small-time Queensland criminals who made the fatal mistake of meeting Tytus Broz. The silver hair that was once only creeping from his scalp into a ponytail has fully evacuated, along with his ponytail. His dark eyes. His twisted crazy eye smile that says he likes having three innocents cornered like this in a room beneath the earth.
‘Only one way out,’ he smiles.
We’re standing in the farthest corner of the concrete room, Caitlyn and I forming a protective wedge around Bevan Penn, who huddles behind us. I’m not holding the axe any more because Bevan’s holding it, hiding it behind my back, as per my dubious plan to get us the fuck out of this nightmare.
‘We’re journalists from The Courier-Mail,’ Caitlyn says.
We’re moving back, moving back, deeper into the corner until there’s no more corner left to move back into.
‘Our editor is fully aware of our whereabouts.’
Iwan Krol nods. Weighs up the possibility of this. Stares into Caitlyn’s eyes.
‘What you meant to say was, “You were journalists from The Courier-Mail,”’ he says. ‘And if, by chance, your editor is indeed at that swanky do in town with my employer and he is indeed thinking about you down here beneath my employer’s lawn, then . . .’ – he shrugs, pulling a shining and long Bowie knife out from behind his pants – ‘I guess I better make this quick.’
He marches forward like a heavyweight boxer leaving a blue corner at the sound of a bell. Predatory.
I let him come closer. Closer. Closer. Three metres away. Two metres away.
Half a metre from us.
‘Now,’ I say.
And Caitlyn points her faulty camera at Iwan Krol’s face and clicks a blinding flash. The predator turns his head, momentarily stunned, still recalibrating his eyesight as the axe that is now in my hands takes an achingly long arcing journey towards his body. I’m aiming for his torso but the camera flash is so bright it stuns me too, and my aim is skewed. The rusty axe blade misses his chest and his belly and his waist completely but it finds flesh at the end of its journey, lodges into the mid-dorsal area of his left foot. The axe blade cuts clean through the foot and his stupid fucking blue flip-flop and digs into concrete. He looks down at his foot, transfixed by the scene. We’re transfixed by it too. Curiously, he doesn’t howl in agony. He studies his foot the way a brontosaurus might have studied fire. He raises his left leg and the ankle end of his foot raises in the air with it but all five toes stay planted to the concrete. Five grubby toes resting on a cut cake of rubber flip-flop.
His eyes and my eyes move at once from his foot to meet on the same eye line. Rage fills his face. Red death. The predator. The reaper.
‘Run!’ I scream.
Iwan Krol swings his Bowie knife swiftly at my neck but I’m swift too. I’m Parramatta Eels halfback Peter Sterling, ducking and weaving under a swinging arm from a Canterbury Bulldogs prop. The heavy black leather tool bag tucked under my left shoulder is now my old leather football. I duck and step left as Caitlyn and Bevan Penn run right and we meet at the door of this dark and evil place.
‘Go!’ I scream.
Bevan runs in front, then Caitlyn, then me.
‘Don’t stop,’ I scream.
Sprinting. Sprinting. Past the open doors to these sick rooms, these Frankenstein rooms with the real and fake body parts, these underground dens of design where madness and mongrel take hold because in the ground we’re that much closer to hell. Sprinting. Sprinting. To the stairs that go up to life. To the stairs that go up to a future with me in it. First step, second step, third step. I turn around as I climb the stairs and the last I see of Tytus Broz’s secret underground play space is a Polish-Queensland psychopath named Iwan Krol limping down the concrete hall painting a trail of blood with his axe-cut left foot. The blood is burgundy.
*
The tyres on the Ford Meteor screech around the corner from Countess Street into Roma Street. Caitlyn shifts gears with her left hand and turns the wheel in sharp, deliberate jolts, slams the accelerator into and out of bends. Something deep in her eyes. Trauma, maybe. The magnitude of the scoop, maybe. Which reminds me of work. Which reminds me of Brian Robertson.
The face on the clock on the Brisbane City Hall clock tower