by Nick Place
To my awesome boys, Will and Macklin.
To Chloé.
And to all of those who have been with me for the journey.
Chips, Shonko, Annie, Ronnie P and Patricia Rivers.
Amanda, Rich G, Rich H, Katey and everybody else.
Your support and love got me here. Thank you.
CONTENTS
Title Page
1 A perfect shot
2 Reality bites
3 Ghosts and dreams
4 Life in the saddle
5 Friends of the planet
6 Riding with Rocket
7 Car shopping with the Wild Man
8 Lance Armstrong
9 Laver’s day off
10 The Devil’s Mockery
11 Showdown at the Soul Food Café
12 Spider senses
13 A nasty accident
14 Questions without answers
15 The Vegie Bar
16 The Mutant Children of Ossie Ostrich
17 Lost in Siberia
18 The Grevillea wing
19 Doing the Kew conga
20 Sewer life
21 The naked koala
22 The Vegie Bar, take two
23 Code 33
24 Stig cops a bullet
25 Nightmare Scenario
26 In the dark
27 It was probably nothing
28 A social call
29 The wallet
30 One minute to midnight
31 Taking care of business
32 77 Sunset Strip
33 Incident on Rathdowne
34 Punching your weight
35 The perfect shot (reprise)
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
Under different conditions, it might have been considered the perfect shot. People win gold medals in the Olympics for worse shooting.
The bullet had entered the body under the arm on the right-hand side and passed through both lungs, as well as the heart, before hitting a rib and deflecting almost exactly 90 degrees south, taking out several vital organs in the stomach region. But here’s where the shot became close to magical. It ricocheted precisely off the top of the hip and pinballed straight up, actually leaving the body on its upward trajectory just long enough for the victim, in the process of looking down to see if he’d been shot, to receive the bullet right between the eyes. It then passed through his skull and nestled contentedly in the brain.
Needless to say, the victim, a known armed robber called Wesley Coleman, twenty-nine, of Thomastown (or the late ‘Wasted Wes’ as his motley crew of criminal friends would briefly mourn him) was dead long before his body made it to the tarmac of the airport car park.
His soul? Who can say? Maybe rising above his corpse to find his dead mother there, arms crossed and scowling at him, saying, ‘So, that’d be right. Shot dead in a fucking car park.’
Back on earth, Detective Tony ‘Rocket’ Laver had a different set of problems, the first of which was that he was unlikely to be awarded any medals, gold or otherwise, for dusting a lowlife career criminal like Coleman.
In fact, Laver was trying to come to terms with the fact that less than three minutes ago he’d been asleep – and now he’d killed somebody for the first time in a fourteen-year police career.
It wasn’t unreasonable that he’d been dozing on the job, despite the fact that he was kneeling in all-blue Special Operations Group overalls, feet spread to balance the load of equipment and Kevlar protective padding strapped to his body, his arms holding a high-calibre, fast-action semi-automatic rifle. Laver was Major Crime these days, right now part of a joint operation, but had spent enough time in the SOG to know what it was to wait, and how to switch on and off as required. Laver could sleep literally anywhere.
As it was, he’d been either squatting or kneeling in the unmarked delivery van for the best part of two days, with no sign of the armed robbery the surveillance dogs kept assuring them the gang was doing nothing but talk about. In the long-term car park of Tullamarine Airport, cars roamed aimlessly, looking for parks less than three suburbs from the terminals. There was the semi-regular rush of a plane in take-off. The distant hum of the freeway. Laver had closed his eyes to rest, confident that when the call came he’d be sharp.
So it was a shock to hear the barked ‘Ready?’ from his partner that day, SOG member Nathan Funnal; Laver’s eyes flew open, his heart rate ramming from asleep to close to capacity in less than a second. Which, of course, it had done plenty of times before.
‘They’re here?’ Laver blinking and trying to get a look at Funnal, jammed between him and the door in the cramped space of the van.
