The Robbers Page 2

  Shepherd lowered the volume. Took another drag.

  ‘Righto,’ he said, covered in urban brine. ‘I guess you’re not here to blow smoke up my arse.’

  Malone pushed record. The Pascoe drama meant his timing was gold.

  ‘So, what do you say about today’s arrest?’ he asked, off script. ‘Looks like you’re gunna cop some flak for it.’

  ‘Media flak we can handle. We did our job today.’

  ‘Was ramming Pascoe’s car necessary?’

  ‘Yes, it was. I reckon the public would prefer us to be damaging cars rather than hanging out windows shooting tyres. We believed the suspect was armed. He had to be apprehended. No-one got hurt.’

  ‘Apart from Pascoe …’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, the suspect suffered some minor injuries. He rolled the dice.’

  ‘What happened at the bank?’

  ‘Those details will be alleged in court.’

  Malone moved on. Those responses would suffice for a news yarn about the arrest. He now needed material for his feature.

  ‘What about the general perception of this squad? What do you say about allegations that you assault suspects and plant evidence?’

  Shepherd leaned back in his chair. Exhaled grey smoke against his view of the evolving city-scape. If this is what media liaison and command wanted explained—yet again—then he was happy to fire both barrels.

  ‘We don’t shy away from the fact that we investigate some of the most violent crimes in this state, and hunt the most vicious vermin who perpetuate those crimes. That’s what armed robbers are: vermin. A plague on society.’

  Shepherd’s failure to deny caught Malone off guard. You wouldn’t have heard the head of Homicide talking like this on the record.

  ‘In our time we’ve had our fair share of shooting incidents. Nine years ago I shot dead a really nasty bloke named Rodney Divine. But you’d know that. He gave me no choice after taking my fingers. A coroner agreed.’

  True confessions of a killer cop.

  ‘Over time, Bomber Bronson’s gone down,’ Shepherd continued. ‘George Carmody. Kenny Lipton copped it in the neck. He was a fucking maniac by the way, old Kenny Lipton. Sure, we’ve been criticised by coroners—and detectives John Quinn and Colin Reeves were charged and acquitted of murder—but if a bandit draws on us or an innocent member of the public, we will fight fire with fire. We make no bones about that and don’t apologise for it.’

  Shepherd took another drag. Malone did the same.

  McCrann entered Interview Room One, joining a seated Gilmore. Pascoe’s face looked ordinary; like a busted arsehole. Car accidents could do that to a man’s head. McCrann, a broad-shouldered jack with a crop-shaved head, took a seat at the interview table. Stared in complete silence. Pascoe dropped his gaze. Silence remained. Hung heavy. McCrann leaned in.

  ‘Do you hear that, Mr Gilmore?’

  ‘What’s that, Mr McCrann?’

  ‘That ringing sound.’

  Pascoe looked around, incredulous.

  ‘Yeah, now that you mention it, Mr McCrann, I do hear that … Can you hear that, Glen?’

  ‘What? What ringing sound?’

  ‘Hang on, Mr Gilmore, I think it’s my shoe phone. I’d better answer it.’

  Malone moved on with his next question.

  ‘What, if anything, then, has changed about the squad over time?’ he asked with a hint of scepticism.

  ‘Well, the bandits certainly haven’t changed but we’ve improved our techniques,’ Shepherd replied. ‘We’re now analysing and profiling the bandits. Trying to get inside their heads.’

  McCrann pulled off his right shoe and placed it to his ear.

  ‘Hello. Yeah, he’s here. Hang on a sec … Siegfried, it’s for you.’

  McCrann held his shoe out across the table, then leaned over and belted Pascoe in the head with it. Belted him several times.

  ‘I bet you can hear that ringing sound now!’

  Pascoe recoiled.

  ‘Jesus man. Lay off … I ain’t gunna confess to anything.’

  The air changed, and with it the tone. Acrimony turned to empathy. Loathing to understanding. McCrann clasped his hands like a preacher, leaned back.

  ‘The most difficult part is admitting it out loud, Glen.’

  Gilmore took his turn. ‘Yeah. Just say it. Once you do that pal, it gets real easy.’

  He consulted a file. ‘You’re turning forty this year. You gotta start looking for another job.’

  McCrann chipped in. ‘Yeah, and a new peer group. Those Aryan brothers of yours are obviously a bad influence.’

