ThornyDevils
THORNYDEVILS
Other books by TW Lawless
HOMECOUNTRY
THORNYDEVILS
TW LAWLESS
Published by TW Lawless
www.twlawless.com
First published 2014
© 2014 TW Lawless
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
ISBN: 978 1 925 11283 2 (pbk)
978 1 925 11284 9 (ebk–ePub)
978 1 925 11285 6 (ebk–mobi)
Cover design by Greg Alex-Vasey
Edited by Christine Nigel Literary Services
Designed, typeset and printed by Palmer Higgs Pty Ltd
palmerhiggs.com.au
Distributed by Palmer Higgs Books
phbooks.com.au
To Kay
For all your love and support.
Without you this would have all remained a dream.
CONTENTS
MARVELLOUS MURDEROUS MELBOURNE
1
Melbourne. Winter 1989
Peter was thinking of a Beatles’ song as he ran along King Street; the one that had been written about Melbourne when they had toured here in 1964.
Rain
. It was the B-side to
Paperback Writer
.
The rain had just started pissing down. Peter loved Melbourne but hated its rain. It wasn’t anything like the warm downpours of Townsville. It was always cold and chilling, like rain you would equate with being lost on the Yorkshire Moors, and always unexpected. Five minutes ago it was sunny. No, Melbourne’s rain was more like a mother-in-law’s kiss: unwanted, unnerving and unpredictable.
Now, he was running down King Street with a sodden footy magazine held over his head, as the sudden deluge pelted down. He stepped onto the pedestrian crossing as a car swept around the corner, nearly knocking him over and spraying him with water. Peter swore at the car as he righted himself, then continued running across the street, saturated and humiliated. The rain, impatient drivers and the thought of having to leave the comfort of a warm bed and a willing lover were all running through Peter’s head when he reached the sanctuary of
The Truth
office’s front door. He pushed it open gratefully and stepped inside.
Shazza’s head was hanging in her hands like a broken limb from a tree. She didn’t raise it as Peter peered over the counter, but moaned a painful greeting.
‘What happened this time?’ Peter said cheerfully. He wanted to bang the front door bell but he suspected that Shazza might throw her typewriter at him.
‘Can’t remember,’ she grunted without looking up. ‘Only meant to go to the club for a couple of quiet drinks. I reckon someone spiked me drink.’ Shazza managed to raise her head slowly.
Poor Shazza
, Peter thought. Her face was a nightshade of death, and two bloodshot eyes hung from her head like a pair of clots. Her head dropped into her hands again.
‘I’m gonna give up the piss. For sure this time. Honest. I’m done with this,’ she said with conviction. ‘Care to join me?’
‘I only get pissed on the weekend. You know that,’ Peter retorted.
‘And what about the rest of the time, Mister Clancy? You drink milk?’
‘A nightcap every night never hurt anybody. It helps me sleep like a baby.’
‘How’s that? You wake up with a wet bed?’ Shazza managed a hoarse laugh. ‘What’s the bet, I can give up the piss before you. You want to lay some money on the table?’
‘I don’t need to, Shazz. I am the master of my drinking habits,’ Peter grinned.
‘Jeez, you’re deluded. Don’t come crying to me when your liver has kicked the bucket and you’ve turned yellow.’
Peter skilfully turned the conversation towards work. ‘Any messages?’
‘Talking about delusions. Message from one of your colourful sources.’
‘Which one?’
‘How do I say this? He, or should I say, she? What was her name?’
‘Have you ever thought of writing down information? In your current condition I wouldn’t rely on that memory anymore.’
‘Written down. Just before me memory cells packed it in,’ Shazza said as she handed Peter a screwed up piece of paper. ‘That’s right.
Concheetah
, she called herself.’
‘I haven’t heard from her for a while,’ Peter pondered as he slipped the note into his trouser pocket.
‘So, what the hell is it? Boy or girl, or both?’
‘A Les Girl.’
‘One of those,’ Shazza observed. ‘You keep odd company.’
Peter left Shazza in her death throes and made his way to his desk, past an assortment of cubicles left and right, each containing one of
an odd collection of characters who had listed their occupation as journalist. A motley, moth-eaten, maggot-ridden bunch.
One of them was Kyle, the cadet journalist. Doe-eyed, naïve and riddled with acne vulgaris. Peter enjoyed torturing Kyle. Nothing too cruel, just a few life-lessons designed to keep him in check. A kind of journalistic hazing, a tradition passed down the generations. The obligatory cigarette hung limply from Kyle’s mouth, and the requisite steaming coffee sat on his desk. He looked up at Peter, admiration in his eyes. He still had a lot to learn.
‘What was that thing again? The introverted pyramid?’ Kyle asked.
Too early to think
. ‘Inverted pyramid, Kyle,’ Peter muttered as he stumbled past.
Coffee. I need a coffee.
‘The coffee machine’s working?’ Peter asked of nobody. ‘I could really do with a coffee.’
There was no reply. The air hung heavy with male odour and smoke.
This place could do with some female influence
, Peter thought, but what female in their right mind would ever want to work here? Besides, female journalists weren’t all that common. Not at
The Truth
, at any rate.
Why do people become journalists, anyway? We all start out acting like war correspondents, but we eventually have to concede to being lowly paid. Then we become cynical after dealing with broken marriages, affairs with the grog and thwarted ambitions. Most of us will be dead in our fifties, if we’re lucky, or we’ll get a second wind writing racy thriller novels or become an old hack. Where do journos go when they die? Wherever it is, it has to have hot coffee and plenty of booze
.
