Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage

If there’s one thing worse than a crooked cop on your heels then it’s a whole unit of them
.

A fistful of people are murdered, fifteen million dollars is stolen and detective Tom Bishop is stuck in the middle. When he hits the street, every clue points in the same direction – his colleagues in a police department demoralised by cutbacks and scandals. Hunted, alone and with no place left to turn, Bishop embarks on a hellish journey down into the gutters where right and wrong quickly become twisted and problems are solved with gunfire and bloodshed.

Over the next two days, Tom Bishop will be cornered. He will be beaten. He will bust into prison. He will shoot at police. He will team up with violent criminals. He will become one of them. He will break every rule in the book, chasing a lead nobody else will go near down a rabbit hole of corruption, murder and buried secrets.

Will Bishop become the very monster he set out to destroy?

A modern hard-boiled tale that unfolds at a relentless pace,
Dark City Blue
is
Serpico
, if
Serpico
snorted a fistful of cocaine and hung out with Lee Marvin.

Two days ago, division found a half-beaten, half-pretty, naked fifteen-year-old girl stumbling down the Hume Highway. The case got bumped to Sex Crimes, then the CO bumped it to Tom Bishop. The girl didn’t speak a word of English, and after a translator arrived she didn’t speak a word of anything. Yesterday, Bishop and Ellison hit up every pimp and whorehouse in a two-kilometre radius of where she was found. An hour ago, they got an address from a gonzo smut shooter as to where simulated rape videos were being shot. Only they weren’t so simulated.

Ellison shifted her attention from the dirty windscreen to the clock on her phone. ‘What the fuck takes so long?’

‘Relax,’ Bishop said. ‘It takes as long as it takes.’

She mumbled a profanity and shifted her weight from one arse cheek to another.

Bishop lit a cigarette and wound down the window. The shit smell of three-day-old roasting garbage blew through the car from the rubbish bins some bastard had kicked over the night before. He fixed his gaze on the green stucco house at the end of the street. Three bedrooms. One bathroom. Paint-chipped walls. Overgrown lawns and a burnt-out shell of a car in the yard. A shithole.

The radio crackled to life. ‘Any movement?’

Ellison picked it up, pushed it to her lips. ‘Nothing but the street.’

Moose and Winters were around the back of the house doing the same thing they were: sweating, waiting and trying to stay alert.

Twenty minutes and another cigarette later, Bishop watched a car pull up in the rear-view. He slipped on his sunglasses, climbed out and clocked the street: empty in every direction.

Reeves emerged from the fleet and approached Bishop with a shake of his head. ‘They wouldn’t do it, mate.’

Ellison kicked the side of the car. ‘Fuck.’

She left a dent in the door that Bishop ignored. ‘Did you go to Kean?’ he asked.

‘And to Beechworth and Pointon. All said the same thing: not enough evidence for a warrant.’

A breeze pushed across Bishop’s sweaty face as he turned to watch the green stucco house. His mind raced with all the horrible things that were going on inside. Still, probably nowhere near as bad as the reality of it.

He took a breath.

Fuck it.

Bishop popped the boot, pulled out a shotgun, racked it and moved toward the house with Ellison and Reeves in his wake. ‘You hear that?’ he said.

Ellison looked up and down the street. ‘Hear what?’

‘Screams.
Waiting for a warrant, we heard screams then entered
.’

Ellison pulled her weapon, checked the chamber, let the slide fall back into position. ‘Works for me.’

‘Reeves, go get lost in traffic.’

Reeves nodded, headed to his car. A moment later, it pulled into the street and the engine faded away.

Bishop wiped his face with the sleeve of his leather jacket as they crouched behind a dilapidated picket fence. Ellison handed him the radio.  He pushed it to his face.

‘I want you boys to wait a couple of minutes, then meet me around the back.’

Winters’ voice filtered back through the two-way. ‘Sure, boss.’

‘Where do you want me?’ Ellison asked. She couldn’t keep still; her eyes darted every which way.

‘Front of the house, pick the door quietly.’

‘What if the shit hits the fan?’

Bishop gave it some thought, rubbed his jaw. ‘Then kick it in.’ Bent at the waist, he made it down the street and into the front yard.

There were two cars parked on the kerb and a shitbox Ford up on blocks. Bishop slid in behind it, peeked over the bonnet. Tattered yellow curtains that were once white hung in the windows and blocked any way of seeing in. He moved closer. Dry grass crunched under his feet as he crept between the house and the fence. The windows were painted black and beyond that, at the rear of the property, lay burnt grass and a makeshift fireplace surrounded by empty longnecks and cigarette butts.

