by Luke Preston
Bishop was first through the door. The room was cold, the charge desk empty. Mickey tapped on the glass with his gold pinkie ring. Nobody came.
‘This could be easier than we thought,’ Val said.
Mickey checked his watch. Thumped on the glass.
Finally someone appeared. It was the old-timer, Bean. ‘Sorry fellas, just taking a shit.’
Val leant forward, all smiles and rough charm. ‘Hope we didn’t rush things, cause you too much discomfort.’
Bean slid open the glass window. ‘At my age, discomfort’s all I got. What’s one more?’ He pushed a pair of glasses on his face and squinted at Bishop. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘Tom Bishop,’ Mickey said. ‘Rayburn wanted him put out of harm’s way.’
He recognised the name. His wrinkled lips curled in disgust as he spat through the window. It hit Bishop square on the cheek and dribbled down his jaw. ‘Then maybe Rayburn should have sent him someplace else.’
Val laughed. ‘Got something for us to sign?’
‘I’ll get you boys out of here in a jiffy,’ Bean said, pushing a transfer form across the counter.
Val filled it out as if he had done thousands. Probably witnessed enough to get by. When he was finished, he slid the pen and paper back.
‘Most of the boys are out on a call. Some crazy bastard’s running around with a gun. Can you guys do the escort with me?’
‘Sure, buddy,’ Mickey said. ‘No worries.’
Bean buzzed them through, then led them down the long hall. ‘It’s been a couple of busy, ball-busting days, that’s for sure. Some prick got stabbed here the other night, then there was that robbery. Now there’s a shooter down the road. Sometimes I’m glad my street days are behind me.’
Val laughed again. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
Bean looked back and his face dropped, ‘Oh, shit.’
Mickey and Val had their weapons on him.
‘How many on the other side of that door?’ Mickey asked.
Bean scrunched up his old newspaper of a face. ‘None.’
‘There’s at least one,’ Bishop said, slipping off his cuffs.
Bishop went through the door, gun first, Val, Mickey and Bean in tow. Swept the room left to right. The uniform behind the desk was frozen in shock, his mind too slow to catch up with what was happening. Then he went for his service revolver.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Bishop said.
Without needing to be told, the uniform put his hands behind his head. He looked like he had just shit his pants.
‘Where’s Jay Franks?’ Mickey asked.
‘Holding Nine.’
‘Thanks.’ Mickey knocked him out cold.
Bishop flashed him a hard stare. ‘Was that necessary?’
Mickey grinned. ‘I guess I should’ve shot him, huh?’
The cells were the old-fashioned type with bars instead of doors, no heating and poor lighting. The twenty-three holding cells were full with at least two men in each cramped space. The criminals cheered as they passed, each secretly hoping that it was them that they were there for.
Jay Franks had a cell all to himself. Caked blood covered one side of his face from a beating he had taken the night before, and his Armaguard uniform was now filthy and torn. He was taller than Mickey, had the same skinny frame as Val, but unlike them he had a wounded dog look about him: scared, unsure, neither smart nor tough. It was clear to Bishop that Mickey and Val’s plan to free their brother was as much about protecting themselves as it was him.
Val pushed Bean up to the cell door. He fumbled for some keys. As soon as he got it open, Val pushed him inside. Bean tumbled to the floor and wasn’t in much of a hurry to get up.
Jay stepped out. Val slapped a Beretta into his hand, then grabbed his neck affectionately. Jay shook it off. ‘Who’s this?’ he said with a look Bishop’s way.
‘He’s nothing to worry about,’ somebody said.
Then Bishop copped a blow to the back of the head. He stumbled forward and tried to grab hold of the cell door, missed. Fell to his knees. Mickey hit him again. His vision blurred. A high-pitched sound shot between his ears. Something hit him in the gut and he rolled forward.
When the ringing in his ears faded and the vision began to return, he used the wall to pull himself up. He was in Jay Franks’ jail cell. Bean sat on the thin mattress.
‘Bet you’re regretting some of your life decisions around about now.’
Bishop sat up, leant his back against the bars of the cell. The Franks brothers were gone.
Bean chuckled grimly. ‘You reap what you sow, sunshine. You reap what you sow.’
The alarm on Bishop’s watch beeped. The fifteen minutes were up.
Gunfire erupted outside.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The shooting lasted no longer than a few seconds. Then there was silence. Bishop pushed his head against the bars for a better look; he couldn’t see a thing. He paced the narrow cell.
‘It’s all over now.’ Bean grinned.
The hallway door burst open. Bishop pushed his head against the bars again, caught sight of Mickey and Jay dragging Val across the floor, leaving a long trail of blood in their wake. They left him slumped against the wall, still clutching his weapon. Alive, barely.
Jay was hysterical. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fucking cocksucker motherfucker fuck. What the fuck now, man?’
Mickey closed his eyes. ‘Shut up. Let me think.’
The scenarios he ran through his mind all came to the same dead-end conclusion.
With what little strength he had left, Val hissed, ‘We bunker down. Negotiate our way out.’
Jay’s hopeful eyes looked toward Mickey for approval. ‘Sounds like a plan?’
