Animal Kingdom (12 page)

He ran.

No way was he going in to see the cops, with or without Ezra. No way in the world. He knew he wouldn't stand a chance. They'd start making all their wise-arse cracks, goading him, making jokes about Baz and Catherine and how maybe they should all go over there and give her a poke and that sort of shit. Then he'd lose it and the next thing he'd be threatening to kill the lot of them and they'd have him on the floor with a gun behind his ears, breathing beer and meat pies into his face. He just knew it.

He was too strung out, that was the thing. If he had a bit of time to rest up and settle, have a massage, a bit of a relax, well, maybe then, but not now—not now, with so much going on. Maybe Pope could get away with it, giving it back to them. Pope was at his best when he was slinging shit with people he really hated. Maybe even Darren could get away with it, front up and put on that sulky act of his till they were so sick of looking at his mopey face they'd chuck him out.

But Craig? Craig knew himself well enough to know it wouldn't take much for him to crack, and when he cracked he didn't know what he'd do or say. Or rather, he did.

He had to get out.

He didn't have a plan, or not much of one. There was a mate of his, Richard, who'd decided to go straight, or as straight as guys like Craig and Richard can go. He'd shacked up in the bush somewhere with a Filipino bride, trying to pretend everything was going to be all right and he could crawl away from his previous life. That he could be a farmer on a clapped-out piece of land where he might be able to grow a bit of dope and hang loose. And Craig thought he owed him a favour or two, so decided to pay a visit. Why not? Lie low, take it easy, have a little holiday in the Australian bush away from it all. Maybe even do a bit of hunting. It sounded great when he'd first thought of it, looking into a glass around midnight the night before.

He hadn't been able to sleep, not since the killings. It wasn't that he regretted it—he didn't—it was just that it hadn't been like he'd imagined. Sometimes when you think of doing something like that, you just imagine it in a flash. One minute you're all there eyeing one another off; the next it's
bang
and someone's gone. Craig hadn't realised how hard it was to kill someone, the hard, physical effort of doing it, of whacking into someone to make sure they were dead. And then blood everywhere, all over the place. Just when you think you've cleaned it off, you find it somewhere else. And then afterwards, when you're trying to nod off, the little details you didn't even remember flooding back. The look of fear in their eyes, the gurgling and twitching, the horrible details of how men die, and so he had been up for twentyfour, maybe thirty-six hours by now.

Normally that was okay: he was used to it. He liked that crystal-clear clarity you get after a few days without sleep. The sun goes up, the sun goes down, people sleep and wake and sleep, and, meanwhile, you're just there, watching it all pass as it should, like God. It is like being God, or being with God.

But this wasn't like being with God. Not this time.

Not that Craig believed in God. He had as much trouble with that as anyone else, but at times like this, when you were touching the edge, you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel something kind of … spiritual.

Yeah, just get away
, that's what he thought.
Straighten out; clear the head; do a bit of meditation. Commune.

He'd let his life get way out of whack. All that aggro. It was his line of business: everyone always trying to rip you off, steal your money. People thought selling drugs was easy, but there was a lot of infrastructure, capital costs. Actually, Craig had been thinking about expanding into production— get a bit of vertical integration going. Get rid of Roache— nobody likes corrupt cops, not even crims—or maybe keep him on just to keep the coppers sweet, but expand out, you know, get some chemists working for him, set up a lab. Get a steady supply of codeine and Bob's your uncle. There'd be no looking back.

But was it really him, he wondered. The Yin and the Yang things weren't really in sync, and he wondered if he'd neglected his true, inner self. So a holiday might be just the thing.

All he needed was a bit of time to get his head together. Lay off the dope and the rest of it, eat some brown rice.

Once things had settled down he could poke his nose back in, go in and see the cops, maybe, the way Smurf had said. He'd be in a better frame of mind and able to handle their shit.

That's all he needed: just a few days away, a bit of fresh air, somewhere away from it all.

