“I’m the fucking bloodhound, mate,” he said, no snarl in his voice. “It’s Hopkins I want.”
“It’s an obsession.”
“It’s justice,” Flanagan said. “I think even you understood that.”
“Hmph.”
“So tell me where I can find him, guaranteed.”
*
SUDDENLY HE WAS busy again. Because it seemed almost like an effrontery to the Tennysons, still numb with shock and grief, Flanagan made as quick an exit as he could. His jeans badly needed a wash. The knee was going on one leg and there was a whiff of blood and gunsmoke about them. At least he could grab a ginger shower, going slow with a sponge purloined from the kitchen, careful with his healing grazes, the ribs that would give him grief in old age. A new shirt, a much-needed shave, helped greatly. Wet from the shower, his hair was getting overlong, collar-length at the back and just starting to give in to Irish curls. He judiciously snipped the fringe with Teneille’s toenail scissors and realised he’d begun something he couldn’t possibly correct, exaggerating the sense of a mullet, now very much the out-of-work shearer or bricklayer come down from the north.
Teneille came while he was folding up envelopes, sorting the wheat from the chaff. She rested her head and shoulder against the doorframe, honeyed hair longer already than when first they met. She said his name once and though it registered, her voice gave out with hoarseness.
“Flanagan. What are you doing now?”
“I’m sorting my mail. Thanks.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She scowled and crossed her arms. “You know that.”
“Sorry. Does it matter? I’ll have my own place soon. I’ll be out of your hair.”
If she could manage a deeper scowl, Teneille didn’t show it. She pushed off from the doorframe and came into the room, energised by her annoyance.
“We’re not waiting for you to be out of our hair any more than we expect you to keep throwing yourself against brick walls like this. You can’t bring her back, Mick, and we don’t expect you to.”
“It would be a foolish thing to hope,” he replied, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m not kidding myself either. Just leave me to it.”
“To what?”
He looked at her a moment and turned away, hands on the sideboard to steady himself. Teneille gave a motherly cluck and came and put her hands on his shoulders, but he moved quickly aside, put hands up, and scooping up the mail to be sent, bustled from the room, Teneille slow but on his heels still.
“Just leave me to it, Teneille,” he said. “Don’t get too close.”
She huffed and caught up to him in Lord’s study, grabbing him by one bicep and doing her damnedest to spin him around.
“That’s the typical defensive twaddle I’ve come to expect from you, Flanagan,” she snarled. “For God’s sake, you’re the most suppressed, repressed, not to mention dangerous ball of anger I’ve ever met. Can’t you see you can’t keep running from your emotions as well as all these other people? My God, man, it’s killing you – or it’s going to get you killed.”
“Fuck off ,Teneille.” He shook off her hand. “I’m not running from anything,” he said. “Do you think I tell you to stay your distance because I’m afraid to have a cry? Didn’t your husband already tell you how I embarrassed myself on the back step yesterday?”
Teneille looked back too late with a rising wave of caution.
“I’m telling you to back off because one more little cuddle or hug from you and we’re going to end up on hands-and-knees going for it like a pair of stud horses and if you can’t see that, then you’re playing a game with yourself and with me.
“I love you, alright? You’re my friend’s wife. I would do for you what I’m doing for your sister because what happened was wrong. Fucking wrong. And I’m damned if I’m going to let Brett Hopkins run out there and play Grand Final football after he’s done what he’s done.”
“It’s not like that –” Teneille began, perfect teeth clamping her lower lip.
“You’re probably right. I’m happy to be wrong. Maybe it’s just me. I’m sorry, Teneille. I have to go.”
He kissed her on the cheek before she could move, snatched his jacket from the back of a chair, and disappeared like an apparition through the glass.
THIRTY-TWO
THEY MET IN the same place like it was a guarantee of trust. Flanagan was there beforehand, Floyd playing with distorted abandon low on the deck, smoking in the driver’s seat as the dusty black van bounced over the corrugated dirt path and parked near the burst chemical drums.
