Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage (16 page)

He followed the calls to the boot of Rayburn’s car, circled it once and then opened it.

Jim Patterson rolled over and squinted up at him, his face a montage of purple bruises and bloody cuts. ‘Jesus, Bishop,’ he said. ‘You look like shit.’

In the twenty hours since Bishop last saw Patterson in the car park of the Broadmeadows shopping centre, gun in hand, fending off Rayburn, he had been in the back of various vehicles, slapped around, belted and kept only as insurance.

It wasn’t until Patterson stumbled out of the boot that he saw the carnage around him. The caravan destroyed by gunfire, the bodies of Mick Evens, his bouncer, Warren, the bloody mess that was Rayburn and the body of Chief Inspector Patrick Wilson slumped awkwardly over itself with a round in his chest.

Patterson limped through the scene and repeated the words, ‘Bloody hell’, under his breath. He stopped when he came to the old man. ‘Patrick Wilson was Justice?’

Bishop painfully leant against the wall of a caravan. ‘Looks that way.’

Patterson was amazed. ‘Bloody hell, you did it.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m a fool. All I did was destroy everything.’

The sky turned black on the drive over, the streets were deserted and the painkillers had stopped working. Bishop took three more anyway as Patterson brought the car to a stop in front of the boom gate. The security guard leant out of his booth and asked for a badge number; Patterson gave it and drove through into the department’s evidence warehouse.

Neither of them moved fast and the duffel bags slowed them down even more. The lobby was empty except for Constable Grey, who saw them coming and climbed to his feet.

Grunting at the pain it caused him, Bishop swung the bag up onto the counter.

‘Fifteen million in cash from the armoured car robbery two days ago,’ Bishop said. ‘Log it.’

Grey looked down to find Patterson had a weapon aimed at his gut.

‘We’re not asking.’

There was no stopping it now. Once the money was logged as evidence, it was in the system. Fifteen million dollars created a paper trail too large to ever be covered up. The notes would scanned, the serial numbers sent to countless departments as well to as all the banks and Treasury. It took ninety minutes in the evidence room for Grey finalise the log, only then did Bishop let go. The last few days caught up with him in a matter of seconds. Standing was a little more than he could handle; he swayed, used the wall to hold himself up.

‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Patterson said with his hand already on the telephone.

‘No,’ Bishop grunted as he pushed himself off the wall. ‘But I think I’ll be heading off now.’

Patterson put the phone down on the desk. ‘Bishop, you can’t leave.’ His face pulled to the side as he shook his head. ‘I need to put you under arrest.’

Bishop paused at the door. A vein throbbed in his forehead as he stared Patterson down. ‘So, arrest me.’

Patterson smirked. ‘Maybe later.’

Bishop stumbled into the lobby and, a few weak steps later, he was out of the building and in the car park.

Sirens.

Lights.

A patrol car came to a sliding stop in front of him and two uniforms climbed out, weapons drawn.

Bishop knew the drill. He pulled his badge, held it high. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m a cop.’

The uniforms swapped a glance and Bishop knew he was in trouble. They opened fire so fast that the succession of bullets sounded like firecrackers.

His body slammed to the ground.

One of the uniforms held his radio to his lips. ‘Ten one-oh-eight,’ he said. ‘Officer down.’

Bishop held on tight to the badge and let everything else go.

‘I commend your fight against police corruption. But in the process of fighting it, you have become corrupt yourself.’

There were five of them on the parole board and Bishop had forgotten their names after the first one opened his mouth. Words like,
violent
,
brutal
and
excessive
were thrown around and after fifteen minutes Bishop’s twenty-seven-year-old legal aid lawyer finally climbed to his feet. ‘Tom Bishop was a hero cop.’

‘You’re speaking in the past tense.’

‘His actions led to the exposure of a widespread network of police corruption throughout the entire state.’

‘His actions led to the deaths of seventeen people.’

‘In trying to uncover the truth in regards to the death of his daughter—’ he shuffled through papers on the desk ‘—Alice Cameron, and to solve an armoured truck heist that left twelve people dead.’

‘That does not excuse his actions.’ The chairman pushed his rimless glasses into his face and hunched over the desk. ‘Mr Bishop, do you believe you belong in prison?’

Bishop scratched the back of his shaved head. ‘Yes, sir, I do.’

The lawyer let out a long sigh that the whole room could hear and sat down, his mind already shifting to the next case on his docket.

There was a knock at the door and the man who opened it produced a badge. ‘Detective Patterson from Ethical Standards,’ he said. ‘I need a word with Tom Bishop.’

Two guards led him down the hall on either side while Patterson limped behind. They reached a small interview room that reeked of disinfectant and stale piss.

Patterson sent the guards out. He took a seat across from Bishop and stretched his leg. ‘How’s the hearing going?’

‘I think they’re going to let me out.’