‘You do that and you’re dead.’ Bishop leant against the bars. ‘You want to get out of here, you talk to me.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Jay said.
‘You really think they’re calling a negotiator? You’ve got a couple of minutes until they storm the place with a shoot–first, no-need-to-ask-questions-later type of attitude.’
A window broke a couple of floors above: they were coming.
Mickey turned to Bishop. ‘What’s your plan?’
Bishop tapped his fingers against the bars. ‘Wanna find out?’
A moment later, he was free. Mickey palmed him his .45. Bishop checked the rounds. Still good.
Jay was close to losing it. ‘So how do we get out?’
Bishop shifted his gaze to the cells. With them lay an army of cruel and violent men, many of whom had killed before and would do so again to get loose.
‘We let them out. All of them.’
Mickey smiled.
‘You might be safer in here,’ Bishop said, tossing Bean the key to his cell.
He made no move to catch it and it clattered on the floor. ‘I hope they gut you,’ he said.
‘They just may,’ Bishop said, heading to the control switchboard, a relic from the days when the station was a prison. He flicked the switches on the primitive machine. One by one, cell doors opened and the criminals flooded out in a rush toward the exit.
Bishop made his way through the stampede of criminals to find Jay on his knees, beside Val, gently rocking him back and forth. He was dead.
Noise of panic, anger and violence filtered though the walls. ‘We gotta go,’ Bishop said.
Jay was crying. ‘What about Val?’
‘What about him?’ Bishop said.
Mickey put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘He stays.’
Gunfire and screams echoed down the hall.
‘We need to go.’ Bishop headed off, away from the mayhem. ‘This way.’
*
The sounds of the riot chased them though the maze of tight and ancient corridors. Stopping at a door marked ‘Basement’, Bishop kicked it open, patted the wall inside, found the light switch. The three of them quickly descended the narrow staircase.
Unlike the floors above, the basement wa
s a wide-open space with low ceilings, dim lights and filled with rows of ancient filing cabinets and broken furniture. A diesel generator chugged away in the corner, providing emergency backup power.
They had come through the only door.
‘What the fuck now?’ Mickey said.
‘When this place was converted to a station, half of it was turned into apartments.’
Jay stared at him stupidly.
‘Take a wall,’ Bishop told them. ‘Tap around for hollow spots.’
The Franks brothers took a wall each. Bishop snapped a leg off a chair and did the same. Dull thumps. All brick. Just when he was about think that this was the worst idea in the history of ideas, Mickey called out from over by the generator.
Bishop hurried over to them, tested the wall with his chair leg: hollow. The three of them swapped a glance. Taking a step back, Bishop steadied himself, let out a breath and hurled himself forward, his foot smashing clean through the particle board. When he pulled his leg out again, it was covered in plaster dust.
Mickey smiled. ‘Well, Bob’s me uncle.’
The Franks brothers went to town with their pistol butts, then the three of them tore at what was left with their hands. The air of the other side smelled damp and old and they couldn’t see more than ten feet in.
Then they heard the bullets.
Bishop hit the deck. Jay lunged into the hole.
Behind them, from the staircase, shots rang out again, pounding into the filing cabinets that shielded Bishop.
‘Come on!’ Jay yelled.
Mickey slumped over on his stomach. Two bullets had caved in the left side of his face.
Jay yelled again. His words fragmented between the blasts.
Bishop climbed to his feet.
Jay looked over his shoulder for Mickey.
‘He’s not coming,’ Bishop said.
Jay punched him. Upper cut to the ribs. Bishop barrelled over and Jay dived in. Bishop gasped for air and, when he could breathe, he followed.
The sound of gunfire bounced off the walls; it was difficult to tell where it was coming from. Bishop fired back. High, safe, aiming for no one, hitting no one. Jay got hold of his dead brother’s boot and dragged him back. A couple of bullets buried themselves in Mickey’s corpse. Bishop emptied another clip into the basement roof and crawled back through the hole and into the corridor. Bishop knew no uniform in their right mind would follow two armed men blindly into the darkness.
Jay was on his feet. Mickey was over his shoulders like some demented backpack and the pair of them heading into the darkness. Jay and Bishp ran until they hit another wall and, like savages, they tore it apart until they found themselves inside another basement. This one was smaller and tidier. The sensor light flickered on as they headed for the stairs and into a pastel pink hallway and followed that to the apartment’s lobby.
A patrol car hammered down the street toward the madness outside the St Albans station. The prisoners shot out of the station and were caught by the uniforms who outnumbered them three to one. A helicopter buzzed the skyline and blasted light onto the street, tracing the steps of three lifers who were frozen by the blast of artificial light.
Jay shifted his weight from one foot to another, trying to get a better grip on his dead brother. ‘Now what?’
Bishop stepped out onto the street. He passed a couple of cars, then stopped beside a parked Holden. He broke the window, popped the boot. Jay lugged Mickey over and laid him inside.
After a couple of moments under the dash, the Holden turned over. Bishop sat up and found himself staring at a uniform standing by the front bumper. His name was Daniel Tucker. A career cop who Bishop knew pretty well. The guy didn’t know what to do and as a result had done nothing but stare.
