Bright City Deep Shadows

by Graham Storrs

  “See?” Hairy said. “He’s a retard like Kurt said.”

  Baldy looked at me as if I disgusted him. He pulled away from me, letting me breathe again. To Hairy, he said. “I hate fucking retards. Are you gonna open the fucking door or what?”

  Scowling, Hairy fished in his jeans for a key and opened the door. Baldy threw me inside and they slammed it and locked it after me.

  “Well, well, well,” Ronnie said. I picked myself up off the floor and looked around. He was sitting in the chair by the window wearing nothing but his bloody singlet and a pair of boxer shorts. He had his arms crossed and was shaking his head. “You, my friend, are dumber than a bag of fucking hammers.”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself but I couldn’t help agreeing with him. I went to sit on the bed, staring at the dusty floor.

  “Please tell me you had more of a plan than stumbling around disguised as a black and white minstrel until someone found you.”

  It was sort of accurate but it felt grossly unfair. “So tell me how well your plan worked out, then? Where does sitting around in your jocks fit into the master plan?”

  He didn’t seem keen to answer. I squinted at him sideways, wondering if I should maybe a bit more sympathetic. He looked pretty battered and he seemed to have aged ten years.

  “It was a set-up,” he said. “That little bitch Debra led me right into Opperman’s hands.”

  “No way!”

  “Way!” he said, mocking me.

  “But...”

  “She seemed so nice? So sweet? So helpless?” He turned away, looking like he could spit nails. “Yeah, well, she took us both for fucking wood ducks. That woman should get a bloody Oscar. Turns out the whole bloody thing was her plan from the start. She took it to Opperman – and guess who he is, by the way.”

  This was terrible. “Her boyfriend?”

  “Her brother – half brother from a different mother. She almost fell on her arse laughing, telling me about it. It was Debra’s idea to involve Anning – up to his bloody arse in debt and embezzling from the company to stay afloat. Anning brought in Archerfield, who were already laundering money for the bikies as well as providing software for the Gamefest. ‘It was just meant to be,’ as Debra put it. I think she really believes a benevolent God dropped this into her sticky little fingers.”

  “And then Chelsea worked out what was going on,” I felt sick. If she’d just gone to the police instead of taking it to Anning first.

  Ronnie seemed to sense what I was thinking. “Anning was just a puppet. They had him in their pocket. But they knew he was too weak to rely on once they’d made him kill Chelsea. Knocking him off was Opperman’s idea. Just to keep things tidy.”

  And then we turned up. “Are they going to kill us? Opperman said he needed time to think about what to do next.”

  Ronnie looked tired. “If you’d stayed away, I’d have said no. As long as they could intimidate you into silence, there was no need. Now, I’m not so sure. It depends who else knows you’re here.”

  “There’s someone. Just some rando, really. He might go to the cops. Or he might not.” My guess was that Dicko would keep his head down and try to avoid being involved. “Bertolissio might work it out. I think organised crime have the place under surveillance since you got snatched but...” But I’d sneaked in and been grabbed without them apparently noticing, so their surveillance was probably a car parked up the street, watching the front door.

  “So we’re on our own. I reckon Opperman will wait a day or so, to see if any cops come sniffing around, then you and me are going on a one-way drive out to the bush.”

  “What if the cops do come?”

  “Unless they bring a search warrant, all the good it will do is to give Opperman a chance to find out how much they know. If I was him, I’d kill us tonight, stick the bodies in a big box and get it far away from here, despite the risk of the cops noticing. But he’s the cautious type and completely up himself. He thinks he’s a criminal mastermind. He’ll play it cool. Try to impress his mates. Play chicken with the cops. And, frankly, he’ll get away with it. Unless your rando goes to the cops with a convincing story, there’s no chance they’ll get a warrant. Opperman knows that.”

  The words, So, what are we going to do? were forming in my mind when a commotion broke out in the room next door. It was a man and a woman in Opperman’s office having an argument at ever-increasing volume.

  “Me?” the man yelled. “This was all your bloody idea!”

