‘Did you tell ’em we were with you the whole night, like I said?’ Pope suddenly demanded.
‘Yeah,’ J lied.
‘What were you doing in there so long?’ Darren asked, not even bothering to conceal the accusation in the question.
‘Nothing,’ J said. ‘They just sat me in there with no-one coming in or nothing.’
Smurf was listening extra closely to what he had to say, her gaze never shifting from him; he was trying to make her believe him, but he wasn’t sure if she did.
‘That’s good, that’s okay,’ the lawyer said finally, taking charge again. ‘Now, I want you to listen very carefully. From now on, mate, you don’t say anything. And that means nothing at all. You don’t say I don’t know; you don’t say I was sleepy. You just refuse to answer any of their questions. Okay? By law, these cunts can’t make you say anything. You don’t even have to give your name. Okay?’
Okay, J got it. He wasn’t to say anything.
All of a sudden he felt like it was all his fault. But what did any of it have to do with him? Nobody had asked him if he thought it was a good idea to shoot two policemen. But what if they had? J wondered. What if Pope had sat him down and said, What do you think, matey? You liked Baz. What do you think? What would he have done then?
The thought made J uncomfortable, because he knew what he’d done when Pope had told him to get the car: he’d gotten it, no questions asked, or no questions answered, at least. And if he’d been told they were going to kill some policemen, would he have done any different? He was scared of Pope—they all were—but it was something else. J didn’t know how to stand up to him.
That was the thought that made him uncomfortable. He was too weak to say no.
‘Now this is very important,’ Ezra was saying—because that was his name: Ezra. ‘Don’t let them push you around. You just sit there in silence. At least, you know, till I get there. This goes for your girlfriend, too. What’s her name?’
This was getting worse. J didn’t want Nicky caught up in any of this. Why was he trying to drag her into it?
‘N’cole,’ he answered sourly, like he had a bad taste in his mouth, and he did.
‘Cole?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Ni-cole,’ J repeated, pronouncing it extra slowly.
‘Nicole,’ the guy said, just so he could remember it for later.
This was bad, and J was angry at himself for letting it go so far.
‘This goes for you with Nicole, too. There’s just certain things you don’t talk to girls about, you know?’
J couldn’t believe he was being talked to like this, like a ten year old who had to have the difference between boys and girls explained to him. By someone whose specialty was back-alley hookers and strip-o-grams.
‘It doesn’t matter how special they are or what you have or haven’t done,’ he continued, really laying it on. ‘Girls, they get frightened. They natter.’
Jesus, when would this guy shut up?
‘They can’t help it. It’s just the way the world is.’
Smurf didn’t care much for Ezra’s ramblings, but was following his line of questioning closely.
‘There’s not much to understand about this,’ the lawyer finished up, catching sight of Smurf ’s sneer, ‘except you shut up.’
‘Are you clear about that, honey?’ Smurf said, soft and fuzzy, like a grandmother should sound.
‘Yep,’ J answered, trying to work out a way to get out of there as fast as he could.
After all that, J didn’t bother to tell them about spinning the cops the yarn he’d been smoking marijuana on the night in question. He didn’t think it would go down in quite the way he intended it.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Ezra said, trying to be nice. ‘Hey, do you want a cold drink? I got lots of different kinds of drinks.’
Pope had hardly said a thing the whole time. He’d been sitting hunched over the table, taking it all in, making his calculations. Pope was often quiet—maybe that was why they called him Pope—but today he was even quieter than usual, quiet and giving J the death stare. And J didn’t like it one little bit.
‘Just shut the fuck up,’ Pope snarled as they left Ezra’s and got back in the car. He didn’t have to say anything else—that was enough—but, glancing at J, Smurf wondered if he understood.
Nobody had said anything about Craig, but he hadn’t been with the others because he’d been out doing his own shit, which basically meant fanging around in circles, working himself up into a lather.
By the time he pulled in to the petrol station later that night, he was already pretty wound up. So when he saw the cop car pull in right after him, he was packing it.
