by Luke Preston
Bishop stepped into the hall. Uniforms passed him in one direction as they came on shift, while others hurried in the other with knock-off drinks on their minds. A door opened and closed down the hall and Chief Inspector Patrick Wilson stepped out. Bishop knew the room: one table, one chair and a television to monitor the interview rooms like the one Bishop was just in.
‘You hear all that?’ Bishop asked.
‘I heard,’ Wilson grumbled. ‘I’m starting to think that maybe you shouldn’t have come back so early.’
‘It wouldn’t have changed anything that happened today.’
‘You went in without a warrant.’
‘I had probable cause.’
Wilson smirked to himself. ‘So you say.’
‘Everything worked out,’ Bishop said.
Wilson shrugged. ‘There’s something you should hear.’ He stepped off and Bishop followed. He was a big man with the body of a boxer who, after his career, had let himself go. He still moved like a boxer and he could still throw a punch.
They moved through the internal maze of paint-chipped corridors and came to an unmarked door. Wilson used a key, unlocked it and they both stepped through. Bishop’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He saw through the two-way mirror and into the interrogation room. The animal Ellison had tussled with earlier sat cuffed at the table. He had a hard face and an even harder looking bald head covered with dents from previous bad decisions. Track marks led up his neck along a collapsed vein and faded around the same place that the scabs on his face began.
‘Haven’t been able to shut him up,’ Wilson said. ‘Nothing but yak, yak, fucking yak.’ He picked up the telephone and told whoever answered that they were ready.
Ellison entered the interrogation room. At twenty-nine she was young to be a detective and probably lied to herself that the promotion was due to hard work rather than the VPD trying to fill a quota. She had six brothers, all cops, and no social life. Bishop knew she was smart; the heavy make-up and clothes led most people to believe otherwise.
She skolled a can of Red Bull and stared the junkie down.
His eyes had trouble focusing. ‘If I rat, this going to shave any jail?’
‘If it pans out, I’ll put in a word,’ Ellison said.
The junkie sized up his options and realised that he didn’t have any.
‘What do they call you?’
‘Roach.’ Ellison uncuffed him. ‘You got a smoke?’
She tossed him a pack. His cracked lips hooked onto one and pulled it from the deck. ‘Whatcha wanna know?’ he said as he lit up.
‘Tell me about this Justice.’
Roach slumped in his chair. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’ he said quietly. ‘I know other things. Lots of other things. I can tell you about those.’
Ellison took a seat. ‘I don’t want to know about those. I want to know about Justice.’
Roach, scared, chewed a dirty nail. ‘He leads a network of bent coppers.’ His eyes dipped to the floor, disappointed for having said the words.
‘Who is he?’
‘Nobody knows. All you hear is whispers and shit talk. Somebody, somewhere disappears. Somebody gets knocked. Nobody ever says nothing.’
‘How did he get to you?’
Roach dragged on his cigarette. ‘Last week, I’m out and about with my boy Beanzie drinking, cruising for cunt. Good times, y’know? Then he gets a call and he’s all fidgety, like he’s got to score up, but he don’t, cos he’s already high as all fuck. Says he’s gots to go do this thing. Wants me to go for support or backup or some fuckin’ shit.’
‘What’s Beanzie do?’
‘Big dicks, little dicks, clean dicks, put a hole in the world dicks. You want a gun that’ll do any of the above, Beanzie’s your man.’
Ellison waved her hand for Roach to move on.
‘We headed out of the city.’
‘Where to?’
‘Out of the city, I dunno; up bush. We roll up on this joint and Beanzie’s getting all nervous and shit like a little bitch, so I tell him to man the fuck up.’
‘Did he?’
‘After I slapped him, he did. We knocks on this door and this real trained-up looking guy opens. Now, I was only there for a few minutes, but I could see that these guys were definitely the don’t-fuck-around types. They didn’t say much, but they didn’t need to. Their black eyes did all the talking.’
‘How many?’
‘Three or four.’
‘Was it three or was it four?’
‘Do I look like a mathematician?’
