INSPECTOR RON BINGHAM LOOKS torn. He stands behind his desk, arms folded, gently rocking on his heels. Across the room, Bruno Karras and Pete Reynolds wait in silence.
‘This is good work, Pete,’ Bingham says. ‘You should have briefed me sooner, but …’
Reynolds shifts in his chair. ‘I kept my people in the loop.’
Bruno and Reynolds have spent the afternoon assembling a dossier on Seth Blackwell. Right now, the Robbery Squad is out on the street, knocking on doors and following leads. The case is breaking. An hour ago, two detectives—one of them Lana Cohen—located a known associate of Blackwell’s who claims Blackwell was running with a crew of local guys. No imports. But details beyond that are scarce.
Reynolds ashes his cigarette in the guest ashtray on Bingham’s desk. ‘We’ve also been running the paperwork back and forth. A maroon panel van was stolen off a street only a few blocks from Blackwell’s grandmother’s house, back in August. The van was later found in a local quarry. It was burned out. My lot is pretty sure it was used as a getaway vehicle for the third robbery, last month.’
‘Does Blackwell have any form for auto theft?’ says Bingham.
‘No. But it must be the only caper his family isn’t into. I got some of the girls to search for recent parolees and known crims with those skills. That’s in the mix, too. It might turn up someone we haven’t thought of.’
‘Good,’ says Bingham. ‘Okay, stay on it.’
That’s it.
There are no further congratulations coming.
Bruno feels a distant fury rising. They’re going to fuck him over on this. He can feel it. His contribution will be downplayed and diminished. No doubt.
It doesn’t matter.
‘You coming?’ says Reynolds.
Bruno, still deep in thought, lingers in his chair.
Ron Bingham stares at him with those rat fucker eyes.
They both wait for him.
‘Anything else, sir?’ says Bruno.
‘No. Nothing,’ says Bingham.
Bruno walks out without another word.
The two detectives eat pizza off the bonnet of their car at the back end of Burleigh Heads. It’s Reynolds’s regular spot, and it makes sense: they’re headed to a late-night briefing with the Robbery Squad down in Tugun.
Reynolds wipes oil on his pant leg. ‘Can I ask you a question? Why do you make it so hard on yourself?’
‘Practice, I guess.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘That’s a bit rich coming from you.’
‘I’m not talking about being chummy with everyone. You just don’t have to be so …’
‘What?’
‘You have to roll with the punches sometimes. Everyone does.’
‘Is that what you do, Pete?’
‘Yeah, look, you are in the bad books, but it’ll pass, if you fucking let it.’ Reynolds slings a half-eaten slice back into the box and slides off the car bonnet. He lights a smoke and takes a long drag; the ciggie pinched hard between his fingers. ‘I used to have this doctor once, when I was younger, and he was always on me about giving up these bloody things. Doctor Hussein. He’d tell me, You have to stop it with these cigarettes, Peter. You have to give them up. And he’d be telling me this with a pack of Winnie Reds sitting right there beside him. One day he’s really getting stuck into me and I say to him, What about you, mate? When are you giving up the durries, huh? And you know what he said?’
‘I don’t, actually.’ Bruno closes his eyes.
‘He said, I’m not telling you all this because I’m better than you. I’m telling you all this because I know how bad it can get.’
‘And yet here you are, still smoking.’
Reynolds nods, takes another drag. ‘Doctor Hussein died a few years back. Lung cancer.’
‘Right. So, what’s the point of this?’
‘You should listen to me. That’s the point of all my fucking stories.’
‘So I should kiss Bingham’s arse even though he’s hell-bent on fucking me over?’
‘Suicide’s a sin, you know.’
The fuck.
Bruno has to take a few steps away from him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Reynolds’s cigarette butt land in the dirt.
‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I wasn’t talking about your dad. I’m just … I dunno. You need to find a way to fit in. You don’t need to come across or take the money or be everyone’s best mate. But you can’t keep going on like this, or you’ll end up in real trouble. You keep walking around like you’re better than the rest of us and sooner or later someone is going to go out of their way to prove to you that you’re not.’
‘I don’t think I’m better.’
‘Maybe not, but …’
The radio chirps inside the car: the call sign for a potential homicide. The two detectives move around to their respective windows. They hang their heads inside. Dispatch describes a body in a motel down in Currumbin. Caucasian single male. Jameson Leaver, twenty-two years of age. Multiple stab wounds to the face, neck and torso.
Reynolds straightens up fast, recoiling.
‘What is it? You know him?’
‘That’s Jamie. Local kid. He’s been in and out of the station a few times.’
‘You want to take a look?’
The man is deep in thought. ‘Yeah, we should.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Something’s happening.’
The street is cordoned off. Bruno and Reynolds come up the avenue on foot, finding an SIB investigation team photographing a car parked in a bay beside the motel.
It’s a dark blue Holden Commodore.
Camera flashes strobe the dark street.
‘Hang on a sec,’ says Bruno.
He checks his notes.
The plate numbers match.
‘That’s one of the missing O’Grady cars,’ he says to Reynolds.
One scientist has a flashlight. ‘Look.’ There are squares of black duct tape on the chassis. Bruno squats under the light and peels one of the tape squares back, revealing a bullet hole.
They count four more on the car.
The back windscreen is brand new. A fresh install.
Bruno asks Reynolds, ‘Any of your guys ever fire on a getaway car?’
‘Nope. Did you shoot at them?’
‘No, not at their car.’
From there, they move up to the apartment. Two homicide men are inside, working the scene. Bruno takes a quick look. The description broadcast on the police radio is the polite version. The body of Jamie Leaver is almost completely separated from the head. There’s a lot of blood. Pools of it. The bedsheets are drenched and black. On the wall above the bed, there’s a word written in gore.
STOP
‘The fuck?’ Bruno hears himself mumble.
‘What is it?’ Reynolds comes forward and looks.
The man stops breathing.
They take the stairs back down and follow the footpath to the end of the street, back to the car. ‘I need to take a break,’ says Reynolds as they pull away from the kerb. ‘This is getting a bit much.’
‘You okay?’
‘We’ve gotta … we’ve …’ He hits the car’s indicator and turns. ‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow.’