Blood Feud (44 page)

“I’m not a kid!” Kieran replied indignantly. “I’m almost seventeen.”

The Sarge threw me a dry glance, which made me defensive. “Hey! I wasn’t there to check IDs. That place is swarming with underagers. The Super ought to raid it one night. Anyway, Kieran did me a favour. He spotted Red Bycraft for me.”

Kieran smiled with quiet pride, his eyes modestly downcast.

The Sarge looked silently from me to Kieran, then back to me again. “I rang the Super. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Good first.”

“She’s not going to dismember us and burn us at the stake in public.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But
only
– and I stress the
only
bit – because we found Bycraft.”

“Because
I
found Bycraft,” piped up Kieran. We both stared at him for a second before resuming our conversation.

“And the bad news?”

“There’re no teams available. Apparently there’s an out-of-control party just north of here and everyone’s assisting at that. There are over five hundred people at the house and now the street’s practically a riot zone – cars vandalised, windows smashed, rocks and bricks thrown, neighbours cowering in fear. The media are crawling all over it so it’s receiving priority treatment.”

“Couldn’t she spare even one or two uniforms for us?” I grumbled. What on earth was more important than Red Bycraft?

“I heard about that party on Facebook,” contributed Kieran. “The parents of the girl throwing it aren’t home this weekend.”

We ignored him. The Sarge put his hand on my arm. “It’s just you and me, Tess. With no weapons and no backup.” His face was serious. “You sure you want to keep going with this? We can walk away now. We’re bound to get another chance at him one day.”

“One day’s too late. I’m not letting him get away from me again. God only knows what he’ll do tonight if he finds a chance. You didn’t see that woman. She’s so young. She has no idea who she’s messing with.” I paused and begged the Sarge with my eyes. “Please Sarge, think about that poor woman.”

He sighed heavily, rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over at the Trogs standing outside Industrie.

“Could be a long night of waiting.” He took in Kieran. “You better head off home, kid.”

“Nah, I’m good. This is better than home,” Kieran said, and promptly planted his butt on the narrow brick window sill of a milk bar shop front. I did the same and settled myself next to him on the sill. The Sarge frowned at him, but short of manhandling him off the scene, it was hard to know how to manage the stubborn teen.

After a while of standing, the Sarge caved in and the three of us sat there waiting until our butts grew numb. Kieran queried why we weren’t being more covert by hiding, helpfully pointing out for cover a smelly skip jammed in a dark, narrow alleyway between two buildings, overflowing with the detritus of the Indian restaurant next to it. The Sarge and I wrinkled our noses, uninterested in that prospect, especially when the rustling of small scavenging rodents was clearly audible. I explained to Kieran that I
wanted
Red Bycraft to see us as soon as he stepped outside the door. There was nothing more dampening when you’re planning some trouble than a couple of cops on your tail.

The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness. We discovered that Kieran liked to talk. A lot. Especially about himself.

We learned more than we ever wanted to know about the minutiae of his school life (an above-average but bored student), social life (lonely), love life (non-existent), family life (supportive and loving), life as a Goth (reliant on the internet for all his Goth needs), and the life he hoped to lead in the future (vague plans for some career that earned billions of dollars and worldwide adulation, but still retained his privacy and street cred).

The Sarge rang the Big Town police station for regular updates on the party riot, but by the sounds of things it was only getting worse and consuming even more of the already stretched police resources. The Super had apparently called in every available cop not currently rostered and was even considering requesting some backup from the police force in the nearest large town, Melcombe Bay, even though it was a three hour drive away. There was no hope of the Sarge and me receiving any backup to deal with Red Bycraft. In fact, we were lucky the Super didn’t order us to abandon what we were doing and drive over to help with the riot.

I stood up, stretched and paced up and down the footpath, trying to coax the blood to flow in my legs again. We’d been waiting about ninety minutes for Red to show and Kieran had nattered away for at least eighty-eight of those long, long minutes. Judging by the set of his jaw, the Sarge was ready to strangle the boy with his own silver skull-buckled, studded belt, just to shut him up for a few blessed minutes of peace.

“I’m bored,” Kieran complained, staring at his reflection in the shop window, rearranging his hair. “I thought being a cop would be more exciting than this. You two aren’t very interesting. You’re nothing like the cool cops on TV.”

“Might be a good time for you to go home,” hinted the Sarge sourly. “Must be past your bedtime by now. And don’t you have school tomorrow?”

He received a withering glance and a tone dripping with disdain in return from the Goth boy. “I’m allowed to stay up past eight o’clock,
grandpa
.” And he rolled his eyes with all the scorching contempt a teenager was capable of producing.

“Remind me never to have kids,” the Sarge muttered, pulling out his phone and calling for another update on the riot.

I yawned and jogged on the spot for a minute to wake up.
Where the hell was Red?
I’d felt sure that when he couldn’t find me in the nightclub, he’d come looking for me. He’d want to make sure that I saw him with that young woman. It wouldn’t be half as fun for him otherwise. My mind whirled with theories. Maybe he’d decided to do whatever he was planning to do
inside
the nightclub? Maybe in the bathroom? Maybe in the hallway leading out to the . . . A lightning bolt of understanding hit me with a shock.

“Keiran?” I asked urgently, grabbing his arm and startling him. “Is there a back door to Industrie?”

He stopped fiddling with his hair and turned. “Yeah, but it’s a fire escape. Nobody’s supposed to go out that way.”

Without a word of explanation, I tore off across the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a speeding taxi, the driver blaring his horn and screaming out the window at me what I presumed were obscenities in his mother tongue. The Sarge jogged over to the Trogs while I sprinted down the narrow, unlit passageway between the nightclub and the strip of shops to its right.