‘Alright, go on.’
Roach flicked his cigarette to the other side of the room and let the smoke escape his nostrils. ‘One of them went to Beanzie’s car and got the guns.’
‘What kind of guns?’
‘I didn’t look.’
‘If you had to guess?’
‘M16s.’
‘That’s a hell of a specific guess.’
Roach looked around. Paranoid. ‘That’s not all. They had maps. On the walls in the place, they had maps, blueprints, timetables and shit. They’re planning a robbery.’ Roach leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘Six AM tomorrow morning. Justice will strike.’ He was pretty pleased with himself. 'So what about my jail?’
‘What about it?’
‘This shit’s going down.’
‘What shit?’ Ellison said. ‘Some fairytale about a network of bent cops? Some bullshit about a robbery tomorrow morning? You don’t know who they are, what they’re robbing. You don’t know shit.’
‘Beanzie will tell you; go ask him. He hangs out on Brunswick Street.’
‘Is Beanzie his real name?’
‘No.’
‘What is?’
Roach couldn’t remember. ‘Fuck.’
Ellison left the room.
‘Hey,’ Roach’s cracked voice yelled. ‘Six AM. It’s meant to happen at 6 AM. Fucking 6 AM, 6-fucking-AM. Tomorrow at 6 AM.’ And the more he said it, the more insane he grew at the sound of his own voice.
Wilson flicked the switch and muted the interview room audio.
‘Do you believe him?’ Bishop asked.
‘The commissioner believes it and I believe what she tells me to believe so we’re looking into it.’ Wilson cocked his head and smiled. ‘What do you say? Do you want in?’
‘Every second crim whips out that story when they’re busted. Justice is nothing but a dead end.’
‘It’s not the first time you’ve chased a dead end that led somewhere.’
Bishop dry-rubbed his face. He was tired and Roach had given him a headache. ‘Put Ethical Standards on; Jim Patterson would chew this up.’
‘Jim Patterson is only looking to get his head on the telly. He’s still trying to save the career he had before his leg was blown off. The commissioner wants this taken care of quietly. If it gets out that a group of officers pulled a robbery and we knew about it, it’ll fuck us up for years. There will be budget cuts across the board. Then we’ve got low-paid officers, then we’ve got corrupt officers. We need to find Justice and stop whatever is happening tomorrow at 6 AM.’
‘I’m not in any shape for this.’
‘If this thing goes down, a lot of people are going to get hurt.’ Wilson put a fatherly hand on Bishop’s shoulder. ‘I don’t have anyone else I can trust.’
Bishop gave a weak nod. ‘Alright, I’ll look into it.’
‘Good,’ he said, slapping Bishop’s shoulder. ‘Give me updates. Any lead, no matter how insignificant, forward it on.’
Wilson headed to his office and Bishop waited until the locker room was empty before taking a shower. His forty-year-old body was an embarrassment, covered with the history of his life in a mess of tattoos, scars and gunshot wounds. Even after a shower he could still smell the gunpowder on his hands and hear the ringing in his ears from the mess at the green stucco house.
Bishop rode the elevator to the lobby. It was brown and empty and he was
half way across it when the Desk Constable called him over.
‘The hospital sent this over,’ he said and handed Bishop a clear bag.
He could see the contents through the plastic. The possessions of a young girl: purse, keys, bracelet. All of them smeared in blood.
*
Bishop parked a block from his apartment. Down the street, a kid, fifteen years old, pants low, hat high, was struggling to jemmy a car window. Rubbish piled around the wheels; the vehicle hadn’t moved in months.
Bishop called out: ‘Hey.’
The kid turned, took one look, thought Bishop was nothing to worry about and went back to work on getting arrested.
Bishop unclipped his badge and held it out for him to see. ‘Hey, dickhead.’
The kid took off as fast as his oversized pants would allow him. A moment later, he was gone.
Bishop’s apartment: three rooms, a balcony, no view and hints of her every place he looked. Shoes left where they had been kicked off. A coat on the back of a chair. A coffee cup with lipstick traces.
