Blood Feud (14 page)

We agreed that he seemed young, maybe in his twenties or thirties. We agreed that he was lean and taller than me, but not as tall as Kevin. I thought he’d been wearing jeans and Kevin thought it was track pants, but we both agreed he’d been wearing a t-shirt. We also both agreed he was barefoot and had longish hair to his shoulders. I thought he might have had some kind of beard, but Kevin didn’t receive a close enough look at him to be sure. And that was all we’d managed to observe.

“It’s better than nothing,” said the Sarge philosophically, turning into his driveway. He cut the engine, but didn’t move, staring through the windscreen at his unlit house. “I wonder if I’ve been locked out.”

“If you have, you’re welcome to stay at my place. Kevin’s in the spare room, but you can have Dad’s bed for the night,” I offered immediately as we climbed out, experiencing that stab of guilt again about dragging him away from Melissa.

He locked the patrol car. “Thanks, Tessie. I might need to take you up on that. I’ll be damned if I’m sleeping out on the veranda like some flea-ridden dog.”

Kevin and I propped our butts against the patrol car while he jogged up his front stairs and tried his doorknob. Locked. He rapped loudly on the door.

“Melissa, let me in.” He knocked again and stood there for a minute, waiting for some response from her. Nothing. He jogged around to the back of the house, but soon returned, irritation shadowing his features.

“No luck?” I asked.

“Let’s go,” he said tersely, marching over to my 4WD. “I’m not waiting around here all night for her to get over her huff. I’m tired.”

I reversed down his driveway onto the highway and slowly gathered speed. Melissa flew out of the doorway, calling out something we couldn’t hear because we had the windows up.

“Do you want me to stop and let you out?” I asked.

“No. Keep driving,” he replied quietly. “Somehow I don’t think my house would be very congenial tonight. I’d rather stay with you.”

So I drove away, watching Melissa growing smaller in my rear view mirror, shouting after us all the way.

Exhausted, we all went straight to bed. I dreamed.

I
stood at the bottom of the steps to Miss G’s front veranda, checking my equipment as I routinely did before each call-out. It was pitch black in the night, but light blared from every window of the house.

The Sarge
had woken me from sleep with his phone call from the house requesting urgent back up. I wasn’t sure why he had taken a call-out when I was the one rostered for the weekend, and I was a little miffed that he’d taken a night call-out without me. We usually tried to do them together. I’d hurried over, fretting.

My phone rang and I answered, hearing Kevin’s insistent voice on the other end. “Be careful, Senior Constable Fuller. There’s someone inside. Be careful, Tess. Be careful. Please be careful.”

I hung up on him and climbed the stairs, dodging the rotting tread. The front door was slightly ajar, so I pushed it slowly open.

“
Sarge?” I called. “It’s Tess. Where are you?”

And that’s when I noticed the walls. Abandoning caution, I ran from room to room, increasingly frantic. Each wall in the house was covered with dripping red writing, the same message written over and over on every surface.

“
Sarge? Where are you? Where are you?” I cried, now sick with fear.

I ran into the kitchen and skidded to a halt. On one of the benches stood
a barefoot Melissa, a sheet shaped into a dress draped around her body, her long dark hair shining and bouncing freely down her back, happily humming to herself. She spun around at my entrance and smiled at me. Her white sheet-dress was no longer pristine, but splattered with red, the paintbrush she held in her right hand dripping red down her arm.

She turned back to finish what she’d been painting, the same phrase she’d written
multiple times over every wall – HE’S MINE. When she’d added a final flourish, she faced me again and giggled.

“
I told you he’s mine. And now I’ve made sure you’ll never have him.”

She giggled again and lowered her eyes to the floor. I followed her gaze.

“
Oh God, no,” I moaned, dropping to my knees in shock. I crawled across the floor to where the Sarge lay on his back, dressed only in long pyjama pants, his arms and legs asunder, his lovely blue eyes staring up at the ceiling, sightless. His now graveyard-pale skin highlighted the vicious gash across his throat and the pool of blood that matted his chest hair and formed delicate rivulets over his stomach and waist as it dripped to the floor.

I sidled over to cradle his head in my lap, smoothing back his hair, my tears splashing his face. “No, Finn. You can’t leave me. I can’t do it without you,” I
sniffed tearfully. “You promised not to leave me. You promised.”

Melissa
clambered down off the bench and lent over him, her long hair and sheet-dress dangling in his blood. She dipped her paintbrush into his neck wound and climbed back up on the bench to commence a new ‘HE’S MINE’, singing a soft, but cheery song.

I sat on the floor holding him, crying and listening to that
horrible song until I could discern the words she sang.

“
He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine,” she crooned to herself as she painted with his blood, smiling and giggling. “He’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine.”

I sprang out of bed, gasping for air and reaching for my half-closed bedroom door. But as my hand gripped that solid, real door knob, I snapped out of my reverie. I had a terrible lingering suspicion I’d been about to burst into Dad’s room to run my hands over the Sarge’s neck and chest to assure myself that he was all right and still alive. I stood in my room, hand on the door, my chest heaving, contemplating just how mortifying that would have proven for me. Imagine waking up and finding a colleague with her hands all over you. Imagine what Jake would have said if he’d ever found out.

Thank God I stopped myself in time
, I thought, managing a self-deprecating laugh. But maybe it was time to admit to myself that I needed to seek some professional help about my recurring nightmares, especially if they were going to cause me to act impulsively like that.

I checked the clock – almost four in the morning. Wound up and knowing I’d never go back to sleep now, I made myself some warm milk and slouched on the lounge, sipping it, not thinking about much at all. I heard footsteps and the Sarge poked his head around the doorway, his hair curling off in every direction.

