Blood Feud (2 page)

I know that Im the last person you ever want to here from, but my conshense forces me to write this letter to you. And the prison shrink says its good for me to do it and maybe for you too which is the only reeson Im doing this. Im not trying to bring up bad memeries. Please beleive me.

Im sorry for what I done to you and your nana. It was very wrong and I was wrong to not stay and help youse after. Im sorry she died and Im sorry you got hurt so bad. Ive been thinking a lot since Im in jail and talking to the shrink a lot about my family. Ive decided that when I get out I want to move away from Little Town and get a real job and be a better person and dad for my kids. I dont want them to grow up and go to jail like me. I dont want them to grow up with the hate in there hearts. They send me happy drawings a lot and that makes me think of a happy future for me and Kym far away from Little Town. Away from my family. I hope you beleive me.

Yours sincerly

Tommy Bycraft

PS. I dont do any drugs or drink no more.

And even though I’d read it so many times before, I sank onto my bed, overwhelmed. This letter was unexpected, momentous. Unprecedented. A Bycraft had finally expressed remorse for what he’d done to my family and me.

Joanna, our brawny yet feminine mailperson, had delivered the letter at the station, announcing her arrival with a jaunty ring of the counter bell. When the Sarge had frowned at me for not being quick enough on my feet to answer, I’d reluctantly dragged myself away from a fresh cup of tea and a tight game of solitaire on my computer. After wasting five minutes leaning on the counter chatting to Joanna, I took the letter, the only piece of mail she had for us, back to my desk. I’d read the missive, gasping audibly as I did, scarcely able to believe my own eyes. Immediately noticing the odd expression on my face, the Sarge had snatched the piece of paper from my hands and scanned it quickly.

He’d whistled softly under his breath.

I’d looked up at him, unsure. “Do you think it’s some kind of trick? Some sneaky way of Tommy obtaining parole earlier?” A lifetime of not trusting the Bycrafts had an indelible influence on my thought processes.

The Sarge’s eyes had rested on my face as heavily as his hand did on my shoulder. “No Tessie, I don’t think it’s a trick. Look here. The letter’s countersigned and stamped on the back by the prison psychologist. This must be part of Bycraft’s rehabilitation therapy. The psychologist wouldn’t let an apology letter go out to a victim of crime with his endorsement if he wasn’t convinced of Bycraft’s sincerity.”

My dark gray eyes had locked onto his stormy dark blues. “A Bycraft being sincere? Really?”

His face had held its usual serious expression. “Think about it, Tessie. Bycraft’s not due for parole yet. He’s only done six years of a fourteen year sentence. That’s not the reason for this.” We regarded each other intently for a few more ticks of the clock. “What are your instincts telling you?”

I’d sighed deeply and glanced away, not trusting my own answer. “That he means it.”

The Sarge had smiled, his stern features softening into an appealing attractiveness. “Then he means it. Your instincts are usually sound about the Bycrafts. Trust yourself.”

Not convinced, I’d shown the letter to my father later that day when I’d returned home after work. He’d been less impressed with Tommy’s apology.

“I don’t trust any of them and you shouldn’t either, love. Bycraft’s after something,” Dad had replied grimly, throwing the letter on the coffee table with contempt.

He’d wheeled his chair away, his face etched with fresh lines of suspicion and old lines of tired pain from his advancing cancer. I worried about him constantly as I was often on-call day and night and frequently worked long hours, never knowing when I’d have to leave him by himself. I was fortunate in that his long-term girlfriend, Adele, was willing to help as often as she could. She didn’t have far to travel to get to our house – nobody did. Our small mountain town, known fondly as ‘Little Town’ to all locals, could be traversed in a matter of minutes.

I hadn’t talked to Dad about the letter again.

