Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage (2 page)

Tom Bishop heard the screams from down the hall. He heard them from the lobby. He even heard them from the car park. The call that pulled him out of bed came thirty minutes ago, and at first he thought it was just a couple of guys pulling a bullshit joke. But even the best bullshit has a hint of truth in it.

There were a couple of hours left before the sun rose and the station took the time to catch its breath before the onslaught of a new day. Lewis met him in the lobby, blood-soaked tissues rammed up his nose. ‘Thought we should give you a call. Just in case,’ he said.

‘Where is she?’

Lewis pointed to the end of the hall, and they headed toward the source of the racket. With each step, the screams faded, making way for a relentless wall of abuse that was just as unpleasant.

‘We picked her up about an hour ago. B&E on a boutique store in Toorak with two other juvies. Took me and a couple of baggy pants to subdue her.’

Lewis slowed to a stop at the office door. Bishop peered through the small glass window at a worn-down girl who couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. In another place and time, she could have been on the cover of a magazine; at the moment, her looks were hidden by anger and pain.

‘No criminal history,’ Lewis said. ‘I figure she probably just did this for some attention.’

Bishop lit a cigarette. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Alice Cameron.’

He pulled in a lungful of smoke, wrapped his hand around the doorhandle and stepped through.

Her eyes snapped to him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

Bishop dragged a chair from another desk and sat next to her. ‘I’m Tom Bishop,’ he said.

Her face softened. ‘I imagined you different.’

‘How so?’

‘A bit more like the cops on television.’

‘I can have some headshots made if you like?’

‘I imagined you funnier as well.’

Bishop leant over and uncuffed her. ‘They tell me you think I’m your father.’

She rubbed her wrists. Not because she needed to, but because she thought she should. Too many movies. ‘They tell me that as well.’

‘Who’s your mother?’

She took her time with an answer. ‘Her name is Stacy,’ and waited for recognition to cross Bishop’s face, but there was none.

‘About seventeen, eighteen years ago? Ring any bells? Stacy Cameron?’

He held his breath. It was just for an instant, but it was long enough to give Alice the answer she had come to find.

‘Guess I’m your little girl,’ she said. ‘Are you proud?’

Neither of them knew what to say in the car, so neither said much of anything. They watched the city roll by in the stillness of the metropolitan night. Occasionally, light from a neon bar would bounce off their faces and fall back into the darkness as they passed. It had been raining for three days and had finally stopped earlier that night.

Alice rolled down a window and lit a cigarette before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. Bishop leant across, snatched the butt from her lips and flicked it out the window.

‘What the fuck?’

‘Watch your language.’ He said it with enough authority to make her sit up and keep her mouth shut. ‘It’s not very ladylike.’

She shifted her gaze to the shards of rising sun that splintered the gaps in the buildings. ‘How did you and Stacy hook up?’ she asked.

‘Your mother hasn’t told you?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s not much of a story. I knew your mother for about twelve hours. We met in a bar in Port Melbourne, had too much to drink and had sex.’

‘Sounds like Stacy.’

‘Guess we weren’t too big on the birth control.’

‘Still sounds like Stacy,’ she said. ‘What do I call you?’

‘What do you want to call me?’

‘I don’t think we’re at Dad yet, are we?’

Bishop shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think we are.’

‘How about Tom?’

Nobody called him Tom. Half the guys he knew probably didn’t even know his first name, and those who did would never think to use it. But when she said it, he liked the way it sounded.

Bishop pulled into an all-night convenience store on Sydney Road. The bell rang as he stepped through the doorway and an overweight man with a kind face looked up from his paper and smiled. Bishop tried to return the smile but it came off crooked. He headed to the rear of the store and found the toiletry section next to the car care products and picked up a box of tissues, face wipes and some make-up. He struggled with them on his way back to the counter and dumped them on the bench.

Bishop poured a couple of coffees, but when he reached for his wallet, the man glimpsed his badge. ‘No, no, no. No charge,’ he said with a wave of his hand.

‘No, mate, I can’t do that.’ Bishop sifted through the notes in his hands.