‘Really?’

Bishop patted down his shirt, took out a pack of cigarettes and set one on fire. ‘I’ve been on my best behaviour.’

‘I’d prefer you didn’t smoke.’

‘I’d prefer you got to the point.’

Patterson smiled. He opened a manila folder and laid out a ledger in front of Bishop. ‘I want you to take a look at this.’

Bishop glanced at the pages. ‘I don’t know what any of this means.’

‘See, have a look here,’ Patterson stabbed the papers at various points with his finger, ‘here and here.’ Then he waited for the information to sink in.

‘Look, mate, I wasn’t kidding before, I have no idea what any of this means.’

‘The money allocated from the state to the Victorian Police Department is 1.4 billion dollars a year. But only 1.37 billion has reached the streets. There’s two hundred and fifty million dollars missing.’

Bishop shrugged. ‘It wasn’t me.’

‘I looked into it. A name came up. Justice.’

‘Patrick Wilson had a long reach. A lot of fingers in a lot of pies.’

‘That’s what I thought. But Wilson’s been dead three years.’ He tapped the papers on the desk. ‘As of last month, this skim is still active.’

It took Bishop a couple of run-ups to finally leak some words from his lips and when he did they were accompanied by a sad smile. ‘So, Patrick Wilson wasn’t …’

Patterson shook his head. ‘No, Justice is still out there.’

Bishop thought about everything that had happened over the past three years and it all come down to one moment: sitting on the front steps of the Oak Park Apartments.

The hostages were safe. He had killed five shooters, pounded one to death with his fists, and watched Chloe Richards die.

Patrick Wilson sat next to him. Blue light from an unmarked crossed his face as it slowed to a park. Commissioner Mackler had arrived with her entourage and navigated the maze of patrol cars and up to the police tape at the edge of the scene. She waved for Wilson.

He climbed to his feet, put a hand on Bishop’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes a little violence is not a bad thing.’

Bishop watched as Wilson passed through the uniforms and paramedics to greet Mackler with a friendly smile and a shake of the hand. Bishop couldn’t hear the words they spoke but when they were finished, they were both staring him down. Their friendly smiles were gone; they looked at him as if he were a threat. And to Justice he was.

Jim Patterson shuffled the pages into a pile and slid those between a manila folder. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked. ‘Do you have any thoughts?’

Bishop clenched his fist, his busted knuckles pointed out in random directions. ‘Only one.’

 A writer is created by an accumulation of their experiences, desires and most importantly, the people they surround themselves with. Although my name is on the cover of this novel, it took many people to create the writer who wrote it.

Conrad Exton: Who filled my teenaged mind with great literature and great music.

Ray Mooney: Who taught me to write like me, despite the consequences.

Matthew Vaughan: My consigliere of words.

Gaby Naher: My agent, who has gone into battle for me on more than one occasion.

Gareth Beal: My editor, who killed all the words that didn’t matter.

Everyone at Momentum: Especially Joel Naoum and Mark Harding for their encouragement, support and for making publishing the easiest part of writing.

Dale Eastwell: My father and my mate.

Mum: Who taught me resilience, laughter and to always follow my dreams.

Shari Emin: Without her, I wouldn’t be me. She’s my first audience, my best friend and the centre of my often off kilter world.

Luke spent most of his twenties as a freelance writer and listening to rock ’n’ roll. He drinks heavily on occasion, is a half-decent musician and his idea of a good time involves a jukebox designed to bleed ears.

Luke’s work has been recognised by The Inside Film Awards, MTV and The ATOM Awards. He writes in cafes, bars and in parking lots on the back of old fuel receipts and cigarette packets. He doesn’t believe in writer’s block or in the magic bullet theory and his favourite album is
Exile on Main Street
.

Luke’s writing is as much influenced by AC/DC and Johnny Cash as it is by Richard Stark and Raymond Chandler. He likes bad traffic, noisy neighbours, cheap beer, loud bars and has been known to occasionally howl at the moon.

Sometimes a little violence is a good thing.

You can't go on the kind of spree ex-cop Tom Bishop did and not face consequences.

After three years of rotting in a cell, Bishop is busted out of prison in the dead of night and thrown into the middle of a police war where the stakes are high and personal.

Now, the very man who put him away calls on his help. But what starts out as a simple rescue mission descends into an adrenaline-fuelled, action packed thrill-ride as Bishop plunges into a web of conspiracy that threatens to destroy his soul, but may provide the answers to his past.

Out of Exile
is the anticipated follow up to the award-nominated
Dark City Blue
. 

Praise for
Dark City Blue

"Noir on no-doze" - Fair Dinkum Crime

"The cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy and packing heat." - Trent Jamieson, author of the
Death Works
trilogy

"As far as hard-boiled goes this is a hard-boiled, deep-frozen, sharpened implement." - Jon Page, Bite the Book