BRUNO SCANS THE FRONT bar, sorting Criminal Investigation Branch detectives from the lunchtime tradies and bar flies. There’s not much in it. He does the rounds, asking questions about the photos and the mysterious house depicted. No one has any answers. A Homicide bloke asks Bruno why he’s breaking up the session with this bullshit, and Bruno tells him the truth, ‘Because no one is back at the station.’ Giving up, Bruno orders a schooner from the tab and settles in.
An hour later, his old partner Detective Lana Cohen rolls through with her new workmates, the Robbery Squad. The Robbers, as they’re known, have a full plate at the moment. A local crew is knocking over Gold Coast banks at a rate of one a week and the last two robberies involved fatalities. Now the state media have latched onto it and the pressure has dialled up. Lana slips away from her lot and sidles up to Bruno by the bar. She gives him the once-over. ‘You’re looking more and more like one of the boys, Bruno.’
‘If you can’t beat ’em.’ He drains his glass and motions to the barman for two more.
Lana winks at a passing constable. ‘Fancy a smoke?’
‘I’m trying to quit,’ says Bruno.
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘I guess I haven’t quit yet, so there’s no harm in it.’
They take their beers and cigarettes to a table outside and spark up in the sun. September is hot already, but there’s the whisper of a breeze coming in off the ocean.
‘How’s the big time treating you?’ says Bruno, tapping his smoke into a stray glass.
‘It’s going,’ says Lana. ‘They have me following up leads with the bank staff. Rank and file work. Pete Reynolds doesn’t give a shit, though. Half the time he’s off doing Christ knows what.’
Lana is partnered with Reynolds. It’s a punishment posting. Reynolds is an old enemy: a bent copper who used to run the Gold Coast CIB with Ron Bingham and Mark Evans, back in the Strike Force Diablo days. Diablo was a serial homicide case that went pear-shaped a couple of years back. Lana came across the border on secondment for it, and Bruno was the guy helping her get acquainted.
‘I thought you’d be old mates with Reynolds by now,’ says Bruno.
‘Piss off.’
‘Well, let me tell you, things are hotting up in Missing Persons.’ He hands a few of the photographs over. Only the images of the house. ‘Someone popped these under my windscreen wiper yesterday.’
Lana looks through them. ‘Creepy. Whose house is this?’
‘Well—’
‘There’s a licence plate in this one.’
‘There are actually two different plates visible. I ran both. The first one, that yellow Cortina, belongs to a family in Beenleigh, so that’s a bust.’
‘This doesn’t look like Beenleigh,’ says Lana, tapping the image.
‘The second one gave me a house here in Southport. Pohlman Drive.’
Lana shrugs, doesn’t know it. ‘You run the deed?’
‘The house belongs to Phillip and Marion O’Grady.’
‘Should I know who they are?’
‘Phil O’Grady was a magistrate up in Brisbane. I’ve given evidence in front of him. He must have retired down here.’
‘What’s the deal? Are the photos a tip-off?’
‘I drove past the house a few times yesterday. No one’s home. But the lights were on last night. I don’t know what’s going on.’
Bruno’s mind flashes to the last photo in the deck, the one he’s not showing her.
A while back, as everything was going to hell.
Some strange autumn afternoon.
The loading dock of a shopping centre.
He swallows it down.
Lana hands back the photographs. ‘What did Bingham say?’
Inspector Ron Bingham is the boss.
‘He thought it was a bunch of nonsense but told me to look into it.’
Lana winces and shakes her head. This is their lot at the moment, and they brought it on themselves. At the end of Diablo, Lana and Bruno put Inspector Bingham offside. They went around him to get Lana posted on the Coast, and it wasn’t a clean deal at all. Lana had photos of Gold Coast coppers stepping into a brothel and she had Bruno trade them up the chain for a job. Bingham was the last to know and he wasn’t chuffed. But Bruno and Lana solved a few cases when they hit Homicide together the following year, and that kept the Inspector at bay, until Bruno’s father got sick.
He needed time off.
Then his father died and Bruno took a longer stretch.
Had to.
And Inspector Bingham was lying in wait the whole time. He took the gift of Bruno’s absence and started meting out the punishment.
Lana demoted to Robbers, a dead-end at the time.
Bruno found himself filed in Missing Persons.
The union stayed mum.
Everyone knew what was happening.
Lana holds up her glass. ‘For our sins,’ she says.
Bruno taps his glass against hers.
‘Amen.’