by Candice Fox
I heard him roll through the bush before I reached the point at which he’d disappeared. Amanda and I ran down the slope, crashing through the undergrowth, my feet somehow finding a place between the fallen branches and tangled vines. The sound of sirens rose like a wail from beyond the forest. I realised Amanda must have called the police when she ran back for her bike. At the same time, I saw the unmistakeable pattern of blue and white checks whizz through the thinning rainforest up ahead.
The petrol station at the side of the road seemed to materialise out of nowhere. Amanda sprinted ahead of me down the muddy path, following Hogan towards the back door. I heard the crunch of brakes skidding on gravel out the front of the petrol station.
‘He’s unarmed! He’s unarmed! Don’t shoot!’ I heard Amanda scream.
Two gunshots split the air.
Three seconds. Maybe less. That’s all I needed to get a hold of the situation. I stepped inside the door of the petrol station and walked to the aisle where the drinks fridges lined the wall. And there I found Dylan Hogan on the floor, gripping two holes in his chest. Amanda was bowed over him, her hands covered in blood, desperately trying to gather the folds of Dylan’s shirt and his own hands over the wounds, to somehow cover up and deny their existence and save the dying man’s life.
I looked up and saw Joanna Fischer standing there, both hands gripped around her black Glock 22, the smell of expired gunpowder still hanging thinly in the air. In three seconds I saw Dylan and Amanda and then Joanna, and I saw on Joanna’s face the vicious intent in her eyes. The intent to fire again where the barrel of the gun was already pointed, right at Amanda’s head.
Joanna’s eyes flicked to me. Nothing else about her moved. She didn’t even seem to be breathing. The decision was like a switch flipped. She took her finger off the trigger, and the intent drained from her features, sucked away instantly as footsteps sounded at the front of the shop.
‘Oh no. Oh, man.’ Superfish assessed the scene and dropped his own aim, his gun slipping back into his holster with relief while his body slumped at the sight of Hogan. He turned and shouted towards the doorway, where more officers were sliding their cars into the lot. ‘Clear in here! Clear!’
When I looked back at Joanna, it was as though a different person stood there. Her eyes were already wet with tears. She holstered her gun with shaking hands.
‘Oh god,’ she stammered. ‘I … I shot him. I shot him.’
‘Conkaffey.’ Superfish pointed at me. ‘Put your weapon away. Get Amanda’s gun now, please.’
I did as I was told, taking Amanda’s weapon from the floor and ejecting the magazine. The small space around us was suddenly crowded with cops. Someone was taking my arm, shoving at me, barking. I was standing outside by the petrol pumps, feeling all the numb dread of a man facing the firing squad, suddenly unable to focus on anything but the ringing in my ears from the gunshots. The petrol station employees were gathering together at the pumps, wide-eyed and silent like frightened birds.
Joanna Fischer was crying into her hands. Chief Clark had appeared out of nowhere and was listening with his arms folded, Amanda and Joanna before him, the angry father assessing as one bullied child described a fray while the other waited for her turn.
‘She shouted, “He’s armed! He’s armed! Shoot!” So I shot him.’ Joanna was really putting on a show, her whole body shaking now. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I did not say that,’ Amanda protested, watching Joanna’s performance calmly. ‘I said the exact opposite.’
‘Why would you say he was armed when he wasn’t?’ Joanna howled at Amanda. ‘Oh god, I’ve killed a man. I’ve killed a man!’
I strode into the huddle, pushing Amanda aside.
‘I can back up what Amanda said,’ I told Chief Clark, whose eyes were downcast, his fists clenching and unclenching. ‘So can the staff. Does the petrol station CCTV have audio? It’ll be on the tape. I’m a witness. This is a set-up. This is a fucking set-up! Joanna shot Dylan Hogan and she’d have shot Amanda if I wasn’t there.’
Joanna gave a dramatic gasp of horror, grabbed at her throat and mouth like she was going to be sick. Clark was visibly trembling with rage.
‘You’re out.’ He pointed at me, at Amanda. ‘You’re both out. Go home. That’s it for you. That’s all I’m willing to take.’
