The Robbers Read online

  This book is dedicated to those who fought the good fight under the crossed pistols

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER 1

  Detective Sergeant Steve ‘Trapper’ McCrann was relishing what had become a good old-fashioned police pursuit. Riding shotgun next to him, Detective Senior Constable Frank Barlow relayed information via the two-way. This chase was hot.

  ‘Suspect vehicle is now left in Venice Street … right into Railway Parade,’ Barlow called into the transmitter, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

  ‘Roger that, Crime four-zero-one,’ came the D-24 operator’s droll, controlled reply. ‘Take all due care. Air four-nine-five is up and heading over to you.’

  ‘Yeah, VKC, roger that.’

  Jockeying in the back seat of the police Holden, nursing a Remington 12-gauge, was Detective Senior Constable David Gilmore. ‘Happy’ was all grin as McCrann ripped another savage turn under full bells and whistles. The police Holden held on, just; its voice a growl, tyres squealing ‘fuck you’ in effort. Barlow took a quick jerky call on his mobile.

  ‘Righto.’

  He hung up.

  ‘That was Gooch. He’s viewed the bank footage.’

  ‘Whose tail are we riding?’ McCrann asked.

  ‘It’s Pascoe. It’s his m.o. for sure.’

  McCrann drove the sedan hard.

  Gilmore was tense. ‘He’s pulling away—’

  ‘Like fuck he is,’ said McCrann.

  Detective Inspector Ken Shepherd was coming in at Pascoe from another direction—minus lights and sirens. His was a stealth approach. Driver: Detective Sergeant Max Rogers. Back-seat shotgunner: Detective Senior Constable Shane Kelso, who took a call. Hung up.

  ‘Boss, Gooch says we’re chasing our old mate Siegfried.’

  ‘Of the Kaos variety?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Shepherd returned to Crew 401’s pursuit commentary on the open radio channel.

  Cradling a shotgun and with a street directory in his lap, Shepherd tracked Glen Pascoe’s movements with a finger. There were two recreation reserves on the southern side of the footbridge. He took an educated punt.

  ‘Hang a right here, Roy.’

  Pascoe’s vehicle cut a sharp right and skidded to a messy stop in a gravel car park. He leapt from the getaway car with gun and moneybag in hand and burst into a sprint, heading towards a second vehicle. As McCrann’s sedan slid to a stop, he and Gilmore were out. Barlow remained on the two-way.

  ‘ARS four-zero-one … Suspect has done a runner. Repeat, suspect now on foot heading south across the Melton Reserve footbridge. Members in pursuit—also on foot.’

  McCrann and Gilmore watched Pascoe, still in balaclava, put some distance between him and them. The prick obviously liked adidas—the best getaway footwear on the market. The two Armed Robbery Squad detectives, on the other hand, were running in suit pants and work shoes and lugging a layer of Kevlar. They watched the stick-up merchant dart downwards into a concrete culvert. Kept him in sight as he passed under two bridges. Went up and over a fence. As the duo cut across a playground into a recreation reserve, Pascoe was inside his second vehicle and had it spitting gravel. Breathless, the two Robbers watched the hot Commodore fishtail out onto the roadway. McCrann holstered his .38 and lowered, hands on knees.

  ‘I should have shot that cunt … the last time ’round … when I had the fuckin’ chance.’

  Shepherd locked on as Rogers drove straight towards Pascoe’s Commodore; the squad car now under lights and siren. Shepherd relished this feeling. The cool air through his window was the tonic; the car action the juice. It was now will versus will. Mano-a-mano—and he knew Rogers would not turn chicken. Kelso was urging from the back seat.

  ‘It’s Control versus Kaos again, boys.’ Shepherd saw Pascoe rip his balla off. The look in the neo-Nazi’s eyes said it all. He damn well knew it was a Robbers squad car heading right at him. Pascoe yelled something through his windscreen, his vehicle picking up pace. Then he blinked and wrenched hard down on the wheel. Hit the brakes. The squad car hit the rear side of the shit-box, smashing it a new arsehole.

  The detectives’ world spun for a second. They rode the collision and were out with guns up in an instant. They wore bulletproof vests emblazoned with POLICE. This was still their town, despite whispers from the cheezels on high suggesting otherwise. Rogers and Kelso covered their boss as he approached Pascoe’s mangled chariot. Two helicopters hovered. One was the police air wing. The other was a media chopper: Channel Seven, according to its underside. The filth must have heard the pursuit over their police scanner and been up and close at the time. Rogers wrenched open Pascoe’s driver-side door. Shepherd and Kelso stepped in; Remington pump-actions nuzzled.

  ‘Gotcha, Glenny.’

  All head injuries and bloodstained teeth, Pascoe sneered in reply.

  ‘Get fucked Shepherd, you dog. Du Hund! Du fickst dich, Hund!’ Shepherd pressed the end of his barrel against Pascoe’s head.

  ‘Gesundheit, shithead.’