‘Yeah, Rocket. Haven’t you been listening to the dogs tracking them here for the last five minutes? What were you, asleep?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Laver creaked off his knees to his feet, took a step back for a little more room, crouched, did some squats to get his legs moving and flexed his grip on the gun. ‘Vision?’
‘Nope. They’re just pulling in off the freeway now.’
‘And the van?’
‘Just pulled in to the armoury, twenty metres to our right.’ Funnal looked hard at Laver. ‘You fucking were asleep. You’re unbelievable.’
Laver grinned. ‘It’s all good, Spider. I’m wide awake now.’
Funnal, lanky and rail thin, all arms and legs under his Kevlar, shook his head in grudging admiration, peering out the tiny crack strategically placed in the apparently empty delivery van. ‘Well, you better be awake enough to hit them hard and fast. If we can get them on the ground before they get their guns raised, we’re a chance of getting out of this with no shots.’
Laver feeling his heart pumping now. Not sharing his partner’s optimism. This gang had carried off five armed robberies on armoured vans and had killed three guards in the process. The police had finally made some inroads and started surveillance a month ago. The gang was a collection of hardened criminals with some dubious views on sexual equality, racial harmony and paying tax, if you went by their daily banter. It had also become clear that they were actually looking forward to the day a cop tried to foil one of their robberies; facing off against rent-a-security-guards was getting old.
Now a light-blue 80s-model Ford cruised through the lanes of parked cars, heading towards the cash armoury at the back of the car wash. Tullamarine Airport management had hoped this location would make it less obvious as a target for robbers, when in fact they’d made it pleasantly accessible and away from crowds.
A radio squawking on Laver’s hip: ‘Spider? Rocket? You good to go?’
‘Affirmative, Doc. Say the word.’
Funnal motionless by the door. Laver, squatting beside him, moving his hand back off the radio to his gun. Locking eyes, not needing to see the crooks now. Doc doing that for them.
‘Go! Go! Go!’
Funnal crashed open the van’s door and they exited, low, crouched but running fast, aware of the similar blue-clad figures coming from the south and north, at tangents so no officers could be in the background of potential shots. The five bandits, barely out of their car, guns still dangling at knee height, taking the crucial half-second to register and react that they always did. By which time police guns were all over them.
One robber taking half a step to run but two SOG officers flanking him before he completed the thought, screaming at him to stay where he was, to drop the gun, to freeze.
Laver looking down the barrel of his gun as he slowed to a walk, still registering the four remaining, frozen bandits. Suddenly aware of one of them, the one with the bad afro hairstyle, raising his gun towards him. Laver yelling what he should yell, but the next few moments were strangely without sound. Not hearing his own voice, telling Coleman to drop it. Not hearing
anything that Coleman yelled back, registering spittle flying from the man’s mouth. Seeing the oddly silent flash of Coleman’s gun and feeling the searing rush of something impossibly fast passing his right ear.
Wondering why he had let himself wait so dangerously long, surprised that he had such an aversion to killing now it came to it, after fourteen years of wondering what the moment would be like. Laver still in his cocoon of silence as he squeezed the trigger and watched Coleman jerk, spasm and fall right in front of him. Laver with no doubt he’d killed the man.
Fourteen years of carrying a gun, even doing his time in the Special Operations Group where wearing Kevlar and kicking in doors, guns drawn, was a standard work day. Being there as people died. Like the time Laver had entered a room only to find the serial rapist he was pursuing was hiding behind the door, shotgun ready. Laver swinging around to watch in mild surprise as his SOG partner, from outside a window and with a better view, unloaded eight rounds into the crim. The man had barely twitched – in fact, he’d been so still as the bullets hit that Laver had wondered if his partner had somehow missed. But he hadn’t, not once. It wasn’t like in the movies, where bodies get blown dramatically backwards. The rapist just froze, then toppled over.
Coleman got thrown around a little more by the magically perfect ricocheting bullet, but he was still very dead – and Laver didn’t think for a moment that he would get any medals for it.
