Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage (3 page)

Junkie. Rapist. Murderer. Roach was all these things and probably more, but that didn’t make him a liar. Bishop parked in the police bay and climbed out. The St Albans watch-house loomed over the street. Anybody pinched was initially kept at the station, but when the detectives were finished listening to their confessions and lies, they were transported to the watch-house for a short stay, then either released on bail or taken to a long-term holding facility out of the city. Bishop stepped through the double doors and into the quiet of the lobby. It was nothing special: four dirty walls, a couple of plastic chairs and a glass window for checking in and out. Bishop tapped his badge on the glass that somebody had tried scraping their name into.

The cell officer, Bean, waiting out retirement, looked up from the footy section of the
Herald Sun
. ‘Dropping off or picking up?’

Bishop put his badge away. ‘Neither. I logged an arrest earlier; I need to see him again.’

Bean rose to his feet, stretched out his back. It cracked all the way up to the top. He laid the paperwork on a clipboard and picked up a pen. ‘Name?’

‘Mine or his?’

Not impressed. ‘His.’

‘Leroy “Roach” Blacker.’

‘What's wrong with the names they’re given?’ Bean slid the clipboard under the glass. ‘Sign. Badge number and weapon.’

Bishop filled out the form, unclipped his sidearm and slid both under the glass. Bean buzzed the door and Bishop stepped into the man-made purgatory. It was after dinner but before lights out. The prisoners were relatively content, as content as prisoners were ever going to be anyway. The halls were calm and quiet.

‘Mate. Hey, mate.’ A prisoner leant through the bars of his cell. His hair was long, grey and thinning. He whispered, ‘Can you spare a smoke?’

Bishop pulled out his pack and gave the old-timer a smoke and a light.

‘Thanks, mate. Thanks.’

Bishop nodded and moved on. His footsteps echoed on the thick concrete. Somewhere in another part of the facility a radio played. His footsteps and the muffled music was all that could be heard until the peace was broken by a whooping alarm. Red lights flashed all the way down the corridor. Farther up, cops in riot gear rushed out of a door and disappeared around a corner.

Bishop picked up the pace.

Beating sounds up ahead.

His steps turned into a jog, then into a run.

He took the corner. Stopped.

A frantic mess. Three guards were battling a wall of inmates. On the floor, an inmate convulsed as blood pumped out and painted the floor a brown shade of red. Two other guards worked to keep him alive, but it was just for appearances.

The body stopped moving.

What was left of him was a mess, his face swollen and blue, an ear to ear smile across his throat.

It was Leroy ‘Roach’ Blacker.

Bishop turned, headed back the way he'd come past the ambos whose only purpose now was to fill out paperwork.

He clocked his watch: 12:07 AM.

Less than six hours left.

Roach had said Beanzie hung out on Brunswick Street. It was an area riddled with kitsch storefronts, tattoo parlours, restaurants and, between and above those, every small space was jam-packed with bars and clubs. So to say Beanzie hung out on Brunswick Street, was about as useful as saying Beanzie’s favourite colour was orange. Bishop ran the usual checks. The computer came back with 315 Beanzies and none of them with a weapons charge in their file.

He brought the car to a stop across from Monroe Guns ’n’ Ammo. The four-lane street was busy. Cars shot past and he had to stop three times before he made it to the other side. There was a firing range at the rear of the shop, and shots could be heard from the street in muffled thumps and cracks.

The bell above the door announced Bishop’s arrival. The woman behind the counter, who had tattoos for sleeves and an arsehole for a face, briefly looked up before refocusing her attention on the weapon she was cleaning.

‘Jackknife around?’

Her eyes avoided him. She called out, ‘Jack. Some pig out here wants to see you.’

Movement came from the small room behind the counter, and a moment later Jackknife filled the space in the wall where a door would usually go. His gut hung out over his tracksuit pants and his T-shirt wasn’t big enough to cover it.

‘New diet?’ Bishop asked.

‘Fuck off,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve been trying.’ He thumbed toward the shooting range and Bishop followed him through.

The smell of stale gunpowder hung in the air and the walls looked like they were imported from Baghdad. Somebody farther down popped off a few rounds as Jackknife came to a stop. Four years ago, Bishop sent him away for receiving stolen ammunition from the VPD’s armoury. What he left out was that his thirteen-year-old son Wyatt was in on the act as well. Jackknife took the fall and his son walked.

‘I’m looking for a runner. Calls himself Beanzie.’

