Blood Sport
Authors: J.D. Nixon
Blood Sport
by JD Nixon
Copyright JD Nixon 2011
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real locations, is purely coincidental.
Also by
JD Nixon
at Smashwords:
Heller series
Heller
(free ebook!)
Heller’s Revenge
Heller’s Girlfriend – due end January 2012
Little Town series
Blood Ties
(free ebook!)
Blood Sport
Next Little Town book – due end March 2012
Cover design by JD Nixon
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Cuttings from my scrapbook . . .
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Tuesday, 16 December 1919
Local man to hang for ‘animalistic’ murder; family members arrested for assaulting police
An unemployed man, Joseph James Bycraft, aged eighteen years, was yesterday sentenced to death for the murder of Ruth Anne Fuller, aged fifteen years, in Mount Big Town in May of this year. The presiding judge, Justice Henries, condemned Bycraft for the brutality of the murder and his complete lack of remorse, stating that his animalistic urges had robbed the Fuller family of a daughter, sister and niece.
Miss Fuller was knocked from her bicycle by Bycraft as she cycled to meet a friend at the beach. Bycraft then dragged her to a nearby field where she was indecently treated before being strangled to death. The court heard during the trial that Bycraft was strongly infatuated with Miss Fuller and had pestered her for many years, ignoring repeated warnings from her father and brothers to stay away from her. Mr Fuller had been forced to report him to the local constable on four separate occasions in the last year in response to Bycraft’s increasingly threatening behaviour towards his daughter. It is not known what precipitated the vicious murder, but witnesses stated that Miss Fuller had scorned Bycraft in front of her friends the previous day, at which time he was heard to yell loudly at her, “You’ll be sorry soon enough for your sharp tongue.”
Miss Fuller’s parents, grandparents and three brothers were in court to hear the death sentence being handed down, and took the news with quiet dignity, despite their obvious distress. However, members of the Bycraft family created a shameful uproar by yelling obscenities at Justice Henries and the Fuller family, before rightfully being ejected from the courtroom by court officials.
Three members of the Bycraft family were consequently arrested for assault, after spitting on and kicking police officers outside the courthouse. They will appear in the Wattling Bay Magistrates Court next week.
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Bycraft sentenced to life for motiveless murder
In the Wattling Bay Supreme Court today, Justice Maria Givenchy handed down a life sentence to Craig Richard Bycraft, 30, unemployed of Mount Big Town. Bycraft was found guilty of the sickening and seemingly motiveless murder of young mother, Marcelle Antoinette Stormley, 25, also of Mount Big Town, in July this year.
During the trial the court heard that Bycraft waylaid Mrs Stormley as she waited for her friend to go for an evening jog in preparation for a charity fun run in the city. Mrs Stormley was taken by surprise by Bycraft and had no opportunity to defend herself against the attack. She was sexually assaulted before being bludgeoned to death with an iron bar.
No motive for the attack was established, but police believe that it was a case of mistaken identity. Bycraft admitted during police interviews that he had intended to target Mrs Stormley’s jogging partner instead. The court heard that Mrs Stormley had been well rugged up against the cold air with her features obscured on the night of her murder and had been wearing a distinctive jacket that she had borrowed from her friend that afternoon. Bycraft later retracted his admission, insisting that it had been made under duress and denied that the attack was premeditated.
Family and friends of Mrs Stormley, who leaves behind a husband and young daughter, wept in court as the sentence was handed down. Members of Bycraft’s family shouted abuse at Justice Givenchy. Four of them were later arrested, three for assaulting court security officers, and one for serious assault against the detective in charge of the case, Detective Inspector Fiona Midden.
Bycraft’s father, Robert (known as Bobby) Bycraft, was brutally killed himself in the city jail almost seven years ago while also serving a life sentence for rape and murder.
Bycraft is expected to appeal his conviction.
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Sunday, 22 May 2011
Fugitive fires shots at cops
Two police officers were shot at in Mount Big Town last night, both sustaining shrapnel wounds in the face and neck. At the time of the attack, the officers were attending a residence in Jarrah Street after receiving an anonymous tip-off that fugitive Redmond Christopher Bycraft, 35, was present at the house. Bycraft escaped from custody four months ago.
Investigations are continuing into the shooting.
Prologue
As I sleep, my mind forces me to relive that terrible evening three years ago. During the day I ruthlessly quash any thought of it, but at night every detail returns with awful clarity.
