Not Dead Yet

by Peter Menadue

CHAPTER 26

  Most cops are gradually sucked into corruption. Temptation slowly corrodes their souls. Not Brian Pringle. He never had one. From his first day in uniform, he took bribes, shook down criminals and demanded freebies. Search warrants were just a licence to plunder.

  Later, on the Narcotics Strikeforce, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven. Stealing cash and drugs from dealers was like taking candy from babies.

  So when one of his snitches, Tony Thompson, told him Pedro Garcia was importing big shipments of coke, he just had to rip off one. Stealing it would be the pinnacle of his corrupt career, like winning an Olympic gold medal.

  The rip-off went smoothly: Pringle and Thompson killed Garcia and his pal, Morales, and grabbed the coke. But then their plan went awry. The Homicide cops found Thompson's prints in Garcia's apartment and called him in for an interview. Thompson kept his mouth shut, but Pringle got nervous and rubbed him out.

  Pringle also planned to kill Thompson's girlfriend, Trixie Powell, who knew a lot about his dealings with Thompson. However, when he got to Thompson's apartment, the bitch was gone.

  If Trixie blabbed, he could easily go to gaol. So he worked tirelessly to finding her and rub her out. However, she had disappeared into thin air.

  Then a Homicide contact mentioned that Barbara Thompson had employed Gary Maddox to find Trixie. That frightened Pringle, because Maddox was smart and relentless, and hated Pringle. Pringle had to make sure that Maddox didn't find Trixie before him. So he planted a bomb in Maddox's apartment, but only managed to kill a neighbour. Then Maddox disappeared.

  Pringle anxiously monitored the police computer for some mention of him. That was how he discovered Maddox was kidnapped near Byron Bay. He went up there and poked around. But the local detectives had no idea why Maddox was kidnapped or what had happened to him. Pringle had no idea either. He just prayed that whoever kidnapped the bastard was considerate enough to kill him.

  Pringle liked to think he was always a couple of steps ahead of the game. However, for the first time, he wasn't so sure. Where was Maddox? What had happened to Trixie? Until he had answers, he couldn't relax.

  Indeed, he started having anxiety attacks in the middle of the night that made him wake up sweating. He'd always treated his wife and two sons with callous contempt. Now he was brutal. When his wife recently complained that he never showed any interest in her, he said: "That's not true - I've always noticed your tits are too small and your arse is too big." She called him a "shithead" and threatened to leave him. But he knew she wouldn't. He wasn't that lucky. He was stuck with the whining bitch.

  He also loathed his two teenage sons, a pair of nasty shits destined to become career criminals. He didn't mind that choice of career. But they were so goddamn stupid they'd spend most of their lives behind bars. What special form of insanity made him sire the little bastards?

  One thing was certain: when he retired, he'd ditch all of them. They wouldn't feature in his new life. He wouldn't even keep a photo of them.

  His only relaxation was fishing. So on Saturday morning he woke early and glanced over at his wife, snoring loudly. As soon as she woke, she'd start whining. These days they usually had their first fight while still in bed.

  He snuck into the kitchen, quietly ate breakfast, packed his esky and drove down to his cabin cruiser, reflecting that he'd love to take his wife fishing and use her as bait. He carried the esky across the marina and stowed it in the cabin of his boat. But, as he returned to the deck, he found himself staring straight into a pistol, with Gary Maddox behind it.

  "Hello Brian. Long time, no see."

  Shee-it.