I’VE known a hundred good street fighters and a thousand not so good ones. But in a lifetime I’ve met only a handful of freak street fighters, the best of the best. They all died young. The freaks always do. This is the story of one of them …
*
HIS name was Billy, but they called him ‘Blueberry’ for short. There was no choice, really. His real name was William Hill, so it just came naturally that he’d get ‘Blueberry’ while he was still a little kid.
Not that Billy stayed little for long. He grew fast, and by the time he was 16 he stood an even six feet tall. He was a thin kid with an abnormally thick ‘bull’ neck. He had long skinny arms with giant hands hanging on the ends of them. They looked as big as dinner plates.
Billy seemed to be born with the makings of a professional boxer’s face, and soon picked up the optional extras — the classic pug nose and the flattened top lip. His ears were slightly cauliflowered and both eyebrows were thickened and scarred. He had a rich olive complexion but his hair was light brown, almost blond, and curly. The vivid green eyes stared out into nothing. Those eyes didn’t smile, even when he did. When he grinned, the missing top tooth gave him a look that was a sort of a cross between a naughty schoolboy and a grey nurse shark.
Billy didn’t so much walk as swagger. He had an arrogant air mixed with a streak of dark violence that warned anyone near him the full-of-himself look was backed up with a heap of dash. The big hands were covered in a patchwork quilt of scars. And he hadn’t got them chopping up rump steak.
They used to say around Collingwood, ‘If Blueberry Hill isn’t a nut case he’ll do till one comes along.’ The fact was, Blueberry was not a nut case. He was just tough, a freak street-fighter. That’s why, at 15, he was arrested for killing a 27-year-old man in a fist fight.
*
PETER Stavros was a black belt fourth dan karate expert with a criminal record as long as your arm. Fourteen convictions for assaulting police and one conviction for rape. He never did a day’s jail for any of his assaults on police.
Times had changed. Only a few years earlier anyone who raised his hands against a copper would get a flogging for his trouble and jail time to boot. Then, when he got to the Big House he would have to walk the ‘liquorice mile’ — getting whacked by a line of prison officers with truncheons. But for Stavros it was fines, fines, probation and more bloody probation. And, for some unknown reason, he served a lousy 16 months of a four-year sentence for rape.
He’d been out of jail and working as a bouncer at the London Tavern Hotel in Lennox Street, Richmond, for about nine weeks when he hit a snag. One night he told a big 15-year-old kid he couldn’t come in. The skinny kid with the big neck just stood there, looking at him with a gap-toothed smile. Stavros threw a punch at the kid to back up his words. He wasn’t in the mood for arguing.
The Coroner’s report showed that Peter Stavros was dead from blows to the head before he hit the ground. The self-defence plea was accepted and a Supreme Court jury found Billy Hill not guilty.
Nine months later the death of Peter Stavros and the publicity it generated took a little-known teenage Richmond street-fighter from being a nothing to being something. The Press went mad.
‘Billy “Blueberry” Hill Not Guilty!’… ‘Fifteen-year-old Kills Karate Expert’ … ‘Greek Rapist Dies At Hands Of Schoolboy.’ And ‘Princess Di’s Amazing Broccoli Diet’. Some things never change.
For the public, it was another case of 15 minutes of fame. Like the kid who took the gun from the Melbourne docks after Freddie ‘The Frog’ Harrison had his head removed from his neck per medium of a shotgun blast, it was just a jolly good read for a little while. But to the underworld, it was a lot more.
The public might not have remembered Billy Hill’s name, although no-one who’d seen his smile would forget it. But to every drunk, pimp, slut, and would-be gangster he was a deadset instant legend.
Every rung up or down the ladder in the underbelly of any city in Australia was always stained in blood. Stavros was considered a topline fighter in every way. He was a national kick boxing champion, light heavyweight division, and one of the most feared standup street fighters ever to come out of Brunswick. He was backed up by a 20-man mob of nutters from Albert Street, Brunswick, and their blood battles with the Coburg boys in Bell Street were famous.
Stavros was so well-known that the fact he had been killed by a 15-year-old kid with a strange nickname created a sensation. How could the Press avoid paying special attention to such a kid?
Of course, anybody from the back streets of Tigerland already knew that young Blueberry Hill was already a rising star in the street fighting caper. Born and bred in Lennox Street, Richmond, he’d been punching his way up the ladder from the age of 14, when he opened his innings by biting the nose off Reggie McKee outside the Royal Hotel in Punt Road.
Reggie may not have had a nose any more, but he still had mates. Two weeks after McKee lost his sense of smell it was payback time. The 22-year-old streetfighter from Fitzroy with the nasal problem had half a dozen boys, all armed with iron bars, to back him up. Billy spent 14 weeks in the Epworth Hospital in Erin Street. Then he discharged himself, walked into the Lord Newry Hotel in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, pulled Reggie McKee’s right eye out, then set about the bar with a broken Irish Whiskey bottle. They reckon the blood was so thick on the floor they had to rip the carpet up and burn it.
Billy was a young lone wolf but since the Stavros unpleasantness he had taken to walking about Richmond with his own crew. Two teenage criminals, Leigh Kinniburgh, nicknamed ‘The Face’, and Bobby Michieletto.