  ‘Ich ficke deine Mutter.’

  ‘And they’re teaching you some pisspot Kraut sayings to boot.’

  It was pretty clear Pascoe didn’t like the shrink routine. The neo-Nazi bandit had always been one to prefer butting heads.

  Malone continued with his interrogation.

  ‘What does the Armed Robbery Squad stand for?’

  ‘Protection of the community,’ Shepherd answered, not missing a beat.

  ‘At what cost?’

  ‘My men make personal sacrifices every day. None the community need know or hear about.’

  ‘Does that mean at any cost?’

  ‘There’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. We take immeasurable pleasure from removing the worst of the worst from society.’

  Malone was trying to push Shepherd’s buttons. Entice his ego into saying something out loud and on the record: something he was more than likely desperate to say.

  ‘Removing them from society … How?’

  ‘By gathering the necessary evidence to bring about a criminal conviction.’

  ‘Any other methods? I mean, are the crooks genuinely scared of you guys? Is that the way you want it?’

  ‘Ian, we rely on our seventy-plus per cent clean-up rate to do the talking for us. The sooner the crooks realise they will be caught if they continue their criminal conduct in Victoria, the sooner they can either find God or pack up and move interstate.’

  Shepherd had successfully deflected. The Divinyls line was the closest Malone had come to an extraction.

  ‘Who’s the hardest bandit you’ve ever dealt with?’

  Shepherd sat and thought, realising the journo had given the hard stuff a crack. He respected him for having had a go. For doing his job.

  ‘The hardest bandit?’

  Did he want to answer that question: give a shithead kudos? Normally he wouldn’t.

  ‘I’ll answer that off the record.’ Shepherd trained his gaze on Malone’s voice recorder. The journo turned it off.

  ‘A bloke called Pat Barrett,’ Shepherd admitted. ‘Got better form than Phar Lap: armed rob, escape, guns. He shot and wounded one of us during a raid a decade or so ago. Put a round through his front door and drilled Frank Aaronson. Beat the charge on a self-defence argument. He said he thought we were there to rob him … Imagine that.’

  ‘Imagine …’

  ‘The last time we kicked in his door he sat up in bed and asked if we could make him a cup of tea.’

  Another drag.

  ‘He knew the rules. Loved the game. Staunch no matter how well we treated him in here.’

  Malone nodded through the smoke.

  ‘I thought he’d be up there on your list.’

  ‘As cunning as a rattlesnake. Make no mistake.’

  ‘Okay. Back on the record now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What’s it like to kill a man?’

  Bang. Shepherd sat, cigarette burning down to his fingers. Dark and judiciou
s, his eyes peered deep into the journalist. Malone held the veteran cop’s stare. Had to, on the back of that question.

  ‘Jesus, pal,’ the inspector finally smirked, taking a last drag of his dart. ‘I thought you might have bought me flowers and taken me out to dinner first.’

  He butted in the desk ashtray.

  ‘What’s it like to kill a man? It’s nothing to envy. We call it natural selection.’

  CHAPTER 3

  It was six bells in the evening and Shepherd sat back in his office, shuffling around endless paperwork. He lit another dart and flicked on his office television. O’Shea appeared with a couple of green cans. Tossed one of the VBs over.

  ‘How’d you go with that journo?’

  ‘He had a crack. I’m expecting a carbon copy of the usual media diatribe.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. He and Pascoe accidentally came face to face at the lifts, and he didn’t flinch.’

  ‘Probably ’cos Pascoe was in cuffs.’

  ‘Dunno. There seemed to be a bit more to him than the other scribes.’

  O’Shea fizzed open his can and rested against the doorframe to watch the Channel Seven news.

  ‘First up,’ said Alice Morgan, ‘there are claims of Armed Robbery Squad brutality tonight after police used violent force to bring a bank robbery to an end in Melton this afternoon. Detectives smashed their vehicle into a getaway car during a high-speed pursuit on suburban streets. Channel Seven warns the following footage may be considered disturbing to some viewers.’

  The station’s police reporter, Kent Hammond, began to speak over pictures of the squad car hurtling towards the Commodore. A collision. Pieces of Holden. Spinning metal. Great vision. ‘An alleged armed bandit is in custody tonight after this questionable arrest. Armed Robbery Squad detectives rammed this car to end a pursuit following a nearby bank robbery …’

  Out in the office proper, squad detectives sat watching the report, some swigging on VB cans. Others smoking.

