Roll With It (11 page)

‘Umm, no, I haven’t got keys like that, certainly not on me.’ Salter’s right hand involuntarily drifted towards his pants pocket. He tried to adopt a firm tone. ‘I think maybe it might be better if you just left, thank you. I don’t think Salter’s Special Auto Stadium actually wants to do business with a man such as yourself. There are plenty of other lots along this road. So move along, please son. Thank you.’

The Wild Man took one fast step forward and ripped a short, sharp left uppercut into Salter’s ample stomach. The salesman didn’t even see it, only found himself trying desperately, unexpectedly, to breathe. His lungs couldn’t find any air as he bent double, arms futilely trying to protect his gut after the damage was done. The Wild Man glanced around, then hit Salter twice in the face: once on the right temple and then flush on the nose. There was a breaking sound from within the nose and blood started to flow instantly. Salter went down, making a low moaning sound, his shoulder sliding against the door of a Corolla station wagon, and the Wild Man kicked him three times in the chest, breaking ribs, before lifting Salter up by the tie and giving him a last, heavy punch to the face. Salter gurgled a little as he sank back onto the bitumen.

The Wild Man crouched, dug into Salter’s right-hand pants pocket and grabbed the substantial bunch of keys he found there. He expertly flicked through them until he found the ones he wanted: a Subaru key and the single Lockwood padlock key on the bunch. Straightening, he walked fast around the bonnet of the Subaru and unlocked the padlock holding the metal chain that acted as a fence for the lot.

About two hundred metres south, a caryard worker yelled, ‘Hey!’ and started moving in the Wild Man’s direction.

The Wild Man waved a single finger in the guy’s direction then ducked back around the car, kicked the inert Salter in the kidneys, and slid into the Subaru’s driver’s seat.

The guy yelled ‘Hey!’ more loudly and broke into a run as the Wild Man fired the engine, slammed the gearstick into first and planted his foot, erupting onto the Nepean Highway in a wide-arcing left-hand turn that had several cars veering wildly to avoid him, horns blasting.

The Wild Man raced up to ninety kilometres per hour, screaming the gears through second and into third, before swinging left again and then right down a side street. This ring of skeleton keys is pure fucking gold, he thought to himself, grinning madly. Driving more sedately, he cruised along until he spotted a white Commodore parked outside a row of single-fronted shops. He parked the Subaru, got out, walked calmly but quickly up to the Commodore, inserted the appropriate key and managed to pull out without anybody noticing.

He wove his way back to the Nepean Highway and headed for the city, pulling off his beanie and glancing at Salter’s Special Auto Stadium just long enough to register the group of people huddled around a blue-suited form, one blonde girl talking furiously into a mobile phone.

The Wild Man flicked on the radio and winced when talk-back voices filled the car. He punched buttons until he found Triple J. That was more like it.

The Wild Man cranked the volume and enjoyed the drive.

***

‘Well, Stig, this is a surprise.’ The voice of Andrew Wo, one of Melbourne’s rising drug stars, came calmly through the phone. ‘I’d heard some bad news about you, mate. You seem healthier than the Queensland authorities would have the world believe.’

‘Alive and well and loving the Darwin weather. But let’s keep all those facts between us, hey, Andrew?’

Stig hoping that some profitable dealings with Wo before he went north would count for something.

‘You can’t seriously be trying to go behind Jenssen’s back?’ Wo said.

‘Once in a lifetime opportunity, Andrew, and top secret so nobody will even know. You in?’

There was silence. Then Wo said, ‘You’re insane. I want no part of it.’

‘Why?’ Stig was genuinely shocked. ‘I can get the gear down to Melbourne within a day. What do you owe Jenssen?’

‘Nothing, Stig. It’s about staying alive. I owe the man nothing, but I also have no wish to find myself at war with him.’

‘For Christ’s sake. I’d heard you were the new muscle here.’

‘Do you mean Melbourne or Darwin?’ Stig winced at his slip, but luckily Andrew didn’t wait for a response. ‘I am a rising star, Stig – mostly because I conduct smart business. It’s time we wrapped this up. Now.’

‘Okay. Sure. I respect that,’ Stig said. ‘Andrew?’

