Dark City Blue: A Tom Bishop Rampage Read Free Page B

a couple of hours left before the sun rose and the station took the time to catch its breath before the onslaught of a new day. Lewis met him in the lobby, blood-soaked tissues rammed up his nose. ‘Thought we should give you a call. Just in case,’ he said.
    ‘Where is she?’
    Lewis pointed to the end of the hall, and they headed toward the source of the racket. With each step, the screams faded, making way for a relentless wall of abuse that was just as unpleasant.
    ‘We picked her up about an hour ago. B&E on a boutique store in Toorak with two other juvies. Took me and a couple of baggy pants to subdue her.’
    Lewis slowed to a stop at the office door. Bishop peered through the small glass window at a worn-down girl who couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. In another place and time, she could have been on the cover of a magazine; at the moment, her looks were hidden by anger and pain.
    ‘No criminal history,’ Lewis said. ‘I figure she probably just did this for some attention.’
    Bishop lit a cigarette. ‘What’s her name?’
    ‘Alice Cameron.’
    He pulled in a lungful of smoke, wrapped his hand around the doorhandle and stepped through.
    Her eyes snapped to him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
    Bishop dragged a chair from another desk and sat next to her. ‘I’m Tom Bishop,’ he said.
    Her face softened. ‘I imagined you different.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘A bit more like the cops on television.’
    ‘I can have some headshots made if you like?’
    ‘I imagined you funnier as well.’
    Bishop leant over and uncuffed her. ‘They tell me you think I’m your father.’
    She rubbed her wrists. Not because she needed to, but because she thought she should. Too many movies. ‘They tell me that as well.’
    ‘Who’s your mother?’
    She took her time with an answer. ‘Her name is Stacy,’ and waited for recognition to cross Bishop’s face, but there was none.
    ‘About seventeen, eighteen years ago? Ring any bells? Stacy Cameron?’
    He held his breath. It was just for an instant, but it was long enough to give Alice the answer she had come to find.
    ‘Guess I’m your little girl,’ she said. ‘Are you proud?’
    *
    Neither of them knew what to say in the car, so neither said much of anything. They watched the city roll by in the stillness of the metropolitan night. Occasionally, light from a neon bar would bounce off their faces and fall back into the darkness as they passed. It had been raining for three days and had finally stopped earlier that night.
    Alice rolled down a window and lit a cigarette before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. Bishop leant across, snatched the butt from her lips and flicked it out the window.
    ‘What the fuck?’
    ‘Watch your language.’ He said it with enough authority to make her sit up and keep her mouth shut. ‘It’s not very ladylike.’
    She shifted her gaze to the shards of rising sun that splintered the gaps in the buildings. ‘How did you and Stacy hook up?’ she asked.
    ‘Your mother hasn’t told you?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘It’s not much of a story. I knew your mother for about twelve hours. We met in a bar in Port Melbourne, had too much to drink and had sex.’
    ‘Sounds like Stacy.’
    ‘Guess we weren’t too big on the birth control.’
    ‘Still sounds like Stacy,’ she said. ‘What do I call you?’
    ‘What do you want to call me?’
    ‘I don’t think we’re at Dad yet, are we?’
    Bishop shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think we are.’
    ‘How about Tom?’
    Nobody called him Tom. Half the guys he knew probably didn’t even know his first name, and those who did would never think to use it. But when she said it, he liked the way it sounded.
    Bishop pulled into an all-night convenience store on Sydney Road. The bell rang as he stepped through the doorway and an overweight man with a kind face looked up from his paper and smiled. Bishop tried to return the smile but it came off crooked. He