At 16, Billy Hill looked like a 20-year-old tent fighter who’d learned to fight in jail, and his two mates didn’t look much better. But they could have been in nappies and be sucking on dummies and no bouncer would have blocked their way into any pub or nightclub after Stavros bit the dust. Everyone knew it was healthier to stay on the good side of the boy with the grey nurse smile.
Bobby Michieletto had tried to buy a hand gun from a crew of nutters who drank in the Morning Star Hotel in Hoddle Street, Collingwood. Being young and foolish, he had paid $700 in advance, then got lashed on the deal. It was this small matter of business and honor that captured the attention of Blueberry and his two companions.
As they drank in the Citizens Park Hotel in Church Street, Billy said: ‘You’re a bloody mental case, Bobby — $700 up front and you get lashed. Any mug could see that lot coming.’
Bobby Mick, as his friends called him, was a fast thinking but slow talking kid, built like a small bull. At 16, he could bench press 280 pounds, in sets of a dozen, all day long. And he had a punch like a sledge hammer. His only trouble was, he trusted people.
Leigh Kinniburgh, on the other hand, trusted no-one and was slow thinking and fast talking. He wasn’t physically strong at all but tossed punches at a hundred miles per hour and used his face as a battering ram. He was totally fearless in a fight and quite psychopathic when it came to inflicting or taking injury. But, as good and as game as both kids were, they knew they were so far behind Blueberry they couldn’t hear the band playing. Hence their total loyalty and devotion.
It was up to Billy what action was to be taken, and they waited for his decision on the matter. No correspondence would be entered into.
Billy was making the most of his chance to bag Bobby Mick. ‘What the bloody hell made you want to do business with them rat bags from Hoddle Street? Bloody Collingwood. They are all nut cases over there,’ he sneered.
Bobby Mick looked a bit shamefaced. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘Sorry indeed,’ said Leigh Kinniburgh. ‘Ya stupid dago.’
‘Shut up, Face,’ said Billy. ‘Insulting people won’t get things even.’
The Face returned to his beer in silence.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t like going out of Richmond for any reason, but needs must be met and when the Devil calls and all that sort of shit. Ha ha.’
‘So what are we doing?’ asked Bobby Mick.
Billy looked down at his little mate as if he was a pup that had just pissed on the carpet.
‘We are going to bloody Hoddle Street. That’s what we are doing,’ he said slowly, with exaggerated patience.
‘Collingwood,’ said The Face, breaking his silence. ‘We’ll need a fucking army. Jesus Christ. Collingwood.’
He shook his head. ‘Hoddle Street. That’s seen more bodies than the Western Front.’
‘Well,’ snapped Billy, dropping the patient routine. ‘We either go to the Morning Star Hotel, or we cop it sweet. Whether it’s $700 or 70 cents, they lashed Bobby, and that means they lashed me. And no one lashes me.
‘Who are these turds anyhow?’
‘Skinny Kerr and his crew. Peter Thorpe, Kevin Toy and Rockin Ronny,’ said Bobby.
‘Rockin Ronny,’ Leigh Kinniburgh yelped. ‘Rockin Ronny the Nazi. Shit, he’s got a crew of at least 60 backing him.’
Bobby continued, ‘Ray Bennett, Terry Taylor, Steve Finney, Ronnie Cox and Fatty Kane.’
Blueberry Hill looked at his mate with a look of comic horror.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Bobby Mick.
Nine men in all, thought Billy.
‘How we going to handle that?’ asked Leigh.
‘I think,’ said Billy, ‘it’s safe to say we’ll be relying heavily on the element of surprise. Ha ha.’
‘How do ya mean?’ asked Leigh.
‘Who owes you the money?’ Billy asked Bobby Mick.
‘Skinny Kerr,’ said Bobby.
Billy had a think. ‘He lives in Cambridge Street near the Collingwood State School,’ he said after a while. ‘So let’s not bother with the pub, let’s just go and see him at his joint.’
Leigh smiled. He was relieved. ‘Can I wear a mask?’ he asked. ‘I think we’d all better,’ Billy said.
They didn’t know that what was to take place would haunt them all.
*
SKINNY Kerr lived with his mother in a little single-fronted, two bedroom, brick workman’s cottage, built in the last century. Cambridge Street was an old bit of Collingwood, and at night it was a very dark part of town.
When Mrs Kerr answered her front door at 9.30 at night the fist that hit her on the chin put her to sleep for a full three weeks. It wasn’t a full coma but near enough to it.
Skinny was watching TV with a pie in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He heard his mother hit the floor and turned to look down the dark hallway as three masked men came down it.
Skinny was as hard as nails, a tough hood in his late 20s. He smashed his beer bottle over his own skull as he rose to his feet screaming with rage. He swung a savage blow into the face of Bobby Mick as Billy Hill rained blows down on him. Skinny went down. Leigh Kinniburgh put the slipper in and the fun started. Bobby Mick held his bleeding face in pain and rage and helped the other two as they kicked and kicked and kicked the unconscious body. After about three minutes Billy was getting tired and pulled up. Skinny didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was quite dead.
‘Search him and go through the house,’ Billy ordered.
