ThornyDevils (8 page)

Cars in the area of Clifton Hill, gunshots have been reported at 92 George Street, repeat…

Peter was rudely snapped out his dream. He sat upright as if a rope was around his neck and he was being pulled towards the ceiling.

Double shooting, two males, 92 George Street Clifton…

He fumbled for the phone and dialled Mad Dog, who answered as if he had been sitting by the phone expecting an important call. No hint of sleep evident in his voice.

‘We’re on. Double shooting,’ Peter flung at him. ‘Ninety-two George Street, Clifton Street.’

‘I’ll be there in three. Just live two streets away.’ Silence. Mad Dog must have thrown down the phone.

Peter dived into his new suit pants and a T-shirt. He flung the suit jacket over his shoulder.
Out the door
. He was running down the stairs towards the Stag with the image of a helicopter landing under fire in Vietnam in his head. He threw himself into the car, pulled open the choke and turned over the ignition. The Stag roared lustfully, suddenly injected with adrenaline. He pressed down the accelerator several times just to make sure.
Thank God. The Stag is alive. Don’t let me down
.

He propelled the car down the street, its well-worn tyres screeching and shuddering against the bitumen as he hurtled around a corner. He peeked at the speedometer. Twice the limit, and no police, or anyone else, around.
I hope they’re not at the shooting yet
. He glanced at his wristwatch.
No wonder. It’s five thirty. The Pulse is coming,
Peter thought.

Mad Dog’s Harley Davidson was already at the front of number ninety-two, a double storey period brick house, with a concrete driveway down the side. He noted the house’s name on a large plaque over the front door.
Serenity
.

Mad Dog wasn’t in sight. He’d probably already gone into action. Peter threw open the car door and sprinted across the footpath towards the guttural sobbing of a woman emanating from the house. The sobs turned to wailing, loud and distressing. He could hear a chorus of sirens in the far distance. Groans echoed out of the garage at the end of the driveway.

First glimpse: A grey-haired woman wearing a floral nightie is hunched over, kneeling on the ground in the entrance of the garage, her face and nightie blotched with blood.

Second glimpse: Mad Dog standing over the woman, spooling off shot after shot of the carnage, his face blank.
What the fuck? What the fuck?
Mind reeling, Peter reaches the garage.

The woman is bent over a man sprawled on the ground beside the open passenger door of a BMW, his balding head resting against the wheel. He looks to be the same age as the woman but it’s hard to tell. The garage is a slaughterhouse. Blood is smeared across the car door from the man’s hand. It’s as if a hose has been left on and it is running blood, not water, over the concrete floor. The woman is on the ground, crouching in a deep pool of claret. A thin stream of blood seeps from the man’s neck. There is so much blood it obscures the man’s face. The woman grasps the man’s neck tightly with both hands, trying to stem the flow. Peter stands frozen just outside, the open garage door framing the horror within. It is overwhelming. Mad Dog’s camera whirrs. He’s still taking photos. He is possessed. The woman screams for help. She screams at Mad Dog, who ignores her.

‘Get away, you scum!’ The woman picks up a bloody slipper she’s been wearing and throws it at Mad Dog. It hits him in the head leaving a gory footprint on his forehead. His camera clicks. She looks down at
the man, who is trying to talk. He’s turning a dusky blue and drifting in and out of consciousness. Again, he is trying to talk. Peter wants to walk away, but his feet are now stuck to the concrete. He shakes his head and frowns.
None of this is right
, he thinks, yet he can’t tear himself away.

‘Don’t talk, Pat,’ she begs. ‘Save your strength.’ One of the man’s red hands reaches up and pulls her head towards his mouth. He mutters to her. Peter observes the scene unfolding, edging forward to hear. A deathbed confession? A final expression of love? A dying will and testament? They both strain to listen.

‘Yes, yes, Pat, I can hear you,’ she says, stroking his face. ‘Save your strength. We’ll get them.’

Peter is an eavesdropper. He feels ashamed. He can hear the cacophony of sirens now in the street. The woman looks directly at him. Her eyes are dilated and luminous.

‘Help him. Help me,’ she implores Peter. ‘Please. Please help.’