‘Next time I get robbed, you come, you come.’

‘When was the last time you got robbed?’

‘Last week.’

Bishop pointed to the floor. ‘You got robbed here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re only a few blocks from Brunswick Station.’

‘Next time you come, free coffee.’

Most of the coppers Bishop knew had used their truth suits or badges to get discounts or free lunches at some stage in their lives. A couple of bucks here, a free beer there; it was part of the job, a perk the bosses didn’t endorse but couldn’t stop. The perk wasn’t for Bishop. He always felt like he was stealing and the guilt was never worth the discount.

The old man wouldn’t let the issue drop, so Bishop left some cash on the counter and walked out. He climbed into the car, cranked up the engine and put the bag of cosmetics on Alice’s lap.

‘What’s this?’

‘You can’t go back to your mother looking like you’ve spent half the night in jail.’

‘I have spent half the night in jail.’

‘Doesn’t mean you have to look like it.’

A smile came to her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

Yesterday’s make-up came off easily and with it she lost the anger and attitude. She saw the scars on his knuckles. The badge chained around his neck. The bulge of the gun under his leather jacket.

‘Why a cop?’ she asked.

Bishop leant back in his seat and thought about it, and it wasn’t something he thought about often. ‘It was a way out?’

‘From what?’

‘A bad future?’

‘How’s that working out for you?’

Bishop smiled; she was growing on him. ‘My old man, your grandfather, we used to live on the road. He was a trucker; we bounced around from place to place. Drive a load across the country, drop it off, pick up another and drive it someplace else. Lived out of the cab, ate in roadhouses, that sort of thing. But the old man liked the drink, and when he drank he liked to mouth off. One night he mouthed off and got his throat cut.’

Alice frowned. Bishop wasn’t sure if it was out of disgust or horror. He figured it didn’t matter; they were both bad enough and he wondered why he actually told her that. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said.

But that was a lie. The thirteen-year-old Tom Bishop was copping size ten steel-capped boots while trying to shield his bleeding father.

His old man wasn’t easy.

His old man was a drunk.

Bishop wasn’t even their real name.

His mother, Billie, was a philanthropist and being poor meant she had little to give. She volunteered at the Salvation Army, at local charities and when somebody passed away she was always the first to bake a casserole for the family. His father Roy was a petty criminal at best. Everything in their house had fallen off the back of a truck and holding a steady job was difficult for a man who slept until three in the afternoon and was drunk by seven.

When Tom was five years old, he watched his father cave in his mother’s face with the butt of a longneck. The day before he had had a win at Flemington on a sixty-to-one horse and come home with $9000. That was more money Billie had seen in her life and she came to the conclusion that they couldn’t possibly spend it all themselves so she donated $4500 of it to the local church and for the rest of the afternoon felt good about being able to help. She baked a cake, cooked a roast and when Roy woke up to find half his money in the hip pocket of a church he didn’t believe in, his fist wrapped around the first thing in reach. He swung only once and before he realised what he had done it was over and there was nothing anybody could do. Billie was gone.

To escape the law, the son of a bitch kidnapped his son and they disappeared. The road was a cold experience. Partly because Roy was a cold man who didn’t like people, and partly because it was no place for a child to grow up. Roy would go days without talking to his son and there were many nights where Tom would have to sleep under the truck while the old man banged some rough piece of arse in the cab. Then there were the beatings. Tom learnt to tune out during them and put his mind someplace else until Roy tired or finished. It wasn’t until years later, after Roy had the life kicked out of him and Tom was in an orphanage, that the violence inside him began to show. At first, small outbursts, then much worse. His first schoolyard fight sent a kid to the nurse, his second to the hospital, and with his third he almost killed some poor little bastard who’d bagged him for not being able to kick a footy straight. He never knew when to stop; he just kept throwing punches until he was pulled off whoever was on the receiving end of his demons.