Skinny was soaking wet from neck to knee in his own blood and the $1200 he had in his pockets was also red and wet. The boots Leigh ‘The Face’ had been wearing had dug into Skinny’s chest and into his heart and lungs. They had literally kicked holes in him. Billy ransacked his mother’s bedroom and found cash to the tune of $2200 and jewellery.
Bobby located a bag full of guns in Skinny’s room. Two sawn-off double barrel shotguns and cartridges, and six hand guns with boxes of ammo. Leigh removed the rings and personal jewellery from the sleeping body of Mrs Kerr and the three walked out.
They took their masks off and walked through the night back to Elizabeth Street, Richmond, to Bobby Mick’s place. His Italian mother went crazy when she saw the damage to his face and she rushed him to the Epworth Hospital, to the Accident and Emergency Unit. Billy took all the loot and gave Leigh $200 and sent him home. ‘Meet me at the corner of Church and Victoria tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll whack this lot up then.’
‘But I want to check it all out,’ said Leigh.
‘That $200 comes out of your whack,’ said Billy.
Leigh wasn’t pleased, but he wouldn’t question Blueberry Hill, let alone defy him.
*
BILLY Hill wasn’t too interested in firearms, but he wanted to keep them out of the hands of his two friends. Billy was a fist fighter, pure and simple. But he knew Bobby Mick and Leigh Kinniburgh both wanted to step up the criminal ladder into the deadly world of the gunnie.
They were both a bit mad, and if they got armed up to the eyeballs they would grow away from him and either run headlong to a small box in the graveyard, or a slightly larger one in Pentridge. Billy decided to hide the guns. They could be of great use when needed, but carting loaded guns on you all the time was a bit out of the league of a 16-year-old, no matter how tough he was. Anyway, Billy didn’t like them, and didn’t trust people who carried them, so he hid them away. He counted out the money. There was $3200. He hid the jewellery; he knew it could be traced. Then he kissed his Aunty Muriel good night and went to bed. Every night before he went to sleep in his bedroom in his auntie’s place on Lennox Street he would say a little prayer. His late mother had taught him this prayer. She had died when he was 10 years old. He’d never met his dad.
Billy closed his eyes and mumbled the words he’d recited every night that he could remember. ‘And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen. Good night, Mum, wherever you are.’
*
THE homicide squad couldn’t operate a three-seated shithouse without getting one of the pans blocked up, or so it seemed to a lot of people who took an interest in the violent end of Skinny Kerr. It had been six months since the murder, and Blueberry Hill had been arrested, questioned and let go five times.
The Press was screaming. It made front page every time he was taken in and let go.
Keith Kerr wasn’t impressed. He was Skinny’s uncle and he was sitting in the lounge room of his home in Lithgow Street, Abbotsford, talking to Peter Thorpe and Kevin Toy.
‘My bloody nephew gets his heart and lungs kicked out his arsehole, my sister-in-law is nearly turned into a vegetable and Blueberry Hill and his mates are laughing,’ he spat. ‘It’s even up time.’
Peter Thorpe nodded. Kevin Toy sat quietly. He looked thoughtful.
‘He’s got a birthday party coming up in about a week. The fourth of November. He’ll be 17,’ he said.
Keith Kerr shook his head. ‘Seventeen years old. Holy Hell, he’s a freak. Best street fighter in Richmond at 17 years old – it’s bloody hard to credit.’
‘Yeah,’ said Peter Thorpe. ‘Once in 20 years one comes along, rare as hen’s teeth. Goodfellow was the same, he could flog half of Melbourne by the time he was 16 years old. Harris Morrison, Kingdom West, Kane. They were all freaks.’
‘Ya right,’ said Keith. ‘And they’re all dead.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said old Keith Kerr. ‘We may have to give Billy Blueberry a bit of a helping hand, fate wise.’
*
‘HAPPINESS for me,’ said Blueberry Hill to Bobby Mick, ‘would be to own a thousand-room hotel and to find Chief Inspector Graeme Westlock dead in every room. Ha ha. The bugger’s been picking on me ever since Stavros. It’s not fair.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bobby Mick. He wasn’t big on conversation. Especially since his face had been cut up with Skinny Kerr’s beer bottle. The scars didn’t do a lot for Bobby’s good looks, nor his good nature, not that he had started out with much of either.
The two tough teenagers were standing in the piano bar of the Chevron Night Club on St Kilda Road. It was 4.30 on a Sunday morning. They were about to finish up and go and meet Leigh Kinniburgh at the Cadillac Bar in Carlton when the shooting started.
Blueberry Hill didn’t notice Bobby Mick fall dead to the floor. All he felt was a heavy punch and a red hot pain in his neck. He turned, and like some insane wild machine started swinging sledge hammer punches into the head of the man carrying the gun. Peter Thorpe fired one more wild shot into the darkness as he fell to the floor, dying.
Then Billy started to kick the bouncers at the club as they stepped in and tried to restrain him. He was pissing blood from a .38 bullet wound to the neck, but they found themselves facing an onslaught of punches that rendered two bouncers unconscious and two others running for their lives.
The self-defence laws are pretty clear. A man who kills another man with his fists after being shot in the neck is pretty hard to prosecute successfully. But Chief Graeme Westlock was most happy to formally charge Blueberry Hill with the murder of Peter Thorpe as Hill lay in bed at the Alfred Hospital, conveniently located behind the Chevron Night Club.
