THE STRANGER ON THE BUS

 

                                          Episode 5      

                                 One Kid Too Many

 

   Take some advice from a guy who ought to know: go join the local fellowship. This gumshoe stuff is strictly for suckers.

   Out of time, out of cigarettes, and probably way out of my depth, this was one Thursday morning when I'd rather have been somewhere else. I had a bad feeling about all of this. When the Underworld sends out a death threat, it doesn't expect a reply.

   Half-past seven suburbia was running like an Atari track-race past my bus window. I hadn't slept too well last night. I could feel the lowlife closing in.

   In fact, I was sitting on it. Some punk with a razor blade had slashed my seat. Maybe I was just getting jumpy, but it almost looked to me like the handiwork of an aforementioned old friend. Weird. Real weird.

   The 730 pulled up at Alan Avenue, and Karen Davies strolled on.

   "Hi Nick."

   "Yeah, baby. Look, take a walk would ya? I got some thinking to do."

   I braced myself for a treble typhoon, but it never came. Funny, the girl must've been in a good mood today. Either that or she knew something I didn't. I wasn't sweating over it. There were more important things on my mind.

   Things like "Drop it now."

   Those words had been bouncing round my brain like rubber balls.

   I'd had my arm twisted to drop cases before- it comes with the job- but the bit that had me squirming was "now". Why the hurry? Vice doesn't usually run on a schedule. Buses do.

   So what was this note doing inside a U.T.A. envelope? I couldn't make the link. Outside of a couple of slashed seats, the Urban Transit Authority had a clean record with me. Excepting, of course, the untimely demise of a certain Captain Tact one dreary Monday morning on the bench of the 730 schoolbus.

   Only one thing was making itself clear. There was more than one surprise in store for Nick Shaw before this week was out.

   It was then that a scream ripped into my eardrums and chainsawed a slice off my brain. Like an alley-cat caught in a lawn mower, something was squealing its death-song. Or rather, somebody. I turned and my mind skipped a beat. This time it wasn't Captain Tact. It was Karen.

   I leapt from my seat and made straight for the driver.

   "North Sydney Station, buddy, and step on it!"

   The girl was convulsing like a dropped jelly. The bus ran the lights on the corner of Falcon and Miller, jumping the traffic island into the Transit Lane. Dodging the peak-hour traffic like slot cars, it covered the distance in four minutes flat.

   By the time the 730 skidded to a stop on the sidewalk at North Sydney Station, the ambulance was waiting and the quivering body went sliding through the Emergency Push window.

   But it was too late.

   The lords of the Underworld had claimed another victim: another human sacrifice in the name of scum and filth.

   I walked over to the Station cigarette stand, bought my brand and found myself a bench.

   I knew what I had to do, and if it killed me, I was going to get it done.

   The death of Karen Davies would not go unavenged.

 

                   *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        * 

 

   It was half-past four, the smog was starting to clear for the night, and the last 710 was pulling up to the Station. By the time it groaned away again, it had a passenger.

   As Mosman receded behind and the Spit Bridge rolled past underneath, I got up to ring the bell and stop the bus. Then a glint of light and a patch of raincoat behind the Battle Boulevarde bus stand caught my eye.

   I didn't need a second look.

   This was my old pal. Karen's pusher. Charlie's slasher. And suddenly everything made sense.

   The time for luck was through.

   The Underworld had hit one kid too many.

   Now they had Nick Shaw to deal with...