‘What?’

‘Just because you don’t want in doesn’t mean you have to fuck me, does it?’

‘What can you possibly mean by that?’

‘Can we keep the fact that I’m alive between us?’

‘Of course, Stig. I’m not entirely amoral, you know.’

‘I’m sorry, Andrew. You’re right, I shouldn’t have raised it. Just nervous, I guess. Better safe than sorry, hey?’

Andrew Wo chuckled quietly. ‘Better safe than sorry? Better safe than fucking sorry? My friend, you left that behind forever the moment you took this path. Good luck, but please do not contact me again.’

Another night of being tormented by Wesley Coleman’s ghost.
It was standing mutely at the end of the bed when Laver woke from what might be called sleep. Laver rolled over and growled at it to piss off. The ghost was still there forty-five minutes later when he woke yet again – Laver had serious words with it at that point – but then it was gone half an hour after that.

Now he lay on his back, groggy and as tired as before he’d tried to sleep. Said to the room: ‘You shot at me first, you prick. Go to hell.’

Laver staggered out of bed and winced at his stiff legs – which seemed like his biggest problem, until he sat down for breakfast and almost yelped at how tender his buttocks were.

‘Who is the bastard who invented the bike seat?’ he mused aloud to the empty flat. ‘Coleman, wherever you are? Got an answer to that?’

Driving to Collingwood, he frowned at the rain lashing the windscreen. The only sure way to end Melbourne’s endless drought – the cause of catastrophic bushfires and dangerously low water levels in the dam, the reason the cricket ovals were bone-dry and trees across the city were wilting – was to send Laver out on a pushbike so the gods could pour buckets of rain on his sorry head.

It was just like when Melbourne and Sydney staged the biggest charity concerts ever, for the bushfire appeal, and it had bucketed rain in both cities all day. Laver had long ago come to the conclusion that God, or nature or whatever you wanted to call it, had a perverse sense of humour.

At the Mobile Public Interaction Squad’s office, Slattery took one look at Laver and didn’t pair him up with anybody. Cecy headed off with Ratten, giving him a small wave as she left. Laver donned his ridiculously luminous green rain jacket with ‘POLICE’ in black letters on the back, rode the two blocks from Wellington Street to Brunswick Street, rain trickling down his neck the whole time, and hobbled to one of the bench seats, which required less leg-bending, in the window at Mario’s, wondering if his arse would hurt less if he sat on a folded newspaper. Instead, he took off the glowing green jacket and sat on that.

Now that he was off the road, the rain backed off noticeably. Cruel as well as perverse.

As he sipped his coffee, Laver’s thoughts turned to his fiancée. Marcia had hardly been in touch. Told him she was going to the theatre with a friend one night; too tired to come over, another. Giving him that distracted ‘uh huh, uh huh’ on the phone that she only did when she was actually working on her computer, or surfing Facebook, or doing something else while pretending to listen to him. When Laver tried to bring her up to speed on the worrying lack of an actual inquiry date, Marcia was barely concealing yawns down the phone.

‘You don’t give a shit about this stuff?’ he asked her straight out.

‘It’s just part of the game, isn’t it? You look contrite, they tell you off. “Bad boy, Tony. Don’t shoot anybody else, okay?” You say, “Sure, sorry again.” Then you head back out when it’s done, gun packed, until the next one. Why should I get worked up about it?’

‘Babe, I killed a man.’

‘I know. Got a tattoo marking the occasion yet?’

‘Fuck, Marcia.’

‘Fuck what? I know how you cowboys work.’

You cowboys. Not him, her fiancé. Not her Tony. You cowboys.

Laver knew a lot of cop marriages gone wrong. Christ, he’d already had one of his own. Being married to a cop was a tough gig that took a certain sort of person, and a woman who showed little to no empathy when her partner killed somebody was not off to a good start.

Laver wondered where she was, not just physically but mentally. Why wouldn’t Marcia have rallied to be with him, to support him, now of all times? Her future husband’s career was destroyed; he’d been dragged out of Major Crime onto a fucking pushbike. How could she stand by, watching him lose everything, even the ability to sleep? Well, actually, not watching that at all because she simply wasn’t there. Laver wondered how long this slide, this distance between them, had been brewing. How had he missed it?