Her voice jolts his mind and Peter suddenly finds himself pulling off his jacket, tearing off his T-shirt and reaching down to cover the man’s neck. From observer to participant in a single moment: gonzo journalism at its most authentic. He presses hard against the man’s neck in an attempt to staunch the haemorrhage. His blue T-shirt turns crimson in an instant. He keeps pressing down, until his hand aches, but the man has stopped breathing, and the woman’s screams become a howl. She has already gone into mourning. Peter feels a hand on his shoulder, jerking him aside.

‘We’ll take over here, mate.’

Peter looked up the driveway at a swarm of ambulance paramedics, police officers, cameramen and journalists descending like a succession of waves.
When did they appear?
The ambos were already applying CPR and the police had cordoned off the journos who were gathering further up the driveway. He could hear their fruitless protests.

He stood up slowly and moved aside, his legs quivering, nearly buckling.

‘It’s okay,’ he heard himself saying, ‘I’m a journo with
The Truth
.’

A police officer tried to shift the woman, but she hung onto the man’s torso with both hands.

‘I’m not leaving him,’ she cried as the police officer tugged. ‘I’m staying.’

‘You have to let the paramedics help him. They can’t help him when you’re holding onto him,’ the police officer reasoned.

‘I’m staying. Fuck off, you copper bastard.’

Another police officer stepped in to assist, but she wasn’t letting go. He threw himself into the melee. Finally, the woman was dragged off the man and into the house, kicking, punching and yelling. In the meantime, Mad Dog was jostling with a detective who had covered his camera lens with his hand. Another uniformed officer joined in. Mad Dog was yelling vehemently about freedom of the press as he was frog-marched back up the driveway.

Another officer had taken Peter aside and instructed him not to leave. The officer seemed annoyed, saying something about how Peter would have to answer some questions and congratulations, he had just contaminated a crime scene. Peter mumbled something about trying to help. He attempted to find an eye in the storm: a calm place. He finally found a spot near a child’s swing. A doll with one of its arms missing lay near the swing. He could hear men yelling. He looked up to see two thirty-something men pushing their way through the phalanx of police. One had red hair; the other had long hair and a beard.

‘He’s our father. Get out of the fucking way,’ the bearded one yelled, angry spit flying into the face of a young constable.

‘We want to see him. We’re his sons, you dumb copper cunt,’ Ranga added.

The constable, flushed with anger, stood his ground until a tall, wavy-haired policeman, who appeared to be in charge, pushed the constable aside and took the two men to where the victim lay on a trolley. Peter walked back towards the fracas, observing that his neck was now covered in a tight compression bandage that was steadily turning red. Peter still couldn’t make out what the man looked like; his face now had an oxygen mask on it.

The bearded son took hold of one of his father’s hands and the other leaned over him, dripping tears of grief onto the face of the dying man. The bearded man retrieved something from his pocket and pressed it into his father’s hand, then closed it. Peter edged forward: Rosary beads. The monitor on the trolley was alarming. An ambulance officer started CPR.

‘We’re losing him. Move. Move. Move!’

The ambos were at both ends of the trolley, manoeuvring it frantically up the driveway. They hit a bump and the monitor looked like it would fall off the trolley, except that one of the officers secured it without stopping. The wheels rattled as they rolled over the concrete. The sons, the police and the journalists herded themselves behind the trolley and towards the ambulance.

The grey-haired woman darted out of the house, followed closely by a policewoman. The woman had changed into a fresh, green tracksuit with yellow edging. In her urgency she had only zipped up the tracksuit top over her abdomen, leaving her bra exposed. She threw a passing glance at Peter before running up the driveway towards the ambulance. She seemed oblivious to her public display. Peter thought about telling her but decided against it. Maybe the female copper would tell her.

Mad Dog had gone back into action, snapping the trolley as it was pushed into the back of the ambulance. He attempted to take a photo of the woman trying to climb in and being grappled by police, but he was pushed away. The doors were thrown shut and the ambulance screamed away, siren blaring in harmony with the two police cars following it. Peter wanted to go back to the swing and close his eyes. He desperately wanted a stiff drink. He managed to direct his feet back towards the garage. It was cordoned off. He realised his suit jacket was back there and he was wearing nothing but a singlet and pants soaked to the knee in blood.

A line of police officers and ambos were gathered at the doorway of the garage. Peter wanted to blend in. He was a few steps away. Then he noticed. How the hell hadn’t he noticed before?

