Bright City Deep Shadows

by Graham Storrs

  I lifted the bolt cutters and got to work on the fence. I’d never used such a tool before and found, to my dismay, that it was incredibly fiddly. The jaws barely opened enough to get the wire between them, they were so heavy, it was hard to hold them by the hand-grips and still put the tiny jaws around the wire, and then they needed all my strength to close the jaws and cut the wire. By the time I’d made three cuts, I was sweating profusely and cursing the idiot who’d designed such a ridiculous tool. When they did it in films, it always looked so easy. It certainly didn’t reduce the hero almost to tears as he struggled with aching arms and stinging sweat in his eyes. Manfully, I refrained from counting how many more cuts there would be and calculating how long this would take me.

  On the fourth cut, a dog exploded into furious barking. I looked across the yard and saw it immediately – a huge, shaggy German shepherd, straining towards me on a long chain attached to the wall near the back door. It was snarling and bellowing at me as if I’d personally insulted it. I swallowed hard, pulled back into the shadows and hoped the brute was well secured. I don’t have any particular fear of dogs. I’ve always quite liked them. But this one turned my blood to ice, not because it was the biggest or most aggressive dog I’d ever seen – although it might well have been – but because I had to get past it somehow, without being eaten.

  I was still staring at the Hell Hound when the back door of the clubhouse burst open and a big, hairy man stormed out bellowing, “Shut the fuck up, you useless bloody mongrel. Quiet, or I’ll beat the fucking snot out of you.” To back up his threat, he waved a massive stick at it. The dog immediately stopped barking and cringed away from him with a whine of submission. My fear transformed instantly to pity – and anger at the thug with the stick.

  “So, what is it this time?” the dog-beater asked, turning towards where I was hiding. My breath caught. I wanted to dive back into the garden but daren’t move. “Another cat? A possum?” He took a couple of steps towards me, peering into the dark shrubbery. How he couldn’t see me, I didn’t understand. I felt lit up like a Christmas tree. But he didn’t. I thanked the god of reckless idiots that the security light behind me had gone out. I must have been just one dark shape among many. The man turned away, cursing the dog and went back inside.

  The dog lay on the ground, watching me, growling with sullen resentment but not daring to bark again. Gradually, my heart slowed and my breathing steadied. I put down the bolt cutters and used my polo-neck to wipe the sweat from my eyes. Watching the dog, I picked the cutters up again and continued the slow process of snipping my way through the fence. The dog continued to growl from time to time but, each time it did, looked anxiously over its shoulder as if expecting retribution.

  I pushed the fence apart, pushed my bag through and crawled after it. I left the bolt cutters behind. Emerging through the fence was too much for the dog. It leapt to its feet and went wild, barking and snarling and leaping against its chain. But I’d already planned what I’d do. Rising to a crouching run, I cut across the yard to the Jeep and ducked down behind it. Lying on my belly I saw the door fly open again and the man with the stick reappear. As before, he yelled at the dog. This time, it ran, tail between its legs, back to its spot by the door and grovelled in fear as the dog beater cursed and threatened it. It was sickening to see an animal so cowed. If I could have taken the man’s stick and beaten him to the ground with it, I would.

  I waited, full of anger, for him to go back inside, then I opened my backpack and pulled out the plastic bag. Inside, wrapped in paper, was two kilograms of diced beef. Crawling to the end of the sports car to be nearer the dog, I picked up a piece and threw it to where it was sitting. Eyeing me suspiciously, it went to the lump of meat and sniffed it, cautiously. After what seemed a very long time, it picked the meat up in its teeth and gobbled it down. It looked up at me with a quick, sharp movement as if it had suddenly understood that its miserable life was about to take a turn for the better. I stood up and threw it another chunk of beef. This time, it caught the piece in mid-air and waited, alert and eager for the next. I moved closer, tossing another morsel. Then another. Soon, I was standing beside the dog, feeding it pieces of meat by hand and stroking its shaggy head. I put what was left on the ground and, while the dog ate, I unfastened its thick, leather collar.