‘Amanda didn’t –’
‘Get out of here!’ Clark roared so loudly and so hatefully that I stepped back, thinking he was going to swing at me. ‘Go now, before I knock your fucking face in!’
I stormed off towards the petrol pumps and kicked over a rubbish bin, picked up a squeegee and flung it at one of the pumps. I didn’t know Amanda was behind me until I turned and almost shouted an obscenity in pure rage right into her face. I didn’t get a sound out. Her bloody fist smashed into my left cheekbone with the full force of her body, a blow that pounded through my skull and seemed to leave in a red burst of energy at the back of my head.
She held up a finger as I tried to recover.
‘Call me crazy again,’ she said, red rivulets of Dylan Hogan’s blood running down her wrist. ‘I dare you, Ted.’
I didn’t say anything. I held my face, and we stood together in silence, watching as the ambulance arrived and Joanna was given oxygen while the paramedics worked on Hogan inside. I knew the maintenance man was dead when one of them came wandering out, talking on a mobile phone, his uniform splattered with blood.
Superfish looked over at me once or twice, but he stayed at his partner’s side.
Lillian and Celine were doing their performance at the screen door when I arrived home, which might have brought a smile to my face were it not for the bruise throbbing and growing on my cheekbone. I snatched Lillian up from the ground as soon as I got inside the hall and held her, and the mere feel of her arms around my neck decreased the pain in my body by half.
‘Daddy’s had the worst day ever,’ I told her as she puzzled over my swollen, colouring cheek. ‘He’s going to need constant cuddles for at least six or seven hours.’
Val was in the kitchen reading a newspaper, half-moon glasses perched on the slope of her hooked nose.
‘Worst day ever?’ she said without looking up. ‘That must have been a real zinger. Weren’t you falsely arrested for the second time not a week ago?’ She finally looked up as I set Lillian down and went to the fridge to get icepacks. ‘Oh, wow.’
‘My partner punched me,’ I said. ‘A hobo threw boiling hepatitis coffee at me. The lead suspect in our case was gunned down, after admitting that he’d killed our victim. We have no idea where he’s hidden the body, and we may never discover that now. I ran after him for bloody miles and some itchy plant has scratched my arm and I think I’ve twisted a muscle in my groin region.’
‘These nightly reports of your cheerful investigative jaunts around town are so alluring. They make me wish I’d been a private investigator in my younger years.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘Coulda shoulda woulda.’
I slumped into the chair across from Val, and Celine stuck her nose under my hand for pats. The plant I’d brushed up against in the rainforest had spread a weird red rash down my left forearm. I held an icepack to my eye and stroked the dog with my right hand, balancing another ice pack on the burn mark or twisted muscle near my groin that I hadn’t yet examined. Val looked at me with amused pity.
‘And how was your day, Nanna?’ I asked.
‘You know, the same old stuff.’ She let Lillian climb up into her lap. ‘I took one kid to the morgue to look at burned bone fragments possibly belonging to a different kid.’
‘Delightful,’ I said.
‘She didn’t see anything morbid. I had some nurses up in the children’s ward watch her in their playroom while I worked.’
‘What was the verdict? Were they human remains?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she sighed, curling one of Lillian’s ringlets around her finger. ‘A good deal of what I did today was separating bone fragments from s
oil. The remains were burned for days, it looks like. I’ve had a look at the microscopic structure of the bones. The osteons are scattered and evenly spaced, which is consistent with human remains. But I don’t have any other species osteons to compare it with. It’s not my area of expertise. We’ll need to bring in an anthropologist, do some chemical tests.’
‘I’m sorry; osteons?’
‘Little bone pattern thingies.’
‘Right.’
‘Even if they are human, they’re not the boy’s. Is that what you’re saying?’ she asked.
I explained what had happened, the chase and Dylan Hogan’s confession to me, the shooting in the petrol station. Lillian didn’t seem to be listening. She talked over me, telling no one in particular a story that was impossible to follow.
