Read Wasted Lives, a Detective Mike Bridger novel Page 24

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Grant Wylie entered the custody area of the Dunedin Central Police Station with one thing on his mind, to get Baz Ropata to spill his guts. He had spent the car journey from the pad to the police station holding his temper in check. Baz had just sat quietly with an angry smirk on his face staring out of the window. Grant had desperately wanted to reach over and smack him in the face and force him to tell him where the rest of the gang had his friends, but he knew that it would not do any good. Baz would never talk to the police and he certainly was not afraid of violence. He had to play this another way, it would not pass muster in a court of law but that was not the point, Baz was the only source of information they had and these were extraordinary circumstances.

  He had heard that the armed offender’s squad had shot someone back up in Corstaphine, the grapevine indicating Bridger had been involved somehow. He must have surfaced finally but he was too busy to give much thought as to what part he had played in all of this. This was getting messier by the minute and they were no closer to finding John and Jo. These were definitely extraordinary circumstances so he had no issues whatsoever with what he was about to do.

  He had spent the last twenty minutes gathering as many unsolved cases from the office that dealt with child abuse as he could, he added to that the faxed copy of the DNA analysis indicating Kingi in the robbery murder. A little modification to that form was all it took; Baz Ropata was now looking at very serious charges backed up by DNA evidence. He was sure Baz would not want to go down for crimes against children, as tough as he thought he was he would not last in prison with his temperament and that label around his neck. It almost sounded fitting to Grant for him to turn the tables on Baz for once, make him feel the fear he had instilled on so many people in the past. Baz Ropata was a bad man and deserved everything that was coming to him, even so, he knew it was only ever going to be leverage, but he felt angry enough to pull it off and he would still sleep easy.

  “Get a fucking ambulance here now.” The urgent shout preceded the audible panic alarm that started bleating its call, reverberating off the concrete walls of the custody block. Grant threw his pile of files on the desk in front of him and followed the custody officer who had leapt off his chair like a startled rabbit and then run blindly into the corridor of cells. The panic alarm usually meant an officer was in trouble and needed urgent assistance.

  Another bloody incident is not what they needed right now they did not have time for that. Grant was thinking that the day could not get much worse when they reached the source of the alarm and saw what had happened, he realised with growing fear that it already had.

  He stood there in the slightly chilled room, it was colder in here than outside in the warm sun, but the sight which lay before him warmed him on the inside so he did not mind. She was pathetically beautiful, lying there with just her bra and panties covering her modesty. She was so pale and porcelain like, she reminded him of the dolls his mother collected when he was a child. They had been so lifelike; he remembered the thoughts he used to have about the dolls. He remembered how they would mock him with their eyes when he could not control himself any longer. After his older sister had left home and taken her friends with her, he only ever had the dolls. He touched her skin with his sweaty fingers, running them along her belly; she was much warmer than a doll. It was much like his sister had been when he was younger; only this time he was the one in control, not her, or her perverted friends.

  He could feel his arousal growing, a deep-seated feeling that only came to the fore in circumstances like these, and he started to rub himself. There hadn’t been many times like this but when they came his way he needed them like a drug, and today this girly copper was the needle in which it would be delivered. He felt it beginning. Earlier he had found one of the other Patches trying it on with her; he was a bitch for trying it on without his permission. Lucky for the Patch, the other copper had interrupted him before it had gone too far. If he had closed the deal with her, he would have had to kill him and not just beat him as he had. No one was going to sully his prize, the rest of them could do what they wanted with her afterwards, but he was going to be first…

  The sound of the door opening behind him broke the moment. “What the fuck do you want?” The interruption instantly bringing his temper to the surface, suppressing whatever excitement had started to build in his loins. He looked at the interruption, standing there shaking slightly, “This better be good.”

  “S-sorry J man, I thought you might want to know this. Baz has been picked up; the pigs did over the pad a little while ago.” The interruption was glancing nervously between Joseph and Jo Williamson lying semi naked on a yellow stained mattress, his eyes staying a little too long on her.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” Joseph snarled.

  The interruption jumped backwards at the outburst and looked like he was going to cry “N-nothing J man, I was just saying about Baz.”

  “Well you have said now, so get the fuck out… Baz is safe; he wouldn’t diss a brother dog.” He looked the interruption in the eye and knew what he said had to be true, or every one of them would be fucked.

  The interruption backed out of the room, eyes fixed on Joseph then shut the makeshift door behind him leaving Joseph and Jo in the murky stagnant room.

  Joseph shook his head in anger, the interruption had skewed his concentration, and he had felt his hardness dissipate. “Fuck fuck fuck,” he growled under his breath. What’s next…, he needed another hit that is what he needed; speed up his system a little. She would taste better on the gear he knew that. However, something else was bugging him that he could not quite place.

  Baz’s face was in the front of his mind, big and ugly. He grabbed at his head to try to dislodge the image but he could not shake it free. Baz had always been there, he had been there when his father had run things and stayed when he had taken over. Even when some of the old timers had given up and drifted off Baz had stayed loyal to the patch. That is what bugged him; Baz was loyal to the patch not to him. What did that mean? He did not know. If it came down to it though he knew Baz would not talk to the police, which was one sacred rule that bound them together no matter what they did. What did Baz have to do with the coppers wife though…? He did not really care. He wondered briefly if his father’s plan had worked out but then dismissed the thought outright, he had moved past that now. This was his show.

  He had time; the pigs would not find them here, he had done all sorts of things here in the past and no one had taken a blind bit of notice so a couple more hours would not hurt anyone. He laughed quietly to himself at that thought; it would not hurt anyone except his captive audience. He looked at Jo lying on the mattress, vacant eyes staring back but not seeing, lost in a haze of drugs. “You are going to have to wait a little bit longer Miss Piggy, but I promise you it will be worth it.”

  He stroked her face with his hand, almost affectionately, this felt right to him. Then he turned and left the room in search of another hit.