Chopper Unchopped (102 page)

‘Okay, Okay’ said Roy. ‘Call Paul Hawkins. Let’s find out who pinched him and what’s going on. Don’t panic. I’m having a shower and getting dressed. Mickey, you and Raychell come with me. As soon as I’m ready, we’ll go see some people. Get dressed.’

‘Okay, Roy’ said Mickey obediently.

Raychell was in tears. ‘They won’t kill little Byron, will they, Uncle Roy?’

‘No baby, don’t worry. They won’t kill Lord Byron. I’ll see to that.’

He kissed the big blonde on the cheek. ‘Now get dressed pet. It will be all right, I promise.’

Raychell went back into the bedroom like a little girl, crying but happy that daddy had said everything would be okay.

Then Roy whispered to Mickey: ‘If Lord Byron spills his guts, we are all gone. The cops won’t kill him, but we might have to.’

Mickey winked. He loved Lord Byron but he wasn’t doing a life sentence because of him. Or anyone else. That was for sure.

‘WHERE is it that it is that I am going?’ asked Lord Byron for perhaps the 30th time in five minutes.

‘Shit!’ yelled Detective Chief Inspector Rod Kelly. ‘Does he always talk like that? He sounds like a cartoon my kids watch on TV.’

Lord Byron continued his mental act. ‘What is that it is that you is doing?’ He sounded like a talking robot scripted by Walt Disney.

Rocket Rod Kelly tried the direct approach. ‘Shut your face!’ he bellowed.

It was no use. ‘That’s what I think anyway,’ replied Byron, unblinking. ‘Ha ha ha’.

‘Christ Almighty’ muttered Detective Sergeant Harry ‘Golden’ Ruler to nobody in particular. ‘What the hell are we supposed to be doing with this imbecile?’

The third cop in the car was Detective Sergeant ‘Long John’ Silver. He too was talking to himself. He drove along repeating the same sentence: ‘They will hang us for this Rod, I’m telling ya. They will hang us for this.’

Fact was, Rocket Rod had a problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had kidnapped Byron Brown. This was apt to be regarded as extremely illegal, even for cops used to bending the law a little in their zealous defence of society and the greater good. Sure, it was just a little tactical mind game to rattle Raychell Van Gogh and thus unnerve Mickey the Nut and Ripper Roy. But would a judge see it like that, let alone the chief commissioner after the premier kicked his arse? They all knew the answer to that one.

‘He’s carrying a handgun, isn’t he?’ asked Kelly hopefully. It was the Irish in him. He had plenty of dash, but didn’t always think things through, a bit like his namesake Ned, who pulled the wrong rein a few times, and got his neck stretched for it. If Rod didn’t think of something fast, hanging would not be out of the question for him, either.

It was Ruler, the realist, who answered the handgun question. ‘No, he isn’t,’ he said.

Silver laughed his lunatic laugh – then pulled a .22 calibre pistol out from under his seat. ‘He is now,’ he said.

‘Perfect’ said Kelly. ‘Byron Brown, I arrest you for carrying a concealed firearm.’

All of a sudden Lord Byron forgot his cartoon script. He looked at Kelly with a cold stare and shut his mouth as tight as a rabbit trap.

Kelly chuckled. There was nothing like a good throwaway to keep a cowboy cop amused.

They all laughed, bar Byron. But Silver wiped the grin off his face a few minutes later when Rocket Rod changed his mind about booking Lord Byron, instead deciding to keep him handcuffed and gagged … in Silver’s tool shed.

‘It will only be for 48 hours,’ said Kelly breezily.

‘They’ll bloody well hang us all,’ pleaded Silver, almost mechanically.

‘Oh yeah, who’s going to believe that little retard?’ chipped in Ruler, a bit cocky because the abducted prisoner was going to Silver’s shed and not his. It was one advantage of living an hour out of town.

‘Yes, you have a point. I mean, I don’t believe it myself. So who else ever would? Ha ha.’

‘Exactly,’ said Kelly. ‘We will let him go in 48 hours. If I’m any judge, that crew of fruitcakes will crack up before then.’

Silver wearily waved Kelly and Ruler goodbye and went inside to face the ticklish problem of explaining to his wife why she should stay out of the toolshed for a few days. God, the things I do in the name of law and order, he thought, as he carefully removed a shovel, a spade and an old blunt axe from the shed, just in case Byron somehow got out of the cuffs. No use giving a crook an even break, he thought. He’d heard about a bloke who’d killed a gunman with a garden spade while he was being forced to dig his own grave. Or maybe he’d read it somewhere? Great yarn. But he didn’t want to be the one to see if poor, silly Byron Brown could pull off the same stunt.