When he was fifteen years old, he escaped from the orphanage. It wasn’t the first time, but this time it stuck. He picked up a job as a labourer on a construction site and quickly fitted in. It was Tom’s first taste of a normal life and he liked it, enjoyed it; he relaxed. Even started dating a local girl. Her name was Dianne; he made her laugh and she taught him how to read. But no matter how good things were, he could never escape the violence. It lingered over his shoulder. Behind him. Lurking. The darkness was always with him, and one night the beast inside Tom Bishop came out when Dianne’s father got drunk and slapped her. It took four uniforms to pull Bishop off and, when they did, Dianne’s father looked more like a side of beef than a man.

Patrick Wilson was one of those uniforms. Already a thirteen-year veteran, he had seen the darkness before. He also saw glimpses of his son Daniel in Bishop. They both had the same honesty. Wilson and his wife Mona had watched their little boy slowly fade away from leukaemia when he was five years old. Neither of them ever really recovered. Wilson threw all his time and effort into the job and rose quickly through the ranks, while Mona doted on her nieces, nephews and any hard luck case she could find to plug the hole in her life.

Wilson called in all his favours. The assault charge disappeared and Tom went to live with him and Mona. There were rules and Tom liked them. For the first time, he had structure in his life. School, chores and a routine. Gradually, Wilson taught him discipline. He taught him self-control and that, if he was going to unleash the beast, to unleash it on those who deserved it.

It was light by the time Bishop brought the sedan to a stop outside Alice’s home. The lights were still on from the night before. Somebody was up and about.

Alice let her gaze fall self-consciously to the floor. ‘So this is it?’ she asked.

‘I guess it is.’

‘Would you like to come inside?’ It wasn’t so much an invitation. He got the feeling she didn’t want to go herself.

Bishop took a breath. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to be a father.’

She wanted him to say more. When he didn’t, she pushed open the door and was halfway out when Bishop grabbed her arm. He reached for his wallet. ‘You need any money?’

‘No,’ she said. Bishop could almost see the hope fade from her body as she pulled away from him. She navigated the cluttered yard of garden furniture and relics of children’s play equipment and didn’t look back. Bishop watched her struggle to find her keys. She dropped them at the door, scooped them up and then finally got them to work. Inside, it didn’t take long for the yelling to begin, most of it indistinguishable, all of it unpleasant. Bishop listened for a moment before putting the sound out of his mind and the car into gear. He made it past a couple more dumps before pulling in again, his eyes on the rear-view with Alice’s place in frame. He scratched the back of his head, cursed himself and turned off the engine.

A minute later, he was at the door. Knocked twice. When nothing happened, he knocked a third time. The door was cheap; if he knocked any harder, his fist would go right through it. The yelling ceased and a moment later the door swung open.

Stacy Cameron hadn’t aged well. By the looks of it, she had been around the block more than a few times and had the frayed edges to prove it. She stepped back, checked him out and seemed to like what she saw. ‘Well, well, well. Tom Bishop,’ she slurred. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Can I come in?’ he mumbled.

One glance at the joint was all Bishop needed. In a flash, he took in the mismatched junk-store furniture and the holes in the walls from the assembly of men that had passed through on sloppy drunken nights.

Stacy leant against the fridge, slipped. She was drunk and pretending she wasn’t. ‘What do you think of our little pride and joy?’ she said as she shoved a cigarette between her lipstick-smeared lips. She sparked her lighter and on the third crack got a flame. ‘You look like you’re doing alright. Give us fifty bucks.’

Bishop stared at her. She bored him.

Across the worn carpet, Alice stood in the doorway and, when she saw Bishop, she was embarrassed for smiling.

‘Want to get out of here?’ he asked.

Alice scooped up her handbag from the back of the couch. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ Stacy raised the back of her hand.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Bishop warned her.

The don’t-fuck-around tone of his voice was enough to stop her dead. She looked to her daughter and let out a sob. Alice saw right through the performance, and by the time Stacy realised it, they were already out the door and halfway to Bishop’s car.

Bishop explained to his daughter that he was a single man. He told her he wasn’t father material. He told her she could stay with him for a few days until they sorted something out, but when she smiled he knew he’d do whatever she wanted.