Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage (5 page)

He felt a calming hand on the back of his neck and his breaths drew longer, his hand stopped shaking and his mind slowed.

Patrick Wilson looked over his shoulder at the corpse in the lobby and sat down. ‘You’re alright, mate, come on,’ he said with a hand rubbing Bishop’s back.

‘Did you see what I did in there?’

‘You did what needed to be done,’ Wilson said.

Bishop wiped the cold sweat from his brow. ‘There’s something inside me I don’t understand.’

Blue light from an unmarked crossed Wilson’s face as it arrived on the scene. He put a hand on Bishop’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes a little violence is not a bad thing.’

He told Bishop he was a hero. That he took down five traffickers, sex offenders. Scum. He told him that he saved the lives of sixteen under-aged girls. That he would get a commendation, a medal even. But when Tom Bishop thought of Chloe Richards or the five men he had just killed, he didn’t feel like a hero.

It was near dawn by the time Bishop arrived home. His feet moved slow, his body was heavy; pushing through the front door felt as if he were trying to move a wall. He closed it gently so as not to wake Alice and moved through the room collecting the clothes she had left strewn over the floor and on the backs of chairs. He folded them into a neat pile on the edge of the kitchen table. His shoulder was sore, his back ached and he wanted to wash the smell of ugliness off his skin.

He had stepped through the hall and wrapped his fist around the bathroom doorknob before the sound of vomiting on the other side stopped him.

Bishop rubbed his tired face and sighed.

When the toilet flushed, he knocked. ‘Is everything okay in there?’

‘… Everything’s okay.’

Bishop took a half step toward the kitchen before slowing to a stop. He looked back at the door. ‘Do you want to talk? Is that how your mother does it?’

The door unlocked with a click. Alice sat on the floor with her back to the bath and her head in her hands. She had been crying but was now all cried out and there were no tears left.

He sat next to her. His big knees up near his chin and his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her close. ‘Everything will be okay,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be okay.’

She let out a long howl that muffled into his leather jacket.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay.’

When she calmed down she told him the father was some piece of shit that gave her three hundred dollars for an abortion and told her to lose his number.

He told her everything would be okay.

He thought of Chloe Richards and the next time he said those words they sounded hollow.

Flashing lights ripped through the morning sky. The block was cordoned off, yellow tape and rookie uniforms pushed the spectators away but didn’t stop them from eyeballing the scene and recording what they saw on their mobile phones. The flow of traffic from the eastern suburbs into the CBD crawled to a stop turning the far end of St Kilda Road into a car park.

The scene ran from the café shopfronts on one side of the road, over the six lanes and one tram line to the café shopfronts on the other. Dawn’s Coffee & Muffins had zigzag bullet holes through its lettering. Rounds were buried in the trees on the footpath and were being dug out by forensics while the car alarm of a Mercedes screamed from a peppering of machine gun fire it had taken while parked on the side of the road. The sound bounced off the buildings and rang in everybody’s ears.

Shell casings littered the street, and body bags lined the footpath. Ambos wheeled another to the side of the road, pulled it from the gurney and laid it on the concrete, where it became the ninth in a row. It sat disjointed and folded over itself.

Bishop had sat on the gutter and watched as the number of body bags that lined the road grew.

The detectives huddled around the wreck of the armoured truck. It was bashed and bruised with the left side sunken on the road from two blown tyres. Water pissed out of the radiator: the result of hitting a divider in the road. The rear doors hung open, warped from the force of the explosion.

Bishop circled. The three guards were dead. The driver lay slumped across the bonnet. Halfway between the passenger door and the rear lay the second guard, facedown in a pool of his own blood. Judging by the amount his heart had pumped out, he hadn’t died straight away. The third lay at the rear. Cut in half with automatic weapons when the doors exploded.

Lieutenant Rayburn was in charge of the scene. He had a small face with big features and at some stage in his teenage years had had bad skin that left scars on his chin and cheeks. Shorter than most men, he had hunched shoulders that gave him a silhouette not far off that of a bulldog. He’d spent half his career in Major Crimes working under Cliff Moore and when Moore retired, Rayburn was bumped up. He had gotten lazy and fat since he was made CO and all his clothes were half a size too small. He ran his thumb between his waistband and gut so he could draw a breath as he made his way through the crime scene.