Instead, his ear still humming from Coleman’s bullet, Laver saw his future in a flash, as though a TV news headline had been beamed into his head: ‘Public and political outcry as sixth Victorian police officer in four months shoots to kill.’
Looking at Coleman’s body, listening to the final barking orders of his SOG teammates telling the captured crooks to lie flat, to put their arms behind them, to not move a muscle while they were cuffed, Laver realised he was hearing again. Even so, he felt more than heard the approach of his best mate in the Force, Detective Senior Sergeant Mitchell Dolfin, usually Major Crime, currently with the Noble Taskforce into organised crime, gun dangling in his right hand by his hip.
Dolfin walked past Laver towards Coleman and gently nudged the lifeless form with a steel-capped boot.
‘You let him get a shot off.’
‘I know,’ Laver said. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘One thing’s for sure, Rocket old boy.’ Dolfin put a hand on Laver’s shoulder. ‘You picked a bad time to lose your virginity. Will I call the press conference or do you want to?’
***
The Wild Man had an aversion to flying, and so they drove. The Wild Man fundamentally refused to believe that something as big and heavy and metal as an airplane could fly. So it stood to reason that any plane with him on board, honestly believing it physically impossible for the plane to be airborne, would probably crash. Eighteen hours and four cars later, they were almost through New South Wales, approaching the Victorian border. Stig had taken the coast road to avoid cops on the Hume Highway, sitting on 140 ks as they left Eden. He might grab another car around Cann River, or see if they could make it as far as Gippsland before they switched. Let the Wild Man terrify some holidaymaker in Lakes Entrance, just for the sport.
Flying would have been a lot easier, but it was safer this way. A leading drug baron like Karl Jenssen had ways of finding out if people had flown the state. Especially in Queensland, where there is a general understanding that most things are for sale. Even though the Wild Man and Stig were convincingly dead in the tangled wreck of a car down a deep ravine in the hills behind Byron Bay, not far from Nimbin, the drug capital of Australia, they couldn’t be too safe. Hopefully the fact that two South African drug mules hadn’t returned to J-burg would take months to filter back – and by then Stig and the Wild Man should be long gone, and rich.
Wildie seemed to know what he was doing, even saying he’d left a couple of bags of weed scattered near the wreck to help sell the accident. But not all of it. And not the bigger bag of white powder. The police would sigh at the loss of another couple of wastoids who shouldn’t have driven after so heartily enjoying the local produce. The bodies were banged up and burned beyond recognition – what were the odds that both the victims’ mouths would be smashed in the wreck, making dental identification impossible? – but they were the right size and weight, and there was Stig’s wallet lying just to the left of a disconnected tyre. It was open and shut.
And the drugs they’d been carrying when they crashed? Gone, presumably burned. More than $2 million worth. Even Jenssen would feel that.
And wonder.
Hence the long drive south, swapping cars and putting a lot of miles in, fast.
Stig glanced at his co-pilot, currently asleep with his head tilted up against the window, bright-orange hair mashed against the glass, looking strangely childlike. His big, beard-enveloped mouth wide open, a hint of dribble collecting at the corner. Dreaming of God knew what. Stig still had no idea what made the Wild Man tick, but he was a good guy to have if you thought things could get nasty. Stig might even follow through on splitting the money with him, to avoid the unpleasantness of having to deal with all the other variations of that situation.
He thought again of how Wildie hadn’t blinked at killing the South Africans and fixing the crash site. They were things Stig wasn’t sure he’d be able to do, but the Wild Man shrugged that it was no different from finishing off a roo after you’d hit it and broken its legs. Stig didn’t ask any more after that.
He stared into the night and drove, oblivious to the fact that, while he fretted about Jenssen and their immediate plans, the Wild Man was dreaming happily of penguins. The best thing about Wildie being asleep was that Stig didn’t have to endure the hardcore rap making the car vibrate. Instead he could think about Melbourne and which people he should avoid when he got there. And who he wanted to see.