  ‘Questionable, my arse,’ Gucciardo boomed from his desk. ‘The cunt terrorised women and children!’

  ‘Fuckin’ A,’ mumbled a golden-haired Jack Lynch sitting next to his sergeant.

  The report cut to an eyewitness, an overweight local all wide eyes and hand gestures.

  ‘They just rammed this bloke, and his car went spinning. Then there were cops with guns yelling, “Police, don’t move! Show us your hands. Police! Police!” It was crazy, man.’

  Overhead footage played of Shepherd, Rogers and Kelso converging on the smashed Commodore with guns up; Shepherd forcing the bloodied driver face down on the roadway at gunpoint.

  ‘Good footage,’ O’Shea suggested to his boss, between mouthfuls.

  Shepherd swallowed half his can.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The fuckin’ wombats in command are gunna love it. Even odds the Rat Squad demand an explanation.’

  ‘Command reckons we need some positive PR,’ O’Shea informed. ‘I’ve got no idea why.’

  ‘It’s got me buggered, too,’ Shepherd added with a smirk.

  The screen cut to Police Union president Vic White: a greying T-Rex in suit and black overcoat.

  ‘The Police Union supports any method of arrest that results in the apprehension of violent and dangerous offenders,’ White declared, his name and title appearing along the bottom of the screen.

  Oozing the charming confidence of a politician but speaking in a common copper’s tongue, it was obvious that White was flying the flag for The Robbers.

  ‘On ya Vic!’ the freshly showered Lynch yelled, a Black Label Penthouse in hand and an opened bottle of Gatorade on his desk.

  White continued. ‘No major injuries resulted from the arrest, which followed a frightening bank robbery involving women, children and staff. The bandit fired a shot into the ceiling and threatened a very young boy at gunpoint.’

  The screen cut to footage taken at the bank scene: three female tellers sitting separated inside. Two held white polystyrene cups in trembling hands; one’s mascara stained down her face. A woman, obviously a customer, sat hugging a boy aged three, or thereabouts. She rocked the child back and forth; woman and boy trembling in unison. The kid had seen the bogeyman up close.

  ‘Mum and kid’ll carry that with ’em for ages,’ Detective Dan Drake, a golf club across his shoulder, said to Kelso. ‘The little bloke was in his mum’s arms. Pascoe grabbed her, fired one into the ceiling then put the gun to the kid’s head. Told the teller he’d blow the boy’s brains out if she didn’t hand over the cash.’

  Kelso’s jaw clenched as he shook his head. ‘Pascoe’s an A1 piece of shit, all right.’

  Drake resumed practising his chipping off the carpet, cutting in and under an imaginary ball. ‘Yep.’

  A five-o’clock shadow smudging his jaw line, Kelso yelled across to McCrann, busy on a central computer. ‘Hey Trapper, you should have aced Siegfried when you had the chance, pal.’

  McCrann yelled back, eyes still scanning the computer screen: ‘Don’t make me feel worse than I already do.’

  Police Chief Commissioner Trevor McFarlane—a questionably young-looking leader—appeared on screen. Kent Hammond’s voice-over continued.

  ‘Police commissioner Trevor McFarlane said he did not support the Police Union’s view.’

  Razor-nosed with boot-polished brown hair, McFarlane spoke to the cameras.

  ‘Force command does not condone any improper or unlawful methods of policing. Today’s arrest will be investigated by the appropriate people … and if necessary, internal action will be taken.’

  Gucciardo reacted, his classic black ‘bikie’ moustache sporting beer froth. ‘You’re a fucking cheezel McFarlane.’

  ‘If a complaint is made then the Police Ethics Commission will carry out its own inquiry. That’s why the PEC was established: to independently investigate complaints of unlawful police behaviour.’

  The screen cut to Stuart Davis, chief investigative officer of the PEC. Channel Seven had caught him on the hop.

  ‘Sorry, but I am not at liberty to make any public comment,’ he said in his trademark thick Scottish accent.

  The footage of Davis seemed to incense Gucciardo further. ‘Fuck you, Davis! The fuckin’ peckerheads couldn’t investigate a parking fine.’

  The goliath squashed his empty can. Belched up a swirl of beer and lunch fumes. Can in hand, Detective Mitchell Hunter joined the chorus.