  “You’re free,” I told it. “Even if I don’t get Ronnie out, I did one good thing tonight.” It was an irresponsible thing to do. I could see that. For all I knew, the dog would go and eat someone’s kid, or it would be caught and put down within the week. But at least it had a chance now of finding a new home, one where it wouldn’t be beaten and chained up all the time.

  I left the dog eating and went to look through the windows. There were four on the ground floor at the back and they all had bars on them. I took a picture with my phone. My idea was to build up a layout of the building so I could find my way around at some later date if necessary. I crept to the first window and peered in. It seemed to be some sort of junk room. Its light was off but the door was open and light came in from a hallway. I held my phone to the glass and took another picture.

  I realised that the music I was hearing was coming from upstairs. It confused me because I’d fully expected the main room and bar to be on the ground floor but, clearly, it wasn’t. So, downstairs would be just ordinary rooms – offices, store rooms, that kind of stuff. Upstairs would be where everybody hung out. This was good. It meant Ronnie might be downstairs and I wouldn’t have to creep past dozens of people or climb a wall to get to him.

  I moved to the next window. It had frosted glass and was obviously a toilet. The next one was an office. That is, it had a desk and a computer, a filing cabinet and a bookshelf, but it also had a gun cabinet, a badly-chipped department store mannequin with its head missing, a dartboard and a wheel from a motorbike. On one wall was a huge whiteboard with what looked like an organisation chart. I took my picture then studied the chart. I couldn’t make out much but I quickly realised this was not the Devil’s Playthings’ corporate structure. It was the Queensland Police’s. Specifically, it was the State Crime Command. The only name on it I recognised was Grogan. It sent a chill through me that, while the police were collecting intelligence on the criminals, they were, in turn, collecting intelligence on the police. There were notes and symbols against each name. Many, like Grogan, had photographs.

  I stepped back. It was disturbing. It was an image I didn’t want in my head but it was too late. I looked around the yard. The dog had gone. I heard laughter from upstairs. I wanted to go, too, but there was still work to do. I moved to the last window and peered in.

  It was a small room with little furniture – a bed, a wooden chair, a bucket by the door, a roll of toilet paper beside it. There was old lino on the floor and the single light in the ceiling had no shade. I felt a twitch of irrational irritation that it was an old-style incandescent bulb, not a low-wattage energy-saver. I raised my phone for a shot and froze.

  Someone was in the room. There was a second chair beneath the window and someone was sitting in it. I hardly dared move. Slowly, I turned my head and looked down at a man’s head and shoulders. He was just centimetres away on the other side of the wall. He was wearing a white vest that exposed beefy shoulders, covered in curly grey hair. The stubbly hair on his head was grey too. I blinked. In one of those sudden twists of perception, the dangerous bikie transformed into Ronnie.

  I almost cried out. I did a quiet dance of triumph. I’d found him. It was unbelievable. I realised I hadn’t really expected to get anywhere near him, let alone find myself standing just an arm’s length away. I put my face up against the window and tapped, hissing, “Ronnie! Ronnie!”

  My partner jumped out of his seat and spun to face me. He gaped at me with wide eyes and an open mouth. My exultation drained out of me as I took in the blood on his vest that had run down his neck from cuts on his face. The bastards had beaten him. His lip was cut, his nose had bled. One eye was badly swollen, both c
heeks were puffy and inflamed. My nostrils flared as I breathed stertorously through my nose, rage building in me. I caught the bars of his window in my hands and gripped them hard. He moved quickly to the window, shoving the chair aside.

  “Fuck off you stupid bell end!” he snarled, his voice barely audible. “You’ll get us both killed you idiot.”

  I looked around at the bars. They were firmly anchored into the brick wall. I had a crowbar in my pack but I was pretty sure it would take more than that. Ronnie knocked on the window to make me look at him but I was thinking. If I could get the dog chain off the wall, tie it to the bars, tie the other end to the Jeep and, somehow, get that started, I could pull the bars out, Ronnie could climb through the window and we could get away in their own vehicle.