He called for his detectives. They assembled around him. Cooper was a beast of a man. Six foot five, size fourteen boots and hands the size of dinner plates. He and Rayburn had been partners since they were both in uniform. Warren was smaller but in better shape. He didn’t smoke, drink or curse. He had transferred in from Special Operations three years earlier after he busted his ankles when a rope snapped abseiling down the side of a building. Russell had worked undercover before Rayburn had recruited him. He was unassuming and plain faced. He used it to his advantage and people opened up and told him all their secrets without realising they had.

After he was made CO, Rayburn put together a tight crew and the bosses had high hopes, although they never understood the inclusion of Con Taylor. As a man he was a pig and as a police officer he was barely effective. The VPD had been trying to bounce him for years and at the time Rayburn recruited him he was just coming off suspension. Taylor followed him around like a sick dog and most people believed that Rayburn didn’t have the heart to put him down.

Ellison had been called in from Sex Crimes and stood shoulder to shoulder with the detectives.

Rayburn paced and ran his thumb under the waistband of his trousers again. He shouted over the howl of the car alarm. ‘We’ve got innocent people dead. Bystanders, witnesses, security guards. We’ve got fifteen million dollars missing. Call your families, cancel your plans. Nobody goes home until we’ve got these dogs in cuffs. At 5:27 AM,’ he, nodded back at the wreck, ‘truck 177 left Crown Casino and headed out to deposit the night’s earnings. Somewhere between 6:07 and 6:20, some wannabe gangsters ran them off the road. They then proceeded to blow out the rear doors and execute the guards, as well as any passing bystanders. That’s three guards and nine dead witnesses as far as we know, though others might have fled to safety. If they exist, we need to find them.’ He pointed to badges, assigned duties. ‘You all know what to do, so do it well. And for Christ’s sake, someone turn off that fucking alarm.’

The unit dispersed and an obedient uniform rushed toward the Merc, leaving Rayburn and Bishop alone.

‘What about me?’ Bishop asked.

Rayburn lit a cigarette, let the smoke leak through his words. ‘I want you to go home, get some rest.’

‘I don’t need rest.’

‘
I
need people who are on the ball, and you look far from that.’ He pointed to the gash on Bishop’s head. ‘See a medic and go home.’

He walked off as a news chopper swooped in and hovered a few hundred feet above them. Half the cops on the street waved it away, but it was too late: the images were already in the lounge rooms of the world. The chopper disappeared into the skyline. The fading noise of its engine was replaced with a sound Bishop had heard a thousand times and still hadn’t got used to: a woman in pyjama pants and a puffy jacket broke the police tape and ran toward them, sobbing and wailing. Bishop stepped forward, grabbed her. He buried her face in his jacket, hugged her close so she didn’t have to see the world for a while.

An ambo waited patiently until she let go of him, then walked her away from the scene.

‘Fucked up, isn’t it?’ Ellison kept her gaze focused on the cigarette she was struggling to spark up in the wind. ‘It always amazes me how they get here so fast.’

‘Would you take your time?’

‘I just meant—’

‘I know what you meant.’ Bishop waved his hand to let her know it was okay.

She didn’t seem too worried. ‘This is fucking awesome; I’ve been waiting for a case like this for ages.’

‘They shifted you from SC?’

‘Only for a few days. They want a woman for the cameras and shit, but I don’t give a fuck.’ She adjusted her shirt. Like Rayburn’s, it was a size too small, but the smaller size fitted her better than it did him. ‘What’s our first move, boss?’

‘I’m not on this,’ he said. ‘Rayburn’s sending me home.’

‘Motherfucker,’ she spat. ‘You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you?’

The Merc’s alarm fell silent, but echoes of it rang in everybody’s ears for a few moments longer. A uniform pulled his head out from under the bonnet with a look of achievement on his face as if he had just solved the entire crime.

Bishop’s gaze lingered on the Mercedes. He made his way over to it with Ellison in his wake. She was still talking, but, although he threw in a mumble from time to time, he wasn’t really listening. Taking a lap of the Merc, he ran his fingers along the bullet holes, jamming his finger into each one as his thoughts swirled in a thousand different directions.

‘What is it?’