He pushed against the back wall of the house and waited.

Movement.

Winters and Moose. Each held their weapon with one hand while they climbed over the rear fence with the other. The pair wore Hawaiian shirts, loud, offensive. They sidled up to Bishop. ‘I take it we’re going in, boss?’ Winters asked.

Bishop nodded. ‘There’s no warrant; you boys up for that?’

‘Cool with us,’ Moose said. ‘I’m assuming we heard screams?’

Bishop nodded. His eyes shifted to the back door. ‘That thing locked?’

Winters slipped his fingers around the knob and quietly turned. Locked.

‘Pick it.’

Winters got started as Bishop knelt down beside the basement trapdoor. The forty-dollar padlock was a good attempt at security, but the rusted-out latch it was connected to wasn’t. Bishop pulled his flick knife and undid the screws. He looked to Winters and Moose and their Hawaiian shirts. ‘Try to blend in.’ And then he stepped into the darkness.

The smell was terrible. Shards of light pushed through the cracks in the newspaper-covered windows. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the black. Dog cages lined each side of the damp pit.

A sound.

Bishop swung his shotgun low and to the left: a cage. Naked girl. Twelve years old, maybe. She huddled in a corner and tried to cover herself, but there wasn’t much space for her to move and nothing to cover herself with.

Bishop brought a finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’

Whatever language she spoke, she understood.

He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a flashlight. Hitting the switch, he scanned the basement: two more cages, two more girls.

The floorboards above creaked. Dust sprinkled down and fell through the light; somebody was in the house and, judging by the steps, they were around one hundred and fifty kilos’ worth.

Bishop headed up the three wooden steps, wrapped his fingers around the doorknob, opened it a crack and peeked through. The hall was empty. He stepped onto the warped floorboards and closed the basement door behind him. Despite their attempts at blacking out the windows, the hall was bright. The walls were bare, yellow, the floors scuffed and dusty. Muffled sounds of fucking leaked from the front of the house. Bishop raised his shotgun and took baby steps toward the source. Each room he passed was bare and cold. Nobody lived there and hadn’t for a long time.

The scene was common enough: the makers shoot fuck films in empty houses for a couple of weeks before moving on to another location. By the time the movies are shot, cut, distributed and intercepted by the VPD, the location is already two months old and pointless tracking down.

Bishop passed through the kitchen. The fuck sounds grew louder as he neared the doorframe and waited, the nightmare only inches away on the other side of the flimsy wall. Sweat ran down his face. His palms were wet. He wiped them on his jeans, took a breath … Then his heart stopped.

A barrel pushed into the back of his neck. ‘Easy,’ the voice said as a hand took away his shotgun. Bishop turned and ran his gaze from the .357 up the arm of the musclebound monster. He was tattooed from head to toe, With a minor tilt of his head, the monster motioned to the other room and Bishop stepped into the lounge.

Four men.

Girl on the floor. Crying. Dirty mattress.

Table of knives.

Above the girl, a fifth man. Masked. Naked, Machete in hand.

Bishop was outmanned and outgunned. ‘You’re all under arrest,’ he said.

Nobody was amused.

Ellison kicked the front door to splinters. Scanned the room. Aimed. Bishop hit the deck. She fired. Sprayed what was left of the monster’s head on the wall.

Scumbags yanked out weapons.

Sidearm in hand, Bishop rose to his feet. The masked man moved on him. Machete above his head. Bishop fired. The blast slammed him back into the wall.

A scumbag lurched at Ellison. She fired. Missed. He tackled her to the ground.

Bishop felt a gun on him: the director. He raised his weapon as the girl on the mattress jumped to her feet. Terrified. She tried to run, didn’t know where. Bishop shifted his aim.

‘Down,’ he yelled.

She didn’t hear. Couldn’t hear. The director about to shoot them both. No time: Bishop slammed the butt of his gun across her cheek. Out cold.

Scumbag fired. Missed. Hit Winters instead. He hit the floor.

They opened up. Bishop took out the director as Moose put six into the one on the right.

Ellison was still down on the floor. She had a bastard twice her size in a headlock. Veins on his forehead popped. Spit pushed though his clenched teeth. A moment later, his body went limp.

As fast as all the bad noise started, it came to a stop, leaving only the heavy breathing of the living and gun smoke lingering in the air.

Moose helped Winters to his feet. He leant against the wall and coughed.

