly trudging up the front stairs, my mind consumed with thoughts of revenge and hatred.

Inside, I smelt Young Kenny before I saw him. He sat on the wooden bench, his rheumy eyes staring at me reproachfully. An untouched cup of tea and three chocolate biscuits on a plate perched on the bench beside him.

“Morning, Young Kenny.”

As usual he didn’t say anything, but this morning I didn’t even receive his customary nod of acknowledgement. His eyes slid to the tea and biscuits then back to me.

I leaned over to pick them up from the bench. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told him, letting myself through the counter hatch.

The Sarge looked up at my arrival and then down at his watch with a frown. “Oh, so you do plan on actually doing some work today? You took your time at home.”

“I have a reason for that and I’ll tell you in a minute. I just have something to do first.”

I poured the contents of the tea down the sink and gave the cup a quick rinse, flicking on the kettle as I did. I set the Tim Tams aside and pulled out the plain sugared biscuits from the cupboard.

“What are you doing?”

“Young Kenny didn’t like the way you made his tea. And you know he won’t eat Tim Tams. He only likes these biscuits. You didn’t look after him properly.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, turning back to his emails. “We’re not running a cafe. He’s lucky I even remembered him.”

“He just likes it done a certain way.”

“Tough.”

I carried the tea and biscuits out and deposited them on the counter. “There you go, Young Kenny,” I said, receiving a faint nod in response as he shuffled to his feet to retrieve the items.

“I like my tea a certain way too,” hinted the Sarge on my return. “You remember how that is, don’t you?”

“Geez, you’re subtle, Maguire,” I said, detouring over to the kitchenette again.

He smiled briefly. “It’s my special talent. Now, what were you going to tell me?”

I explained about the dead bird and the note. After I brought a mug of tea over each, I showed him the note and the picture I’d taken of the bird.

“We’re going to have to stick together all the time from now on. No more going anywhere by yourself.”

I sighed in exasperation. “That’s not necessary.”

“It’s not just necessary, it’s an order.”

“You always pull rank when it suits you,” I complained.

“That’s kind of the whole perk of being a higher rank. And most of the time it’s the only way I can get you to do things and even then it only works half the time.”

“I can handle Red Bycraft myself.”

“Look, just do what you’re told for once. You’re personally responsible for giving me gray hairs.”

That coaxed a reluctant smile from me. “You don’t have any gray hairs.”

“I will by the end of the year if I keep working with you.” He reread the note. “God, he’s a sick bastard,” he said, lip curled in scorn. “I’ll never understand how you can have anything to do with that family.”

We exchanged a long glance.

“No,” I said coolly, not appreciating his unspoken jibe at Jake. “I guess you never will.”

“No,” he replied, equally cool. “I guess I won’t.”

“Not that it’s any of your business.”

“I suppose not.”

An uncomfortable silence between us stretched for the next hour or so as we both attended to our paperwork, assiduously ignoring each other. During that time, I answered some wrong numbers and recorded the attendance of a couple of our regular reportees. All of the reportees were Bycrafts or people associated with them, and all were on parole or good behaviour bonds. It was not a task that any of us enjoyed.

“I received an update on the Greville investigation earlier this morning,” the Sarge said, breaking the lull.

“Really? Have they made some progress?”

“Nope. None.”

“They should let us be more involved instead of sidelining us. And are they even bothering to investigate our mystery man?”

“Doubt it. They’re currently concentrating on Miss Greville’s financial concerns, presumably because of what she went through earlier this year.”

“And that saves them the bother of actually coming here and doing the hard yards tramping around town, interviewing everyone.”

“There is that as well. But in their defence, I believe they’re doing a lot of that over the phone.”

“So they’ve given up on the idea of Greg Bycraft as the murderer?”

“I think they’d love nothing more than to pin it on a Bycraft. It would make their life easier.”

“I wish they’d take us more seriously about that mystery man,” I grumbled, deleting three email directives from the Deputy Police Commissioner without reading them. Having no other interesting email, I took our empty mugs to the sink and went to the front to collect Young Kenny’s mug and plate.

I actually looked at Young Kenny properly as I did, surprised to see what I’d taken as admonishment for my tardiness and his substandard morning tea was in fact nerves. He shrank himself into the corner and his special tea mug shook slightly as he sipped.