A week later, before Billy checked out of hospital, the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the case against him. A gunman murders an unarmed youth, then tries to kill a second, but gets punched to death, and the police charge the man who was defending his life after being shot in the neck. It seemed to some in Richmond that the police and newspaper vendetta against Blueberry Hill had taken on comic proportions.
Mr Mario Bonanno QC, Director of Public Prosecutions, personally went to visit Billy Hill in hospital to tell him that the murder charge was no more. The Press went crazy.
‘Blueberry Hill Beats It’ … ‘Murder Charges Dropped’ … ‘Teenage Tough Guy Gets Off Again.’
When Billy Hill walked out of hospital he was 17 years old. It was the 17th of November. He had missed his birthday party, but Leigh Kinniburgh and the Richmond boys had arranged a big piss up at the French Knickers Hotel at the corner of Church Street and Victoria Street, Richmond. The joint was Billy’s favourite hangout.
You don’t have to be told. The Press found out about it and took a hidden camera into the hotel to film Blueberry drinking with well-known Richmond criminals, professional boxers, football players, gangsters and gunnies, strippers and prostitutes.
The next day the morning paper carried photos and a headline that ran ‘Birthday Thrill For Blueberry Hill’. That was all right, but the story underneath it went on to condemn local authorities for allowing Billy Hill to indulge in underage drinking. Such criticism was not considered fair play in Richmond social circles, but what could a poor boy do but cop it sweet.
‘I mean to say,’ said Billy’s Auntie Muriel, ‘if they can’t hang ya for murder Billy, ya gotta expect ’em to try and pinch ya for underage drinking. Ha ha.’
Billy Hill sat at the kitchen table and spread a lavish helping of marmalade onto his morning toast – the first of a dozen slices he knocked off every day. Tea and marmalade on toast was Billy’s breakfast routine. Meanwhile, he read the morning paper and that big, gap-toothed smile slid across his dial.
‘It must be a slow news day, Auntie M,’ he snorted. ‘Underage drinking indeed. They gotta be kidding. Too young to drink. What a lot of flap doodle. I’m not too young to get pinched on murders when I’m only defending me bloody self.’
‘Too right,’ said his Auntie Muriel. ‘That’s perfectly correct, Billy.’ She was very supportive of her nephew and would not hear a bad word said about him. How dare the police and press pick on a young innocent lad. It was a bloody disgrace.
Muriel was a well built, attractive 32-year-old woman. She had the same rich dark olive complexion as Billy, the same light-brown, almost blonde hair and the same vivid green eyes. She was the baby sister of William Hill, Billy’s dad, the dad Billy had never ever known because he had vanished before Billy was born.
Muriel was not only his auntie but his late mother’s best friend. When Jeanie Hill died, Muriel was delighted to take charge of the little boy. Muriel worked in a flower shop in one of Richmond’s best-known streets, but she knew her way around. She was a former prostitute and stripper but had given it all up to care for young Billy. She’d gone from horns to thorns.
What the Tax Department didn’t know was that Muriel Hill actually owned the florists’ shop that she supposedly only worked for. Muriel was no fool. She had inherited two houses in Lennox Street and had bought two more houses as well as the shop. But no-one knew this, not even Billy.
Muriel had given up hawking the fork when she was 25. But, unlike most other working girls she’d looked after her money, and now it was looking after her. And Billy.
She truly loved young Billy and it was fair to say Blueberry Hill loved his Auntie M more than anybody else in the world, now that his mum had gone. Not that it was much of a contest. Billy didn’t like many people.
‘You should eat more than marmalade on toast, Billy,’ she told him. ‘But I like marmalade on toast,’ said Billy.
‘You should let me cook you ham and eggs,’ said Auntie M. ‘Your father always liked me to cook him ham and eggs.’
‘Well,’ said Billy with a sneer, ‘I hope that wherever that prick is he is enjoying his ham and eggs. As for me, I like marmalade.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Auntie M, frightened that she had upset him. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry, Billy.’
Blueberry Hill reached over and gave his auntie a big marmalade-covered kiss on the mouth. She giggled, happy that he was no longer cross at her mention of the long-vanished father and brother.
*
BILLY didn’t go outside the front door until about midday. He had a luncheon appointment with his la de dah lady lawyer at Rhubarb’s Bar and Restaurant in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy.
Anita Von Bibra had been with him since the Stavros fiasco and their relationship had come along very nicely since then. There was trouble coming his way and a pre-bloodshed legal chat with Madam Von Bibra was a must. The lunchtime restaurant meeting in the courtyard at Rhubarb’s had become a regular event.
Anita Von Bibra was a wealthy, south of the river socialite barrister, who lived with her property developer husband in a $3.5 million mansion in South Yarra. At least, that was what they’d paid for it in the property boom in the 1980s, when every yuppie in town used lines of credit the way they used lines of coke. By the time the 1990s came around, the Von Bibra shack was probably only worth a flat $3 million. Life can be cruel like that, but it seemed to Billy that Anita was bearing up bravely.
