Blood Ties (3 page)

“Des, for the last time,” I said patiently, “if you want me to give you a lift home, you have to put some clothes on.” I paused a beat, looking him up and down. “At least put your pants back on. I can’t have you bare-arsed in the patrol car. It’s unhygienic.”

Des swayed in front of me trying to focus, then without a word opened his mouth and projected a stream of vomit that landed like a homing missile right on my boots.

“Aw shit,” I complained mildly, glancing down at the mess. “I just cleaned those this morning.”

“Sorry Tessie, love. You see, it’s like this . . .” he slurred, index finger up to make his point. Then he slowly dissolved in front of me until he was lying collapsed in an unattractive naked heap on the sticky carpet.

I rubbed the back of my neck with tiredness and exhaled heavily while I thought. I nudged him with my soiled boot a few times. He didn’t move. I didn’t want to pick him up. He was starkers for one thing and not a lightweight anymore, for another. There were parts of my job I really hated sometimes – usually they involved the Bycrafts, but tonight was an exception.

“Does anyone know where Des’s clothes are?” I shouted out at the happy-drunk crowd milling around me, bending down to give my boots a perfunctory wipe with some paper napkins I pinched off the nearest table. A few of the crowd pointed helpfully over at a far corner of the room. Others pointed to the opposite far corner. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling in silent supplication, sighed again and headed towards the first corner.

“Anyone seen Maureen?” I shouted again, over my shoulder. Didn’t matter who I directed my question to; there were usually half-a-dozen people willing to listen and help me. There was always someone to look out for you in this neck of the woods. My mother used to call the townsfolk insufferable sticky-beaks. She never got used to country life. Or so Dad told me.

“Maureen took off about an hour ago,” boomed Abe from the bar where he was perfecting the head on a fresh pint. He was probably the only other sober person in the room besides me. “She went home. Said she’d had enough of it.”

I turned to throw him a grateful glance. I was with Maureen – I’d had enough of it too, especially at this time of the night. He winked at me in sympathy, but didn’t volunteer to help me wrestle Des into his clothes. There was a limit to citizen cooperation I had found, especially when it involved drunken naked men.

I eventually tracked down Des’ clothes to where he had carelessly discarded them in the pub’s function room. I smiled for the first time that evening as I picked them up. I must have missed a doozy of a speech from him. He had been a lazy cop and a negligent boss, literally counting down the days to his retirement, crossing them off in red marker on his wall calendar each day. I’d done most of the crime fighting in the couple of years I’d been back in town, and while in his favour he’d given me a lot of freedom, he’d also taken most of the credit for any successes, leaving me to wear the blame for any failures.

It was hard to be angry with him though because he had kissed the Blarney Stone when he was born for sure, and I reckon he’d be able to talk underwater buried in a cement coffin, gagged and following a laryngectomy. I’d barely got a word in the whole time we’d worked together. He had the gift of the gab, was a real charmer and his speech would have been a work of art. Well, it should have been because he’d laboured over it every day for the last six months instead of doing any real work.

I wish I’d been at the pub to hear it, but I’d been at old Miss Greville’s house, half-heartedly searching her dark overgrown garden by torchlight for the third peeping tom she’d reported that fortnight. She’d clutched my hand gratefully, if a little shakily, when I’d assured her that there was nobody there. I hadn’t wanted to remind her that if there was even the remotest chance of a man peeking on ladies in our small town, he’d be heading straight for the nudist community which was only a couple of kilometres away.

Failing that, he had the option of waiting around until eight on a Sunday night when, as regular as clockwork, the town’s good-time girl, Foxy Dubois, gave an impromptu free striptease performance in her lounge room after spending the afternoon drinking at Abe’s pub. There was always a crowd at
her
window on Sunday nights. But what a peeping tom patently wouldn’t be doing in Little Town however, was wasting his time spying on Miss Greville, a ninety-three year old spinster who had confessed to me with breathless confidentiality that she always bathed with her underwear on, “just in case”.