Jackknife’s eyes avoided Bishop’s. If he’d been connected to a lie detector, he probably wouldn’t be feeling too comfortable. ‘Nah, don’t know him,’ he mumbled.

After twenty years of listening to lies, Bishop had a pretty keen bullshit detector. ‘Yeah, you do,’ he said.

They locked eyes. Jackknife’s face wasn’t the lying kind and he knew it. ‘Fuck.’

‘Jesus Christ. You lie to your wife like that?’

‘Yeah, I know Beanzie. So what?’

‘You know where he lives, hangs out, anything like that?’

Jackknife stared at him for a couple of moments. ‘This make us square?’

Bishop smiled. ‘Could do.’

Jackknife scribbled something on the back of an empty ammo box and handed it to Bishop: an address. He slipped it into his pocket. ‘How’s Wyatt?’

‘Doin’ three to five for burg.’

Bishop lit a cigarette. ‘Things are rough all round.’

Beanzie didn’t do much to conceal his lifestyle, income or identity. The address Jackknife had given Bishop was for a flashy apartment in an equally flashy neighbourhood, and the forty-thousand-dollar Nissan Skyline parked out front had the personalised licence plate, ‘BEANZ’. It wasn’t the most inconspicuous vehicle, but then Bishop was getting the impression that Beanzie wasn’t the smartest of crims. The building was old-school art deco with red leather chairs in the lobby, and somewhere someone was burning incense. Bishop headed up to the second floor and found Beanzie’s apartment about a third of the way down. Newspapers were piled up outside the door.

Four papers: four days gone.

Bishop knocked. No answer.

It took him a couple of minutes to pick the lock, and when he did he drew his weapon and stepped inside.

Quiet. Cold.

The hall was lined with framed autographed photos of soccer players Bishop didn’t recognise, and the lounge looked like something out of a magazine. Leather couches, red drapes, oak floors and designer clothes of whatever was in fashion that week sat in various piles around the place. The apartment was every young gangster’s dream. It’s what they saw in music videos and on the television. What they didn’t see was that it all comes to an end, and judging by the horrific stench burning Bishop’s nostrils, he suspected the end for Beanzie was fairly recent. He followed the smell of bad decisions into the bedroom and holstered his weapon.

Beanzie was facedown on the bed, a towel around his waist. Strangled.

Bishop took the keys to Beanzie’s Skyline and when he got to the car, he pulled the satellite navigation, scanned through the list of addresses and found one that matched Roach’s story.

‘At the next intersection, turn right.’

The edges of the city were torn and frayed. Every block Bishop passed, the property values decreased that little bit more.

‘At the next intersection, turn left.’

A stone’s throw from the city, moonlight bathed an industrial wasteland. The street lights were fewer and farther between, and ten minutes after that there was nothing but darkness.

Bishop saw the orange glow through the treetops in the distance. He grounded the pedal, took the corner, slid to a stop. Firemen ran toward a blaze twenty feet into the scrub: a one-room shack that wouldn’t have been much when it was built a hundred years ago, was now burning down to nothing.

Climbing out of his car, Bishop pushed though the crowd toward the rear of the fire engine. Water pounded the shack; the force alone tore away planks of wood, the beams creaked and the whole thing was ready to collapse.

‘Hey,’ a fireman on top of the engine yelled. ‘Get back!’

Bishop showed his badge and was let past the line.

Any evidence that had had the long shot of being inside was burning. Bishop stepped forward, got an angle. Through the burning door that swung back and forth, he saw something.

On the wall: maps. Plans. Schematics. Everything Roach had talked about. It was only a matter of moments before the whole thing would be nothing but ash.

Bishop took a breath and stepped forward. A gust of black smoke hit him in the face. He took another step.

A fireman called out, too late.

Bishop ran into hell.

Smoke filled the shack, stinging his throat and eyes. He shielded his face and forced himself forward. Coughing and choking, he stumbled through another step and fell against the wall. A blast of heat hit him in the face. He dragged off a handful of papers and staggered backwards. There was black smoke in every direction. Bishop couldn’t see through it. He squeezed his eyes shut. Coughed. Fell to his knees and crawled. He heard the wooden roof crack and felt the heat of a beam fall past his face and hit the floor. He reached for what he thought was the open door but felt nothing but wall. He drew in a lungful of smoke and felt his lungs catch fire. The exit was lost to him.

Then he felt hands under his armpits; a couple of firemen dragged him across the ash, and cold air rushed over his face, clean air filling his lungs.

They dumped him on the ground. One got in Bishop’s face. ‘What are you doing, you fuckin’ dickhead?’