Kneeling down at the rear of the car, it didn’t take him long to find the reverse camera that sat just under the licence plate. He followed its line of sight: a complete view of the crime scene.

He looked up at the uniform. ‘Is the alarm disabled?’

‘Yes sir.’

Bishop scanned the street. ‘Give me your baton.’

The uniform handed it over, watching nervously as Bishop put it through the driver’s side window. Nobody noticed. He popped the boot and searched it.

‘When the alarm is triggered, the reverse camera automatically records.’

Bishop pulled the SD card and showed it to Ellison.

With the door closed, the only sound in the small office was the hum of the computer booting up. Bishop slid the SD card into the adaptor he got from tech and plugged it in. Despite how it was captured, the image from the back of the Merc was clear with a good angle on St Kilda Road, the disabled armoured truck, and a crime that was in process long before the camera started recording. Three masked gunmen swooped the rear of the truck relaying cash. Truck to car. Truck to car. Within fifteen seconds the bags were loaded in the boot and the gunmen fell back to their vehicle — nondescript — untraceable. They were almost in the clear when a guard dropped to his ankle and came up with a snub nose in his hand. He swung it toward the gunmen but they put him down before he could realise how much of a bad move it was.

The gunmen scanned the area.

Witnesses. Men going to work. Women in cars. Each and every one of them able to stand up in court and point a finger.

They unleashed hell. Nobody got out alive.

When the executions were over, the gunmen piled into the car and out of frame. Five in total. Identical clothing, identical weapons, and no identical features. The whole thing was over and done within sixty seconds.

Smart. Professional. Cool.

Bishop leant back in his chair and drew on his cigarette. He was about to turn the machine off, but in the final frames of the recording, a piece-of-shit Ford that looked parked and empty, pulled away from the curb and trailed after the getaway car.

A spotter. A lookout. Bishop tapped the arrows on the dirty keyboard and brought the footage back frame by frame. A hundred or so taps later, he leant forward and peered at the screen.

A licence plate.

Bishop wrote down the number, yanked the SD card from the computer and left the room.

The CIB had come to life. The phones rang; some were answered, some weren’t. Every desk was occupied, and those without one worked from the floor. The coffee machine was in overtime, and the guys whose shifts had ended hours ago stayed on for no pay and forced themselves to think outside of the four corners they were used to.

Bishop shoved the crumpled paper into a uniform’s hand. ‘Run this tag, then run who the vehicle is registered to. I want sheets, known associates; everything you can find. Bring it to me and only to me, you understand?’

The uniform nodded. He had no choice and a second later was off and on his way to do the detective’s shit work and cursing under his breath.

In the chaos, on a bench, quiet and alone, sat a woman. Waiting patiently with her handbag on her lap and a scrunched-up tissue in her hand.

Bishop walked over and crouched in front of her. ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

She stared back at him blankly.

‘Ma’am? Can I help you?’

She started. ‘What …? Oh, I’m sorry. It’s my husband; he’s a driver for Armaguard. I can’t get him on the phone. I’ve been waiting, but everybody’s so busy.’

‘What’s his name, love?’

‘Jamie Gale.’

Bishop patted her hand. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ Heading toward his desk, he picked up a victim list, scanned through the names. Then he made his way back across the office and sat next to her.

He was never any good at this. No one is ever good at it, but Bishop always struggled to find the words, which he knew always made it worse. His face gave the answer long before he opened his mouth.

‘His name was on that list, wasn’t it?’

Bishop nodded.

‘I thought so. I just needed somebody to tell me, to know for sure.’ She stood up and held out her hand. Bishop shook it. ‘Thank you, detective.’

‘Can I have someone drive you home?’

She shook her head, disappeared into the sea of activity and was gone.

The noise started from the elevator and rolled back in waves. Cheers, claps and wolf whistles flooded the room. Within a matter of moments, every badge was on their feet and their hands slapping together like a chant. Bishop headed over to what everybody was so happy about. Rayburn, Cooper and Taylor barged through the office with shit-eating grins.

‘We got ’em,’ Cooper yelled.

