by Luke Preston
When he was fifteen years old, he escaped from the orphanage. It wasn’t the first time, but this time it stuck. He picked up a job as a labourer on a construction site and quickly fitted in. It was Tom’s first taste of a normal life and he liked it, enjoyed it; he relaxed. Even started dating a local girl. Her name was Dianne; he made her laugh and she taught him how to read. But no matter how good things were, he could never escape the violence. It lingered over his shoulder. Behind him. Lurking. The darkness was always with him, and one night the beast inside Tom Bishop came out when Dianne’s father got drunk and slapped her. It took four uniforms to pull Bishop off and, when they did, Dianne’s father looked more like a side of beef than a man.
Patrick Wilson was one of those uniforms. Already a thirteen-year veteran, he had seen the darkness before. He also saw glimpses of his son Daniel in Bishop. They both had the same honesty. Wilson and his wife Mona had watched their little boy slowly fade away from leukaemia when he was five years old. Neither of them ever really recovered. Wilson threw all his time and effort into the job and rose quickly through the ranks, while Mona doted on her nieces, nephews and any hard luck case she could find to plug the hole in her life.
Wilson called in all his favours. The assault charge disappeared and Tom went to live with him and Mona. There were rules and Tom liked them. For the first time, he had structure in his life. School, chores and a routine. Gradually, Wilson taught him discipline. He taught him self-control and that, if he was going to unleash the beast, to unleash it on those who deserved it.
*
It was light by the time Bishop brought the sedan to a stop outside Alice’s home. The lights were still on from the night before. Somebody was up and about.
Alice let her gaze fall self-consciously to the floor. ‘So this is it?’ she asked.
‘I guess it is.’
‘Would you like to come inside?’ It wasn’t so much an invitation. He got the feeling she didn’t want to go herself.
Bishop took a breath. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to be a father.’
She wanted him to say more. When he didn’t, she pushed open the door and was halfway out when Bishop grabbed her arm. He reached for his wallet. ‘You need any money?’
‘No,’ she said. Bishop could almost see the hope fade from her body as she pulled away from him. She navigated the cluttered yard of garden furniture and relics of children’s play equipment and didn’t look back. Bishop watched her struggle to find her keys. She dropped them at the door, scooped them up and then finally got them to work. Inside, it didn’t take long for the yelling to begin, most of it indistinguishable, all of it unpleasant. Bishop listened for a moment before putting the sound out of his mind and the car into gear. He made it past a couple more dumps before pulling in again, his eyes on the rear-view with Alice’s place in frame. He scratched the back of his head, cursed himself and turned off the engine.
A minute later, he was at the door. Knocked twice. When nothing happened, he knocked a third time. The door was cheap; if he knocked any harder, his fist would go right through it. The yelling ceased and a moment later the door swung open.
Stacy Cameron hadn’t aged well. By the looks of it, she had been around the block more than a few times and had the frayed edges to prove it. She stepped back, checked him out and seemed to like what she saw. ‘Well, well, well. Tom Bishop,’ she slurred. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
‘Can I come in?’ he mumbled.
One glance at the joint was all Bishop needed. In a flash, he took in the mismatched junk-store furniture and the holes in the walls from the assembly of men that had passed through on sloppy drunken nights.
Stacy leant against the fridge, slipped. She was drunk and pretending she wasn’t. ‘What do you think of our little pride and joy?’ she said as she shoved a cigarette between her lipstick-smeared lips. She sparked her lighter and on the third crack got a flame. ‘You look like you’re doing alright. Give us fifty bucks.’
Bishop stared at her. She bored him.
Across the worn carpet, Alice stood in the doorway and, when she saw Bishop, she was embarrassed for smiling.
‘Want to get out of here?’ he asked.
Alice scooped up her handbag from the back of the couch. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ Stacy raised the back of her hand.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Bishop warned her.
The don’t-fuck-around tone of his voice was enough to stop her dead. She looked to her daughter and let out a sob. Alice saw right through the performance, and by the time Stacy realised it, they were already out the door and halfway to Bishop’s car.
Bishop explained to his daughter that he was a single man. He told her he wasn’t father material. He told her she could stay with him for a few days until they sorted something out, but when she smiled he knew he’d do whatever she wanted.
Chapter Four
Junkie. Rapist. Murderer. Roach was all these things and probably more, but that didn’t make him a liar. Bishop parked in the police bay and climbed out. The St Albans watch-house loomed over the street. Anybody pinched was initially kept at the station, but when the detectives were finished listening to their confessions and lies, they were transported to the watch-house for a short stay, then either released on bail or taken to a long-term holding facility out of the city. Bishop stepped through the double doors and into the quiet of the lobby. It was nothing special: four dirty walls, a couple of plastic chairs and a glass window for checking in and out. Bishop tapped his badge on the glass that somebody had tried scraping their name into.
The cell officer, Bean, waiting out retirement, looked up from the footy section of the Herald Sun. ‘Dropping off or picking up?’
Bishop put his badge away. ‘Neither. I logged an arrest earlier; I need to see him again.’