Mad Dog was having a loud argument with the coffee percolator as Peter approached the kitchen.
‘Anything wrong?’ Peter asked hesitantly.
Mad Dog spun around and looked like he might go into a combat stance but instead he threw a cautious, wild-eyed stare at Peter. Mad Dog, as he had designated himself, was the most notable of the staff photographers. No one knew his real name. It had to be Mad Dog and nothing else. Not Dog. And certainly not Mad. Peter had once heard a vague rumour that it may have been Neville or Quentin, but only Bob knew his real name and he wasn’t confessing.
Mad Dog had cut his teeth—and most probably altered his brain waves—as a war photographer in Vietnam. He had had the reputation of getting close to the action, into the core of battle. Now he was,
according to the Mad Dog, confined to outing the morally rancid of society. Apparently, Mad Dog had once crawled into a Viet Cong tunnel and got a photograph of a surprised medical team operating on a wounded brother-in-arms. Peter had long wondered why Mad Dog was here and not residing in a comfortable mental health facility.
‘Useless as tits on a boar pig,’ Mad Dog replied as he twiddled the buttons on the machine. Peter recalled when Bob had bought it for the office, all of four, long years ago.
‘The coffee’s too cold,’ he complained, as if on the verge of tears. Peter was ready to throw a sympathetic arm around the battle-weary photographer, when he remembered it was Mad Dog. Mad Dog had a bite. Instead, Peter had a fiddle with the machine and then thumped it with his fist. A red light flashed it into life.
A promising indicator of a successful coffee machine resuscitation
.
‘That might work,’ Peter suggested. ‘Leave it for a half hour.’
At that, Mad Dog seemed to relax. Peter was the undesignated office coffee machine mechanic in his department, which was a heavy burden in a place full of hard-core caffeine addicts.
Why couldn’t it have been Kyle?
Kyle was young enough to understand the inner workings of appliances. Coffee was to journalists like a blood transfusion to a road trauma victim. If the machine broke down completely (and he suspected it wasn’t far away), God help him. Peter wouldn’t be able to stem the tide of rebellion. And it would be he that would be the object of the mob violence. He would be chased up Bourke Street by a rabid, baying pack of journos.
‘Can you ask Bob to buy another machine? This one’s about to shit itself,’ Mad Dog asked through gritted teeth as he flipped an empty cup in his hand and shoved his face closer to Peter’s.
‘I asked him last week. Like I did the week before and the week before that,’ Peter replied defensively, feeling as if he had been pushed against a wall and now had a bright light pressed into his face.
‘Ask the fat cunt harder.’
‘I’ll mention it to him again today.’
‘You know this place runs on coffee. We have to have our coffee. We can’t function without coffee.’ Mad Dog was addressing the rebellious crowd at the Bastille with his political manifesto. His declaration was so loud, in fact, that some of the journos managed to look up from their work long enough to clap. One even held a clenched fist in the air.
Put it down, Kyle,
Peter thought.
You’re a cadet. You have no rights
.
‘See?’ Mad Dog beamed as he looked around the office.
‘All right, all right, don’t hang me yet.’
‘You need me today? Whose life are we ruining today?’ Mad Dog asked gleefully.
‘I’ll let you know. I’ve got to ring a source,’ Peter replied as he inched away from Mad Dog’s clutches.
‘When you’re ready, I’m ready for action.’
Peter always wondered why a war photographer would want to hang out of trees or lie under a garbage lid to take photos of bare-breasted women or clandestine lovers. Maybe Mad Dog thought he was still at war? At war with the public.
Peter retreated into the sanctuary of his cubicle, leaving Mad Dog hovering impatiently over the coffee machine. He placed his tie-dyed, knotted Indian sling bag on top of a mountain of manila folders. His battered briefcase, a hangover from university, had managed to fall apart as he was walking along King Street one morning. Its contents of papers and photographs of the latest page three girls had spewed across the street.
Embarrassing
. The sling bag was a quick replacement but it had subjected him to office ribbing like,
going hippie?
and the like. He had developed a fondness for the bag. It appealed to his sense of the bohemian.
Peter had the reputation of having the messiest desk in the office, followed closely by Reg Whitlock. Reg’s desk lurked somewhere under bales of racing guides, tied up with tatty string, photographs of horses and jockeys and betting chits. He lived his passion. As
The Truth
’s racing columnist, Reg was usually at the tracks getting the certs, running tight with the racing fraternity and the lowlifes; you didn’t see him much. Not much time to tidy up his desk. When Reg was around, he always liked to inform you his racing column was the moneymaker for
The Truth
.
Shake your moneymaker, Reg
.
It was a close contest, but Peter’s desk had been judged and awarded the Brown Turd by Bob over Reg’s. Third year in a row. Piles of tumbling folders and press releases, a collection of takeaway coffee cups that Peter had stacked into a pyramid at one side of the desk. It was going to rival Giza, one of his colleagues once teased. Even the drawers were jammed with files. Yet he could still locate any file he wanted. It was a gift. Like finding a clean handkerchief at a rubbish dump. In the detritus somewhere was his beloved word processor, his collection of blue biros and paper clips. A journalist’s rule: you can’t
do your job without paperclips or pens. The other rule: no cartoon strips, personal pictures or motivational sayings stuck on the cubicle wall. How would you ever be taken seriously as a Seeker of Truth if you did that?