I tripped over a garbage bag spilling from an industrial bin and nearly fell face first to the ground. I managed to regain my balance somehow by stumbling around, bouncing off the brick wall, before righting myself and tearing off again. I skidded around the corner to the back of the nightclub.

It was a poorly lit space. A luminescent exit sign and one dim yellow-tinged security spotlight provided the only illumination over what was an unsightly and tiny rear area containing the nightclub’s bins, a stack of empty beer kegs and a graveyard of broken furniture and fittings. It wasn’t somewhere you’d take a person you’d just met inside the club hoping for some romance or even a quick poke. It was dark, bleak and stinky, not at all conducive to passion.

Having given that lofty judgement, I could make out two couples going for it in the badly lit wasteland. A police officer can’t afford to be shy, so I jogged up to the first couple and thrust my badge between them.

“Hey, you two. Police.”

They sprang apart as if I’d jabbed them with a cattle prod. The girl was young, the boy even younger. They should have been at home eating popcorn and watching Harry Potter DVDs, not standing at the back of a nightclub amongst the garbage, their tongues tasting each other’s dinners, the girl’s dress down to her waist, the boy’s jeans unzipped. I gave them a moment to hastily fasten their clothes and assume some semblance of dignity.

“We’re both eighteen,” squeaked the boy in a voice that barely sounded as if he’d hit puberty yet. The girl blushed furiously, on the verge of frightened tears, her braces glinting in the dull light.

“Sure you are,” I said sceptically. “And you’re both lucky I don’t care about that tonight. I want to know did you see a good-looking, tall man with wavy golden hair wearing a green shirt come through that door?”

They hadn’t seen anything except the pressing animal excitement in each other’s eyes. I took their names and addresses and told them to go home right now, threatening to call their parents if I found out that they hadn’t obeyed me. They scurried away, casting resentfully frustrated glances over their shoulders at me.

“They go to my school,” said a voice from the darkness behind me and I spun around, almost shrieking in fright, my hand on my knife. Kieran had shadowed me here from across the road and I hadn’t even heard him.

“Shit. Don’t do that,” I scolded quietly.

“They’re both in grade ten,” he sniffed. “Not old enough to go clubbing.” As if he was.

“Why can’t you kids just let yourself be kids anymore?” I demanded, stalking over to the other pair.
Where the bloody hell was the Sarge?

“It’s boring being a kid,” explained Kieran, following me. He paused, considering, then said dismissively, “But it’s boring doing adult stuff too.”

“Be grateful if your life isn’t too exciting.”

The other couple was much older and should have known better. They didn’t appreciate being interrupted during a delicate stage of their lovemaking by my hand shoving my badge between their squirming bodies.

“Police. I need to speak to you urgently.”

“What the hell?” challenged the man angrily, spinning around. “I was just about to . . .”

I looked down, eyes widening. He wasn’t lying. He
was
just about to . . .

“You stupid cow!” the woman screeched at me and whacked me twice on the arm. “Do you know how long it takes him to get it up these days? I’ll never get a root tonight now. Thanks for nothing.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, but there’s no need to abuse me,” I said defensively. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

The man shook his wanger a few times in despair, but it was no good – it was shrinking before our eyes.

“How about you put that away?” I suggested.

“Sorry darl,” he apologised to his companion as he tucked it back in his pants. “I was
that
close, I swear to God.”

“So was I,” she moaned and whacked me again.

“Do that one more time and I’m going to bust your arse,” I promised nastily. “Have either of you seen a tall, good-looking man in a green shirt with golden wavy hair and a scarred neck come through that door?”

“No,” sulked the man, zipping up his trousers.

“Yes,” said the woman simultaneously, awkwardly reaching under her top to do up her bra.

Her partner glared at her. “What the hell, Barb? I thought you and I were hot and heavy out here? That’s what you were telling me the whole time. And now I find out you were looking at other men?”

She shrugged, embarrassed, and twisted her skirt back into place, avoiding eye contact with him. “You were taking a while and I just looked around for a moment. That’s all, Bruce. Don’t get your nuts in a knot.”

“Where? When? Who was he with? Where was he going?” I asked, my words tumbling over each other in excitement.

“Calm down, love, and let me think for a moment.” She sat on a chair with a broken arm, crossed her legs and fished around in her handbag for a cigarette.

I waited for an agonising minute for her to light up and take a deep drag, lifting her chin and blowing the smoke up into the air with a groan of satisfied happiness. Her partner crouched down on his haunches up against the hot water system and lit his own cigarette, scowling at all of us.

The Sarge jogged up at that point. Barb’s eyes lingered on him as she took another drag on her cigarette, watched with impotent jealousy by Bruce. I quickly brought him up to speed and he told me he’d given the Trogs his phone number so they could let him know if Red exited from the front door while we weren’t watching it.

Kieran wisely lurked in the dark background, managing to keep quiet, well aware that if either of us remembered him or heard him, we’d send him packing in no time.

Barb was ready to speak, but she’d transferred all her attention to the Sarge and I was left directing questions to the side of her head. What she’d seen boiled down to Red Bycraft exiting the nightclub holding the hand of a young woman with long dark hair and dubious taste for cheap shoes, she scorned, peering down at her own leather designer ones with a smile. Further questioned by me, Barb was confident the man had a long scar on the left side of his neck because she found it very sexy she confessed with a tight smile and a quick glance at the simmering Bruce. There would be trouble at their place tonight, but her self-assured evidence convinced me that it hadn’t been Rick, Denny or Mark acting as a decoy.

Barb insisted the woman seemed willing to be with Red and wasn’t being coerced in any way. He’d stopped for a second when he left the club to look around, as if he was searching for something. Barb had particularly noticed that because to her it was odd behaviour from a man obviously out for a good time with a pretty young woman.