Bruce opened the door and switched on the lights.
There he was. Costas. Or what was left of him.
His torture had been systematic. He was lying across the table, face down on his belly. His chin is on the table, his head tilted up, facing Bruce. His jaw has been broken and his teeth have been pulled out. They lie next to his amputated fingers. His eyes witness this. The eyelids have been cut away and the eyeballs have been carefully removed from the head without severing the optic nerves. These had somehow been stretched like a cartoon character’s and the eyes lie, each one on a pile of books, each one facing some of the fingers and teeth and eyelids and ears, which have also been removed and cut off with surgical scissors. The scissors lie with the pliers, and the nail gun which has secured Costas to the bench by his hands and clothing. The genitals have not been severed, possibly to avoid him bleeding to death. His tongue has been cut out.
They wanted to keep him alive as a message to his associates.
Bruce stood there, facing him, thinking how could anybody do this to another human being. But all he said to Costas was, You’ve been keeping bad company mate.
He puts the gun in the man’s mouth and fires. He cannot look but the groans are no more. Bruce shakes and moves out of the office across the forecourt. The door is stiff, and it is a tight squeeze to get into the Sydney sunshine. He panics, trembling with anxiety. He tries to phone me but I’m at my mum’s. If only I’d been home for him.
Bruce walks for a little bit, then runs into a prostitute, a half-Aboriginal girl called Madeline. He takes her to a hotel and pays her five hundred dollars, just to talk to her.
Just to talk. She sits warily as he speaks in measured tones, telling her about Costas and about the war he is having with the others and the consequences for him.
It should have been me that was there, not that whore.
I think that for Bruce that image of Costas became a symbol for extreme possibilities of evil. That’s why Bruce is how he is.
Worms And Promotions
I’m driving out to see Rossi, but Carole’s on my mind. I used to tell her a pile of shite when I was knocking off Madeline, this half-Abo bird I used to leg out there. I made up a lot of bullshit about working undercover down Kings Cross to put
Madeline was putting pressure on me to leave Carole. She was very headstrong and less easily controlled than Carole. The old country called.
Carole always believed every word I told her. She was happy in her own world with the kid. Always a domestic type, old Carole. Dirty cow in bed mind you. Give her the meat and the dosh, and she’d accept anything. It was all the dyke politics that fucked up her heid, when I slapped her after she’d overstepped the mark and she freaked and went to that refuge. I apologised for that, but she overreacted. She’ll come to her senses soon though, nothing surer.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I miss the turning for Rossi’s. I stop off at a newsagent for Playboy, Penthouse and Mayfair, before pulling up outside his surgery.
This Dr Rossi cunt fancies himself. Swarthy eyetie bastard. Dresses well does Rossi. Nice suit, shirt, shoes. Bet he makes a bundle on private consultations.
– Yes, we’ve got the test results. As I suspected, you’ve definitely got worms. We’ll have to carry on with this treatment.
– Eh!
I can’t believe it. This is another price I have to pay for hanging around with schemies and criminals.
– It’s only tapeworms, nothing for you to worry about. They’re very common, but not at all dangerous.
– Something’s growing inside me and you say it isnae dangerous!
– It’s not. What you have to do is take this solution and it’ll help you move your bowels more frequently.
– No, that seems to be a persistent nervous condition. You don’t have anything on your mind, anything you haven’t told me about?
Rossi’s just an exploitative quack, but that’s GPs for you. Fancy themselves as something else. Some want to be surgeons, Rossi evidently wants to be a psychologist. We ken you Rossi.
– Nothing on my mind at all, I say stiffly.
Dae yir fuckin job ya cunt.
I’m glad to get away from Rossi and back to the station.
I’m back just in time for lunch so I hit the cannie. Ina’s haggis is on the day. Lennox and the closet-faggot Peter Inglis are sitting together. I join them. Drummond and Fulton were behind me in the queue and they come and sit with us.
Karen Fulton, Drummond’s new best pal. Was not always thus. I’m sitting opposite them looking at the haggis and I feel like shouting at Fulton: Mind the time I fucked you Karen? After Princess Di’s funeral? I’ve never seen such a big, thick, black minge in my puff. C’mon everybody, let’s take a look at former W.P.C. Fulton’s hairy pie! It’s a fuckin jungle: curly hairs right up to and around the arsehole.
Drummond’s going on about her favourite shite: politics and changes in legislation and how it affects policing. She’s looking a bit tired. Too many long nights at the office, trying to trace where a hammer comes from. That’ll never be detected. I heard that cunt talking about me as well, her and the fag Inglis.
– Poor old Clell. He’s defo lost the plot since that move to Traffic, Ray says. – Went to see him the other day. He looks at me and Drummond. – He was saying that we were working for the alcohol marketing board. He’s obsessed with this Drugs Führer the Government’s appointed.
– No, we are working as enforcers of the law. The democratically elected government of the day makes the laws in Parliament. We enforce that law, Drummond squeaks, in polis rhetoric.
– Hmm, I say teasingly. Clell may have a point. This new Drugs Führer wants to attack demand rather than supply. That means sending more kids to jail. If that works and kids are scared to take illegal drugs, then they’ll turn on to legal ones like alcohol as a substitute.
– Which means more violence! Ray gives us the thumbs up.
– Tougher sentences! I say.
– Mair polis! Ray laughs.
– And, mair promoted posts, I rub my hands. – It also means mair prisoners, mair prisons, mair wardens, mair security guards. Pump-priming, basic Keynesian economics! Then we’ll get Maggie back in ten years’ time telling us we’ve been spending too much!
– But we can cut back on education, social work and health and aw that shit, Lennox nods.
Drummond’s looking horrified. – We’re only the enforcers of the law of the land. I mean, if a left-wing government was elected to power and had a radical agenda which became law and that law was ignored or opposed by vested interests then that law would be enforced by us just as rigorously. That’s how it is in a democracy, she says smugly.
– Bollocks, I tell her. – If you believe that then you’re even thicker than I thought.
Ray raises an eyebrow as Drummond pouts sourly.
– I mean . . . go back to the miners’ strike. Our job then was
I don’t know who asked that queer to open his flaccid mouth. That cunt should stick to thinking about young laddies’ cocks or whatever pervy shite goes on in his sick head and leave the politics to the experts.
– No, we upheld the law, Drummond’s screeching. Fulton nods supportively.
– If unions had never broken the laws, we wouldnae have any democracy . . . in the first place, I say, wondering why the fuck I’m coming out with all this wank.
– But that’s history. It isn’t like that now, Drummond says.
– Yes, you’re right Amanda, I correct myself, – But there are people within the unions now who don’t give a fuck about democracy. Maggie sorted them out, but they’re still there, just waiting for that Tony Blair spastic to show signs of weakness and let them back in. That was why things got so messed up with the last Labour government. These bastards held sway. Scargill and the likes. That’s why we had to sort them out.