In the congealing pool, Peter saw four bullet casings alongside the still open passenger door of the BMW. Four more on the other side. The driver’s door was also open. Two police officers were standing near the door looking down. One has taken off his cap and was running his hand through his hair, pale with shock. Peter could now clearly see what he was looking at. A male torso hung out of the driver’s door, the head resting limply in a puddle of gore on the garage floor. The back of his skull was missing.

Then Peter saw his suit jacket draped over a carpenter’s bench. He wanted to go and pick it up but an agitated male voice bore down on
him from behind. The two coppers looked up in the direction of the voice. It was the wavy-haired detective senior sergeant.

‘Hey you,’ he barked. ‘You. The bloke in the singlet. You can’t go in there, you’ll be disturbing a crime scene. Don’t you touch anything.’ With a wave, he signalled one of the other Homicide Squad members to approach Peter.

As Peter backed away from the garage door, he was followed by a senior constable, who cornered him against a fence. A few minutes later, the detective senior sergeant crossed the yard towards him.

‘Who are you?’

Peter was still trying to shake the vision of trauma he had witnessed from his consciousness. He concentrated all his energies on the present. The detective was taller than Peter, broad-shouldered with a soft, jowly face, a porn moustache, and that hair. The thought that it might be permed pushed everything else away. The detective’s soft face didn’t match his rasping voice.

‘Peter Clancy. I’m the new crime journalist from
The Truth
and the owner of that coat.’ Peter was beginning to feel the brisk Melbourne winter air. He started to shiver.
I need a shirt. I need a shirt. I want my coat back. My tits will freeze off
. ‘I heard about the shooting on a scanner and my photographer and I got here just before your lot turned up.’

‘If it was up to me those things would be outlawed,’ he sneered at Peter.

‘I was using my shirt as a compress. For the man who was shot. Can you tell me anything about him?’ he continued, wrapping his arms around his body for warmth.

The detective smirked, enjoying Peter’s discomfort. He took his time responding. ‘I’m the one asking the questions here, mate. You’ll be very lucky not to be charged.’

‘With what? For trying to save a life?’

‘Well, Peter Clancy, porn peddling, muck raking Good Samaritan from
The Truth
, one of the detectives here will ask you a few more questions and then you can go home. But make sure you don’t go too far away; I might need to speak to you again. Understood?’

‘Understood.’ Peter hesitated. ‘You can’t tell me anything more about the victims? Their names maybe?’

‘You have got to be joking. There’ll be a press conference for your lot tomorrow at St Kilda Road. You can ask your questions then. That’s
if you’re not dead from hypothermia,’ the detective chuckled. He shot a glance at another detective standing nearby with his hands in his pockets, who joined in.

‘That’s clever,’ Peter answered back sarcastically. ‘The detective senior sergeant’s a comedian.’

‘The detective senior sergeant has a name, and his name is Dale McCracken,’ he growled as he stepped forward.

‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Peter replied with a smirk. ‘Dale McCracken: Senior Dick and part-time comedian. Or is that the other way around?’

‘If this is your first day covering crime, then you’re already off to a bad start, Clancy,’ McCracken snarled into Peter’s face. ‘I hope it changes along with your shitty attitude. How it works is, if the press are pleasant to us, we give out the necessary information. If not…’

Peter interrupted. ‘Wow! I’m starting to get it! You spill the breadcrumbs and we get to eat them. Like chooks.’

McCracken’s face flushed crimson. ‘Get the hell out of here,’ he snapped, ‘before you find yourself in a cell.’

‘Thanks,’ Peter smiled as he attempted to push his way through the two detectives. ‘I’ll be in touch. And I’d like to get my coat now’

McCracken grabbed Peter on the shoulder. ‘Forget your coat. And that crazy photographer you dragged along with you: keep him on a chain. He’s interfering with police work.’

‘Of course,’ Peter retorted. ‘I’ll return him to the RSPCA today.’

McCracken left Peter to the smirking detective. A few questions and a flash of his driver’s licence later, he made his way briskly up the driveway, heading back to the Stag and more importantly, to its heater.
McCracken
. He was vaguely aware of having heard the name before. Was it the same McCracken that Concheetah had mentioned?