The Centre Cannot Hold

Okay, here’s chapter one of yet another new story - as always, let me know what you think:

Way too early in the morning. Two men stand on a rooftop above an apartment above a Vietnamese restaurant, waiting for the pre-dawn light.Below them, Brunswick Street seems to hold its breath, but the snoring that can be heard from one nearby window is closer to the truth: the street merely sleeps. It’s too early for there to be trams or waste collections. It’s too early for anything but the keenest of joggers and dog walkers to be out – and Fitzroy isn’t home to them in any case. In fact, the only living beings the two men have seen for more than an hour now have been cats and possums.

Drysdale turns to McEwan and says “We’re wasting our fucking time.”
“And freezing our arses off,” agrees McEwan. But neither man leaves his post. They have a job to do.

For months now, the Brunswick Street shopping strip, from Gertrude in the south to Alexandra Avenue in the north, has been terrorized – well, if you were a sensationalist headline writer, that’s the word you’d use – by a reign of vandalism unparalleled in the history of this city in both scope and variety.

Aside from the spray-paint cans so customary of graffiti all over the world, there’s a distinctly Melbourne feel to the vandalism – but then, Melbourne’s the stencil art capital of the southern hemisphere, so that’s no surprise. Of course there are going to be stencil artists, ranging from furtive boys with simple designs they’ve cut into A4 pages up to the huge, elaborate and as-yet unfinished multi-coloured design on the wall of one of the buildings opposite the Running Dog restaurant, upon whose roof the two men stand and watch.

But there’s more. There’s posters, and stickers, and one time, the pages of that unpublished novel neatly taped, one after another, along shop fronts in careful numerical order. There was even, briefly, a massive art installation that blocked traffic for three days until it could be removed. But these are less common if more newsworthy and a bigger fucking headache for anyone stuck dealing with them.

Of course, one person’s vandalism is another’s free expression and yet another’s artistic masterpiece, so the battle lines have been drawn along the same old cultural fault lines of age, class and politics. Detectives Rufus Drysdale and Grant McEwen are studiously neutral on the subject in their conversations with each other.

The Brunswick Street Irregulars, as they have been dubbed, have become heroes to some and villains to others, but one thing that everyone has to agree on is that they’re criminals. Even if several shopkeepers have refused to press charges.

“I’m going for a smoke,” said McEwan. The two policemen were forbidden to smoke at the street end of the rooftop, in case a glowing ember alerted someone to their presence, but the back end of the roof overlooks nothing but a small balcony of the apartment beneath it. Drysdale grunted an acknowledgement, his attention still riveted to the street below. Internally, he knew full well that he was most likely in the wrong part of the street. The Irregulars had a knack for appearing where the police weren’t – it was one of the reasons they were called irregular, in fact. But the unfinished design was too obvious a provocation. They had to be planning to come back to it, sooner or later. It was worth watching, even if that did mean that other crimes took place elsewhere. There are only so many eyes in the force, after all. Better to have them where they could do some good.

At long last, light was starting to appear on the eastern horizon. Against the yellow and pink undersides of the clouds somewhere over Gippsland, Drysdale could make out the outline of Studley Park hill against the sky in the background, although it was still too dark to see much else. In a few minutes, the sun would be high enough to reach over the hilltop, and it would be light enough to see how they’d been made fools of tonight.

*   *   *

Tommy ran as fast he could along the dew-slicked cobbles of Napier Street.

He wanted to look back, but he didn’t dare. He couldn’t spare the time. His pursuer would gain on him if he slowed down to look back at them. As it was, he knew that his time was limited.

He still couldn’t believe it, the horror that he’d discovered by accident, but Tommy knew it was true. He had all the proof anyone could ever want. And as much as he didn’t know what to do about it, Tommy knew exactly who to tell. Rag would know what to do – he always did. Rag was the one who’d figured out how to find all the Irregulars and bring them together, to make them a true collective, all without tipping off the cops to what he was doing. If he couldn’t sort this out, no one could.