 
CHAPTER 2

  The St Kilda Road police complex was home to the major crime squads along with the Exhibits Management Unit—commonly referred to as ‘Emu’—and the Special Projects Unit—‘Spew’. The Spew ran the listening devices and telephone intercepts. As newspaper crime reporter Ian Malone well knew, St Kilda Road housed the stars and the support acts. The covert surveillance units, ‘the dogs’, and the Special Operations Group—both behind-the-scenes specialists—worked out of a different building. They preferred to shape the scripts rather than take the limelight. While relatively new to the city crime beat, Malone had done his apprenticeship in the burbs: as a far from enthralled junior police constable before finishing a degree and scoring a gig as a local news scribe. To get on the payroll of a major daily, a crime reporter hacking it on a local rag had to break big yarns; force a city editor to kick someone’s arse while screaming ‘Why the fuck didn’t we have this?’ It was after Malone had broken a few big ones that The Age had come calling.

  Detective Senior Sergeant Richard O’Shea met Malone in the St Kilda Road foyer and chaperoned him into one of six lifts. While Malone had visited the building’s street-level police station during his short-lived police career, he’d never had reason to venture upstairs to any of the crime squad offices. He’d been too junior-burger for that. O’Shea removed his spectacles and cleaned the lenses with his handkerchief as the lift ascended. An automated female voice announced ‘Eleventh floor’ and O’Shea, a bald, stocky bloke with Popeye-like forearms—one etched with a marine tattoo—escorted Malone from the box. As they stepped clear an opposite lift opened, spitting free a half-chewed prisoner, a swastika tattooed on the left side of his neck. One of three detectives pushed the bloodied and cuffed suspect, foot against arse, out into the corridor: right into Malone’s space. The tallest of the arresting detectives grabbed the bracelets and pulled the prisoner back. Malone locked eyes with the gaunt battered bloke, who had crystal blue eyes and a shock of spiked blond hair. The prisoner sneered. Muttered something in German. The bigger detective in control said nothing. Stared silently at Malone. For a frozen instant the three men stood in a vacuum: the journalist, the crook and the Armed Robbery Squad detective. The good, the bad and the ugly, thought Malone. But who, exactly, was who? In a blink the crook was pushed towards glass doors marked with the squad’s crossed-pistol emblem.

  ‘Who is he?’ Malone asked O’Shea.

  ‘You just met Glen Pascoe … or Siegfried as we like to call him.’

  ‘Siegfried?’

  ‘You ever watched Get Smart?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘Well, Pascoe’s a clown. A very dangerous clown. Just like Siegfried, he’s in charge of public relations and terror on behalf of chaos.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘He did a bank in Melton this afternoon.’

  The journo watched as a belligerent Pascoe copped a slap across the back of the head. It was common knowledge that Pascoe was no stranger to The Robbers, and he’d obviously worked his way several times through this building, like a germ in the bloodstream. One of the arresting detectives keyed a code and the glass doors opened.

  The Armed Robbery Squad office consisted of four groupings of desks, operational whiteboards and filing cabinets. Plaques of commendation and cop memorabilia from around the globe adorned the walls, along with framed copies of newspaper articles trumpeting headlines about fatal and non-fatal Armed Robbery operations. Malone smelled the thick aroma of machismo and tradition. White shirts, one with a telephone to his ear, side-spied him suspiciously from a desk chair: golf balls and a framed picture of a woman holding a baby on his desk the only things to suggest he might be a half-decent bloke. The office felt an inhospitable place for someone sans a dark suit, pressed white shirt and black tie stamped with crossed gold revolvers. A movie poster struck Malone’s eye. He knew the film well. Tombstone. The poster had Kurt Russell playing Wyatt Earp; he and three fellow ‘immortal’ law makers striding down a burning town street. ‘Justice Is Coming’, the poster promised. It was no state secret that the SOG (a.k.a. the Sons of God) were the force’s elite siege tacticians, and that Homicide detectives considered themselves top of the investigative food chain. But what about the men of the Armed Robbery Squad: the brotherhood within the brotherhood as they so boldly chose to be known? They were the ones depicted in TV shows as two-dimensional detectives who strolled up to an unarmed crook, yelled ‘He’s got a gun’, then blatted the shithead to kingdom come. Shooting incidents had gone to inquest, and the squad had worn some criticism. Many years before Malone ever temporarily wore a blue uniform, the men of ‘The Robbers’ were wearing as a badge of honour claims they framed crooks, stole proceeds of crime and bashed suspects. ‘Noble corruption’, some called it. The Robbers remained the mystery men of the crime department today; investigators with a reputation for being a law unto themselves who struck the state’s most violent criminals with dread. But no member had ever been found guilty of unlawful conduct. So were The Robbers demonised or deserving of their chequered reputation? Malone wanted to lift the lid. Inform the public that they were either the real fucking deal or a bunch of cops trading on lunchbox legend. At least that’s what he’d told his editor.