Her memory, everywhere. It suffocated him.
Chapter Three
Ten months ago
Tom Bishop heard the screams from down the hall. He heard them from the lobby. He even heard them from the car park. The call that pulled him out of bed came thirty minutes ago, and at first he thought it was just a couple of guys pulling a bullshit joke. But even the best bullshit has a hint of truth in it.
There were a couple of hours left before the sun rose and the station took the time to catch its breath before the onslaught of a new day. Lewis met him in the lobby, blood-soaked tissues rammed up his nose. ‘Thought we should give you a call. Just in case,’ he said.
‘Where is she?’
Lewis pointed to the end of the hall, and they headed toward the source of the racket. With each step, the screams faded, making way for a relentless wall of abuse that was just as unpleasant.
‘We picked her up about an hour ago. B&E on a boutique store in Toorak with two other juvies. Took me and a couple of baggy pants to subdue her.’
Lewis slowed to a stop at the office door. Bishop peered through the small glass window at a worn-down girl who couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. In another place and time, she could have been on the cover of a magazine; at the moment, her looks were hidden by anger and pain.
‘No criminal history,’ Lewis said. ‘I figure she probably just did this for some attention.’
Bishop lit a cigarette. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Alice Cameron.’
He pulled in a lungful of smoke, wrapped his hand around the doorhandle and stepped through.
Her eyes snapped to him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
Bishop dragged a chair from another desk and sat next to her. ‘I’m Tom Bishop,’ he said.
Her face softened. ‘I imagined you different.’
‘How so?’
‘A bit more like the cops on television.’
‘I can have some headshots made if you like?’
‘I imagined you funnier as well.’
Bishop leant over and uncuffed her. ‘They tell me you think I’m your father.’
She rubbed her wrists. Not because she needed to, but because she thought she should. Too many movies. ‘They tell me that as well.’
‘Who’s your mother?’
She took her time with an answer. ‘Her name is Stacy,’ and waited for recognition to cross Bishop’s face, but there was none.
‘About seventeen, eighteen years ago? Ring any bells? Stacy Cameron?’
He held his breath. It was just for an instant, but it was long enough to give Alice the answer she had come to find.
‘Guess I’m your little girl,’ she said. ‘Are you proud?’
*
Neither of them knew what to say in the car, so neither said much of anything. They watched the city roll by in the stillness of the metropolitan night. Occasionally, light from a neon bar would bounce off their faces and fall back into the darkness as they passed. It had been raining for three days and had finally stopped earlier that night.
Alice rolled down a window and lit a cigarette before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. Bishop leant across, snatched the butt from her lips and flicked it out the window.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Watch your language.’ He said it with enough authority to make her sit up and keep her mouth shut. ‘It’s not very ladylike.’
She shifted her gaze to the shards of rising sun that splintered the gaps in the buildings. ‘How did you and Stacy hook up?’ she asked.
‘Your mother hasn’t told you?’
She shook her head.
‘It’s not much of a story. I knew your mother for about twelve hours. We met in a bar in Port Melbourne, had too much to drink and had sex.’
‘Sounds like Stacy.’
‘Guess we weren’t too big on the birth control.’
‘Still sounds like Stacy,’ she said. ‘What do I call you?’
‘What do you want to call me?’
‘I don’t think we’re at Dad yet, are we?’
Bishop shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think we are.’
‘How about Tom?’
Nobody called him Tom. Half the guys he knew probably didn’t even know his first name, and those who did would never think to use it. But when she said it, he liked the way it sounded.
Bishop pulled into an all-night convenience store on Sydney Road. The bell rang as he stepped through the doorway and an overweight man with a kind face looked up from his paper and smiled. Bishop tried to return the smile but it came off crooked. He headed to the rear of the store and found the toiletry section next to the car care products and picked up a box of tissues, face wipes and some make-up. He struggled with them on his way back to the counter and dumped them on the bench.
Bishop poured a couple of coffees, but when he reached for his wallet, the man glimpsed his badge. ‘No, no, no. No charge,’ he said with a wave of his hand.