They glanced casually in his direction as they strode past and then stood propped at the magazine counter, flicking through the men’s mags as he scuttled by. Paying for the petrol, he couldn’t help but shoot nervous glances over his shoulder. He was scared.
And he had every reason to be. They’d already shown what they could get away with. They could take him outside, make him get on his knees, and blow his brains out with the press cameras popping. And then say he was threatening them. No-one would say a thing because that’s what the coppers were able to do in this place. If you thought the crims were the only ones out of control, you weren’t reading the papers.
So Craig was right to be scared.
The only problem is, when you let yourself get rattled like that, you start making the wrong decisions, and Craig was just about to make a beauty.
He ran.
No way was he going in to see the cops, with or without Ezra. No way in the world. He knew he wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d start making all their wise-arse cracks, goading him, making jokes about Baz and Catherine and how maybe they should all go over there and give her a poke and that sort of shit. Then he’d lose it and the next thing he’d be threatening to kill the lot of them and they’d have him on the floor with a gun behind his ears, breathing beer and meat pies into his face. He just knew it.
He was too strung out, that was the thing. If he had a bit of time to rest up and settle, have a massage, a bit of a relax, well, maybe then, but not now—not now, with so much going on. Maybe Pope could get away with it, giving it back to them. Pope was at his best when he was slinging shit with people he really hated. Maybe even Darren could get away with it, front up and put on that sulky act of his till they were so sick of looking at his mopey face they’d chuck him out.
But Craig? Craig knew himself well enough to know it wouldn’t take much for him to crack, and when he cracked he didn’t know what he’d do or say. Or rather, he did.
He had to get out.
He didn’t have a plan, or not much of one. There was a mate of his, Richard, who’d decided to go straight, or as straight as guys like Craig and Richard can go. He’d shacked up in the bush somewhere with a Filipino bride, trying to pretend everything was going to be all right and he could crawl away from his previous life. That he could be a farmer on a clapped-out piece of land where he might be able to grow a bit of dope and hang loose. And Craig thought he owed him a favour or two, so decided to pay a visit. Why not? Lie low, take it easy, have a little holiday in the Australian bush away from it all. Maybe even do a bit of hunting. It sounded great when he’d first thought of it, looking into a glass around midnight the night before.
He hadn’t been able to sleep, not since the killings. It wasn’t that he regretted it—he didn’t—it was just that it hadn’t been like he’d imagined. Sometimes when you think of doing something like that, you just imagine it in a flash. One minute you’re all there eyeing one another off; the next it’s bang and someone’s gone. Craig hadn’t realised how hard it was to kill someone, the hard, physical effort of doing it, of whacking into someone to make sure they were dead. And then blood everywhere, all over the place. Just when you think you’ve cleaned it off, you find it somewhere else. And then afterwards, when you’re trying to nod off, the little details you
didn’t even remember flooding back. The look of fear in their eyes, the gurgling and twitching, the horrible details of how men die, and so he had been up for twentyfour, maybe thirty-six hours by now.
Normally that was okay: he was used to it. He liked that crystal-clear clarity you get after a few days without sleep. The sun goes up, the sun goes down, people sleep and wake and sleep, and, meanwhile, you’re just there, watching it all pass as it should, like God. It is like being God, or being with God.
But this wasn’t like being with God. Not this time.
Not that Craig believed in God. He had as much trouble with that as anyone else, but at times like this, when you were touching the edge, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel something kind of … spiritual.
Yeah, just get away, that’s what he thought. Straighten out; clear the head; do a bit of meditation. Commune.
He’d let his life get way out of whack. All that aggro. It was his line of business: everyone always trying to rip you off, steal your money. People thought selling drugs was easy, but there was a lot of infrastructure, capital costs. Actually, Craig had been thinking about expanding into production— get a bit of vertical integration going. Get rid of Roache— nobody likes corrupt cops, not even crims—or maybe keep him on just to keep the coppers sweet, but expand out, you know, get some chemists working for him, set up a lab. Get a steady supply of codeine and Bob’s your uncle. There’d be no looking back.
