Read Bad Debts for Free Online

Kensington McDonald’s, eating Big Macs. Barry Tregear also had two large French fries and a large Coke. He was a big man with a pear-shaped head, its summit and three upper slopes thinly covered in greying blond stubble. He always looked two slabs of beer away from fat, even when I’d first met him in Vietnam, but nothing moved when he walked.
    ‘You could’ve gone back to Hay,’ I said.
    Barry grew up somewhere out on the endless plains around a town called Hay in New South Wales. His father hadn’t come back from World War II, along with half of the other fathers of the kids in his school.
    ‘Fuck Hay,’ said Barry. ‘Bloke offered me half a motel outside Lismore. Was in Licensing with me. Turned it down like a stupid prick. He sells out a couple of months ago, doubles his money. And I’m still driving around in the fucken rain, member of an elite group. Number eight on the new Commissioner’s Top Ten shit list. Is that judgment or fucken what?’
    He took a savage bite of his Big Mac.
    A lot of work had drifted my way in the old days because of Barry. He’d been in Consorting and then Major Crimes, squads closed down now but once home for hard men all but indistinguishable from the criminals they spent most of their time with. I’d had plenty of clients who’d come in and said variations on ‘Barry Tregear reckons y’might get me a fair shake’.
    I said, ‘You’ve got an ex-cop for a Police Minister now. He’ll see you old blokes right, won’t he?’
    Barry took in about eight chips and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Garth Bruce is a cunt. And he’s got selective amnesia. You hear him sprouting all that shit about getting rid of the old culture in the force? Mate, I’m part of the old culture and fucking proud of it,’ he said around the potato.
    ‘What exactly is the old culture?’
    ‘The dinosaurs left over from when it didn’t count if you took an extra ten bucks for the drinks when you put in for sweet for your dogs. When you had to load some cockroach to get it off the street. Public fucken service. We’re the ancient pricks think it’s okay to punch out slime who dob in a bloke who’s walked out on the wire for them to fucking Internal Affairs. That’s us. That’s the old culture.’
    I said, ‘They got all of you on armed robbery now?’
    Barry finished the chips, drained the Coke, put everything away neatly in the recyclable brown paper bag, opened his window and threw the bag out into the carpark. ‘The ones they’re hoping will take a bullet,’ he said. ‘We’re out there doing the in-progresses. When I done this line of work years ago, only the mad dogs fired on you. Now it’s all fucken mad dogs. They all fire on you. Chemical war’s going on inside their heads. The stuff come in the nose is fighting with the stuff come up the arm. Cause for concern, I can tell you.’
    He looked at his watch. ‘Shit. I’ve gotta get moving. What’s your interest in this McKillop?’
    ‘Ex-client of mine. Wife reckons he thought someone wanted to kill him.’
    Barry sighed. It triggered off a burp. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’m all wind. Listen, short story is this Quinn, drug squad, he got a call just before seven Saturday night, there’s a handover set for the yard of the Trafalgar, 7 p.m. There was a bit of stuffing around, they didn’t get there till quarter past.’
    He burped again and patted his pockets. ‘Never got a bloody Quikeze when you need one. Anyway, they hang around for a bit, no-one in sight, reckon they’ve missed the boat. Then they take a stroll through the cars, one from each end, and this cunt pops up with a .38 pointing at Martin, Quinn’s offsider. So Quinn, who’s behind this guy, puts four in him. Dead on arrival. There’s about five hundred bucks’ worth of smack in his car. End of story.’
    ‘And McKillop?’
    ‘Form.’
    ‘Not since.’
    ‘Well shit’s shit.’
    ‘Wife can’t believe it. Kid, job. Says he’s been absolutely straight.’
    Barry