  O’Shea pointed out some of the members involved in the Pascoe arrest.

  ‘Crew four-zero-one,’ he said. ‘That’s Sergeant Steve McCrann.’

  McCrann, the bigger detective who’d kicked Pascoe from the lift, stood with a lit cigarette jutting from his teeth while tipping bullets from his .38 into a desk drawer. O’Shea pointed to a younger detective clearing shotguns and standing them in a locker in a small room at the back of the office.

  ‘That’s Dave Gilmore … And there’s the boss, Ken Shepherd.’

  In white shirt with rolled sleeves, Shepherd stood with hand on holstered .38. By his side hung a misshapen left hand; small finger shortened by an inch. Ring finger nothing but a nub at the knuckle. Malone studied him. While Wambaugh or Ellroy may have written Shepherd as the greying modern-day sheriff, to Malone he stood like the captain of a fishing trawler amid six metre swells, creased yet unperturbed while checking the catch of the day. The third of the detectives from the elevator—a pinch-faced slighter guy—frogmarched Pascoe past Shepherd.

  ‘Put him in one, Tickets,’ the boss ordered.

  ‘Tickets—that’s Frank Barlow,’ O’Shea informed Malone. ‘We took him from the Drug Squad about six weeks ago. As you’re probably no doubt aware, Internal Affairs are all over the Druggies at the moment … Frank was glad to get out.’

  ‘How many detectives have you got, all up?’ Malone asked.

  ‘There’s usually four blokes to each crew but we’ve got two on leave and another couple doing temps at sergeant level back in uniform.’

  Behind a closed door in Interview Room One, Barlow pushed Pascoe into a chair at a plain table.

  ‘Fick dich, Schwein … I want a fucking ambulance.’

  ‘Don’t worry Glen, we’ve got an FMO on the way up to assess your injuries.’

  ‘What the fuck’s an FMO?’

  ‘A forensic medical officer. She’ll tell us if you need to go to hospital.’

  Whistling the Get Smart theme, Gilmore entered and closed the door again. He smiled in reassuring fashion, doe-eyes soft.

  ‘Don’t worry, shithead,’ he began, ‘we’re gunna take real good care of you … like we always do.’

  He moved and grabbed Pascoe by the back of his sweaty hair. Yanked hard.

  ‘When are you gunna learn that you can’t run from The Robbers?’

  Gilmore let go. Gave Pascoe a belting.

  O’Shea walked Malone to Shepherd’s office, a glass enclosure overlooking the rest of the floor.

  ‘Boss, this is Ian Malone. A crime writer from The Age. Media liaison
okayed it last week for him to come up for a feature story he’s writing.’

  ‘It’s The Age’s turn is it?’ Shepherd asked rhetorically, leaning back in his chair. ‘The Herald Sun’s taken this week off have they, Dick? Actually, I don’t mind the Herald Sun.’

  O’Shea played along.

  ‘It’s a fine blue-collar publication.’

  Shepherd rooted around in a drawer. Located a pack of smokes.

  ‘Take a seat, pal.’

  The inspector studied the young bloke: clean-cut in facial appearance with economically trimmed dark hair. Shoes in need of a polish. His tugged tie and undone top button gave him a gumshoe appearance, his cheap suit confirming he was no self-important scribe. More likely a grunt, and a bachelor to boot. Shepherd lit a dart and tossed his packet of Marlboros over.

  ‘Feel free to light up. No-one tells me and the boys where we can and can’t smoke.’

  Malone sat opposite.

  ‘Go on,’ Shepherd said, nodding to the smokes. ‘They won’t bite you. Not like me. I’m ferocious … I’m ferocious, aren’t I, Dick?’

  O’Shea stopped at the doorway. Turned.

  ‘Nah, boss, you’re a sweet guy. Just misunderstood.’

  Shepherd turned his attention back to Malone, lighting up with his own spark. Shepherd noticed the journo’s fingers. No strangers to the tar.

  ‘Never trust a man who doesn’t smoke, drink, swear or know how to root. They’re the prerequisites to join The Robbers … That’s off the record by the way.’

  Malone took a drag and placed his voice recorder on the desk. He was about to begin, but Shepherd was distracted. The inspector shot a look at his office clock. Turned up his TV via the remote. It was news update time. The Channel Seven anchorwoman, Alice Morgan, came up full screen before it cut to teaser footage of the aftermath of the Melton police pursuit. Morgan’s voice continued over the running pictures.

  ‘Armed Robbery Squad detectives have used excessive force after a bank robbery in Melton today. The police crashed their sedan into a car being driven by the suspected robber. Chief Commissioner Trevor McFarlane has ordered a full inquiry. The Channel Seven news helicopter captured exclusive footage of the shocking arrest. Full pictures in tonight’s bulletin. In other news, Geelong big man Craig Carter learns his fate at the AFL tribunal tonight for a high hit on his Carlton opponent …’