‘You alright?’ Bishop asked.

Winters tore at the velcro and let the bullet-ridden vest drop to his feet. He ran his fingers over his chest. ‘Think I busted a rib.’

‘You’ll live.’

Ellison peeled herself off the floor, scooped up her weapon.

‘How about you?’ Bishop asked.

‘I’m good.’ She motioned to the brick shithouse on the floor. ‘Better than him anyway.’

The smoke burnt Bishop’s throat. He lit a cigarette and called to Moose. ‘There’s three girls in the basement; get them out and call an ambulance.’

As Moose left, the adrenaline in Bishop’s body began to bleed away. He dry-rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, it was to the sight of a naked child, battered, bruised and out cold by his feet. Bishop lifted her onto the couch. She weighed next to nothing, and his leather jacket looked enormous draped over her small body. Greasy hair lay over her face; he slipped a strand behind her ear.

‘What is she, thirteen?’ Ellison asked.

‘If that.’

A cracked window from a stray bullet let a warm breeze flow over the room, drying the blood on the walls. In the distance, sirens blared.

‘Why didn’t you wait for a warrant?’

‘We heard screams coming from the house.’

Jim Patterson’s arching eyebrow pulled up half of his face. ‘Screams?’

‘Can I smoke in here?’ Bishop already had one in his mouth and was looking for a light.

‘No,’ Arden said. ‘You can’t.’

‘Won’t be much longer, detective,’ Patterson said.

Bishop pulled the cigarette from his lips and slid it back into the packet. He looked at Patterson, than shifted his eyes to Arden with a sigh. It was the standard post-incident Ethical Standards debriefing. Bishop had run through the same story twice and, by the look of Arden, she wanted him to go through it again.

‘Were you the only one who heard the screams?’ she asked.

‘My partner Jane Ellison was with me. She heard them as well.’

‘What about …’ she thumbed through some papers ‘… Moose and Winters?’

‘They were at the rear of the house. You’ll have to ask them.’

‘After you decided to enter the premises, tell me what happened.’ It was clear to Bishop: Ethical Standards was Arden’s first assignment out of uniform. She was trying too hard. ‘What happened next, detective?’

Bishop sighed, looked to Patterson. He knew Bishop’s story wasn’t going to change, no matter how many times he told it.

‘Arden, do you mind giving us a minute?’

Her chair scraped the concrete as she pushed back and a moment later the door closed behind her and the room fell quiet. Patterson stood and stretched out his busted leg. The pain eased, but only a little. He was two years older than Bishop but joined the VPD the year after him. He graduated top of the class, did the customary six months in uniform before shifting to undercover where he exposed a drug smuggling ring out of Tullamarine Airport. The bust netted seventy million in heroin and it made him a real-life genuine star. The bosses were grooming him to be the next power player, possibly even commissioner, so a young Patterson found himself being transferred to a different department every twelve months to learn policing from all angles. It was during his brief stint in Homicide that Bishop met him. They were partnered up together and got thrown a Jane Doe that nobody expected to solve. They traced that girl to a guy, and traced that guy to another guy and the whole thing led to bringing down a people smuggling operation out of KL. Patterson took most of the glory. Bishop didn’t care. Patterson's promising future went all to shit when his leg was blown apart by a religious zealot with a shotgun preaching peace, love and child sex slaves. Patterson was taken off the street and put into Ethical Standards. The leg never recovered and neither did his career.

Patterson turned the tape recorder off.

‘I was sorry to hear about Jennifer,’ he said.

‘Alice.’

His face contorted. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. Now I feel like a real prick.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Bishop said.

Half a smile came to his face. ‘It’s my job to worry.’

‘You worried about me?’

‘Should I be?’

Bishop shrugged. ‘My report’s clean.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s faithful.’

‘Look,’ Bishop said, ‘I made a call. The girls are safe and only the bad guys got hurt.’

‘That’s a common theme in your reports.’

‘Making arrests.’

‘Suspects getting hurt.’

Bishop looked at him sideways. ‘Am I under investigation, Lieutenant?’

‘We’re just two cops having a chat.’

‘Bullshit. What am I doing here?’

Patterson leant back in his chair. Picked up Bishop’s personnel file. It was three inches thick. ‘I read this and I see two things. I see a career detective who’s brought down some heavy hitters. Benny Eastwell, Rob Black – Jesus, you hunted Terry Vass halfway across the country and copped two bullets in the back for your trouble, and you still brought him in. I look at this and see a hero cop with more commendations than twenty cops put together. Then I read between the lines and do you know what else I see?’