Bishop managed to drag out a few words to show he was alive and they left to put out the fire.

The night air soothed the burning in his lungs, and when he felt better he lit a cigarette, relaxed. The fire was under control by the time he pulled himself up to his feet, but it was still a show and the crowd was only just beginning to thin. Most of the papers he’d grabbed were blackened by the smoke, but a couple were still legible. He laid each on the bonnet and tried to make sense of them.

A road map.

A blueprint.

He hit the map first. It was a city map, the kind you’d pick up in any roadside station. Nothing special. Most of it was burnt away, but a highlighted route could be made out. It picked up on City Road, ran down two klicks, hung a left on Moray Street and ran off what was left of the page.

The blueprint was just as burnt but a little more interesting: fragments of a complex, but only half the picture. It was dated ten years ago and Bishop could make out the last three letters of the OWN. It was the type of information that would make sense after the job was pulled, but hard to make sense of now.

He clocked his watch: 3:46 AM. Two hours and change. The blaze was all but out, and Bishop gathered up the papers, thinking it best to leave before the firemen remembered him and collected a badge number for their report. He opened his car door, tossed the papers inside and was about to follow them when he heard one of the crowd mutter something.

Bishop turned. ‘What did you say?’

He was an older man, dressed in a gown and slippers. A woman who was probably his wife stood beside him. Country people. Weathered faces. The man looked at what was left of the shack and then back to Bishop. ‘I said I hope he wasn’t in there when that went down.’

‘Who?’

‘Well, I never met him …’

‘But you saw him?’

He nodded. ‘Here and there.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Average looking. Maybe thirty? Worked at Armaguard Security.’ The last part seemed almost an afterthought. ‘My brother used to work there, so I’d know.’

Armaguard Security had contracts all over the city: banks, insurance, private, ATMs. It was all handled by Armaguard Security.

Bishop reached for the blueprint. His mind raced through all the combinations of places worth robbing that ended in the letters OWN. Then it came to him.

Crown Casino.

The anger of the engine and the smell of burnt rubber pushed their way up through the floor and flooded the cab. Bugs hit the windscreen like machine gun fire as trees whipped past in the silhouetted night.

He pulled his phone, dialled blind and listened for the faint ring. Ellison answered, on shift, half asleep. He told her to put him through to security at Crown Casino. A few moments later, Bishop was talking to the guy in charge. His name was Rodney Doolan.

‘This is Detective Bishop. I’ve got a strong lead an armoured truck pick-up you’ve got scheduled is going to be hit.’

‘Eh, man, relax. This is a casino. The 5:30’s safe. We’re equipped for that type of thing. My boys are tooled and trained.’

‘I’m sure they are, but you need to put on extra guys and stop the 5:30 until it can get an escort.’

‘You telling me what I need to do? Huh? Who the fuck are you?’

‘Mr Doolan, it’s a precaution. Put some extra—’

Doolan hung up.

Bishop called Ellison and she tried again, but Doolan wasn’t answering. He buried the pedal into the floor, the engine roared. The fleet barely hung onto the road. Out of the corner of his eye, Bishop saw the needle pass 120 km/h. The trees turned into traffic lights and buildings. The sky broke blue in shades that brightened like a slow-burning fuse toward 6 AM.

The roads were dead. Three blocks out from the casino, his phone rang.

Ellison. She had found out the pick-up point for Crown. Loading bay 9.

Bishop swung the fleet around a corner and aimed toward the complex. The bottom of the car scraped a speed hump as he floored it into the underground car park. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, he scanned each of the loading bay doors as they blurred past them. Each was numbered in yellow paint. He pulled a right and came to a sliding stop outside bay 9.

The clock on the dash read 5:33 AM.

Bishop climbed out of his car. Three heavyset guys in cheap suits and fake tans were dragging down the roller door.

‘Hey,’ he called.

They straightened and grew a foot in the process. ‘Hey yourself,’ one of them grunted.

Bishop showed his badge; their attitude changed.

‘How long until the 5.30 pick-up?’

‘You just missed it.’

‘What?’

‘Came early.’

The roller door yanked up from the inside and a man with short legs and an even shorter body stepped out. ‘What the fuck is going on out here? Lock it up, lock it up.’

‘Are you Rodney Doolan?’ Bishop asked, his phone already in his hand.

‘Yeah, so what?’

‘How long ago did the Armaguard pick-up leave?’