Tommy kept telling himself that if he could just make it to Rag’s place before it got too much lighter, he’d be okay. They’d know where Tommy was, but it would be too late to stop him then. He could get the word out to the other Irregulars. But it was getting a little brighter every second, and the early morning fog was burning off much quicker than he’d hoped it would.

At least he could now see Rag’s place in front of him. Only another few houses to run past now – maybe 30 metres. He was going to make it!

The first shot sparked off the stones next to his left foot. He stumbled, but caught himself and kept running.

He barely heard the next shot before he felt the horrible burning impact of it in the middle of his back. As he fell to the ground, Tommy’s last thoughts were not of Rag, nor of his killer. His dying thought was that he would never finish the stencil design he’d been putting on the front of the old Punter’s Club.

*   *   *

“Did you hear that?” said McEwen. Drysdale was about to reply when they both heard the second shot.
“Which directi0n?” asked Drysdale.
“Towards Smith, probably over Johnston. Beyond that, you got me,” replied McEwen. He radioed the news in, while Drysdale descended to street level to start the car.

*   *   *

Rag awoke from his sleep with the clear sense that something was wrong, but no idea what. It wasn’t until he heard the second gun shot that he realized that the first shot must have been what had awoken him. A split-second later, he heard the cry, and the uncomfortable thudding of a body falling down in a way it was never meant to.

He sat up and swung his feet onto the floor, looking for his clothes, heedless of the effect his sudden movements had on the mattress. Sally rolled over into the gap he’d left in the bed, and woke up almost as fast as he had.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Gunshots, outside,” Rag said, pulling on his shoes and looking for his coat. Sally reached for the cordless.
“Police?” she asked.
“Call ‘em,” said Rag with a nod.
“Ambulance?”
“I think so, but I’m going down to check.”
“Yell back,” she said, dialing emergency. He nodded. “And be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” he said as he left the bedroom. She watched him go, and couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re never careful, love,” she said softly.
“Pardon?” said the voice on the phone.

*   *   *

McEwen got the word just as Drysdale was crossing Napier. The emergency call was relayed to them over the car’s radio, Drysdale hit the anchors and pulled a fast u-turn. The car rocked on its axles, but all four wheels stayed in touch with the road. He steered it around the corner more carefully, and they made their way to the location they’d been given.

*   *   *

When Rag raced out the door, it didn’t take long to see where to go. There was blood splattered all over the windows of one of the cars parked just a few metres down the street. He could see the back of a head poking above the front of one car, and for a second he hoped that meant they weren’t too badly hurt. But when he looked around the car, he saw that the head belonged to a young woman who knelt by Tommy’s body. And Rag knew right then that Tommy was dead. You didn’t walk away from a bullet hole placed neatly between your shoulder blades.

He turned and called back through the open door: “Sally – Ambulance. But they don’t need to hurry.” Then, more quietly, he added, “Fuck.” The girl looked up at him, and he saw that she was crying. It was only then that Rag realized that tears were falling from his own eyes.
“He’s dead, isn’t he,” said the girl. It was phrased like a question, but it had the finality of a statement.
“Yeah, he is,” said Rag, sinking to his knees on the other side of Tommy’s corpse from the girl.
“Did you know him?” she asked, but Rag’s answer was lost in the scream of brakes as a non-descript car with a flashing blue light sitting on its dashboard pulled up.

*   *   *

McEwen was out of the car practically before it stopped, pulling his gun and covering the three people in front of it.
“Okay, hands up people,” he said with a calm he didn’t entirely feel. The man and woman stood up and stepped away from the body, reaching for the sky. Another woman ran up with a phone in her hand, took one look at the body, and threw herself into the arms of the man, weeping.

The man gave McEwen a look that was equal parts pleading and sheepishness, and lowered his arms to put them around the woman at McEwen’s reluctant nod. Drysdale stepped up next to his partner.
“Who wants to talk first?” he asked. The weeping woman turned angrily to face them, waving the phone at them.
“I called you,” she spat.