THE mail was that Tuppence Murray was being kept upstairs in a particular small corner pub in Footscray. Paul Hawkins the bent cop told Rocky Bob Mulheron and Rocky Bob rang Irish Arthur, then Arthur told Ripper Roy the news. At first Roy couldn’t believe it. Then, after he thought about it a while, he could.

‘The shifty bastards are hiding Murray out at his favourite pub,’ he said. ‘I mean, they may as well be hiding him in his own home. A bit of the old reverse psychology,’ he laughed, shaking his head. He had to admit no-one ever thought to look so close to home – in its own way, it was a smart move. Murray’s own crew drank downstairs in the main bar, all armed to the teeth. And the protective security office boys had Tuppence upstairs. They had him protected coming and going. Very smart indeed.

No-one knew where Lord Byron was. There was no record of his ever being arrested. But Roy Reeves was too old a hand to fall for that one. ‘They have him all right,’ he growled. ‘I remember once in the late 1960s they kidnapped Pat Player for three days and kept him locked in the boot of a wrecked 1939 Packard in the back of Bluey Slim’s scrapyard. They solved the Prahran Market murders as a result. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve seen this trick before. They are counting on us to crack, but it’s Byron who’ll crack. We gotta get them stiffs out of Tex Lawson’s backyard tonight.’

Irish Arthur and Terry Maloney were despatched at once to Hodgkinson Street, Clifton Hill.

After 24 hours in Detective Sergeant Silver’s toolshed, Byron Brown was indeed cracking up. For a start, Byron was a Collingwood boy.

He’d hardly been over the Yarra, let alone way out in the suburbs, where the trams don’t run and everything’s quiet at night, except a few mating possums. He couldn’t take the silence.

Then there was the Moreton Bay bugs: Byron had copped more amphetamines in the past year than a slow Perth racehorse tipped by Laurie Connell. The result was that he’d gone totally schizophrenic, and he was telling Silver that if he let him go he would spill his guts about a mass killer – a sex murderer named Tex Lawson who screwed his victims up the bum with shotguns, then pulled the trigger and buried the bodies in his backyard.

It sounded a far-fetched yarn, but the wily Silver rang Rod Kelly anyway. He knew the value of protecting your arse, and he didn’t mean because of the risk of getting a shotgun barrel stuck up it. If he told Kelly, then Kelly could make the decision whether Byron’s ‘confessions’ were the ravings of a lunatic or valuable information.

‘Hey Rocket,’ he said. ‘Get over to my place. The imbecile’s talking its head off.’

THE Tactical Arrest Unit raided Tex Lawson’s place the following day. They found nothing except some very big holes in the backyard. And surprise, surprise … old Tex had nothing to say.

‘Ya can’t arrest a man for diggin’ bloody holes’ Tex said indignantly. ‘Now piss off.’ It would almost have been funny if they hadn’t been sealing Lord Byron’s death warrant.

Two hours after the police raid, Byron turned up in Collingwood, his poor scrambled brain never thinking for a moment that Mickey, Raychell and old Roy would be cross with him. Poor Byron never could get it right, even when he tried.

Mickey, Raychell, Roy and the crew were holed up in the penthouse apartment above Johnny Go-Go’s nightclub for a change of scenery.

‘I never told ’em nothing,’ Lord Byron chattered nervously. ‘Fair dinkum, Raych. I never told ’em nothing.’

Little Byron was directing all his pleas for mercy to his big sister. She had protected him all his life, and he was calling for her help yet again. But the Raychell of old was no more. The speed had turned her into a mental case, her mind overtaken by schizophrenia.

Ripper Roy called the big blonde girl to one side and said: ‘Listen, I love you. You’re my only baby daughter, and I know you love little Byron, but he’s broken the rules. He’s been putting holes in his manners. You never give no-one up, but if you must you only give up your enemies, and even then you don’t never let no-one ever find out. But you never ever, ever give up your friends. I’m sorry, princess. You know what has to be done.’

‘I know,’ whispered Raychell. ‘Let me do it. He’s my baby brother. Let me do it my own way. You and the boys go downstairs and leave me and Byron alone. I’ll be down later.’

‘Okay, princess,’ said Roy.

He gave her a little kiss and a cuddle, then jerked his head to Mickey and the rest of the crew and they all went downstairs.

Raychell started talking to Lord Byron, telling him the biggest white lie of her life. ‘You’ll have to go up to Hanlon Street to stay with mum and Auntie Kay and Granny Reeves. You’ll like Surfers Paradise, but you won’t be able to come back for a while.’

