BRUNO REPORTED THE MAN with the gun the moment he left the O’Grady house. It took an hour for the Emergency Squad to muster, but by midnight, it was all over with nothing to show. The man had slipped away, leaving just enough proof (a window ajar, boot prints) to keep Bingham from talking a blue streak. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep Bruno’s colleagues happy. You’ve got us out here for what, exactly? It’s bright morning by the time Bruno’s done with the paperwork. He enters the day on three hours of broken sleep, snatched from the back seat of his police car.
The mid-morning sea rolls gently out past the breakers. Just one other bloke further up. Some young blond guy floating in the glimmer and looking at the Strip. Bruno catches three choppy waves and spends the rest of the time sitting there, desperately praying his body will catch up to his mind. A short respite.
Back at the station, Bruno leads Chloe Kennedy, aka Seth Blackwell’s girlfriend, to an upstairs interview room. There’s no sign of Reynolds, so Bruno goes ahead without him. It’s not ideal, considering Bruno killed Blackwell, but Chloe doesn’t know that and, besides, oversight on this case is already at an all-time low.
Turns out Chloe’s no good Samaritan. The girl is tight-lipped and pissed off. Rail thin, greasy black hair. She has the complexion of a junkie, and she’s only here because of an outstanding warrant: seems young Chloe got into a drunken spat in a Kmart last year. Unfortunately, Chloe knows very little about Seth Blackwell’s criminal enterprises. ‘We hung out. He’s just some guy,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know he was robbing banks. He told me he was a plasterer’s apprentice.’
‘You don’t seem too upset about his passing, Chloe?’
‘Nah, it’s not like that. We haven’t seen each other in a while, that’s all.’
‘His grandmother seems to think you were his girlfriend.’
‘That old biddy doesn’t know what day it is.’
‘So, you two were broken up?’
‘I guess, if you want to call it that.’
‘Did something happen?’
Chloe picks at her fingers. No answer.
Bruno says, ‘I can talk to someone about that warrant as soon as we’re done here.’
‘Cool.’
‘But, come on. There’s more, right?’
Chloe pushes her tongue against the inside of her lower lip. ‘Okay, fuck it. I quit hanging around with him because he was a bloody poofter, wasn’t he?’
‘And what gave you that idea?’
‘He brought another bloke to bed one night. I was okay with it at the start. I mean, fuck it, right? I can handle two. That used to be a quiet weekend for me once. But these bloody two … they started in on each other, like. I thought it was gross, so I told Seth to rack off. And he did. End of story. Like I said, it’s not like we were engaged or anything.’
‘Tell me about this other bloke.’
‘No thanks.’
‘I can arrest you. Tell me.’
‘You’re a piece of shit, you know that?’
‘Chloe.’
‘His name is Samson. That’s all I know.’
‘Samson O’Grady?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What did he look like?’
Chloe gives a rote description of every second man on the coast. ‘Look, I don’t know the guy. I know nothing about him. I’m not exactly gonna be best mates with some poof who’s sleeping with my boyfriend, am I?’
‘I guess not.’
Bruno lets her go.
But he doesn’t talk to anyone about her warrant.
After the interview and an attempt at running some deskwork, Bruno locks himself in a toilet cubicle in the station and waits. There’s a torrent flowing through him—fatigue, worry, some other torment—and it’s pulling at every corner.
What am I doing?
Too many grim details circle this case. There’s a lot of blood and bad energy. The chain of events are fucking disastrous: a dead family, dead bank tellers, dirty cops, illicit porn, a motel room beheading. What is this? Bruno closes his eyes and sees a stream of abuse screening in his head, a blurred VHS vision of German men sucking each other off and black-blood lettering smeared on a motel room wall, all soundtracked by Chloe’s bogan whine—and Reynolds talking about his doctor—and a hundred forgotten leads in an unravelling case.
Coming back to the world, Bruno hears two detectives outside the toilet cubicle talking about shot-put and the Games while piss sprays the stainless-steel urinal. It’s all haunting and present. Harsh and close.
Where is Reynolds?
And how is any of this making any sense to anyone?
Bruno gets up and flushes, watching the water withdraw.
He opens the cubicle door and the detectives take one look at him and share a smile between them.
Bruno ignores it.
Washes his hands.
Thinks about his gun.