Of course, nothing was ever that simple. Not for Craig, anyhow. By the time he arrived at the farm early the following morning, he was pissed and still drinking. Noticing Rich's pump-action, he decided it'd be great fun to go out and have a blast at some of the farm buildings. Rich didn't think it was such a good idea, but that's because Rich was a pussy. You just had to look at him. Greying, getting flabby in the middle, bulging in a yellowing singlet, with big fat loser pork-chop whiskers—or maybe he just hadn't shaved for a week—an ugly bitch common-law wife … The guy was a wreck, or so Craig thought.

And certainly no match for a drunk with a shotgun.

‘Woo! Fuckin' monster!' Craig cried as he let off another round at the silo.
Blam, blam, blam!
He felt like Arnie in
The Terminator
.

Shit, that thing made a noise, and every time it boomed Rich flinched like the pussy he was.

‘Nice gun, Rich. Can we go hunting?'

‘Yeah, maybe, mate,' Rich answered, jumpy, and wondering how he was going to get rid of him. ‘I got a few things I gotta do.'

He was nervous—having a drunk guy with a highpowered shotgun blasting away at your property would make anyone nervous—but there was something else …

‘So how long were you wanting to stay?' Rich asked a little later, back in the house. ‘And where's Kelly?' Kelly had been Craig's girlfriend, when he'd still been capable of having a girlfriend. The one that Smurf had never really got on with.

‘We split up. Ages ago,' Craig confessed, suddenly remembering a time when he actually felt something for another human being. ‘Don't worry. You know, it's mutual and everything, so it was for the best.' Isn't that the shit people say when things end?

Rich was worried, and so was his wife, hovering nervously in the doorway as Craig slugged down another stubby.

‘Fucking piece of shit!' he suddenly roared, banging at the electronic gizmo on his lap because he couldn't work out how to tune it.

‘You okay, mate?' Rich asked uneasily. ‘What's with the scanner?'

‘I'll fight through, mate, I'll fight through,' Craig said, imagining that Rich was expressing concern.

‘Look, um …' Rich began, wondering how he was going to broach it. ‘I'm just thinking it's only fair—if you're gonna to be hanging here for a while—it's only fair you tell us …' He glanced worriedly at his wife, who was going to give him hell about this later. ‘What's this about?'

‘I don't know what's going on, Rich. I don't know what's going on, mate,' Craig answered, distraught and incoherent.

And that's when he heard them. The dogs. He'd found a channel, and that's what he could hear: dogs. Rich's dogs.

‘Can you hear that?' Craig asked, mystified at first as he listened more closely.

‘Hear what?' Rich answered, not able to follow the weird detours of Craig's cracked mind.

But, angrily throwing the scanner down, Craig leaped to his feet and rushed out the door, snarling, ‘I can hear your fucking dogs.'

‘What's going on?' Rich's wife asked, stalking forwards as the dogs barked in the distance and Craig hunted around for something in the front of the house.

‘I don't know,' Rich answered, looking quickly at the scanner and wondering if they should just get out now, before the shit really started to fly.

‘Tell him he can't stay here,' she said anxiously.

‘I can't tell him nothin', love,' Rich answered, just as Craig exploded like a bomb back into the house, roaring, ‘Cunt motherfuckers!'

Swinging around in fright, Rich saw him surging forwards, waving a box and a fistful of wires and demanding, ‘What's this, Rich? What's this?'

Rich didn't know what it was, or, if he did, he wasn't showing it. ‘I don't know, mate. I don't know what it is!' he said.

‘It's a bug. There's a fucking bug on your house.'

Was he telling the truth, or was it just another piece of paranoid shit from his scrambled brain?

‘I don't know about it, mate,' Rich answered, feeling like things were just about to go haywire big-time.

‘How can there be a bug in your house? Who knew I was coming?'

This was getting too scary.

‘They're probably bugging your phone, mate,' Rich said. ‘I don't know. I'm not lying to you.'

But he was, of course he was. Whoever thinks there's honour among thieves has only ever read about them in books.

‘Fuck, what am I going to do now, mate?' Craig cried, looking as if he was about to burst into tears.

‘I don't know, mate,' Rich replied. ‘Maybe it's just best you leave, eh?'

That was certainly the consensus at his end.