“Are you okay, Young Kenny?” I asked with genuine solicitousness. He slept rough and I worried about him a lot as he had to be in his late seventies or early eighties.

He didn’t respond, keeping his eyes on his tea, but I noticed his hands shook some more.

“Hey, and where’s your coat?” I’d bought him a very expensive coat that he loved and wore everywhere.

He shrank back further into the corner and looked up at me with fearful eyes.

“Did someone take it from you?”

He nodded hesitantly, as if ashamed. I sat down next to him on the bench.

“Did someone threaten you and then take it from you?”

He nodded again.

“One of the Bycrafts?”

He shook his head.

“Was it a man?” A nod. “A stranger?” Nod. “Someone living outdoors too?” Another nod of confirmation.

Lightbulbs went off in my head. “Young Kenny, try really hard to remember what this man looked like. Did he have longish, wild hair and wore jeans with no shoes?”

He started to speak, but as it wasn’t something he did very often, he had to stop to clear his throat leading to a minute-long hacking cough session. I helped him bring the tea to his lips so he could take a sip.

“When did this happen?”

He shrugged. He had little need of time and dates in his world, yet somehow always seemed to know when it was Monday for his usual visit.

“Blood,” he croaked and rubbed his chest and stomach. “All over.”

“The man had blood on him? Was it fresh or dried up?”

“Dried. Had a knife.”

“Did he threaten you with the knife?” Frightened nodding. “Was your coat the only thing he took from you?”

“My food. My blanket.”

What kind of person takes everything from someone
like Young Kenny who has nothing?
I thought in disgust.

“I’m just going to get an incident report form so we have a record of what happened to you. I won’t be long.”

The Sarge glanced up from scowling down at a text on his phone as I returned. “You were having a nice, long gossip out there. You ever going to start working this morning?”

“I
am
working,” I protested, rifling the mess on my desk looking for an incident report form.

“You could start by cleaning up your desk. It looks like a paper bomb went off on it.”

“You’re so damn grumpy today. I’m the one with the hangover, so what’s your problem?”

He sighed and slipped his phone back into his top drawer. “Melissa, what else.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am sometimes.”

Unable to think of a response that wouldn’t intrude into his private life or insult his fiancee, I decided instead to distract him from his personal problems with Young Kenny’s story. Curious, he followed me out to the front room and leaned on the counter while I took Young Kenny through the details again, jotting them down on the form.

Apart from what he’d already told me, we slowly pieced together that the encounter had most likely occurred on Saturday at the primary school, one of his favourite all-weather nighttime hangout joints. Following his usual routine, Young Kenny had settled down for the evening. He’d chosen a meagre dinner of slightly stale bread, some cheese and a pear from his precious store of victuals. Most of his food was donated by kind townsfolk, especially those running food-serving establishments like Abe, Frannie and the couple who owned the Chinese takeaway. Young Kenny always went to sleep at nightfall, so had eaten during the dusky illumination of early evening. According to him, there had still been enough light at that time for him to be confident about his description of his assailant.

He’d been contentedly eating when the man sprang out at him from the side of the building, causing Young Kenny to drop his pear in fright. The man had waved his knife recklessly, yelled things that Young Kenny hadn’t understood and thrust the knife towards the cowering elderly man a number of times. Tears welled up in his eyes as he stumbled inarticulately through his story. My heart breaking for him, I dared to scoot over and slide a reassuring arm around his scrawny shoulders, giving them a small squeeze.

He pulled a disreputable handkerchief from a pocket and blew his nose with loud wetness before continuing his sad story. The man had rummaged through Young Kenny’s belongings, scooping up the blanket and most of his food. Jabbing the knife at Young Kenny again, the man had roughly wrenched the long coat from his body, wrapping everything in the blanket. He’d then run off into the twilight and soon disappeared. Young Kenny had no idea where he went.

And that was all he could tell us.

He shuffled out at lunchtime when we closed the station, something we did most Mondays to allow us time for out-of-office activities such as walking the beat, conducting follow-up visits or manning the speed radar. Young Kenny seemed smaller, frailer, and now afraid of a town he’d freely roamed for decades. I watched him until he left the carpark, wondering if it was time to discuss care needs for him with his niece, his only relative. We’d discussed him casually over the last couple of years and she’d always signalled her willingness for him to move in with her husband and her. Perhaps that time had finally arrived.