‘So the boy’s dead.’ Val nodded when I was done, watching Lillian fiddling with a gold chain hanging around her neck. ‘I guess I’d held out a hope until now that he wasn’t. I wonder what happened. I hope it was only an accident, like the man said.’
I buried half my face in the soothing ice pack, and we both sat silently as my child sang a garbled, repeating song that seemed to be about beetles. In time I put a hand on the table, and Lillian reached over and slapped her little palm down into mine.
‘There’s only one thing for it, baby,’ I told the little girl. ‘It’s time for the geese to have a party.’
Amanda sat with her bare feet up on the plastic picnic table at the bikie camp, her toes wiggling against the gold light of the distant fire, impossibly small beside Llewellyn Bruce’s boots. She could see her own reflection in one of the enormous polished buckles holding the leather tight around the old man’s thick ankles. They were alone, the camp’s three other occupants that night gathered on the water’s edge, shadows moving between the palm trees. Deep in thought, she watched the flames and found herself huffing with frustration through her nose.
‘If you’re gonna sit there snorting and snivelling, I’m gonna move,’ Bruce said. She looked over at the big man lounging in the plastic chair beside her, his hairy, tattooed arms folded over his belly and a cap pulled down over his eyes.
‘He doesn’t trust me,’ Amanda said.
‘Who?’
‘Conkaffey.’
‘That’s a shame,’ the old man sniffed. ‘He’s about the only friend you got.’
‘How can he not trust me?’ Amanda complained. ‘I’ve been right about everything. It was me who helped him solve his own case. It was me who discovered the thieves behind the Barking Frog. I’m always right.’
‘I’m always right,’ Bruce muttered, on the edge of sleep. ‘Famous last words.’
‘He doesn’t want me hanging around here with you guys,’ Amanda said. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘I don’t know why he worries about us,’ Bruce said. ‘Bad people are predictable. We’ll always do the wrong thing. It’s easier. It’s faster. Cops and heroes – those are the ones you have to worry about. The temptation is always there to cross over, to cut corners, to break the rules. Good people are always treading water, trying not to drown. Bottom-dwellers like us have gills.’
Amanda nodded, sighed again. ‘I wasn’t going to shoot Hogan,’ she complained. Bruce grunted his assent, but she wouldn’t let go. She sipped her beer. ‘I mean, I wasn’t planning on shooting him, anyway. It might have ended up being a good idea. But I didn’t get a chance to decide. I would only have put one in his kneecap or something.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’ Bruce scratched his belly.
‘Point is, I know what I’m doing,’ Amanda said.
‘I’m always right,’ Bruce said. ‘I know what I’m doing. You sound desperate. You better curb that shit. People will think you’re weak.’
‘I’m not.’ Amanda folded her arms. ‘I’ve got Joanna Fischer handled. I’m not crazy. She’s crazy. She killed a guy. I’ve got no problem with that, but, honey, at least get yourself a good reason first. That man died today so she could mess with me, get me off the case. Now that kid’s bones will rot away in the earth somewhere and we may never find them.’
Bruce said nothing.
‘The petrol station CCTV is going to show what I said.’ Amanda nibbled at her cuticles. ‘I spoke to the owner on the phone. The shop’s security system had audio, and it would have been running. Nothing to worry about.’
They watched as the men at the beach began walking towards the camp. There seemed to be too many shadows between the trees. Amanda felt a strange twisting in her stomach. She watched as the shapes in the dark divided, seemed to multiply. But before she could understand what she was seeing, the slide lock on a gun ratcheted back sickeningly close to her left ear. She and Bruce stood at the same time, causing the plastic table to scrape in the dirt. There were two short, stocky men standing at the edge of the shed, their standard-issue police semiautomatic pistols pointed at the pair.
The men were masked, but Amanda recognised a couple of them. Constable Frisp was one of the two that walked Bruce and Amanda out of the shed. She thought she saw Ng among the five men who were holding guns on Jimbo, Rocko and Kidneys as they walked them up from the beach. In the light from the campfire, the bikers exchanged nervous glances.