Bishop didn’t know who they thought they’d got, because the two beaten-up bastards they had cuffed didn’t look like they could rob a blind man, let alone an armoured truck. Everything Bishop needed to know about them he could tell by their ‘tribal’ tattoos, Adidas tracksuits and oversized sunglasses. They were gang bangers, small-time drug dealers, fifty-dollar pimps at best. It was complete bullshit, but that didn’t stop every badge whooping and cheering as Rayburn lapped it up. Cooper shoved the stooges over to a couple of uniforms and told them which interview rooms to let the poor bastards sweat in. When they were gone, Rayburn hushed the room and pointed at the clearance board.

‘We put up those names in red, and sometimes they stay in red. But today, due to the hard work of every cop on this team, today we can change those twelve names to black.’

The room erupted. Fists were thrown in the air and hands were slapped on sweaty backs.

Rayburn gestured for quiet again. ‘Be proud. Enjoy this moment, but only for a moment. This thing is far from over. This fast and effective result is all due to good police work. Be proud of it. But this is far from over. We still need admissible evidence and we still need confessions if we’re going to close this fast.’

The audience clapped one last time and dispersed. When the badges parted, Rayburn saw Bishop leaning against a desk with a crooked smile on his face. ‘What’s your problem?’

‘They didn’t do it,’ Bishop said.

Taylor chimed in; Bishop could smell the grog on his breath. ‘They have jackets for armed rob, they were found in the area. How do you explain that?’

‘Did you find the guns, the cash, anything?’

‘We’ll break them and get it in confession,’ Rayburn said.

‘There’s nothing to confess to, mate.’

Rayburn shook his head. He was still smiling. ‘I thought I told you to go home.’

‘Don’t be more interested in looking like you’ve solved the case, rather than actually solving the case,’ Bishop said.

Rayburn’s face hardened. The smile disappeared. ‘What did you just say to me?’

Although it had been many years since Bishop and Taylor had uttered more than a couple of words to each other, Taylor’s eyes sent him a warning. They told him to back the fuck off.

‘Respect the rank,’ Cooper said, his voice low and dark.

Bishop held up the SD card. ‘I’ve got surveillance of the job. The shooters were trained. Those two fuckwits you dragged in don’t know shit from shit. Just have a look at it; that’s all I’m asking you to do.’

Rayburn was about to tear Bishop three new arseholes when Chief Inspector Wilson walked in. He saw their faces and their clenched fists. ‘Everything alright?’

‘Yes sir,’ Rayburn said, his whole tone changing. ‘We just picked up a couple of suspects. They look good for it.’

‘Good work.’

Rayburn took the SD card out of Bishop’s hand. ‘I’ll take a look at it. I’ve been giving you a bit of slack, you’ve had a rough couple of months, but I want you to go home, get some rest and think about becoming a team player.’ He turned to Wilson. ‘I want him out of here. At least for a few hours.’

When they were gone, Wilson said, ‘They want to see you on the eleventh floor.’

‘Who?’

‘The commissioner.’

Bishop waited outside Commissioner Mackler’s office and watched silent back-to-back coverage of the robbery on the television in the corner of the room.

The door to Mackler’s office opened and Wilson poked his head out. ‘Come on in.’

Bishop scanned the room and saw Mackler standing behind her empty desk with her knuckles on the glass top and her cool eyes on him. Coming up a woman in the Victorian Police Department wasn’t easy. Rising to commissioner by forty required her to be more politician than cop. Most of the street guys didn't trust her and she didn't care.

She had the youngest senior staff in the history of the VPD and earned the nickname The Brat Pack by the cops who had made a career out of policing. They were young and hip, their minds filled with university degrees and their hearts with ambition.

They filled out the room checking the latest news updates on iPads and phones while Bishop stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

‘What have you got?’ Mackler asked.

‘Huh?’

‘On Justice? What have you been doing?’

‘I’ve just spent the past hour waiting to see you,’ Bishop said.

Mackler’s eyebrow rose. She stared Bishop out. He wouldn’t budge.

‘Look,’ Wilson said. ‘Everybody’s blood is high. What we need to do is work out where we go from here.’

Mackler sat, swung her feet onto the desk. The room relaxed. ‘Well,’ she said with her palms raised toward the roof. ‘Where are we at?’

‘The human intel we received yesterday from Roach Blacker checked out,’ Bishop said. ‘There’s a network of corrupt cops in this department. Their leader goes by the name, Justice.’