Of course I had wanted to attend Des’ retirement bash. He’d been my boss, after all, and I’d known him for the whole twenty years he’d lived here. But we were a two-cop town and when one cop is the guest of honour at his own party, the other one hasn’t got much choice but to be on duty, even if she’d been on duty every day for the last month while her boss was busy organising the big event. The evening hadn’t been too onerous though I had to admit, with most of the townsfolk, with the exception of the Bycrafts, gathered at the pub for Des’ send-off. Much of my activity tonight had been confined to ferrying drunk people back home.

I didn’t normally run a blue light taxi with the town’s only patrol car, but it was a special occasion and I didn’t want to make myself unpopular by booking people for being public nuisances or for driving under the influence. Especially after I’d spent the morning manning the radar gun on the highway approaching town from the south. That was where the long mountainous climb finally levelled out and people let their speed rip just as they came to a sixty zone. A lot of interstate drivers, as well as a few locals, would receive an unwelcome penalty notice for speeding in the mail soon. The locals should have known better though. There was always the chance that I’d be lurking behind that thicket of overgrown oleanders on the side of the road just past the ‘Welcome to Mount Big Town’ sign, because that’s where I always perched doing radar duty on that side of town. So I spared no sympathy for those townsfolk who I’d clocked over the speed limit today, but tonight I conveniently looked the other way and lent a helping hand where I could.

I had warned Des about running an open bar until midnight at The Flying Pigs, and as usual he’d listened courteously to my advice and then patted me on the head as if I was his much-loved golden Labrador, Mr Sparkles. But soon after our chat he had left the station with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, loudly arranging for Abe to have beer, wine and spirits generously on tap until the stroke of twelve for all his guests and after that the “fucking freeloaders” could pay for their own, he laughed uproariously into the phone. I didn’t get mad at him for being so patronising though, because when I thought about it I’d rather that he treated me like Mr Sparkles than like his long-suffering and much-ignored wife, Maureen. At least Des
pretended
to listen to me. And there was the pat on the head, after all. The rumour around town was that he hadn’t touched Maureen for fifteen years.

But right now I had a drunk, unconscious and naked former boss on my hands. With a great deal of disagreeable (and hopefully forgettable) effort, I managed at least to get Des panted up, commando-style admittedly, but as long as his bare butt wasn’t touching any of my patrol car seats, I was satisfied. With the help of some of the more sober guests, I walked Des to the car, manhandled him into the backseat and secured him. He lurched immediately to the side, held only in place with the seatbelt. I really hoped he wasn’t going to throw up again.

I drove off slowly, but before I could drop off Des, I had to deliver a few of the other guests who had opportunistically jumped in for a free ride after helping me get Des to the car. Some of them lived a fair way out of town, on the small-holding farms that formed the bulk of Little Town’s outlying population. I was being taken advantage of I realised, but as I said before, it was a special occasion so I didn’t kick up too much of a stink about it. I turned onto the Coastal Range Highway and headed out of town.

When I finally returned to town and reached the house where Des and Maureen lived, neighbouring the town’s police station, it was in total darkness. I presumed that meant Maureen was in a major snit with him. On the dozens of times I’d escorted Des home after a night out with the boys, she had usually left the veranda light on for him at least. He’d probably forgotten to mention her in his speech tonight, was my guess. I was willing to bet that Mr Sparkles had received a number of loving references though.

Speaking of Des’ adored and spoiled pet, Mr Sparkles let out one irritated bark at being woken up and waddled down the front stairs over to me, sniffing at my crotch in his usual disrespectful manner.

“Stop doing that,” I objected, pushing him away. “You know it’s me, Sparkles.”

He looked up at me with his gorgeous brown eyes, cocked a leg and pissed on the back tyre of the patrol car. It was a deliberate act. He knew it was my job to wash the car.

I let out an impatient sigh. “No need to be like that. I’ve told you a million times that I just don’t like you sniffing me there. It’s nothing personal – I’d say the same to any dog.”