In my dream, I’m as flustered again as I was on that fateful evening. Snatching the keys to my little silver hatchback from the hall table, I yell out goodbye to Dad over my shoulder. I carelessly fling open the front door and hurtle through the doorway. I jump down the five steps leading from the front veranda, landing on our patchy lawn with a slight jarring of my left ankle.
“
Slow down, love, or you’ll do yourself an injury,” scolds Dad fondly, walking to the stairs to wave me off. I’m running late, held up by a phone call from my best friend, Marianne. She called me from the city to tell me that she’s pregnant again, after a recent miscarriage. Overjoyed for her, I chatted for far too long, losing track of the time.
I throw myself into the driver’s seat and switch on the ignition, jamming the car into reverse, a horrible crunch of gears my reward for my haste. I hope that Dad hasn’t heard, but the grimace on his face and slow shake of his head as I speed down the driveway suggests otherwise.
I screech left at my gate without braking and with only a cursory check for oncoming traffic, even though I’m pulling out onto the Coastal Range Highway. I plant my foot on the accelerator and push my little car as fast as it will go, disregarding the sixty kilometre speed limit. Doesn’t matter, I decide, because I know the town’s two cops very well. And Ryan, the young constable, is notoriously easy to sway with a pretty smile. Being a cop as well doesn’t hurt either, I remind myself wryly.
It’s almost fifteen minutes past the time that Marcelle and I agreed to meet for our evening jog and I hate being late. Especially as it was my idea to postpone our jog until tonight, using the day to catch up with old friends. I’m on one of my irregular weekend returns from the city to visit Dad in the small town in which I’d been born and raised.
It’s the middle of winter and the night air is particularly freezing
–
something about a cold front sweeping in from Antarctica, I’d heard on the TV weather forecast. I’d lent Marcelle my new sheepskin jacket earlier in the day after she complained that her young sister-in-law, Romi, had borrowed her warmest jacket and taken it to a friend’s place for a sleepover. I have a spare, but it’s not as cute as the deep purple jacket I’d recently bought in the city and proudly worn as I flitted here and there in town today.
I turn off the highway into the side street that bounds the small corner park we’ve agreed to meet in. The park has an unbreakable security light over the entrance to its public facilities, making it one of the safest places to meet in town at night. I step out of my car, careful to lock it behind me.
There’s no sign of Marcelle. That’s strange, I think. She’s usually as careful about timekeeping as I am. I settle myself on the low log fence that surrounds the park and pull my jacket around me more tightly. But it’s so cold that after a few minutes I’m forced to stand up and jog on the spot to keep myself warm. Where is she?
Reluctantly, I yank my phone from my pocket and ring the town’s only pub, which Marcelle and her husband, Abe, own. When Abe answers, I enquire after Marcelle, wondering if she’s been held up, keeping my voice deliberately casual. But he’s anxious straight away, telling me that he dropped her off at the park twenty minutes ago. He’d wanted to wait with her until I turned up, but she’d waved him away, laughing in her delightfully throaty way that I’d be there in a second because I was never late. I hang up on him without another word and cram my phone back into my pocket.
Stomach tense with fear, I start looking for Marcelle, wishing I had a torch on me. I unsheathe the cruelly sharp hunting knife I always have strapped to my thigh and grip it tightly in my right hand. I search quickly behind the toilet block, nervous in its dark shadows. There’s nothing there. Frantic, I run wildly around the rest of the small park, searching everywhere, calling her name.
Nothing.
Frustrated, I move over to the beautiful fig tree that is the centrepiece of the park. It was planted back in the early 1920s to commemorate a brave local boy who died a hero at Pozi
e
res during World War I. I walk cautiously around its huge girth, the breath forced from my lungs when I spot one of Marcelle’s running shoes carelessly lying on the ground. I can’t breathe for a minute. Creeping around the tree, I see her other shoe and her legs bare in the freezing weather, her tracksuit pants bunched down around her ankles.
That’s not sensible, I think to myself in shock. What is she doing lying on the chilly dewed grass like that? She’ll catch a cold.
Moving further around the trunk, I find the rest of her. She is sprawled indecently, exposed for everyone to see, my sheepskin jacket torn open, the zip ripped apart. Her running top is pulled up high, her sports bra in two pieces, breasts uncovered. Her arms are flung wide apart, as if she was preparing to embrace her awful fate.