Bean rose to his feet, stretched out his back. It cracked all the way up to the top. He laid the paperwork on a clipboard and picked up a pen. ‘Name?’
‘Mine or his?’
Not impressed. ‘His.’
‘Leroy “Roach” Blacker.’
‘What's wrong with the names they’re given?’ Bean slid the clipboard under the glass. ‘Sign. Badge number and weapon.’
Bishop filled out the form, unclipped his sidearm and slid both under the glass. Bean buzzed the door and Bishop stepped into the man-made purgatory. It was after dinner but before lights out. The prisoners were relatively content, as content as prisoners were ever going to be anyway. The halls were calm and quiet.
‘Mate. Hey, mate.’ A prisoner leant through the bars of his cell. His hair was long, grey and thinning. He whispered, ‘Can you spare a smoke?’
Bishop pulled out his pack and gave the old-timer a smoke and a light.
‘Thanks, mate. Thanks.’
Bishop nodded and moved on. His footsteps echoed on the thick concrete. Somewhere in another part of the facility a radio played. His footsteps and the muffled music was all that could be heard until the peace was broken by a whooping alarm. Red lights flashed all the way down the corridor. Farther up, cops in riot gear rushed out of a door and disappeared around a corner.
Bishop picked up the pace.
Beating sounds up ahead.
His steps turned into a jog, then into a run.
He took the corner. Stopped.
A frantic mess. Three guards were battling a wall of inmates. On the floor, an inmate convulsed as blood pumped out and painted the floor a brown shade of red. Two other guards worked to keep him alive, but it was just for appearances.
The body stopped moving.
What was left of him was a mess, his face swollen and blue, an ear to ear smile across his throat.
It was Leroy ‘Roach’ Blacker.
Bishop turned, headed back the way he'd come past the ambos whose only purpose now was to fill out paperwork.
He clocked his watch: 12:07 AM.
Less than six hours left.
C
hapter Five
12:57 AM
Roach had said Beanzie hung out on Brunswick Street. It was an area riddled with kitsch storefronts, tattoo parlours, restaurants and, between and above those, every small space was jam-packed with bars and clubs. So to say Beanzie hung out on Brunswick Street, was about as useful as saying Beanzie’s favourite colour was orange. Bishop ran the usual checks. The computer came back with 315 Beanzies and none of them with a weapons charge in their file.
He brought the car to a stop across from Monroe Guns ’n’ Ammo. The four-lane street was busy. Cars shot past and he had to stop three times before he made it to the other side. There was a firing range at the rear of the shop, and shots could be heard from the street in muffled thumps and cracks.
The bell above the door announced Bishop’s arrival. The woman behind the counter, who had tattoos for sleeves and an arsehole for a face, briefly looked up before refocusing her attention on the weapon she was cleaning.
‘Jackknife around?’
Her eyes avoided him. She called out, ‘Jack. Some pig out here wants to see you.’
Movement came from the small room behind the counter, and a moment later Jackknife filled the space in the wall where a door would usually go. His gut hung out over his tracksuit pants and his T-shirt wasn’t big enough to cover it.
‘New diet?’ Bishop asked.
‘Fuck off,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve been trying.’ He thumbed toward the shooting range and Bishop followed him through.
The smell of stale gunpowder hung in the air and the walls looked like they were imported from Baghdad. Somebody farther down popped off a few rounds as Jackknife came to a stop. Four years ago, Bishop sent him away for receiving stolen ammunition from the VPD’s armoury. What he left out was that his thirteen-year-old son Wyatt was in on the act as well. Jackknife took the fall and his son walked.
‘I’m looking for a runner. Calls himself Beanzie.’
Jackknife’s eyes avoided Bishop’s. If he’d been connected to a lie detector, he probably wouldn’t be feeling too comfortable. ‘Nah, don’t know him,’ he mumbled.
After twenty years of listening to lies, Bishop had a pretty keen bullshit detector. ‘Yeah, you do,’ he said.
They locked eyes. Jackknife’s face wasn’t the lying kind and he knew it. ‘Fuck.’
‘Jesus Christ. You lie to your wife like that?’
‘Yeah, I know Beanzie. So what?’
‘You know where he lives, hangs out, anything like that?’
Jackknife stared at him for a couple of moments. ‘This make us square?’
Bishop smiled. ‘Could do.’
Jackknife scribbled something on the back of an empty ammo box and handed it to Bishop: an address. He slipped it into his pocket. ‘How’s Wyatt?’
‘Doin’ three to five for burg.’
Bishop lit a cigarette. ‘Things are rough all round.’
Chapter Six
1:31 AM
Beanzie didn’t do much to conceal his lifestyle, income or identity. The address Jackknife had given Bishop was for a flashy apartment in an equally flashy neighbourhood, and the forty-thousand-dollar Nissan Skyline parked out front had the personalised licence plate, ‘BEANZ’. It wasn’t the most inconspicuous vehicle, but then Bishop was getting the impression that Beanzie wasn’t the smartest of crims. The building was old-school art deco with red leather chairs in the lobby, and somewhere someone was burning incense. Bishop headed up to the second floor and found Beanzie’s apartment about a third of the way down. Newspapers were piled up outside the door.