He shot me a contemptuous look and then pissed on the front tyre as well. The dog sure knew how to make a statement. He sniffed at Des, flinching in disgust at the alcohol vapours coming off him, before waddling back up the stairs to his comfy bed on the wide front veranda.

With no helpers, and only Mr Sparkles as my lazily amused audience, I performed an awkward dance with Des trying to get him up the stairs and into bed. We staggered one way, halted, teetering on the edge of tumbling over together, then righted ourselves and staggered the other way. He was a weighty man and was very drunk and it was the longest twenty metres I’ve ever traversed.

Maureen had locked the front door in her temper, but luckily I knew where the spare key was kept. So did the rest of the town. A large green ceramic frog with a comically wide mouth and the words ‘spare key here’ engraved on its chest, probably wasn’t the smartest place for anyone, let alone a cop, to hide their extra house key. I retrieved the key from the frog’s mouth and inserted it into the keyhole, opened the door and we staggered together towards his bedroom, knocking over at least four of Maureen’s tacky china knick-knacks as we did. They filled the house to capacity, perched precariously on every horizontal vantage point. Their house was a nightmare for anyone who liked to gesture wildly as they spoke.

I eventually managed to manoeuvre Des onto his marital bed, letting go of him gratefully as he fell heavily onto the mattress.

“Thank God,” I muttered to myself as I stretched my agonised muscles.

“Don’t you dare take our Lord’s name in vain, Teresa Fuller!” snapped an angry voice from the other side of the bed. Maureen was very religious and, apparently, very awake.

“Sorry Maureen. My deepest apologies,” I said insincerely, stretching again.
Jesus!
I thought rotating my shoulders. It was going to take me an age to recover from this.

“Did you knock over any of my treasures? I heard a lot of strange noises as you came in,” she asked suspiciously.

“No Maureen,” I lied. They were moving out over the weekend to the city to be closer to their children and grandchildren in their retirement, so I figured I could be loose with the truth with her. Besides, she’d obviously forgotten the bit in the Bible about looking after your own damn husband.

I made a hasty retreat and closed and locked their front door, replacing the spare key in the frog’s mouth. I could already hear Des snoring from out on the veranda. Maureen was in for a noisy night by the sound of it. Mr Sparkles gave a half-hearted bark and made moves as if he was getting up to sniff me intimately again.

“Don’t even think about it Sparkles, you pervert,” I warned. He settled back on his bed again and glared at me with undisguised hostility as I made my way down the stairs. I yawned hugely, stretched again and opened the car door to an indescribably obnoxious smell. I let my nose guide my way to the back seat.

“Oh no,” I moaned quietly in disgust because the revolting odour was coming from a large stain on the seat where Des had been sitting. I didn’t want to investigate any further that evening, but wound down every window as I drove back to the pub, trying not to heave. It would require some intensive car cleaning the next morning, but not tonight – I was way too tired.

Most of the guests had gone by the time I returned to The Flying Pigs. Abe’s step-sister, a pretty sixteen-year-old, was collecting empty glasses and wiping down tables.

“Hey Romi,” I called to her as I headed over to talk to Abe.

“Hey Tessie,” she replied affectionately, flashing me her devastating smile. She was a smart, lovely girl and a real heartbreaker, with big sky blue eyes and light blonde hair. She had lived with Abe for the last ten years since their father, Abel, and his second wife (Romi’s mother), were killed in a head-on accident with a semi-trailer as they drove to the city to spend a weekend away for their wedding anniversary. Her dream was to head off to the city herself in a few years to study law at university and I knew that Abe would miss her a lot. So would the teenage boys in town, although none of them had ever had a chance with her because Abe watched over her like a hawk. And you wouldn’t willingly tangle with him. He was six feet of hard muscle from all the heavy lifting he did in his job, with a shaved head, emotional dark eyes, deep growly voice, craggy features and had a reputation as a hard fighter. You couldn’t run a country pub without being able to sort out drunk, aggressive patrons when you needed to. He was a good man to have on your side.