‘No, mate, I can’t do that.’ Bishop sifted through the notes in his hands.
‘Next time I get robbed, you come, you come.’
‘When was the last time you got robbed?’
‘Last week.’
Bishop pointed to the floor. ‘You got robbed here?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re only a few blocks from Brunswick Station.’
‘Next time you come, free coffee.’
Most of the coppers Bishop knew had used their truth suits or badges to get discounts or free lunches at some stage in their lives. A couple of bucks here, a free beer there; it was part of the job, a perk the bosses didn’t endorse but couldn’t stop. The perk wasn’t for Bishop. He always felt like he was stealing and the guilt was never worth the discount.
The old man wouldn’t let the issue drop, so Bishop left some cash on the counter and walked out. He climbed into the car, cranked up the engine and put the bag of cosmetics on Alice’s lap.
‘What’s this?’
‘You can’t go back to your mother looking like you’ve spent half the night in jail.’
‘I have spent half the night in jail.’
‘Doesn’t mean you have to look like it.’
A smile came to her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Yesterday’s make-up came off easily and with it she lost the anger and attitude. She saw the scars on his knuckles. The badge chained around his neck. The bulge of the gun under his leather jacket.
‘Why a cop?’ she asked.
Bishop leant back in his seat and thought about it, and it wasn’t something he thought about often. ‘It was a way out?’
‘From what?’
‘A bad future?’
‘How’s that working out for you?’
Bishop smiled; she was growing on him. ‘My old man, your grandfather, we used to live on the road. He was a trucker; we bounced around from place to place. Drive a load across
the country, drop it off, pick up another and drive it someplace else. Lived out of the cab, ate in roadhouses, that sort of thing. But the old man liked the drink, and when he drank he liked to mouth off. One night he mouthed off and got his throat cut.’
Alice frowned. Bishop wasn’t sure if it was out of disgust or horror. He figured it didn’t matter; they were both bad enough and he wondered why he actually told her that. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said.
But that was a lie. The thirteen-year-old Tom Bishop was copping size ten steel-capped boots while trying to shield his bleeding father.
His old man wasn’t easy.
His old man was a drunk.
Bishop wasn’t even their real name.
His mother, Billie, was a philanthropist and being poor meant she had little to give. She volunteered at the Salvation Army, at local charities and when somebody passed away she was always the first to bake a casserole for the family. His father Roy was a petty criminal at best. Everything in their house had fallen off the back of a truck and holding a steady job was difficult for a man who slept until three in the afternoon and was drunk by seven.
When Tom was five years old, he watched his father cave in his mother’s face with the butt of a longneck. The day before he had had a win at Flemington on a sixty-to-one horse and come home with $9000. That was more money Billie had seen in her life and she came to the conclusion that they couldn’t possibly spend it all themselves so she donated $4500 of it to the local church and for the rest of the afternoon felt good about being able to help. She baked a cake, cooked a roast and when Roy woke up to find half his money in the hip pocket of a church he didn’t believe in, his fist wrapped around the first thing in reach. He swung only once and before he realised what he had done it was over and there was nothing anybody could do. Billie was gone.
To escape the law, the son of a bitch kidnapped his son and they disappeared. The road was a cold experience. Partly because Roy was a cold man who didn’t like people, and partly because it was no place for a child to grow up. Roy would go days without talking to his son and there were many nights where Tom would have to sleep under the truck while the old man banged some rough piece of arse in the cab. Then there were the beatings. Tom learnt to tune out during them and put his mind someplace else until Roy tired or finished. It wasn’t until years later, after Roy had the life kicked out of him and Tom was in an orphanage, that the violence inside him began to show. At first, small outbursts, then much worse. His first schoolyard fight sent a kid to the nurse, his second to the hospital, and with his third he almost killed some poor little bastard who’d bagged him for not being able to kick a footy straight. He never knew when to stop; he just kept throwing punches until he was pulled off whoever was on the receiving end of his demons.