She cruised about town in a Mercedes sports coupe worth 100 grand. She was old enough to be Billy’s mother, but he was only 17 and she was very well preserved, and looked thirty-something. She was a neat, petite, elegant lady with long hair dyed jet black, big sparkling dark eyes and a wide smile that gave some people ideas when they looked at her lips.
Anita had once been a model, and still had the body and legs to prove it. She was only five feet nothing tall, hence the high heels that added at least four to five inches to her height. She always wore a well-cut suit with the shortest skirts she could get away with cut tight around a wiggle of an arse that looked like two apples tied in a silk scarf.
Her only drawback was a shrill high-pitched squeal of a voice that could travel across a court room and burst the eardrums of an already half-deaf judge. Even when she whispered her voice could travel 100 metres on a windy day. She was quite famous in legal and criminal circles for her outrageous conduct, and the Press loved to hate her.
Anita’s running public battle with the Director of Public Prosecutions had caught the attention of the national media after she screamed at him from the steps of the Melbourne Supreme Court, ‘Hey Mario, if I’d sucked off the Attorney General at the last law society dinner I’d be a QC too, ya dog.’ She was a toff with a knockabout sense of humor and a painter and docker’s vocabulary.
One of her best-known cases had involved defending a notorious con man. The police crown witness was a well-known Italian criminal. Anita was claiming that the crown witness had stolen her client’s cheque book. In her summing up to the jury she made one of the outrageous throwaway remarks that had caught the media’s attention a few times before.
‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘if this case has taught us anything, it is that none of us can ever trust a dago with our cheque book.’
She had been married three times and made a small fortune on each divorce. Why she bothered defending every psychopath from Richmond to Collingwood was a mystery. She certainly didn’t do it for the money. The truth was Anita was a lounge-chair left winger – and anyone who knew her could tell she got a bit of a thrill dealing with young tearaways like Billy Hill. She couldn’t help going for that James Dean rebel without a cause stuff: tattoos, muscles, scars, and the whiff of violence.
‘If I don’t fight for the little Aussie battler, who will?’ she’d scream at the Press and anybody else who’d listen.
The trouble was, obviously, that Anita’s idea of the little Aussie battler was every head-banging, gun-toting psychopath and raving mental case in Melbourne. Oh, and Billy Hill. Except that he was different. He didn’t carry guns.
*
BILLY walked into the restaurant and out into the courtyard at about 12.30 pm. Anita called out to him, ‘Billy! Here I am.’ It was a fair bet they heard her in the next suburb.
Her diamond rings flashed and glittered in the sunlight as she waved her hand. Billy walked over and sat down.
‘What?’ Anita pouted like a bad soapie actress. ‘No kiss hello?’
Billy reached over and kissed his lawyer on the cheek. Anita didn’t invite all her clients to lunch, very few of them in fact, but she had a genuine soft spot for Blueberry Hill. Lunch proceeded and Anita’s legal advice flowed freely.
‘Billy, as long as they hit you first or they use a weapon and you use your fists, we can plead self defence till the cows come home and win hands down every time. But we have to be able to show we were acting in the defence of our own life or the life of another. If we do that we can kill the Queen of England and beat the blue.’
Billy looked thoughtful. ‘I think I’ve got some shit coming up with old Keith Kerr and Kevin Toy and that lot from Collingwood,’ he said.
‘Hmmm,’ Anita mused. ‘The ghosts of Christmases past and all that. Skinny Kerr and his mother come back to haunt you?’
Billy nodded. ‘Yeah,” he said. ‘That’s what that shit in the Chevron was all about.’
‘I knew that,’ she answered. ‘Strangely enough, I defended Peter Thorpe on a rape blue 10 years ago. I spent three months telling a jury he was innocent. We won the case. I took him back to my chambers for a celebratory drink and he belted me in the mouth, bent me over my office desk and committed a foul rudeness upon my person.’
‘What could I do? I’d just spent three months telling the world he was innocent, and there were no witnesses? You’re the first person I’ve confessed that to, Billy. And I’m bloody overjoyed to know the low dog is dead.’
For once, Billy looked shocked. ‘Fair dinkum, Anita,’ he said, his voice full of genuine sympathy and concern.
Anita took the boy’s hand, touched.
‘Not to worry, Billy,’ she said with a wink. ‘Being upended over the office desk wasn’t the point. The bloody ingratitude of the low bastard, that’s what hurt me. He certainly had a different idea of how to handle a hand-up brief.’
Billy was quite shocked at some of the remarks Anita made. In matters sexual Billy was a total innocent. Anita was a woman of the world, and some of the things she said made him blush red. She took a certain delight in teasing the lad, sitting with her legs crossed in front of him with her short skirt sliding around and rippling in the breeze, accidentally on purpose giving him a gander at the upper thighs that had made Anita a hot item in the bikini-modelling caper when she was at law school. Billy was very correct where the ladies were concerned. He might have been a bareknuckle killer, but Anita’s well-honed instincts told her he was a virgin. The prospect of correcting that small matter for him filled her with a certain evil delight. It was a little fantasy she indulged in after the third drink. Which is one of the reasons alcohol is rather popular, even if not many people would own up to it. But Anita’s plans for a little extra-curricular tutoring in client-lawyer liaison would have to wait. Billy had other things on his mind. He went back to Richmond with his head buzzing with plans, as well as a few belts of champagne Anita had pushed at him. Between that and Anita’s mini-skirt, it had been a very good lunch indeed.