Both the men had their scarves and dark glasses on. As such, they were nearly identical, except one had a waxed head and the other wore a Harley-Davidson cap. Chrome Dome went straight to the back of the van and opened up shop. The other one walked a few paces into the middle of the dusty lot and stood, skew-hipped, with one hand tellingly at the small of his back.
“Ballsy,” Flanagan said to himself, not completely lacking in admiration even though he was aware how perverse such an appreciation might be. Perhaps only someone who’d patrolled six hundred hectares of illegal mountain pasture could understand.
Flanagan moved slowly on purpose, pulling his booted feet down from the open door’s window frame and uncurling, cat-like, insouciant, suggestive of a good nap and not a care in the world. Stretching his back and shoulders in an exaggerated show, Flanagan left the Fairmont’s door open and walked across to the bloke in the middle, gauging it right, no handshake, like skin contact might incriminate them. A slight nod was all he required.
“Alrighty then,” a surprisingly high and genial voice said. “What’re you after, matey?”
“Big or small, I dunno. Show me what you’ve got.”
“Money?”
“I’m not paying in trade.”
The masked man snorted a laugh. “Fair enough.”
They walked around the back of the van. The devil’s workshop was on display again, all cantilevered shelves and deadly gadgets on hooks calm as you please, a regular Don Burke workshop for the home mercenary.
“Lots of Glocks,” Flanagan remarked.
“Got a deal on Glocks,” the second man said. “You don’t want something a bit more up-market? Got a Tek-Nine here, fully automatic machine-pistol. Nasty cunt. Interested?”
As a man whose funds had fast depleted compared to when he last stood with Carlo and the others, Flanagan had to concede the bargain had its allure.
“Sorry. I’m feeling thrifty. I’ll have one of those Glocks.”
“Cheap cunt.”
“Don’t abuse the customer, Harry,” the cap-wearing dealer chuckled. “We get flooded by the Yanks on their way back from Iraq. These things, these Glocks, they’re so cheap in the US every boy heading for Desert Storm Two figured he’d bring his own. Half of ‘em weren’t even used, you believe the owners.”
“OK, you’ve sold me.”
*
HE GOT A new phone at the Post Office and somehow managed to load the pre-paid credit. Through it all, he somehow still had the small address book, more crumpled now, resembling something forgotten in the wash. Parked in front of a long stretch of lawn at Cottesloe Beach, not so much going on, he called Doyle and arranged to meet.
“No,” he said at last. “It has to be tonight. I don’t want that cunt going out on the field and basking in his glory tomorrow.”
“Not a supporter, Michael?”
“I’d rather watch the WAFL. Boys there playing because they want to, not for money.”
“Bullshit. You believe all you want to,” Doyle came back. “Same old story, you Flanagans.”
He rang off before Flanagan could get irate.
*
DOYLE DECIDED ON a compromise. They were given a back room at the Claremont police station, bricked in behind the limestone façade, barred windows more a statement to their Colonial past than any actual security measure.
Frank had brought four uniforms with him as well as the techn
ician.
Flanagan took off his shirt and stood like a monkey with his hands above his head while the guy taped his midriff and placed the mikes and made sure the battery and transmitter were securely positioned at the small of his back. Like a straight man paying for oral sex with a strange boy in a foreign country, Flanagan couldn’t quite look down while the unshaven tech did his job, things only made worse halfway through when the young guy looked up, kneeling, and pressed a finger gently into Flanagan’s ribs.
“You know these look like blue cheese, right?”
Head straight, Flanagan grunted. He’d lost most of the extra packaging he’d brought into the country with him, thanks to a shitty month and the worst sort of diet possible. Bashings, hospitalisation, arrest – they didn’t come highly recommended. At least the yoga lady – whatever her name had been – might approve of the end result, if she had approved of anything in her life. He was weeks late for that appointment.
“Just, please, get on with it,” he said.
*
ONCE THE TECHIE had settled at his desk and the reception test went alright, Doyle bustled in wearing an actual flak-jacket, the item strangely coherent with the rolled-up white shirtsleeves and loosened navy tie. The grouchy cop snapped his fingers curtly once.
“Give me your piece.”
“What?”