There was no plan for this. No one had ever considered the possibility of a quiet, controlled ambush on their own turf on an otherwise ordinary evening, seven men strolling in while the bikies’ guns were littered about the place, useless now, the closest one sitting on an upturned bucket surrounded by wary, growling dogs. It was embarrassing how easily they were overcome, herded towards the firelight like civilian hostages.
None of their rival gangs would ever have dared this. These men were walking into a bullpen with a cattle prod. What they couldn’t know was that just their hostile arrival was something that wouldn’t be forgiven, maybe for decades.
Bruce watched as one of them put his gun away and took a baton from his belt, flicking it open with a sharp, grinding sound.
‘This is a bad idea, fellas.’ Bruce shook his head ruefully.
‘You know what was a bad idea?’ one of the masked men asked. ‘Beating on a woman. Beating on a cop. We can’t go around letting people believe they can rough up our people and get away with it. You pieces of shit need to learn your place – it’s here, in the wilds, with the croc shit and the leeches. You’re about to learn what’ll happen to you if you set foot in town again.’
‘Big words,’ Bruce said. ‘I heard them. I’m impressed. Now fuck off out of here. This is your last warning.’ He nodded towards the water. ‘Leave now, before you do something you’ll deeply regret.’
One of the men walked up and whipped the baton across the air, a full-strength swipe. The end of the baton caught Bruce in the jaw, spraying blood and shards of teeth. It was the signal for the others to start. Amanda watched in the firelight as her friends fell under the blows. She tried to throw herself into the fray, but she only managed a step before a man caught her arms and twisted them behind her back, shoving her into the ground. She watched, not daring to look away.
A sure-fire cure for what ails me is a bathroom party with the geese. That’s the case most of the time, at least. I poured myself a glass of wine, ran some warm water in the bathtub, stripped Lillian off and let her climb in. The geese were hardly fazed by her presence in the tub, splashing and squealing with excitement as they came waddling in. They eagerly splayed their wings from their breasts, beaks open and heads high, as four headed into the shower cubicle while two flapped up onto the rim of the bathtub and splashed down into the water with my child.
‘Real life rubber duckies,’ I told Lillian as she grabbed for the geese paddling and fluffing themselves on the surface of the water. ‘I bet you’ve never seen that, have you, Boo?’
I’ve been hosting bathroom parties since the geese were small and fluffy, turning the shower on and sitting on the lid of the toilet to watch them playing around and flapping in the spray. All it takes to indicate to the birds that a party is
about to begin is to throw some Neil Diamond on and open the screen door. The birds come waddling up the yard in a fumbling parade, hopping up the stairs, honking and muttering with excitement. Though it has always raised my mood, I sat that night watching Lillian bathing with the birds and couldn’t tune in to the usual feelings of warmth and comfort. I knew it was probably trauma over Dylan Hogan’s death, the heavy guilt replaying those terrible moments in the petrol station in my mind. If only I’d run ahead of Amanda. If only I’d called out. If only I’d been smarter about our approach to the homeless camp, made sure I blocked the path under the bridge while Amanda manned the path from the road. I drank my wine and tried to focus on my beautiful child, on the second last evening I had with her, on the task of being a good, attentive, undistracted father fully committed to making memories with my girl.
I only managed it for mere minutes. I was dialling Clark before I could stop myself.
‘I don’t want to hear from you,’ Clark barked down the phone. ‘I’m too busy battening down the hatches in preparation for the total career annihilation that’s about to be unleashed upon me after the Hogan shooting.’
I held the phone and waited, knowing that speaking, interrupting his rant, would be useless. I’d let him get it out of his system. Most of the first minute was just obscenities, sighs, the rueful silences of a man trying to find the words to express his dismay.
‘This is a nightmare,’ he said eventually. ‘A true nightmare. I don’t know what you’re thinking, continuing to partner with that woman. She’s a curse. She’s death personified. And those are her words, not mine. The longer you hang around her, the more you’ll lose, I’m telling you.’
‘If I may humbly interject,’ I said quietly. ‘It was one of your officers who killed Hogan, not Amanda. You know Fischer’s claim about Amanda saying Hogan was armed is bullshit.’