*
‘WE gotta hit them before they get us,’ Leigh Kinniburgh said. Billy didn’t say anything straightaway. He was thinking.
The pair had decided to avoid regular drinking haunts like the French Knickers Hotel and had taken to drinking at the Vine Hotel in Bridge Road, and Squizzy Taylor’s Pub in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy.
Blueberry Hill had let The Face carry a handgun. Two, in fact. A .38 calibre automatic and a sawn-off double barrel shotgun. Leigh Kinniburgh walked about with the handgun on him, and saw himself as Blueberry Hill’s personal bodyguard.
Billy, on the other hand, was a realist. He saw The Face as a mental case with a loaded gun.
Leigh was rattling on about the coming blue. He was half nervous and half bloodthirsty, which meant he was as toey as a broken sandal. ‘Needs must when the Devil drives. We gotta attack the bloody Morning Star and get in first,’ he said for the third time in two minutes.
‘Anita said as long as I act in self defence she can get me out of anything,’ Billy said.
‘That old nympho,’ laughed Leigh, putting a hole in his manners. ‘She got my old man out of a shooting charge 15 years ago. Shit, I was two or three years old and she was 25 or 30 then, I reckon.’
Billy scowled. ‘Anita Von Bibra is a very lovely lady and I’ll break the jaw of any man who speaks ill of her,’ he grated. He had a thing about her the way some blokes in the boob were bent about Ita Buttrose.
Leigh back-pedalled at 100 miles an hour. ‘Oh sorry, Billy. I didn’t say she wasn’t a nice lady – just a bit long in the tooth, that’s all.’
Billy looked down at Leigh. ‘Long in the tooth, eh? You’ll have no teeth if ya keep going. Okay?’
‘Sorry, Billy,’ Leigh said meekly.
‘Anyway,’ said Blueberry, trying to look dignified. ‘As I was saying, as long as we can claim self defence we can beat any blue in the book.’
‘Yeah well,’ said Leigh. But he was a bit drunk and he couldn’t help tossing in a smartarse remark. ‘I guess we can always attack ’em with Anita’s walking stick …’
Leigh didn’t see the punch. And he didn’t feel it. So when he woke up in the back of an ambulance, he didn’t remember it. All he knew was that his .38 calibre handgun and all his top teeth were missing. Then he fainted again.
Billy, meanwhile, had decided to face the music alone and unarmed. One man against a small army. Of course, he’d swear that he was the victim of a gang attack, thus maintaining his self defence. He knew that Leigh Kinniburgh was in hospital falling in and out of a coma, and he felt a bit concerned and hoped he hadn’t hit Leigh too hard. Shit, one left hook to the top teeth shouldn’t cause that much damage.
Leigh Kinniburgh must have a paper thin skull. Bloody pansy. Poor little Bobby Mick, he thought. Billy really missed Bobby Mick. Why couldn’t it have been Leigh instead of poor Bobby? He was getting angry again, thinking about it. These turds in Collingwood had to be dealt with, and the sooner the bloody better.
Billy rang Anita at home and warned her he could be facing arrest within the next few hours. That’s if he was lucky. Otherwise he would be in hospital, or dead.
Anita was what lawyers and police describe as ‘gravely concerned.’ In this case, for her favorite client’s skin. Apart from anything else, she hadn’t had a chance to have her wicked way with him yet.
‘Please don’t do anything rash, Billy,’ she pleaded. ‘As your lawyer I must advise you against rash action.’
‘But if they attack me, Anita. I can act in self defence, can’t I?’ Billy asked.
‘Of course, darling,’ she cooed in the sort of voice that $200 an hour buys. ‘Act in self defence only and all will be well.’
*
MELANIE Wells lived next door to Billy Hill in Lennox Street. She was heading out her front door the same time Billy was walking out of his. She stopped to look at him. He was her hero. She had secretly loved Blueberry Hill since she was a little girl. She watched him kiss his Auntie M on the cheek and then closed the door.
‘Hi ya, Mel,’ said Billy.
‘Hi ya, Billy’ said the starstruck 15-year-old.
‘Where are you off to, all dressed up this time of night?’ asked Billy. ‘Ya look good enough to eat.’ Melanie only wished he meant it. She’d sit on his face at a moment’s notice, but Billy treated her like a baby sister, always polite, thoughtful, kind, protective and so politically correct, much to her annoyance.
‘I’m going to the end of year dance at school,’ she said. ‘Where you going, Billy? Are ya gonna blue them dogs in Hoddle Street?’
‘How did you know about that?’ asked Billy, surprised.
‘Shit,’ said Melanie, ‘every man and his dog knows.’
‘Yeah,’ said Billy, winking mysteriously. ‘But no-one knows when, hey kid?’
She wasn’t so smart after all.
‘Ya wanna come to the dance with me, Billy?’ she wheedled in her cutest little voice.
Billy didn’t want to offend his cheeky hot pants little neighbor. ‘Maybe I’ll pop in later tonight,’ he said. ‘What time does it go till?’
‘Midnight,’ she said.
‘Okay, maybe later. I gotta go now.’