The last person I’d shared Tommy’s note with had been Superintendent Fiona Midden, commanding officer of the entire police district that encompassed Little Town. She was also officer-in-charge of the large, well-equipped and well-staffed police station in the pleasant coastal regional centre of Wattling Bay, or ‘Big Town’ as we locals called it. We were good friends, and had been acquainted since I was two-years-old and she was in her twenties, a young probationary constable fresh from the police academy. She was the closest I’d ever had to a mother figure in my life, not that even I’d admit that she was at all motherly.

I’d scanned and emailed the letter to her, as Big Town was a good ninety minute drive away.

Her response had been quick and pithy:
Well, blow me!
The dopey bastard’s grown a conscience in jail. Maybe those nut doctors have more in their diagnostic repertoire than just accusing people of wanting to root their own mothers.

Do you think he means it?
I’d asked her in reply.

Fucked if I know
, she’d emailed back.
Stranger things have happened.

And I’d had to leave it at that, knowing she was far too busy to devote any more time to my little problems.

For some reason I couldn’t explain to myself, I’d left it another couple of weeks before I showed the letter to my boyfriend and Tommy’s brother, Jake. While I realised that Jake would be pleased with his little brother’s sentiments, he wasn’t good at dealing with negative situations. Being reminded that one of his close relatives had been responsible for robbing me of someone precious would only discomfort him, leading to an awkward moment between us.

So in the morning after he’d spent the night at my house, I showed him the letter. I’d broken suddenly from sleep, sitting up, wide awake, upset and trying to control my breathing. I’d just dreamt about Nana Fuller’s death again. Jake woke instantly and comforted me, eventually leading to some sweetly tender lovemaking. And when we’d finished and he lay naked in bed with me, holding me close and happily sated, I fetched the letter from my dresser.

He leaned back on the pillows and read it through a couple of times, a thoughtful frown puckering his forehead. I watched carefully for his every reaction, studying him as I did. He was a gorgeous man with honey-brown skin, wavy golden hair, unusual amber eyes and a ready smile. All the Bycrafts were tall, well-built and beautiful, the golden hair and eye colouring running in the family, but only Jake was good-natured, industrious and respectable. The rest of the huge clan constituted a socially-bankrupt, one-family crime wave. They hated the police and in particular, they hated me. The feeling was returned two-fold.

“Wow,” Jake said softly. “That’s just . . . Wow.”

“Do you think he means it, honey-boy?”

Jake’s sharp glance was indignant, quick as always to jump to the defence of his rotten family. “Of course he does! He made the effort to write to you. Why would you doubt him?”

I gazed back at him with silent steadiness. I didn’t want to insult him by stating the obvious – I doubted Tommy because he was a Bycraft.

“People can change, baby doll,” he entreated.

“He never expressed any remorse at the trial. In fact, I distinctly remember him grinning and giving you all the thumbs-up when the judge handed down her sentence.”

“I don’t know what he did. I wasn’t there, remember? And besides, he’s clearly been thinking a lot about it, just as he wrote in his letter. Jail gives some people a different perspective on things, some self-realisation of where they’ve gone wrong in their lives. I’ve seen it happen tons of times.” Jake worked as a prison officer at the nearby low-security prison, though I had strong reservations about whether being sent to that luxurious jail would engender any self-examination in its pampered inmates. Half of them probably never wanted to leave.

“The Sarge believes he means it,” I said without thinking.

Jake stiffened and stared at me. “You talked about this with Finn before you showed it to me?”

I sighed quietly. “He was with me when I received the letter, so I showed it to him. It’s no big deal.”

But it was to Jake. “How long ago was this?”

“About a month ago.”

His face filled with hurt, he slipped out of bed, not meeting my eyes. “I’m going for a swim in the surf.”

“Jakey . . .” I began, but it was no use. I stayed in bed, watching him gather up his clothes and leave without kissing me goodbye. The roar of his ute as he drove off spoiled the morning peace.