Bishop shook his head.

‘I see bruised suspects and others in body bags. I see corners cut and laws bent—’

‘I never broke the law.’

‘You’ve skimmed the edges of it. The question I ask myself is, who is the real Tom Bishop? The hero cop on these pages or the violent man hidden between the lines?’ He put the lid on his pen and the pen in his pocket.

‘Well, there is one thing I’ve been wanting to get off my chest,’ Bishop said.

Patterson smiled. ‘Good.’

‘It’s a little embarrassing.’

‘Go on.’

Bishop filled his lungs and slowly let the air escape. ‘Yesterday, I parked in a handicapped zone.’

‘Come on. I’m being serious.’

‘I feel really guilty about it.’

Patterson leant against the chair and stretched his leg. ‘Get out of here.’

Bishop stepped into the hall. Uniforms passed him in one direction as they came on shift, while others hurried in the other with knock-off drinks on their minds. A door opened and closed down the hall and Chief Inspector Patrick Wilson stepped out. Bishop knew the room: one table, one chair and a television to monitor the interview rooms like the one Bishop was just in.

‘You hear all that?’ Bishop asked.

‘I heard,’ Wilson grumbled. ‘I’m starting to think that maybe you shouldn’t have come back so early.’

‘It wouldn’t have changed anything that happened today.’

‘You went in without a warrant.’

‘I had probable cause.’

Wilson smirked to himself. ‘So you say.’

‘Everything worked out,’ Bishop said.

Wilson shrugged. ‘There’s something you should hear.’ He stepped off and Bishop followed. He was a big man with the body of a boxer who, after his career, had let himself go. He still moved like a boxer and he could still throw a punch.

They moved through the internal maze of paint-chipped corridors and came to an unmarked door. Wilson used a key, unlocked it and they both stepped through. Bishop’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He saw through the two-way mirror and into the interrogation room. The animal Ellison had tussled with earlier sat cuffed at the table. He had a hard face and an even harder looking bald head covered with dents from previous bad decisions. Track marks led up his neck along a collapsed vein and faded around the same place that the scabs on his face began.

‘Haven’t been able to shut him up,’ Wilson said. ‘Nothing but yak, yak, fucking yak.’ He picked up the telephone and told whoever answered that they were ready.

Ellison entered the interrogation room. At twenty-nine she was young to be a detective and probably lied to herself that the promotion was due to hard work rather than the VPD trying to fill a quota. She had six brothers, all cops, and no social life. Bishop knew she was smart; the heavy make-up and clothes led most people to believe otherwise.

She skolled a can of Red Bull and stared the junkie down.

His eyes had trouble focusing. ‘If I rat, this going to shave any jail?’

‘If it pans out, I’ll put in a word,’ Ellison said.

The junkie sized up his options and realised that he didn’t have any.

‘What do they call you?’

‘Roach.’ Ellison uncuffed him. ‘You got a smoke?’

She tossed him a pack. His cracked lips hooked onto one and pulled it from the deck. ‘Whatcha wanna know?’ he said as he lit up.

‘Tell me about this Justice.’

Roach slumped in his chair. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’ he said quietly. ‘I know other things. Lots of other things. I can tell you about those.’

Ellison took a seat. ‘I don’t want to know about those. I want to know about Justice.’

Roach, scared, chewed a dirty nail. ‘He leads a network of bent coppers.’ His eyes dipped to the floor, disappointed for having said the words.

‘Who is he?’

‘Nobody knows. All you hear is whispers and shit talk. Somebody, somewhere disappears. Somebody gets knocked. Nobody ever says nothing.’

‘How did he get to you?’

Roach dragged on his cigarette. ‘Last week, I’m out and about with my boy Beanzie drinking, cruising for cunt. Good times, y’know? Then he gets a call and he’s all fidgety, like he’s got to score up, but he don’t, cos he’s already high as all fuck. Says he’s gots to go do this thing. Wants me to go for support or backup or some fuckin’ shit.’

‘What’s Beanzie do?’

‘Big dicks, little dicks, clean dicks, put a hole in the world dicks. You want a gun that’ll do any of the above, Beanzie’s your man.’

Ellison waved her hand for Roach to move on.

‘We headed out of the city.’

‘Where to?’

‘Out of the city, I dunno; up bush. We roll up on this joint and Beanzie’s getting all nervous and shit like a little bitch, so I tell him to man the fuck up.’