  “Oh, forgive me for trying to make us both rich,” the woman shouted back.

  “Kurt and Debra?” I asked Ronnie in a low voice. He shushed me, listening.

  “Anyway, I delivered the old bastard, like I said I would. It’s not my fault if the other one’s so bloody stupid he comes sneaking round.”

  “Isn’t it? Really?”

  “What do you mean by that? How is it my fault?”

  “We wouldn’t have had to kill his bloody girlfriend if you hadn’t stuffed up and let her find out what we’re doing.”

  “Oh, right, it’s my fault she was a nosy bitch.”

  “Too bloody true. And it was your fault your bloody boyfriend went off the rails.”

  “Simon was not my bloody boyfriend. It was your job to keep him in line and look what a dog’s breakfast you made of it.”

  The recriminations went back and forth for quite a while. So long, in fact, that I got bored. And depressed. If they’d only let me keep my phone so I could have recorded it all, there was more than enough to convict the pair of them ten times over. As it was, as the argument went on and on, I began to realise that Opperman was working himself up to murder Ronnie and me and, at the rate he was going, it would be sooner rather than later. Ronnie seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

  “Listen,” he said, softly. “When this blue is over, Opperman, is going to send his goons in here to finish us off. They’ll probably tie us up, stick us in a van or something, and drive us far away. Then they’ll kill us, hide the bodies and come home.”

  “This is all my fault,” I said, feeling miserable. If I’d just stayed away, they’d probably have kept Ronnie alive.

  “Yeah. Thank you Captain Bleedin’ Obvious. Look, the point is, we have one chance to get free and that’s before they tie us up. After that, it will be nearly impossible. Do you understand?”

  My heart began to quicken. “Won’t they be armed or something? What chance would we have?”

  “A better chance than if we just let the bastards take us.”

  “Right. Yes, of course. It’s just… I suppose it’s just natural to cling to life as long as you possibly can, you know? Spin it out, like. Not rush to meet death. I’d never thought about why people let themselves be taken to death camps or whatever, but maybe that’s it. If both courses of action – you know, fight or be taken – obviously lead to the same outcome, you pick the one that gives you more time.”

  He scowled angrily. “That’s so profound. You should write a bloody thesis about it when we get out of here. Now, are you going to listen to my plan, or are you going to spout crap all night?”

  As it was, we had another half hour before there were heavy footsteps in the hallway and a key rattled in the lock.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Baldy pushed open the door without entering. He was holding a gun. I’d never seen a sawn-off shotgun before – or even an intact one – but I was pretty sure this evil-looking device must be one. There were two other blokes behind him in the corridor: Hairy and some other guy. He glanced around the room then fixed his eyes and the gun on me.

  “Where’s the other one?”

  I pointed to a space behind the door and grimaced. “He’s… er… you know… using the bucket.”

  From behind the door, Ronnie said, “How about some fucking privacy?”

  Baldy rolled his eyes and lowered the gun. He stepped into the room and pulled the door back. Ronnie, who had been standing there waiting, grabbed the barrel of
the shotgun and punched hard and fast at the bikie’s throat. Choking and obviously unable to breathe, our would-be executioner let go of the gun and fell to his knees, clutching his throat.

  Ronnie pushed the door shut and moved to stand facing it. I leapt up and went to stand beside the door clutching a leg from one of the wooden chairs “Help!” Ronnie shouted in a strangled voice. The door burst open and Hairy rushed straight in at Ronnie. My partner didn’t flinch, even though the younger man was huge by comparison. He hit the bikie in the face with the stock of the shotgun and Hairy reeled back. The third bikie had to stop his inward rush because Hairy was sinking to his knees in front of him. As he did, I swung the chair leg with all my force at the man’s head. It struck with a sickening crack and the third man went down like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Ronnie’s plan called for me to run at that point but I didn’t move. I stared at the man I’d hit, shocked by the violence of it and the real possibility the man was dead. Ronnie grabbed my upper arm and pushed me towards the door, almost sending me flying through it.

  “Move!” he hissed.

