Roll With It (24 page)

***

Lou almost said hi to Jake as he walked past her, oblivious and muttering that he didn’t have any change. She wondered how he, of all people, would react to knowing it was her – naked – beneath the suit?

It wasn’t exactly difficult to see that Jake had the hots for her, like that was ever going to happen, but she wanted to let him down gently – and not until after tomorrow night, when the stickers had been planted. She wondered briefly how the stickers were coming along. That was the problem with trusting the job to an anarchist. How smoothly could a printing factory operate and still be considered anarchic? He’d said they’d be ready for tomorrow.

She watched Jake walk away, tonight wearing a Red Hot Chilli Peppers T-shirt, which surprised her. A change from the Sound Relief shirt. He still had the ridiculous hat on though, his longish hair plastered underneath.

And then she saw Wildie. Stig’s scary friend, with his eyes unwaveringly on Jake’s back as the crowd parted to let him through. Lou drifting against the wall as he passed, smelling his body odour even through the mask’s mesh, and seeing him watch Jake go into the Brunswick Street Bookstore. Wildie hovering briefly then heading into the cars, walking across the road and letting them stop for him. On the other side now, lurking and sneaking glances at the bookshop.

Lou looking to her left and seeing the cop, no longer in the Vegie Bar, and coming this way.

***

Wildie saw the koala look his way again. A third time. Wildie staring back, wondering what the hell it was looking at. Not about to be unsettled by a fucking koala.

Then seeing a guy in a T-shirt and jeans walk past the koala to the bookshop door, hesitating like he might go in. Wildie almost jumping out of his skin as the guy instead turned and looked straight at him and, shit, started to cross the road. Wildie telling himself to be cool, it might be a coincidence. But the guy walking right up to him, staring Wildie in the eye, even from half a head shorter, looking oddly familiar, and saying: ‘How you doing? Don’t the drug deals usually happen over on Smith, near the Safeway? Or is it a Woolworths now?’

Wildie, spooked but aiming for a cool, unhurried stare, mumbling that he didn’t know what the guy was talking about.

‘No? Well, I’m going near Thornbury if you need a lift.’

Wildie finally realising where he had seen this guy before: in uniform at the café the day he’d met Louie. The same cop stare.

Wildie wasn’t the type to walk away from a situation. A few years ago he’d taken on five bikies – fully patched members of the Comancheros, no less – in a pub near Pambula on the southern New South Wales coast, and walked out of there no more damaged than they were afterwards. Which, to be fair, was a lot. Prior to that, he’d been to jail and had learned, the hard way, how to spot the truly dangerous men, as against those trying to bluff it. During his drug-running career for Jenssen, he had found himself staring down the barrel of a gun twice, confident both times, as he looked into the would-be gangsters’ eyes, that they didn’t have the nerve to shoot.

And yet, looking into this man’s eyes, this man dressed casually on a trendy Melbourne street, Wildie was stunned to realise he actually felt scared. Those eyes had seen things, been places. Places Wildie also knew and had no wish to revisit. An emptiness.

And the cop had mentioned Thornbury. And the cop, almost certainly unarmed, off duty, was in his face in a way that people simply did not get in the Wild Man’s face.

He hadn’t really looked at this cop in the café, but now he did, tried to turn it into a long, defiant look, and started to walk. When he was around the corner, off Brunswick Street, he walked faster. He forced himself not to run, but Wildie got the fuck out of there.

Laver watched him leave, wishing he could follow, but decided to stay close to Jake.

When the orange mohawk was out of sight, Laver picked a gap in the shuffling cars and crossed back to the bookstore.

On the footpath, he said to a baggy suit of grey fur, ‘You seem awfully curious for a koala.’

‘Just enjoying the show,’ an unexpectedly female voice said to him, slightly muffled.

‘You get hot in that suit?’ Laver asked.

‘You have no idea,’ the koala replied.

Laver, with his hands on his hips, appraising her. ‘How do you keep cool?’

‘You have even less idea,’ the koala replied.