She’d said often enough that he was already married to the job when he’d raised the issue of when they might actually get hitched. Maybe she’d meant it. Maybe he had been. He needed to talk to her.

He was on his second coffee when he saw the silver Commodore shuffling south towards the city, stuck behind a tram and the usual snarled traffic. Laver sighed as he saw the familiar faces recognise him and break into grins. The light had just gone red on Johnston Street, so the car would be there for a couple of minutes. Laver creaked to his feet, signalled to the waiter that he’d be back and wandered out to the middle of the road to say hello.

‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t Lance fucking Armstrong,’ said Steve ‘Beer With’ Duncan, a Major Crime detective.

‘Jealous yet, desk bunnies?’ asked Laver. ‘Squid, imagine how good you’d look in this gear.’

Evelyn Calomoulous looked unconvinced. ‘I’d certainly carry it off better in the legs, Rocket. You look hobbled. Is that from riding bikes or should I be impressed by Marcia’s abilities?’

‘Only if you mean her ability to kick kneecaps. Forget any bedroom stuff, even if I was capable of it right now.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said, wincing sympathetically. ‘Life doesn’t look so bad though! How’s the coffee?’

‘It’s good. In fact this whole new job is nothing but exceptional coffee, suntans, beautiful pedestrians, gorgeous tourists wanting personal service, and the deep satisfaction of being a serving member of Australia’s finest police force.’

‘Hating it, huh?’ said Duncan.

‘I’m going insane. Some if it is fun but shit, it’s like going back to primary school.’

‘Decent teammates?’ Evelyn asked.

‘Some great kids, others totally dickwads. You know how it is.’

She looked deliberately at Laver and then at Duncan before she said, deadpan, ‘Yes. I know exactly how it is.’

‘We’re not supposed to be talking to you, you know,’ said Duncan.

‘Yeah, funny.’

‘Dead set,’ Duncan insisted. ‘The boss made it very clear. No contact. You’re in deep, deep Siberia.’

Laver stared at him. ‘Siberia? Broadbent said that?’

‘Well, it felt like he was the messenger, the way he said it,’ Beer With grinned. ‘Anyway, doesn’t mean we listened to him, mate. So what’s the plan?’

‘The plan? Jesus, I don’t know. Mountain biking is an Olympic event now. I could still make the next ones.’

‘You coming back to Major?’

‘You tell me. Depends on the pollies mostly. The deep Siberia bit is a worry. You heard anything on my post mortem?’

Duncan grinned. ‘Inquiry, Rocket. It’s an inquiry. A post mortem is what they had to do on that poor bastard you plugged.’

‘The one that shot at me first. You heard anything?’

‘You kidding? Down in our little mushroom patch?’

Laver glanced up at the light: still red. ‘What are you two up to?’

‘Wild goose chase,’ said Beer With. ‘We’ve been investigating a supermarket in the inner north as a potential drug distribution centre, but it seems unlikely.’

‘How far in are you?’

‘Not far. Just having a look, digging some records. Paperwork, Rocket, remember that?’

‘Thing of the past.’

The light turned green but traffic remained jammed on Johnston Street, three cars caught across the intersection so that the Brunswick Street traffic couldn’t move in either direction. A chorus of horns started up.

‘Shouldn’t you be on to that, officer?’ Evelyn said, nodding towards the confusion. ‘That looks like a challenging job for a member of the Elite Public Mobile Interaction Squad.’

Laver regarded the chaos. One of the drivers blocking the intersection on Johnston was giving the finger to the drivers at the front of the Brunswick Street queue. They leaned harder on their horns in response.

‘Hmm, looks a little heavy. I don’t think I’m up to dealing with aggression yet. I’m working my way up from lost tourists.’

Finally, the cars shifted and traffic began to move. Rocket stood and jogged painfully back to the parked cars on the Mario’s side of the street.

‘See you, Rocket,’ called Evelyn. ‘On the other side of Siberia. Maybe even the Christmas party.’ Rocket looked back at them as Duncan shrugged and started to drive.