Even a dog can sense when it’s going to be put down, but Byron trusted his sister, and believed everything would be all right. ‘Is that what Roy was talking to you about, Raych?’ he asked hopefully. Raychell felt sick.

‘Yeah baby,’ she whispered. ‘You gotta go away.’

He smiled and gave her a big hug and said, ‘I’m glad you’re not mad at me, sis.’

She gave him a hug and took him into the bedroom. She laid Little Byron on his back on the bed and sat beside him, then she patted his head and cuddled him. It wasn’t often she touched a man without taking her clothes off first. She rocked back and forth, crooning to Byron the way she had when he was a little tacker. She was saying goodbye to baby brother the only way she knew how.

Byron whimpered with pleasure. In his own strange way, he loved his big sister more than anything else, and she knew it. She began to cry. He looked at her the tears streaming down her face and said, in the same old cartoon way, ‘Why is it that it is that you is crying, my Raychell?’

That was when she took Mickey’s .38 pistol from under the pillow and pulled the trigger. ‘Goodbye, baby,’ she sobbed, turning her face from what was left of Byron’s head.

She was a junkie, a whore and a killer on the road to hell. But by pulling the trigger herself she had saved her little brother from the terror of knowing he had to die. What else could she do?

The only thing left for Raychell was to think about killing Tuppence Murray. In her speed-ravaged brain she put her brother’s death at his feet. Tuppence Murray was the real murderer. Hers had been an act of love.

WHEN Rocket Rod Kelly found Byron’s body in his front yard, he knew the gloves were off. It was open war.

Police raids on Johnny Go-Go’s and the penthouse came up empty. Easey Street was empty. The old addresses at the commission flats all turned up empty. It was as if the Collingwood crew had vanished. Raids on Chicka Charlie’s place, Rocky Bob’s and Jimmy Jigsaw’s drew blanks. Charlie swore he had heard or seen nothing of them for some time. Not altogether surprisingly, Rocky Bob and Jimmy Jigsaw and old Tex Lawson had the same story.

However, there was one place and one person the police had overlooked. Fatty’s little sister, Karen Phillips, had acted on Roy Reeves’s orders a month before, and rented a three bedroom house in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. Roy had never planned to use it as a hideout. The house had a nice backyard, and he had planned to use this as a graveyard, but things had changed and suddenly it turned out to be a great hideout.

Karen was 16 years old now, but looked about 19 or 20. The shaved skinhead haircut was gone and the punk rocker neo-Nazi girl was now looking very sweet and cute indeed. She was still as skinny as a rake, but with two things going for her: a cupid-shaped face and a magic-looking arse. She wasn’t the dirty girl bombshell Raychell was, but she was developing into a raunchy-looking wench who caused a lot of second glances around Collingwood.

‘The little Rabbit Kisser did all right renting this place,’ said Raychell after they’d moved into the Gertrude Street house late one night. ‘Are you screwing her, Roy?’

‘I am not, princess,’ said Roy. ‘I spent half them 10 years in jail screwing you once a month, and you’re the only woman I’ve touched since I’ve been out.’

Raychell gave Ripper Roy a cuddle when he said that. Just what she wanted to hear. She could do the business with all the men in the world – it didn’t make any difference to her – but Uncle Roy was very special to her. A poisonous rage welled up inside her at the thought of him having any woman other than her. She knew Mickey played up on her, and it was too late to be jealous where he was concerned.

She loved Mickey, but he had whored her since she was 12. As a kid, he’d sold her for anything that he wanted. He once sold her to three boys for a stolen pushbike. If anyone wanted to sell a hot shotgun or handgun Mickey would show up with no money but with Raychell in tow.

When teenage boys are selling hot goodies they will take hot pussy over cold cash any time, and Mickey had been using Raychell as his own personal gold Aussie Express credit card for half his life. She didn’t mind. She was a whore, and her arse was a cash register. She loved Mickey – but she wanted Uncle Roy all to herself. She was one twisted sister. To her, the old killer was the only family she had. Byron was dead, Mickey mad, and her poor old mother too far away.

MICKEY was having a heated conversation with Chicka Charlie over the phone.

‘C’mon Chicka, we need you in on this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlie. ‘But I’m staying out of it. The jacks want you for the murder of Lord Byron and they want to talk to ya over the disappearance of Ben Epstein … not to mention the pair of heads on Tuppence Murray’s doorstep. Things are getting out of control. Ya want to leave that bloody speed alone. You’re all going crazy. I’m out of it,’ he said. Then hung up.