Laver woke to his phone ringing, and fumbled for his mobile.

Marcia. The name flashed immediately into his waking brain.

Still little more than half-asleep, it took him a moment to realise it wasn’t even the phone in his hand that was ringing. In fact, it was more of a buzzing sound.

The security for the front door.

That meant standing and, oh boy, realising the severity of the hangover as his senses started to kick in. Palm to temple, wincing, he staggered into the lounge room and pressed the intercom.

‘Wha—?’

‘It’s Flipper.’

‘Tennis is tomorrow, you dickhead. Tomorrow.’

‘Rocket—’

‘And not this fucking early. What time is it?’

‘Rocket. This is work.’

Laver’s brain was staggering. Cogs not meshing. ‘Work?’

‘Will you let me in, for Christ’s sake?’

Laver did. He was on his second large glass of water, three Panadols down, when Flipper walked through the front door, only a one-day growth on his chin and wearing a dark-blue suit.

Laver squinted at him and said, ‘The fuck are you dressed like that for?’

‘You might have forgotten that this is how detectives dress, dickhead.’ Flipper tilted his head, staring at a haggard version of his mate: hair everywhere, in a faded Hoodoo Gurus T-shirt and fitted boxers that looked slightly saggy. ‘Shit, you look good.’

‘I’m supposed to be asleep. For another five or six hours.’ Laver winced and put his hand across his face, groaning.

‘Like that, huh? Let me guess. It was the last beer that did the damage.’

‘It always is, mate. Only in my case, it was the last six whiskies after pissing Marcia off for probably the last time.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, oh’s right. Flipper, what’s going on?’

‘You need to come with me. There’s a crime scene I think you might want to attend.’

Laver was squinting, as though trying to see out of his left eye. ‘I’m allowed?’

‘I haven’t asked. Come on. Get dressed. It’s cold out.’

‘That’s because the sun is hours away, you fuck.’

‘Get ready or I’m leaving without you.’

‘Why would I care?’

‘You’ll care. Plus this is your first chance in a while to stop playing Captain Lycra.’

Laver dropped the c-bomb in his mate’s direction once or twice, but then said, ‘I’ll be one minute.’

Jeans. Caterpillar-brand work boots so he didn’t have to negotiate laces. A jumper over the T-shirt. A leather jacket. A return to the bedroom for a beanie.

Then one luxuriously long piss and a final large glass of water and he was out the door, Flipper muttering about whenever he was ready, maybe sometime this year.

They drove straight at the city but veered onto Batman Avenue and then the freeway, towards the West Gate before Flipper looped off onto the tollway over the Bolte Bridge, aka the Goalposts, and pointed north.

Flipper driving fast and expertly through the almost empty roads, sitting twenty or thirty kilometres per hour above the speed limit the whole time, but occasionally glancing to see if Laver was awake or about to throw up. He seemed okay, blinking and frowning at a faint glow on the horizon that might be the beginnings of the sunrise.

Laver mumbled, ‘Want to tell me what this is about?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Even where?’

‘Near the airport.’

‘So it’s a Code 33.’

‘Yep.’

‘Not a 69?’ The difference in code between ‘body found’ and ‘murder’. Cop humour.

‘Probably. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah. Three knives in the back, headless and set on fire. Might be self-inflicted.’

Flipper almost grinned. ‘Good detectives don’t assume anything, Constable.’

‘Senior Constable, cockless. Do you know who it is?’

‘Not confirmed. That’s where I’m hoping you can help.’

Laver yawned, but the mention of a body had sliced into his hangover and lack of sleep. He could feel his blood starting to pump, like it hadn’t for a while.

‘You want to talk about the Marcia thing?’ asked Flipper.

‘Nope. Let’s just say it was an epic fail.’

‘If you’re going to fail …’

‘… may as well be epic,’ Laver finished. ‘I also saw one of those guys.’

‘Which guys?’

‘The ones I keep talking about. The bad guys.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘He was about to assault a civilian. That kid from the café the first day I saw them, if you remember.’

‘So this guy was about to assault the kid?’