She was excited. The prospect of Blueberry Hill showing up at her school and impressing hell out of all her school chums filled her with a delicious anticipation.
‘See ya later, Billy,’ she purred. She’d seen them do it on the soaps a million times. ‘Yeah, see ya, Titch,’ said Billy. Such a smooth-talking bastard. Melanie pouted. ‘I wish Billy wouldn’t call me that,’ she thought to herself as she pushed her chest out to show him that she was anything but a Titch these days. But Billy was blind to her ample charms. He put his giant hand on the top of her head and ruffled up her hair, then turned and walked away.
‘God, what a fantastic bloke,’ she thought to herself. He was everything she ever wanted and he didn’t even know she was alive. Well, he did, but not in the way she dreamed of, and that cute little boy habit Billy had of ruffling up her hair made her feel like the fish John West rejected with all the goodies to go with it.
But instead of Billy taking her in his strong arms and holding her close and kissing her, all he did was call her Titch and ruffle her hair.
Melanie sighed, then headed off to the dance.
*
ROCKIN’ Ronny MacSladdon, Ray Bennett, Terry Taylor, Steve Finney, Ronnie Cox, Fatty Kane and Kevin Toy put their drinks down and walked out of the Morning Star Hotel. The night was still a pup and they were out to make the most of it. They started walking down Hoddle Street.
They were on their way to meet Keith Kerr at the Clifton Hill Hotel in Queens Parade. There was a full moon out and the night was clear and warm. Everyone was in high spirits. Plans had been set in place to even up on Blueberry Hill once and for all as a payback for Skinny Kerr and Peter Thorpe. He’d be dead in the next 24 hours – if all went well.
Old Keith had it all in hand. His motto was that no-one went against Collingwood and lived, no matter how good they could fight … that’s why God invented guns, he reckoned.
Ray Bennett was the first to notice him get out of the car. He couldn’t believe it.
‘Hey boys, cop a look at this,’ he hissed to his mates.
‘Jesus,’ said Kevin Toy, who had a remarkable grasp of the obvious. ‘It’s Blueberry Hill.’
Billy had caught a lift with old ‘Chang’ Heywood, a local Richmond knockabout. Chang was always willing and ready to drive Billy any place he wanted to go in his old 1967 Hillman Arrow. Billy walked straight across Hoddle Street and towards the group. Even though there was seven of them, the whole crew went into a state of shock.
‘He’s not going to fight us all, is he?’ whispered Rockin’ Ronny, as if he suspected that’s exactly what was going to happen.
Terry Taylor pulled out a small hand gun.
‘Put it away,’ snapped Kevin Toy. ‘We can take him. Seven against one, for God’s sake.’
‘Bullshit,’ yelled Taylor, who didn’t give a shit about the odds. ‘Kill the bastard.’
He aimed the little .32 calibre revolver at Billy Hill and pulled the trigger. The first two shots missed, and Billy just kept walking towards them, as cool as you like. The third shot clipped his cheek bone but still he kept coming. The fourth slug hit him in the upper right side of the chest and the fifth went wild. The piece only held five shots. They were all gone, but Billy wasn’t. He was still coming straight at them.
Now the crew was really worried. ‘What now?’ yelled Ronny MacSladdon.
‘Let’s get him,’ said Kevin Toy.
The gang charged forward toward Billy Hill. Their mistake was in trying to take on a freak on his own terms. Blueberry smiled like a grey nurse in a school of tuna. As the gang reached him Billy’s fists swung like Jack O’Toole swinging his axe on ‘World of Sport’, and they were about as deadly.
Kevin Toy hit the ground first, out cold with a broken jaw and cheek bone, then cracking his skull on the footpath.
Then there were six.
Rockin’ Ronny ran a knife into Billy’s guts but a left hand that would have dropped a bullock shattered his skull. MacSladdon fell down dead. Billy could kill with either hand once he got speed up.
Then there were five.
Ronnie Cox grabbed Billy from behind and gouged his left eye ball, while Fatty Kane moved in with a broken bottle, cutting Billy’s face to ribbons. Steve Finney stabbed Billy in the chest with another broken bottle, but it was a mistake. Billy reached out and put his right hand around Finney’s neck and squeezed, and caught Fatty Kane on the chin with a left hook. Fatty lost interest, and went to sleep on the spot.
Then there were three. Billy still had Steve Finney’s now unconscious body, flopping around like a rag doll in washing machine.
Terry Taylor and Ray Bennett had been standing back. Billy spun around, still holding Finney by the neck, and smashed Ronnie Cox three crashing blows to the skull with his left hand. Ronnie was no different from anyone else; he went to the ground, and stayed there.
Then there were two.
Billy looked down and realised that Steve Finney was dead. He’d strangled him. Then he looked at Terry Taylor and Ray Bennett and smiled. Bennett froze, but Taylor turned and ran.
Billy started to laugh then spat blood into the face of a now crying Ray Bennett. He fell to his knees and begged: ‘I’m sorry, Billy. Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me. Please Billy, please don’t hit me.’
A crowd of onlookers had gathered, and Billy knew he’d won in front of witnesses. Ray Bennett was the luckiest man in Melbourne.
Billy Blueberry turned and staggered back to Chang’s old car and got in. Old Chang took off.