‘Like Oak Park?’

Bishop nodded. ‘There’s a strong possibility that they’re behind this robbery as well.’

‘A robbery you knew about?’ one of Mackler’s staffers said without looking up from their phone.

‘A robbery we all knew about,’ Bishop said.

Mackler swung her feet off the desk. ‘But which you failed to stop.’

Bishop threw a glance at Wilson. He shook his head slightly.

‘You need to let Rayburn in on this. He’s down there right now force-feeding a confession into a couple of nobodies.’

‘For now,’ Mackler said, ‘we need to play our cards close to our chest. I don’t want to run the risk of letting Justice slip through our fingers.’

‘Then, I’m going to need more manpower,’ Bishop said.

‘I agree.’

Bishop relaxed his shoulders and smiled. ‘Good.’

‘So, you’re being reassigned to traffic and operations,’ Mackler said. ‘I’m putting Simons and Behan on Justice.’

‘Who are they?’

She motioned to the two young kids on her senior staff in tailored suits and manicured hair.

‘They look like a couple of accountants.’

‘They’re extremely well educated.’

‘Their mothers must be very proud.’

Mackler stood up and was about to unleash hell when Wilson interjected with, ‘I think what Commissioner Mackler is trying to say is that we’re widening the scope of the investigation.’

Bishop took a breath and let the air out of his nostrils. ‘This is bullshit,’ he said.

Commissioner Mackler sat back in her chair. ‘You’re dismissed.’ She turned the television on; the continuing news story now had her attention.

Bishop looked at everybody like they were crazy and left. He pressed the button to the elevator in the hall as Wilson caught up.

‘Hell, I’m sorry, kid. She thinks education is more important than balls.’

He pressed the button to the elevator a couple of more times but it didn’t speed it up. ‘I was there, Wilson. Just around the corner. I could have stopped it.’

Wilson put his big hand around Bishop’s neck, just like he used to when he was a kid. ‘More than likely, I think you would have been another body bag lining the street.’

The office was half empty. Not a badge of rank in sight. Down the hall, Bishop heard a ruckus and headed in that direction. The observation room was a shitbox with no windows, no air, a couch and a tiny black-and-white television connected to the interview room. It was rarely used, except by the odd badge who wanted to sleep off a shift. Today it was packed. Detectives huddled around the screen, watching Rayburn interrogate one of the stooges. Bishop stopped in the doorframe and watched.

The grainy image was poor, but clear enough to expose Rayburn’s people skills. He leant over the table and shoved a finger in the stooge’s face.

‘Who else was in your crew?’

‘Lawyer.’

‘Was the plan all along to kill the guards?’

‘Lawyer.’

‘What about your cut? Do you think they’ll keep it in a savings account for you while you’re inside? Come on: give me a name.’

‘Mo Everingham.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘My lawyer.’

The room and the bullshit were too much. Bishop had to get out. The air wasn’t so fresh out in the hall either, but it was better than the smell of body odour, cheap aftershave and confusion.

He was halfway down the hall when Ellison called his name. By the time he turned, she was almost in his lap.

‘So who do you like for this?’ She was being the cocky cop she had seen on television growing up.

Bishop wasn’t in the mood and headed in the other direction. She trailed behind, but in heels it was hard to keep up. ‘I know you’re working an angle. I want in.’

‘Work the assignment you’re given, Ellison.’

‘Witness reports? What fucking witnesses? They’re all dead.’

‘Looks like you’ve got an easy couple of days ahead.’

‘Let me bring it in with you.’ She motioned back to the observation room. ‘Those guys don’t take me seriously. Not until I do something big.’

He took in her lean body that could have gotten her on the front page of any third-rate men’s magazine. ‘This isn’t SC. You want to be taken seriously? Put some clothes on.’

She looked away self-consciously. Bishop felt bad. ‘Look, you just need to be patient. Wait it out. And the clothes thing: just forget I said it.’

The guilt followed him back to his desk and was pushed out of his mind when the uniform he’d asked to run the plate stepped to him with a handful of stapled pages. ‘The information you requested, detective.’

Bishop thumbed through the first couple of pages: driving record, rap sheet and address for the owner of the piece-of-shit Ford from the SD footage.