He was about to mouth off when he saw the badge on Bishop’s belt. His mind worked overtime until he realised who he was. ‘Told you the pick-up would go off without a hitch.’

Bishop punched in the number and held it to his ear while he measured Doolan up. ‘It was never getting hit here. It’ll be taken on the road.’

Doolan looked like he had just shit a brick.

‘How long?’ Bishop demanded.

‘Three, four minutes.’

‘How much was it carrying?’

‘Fifteen million, maybe more.’

Ellison answered. ‘Bishop?’

‘The truck has already left. Alert all patrols in the area, and I need to talk to a dispatcher at Armaguard Security.’

A few moments later, a woman with a brash voice came on the line. ‘What can I do you for, detective?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Daphne.’

‘Daphne, we’ve got good reason to believe one of your armoured trucks is going to be hit this morning. I need you to patch me through to the driver of the truck that just left Crown Casino.’

‘Yes sir.’ He heard the click as she put him on hold.

Bishop headed back to his car, pulled his shotgun from the boot and loaded it. Doolan watched him from the loading dock, a fool’s look across his face and a lump in his throat.

The line clicked again. ‘Detective? I can’t raise him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s not answering the radio.’

‘Is there GPS on that truck?

‘Um, ah, yes’

‘Find it.’

Bishop heard her attack the keyboard, and when she was finished she said, ‘It’s moving.’

Bishop climbed into the car. ‘Where?’

‘Heading down City Road. Just turned left on Moray Street.’

He turned the key. Floored the pedal and let the door close itself as he took off and skidded out of the car park. Sunlight blasted the streets. Swerving around a garbage truck on the wrong side of the road, he pulled in front of it and sped forward.

‘Daphne, I’m going to need you to give me real-time updates, can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is it at now?’

‘Still on Moray Street, heading north.’

‘How far up?’

‘Just past Park Street.’

Ten blocks ahead of him.

He accelerated toward the intersection. Green light. Tapped the brakes. Traffic backed up. He yanked the wheel and bounced the car up on to the gutter and made it through the intersection.

‘Just turned left on Albert Road.’

Bishop sped up. Pulled a hard right on to Albert Road. It was two lanes each way, traffic was light but slow. Bishop bobbed and weaved through the early morning commuters. A horn blasted, but by the time he clocked it in his rear-view, the car was a speck behind him.

Daphne was panicking. ‘He’s taking a left on St Kilda Road.’

Four blocks later, Bishop pulled a hard left.

‘Are they still on St Kilda Road, Daphne?’

‘Yes, sir. Just crossed over Commercial Road.’

Bishop could see it up in the shaky distance. The armoured truck was little more than a dot on the horizon, so far away that his eyes would lose it for a split second in the glare of the sun, only for it to reappear a moment later. Then it disappeared altogether. Bishop clamped his eyes shut, opened them: nothing.

The intersection came up fast.

The light green.

One foot on the accelerator, the other on the brake. A yank of the wheel.

Too fast: the vehicle’s arse kicked out and dragged against a row of parked cars. Bishop eased off, got control and floored it.

Up in front: the armoured truck, closer now. No other vehicles between them. He closed the gap. Only a few hundred feet. The truck cleared an intersection. Bishop sailed in behind it and through a red light.

The sun was in his eyes. He barely registered the gleaming windscreen of the Ford as it ploughed into his passenger-side door.

Bishop tasted blood.

The sun went black.

A sharp pain pushed through the side of Bishop’s head. It had taken out a window in the crash. People ran  forward to assist. A bus driver had pulled over and was directing traffic around the scene. Within seconds, everything came back.

The truck.

The robbery.

Six AM.

His vision blurred, Bishop fumbled for his phone. Found it on the floor. Cut himself on a piece of broken glass as he raised it to his ear. Daphne was screaming.

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s stopped. It’s stopped.’

He pulled himself out of the wreck and yelled into the phone: ‘Where?’ His legs were shaky, but a couple of good Samaritans kept him on his feet.

‘Moubray and St Kilda Road.’

It was two blocks away. Bishop staggered off.

A woman called after him: ‘Sir? What are you doing? Sit down.’

He pointed to the Ford with its crushed front end and water spraying out of the radiator. ‘Go see to them.’ Movement inside: the driver, alive.

He dragged himself forward. His boot scuffed the asphalt. With each step, he could feel his coordination returning and he broke into a jog. As he neared the end of the block, Bishop heard a crack and the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons. A blast echoed off the surrounding buildings.

He pulled his weapon. Took the corner.

Smoke hung in the air.

It was all over.