  “You fucking moron!” Ronnie hissed. “Get out of here.”

  The look of horror on his face when I turned to him, grinning and gave him a thumbs up sign, was priceless. I scuttled over to the wall by the door where the chain was fixed and almost whooped in triumph when I saw it was only tied on to a staple in the wall. I began working at it to get the chain untangled.

  “Here you are, darl,” a woman’s voice said, behind me.

  I spun around, falling backwards onto my arse. A woman stood in the doorway, one hand on the handle and the other holding a bowl of dog food. We stared at one another like stunned mullets for several seconds before she threw down the dog bowl and took a step towards me.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  I tried to scrabble away, backwards but in a couple of paces, she was standing right over me. She looked down at me with her expression hard. She wore denim jeans, a tight top and a denim waistcoat. Bikie chick, I thought, stupidly.

  “What the hell have you done with Simba?”

  I had to get out of there. I turned over to get my feet under me but she gave a push with her booted foot on my backside and I went sprawling on the concrete.

  “Butch! Get out here,” she yelled, placing a foot in the small of my back to hold me down. “We’ve got a prowler.”

  I rolled over to get free of her weight on my spine but that just left me lying on my back with her standing astride me. I tried to get my elbows under me so I could get up but she calmly bent forward and punched me in the face. Lights exploded in my head as her fist connected, then again as the back of my skull hit the concrete. Dazed, I unscrewed my eyes just in time to see the big hairy dog-beater turn up, stick in hand, to stare down at me with an expression of purest puzzlement.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They sat me in a swivel chair in the office I’d seen through the window. The gun case and the battered mannequin took on a new, sinister aspect now that I was so close to them. The dog-beater and the Amazon who’d almost cracked my skull handed me over to a couple of blokes they called down from upstairs. My stomach fell as I recognised Hairy and Baldy from my previous encounters with them. They recognised me, too, judging by the grins they exchanged.

  “Wallet and phone,” Baldy said. He held out his hand and I passed them to him. He took them and held them but didn’t look at either. “Everything else on the desk.” I pulled out a handful of coins from my pocket and dumped them, as ordered. Too late, I remembered the SIM card from my phone was among them. Baldy noticed it immediately and picked it out from among the coins.

  “The police know I’m here,” I lied. It didn’t seem to affect them in the slightest. Probably everybody said that when they ended up in that chair.

  We waited for at least a couple of minutes before I heard quick footsteps on the stairs. A man strode into the room. He wasn’t a big man but he was lean and hard. He looked to be in his late thirties, with short black hair and a short, neat beard. Unlike the others, his clothes were smart and formal, with polished black shoes, a white shirt, open at the neck and a pair of charcoal grey trousers with a crease in them that were probably part of a business suit. I wondered if maybe he’d been in court that day. He was so obviously in charge that it had to be Kurt Opperman.

  He walked around me and sat at his desk. Baldy handed him the wallet and phone without a word as if they’d rehearsed this a dozen times. Opperman flipped open the wallet and pulled my cards and driver’s licence out onto his desk. I bit down on my objections. Hairy and Baldy were standing right beside me and looked like they were hoping for any excuse to hurt me. So I tried not to give them one.

  Opperman looked from my licence to me and grinned. To Baldy, he said, “Is it true Sharon beat him up and dragged him in here?”

  Baldy grinned. “Fucking poofter.”

  “Now, now. You know Sharon can be very physical.” They all laughed.

  Opperman turned his attention to my phone. “So you’re Luke Skywalker,” he said, not looking up. “You know all that blackface shit is supposed to be offensive to our coloured friends?”

  I remembered the polish on my face and hands and felt ridiculous.

  His eyes lifted from the phone to meet mine. “What’s the password on this?”