Snapping out of it, he reached for his sidearm.
Bishop put the car in gear.
‘Go, man. Go,’ Jay yelled.
His foot hit the gas.
The car shot backwards.
Tucker blasted away.
The windscreen cracked.
They reached an intersection. Bishop pulled the wheel. Swung the Holden around, changed gears and sped away from the horrible mess.
Beside him, Jay gurgled. Bishop looked over. Blood painted the window.
He had copped one in the neck.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Where’s the cash, Jay?’
Jay’s eyes were glazed, staring.
‘Stay awake, don’t you die on me. Where’s Rayburn? Where’s the cash?’
His lips moved. Words Bishop couldn’t hear. He hit the brakes: the Holden slid to a stop. He pushed his ear to the bloody lips.
‘Don’t let me die,’ Jay whispered.
‘Tell me where Rayburn’s hiding the cash and I’ll take you to a hospital.’
‘Don’t let me die. Take me to a hospital. Don’t let me die.’
‘We’re going there now. You may not make it.’
‘Make sure I make it.’
‘Jay, listen …’
‘Make sure I make it.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bishop called for help and no one came.
The emergency room overflowed with the sick and those who couldn’t find a seat were laid out on the floor. Some of them slept; others groaned in pain. Jay had passed out before they got there and Bishop struggled to carry him. Blood dripped off his shoe and trailed behind them as they headed toward a mob of people gathered around the nurses’ station.
‘I got a GSW here, unconscious fifteen minutes,’ Bishop yelled above the racket.
The nurse at the desk pressed a buzzer and led them through a door to the ER, where several other nurses helped to lift Jay onto a table.
A thirty-year-old doctor with a calm look on his face and Converse on his feet hurried over. Bishop squeezed in between them and slapped Jay’s face.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the doctor said.
‘Give him something to wake him up.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Wake him up.’
A battle axe of a nurse cut in with, ‘If you can’t control yourself I’m going to have to call the police.’
‘I am the police.’ Bishop pulled his weapon. Kept it low. ‘Wake him up.’
The doctor got the message and turned to one of his nurses. ‘Fifty milligrams of codeine.’
The nurse did as she was told. Jay’s eyes snapped open. He was confused. Scared. Cold.
‘Jay, you’re at the hospital; you’re going to be just fine,’ he lied. ‘But you need to tell me where Rayburn’s hiding the money.’
Jay struggled to form the words.
Where is it, Jay?’
‘It’s somewhere … safe, in …’
Jay flatlined.
The doctor pushed Bishop aside and went to work. His hands moved fast but it was too late. Jay Franks was dead.
Bishop felt sick and made a line for the bathroom. Darkness. Shit smell. He collapsed on the floor, his knees in piss. He hugged the bowl and threw up. For close to ten minutes Bishop’s body convulsed and heaved until there was nothing left. When the worst of it was over, he struggled to his feet and tentatively made his way to the basin.
The reflection in the cracked mirror stared back, and he didn’t like the way it looked at him.
Chapter Thirty
Three weeks ago
Bishop and Ellison had spent the day listening to the lies of a fifty-five-year-old prostitute who had knifed an Aboriginal girl a quarter of her age for selling arse on the wrong side of the street. The whore’s story changed every time she told it, and the only reason Bishop was listening was because she worked the same strip as Chloe Richards. After nine hours of her drivel, Bishop figured she didn’t know shit from shit. He hit the road in need of a shower, sleep and evidence of something good in the world.
Chloe Richards never left him. She plagued him day and night, rising to the surface in his shaky hands, twenty-four-hour sweats and errati
c behaviour. No matter how much he tried to get her out of his mind, he was never at peace. She lingered at his shoulder, always there.
In his dreams, she died again and again.
Bishop forced a smile on his face as he keyed his front door. When he saw Alice, she was struggling to stand, heavily pregnant. She struggled with most things.
‘Stay there,’ he said, motioning to the plastic bags in his hand. ‘I made dinner.’
‘You made dinner? Slaved over a hot stove, did you?’
‘Not exactly.
‘Probably for the best.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my cooking.’
She shot him a sideways glance.
As a result of neither of them being able to cook, Bishop had scoured the city in search of healthy takeaway. They had tried Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean; tonight it was butter chicken and a side order of rice from a little Indian joint he’d passed on the way home from the CIB.
Alice swayed from side to side, trying to regain her balance.
‘Stay there,’ he said.
‘I’ve got something to show you.’ She was excited. ‘Come and have a look before dinner.’
He followed her down the hall and they came to a stop at what used to be the spare room.
‘You ready?’ she asked.
Bishop nodded and she opened the door to reveal a nursery: toys, a cot, a change table and a night light that bathed everything in its soft, warm glow.
‘When did all this happen?’
She shrugged as if she didn’t know. ‘Just something I threw together. Do you like it?’
Bishop had never seen anything so gentle, especially not anything in his apartment.
‘Yeah, it looks real good,’ he said and smiled at the idea of it all. It was everything he missed with Alice when she was a baby.
They ate dinner and watched television, and just before Bishop was about to head off to bed, there was a knock at the door.