‘Yeah, yeah,' Craig said, determined, his whole being now intent on one thing: getting away, and getting away fast. Grabbing at his stuff and shoving it into a black plastic bag, he looked quickly about. ‘Did I bring anything else?' he asked.

Rich didn't think he had, and, grabbing the shotgun, Craig was already halfway out the door before they knew it, not far enough yet for Rich and his woman to feel safe, but certainly heading in the right direction.

Rushing out across the yard, Craig threw his things into the car, but, looking up, he saw two cars coming down the dirt track towards him.

Cop cars. With the dogs now barking their heads off.

If there was time for a bit of clear thinking, it was now, but Craig was way past it. Grabbing the shotgun, he turned and ran, fumbling to load the gun as he took off, his thongs flying from his feet as he sprinted through the dust.

Charging past the water tank, he made straight for the open field as the cops roared up. Craig was scared and running for his life, but out in the open like that he was a dead duck.

The cops piled out of their cars in their snappy bullet-proof vests and didn't even call out an order to stop. Why would they? An armed and dangerous man wanted in connection to the murder of two policemen. No witnesses. They had no intention of even giving him the time of day.

Raising his gun, the cop in charge steadied his hand, took aim and shot.

The Smith & Wesson Model 10 shoots a .38 copperjacketed hollow-point bullet, which expands upon entering the target, causing maximum damage to the surrounding tissue as it passes through at the speed of 755 feet per second. It is illegal in the UK, except for killing animals.

As the bullet slammed into Craig, he felt like he'd been hit with a hammer, and the searing pain passing through him was the most excruciating pain he'd ever felt in his life, knocking him down to the ground. Dazed and confused, his lungs already filling with blood, he stood uncertainly and turned to look at his killer just as he let loose with a second shot that dropped him hard again onto the dry soil.

That's how he died, looking at the dead grass, flies already buzzing around his open eyes.

He was dead.

And if he hadn't been, the cop who walked up to gloat over his body would have put a bullet through the back of his head just to finish him off.

The news spread fast.

First to hear was Detective Senior Sergeant Leckie. ‘Craig Cody's gone, mate,' the casual voice on the other end of the phone was saying. It was Norris, his offsider.

Leckie was playing on the floor at home with his kid and certainly wasn't expecting this. ‘What do you mean?' he asked, standing.

‘They had to drop him,' Norris answered matter-of-factly, like they were talking about a mozzie. ‘He found the listening device and sounded unhinged, so they went in to apprehend him and he lost the plot. They had to drop him.'

Leckie didn't buy it, not completely. He knew feelings were running high about the two young constables who had been murdered. There would be plenty of people in the force—and the general public, for that matter—who wouldn't mind one of the Codys, or all of them, going down in a hail of bullets, and Norris was one of them. But Leckie was a policeman, not a vigilante. There were already enough police crossing the line for it to be a matter of concern to anyone interested in a professional police force and not a gang of untouchable thugs dishing out their own brand of justice. Unpopular as it might have been in certain circles, Leckie was on the side of the law, not payback.

‘Why didn't anyone call me?' he said. ‘I would've got the SOGies up there.'

‘Look, there was no time for that, mate,' Norris answered. ‘He just lost the plot.'

Leckie thought he wasn't the only one. You wouldn't shoot an escaped lion; you'd wait till they brought in a net and a tranquilliser gun. But you wouldn't think twice about shooting a man, or a man like Craig Cody. At least, that was what some people thought.

Leckie needed time to think, because he knew what the Codys were like, and things would really start to jump now.

Smurf was shattered. Craig was her boy. It was different from Baz: Baz had been a good bloke and a friend, but Craig was flesh and blood, her son. He was part of her own body and she loved him as ferociously as any mother does, and more.

She didn't need to be told how it happened; she
knew
. She knew in her bones. She imagined his terror and confusion, his awful, panicked flight. She knew they would have shown no mercy, just like they were going to show no mercy to any of them. This thing that Pope had let loose, this ravenous monster of death, was going to devour them all, the way it had devoured so many before whenever it was let off its leash.