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

only once and before he realised what he had done it was over and there was nothing anybody could do. Billie was gone.
    To escape the law, the son of a bitch kidnapped his son and they disappeared. The road was a cold experience. Partly because Roy was a cold man who didn’t like people, and partly because it was no place for a child to grow up. Roy would go days without talking to his son and there were many nights where Tom would have to sleep under the truck while the old man banged some rough piece of arse in the cab. Then there were the beatings. Tom learnt to tune out during them and put his mind someplace else until Roy tired or finished. It wasn’t until years later, after Roy had the life kicked out of him and Tom was in an orphanage, that the violence inside him began to show. At first, small outbursts, then much worse. His first schoolyard fight sent a kid to the nurse, his second to the hospital, and with his third he almost killed some poor little bastard who’d bagged him for not being able to kick a footy straight. He never knew when to stop; he just kept throwing punches until he was pulled off whoever was on the receiving end of his demons.
    When he was fifteen years old, he escaped from the orphanage. It wasn’t the first time, but this time it stuck. He picked up a job as a labourer on a construction site and quickly fitted in. It was Tom’s first taste of a normal life and he liked it, enjoyed it; he relaxed. Even started dating a local girl. Her name was Dianne; he made her laugh and she taught him how to read. But no matter how good things were, he could never escape the violence. It lingered over his shoulder. Behind him. Lurking. The darkness was always with him, and one night the beast inside Tom Bishop came out when Dianne’s father got drunk and slapped her. It took four uniforms to pull Bishop off and, when they did, Dianne’s father looked more like a side of beef than a man.
    Patrick Wilson was one of those uniforms. Already a thirteen-year veteran, he had seen the darkness before. He also saw glimpses of his son Daniel in Bishop. They both had the same honesty. Wilson and his wife Mona had watched their little boy slowly fade away from leukaemia when he was five years old. Neither of them ever really recovered. Wilson threw all his time and effort into the job and rose quickly through the ranks, while Mona doted on her nieces, nephews and any hard luck case she could find to plug the hole in her life.
    Wilson called in all his favours. The assault charge disappeared and Tom went to live with him and Mona. There were rules and Tom liked them. For the first time, he had structure in his life. School, chores and a routine. Gradually, Wilson taught him discipline. He taught him self-control and that, if he was going to unleash the beast, to unleash it on those who deserved it.
    *
    It was light by the time Bishop brought the sedan to a stop outside Alice’s home. The lights were still on from the night before. Somebody was up and about.
    Alice let her gaze fall self-consciously to the floor. ‘So this is it?’ she asked.
    ‘I guess it is.’
    ‘Would you like to come inside?’ It wasn’t so much an invitation. He got the feeling she didn’t want to go herself.
    Bishop took a breath. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to be a father.’
    She wanted him to say more. When he didn’t, she pushed open the door and was halfway out when Bishop grabbed her arm. He reached for his wallet. ‘You need any money?’
    ‘No,’ she said. Bishop could almost see the hope fade from her body as she pulled away from him. She navigated the cluttered yard of garden furniture and relics of children’s play equipment and didn’t look back. Bishop watched her struggle to find her keys. She dropped them at the door, scooped them up and then finally got them to work. Inside, it didn’t take long for the yelling to begin, most of it indistinguishable, all of it unpleasant. Bishop listened for a moment