Blood Feud (49 page)

“I can’t believe I got away with that,” I marvelled outside her office.

“I love it when you talk tough with her,” he smiled.

I yawned. “Do you think we should go to the hospital? Katie’s probably asleep by now or they’ve sent her home.”

We didn’t need to think about that for long because in the foyer we ran into my favourite dee team – Mr X and Zelda.

“Tessie!” exclaimed a delighted Mr X. “I was hoping we’d run into you here tonight. We’ve just come back from interviewing Red Bycraft’s latest victim.”

“Is she still at the hospital?”

“No, we interviewed her at home. There wasn’t much they could do for her at the hospital. Fortunately none of her injuries are terribly serious and after they checked her out and patched her up, she indicated she’d prefer to go home than stay overnight.”

“Fair enough. We were thinking about visiting her, but we’ll just mosey on home instead.”

“Good job on recapturing Red Bycraft,” congratulated Zelda, as usual looking uncrumpled and statuesque in a skirt suit, despite the late hour. I felt a little lacking in the elegance department standing next to her.

“It’s a relief for Tess to know he’s in custody again,’ said the Sarge, nudging me towards the door.

I resisted. “How are things with Blondie?” I asked Mr X, not without a small dose of mischief.

He rolled his eyes and groaned. Zelda smirked discreetly, her eyes on the floor. “Terrible. We’re moving in together. I don’t know how this has possibly happened to me. But she somehow gets me to agree to these things when I’m at my most vulnerable.”

“He means when they’re in the middle of shagging,” interpreted Zelda.

“I don’t expect you to understand, but it’s a very vulnerable time for a man, Z.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times not to call me Z.”

“Why not? I like it. X and Z. It’s fitting. We’re a team.”

“You make us sound like an episode of
Sesame Street
.”

“Well, that’s just ridiculous. They’d never have X and Z on the same show in
Sesame Street
. What kind of show would that be?”

“They could have zebras playing xylophones.”

“Or xenophobes climbing ziggurats.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous? They wouldn’t have xenophobes on
Sesame Street
.”

And they drifted away, bickering good-naturedly. The Sarge placed his hand on the small of my back and virtually pushed me out the doors of the station over to his car.

On the way back home, desperately fighting a major adrenaline slump, I decided to try again to grill the Sarge on his life.

“Your mother seems very nice.”

“So you said before.”

I abandoned subtlety. “I need something to keep me awake during the drive. Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Why not? What’s the big secret? I’ve spoken to her. I’ve seen a photo of her, so why be so secretive?”

He was silent for a moment. “I’m very boring. Why don’t you tell me something about yourself instead?”

“You know everything about me.”

“Not everything. Tell me about all your boyfriends.”

“There haven’t been very many.”

“It won’t take long to tell me then, will it?”

I studied his profile, trying to decide whether or not to be totally open with him. I wasn’t really comfortable talking about myself and there was a lot of pain still wrapped up in one of my previous relationships. But he was my partner and I trusted him with my life every day. Maybe I should trust him with my secrets too?

I took a gamble. “If I tell you that, you have to tell me something about yourself in return. Something I choose.”

“Sounds fair.”

“Okay. Well, I’ve only ever had three boyfriends.”

“Abe was your first.”

“Yes.”

“And Jake is your latest.”

“I’m surprised you’re not a detective yet,” I smiled.

“So, what about boyfriend number two?”

I stared out the window into the darkened landscape speeding past. “It was an unhappy experience for me.”

“What happened?”

“After Abe, I didn’t have a boyfriend for years. I was twenty-three, almost twenty-four, working in Benara in the city at that point. I’d been on a few dates at the police academy, but none of them ever progressed to a second date. I guess my winning personality and my knife put men off.”

“You’re a strong, self-sufficient woman. Some men might be intimidated by that.”

“Maybe,” I smiled wryly. “I’ve felt like a freak my entire life and let’s just say that my fellow recruits didn’t make me feel any less freakish during my time at the academy. They didn’t call me Tess the Ripper for nothing. But I survived and graduated, going to work at the station in Benara for a few years, pretty much resigned to the thought that I’d be single for the rest of my life. It made perfect sense to me – just one more unchangeable negative outcome of being born a Fuller woman in Little Town. I kept myself busy with studying and working and didn’t encourage or seek any attention from men. I actually turned them down if they did ask me out.”

“But you still hoped, deep down?”

“I tried not to be envious of the relationships of my friends and colleagues, but I’m only human. I kept telling myself that some things are just not meant to be.”

“But then this man came into your life?”

“Yes. His name was Mitch. I honestly didn’t pay much attention to him at first. He was a police prosecutor and I met him in a professional capacity during a court case where I had to give evidence. I’m not very good with relationship stuff and it took me a while to realise he was taking a personal interest in me. In fact, it was only when my sergeant started teasing me about him that I even noticed. And I guess after that, I couldn’t stop noticing him.”

“A good looking man?”

“Yes, and well aware of it too. He had a reputation as being a bit of a player, so I thought it would be best to steer clear of him. I’ve never been interested in being a notch on someone’s bedhead.” I slid my eyes his way, blushing a little. “Not that I was a notch on anyone’s bedhead at that time.”

There was a surprised silence. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Not even at university?”

“No.”

“So he was your first man.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so he eventually won you over and you went out with him.”

“Yep. We started dating. He was a lot of fun, very charming. He introduced me to his friends and his family. His parents were lovely and gladly welcomed me into his large family.”

“Big contrast to the Bycrafts.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“This Mitch must have been stunned to find out you were . . . um . . . inexperienced.”