“Your gun. Cough it up.”
“Jesus, Frank,” Flanagan said. “Didn’t you guys confiscate my revolver?”
“If half the things I read on that file were true, Flanagan, I somehow don’t think you’re without your means. Give me the piece and I’ll disappear it. It’s your fuckin’ safety I’m worried about.”
“Sweet of you, Frank, but I don’t have anything on me.”
Doyle gave him one long last look of burning intensity. Mostly bald, grey in pallor and with a bulldog’s moustache, nonetheless Flanagan saw for the first time the smouldering Irish good looks Doyle must have once used to good effect. Tugging at his already relaxed tie, Frank scowled and nodded his head.
“OK.”
“You shouldn’t have been looking at that file, should you, Frank?”
Just as suddenly, Doyle’s face split into a smirk.
“Forewarned is forearmed, eh, Michael?”
“I could do with four arms.”
“You’d make wanking an Olympic event,” Doyle snapped. “Get in the car.”
Outside, a grey sheen stretched across the sky, afternoon not long for the night, birds migrating to less classy digs, the wealthy suburb’s scorn for them apparent in every well-tended hedge, gutter, street tree, and scrupulously neat take-away restaurant car park. It was hard to imagine a place less suited to wildlife, let alone the predatory, parasitic sort.
Flanagan drove with Doyle leaking distaste every mile of the way. Thankfully, the trip to Subiaco was short. Following the directions RJ had given, Flanagan drove the car into a leafy cul-de-sac behind the old West Leederville train station, timbers creaking in the rising wind.
Doyle’s handset crackled and he and the uniforms in the squad car exchanged a few hard-bitten clichés before Frank switched off.
“I’ve got to go back and make sure these guys are in position,” Doyle said. “Nothing else you want to declare?”
“God, Frank,” Flanagan replied, hands curling under the driver’s seat and the concealed handgun. “If you don’t trust me to carry through with this, then I really wonder what the fuck we’re doing here at all.”
“Just get it on tape, Flanagan. Nothing else, OK?”
“You’re a real father figure, Doyle. Just go. You’re blowing my cover.”
“You sound like a professional. Shame you look like just another jug-eared Irish thug with a crooked nose.”
Frank slammed the door and strode away and Flanagan checked his nose in the mirror, as straight as it’d ever been. Shaving had unearthed fresh bruises from beneath their cover, but the motley mess had turned the corner at last. Flanagan smoked a cigarette, eyes switching between the front of a series of off-white brick bungalows and the rear view mirror. He was waiting for a lot of things, not the least for the vomiting sensation to pass in his guts. Once Doyle disappeared back up around the corner to the feeder road, Flanagan threw away the cigarette and stepped from the car, slipping into his leather coat.
“OK, I’m going in,” he muttered into the wire. “If you’re not hearing this, then I don’t know where we’re going now.”
*
FROM THE INSTANT the flyscreen door opened, Flanagan knew RJ’s advice was right on the money. Flanagan recognised the guy from a certain overcast day on Fisherman’s Harbour in Fremantle, only he’d since had his front teeth replaced.
The sock filled with gravel slipped easily into Flanagan’s hand. He brought it down square on the top of the fireman’s skull, and the cretin went down like the proverbial steer, legs like water and trickling down the green-painted wooden stairs to the first and only turn. Flanagan caught the flyscreen as it started to close and stepped into the apartment.
Brett Hopkins sat watching television, shorts and some kind of bathrobe on, ugg boots on his feet, a beer and also a plastic orange juice bottle bong in his lap. The room stank like rank vegetable soup and weed, but Flanagan knew he couldn’t blame the cooking or the pile of Broadway pizza cartons thrown into a pile before the telly.
The second fireman rushed from the unit’s small kitchen.
“You!” He came on with fists extended. “What’d you do to Terry?”
“Come find out.”
The fireman did as asked, and Flanagan rapped him once over the knuckles with the kosh before whipping it back lightning-fast across his jaw. The firey sagged, but not fast enough to avoid Flanagan’s knee as he went down for a nap on the carpet, bloody nose spraying a pattern to make Pro Hart proud.