‘I dissuaded him.’

Flipper actually laughed. ‘Dissuaded. Good word: you’re waking up. So he didn’t assault some Joe. Just might have.’

Laver didn’t say anything.

‘We can add “failed to assault a member of the public” to “possibly being named after a cigarette” and the other mythical charges,’ said Flipper.

‘Maybe. Or maybe I actually do miraculously still have cop instincts. It was actually the other guy, not Stig. I’m pretty sure his name is Stig, not Cig, by the way.’

‘Jesus,’ Flipper muttered. ‘I feel like Doctor Watson in the presence of genius.’

‘As you should. And anyway, if everything I’m saying is so full of shit, why am I in your car right now?’

‘We’ll see soon enough,’ Dolfin said.

They were quiet for a while, driving north, until Laver said, ‘It must have been good to be a cop in the old days. You know, a hundred years ago. All the bodies would have been down city alleys, convenient nearby lanes. These days, every bastard gets topped on the outskirts and we have to hack miles to get there.’

Dolfin flexing his shoulders, hands loose on the wheel. ‘Who says today’s was topped?’

‘So you woke me up because an old bird died in her sleep?’

‘Fair call. But in the old days, they didn’t have forensics. To help find the bad guys.’

‘Or decent cars.’

‘Or comfortable uniforms.’

‘Or titanium-framed mountain bikes.’

‘Or cute female constables in lycra shorts. Now you’re apparently single again.’

‘Oh stop,’ Laver said. ‘It’s too early in every sense.’

Melrose Drive leaves the freeway just after the turn at Essendon Airport, and then runs in a straight line to Tullamarine, where Melbourne’s major airport sprawls across the suburb-sized space. Just near the runways, the buildings become sparse and there’s a large block of bush behind a wire fence and a sign, proclaiming the property to be the ‘Tullamarine Flying Club’.

‘This mob must have great club meetings with 747s taking off twenty feet above their heads,’ Laver said as they drove through the gate, a uniformed cop nodding at Flipper as they passed.

Dawn still hadn’t fully kicked in, so the giant fluoro lights on stands brought their usual artificial daylight to the scene. Police tape was unfurled in a wide arc, an area the size of a couple of tennis courts cordoned off. As they parked, Laver asked, ‘Is there just the one body? Why have they taped the entire suburb?’

Flipper shrugged. ‘Looks like it’s a property with no passers-by and no houses, apart from the flying club HQ. Plenty of room. May as well give the forensic boys and the meat truck some elbow room.’

Laver hit the fresh air and breathed it in, fully awake now, hangover put aside. Wishing to Christ they had grabbed a takeaway coffee on the way, but feeling alive. He had wondered if he’d ever be at a crime scene like this again, and wondered if this little moment of recognition was actually just a way of avoiding whatever reason it was Flipper had brought him here. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a body since Coleman.

The scene looked the way they always do. A couple of clusters of cops, some in uniform protecting the scene, some in suits even at this hour. A white van for forensics and a guy and woman in lab coats poking around while two detectives stand to one side, drinking coffee out of takeaway cardboard cups. Damn them.

They regarded Flipper and Rocket.

‘What is he doing here?’ said the taller of the two, looking hard at Laver.

‘Reckon he might know the bloke lying over there.’

‘Wrong tense,’ said the shorter of the homicide cops.

‘Huh?’

‘You reckon he knew him. When he was alive. Which isn’t now.’

‘Christ, a wordsmith,’ said Flipper. ‘At this time of the morning.’

A car pulled up next to Flipper’s and the police photographer, a guy named Melican, got out and nodded to the group.

‘Nobody ever dies at four in the fucking afternoon,’ he grumbled. ‘Why can’t somebody die just after lunch?‘

Nobody bothered to answer so he went to the boot to get his gear. Laver left them to it, took another deep breath, and then walked over to where the white coats were fossicking around. He looked at the body. It was lying face down, legs in a small stream that had saturated the body below the waist. One arm was flung out to the side, and one was underneath the torso.