‘Jesus, Billy, you fuckin’ killed em,’ he babbled. ‘You beat ’em all. God I never seen nothin like it. Billy, you’re a fucking legend. You’ll go down in history.’
Billy coughed up blood.
‘Hell, Billy, you’re pissin’ blood. You’re fuckin’ dying. Don’t die on me kid, don’t die, hang on, I’ll get you to hospital, hang on.’ Poor old Chang was panicking, and you couldn’t blame him.
‘Nah,’ said Billy. ‘Forget the hospital, take me to Gleadell Street.’
‘What are ya talking about, kid?’ Chang yelled over the howl of the motor and the whine in the gearbox. He was wringing the revs out of the old Hillman, trying to get his mate to the hospital.
‘I promised a little girl I’d take her to a dance,’ said Billy with what passed for a smile. It wasn’t a good look. His face was covered in blood already, and there was plenty more where that was coming from.
‘Kid,’ said Chang, ‘you’re dying and you need help.’
‘Just get me to the dance on time,’ said Billy with a laugh that made an ominous rattle in his chest. It was filling with blood.
‘The Girls School. C’mon, ya silly old bugger. Drive.’
Chang put his foot down to the metal even harder and got the old Hillman Arrow up to its top speed of 60 mph. Billy was holding his guts and chest. He knew he didn’t have long to go, but he didn’t want his Auntie M to see him like this and he didn’t know where to go. Why not go to the dance? He smiled to himself. Titch would be glad to see him.
Chang pulled his old car up outside the college. Billy opened the door and stumbled out. Chang took off, heading for Lennox Street to tell Billy’s Auntie Muriel. She had to be told.
Billy walked into the school ground, trying to keep the stagger out of his gait. A bunch of girls were standing in a group outside having a sneaky smoke.
‘Hey, it’s Blueberry Hill,’ said one girl. Then she looked harder and yelped, ‘God, look at him, he’s bleeding.’
‘He’s bleeding to death,’ said another.
‘Get Titch,’ Billy ordered. His voice rattled from the blood in his throat.
‘Who?’ asked one of the girls.
‘Melanie Wells,’ Billy croaked. He was trying to yell.
Two girls ran inside as Billy fell to his knees, then slumped backward. His eyes went up toward the big full moon. It was a nice night to die, he thought. Warm summer’s night. Full moon. Only he was starting to feel a bit cold.
Melanie came out.
‘Billy,’ she shrieked.
She ran to him and knelt down and held his head in her hands. He lifted himself up and rested his head in her lap. The blood got on her party dress. ‘Hi ya, Titch,’ he said. ‘I won the blue. Ya should have seen it.’
The music had stopped and the school yard was filling up with school girls, all either crying or whispering the name ‘Blueberry Hill’. They all knew he was dying.
Teachers called the police and the ambulance. Billy coughed up more blood and Melanie tried to wipe his bleeding face with her little lace hanky.
‘Don’t die Billy, the ambulance is coming,’ she whispered.
‘Nah, Titch. I’m dead,’ said Billy.
‘Don’t say that, Billy. No-one can kill you. Ya can’t die, please Billy. Don’t die, please Billy. Don’t die.’
The girl was sobbing. She held her face to his.
‘Don’t die Billy, please don’t die,’ she recited over and over.
Billy coughed and started to recite the prayer his mother had taught him. ‘And now I lay me down to sleep,’ he mumbled.
‘No, Billy, stop it!’ screamed the girl. Her face was wet with tears.
But Billy kept going. He was gasping now.
‘I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake.’
‘I love you, Billy,’ cried Melanie. ‘I love you.’
‘I pray the Lord my soul to take,’ he whispered.
Melanie shook Billy’s head. ‘Wake up, Billy. Don’t die.’
Blueberry Hill opened his one good eye, his right eye, and looked up at the moon. Then he opened his left eye.
‘Mum, is that you, Mum?’ he said softly.
Then he closed his eyes. He was dead.
*
CHIEF Inspector Graeme Westlock pulled his car up and got out. The phone call he received from Anita Von Bibra sent him to the Morning Star Hotel. He had just left the carnage in Hoddle Street. Three men dead, two in hospital. Chang Heywood under arrest at Richmond Police Station. The copper couldn’t believe that Billy had been driven to a girls’ school instead of a hospital.
He got out and walked through the crowd of schoolgirls to where Billy lay dead.
‘Ahh, Billy,’ said Westlock, who was a hard-nosed bastard. ‘Not a bad way to die, kid. Lying in the moonlight surrounded by a couple of hundred wobbly bottomed school girls. Yeah kid, ya always were a show off.’
Melanie put Billy’s head on the ground and got to her feet.
‘Piss off you bastard. Go on piss off.’
The girls all began to yell. ‘Go on ya dog, piss off.’
Most of them were crying. Melanie ran forward and began to punch the big policeman, crying. ‘Go away, go away.’
Graeme Westlock held the girl and his mood softened.
‘C’mon, now sweetheart, stop all this fuss. C’mon, you lot, cut all this bloody nonsense out.’ Then he looked down at young Melanie.
‘C’mon, sweetheart. Dry them eyes. That’s Blueberry bloody Hill down there and whatever else he was, he was a tough bastard and ya know what they say … no tears for a tough guy.’