I hesitated to continue. I hadn’t told anyone the full truth of what had occurred between us, not even Marianne. Renewing my decision to be honest with him, I plunged on. “He was stunned all right, but not in a good way. Our first time didn’t end up happening because he became so angry with me when I told him I was a virgin. He actually yelled at me for not telling him earlier, the first suggestion of temper I’d seen in him. I scooped up my clothes and fled his apartment, horribly upset and humiliated. It was one of the most miserable times in my life. I decided that night I was never seeing him again.”

“I can’t blame you.”

“He tracked me down the next day to apologise. He explained that he was only angry because had he known it was my first time ever, he would have made it more special. I blew him off for a while, but he persisted and eventually convinced me to resume our relationship.”

A wallaby leapt out across the highway without any warning, forcing him to slam on the brakes, swearing. The startled animal bounded away and the Sarge accelerated again.

“So our first time really was special and our relationship grew stronger every day. I was deeply in love with him and even brought him home to meet Dad and Nana Fuller. He accepted me the way I was and understood about my knife when I showed him my scrapbook. After about six months, we decided to move in together. I’d never been so happy before. I honestly believed my life was going to turn out perfect, after all.”

“It was pretty serious then?”

“Yes, or so I thought. I still remember everything that happened that awful day so clearly. It was a Sunday and we met up with a group of his close friends at a pub for a lazy lunch and afternoon. During the lunch Mitch told them about our decision to move in together. While most of his friends congratulated us, one woman, his ex-girlfriend, gave me a backhand compliment. She congratulated me for being able to forgive Mitch for what he’d done and still carry on with our relationship.”

“That would have set off alarm bells.”

“I had no idea what she was talking about. But the expression on Mitch’s face when she said that, and the way he immediately told her to shut up, made me realise she was trying to tell me something I probably didn’t want to hear. This woman gleefully spilled the whole story and I knew it was true just from the guilty faces of everyone around the table.”

“He cheated on you?”

I laughed, but it was devoid of joy. “I wished he had. It would have been easier to take than what really happened.”

“What happened?”

“I’ve told you when I met him, I wasn’t dating anyone. I guess some men would take that as a personal challenge. Mitch’s friends – the same friends sitting around the table who I thought liked me – had made a bet with Mitch that he couldn’t get Tess the Ripper to go out with him. A hundred dollar bet.”

“Oh. A bet he won.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“That’s appalling behaviour.”

“That’s not the end of it. Obviously that was too easy a challenge for Mitch and his friends, so they all upped the ante. Another two wagers were laid – one to get me to tell him I loved him and the other to get me to sleep with him.”

“Tessie, I’m speechless. I literally don’t know what to say. I’ve never heard of such an act of bastardry.”

It was so difficult to recount this to him – the memory of my devastated humiliation so incredibly strong after all this time. But I pressed on. “As you can imagine, my whole world collapsed around me as those people tried to deny what they’d done. I kept asking Mitch if it was true, over and over, until he broke down and admitted it. I didn’t stay to listen to their excuses and deflections. I still remember the pain of betrayal burning into me. I’d shared my body and I’d shared my past with that man. I’d even started secretly hoping I’d be able to share my future with him. I’d given him my trust and he’d abused it.”

“God, Tessie.”

“I left the pub and Mitch chased after me, begging me to stop and listen to him, to give him a chance to explain. So I gave him a minute. He told me that it was true he’d deceived me at the start of our relationship, but that his feelings had changed and deepened as he got to know me more. He said he hadn’t expected to like me quite so much, or to end up loving me as he claimed he did.”

“Which was probably true. Nobody could keep up such a charade for over six months and even consider moving in with a person if they weren’t genuine in their feelings.”

“Don’t you understand though, Sarge? He deceived me about his feelings. How would I ever know when they’d been genuine and when they hadn’t? Was he faking it when he first told me he loved me? When we slept together for the first time? Our whole relationship was a lie.”

“Maybe that’s why he was so angry when he found out it was your very first time? He never expected to have to deal with something that momentous.”

“I don’t know. But anyway, I heard him out and then I spun back towards my car. He grabbed my arm, so I swung around and slogged him in the jaw. He dropped like a rock. My knuckles were bruised for weeks afterwards, but it was worth it. I drove straight to Marianne’s place and cried all night long on her shoulder. I never spoke to him again. He tried to contact me on hundreds of occasions, but I had friends running interference for me. Marianne’s husband kept him away from me at her house and my sergeant kept him from me at the station. At my own place, I didn’t answer my door and let the phone go straight to voicemail. Eventually he took the hint and left me alone. Not long afterwards I returned to Little Town.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“Apparently he married his ex-girlfriend, the one who spilled the beans on him. I heard they have a couple of kids.”

“That was probably what she was hoping for when she told you in the first place.”

“Yep. The winner takes it all, right? But she did me a favour in the end. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. And I wouldn’t want to be with any man who considered behaving like that towards another human being was in any way acceptable or a lark.”

“It must have shaken your faith in men.”

“I vowed after that I would never become involved in a relationship again. I was prepared to be single for the rest of my life rather than risk a repeat of anything so painful and demoralising.”

“But then Jake came back into your life?”

“He had a hard time convincing me to trust him and not just because he’s a Bycraft.”

As we pulled into his driveway, the conversation ended and we didn’t say much more to each other, the topic lost in our preparations for sleep. I thought about making him reciprocate in story-telling, but was too exhausted to listen. We had a little spat about whether I should return home now that Red Bycraft was recaptured, but as it was very late and I was so tired, I let myself be talked into staying one last night at his house.