  It snapped me out of my frozen state and I lurched down the corridor towards the front door. The door to Kurt’s office opened as I passed. I heard him curse but that was cut short as Ronnie went past and poked him in the stomach with the shotgun barrel. I’d barely gone a couple more steps when Opperman’s cursing started up again, this time very much louder and mixed with bellowed demands that everybody “get down here now and kill these fuckers.” Feet began pounding on the wooden floor above us and then on the staircase.

  I saw the front door ahead of me. It was a double door with no windows. I’d stupidly imagined some kind of push-bar emergency exit, not something I’d have to stop at and pull inwards. From the sound of feet in the hallway behind me, it was absolutely certain we wouldn’t have the two or three seconds it would take to get the door open and start running again but I didn’t dare look. I slammed into the door, my hand on the knob and looked back just as the whole building shook to the sound of a massive explosion. Ronnie was standing facing the oncoming mob, pointing the gun straight at them. There was a pall of smoke through which I could see a big hole in the ceiling and a wall of angry bikies standing still, dusted in plaster and snarling like caged animals.

  “One more step,” Ronnie said.

  Kurt Opperman pushed to the front of the mob and said, over his shoulder, “Someone go to my office and fetch the guns.”

  Without taking his eyes off the bikies, Ronnie said, “Take your time with the door, Luke. No rush, mate.”

  “Right,” I said, snapping out of yet another daze. I twisted the knob and pulled. The door opened and I almost sobbed with relief that it wasn’t locked. Run! I told myself. That was the plan. Run like hell to the nearest house with its lights on. So I ran.

  Straight into a black-clad bikie in a crash helmet. He was carrying something like a big, heavy pipe and it hit me in the ribs as I smashed into him, sending us both sprawling across the concrete forecourt. Immediately, there was a racket of shouting, bellowing men. Cutting across the shouts was a woman’s voice.

  “Don’t shoot!” it said.

  I rolled into a crouch, gasping at the pain in my ribs, and peered back at the clubhouse, expecting to see Debra. I had to blink hard and shake my head before I actually understood what I was seeing. Ronnie was outside, on his knees with the shotgun on the ground and his hands behind his head. Armed police in black armour and helmets had machine guns pointed at him. A woman was running towards me. It was Alexandra Bertolissio, wearing a bullet-proof vest. Loads more armed cops were surging into the clubhouse, bellowing at people to get down on the ground. Nearby, the cop I had thought was a bikie picked himself up off the ground and, with a scowl directed at me, picked up the battering ram I’d knocked out of his hands in our collision.

  “Are you OK?” Bertolissio asked, squinting at my face, offering me a small, delicate hand.

  I let her help me up. “Yeah, just about.”

  She turned her attention to Ronnie. “Let him up,” she told the cops. “He’s one of the victims.”

  Ronnie was grinning. “Pretty good timing,” he said.

  “We need to find where they put your clothes,” she told him. He looked down at himself and his grin broadened. An ambulance pulled into the forecourt. “OK, that one’s for you two.”

  Ronnie waved dismissively. “Nah, I’ll be right.”

  “Maybe, but I think Luke might have a cracked rib, the way he’s nursing it.”

  “Nah, he’s a wimp. It’s probably nothing.”

  “You’ll both get checked out.” Her tone left no room for argument. Not that I was arguing in the slightest. “Are there any more in there the paramedics should be attending to?”

  Ronnie nodded. “Three. All in worse condition than the Little Princess, here. Not that I care.”

  Even as we spoke, a couple of police vans pulled up and a second ambulance.

  “You were right on the verge of raiding the place,” I said. “What made you change your mind?”

  Bertolissio smiled. It was a happy smile but there was also something feral about it. “New evidence,” she said. “Enough to put Opperman and his accomplices away for nice long stretches.”