  For a moment, I considered not telling him. In that moment, Hairy and Baldy each grabbed one of my arms and held them against the arms of the chair I was on. Baldy pulled a hunting knife out of nowhere and pressed it down against the knuckle of my middle finger. Blood welled around the blade and a shock of pain shot up my arm. “Fucking hell!” I shouted. “112358! It’s 112358!”

  They let go of my arms and I grabbed my hand to me, studying the finger. I still had all of it. The cut wasn’t even very deep. I sucked it miserably.

  “What’s that, your dad’s birthday?”

  “Fibonacci series,” I said.

  “I should have guessed,” Opperman said, happily, poking at my phone again. “Some fucking nerd shit. Ah, here we go.” For a while, he poked and flicked at the screen. Then he put the phone down and sat back. He grinned at me. “Let’s try again shall we?” He pulled out the SIM and tossed it in the bin. Then he replaced it with the other one. He didn’t even bother to ask the password this time, just tapped it in. “That’s better.” For a while, he was lost in browsing through my call logs and whatever else he felt like. He finally put down the phone, rested his hands on the desk and regarded me calmly.

  “I warned you about dicking around in my business, didn’t I Master Luke?” He frowned, puzzled. “What were you planning to do? Sneak in and get Obi Wan out? Are you a fucking retard?” I sucked my finger miserably and didn’t answer, assuming it was a rhetorical question. When he slapped the top of the desk with the flat of his hand I jumped so much I almost bit my finger off. “Well?”

  I had to swallow to make my voice work. “I was just… taking a look.”

  “He nicked Simba,” Baldy said.

  Opperman looked annoyed for the first time. “What?”

  “The dog’s gone. He took it.”

  Opperman scowled at his henchman. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “The police know I’m here,” I said again. I had to say something and it was the only thing I could think of that might worry this cocky bastard. But it didn’t. He just shook his head, sadly, and tapped my phone.

  “No, they don’t. You haven’t spoken to the cops since you called DS Bertolissio at 4:32. Nah, mate, you’re here all on your lonesome. No-one knows. No-one cares. And no-one is coming to your rescue. So, the only question now is, what the fuck do I do with you?”

  “You’re wrong. People know I’m here. I told people.”

  His eyes instantly locked onto mine. “Who?”

  As soon as he asked, his two thugs grabbed my arms again and Baldy pulled out his knife.

  “All right! All right! I lied. No-one knows.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Baldy pressed the knife into my knuckle again. I felt bile rising in my throat, imagining that blade sliding between the bones of my finger.

  “I’m sure. No-one knows. The police don’t want to know. They said they needed evidence to get a warrant. I thought… I thought I coul
d…” They say the best lie is mostly to tell the truth. I hoped I’d told enough truth to keep them from suspecting Dicko was out there waiting for me. The tear that rolled down my cheek probably helped convince them.

  Opperman stared at me for a long, uncomfortable time. In the end, he said, “Put him in with the old man. I need to think this through.”

  “Do you want me to rough him up a bit?” Baldy asked.

  Opperman snapped back at him. “Just do what I fucking tell you, hey? For once? Can you do that?”

  Baldy’s face fell into a sullen mask of repressed anger. He muttered, “Yeah, sure,” and dragged me to my feet.

  Outside in the hall, Hairy slapped Baldy on the shoulder. In an angry whisper he said, “You need to keep your mouth shut. We’re in enough shit for getting beat up on video. What do you wanna bring up the fucking dog for? Who gives a fuck?”

  We stopped just one door down from the office. Baldy snarled past me at his friend.

  “I give a fuck.” He pushed me up against the wall, banging the back of my head where it was already sore from Sharon bouncing it off the concrete yard. He grabbed me by the shirt front and pushed his fist up under my chin. “What did you do with the bloody dog, cunt?”

  “I let it go.”

  “You fucking what? Are you some sort of fucking greenie or something?”

  “A what? Oh, like an animal liberationist or something? No. No, I – I don’t know why I did it. It just seemed...” I swallowed. “...sad.”