Four papers: four days gone.
Bishop knocked. No answer.
It took him a couple of minutes to pick the lock, and when he did he drew his weapon and stepped inside.
Quiet. Cold.
The hall was lined with framed autographed photos of soccer players Bishop didn’t recognise, and the lounge looked like something out of a magazine. Leather couches, red drapes, oak floors and designer clothes of whatever was in fashion that week sat in various piles around the place. The apartment was every young gangster’s dream. It’s what they saw in music videos and on the television. What they didn’t see was that it all comes to an end, and judging by the horrific stench burning Bishop’s nostrils, he suspected the end for Beanzie was fairly recent. He followed the smell of bad decisions into the bedroom and holstered his weapon.
Beanzie was facedown on the bed, a towel around his waist. Strangled.
Bishop took the keys to Beanzie’s Skyline and when he got to the car, he pulled the satellite navigation, scanned through the list of addresses and found one that matched Roach’s story.
2:17 AM
‘At the next intersection, turn right.’
The edges of the city were torn and frayed. Every block Bishop passed, the property values decreased that little bit more.
‘At the next intersection, turn left.’
3:01 AM
A stone’s throw from the city, moonlight bathed an industrial wasteland. The street lights were fewer and farther between, and ten minutes after that there was nothing but darkness.
3:22 AM
Bishop saw the orange glow through the treetops in the distance. He grounded the pedal, took the corner, slid to a stop. Firemen ran toward a blaze twenty feet into the scrub: a one-room shack that wouldn’t have been much when it was built a hundred years ago, was now burning down to nothing.
Climbing out of his car, Bishop pushed though the crowd toward the rear of the fire engine. Water pounded the shack; the force alone tore away planks of wood, the beams creaked and the whole thing was ready to collapse.
‘Hey,’ a fireman on top of the engine yelled. ‘Get back!’
Bishop showed his badge and was let past the line.
Any evidence that had had the long shot of being inside was burning. Bishop stepped forward, got an angle. Through the burning door that swung back and forth, he saw something.
On the wall: maps. Plans. Schematics. Everything Roach had talked about. It was only a matter of moments before the whole thing would be nothing but ash.
Bishop took a breath and stepped forward. A gust of black smoke hit him in the face. He took another step.
A fireman called out, too late.
Bishop ran into hell.
Smoke filled the shack, stinging his throat and eyes. He shielded his face and forced himself forward. Coughing and choking, he stumbled through another step and fell against the wall. A blast of heat hit him in the face. He dragged off a handful of papers and staggered backwards. There was black smoke in every direction. Bishop couldn’t see through it. He squeezed his eyes shut. Coughed. Fell to his knees and crawled. He heard the wooden roof crack and felt the heat of a beam fall past his face and hit the floor. He reached for what he thought was the open door but felt nothing but wall. He drew in a lungful of smoke and felt his lungs catch fire. The exit was lost to him.
Then he felt hands under his armpits; a couple of firemen dragged him across the ash, and cold air rushed over his face, clean air filling his lungs.
They dumped him on the ground. One got in Bishop’s face. ‘What are you doing, you fuckin’ dickhead?’
Bishop managed to drag out a few words to show he was alive and they left to put out the fire.
The night air soothed the burning in his lungs, and when he felt better he lit a cigarette, relaxed. The fire was under control by the time he pulled himself up to his feet, but it was still a show and the crowd was only just beginning to thin. Most of the papers he’d grabbed were blackened by the smoke, but a couple were still legible. He laid each on the bonnet and tried to make sense of them.
A road map.
A blueprint.
He hit the map first. It was a city map, the kind you’d pick up in any roadside station. Nothing special. Most of it was burnt away, but a highlighted route could be made out. It picked up on City Road, ran down two klicks, hung a left on Moray Street and ran off what was left of the page.
He clocked his watch: 3:46 AM. Two hours and change. The blaze was all but out, and Bishop gathered up the papers, thinking it best to leave before the firemen remembered him and collected a badge number for their report. He opened his car door, tossed the papers inside and was about to follow them when he heard one of the crowd mutter something.
Bishop turned. ‘What did you say?’
He was an older man, dressed in a gown and slippers. A woman who was probably his wife stood beside him. Country people. Weathered faces. The man looked at what was left of the shack and then back to Bishop. ‘I said I hope he wasn’t in there when that went down.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, I never met him …’
‘But you saw him?’
He nodded. ‘Here and there.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Average looking. Maybe thirty? Worked at Armaguard Security.’ The last part seemed almost an afterthought. ‘My brother used to work there, so I’d know.’
Armaguard Security had contracts all over the city: banks, insurance, private, ATMs. It was all handled by Armaguard Security.
Bishop reached for the blueprint. His mind raced through all the combinations of places worth robbing that ended in the letters OWN. Then it came to him.