  I wanted to ask more but the paramedics arrived with blankets and sympathy and took Ronnie and me in hand, letting Bertolissio stride away toward the clubhouse to claim her prize.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Two weeks after that night, my ribs still hurt but I was out and about again and the painkillers had actually started helping – which I was very pleased about. This was the first time I’d ventured out on my own. Ronnie had been looking after me like a chook with a retarded chick – which was fun for about the first ten minutes. Even when I went out, he came with me, “To open doors and shit,” as he put it. He complained constantly about what a wimp I was and how he’d known blokes run twenty kilometres with half their leg blown off, and so on, but he did seem genuinely concerned for me and I tried to keep my own complaining to a minimum.

  I was at the cemetery again, on the bench near where Chelsea was buried. I was waiting to meet somebody but, more than that, I wanted to talk to Chelsea. I always wanted to talk to her. Every time I heard a joke, or saw something interesting, or had an idea, my first instinct was to share it with her. And every single time, the pain would stab at me or squeeze my throat. Because she wasn’t there any more. She never would be. Ever.

  I’d thought a lot about her during my convalescence, wondering what she’d have made of my big adventure and my new friend, Ronnie. She’d probably have liked him. She managed to like all kinds of people. I couldn’t see her approving of me running around playing detective and putting myself in so much danger, though. And that was really what I wanted to talk to her about.

  Look, don’t get me wrong. She was dead. I knew she was dead. She wasn’t sitting up on a cloud with a harp, or haunting the tombstones and vaults as a restless spirit. But there was a real sense in which she lived on – inside me. I could talk to her and I could imagine her replies. Sitting there in the cemetery just provided a focus. And it gave me a socially acceptable way to conduct my imaginary conversations, so people wouldn’t think I was mad.

  It was late February and the heat of the summer was finally starting to ease off a little. I was looking forward to the autumn and – my favourite season in Brisbane – the winter. People in the northern hemisphere might think it odd that, while they enjoyed a verdant summer with sunny days in the low twenties, I was enjoying a winter that was pretty much the same down here in my subtropical paradise. Brisbane was a good city, sprawling, beautiful, relaxed and full of good people. It had always been my home and I loved it. And yet, after Chelsea’s death, I’d seen another side of it, a dark, disturbing shadow-world. Even in the brilliant sunlight of a Brisbane summer, soulless creatures moved through my city’s streets like cancer cells in its bloodstream, looking for the chance to set
tle among the good and decent, to steal their lives, to corrupt and fester and grow.

  Now, when I looked at the city, I couldn’t help but wonder how that home was paid for, how that man could drive a Mercedes, what that woman’s designer dress cost in human misery. Ronnie said, “Welcome to the real world, Philosophy Boy.” He seemed to think it was all just a normal coming-of-age, loss-of-innocence story. I felt it more as an emotional bindi seed in my sock that I needed to scratch very badly. I felt I had been taken by the scruff and pushed down and down into the city’s sewers. By a miracle, I’d survived, but the stench still clung to me and I needed to do something about that.

  “Hello.”

  I glanced around to find Karen Cha standing beside me. She looked cool and pretty and younger than ever. I stood up and reached out a hand.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  She shook my hand and I asked her to sit. She sat primly, knees together, hands in her lap, perched at the edge of the seat, her back straight. With that quiet serenity of hers, she waited patiently for me to speak.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”

  She looked at me with a polite, quizzical expression.

  “I know what you did,” I said. “Don’t worry, I will never tell the cops it was you who sent them everything they needed to raid the Devil’s Playthings’ clubhouse. They really don’t have any idea who it could have been. You’re quite safe. Only, I’d love to know how you did it and why you did it.”

  She pressed her lips together, thinking. “OK,” she said, at last. “It was quite easy. After your friend drove me away from the hotel that day, I was worried. I was sure you were going to get into trouble and I thought I should do something. The least I could do was track your phone, to keep tabs on you. But then I realised that I knew some other things that might help. I was there when Kurt Opperman phoned you, you remember. So I could get his number from your phone and track that as well. I didn’t know at the time he’d called you from your friend’s phone but that didn’t matter. I searched that phone for other numbers and there were only two. One was a cop – DS Bertolissiso – the other was Debra Heinzer. So I tracked Heinzer too.