Like Louie.
Stig had lots of vivid memories of Louie, most of them naked and sweaty, but because of circumstances at the time he hadn’t even said goodbye to her when he’d left. She may or may not know the details of his hurried evacuation from Melbourne by now, a couple of years on. But Louie would be interesting. Louie wouldn’t like the Wild Man at all.
But Wildie would probably like Louie. A lot.
That could be a problem.
***
Jake’s world was nothing but blue.
A light-blue world with a thin black line, spreading ever onward in front of his arms as he freestyled down the pool, goggles steadily filling with water but not so badly that he couldn’t see. The dark shape of an approaching body loomed and Jake almost broke his neck, swimming awkwardly so he could look ahead instead of down.
The dark shape revealed itself to be a woman in a blue bathing suit splashing past, looking like she might be swimming off the effects of a pregnancy.
Not her.
The black line formed a T and Jake was at the end of lap thirty-eight. It gave him an opportunity to stop, adjust his goggles and take a moment to look around.
And there she was.
The same black one-piece bathing suit as always. The same endless legs rising to meet the suit and, above the taut flat stomach, the breasts that filled his dreams, slightly straining against the lycra. The same black swimming cap covering every single hair on her magnificent head. Those impossibly grey eyes. And no goggles – the only swimmer Jake had ever seen at the pool who didn’t bother with goggles.
Jake prayed to, pleaded with, cajoled the gods of swimming to make her choose his lane, but she didn’t. She squatted, showing the muscles in her sculpted legs before taking her weight on her arms and shoulders – man, those shoulders – and then was waist deep in the adjacent lane, waiting for a puffing, blotchy-skinned, overweight man to huff his way to the end and turn, then waiting a few more moments to begin her first lap. She duck-dived quickly to wet her head and shoulders and stretched her arms above her head, showing her armpits, bald and somehow stirring to Jake.
He clogged up
the end of his lane as he tried to surreptitiously watch all of this, taking in her profile and trying not to ogle the side view of her breasts, now outlined beautifully by the wet bathers. He fiddled with his goggles, pretending there was a problem, until she took off, giving him one lightning glimpse of her perfect backside as water swallowed her and those arms began their distinctively smooth journey down the pool.
Jake was vaguely aware that this was probably beyond acceptable stranger lust, but that had become unimportant some time ago.
There was a gap in the traffic in his lane, so he swam and cased her one more time from afar as he slid away from the wall, her body disappearing ahead of him as those arms sliced through the water, barely leaving a splash as she moved, unlike every other swimmer in the Fitzroy Public Pool. At the deep end, Jake’s neck again battled the forces of gravity and freestyle technique as he craned to watch her touch the wall and push on to lap two. He completed lap thirty-nine with the vision of her legs kicking in his head. He had only one lap to go, just as she began – beaten again by the clock.
If he wasn’t out of the pool soon the traffic would be unmanageable, even as he headed to the Heidelberg Groc-o-Mart against the peak-hour rush. As assistant manager, it was up to him to be there by 8.30 am to set an example to the staff. Sighing, Jake pulled himself out of the pool, hovering for a moment with his weight on his arms, in case the girl was watching from her lane – giving her a moment to appreciate his physique. He had it all in his mind – the moment he would turn and find she was gazing, that she was quietly watching him. Their eyes would meet and it would be she who gulped, smiling in nervous anticipation.
Jake dragged himself out of the pool, fighting the dual urge to dig his Speedos out of his butt crack and take one more look at her. He lost one battle, looking over his shoulder into the end of her lane. She wasn’t there. Almost at the other end of the pool already, she was in motion, leaving barely a splash in her wake.
Oblivious. As always.
Jake sighed and headed for the change rooms.
It had been five or more years since the coffee chains had attempted their invasion of Melbourne – a European city happily stranded in the wrong hemisphere and boasting a strong population of Italian descendants, which meant a decent coffee was never far away.