Hopkins’ first point of order was to ditch the faggy robe. Beneath the terry towelling, a blue wife-beater revealed enormous arms, the shoulder of one angry red with the spiral of a new tattoo, neo-Celtic meets neo-Nazi. Flanagan kicked one of the leather recliners toward him, but the footballer flinched and lifted his dukes rather than break into action.
“You don’t stay down, do you, Flanagan?”
“You got that right. If you think you’re just gonna walk away from what you’ve done because the pigs in this town think you’re a true local hero, you can forget about it.”
“You’re in my town, Flanagan,” Hopkins sneered. “I think you’re learning that. Carlo said you’d been away. I guess it comes as a surprise, but you’ve got to ask my permission if you want to swing your dick around here.”
“Give it a rest, you fucking headcase,” Flanagan said.
He looked to go right or left around the armchair and Hopkins grabbed the headrest, preparing to shield him off.
“What’s the matter, Brett? Not so keen on another rematch?”
“I’ve had it with you, Flanagan,” the footballer replied. “A bloke like you, with your sort of stamina, ability to take a flogging, you should’ve played for Hawthorn, you weak cunt.”
“You killed my friend’s sister, you lying shit,” Flanagan replied. “No amount of smart talking’s gonna wipe that fact away.”
“Shame you can’t get the police to see it your way.”
“Shame Allyson kept a diary, Brett, and rang the fucking TV news in Melbourne every second day from that cute little pink mobile of hers.”
He watched Hopkins falter. Using words instead of fists, he pressed in for the kill.
“That’s right, Hoppy,” he sniggered. “The diary’s gonna put Franco away for the rest of his natural fucking life and I’ll testify. I know about Tricia Renald and Australia Tonight. What did they do mate, front you up at your home? Is that why you’re sacking up with these dumb-fuck fireys, or do they have another kind of action you’re into?”
“I’m not going to gaol for fuck all, Flanagan,” Hopkins spat.
His eyes were wide, red as a bull’s, and he
had that familiar hyperventilating look. He stiff-armed the chair away, hard enough to make it rebound from a wall and topple his CD collection.
“Allyson’s fucken dead, you arsehole,” Hopkins roared.
He came at Flanagan with the sort of speed that could surprise even the most hardened defender. They locked arms, Flanagan’s persuader disappearing behind the back of the couch. It was like their last bun-fight all over again, Flanagan yielding backwards and heading for the stairs. His ribs, he knew, couldn’t take it. Instead, he twisted free and let Hopkins go, elbowing the screen door hard enough he left the metal dented.
What Hopkins didn’t expect were the two uniforms coming up the path.
What the two uniforms didn’t expect was a drug-mad footballer without an ounce of caution.
He hit the first cop with the elbow and flat of his arm. The guy flew like a pillow across the footpath and into the front headlight of Flanagan’s sedan. Then Hopkins grabbed the second cop, stupidly drawing his weapon, and the footballer chopped the gun from his hand with a savage blow, backhanding him with the other, scooping to retrieve the pistol and then pointing it at the officer sprawled beneath the Fairmont’s bonnet.
The slumped cop seized his chance as Flanagan appeared at the top of the stairs. But Hopkins, as if by some magic, fumbled with the gun until he could see how to disengage the safety. Flanagan jumped into cover, but Hopkins turned without another word and fired three times into first the cop, swivelled, and put another two into the second unconscious patrolman. The moment seemed to freeze, challenging disbelief.
Swearing, Flanagan crouched out of view at the top of the stairs and peeked out as Hopkins rifled the corpses, found the keys to the inert patrol car sitting in the middle of the dead end, street lights flickering on one-by-one around it, and then he ran for it.
*
HOPKINS REVERSED THE police car up the cul-de-sac. Once it was fifty metres shy, Flanagan bolted down the stairs and over to the two downed officers, confirming with long-dormant efficiency that both were dead. Then he crossed to his Fairmont, yanking open the unlocked door, and crossed his fingers as the car bellowed like a bass newborn into life.
Hard Light- Infamous Page 25