  ‘McFarlane’s gunna gut this police force.’

  Gucciardo looked at him. ‘Morale’s already at rock bottom, Mitch.’

  ‘TJF,’ Kelso threw in for good measure.

  The job’s fucked.

  Gilmore stuck his head into Shepherd’s glass enclosure.

  ‘Boss, Pascoe’s too damaged to be put on tape. He’s off to St Vinnie’s for a bedside job tomorrow. Some of us are heading to the Royal if you’re keen.’

  Shepherd, reading glasses perched halfway down his nose, ferreted through a pile of papers as he spoke more to himself than his detective.

  ‘I could drink the Thomson Reservoir dry pal, but I’m buried here. A bloke rams a car and racks a Remington and they want War and bloody Peace.’

  Gilmore chuckled, leaving his boss in purgatory. The next news item caught Shepherd’s ear. Still perched over his reports, he lifted his gaze above his rims. It was footy news; the AFL tribunal’s delayed decision on Geelong veteran Craig Carter. The big man had been charged with striking after instinctively hitting an opponent flush with his shoulder. It was a classic shirtfront: ironed the other player out. In decades past, such an act was applauded as hard and rugged footy. Nowadays, to the chagrin of football purists, it was an act of play frowned upon by the AFL hierarchy. The Carter report seemed particularly contentious. There was a lot more riding on the tribunal’s decision than just Geelong’s fortunes. The game’s culture and integrity was at stake. Sports presenter Michael Ross appeared next to Morgan. ‘And we can now bring you the AFL tribunal’s decisio
n on the striking charge against Cowboy Carter. And, Alice, it’s not good news for Cats fans, I’m afraid. Despite Carter pleading guilty to striking, only minutes ago the tribunal suspended the two-time All Australian for four matches.’

  The detectives watching the report, be they Geelong supporters or otherwise, howled at the penalty. Kelso exploded, ‘The dickhead shouldn’t have pleaded!’

  Lynch was also outraged. ‘Those AFL fuckwits are turning the game into netball … Go Pies!’

  Gucciardo took a playful swing at his junior crew man. ‘Oi, it’s navy blue or nothing on this crew, Whiskers.’

  ‘They’re taking the bump right out of the game, boys,’ Lynch warned, throwing his small Collingwood-coloured football as hard as he could at Brett Teasedale.

  ‘Tiny! Heads up!’

  Teasedale, fresh from the fourth-floor gym—his pumped wet muscles bulging from his singlet—reflexively swatted the little footy away as though dismissing a mosquito. Hulk-like, he picked the ball up and hurled it back. Lynch dodged the black-and-white missile.

  ‘What’s going on?’ a smiling Teasedale asked Barlow, standing picking through a filing cabinet.

  ‘Cowboy Carter just got four weeks,’ Barlow explained. ‘The Saints’ odds will shorten a heap this weekend.’

  Malone sat at his office computer, kicking around his Armed Robbery Squad feature. Calls to former crime department members had proved fruitful. A two-finger typist, he tapped heavily on the keyboard. Justice is coming. Was the Tombstone poster there to remind the bosses what real policing was all about? Or to mock force command every time the brass walked onto the floor? Maybe it served both purposes. Malone tapped in his final two sentences. Filed his 120 centimetre piece to the subs desk, a single beer and cigarette on his mind as reward. The feature was a nicely patched quilt; a cover for an agenda. Justice was coming, he hoped.

  CHAPTER 4

  Amid the fading perfume of oven-cooked pepperoni, pineapple and pizza dough, Peter Rovati shut up shop for the night. It had been fair mid-week trade. The float sat in the till at 1294 bucks and some loose change. It wasn’t as much as a franchised Italian joint would typically pull in—possibly under the management of an Australian or Indian proprietor—but Rovati was a traditional restaurateur who preferred the family touch when it came to making food. His was a proud and independent business. Italians had pizza and pasta. Greeks fish and chips and souvlaki. The Chinese: spring rolls and dumplings. Indians, they made curries. There was no room for mixing and matching owners with cuisine, as was happening more and more. There was a Chinese family running a fish and chip shop down the road, for Christ’s sake. Gnawing on a slice of Aussie pizza for supper, Rovati collected a bag of rubbish and pushed his corpulence against the rear door that led to an alley dumpster.