“I thought I heard someone up.” He ran his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to restore some order.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Nah,” he said, plonking down next to me. “Too much to think about to sleep properly anyway. Did you have another nightmare?”

“Yep.”

He peered over the rim of my mug. “That looks nice.”

“It’s just plain old milk,” I smiled. “Are you angling for some?”

He nudged me with his shoulder. “Maybe.”

I handed him my half-empty mug. “You can have the rest.”

“I can’t drink out of your mug.”

“Sure you can. Just turn it around to the other side. I don’t have any girl germs.”

“Of course you have girl germs. You’re a girl, aren’t you? All girls have girl germs. It’s a scientific fact I established beyond any reasonable doubt during my boyhood.”

“Oh well, I guess it must be true then, seeing how it’s been scientifically proven and all,” I smiled again.

He took a cautious sip. “I’m not tasting any girl germ flavour yet.”

“The germs sink to the bottom. The flavour will hit you in a rush at the end.”

He laughed softly. “You’re cute. What nightmare featured tonight? Your grandmother? Your mother? Abe’s wife?”

“No, it was a new one,” I admitted reluctantly, not wanting to talk to him about it.

“Something about Miss Greville?”

“Sort of,” I replied vaguely. “It was definitely inspired by events of the day.”

“Poor Tessie. It must have been a terrible shock for you to find her.” He slipped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. I leaned on him and closed my eyes, after first surreptitiously checking that his neck was unmarked and whole.

He was a naturally affectionate man, much more of a touchy-feely type than me. That had taken me a while to become accustomed to, not being someone who liked people I didn’t know placing their hands on me. But we’d grown close over the nine months we’d worked together, and unless I was angry with him, now I didn’t mind his friendly embraces. And sure, sometimes I even needed them.

“Do you want to talk about what happened to Miss Greville?”

“Nah,” I said, mumbling into shoulder. “I did before, but Kevin and I discussed it for a long time earlier tonight.”

“Okay, but if you need to talk, you know I’m here. Talking it out might even help stop some of your nightmares about it.”

“It might.”

We relaxed against each other for a while, not speaking. And maybe it was that nice state of drowsy comfort that made him open up a little.

“Do you think Melissa will leave in the morning?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Probably. And then she’ll expect me to chase after her so we can have a big screaming match followed by some wild sex. It’s what she lives for.”

“Sounds emotionally exhausting.”

“It is. To be honest, I’m rather tired of the constant melodrama. I hoped she’d grow out of it by now. But it’s the same thing every time she comes here or I go there. It was fine in the beginning when I thought the volatility made our relationship passionate and exciting – so different to any other relationship I’d ever had. And I’m almost ashamed to say the sex often made up for everything else. But these days . . .” He shrugged and my head bobbed up and down with the movement. “I suppose I don’t want a marriage based on an endless cycle of fighting and sex.”

“No, it’s not enough to sustain a lasting relationship,” I agreed, feeling suddenly sad myself thinking of Jake. We didn’t fight much, but it did sometimes feel that sex was the main driver of our relationship. We didn’t do a lot of ‘couple’ things together, virtually leading our own lives separate from each other. I spent more time with the Sarge than I did with Jake.

“I want her to grow up, get a job and take on some responsibility in her life. I just wish she was more like . . .”

I yawned hugely. “Like what?”

He withdrew his arm and stood up. “Nothing. I’m going to see if I can catch a couple more hours sleep. Why don’t you do the same?”

I stood too, yawning. “Okay. See you later, Sarge.”

He tweaked my nose in exasperation. “Finn!”

“Sorry, Finn,” I said sheepishly, returning to my bed.

Chapter 10

I managed a fitful sleep for an hour, tossing and turning every ten minutes, no more refreshed afterwards than if I’d stayed awake. Everyone woke up early and I made the two men breakfast, which we ate at the battered table in my large kitchen. After he washed up for me, Kevin showered, his melodious and surprisingly booming voice drifting from the bathroom as he sang lustily.

In the lounge room where we were watching the morning news on TV, I raised my eyebrows at the Sarge, grinning.

He nodded, grinning back. “He sings every time he’s in the shower.”

“Nice voice.”

“You could duet with him.”

I pegged a cushion at him which he caught deftly. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I shower with Kevin?”

He gently threw the pillow back to me. “It would be all his birthdays rolled into one if you did.”

“Not going to happen.”

He opened his mouth to speak, when the singing stopped, replaced by shouts of angry shock.

“Hey!” yelled Kevin, bursting from the bathroom, dripping wet and dressed only in a towel tied around his skinny waist.

I jumped to my feet in alarm. “What’s the matter?”

“Someone . . . through the window . . .”

“What are you trying to say, Kevin?” asked the Sarge patiently.

He took a deep breath, his voice indignant when he attempted to speak again. “Someone was looking at me through the window. Someone was
peeping
on me!”

“Oh, is that all?” the Sarge dismissed. We both flopped back on the lounge, uninterested.

“But . . . aren’t you going to
do
something?”

“No point,” I told him, eyes on the TV screen. “It’s just Denny Bycraft. He’s always spying on me. He’s mostly harmless.” I laughed. “In fact, he probably received a bigger fright than you. He would have been expecting to see me in there.”

Realising that we weren’t going to take any action over his peeper and remembering he was virtually naked in front of us, Kevin scurried back to the bathroom, leaving a trail of puddles in his wake.

Later, his car packed and ready to leave Little Town, Kevin offered a less-than-eager Sarge a lift back to his own house on the way.