Part 2 - Stockholm Revisited
Disclaimers etc in Stockholm Backward
A balcony in South America is a million miles away from Sydney Harbour but the way I am feeling now it might as well be across the street.
My computer screen stares back at me – the headlines from the Daily Telegraph scream at me – "Top Cop Slain". As much as I want to get on with my banking I keep returning to that web site, defying it to tell me that it's some stupid prank or someone else.
There is no fucking way in hell it could be anyone else. The picture of his craggy face and the quotes from Chief Inspector Hawker tell me everything.
There had been so many times I had wished Jack Christey dead and now that it has happened all I want to do is …fuck it . . .I'm not sure what I want to do or feel here.
Hell Charlie, you've lost the only two men in your life who could ever give you a run for your money – your brother and John Edward Christey. No one else was game to take you on.
I know I wouldn't rate a phone call from his daughter, any of the other cops or my former employees these days but it would have been better finding out that way than reading Christey's obituary on line.
I could have given that reporter a quote or two.
He had a daughter – could never picture Jack as a dad. The paper said she was in the cops as well. I wonder if she is as stubborn as her dad – probably. She's probably got his kick arse temper too. Bloody good thing I never had any kids as they would have been finishing what her old man and I started.
Couldn't really picture Jack as anything other than a cop trying to bring me down or take me out because I masterminded the passport scam that contributed to his girlfriend's murder. Shit Christey, you should have gotten the fuck over it. People die in our line of work whether we like it or not.
No matter what side of that bloody badge of yours we're on Jack, people die.
My relationship with my brother was as simple as a brother and sister relationship ever gets but the dynamics between Christey and I are . . .were far more complex. I can't think of him in the past tense, he's still too much a part of who I have become.
Shit I can't believe he's dead. All the times I tried to have him killed and the bastard was inconsiderate enough not to die. Come to think of it, he's tried to kill me more than once too.
More lives than a cat that bloke but someone should have told him that even cats only get nine.
I still have my sources in Sydney and I have heard from them it was fucking stupid play on Christey's part to go after both Clive Tyler and Tony Agostinas. If I still had business interests in Sydney or anywhere else for that matter, I would have taken Tyler out of play and saved Christey the trouble or at least cut down his workload.
It would have been nice going head to head with Jack again. It means we would both be feeling more alive than what we are right now. Enforced retirement shits me to tears.
My health has deteriorated in recent months and it looks like I will be stuck in this bloody chair forever. It's a bit hard being a feared crime queen when you have people looking down on you.
I might not be easily intimidated but when your empire has crumbled into ruins and been snapped up by once bit players such as Tyler and Agostinas, you seriously wonder where your life is going and was it all worth it in the first place.
Even though I have taken lives it's all been a business arrangement and I have never and will never consider topping myself. Anyone who hears reports of me dying by my own hand should take a fucking long look at the evidence. It won't be suicide, it'll be murder.
Then there is that shitbag Agi.
Christey might have been unorthodox and played fucking hardball a little too well for my liking but at least you knew where you stood.
Agi was corrupt and stupid which made him fucking dangerous.
At least Christey had the sense to shoot him before that dickead took Jack out. Saved me the trouble anyway.
Whatever it was between Jack and I brought out the darkest and the best in our characters.
This whole shitfight on the waterfront has to be far more complex than just Jack going after a corrupt cop and trying to take out Tyler and Agostinas. Christey's biggest problem is ….was having causes and fighting them. Bloody single minded prick who kept tilting at windmills. Don't think they would have put that in the paper Charlie.
He went on that boat for a reason.
Whoever set loose the chain of events that put Jack on the receiving end of that fuckwit's gun should know one thing.
They're mine.
Whoever you are – you're going down and you're going down hard.