But was it really him, he wondered. The Yin and the Yang things weren’t really in sync, and he wondered if he’d neglected his true, inner self. So a holiday might be just the thing.
All he needed was a bit of time to get his head together. Lay off the dope and the rest of it, eat some brown rice.
Once things had settled down he could poke his nose back in, go in and see the cops, maybe, the way Smurf had said. He’d be in a better frame of mind and able to handle their shit.
That’s all he needed: just a few days away, a bit of fresh air, somewhere away from it all.
Of course, nothing was ever that simple. Not for Craig, anyhow. By the time he arrived at the farm early the following morning, he was pissed and still drinking. Noticing Rich’s pump-action, he decided it’d be great fun to go out and have a blast at some of the farm buildings. Rich didn’t think it was such a good idea, but that’s because Rich was a pussy. You just had to look at him. Greying, getting flabby in the middle, bulging in a yellowing singlet, with big fat loser pork-chop whiskers—or maybe he just hadn’t shaved for a week—an ugly bitch common-law wife … The guy was a wreck, or so Craig thought.
And certainly no match for a drunk with a shotgun.
‘Woo! Fuckin’ monster!’ Craig cried as he let off another round at the silo. Blam, blam, blam! He felt like Arnie in The Terminator.
Shit, that thing made a noise, and every time it boomed Rich flinched like the pussy he was.
‘Nice gun, Rich. Can we go hunting?’
‘Yeah, maybe, mate,’ Rich answered, jumpy, and wondering how he was going to get rid of him. ‘I got a few things I gotta do.’
He was nervous—having a drunk guy with a highpowered shotgun blasting away at your property would make anyone nervous—but there was something else …
‘So how long were you wanting to stay?’ Rich asked a little later, back in the house. ‘And where’s Kelly?’ Kelly had been Craig’s girlfriend, when he’d still been capable of having a girlfriend. The one that Smurf had never really got on with.
‘We split up. Ages ago,’ Craig confessed, suddenly remembering a time when he actually felt something for another human being. ‘Don’t worry. You know, it’s mutual and everything, so it was for the best.’ Isn’t that the shit people say when things end?
Rich was worried, and so was his wife, hovering nervously in the doorway as Craig slugged down another stubby.
‘Fucking piece of shit!’ he suddenly roared, banging at the electronic gizmo on his lap because he couldn’t work out how to tune it.
‘You okay, mate?’ Rich asked uneasily. ‘What’s with the scanner?’
‘I’ll fight through, mate, I’ll fight through,’ Craig said, imagining that Rich was expressing concern.
‘Look, um …’ Rich began, wondering how he was going to broach it. ‘I’m just thinking it’s only fair—if you’re gonna to be hanging here for a while—it’s only fair you tell us …’ He glanced worriedly at his wife, who was going to give him hell about this later. ‘What’s this about?’
‘I don’t know what’s going on, Rich. I don’t know what’s going on, mate,’ Craig answered, distraught and incoherent.
And that’s when he heard them. The dogs. He’d found a channel, and that’s what he could hear: dogs. Rich’s dogs.
‘Can you hear that?’ Craig asked, mystified at first as he listened more closely.
‘Hear what?’ Rich answered, not able to follow the weird detours of Craig’s cracked mind.
But, angrily throwing the scanner down, Craig leaped to his feet and rushed out the door, snarling, ‘I can hear your fucking dogs.’
‘What’s going on?’ Rich’s wife asked, stalking forwards as the dogs barked in the distance and Craig hunted around for something in the front of the house.
‘I don’t know,’ Rich answered, looking quickly at the scanner and wondering if they should just get out now, before the shit really started to fly.
‘Tell him he can’t stay here,’ she said anxiously.
‘I can’t tell him nothin’, love,’ Rich answered, just as Craig exploded like a bomb back into the house, roaring, ‘Cunt motherfuckers!’
Swinging around in fright, Rich saw him surging forwards, waving a box and a fistful of wires and demanding, ‘What’s this, Rich? What’s this?’