‘Did he?’

‘After I slapped him, he did. We knocks on this door and this real trained-up looking guy opens. Now, I was only there for a few minutes, but I could see that these guys were definitely the don’t-fuck-around types. They didn’t say much, but they didn’t need to. Their black eyes did all the talking.’

‘How many?’

‘Three or four.’

‘Was it three or was it four?’

‘Do I look like a mathematician?’

‘Alright, go on.’

Roach flicked his cigarette to the other side of the room and let the smoke escape his nostrils. ‘One of them went to Beanzie’s car and got the guns.’

‘What kind of guns?’

‘I didn’t look.’

‘If you had to guess?’

‘M16s.’

‘That’s a hell of a specific guess.’

Roach looked around. Paranoid. ‘That’s not all. They had maps. On the walls in the place, they had maps, blueprints, timetables and shit. They’re planning a robbery.’ Roach leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘Six AM tomorrow morning. Justice will strike.’ He was pretty pleased with himself. 'So what about my jail?’

‘What about it?’

‘This shit’s going down.’

‘What shit?’ Ellison said. ‘Some fairytale about a network of bent cops? Some bullshit about a robbery tomorrow morning? You don’t know who they are, what they’re robbing. You don’t know shit.’

‘Beanzie will tell you; go ask him. He hangs out on Brunswick Street.’

‘Is Beanzie his real name?’

‘No.’

‘What is?’

Roach couldn’t remember. ‘Fuck.’

Ellison left the room.

‘Hey,’ Roach’s cracked voice yelled. ‘Six AM. It’s meant to happen at 6 AM. Fucking 6 AM, 6-fucking-AM. Tomorrow at 6 AM.’ And the more he said it, the more insane he grew at the sound of his own voice.

Wilson flicked the switch and muted the interview room audio.

‘Do you believe him?’ Bishop asked.

‘The commissioner believes it and I believe what she tells me to believe so we’re looking into it.’ Wilson cocked his head and smiled. ‘What do you say? Do you want in?’

‘Every second crim whips out that story when they’re busted. Justice is nothing but a dead end.’

‘It’s not the first time you’ve chased a dead end that led somewhere.’

Bishop dry-rubbed his face. He was tired and Roach had given him a headache. ‘Put Ethical Standards on; Jim Patterson would chew this up.’

‘Jim Patterson is only looking to get his head on the telly. He’s still trying to save the career he had before his leg was blown off. The commissioner wants this taken care of quietly. If it gets out that a group of officers pulled a robbery and we knew about it, it’ll fuck us up for years. There will be budget cuts across the board. Then we’ve got low-paid officers, then we’ve got corrupt officers. We need to find Justice and stop whatever is happening tomorrow at 6 AM.’

‘I’m not in any shape for this.’

‘If this thing goes down, a lot of people are going to get hurt.’ Wilson put a fatherly hand on Bishop’s shoulder. ‘I don’t have anyone else I can trust.’

Bishop gave a weak nod. ‘Alright, I’ll look into it.’

‘Good,’ he said, slapping Bishop’s shoulder. ‘Give me updates. Any lead, no matter how insignificant, forward it on.’

Wilson headed to his office and Bishop waited until the locker room was empty before taking a shower. His forty-year-old body was an embarrassment, covered with the history of his life in a mess of tattoos, scars and gunshot wounds. Even after a shower he could still smell the gunpowder on his hands and hear the ringing in his ears from the mess at the green stucco house.

Bishop rode the elevator to the lobby. It was brown and empty and he was half way across it when the Desk Constable called him over.

‘The hospital sent this over,’ he said and handed Bishop a clear bag.

He could see the contents through the plastic. The possessions of a young girl: purse, keys, bracelet. All of them smeared in blood.

Bishop parked a block from his apartment. Down the street, a kid, fifteen years old, pants low, hat high, was struggling to jemmy a car window. Rubbish piled around the wheels; the vehicle hadn’t moved in months.

Bishop called out: ‘Hey.’

The kid turned, took one look, thought Bishop was nothing to worry about and went back to work on getting arrested.

Bishop unclipped his badge and held it out for him to see. ‘Hey, dickhead.’

The kid took off as fast as his oversized pants would allow him. A moment later, he was gone.

Bishop’s apartment: three rooms, a balcony, no view and hints of her every place he looked. Shoes left where they had been kicked off. A coat on the back of a chair. A coffee cup with lipstick traces.

Her memory, everywhere. It suffocated him.