Good one, stupid
, I scolded myself, climbing out of bed as well. Jake wasn’t normally a jealous person, too easy-going to be bothered by that kind of possessiveness, but there was something about the Sarge that just pushed his buttons. He resented the close relationship we’d forged in the nine months since the Sarge had arrived in town, forgetting how important it was for our safety on the job to work together as a tight team.

And Jake kept overlooking the critical fact that the Sarge was engaged, not that we ever saw much of that spoiled young lady here in town. She flatly refused to move to Little Town, forcing the Sarge to faithfully trot back and forth on the seven hour drive to the city whenever she summoned him. I didn’t know why he continued to put up with such treatment – it wasn’t as if he was a doormat in any other part of his life. I guess he felt he’d made a commitment to her and he was an honourable guy, trying to make their relationship work. But it was obvious to me that the whole situation was testing his patience almost beyond breaking point. And judging from the tense phone calls I’d accidently overheard – okay, I’ll admit I was trying to listen in – things weren’t going too smoothly between Melissa and him.

Virtuously brushing all that aside as not being any of my business, I concentrated instead on hurrying through my shower, breakfast and tending to my chickens. I had no time for my usual morning jog as I needed to arrive at work early these days to beat Kevin, our overeager recruit from the police academy. He’d been placed with us for two weeks on field experience as part of his training. We’d never had a recruit posted to Little Town before and I’d been excited when the Super rang to tell us the news. Then she explained that he didn’t want to come here, having nominated Big Town as his choice, but they had too many to cope with there. He was one of the unlucky ones to be farmed out to the nearest smaller towns.

The Sarge was kindly putting him up for the fortnight in the police house adjacent to the station, and the two men were getting along well. Kevin was a bit of a Sarge-clone, serious and by-the-book, listening intently and taking copious notes on everything we said and did. But while the Sarge was the very model of rectitude and professionalism, I’d had to make Kevin expunge quite a few of his scribblings when he’d recorded me ranting about paperwork or procedures once or twice (or fifteen or twenty times). Unwisely, I’d expressed some very frank opinions about police bureaucracy in his presence that would surely land him in hot water if he ever aired them back at the police academy.

In fact, the Sarge had assiduously and deliberately kept Kevin away from me during his time with us, mentoring him personally. They’d bonded over traffic infringements, random breath tests, gun licences and petty small town problems such as straying horses, shoplifting, public drunkenness and preventing the Bycrafts from destroying the very fabric of the community with their anti-social behaviour. The two men had cruised around together in the patrol car, leaving me back at the station sullenly doing paperwork, gorging on Tim Tams, and answering wrong number calls for the Saucy Sirens Gentlemen’s Club.

And to top off the whole terrible fortnight, the Sarge hadn’t even made me dinner once since Kevin arrived.

But today, on his last day with us, my time with the impressionable young recruit had finally arrived. The Sarge was bogged down with routine end-of-month paperwork about our statistics and activities, so I shamelessly took advantage of his preoccupation and offered to take Kevin with me to walk the beat. Kevin swiftly agreed, rather bored with watching the Sarge tote up numbers and punch them into his spreadsheet. There were only so many notes you can take on that, I suppose.

I hoped Kevin would ask me lots of questions about policing so I could share my knowledge, not having ever mentored anyone before. But although I’d noticed he was deferentially inquisitive with the Sarge, with me he was gawky and inarticulate, not able to string a single sentence together. A tall, gangly copper-haired young man with freckles from tip to toe, he somehow managed a full-body blush every time I even looked at him. And though I felt for him, not being the most socially adept person in the world myself, it was strangely compelling to witness. I’d never seen anything like it, leaving him looking as though he’d been sunbaking out in the Simpson Desert for an entire day in summer, slathered in olive oil.

We climbed into the patrol car and I spun out the tyres in the loose gravel that formed the station carpark, alarming Kevin. He blushed. As soon as we hit the road, my phone rang. Blatantly disregarding the law forbidding the use of a phone while driving, I pulled it out of my pocket, earning myself a shocked glance from my passenger.