Rich didn’t know what it was, or, if he did, he wasn’t showing it. ‘I don’t know, mate. I don’t know what it is!’ he said.
‘It’s a bug. There’s a fucking bug on your house.’
Was he telling the truth, or was it just another piece of paranoid shit from his scrambled brain?
‘I don’t know about it, mate,’ Rich answered, feeling like things were just about to go haywire big-time.
‘How can there be a bug in your house? Who knew I was coming?’
This was getting too scary.
‘They’re probably bugging your phone, mate,’ Rich said. ‘I don’t know. I’m not lying to you.’
But he was, of course he was. Whoever thinks there’s honour among thieves has only ever read about them in books.
‘Fuck, what am I going to do now, mate?’ Craig cried, looking as if he was about to burst into tears.
‘I don’t know, mate,’ Rich replied. ‘Maybe it’s just best you leave, eh?’
That was certainly the consensus at his end.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Craig said, determined, his whole being now intent on one thing: getting away, and getting away fast. Grabbing at his stuff and shoving it into a black plastic bag, he looked quickly about. ‘Did I bring anything else?’ he asked.
Rich didn’t think he had, and, grabbing the shotgun, Craig was already halfway out the door before they knew it, not far enough yet for Rich and his woman to feel safe, but certainly heading in the right direction.
Rushing out across the yard, Craig threw his things into the car, but, looking up, he saw two cars coming down the dirt track towards him.
Cop cars. With the dogs now barking their heads off.
If there was time for a bit of clear thinking, it was now, but Craig was way past it. Grabbing the shotgun, he turned and ran, fumbling to load the gun as he took off, his thongs flying from his feet as he sprinted through the dust.
Charging past the water tank, he made straight for the open field as the cops roared up. Craig was scared and running for his life, but out in the open like that he was a dead duck.
The cops piled out of their cars in their snappy bullet-proof vests and didn’t even call out an order to stop. Why would they? An armed
and dangerous man wanted in connection to the murder of two policemen. No witnesses. They had no intention of even giving him the time of day.
Raising his gun, the cop in charge steadied his hand, took aim and shot.
The Smith & Wesson Model 10 shoots a .38 copperjacketed hollow-point bullet, which expands upon entering the target, causing maximum damage to the surrounding tissue as it passes through at the speed of 755 feet per second. It is illegal in the UK, except for killing animals.
As the bullet slammed into Craig, he felt like he’d been hit with a hammer, and the searing pain passing through him was the most excruciating pain he’d ever felt in his life, knocking him down to the ground. Dazed and confused, his lungs already filling with blood, he stood uncertainly and turned to look at his killer just as he let loose with a second shot that dropped him hard again onto the dry soil.
That’s how he died, looking at the dead grass, flies already buzzing around his open eyes.
He was dead.
And if he hadn’t been, the cop who walked up to gloat over his body would have put a bullet through the back of his head just to finish him off.
TWELVE
The news spread fast.
First to hear was Detective Senior Sergeant Leckie. ‘Craig Cody’s gone, mate,’ the casual voice on the other end of the phone was saying. It was Norris, his offsider.
Leckie was playing on the floor at home with his kid and certainly wasn’t expecting this. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, standing.
‘They had to drop him,’ Norris answered matter-of-factly, like they were talking about a mozzie. ‘He found the listening device and sounded unhinged, so they went in to apprehend him and he lost the plot. They had to drop him.’
Leckie didn’t buy it, not completely. He knew feelings were running high about the two young constables who had been murdered. There would be plenty of people in the force—and the general public, for that matter—who wouldn’t mind one of the Codys, or all of them, going down in a hail of bullets, and Norris was one of them. But Leckie was a policeman, not a vigilante. There were already enough police crossing the line for it to be a matter of concern to anyone interested in a professional police force and not a gang of untouchable thugs dishing out their own brand of justice. Unpopular as it might have been in certain circles, Leckie was on the side of the law, not payback.
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