We were parked in a side street off Doncaster Road, about sixty metres from the Commonwealth Bank on the corner.     The rear of the bank gave on to a parking area, and this we were keeping an eye on while trying to look inconspicuous, which isn’t easy when you’re wearing a ballistic vest with POLICE emblazoned across it.

Wayne Elliott was behind the wheel.    Like most younger coppers, he reckoned there wasn’t a sergeant alive he couldn’t outdrive, me included.   No skin off my nose; I used to think the same.    He’d been with the Robbers for a year and a half and had recently made it to senior connie, which meant he was making a decent fist of the job.   He was big, tough, mean and uncompromising, and good-looking in a Nordic sort of way.   Deputy commissioner material if ever I’d seen it.    Trouble was, the arrogant prick knew it, which meant I didn’t like him over much.    That was no skin off his nose.

He suddenly straightened.   “Here’s the van.”

An Armaguard van turned into our street, heading for the rear of the bank.     But there would be no cash transfer today.    The crew were not Armaguard employees but three coppers in the security firm’s uniform.   They were duplicating the crew’s usual routine, knowing full well they were about to become victims of an armed holdup.    That was if the Tactical Intelligence Squad had got their sums right.

“Start up,” I ordered.

Elliott had no sooner keyed the Ford into life than the radio showed some of its own.    “On your toes,” it said.    “They’re moving.”

‘They’ were two blokes who’d been watching the bank while drinking coffee at a footpath table just around the corner.    One of them was Lenny Glover, the most brutal, psychopathic piece of shit I’d ever come across.   Should’ve been drowned at birth.  Glover...problem child, delinquent, petty crim, suspected rapist, standover man, payroll snatcher and, without question in police eyes, responsible for the ambush murders of two constables.    We’d never been able to lumber him for that one, so when we got the tip-off that he was planning a bank job in Greythorn, well...Nemesis was on the wing.  

We watched as Glover and his mate walked towards us, then cut past the van and disappeared into the rear of the car park where, according to the TIS, there were another two blokes in a black Commodore.   I shoved a shell into the breech of the Remington as my disguised colleagues were let into the bank.  

We waited, my guts screwing themselves into a hard, tight ball, confirming that it’s right what they say – anticipation is the worst part.   But it was all going to plan.

Then it went down.    The bank door opened and the ‘guards’ came out, two of them sharing the load of a steel cash box.   Immediately there was a black Commodore, its boot open, screeching to a halt beside them.   Four blokes in balaclavas leapt out, wielding shotguns and shouting.   A handful of passing shoppers froze.   So did my colleagues as the shotguns were shoved into their faces.    Next thing, they were disarmed and complying with an order to put the cash box into the Commodore’s boot.    While two of them were doing that, the third was forced to unlock the rear doors of the van, which was having its antenna snapped off by one of the crims.    His mates slammed the boot of the Commodore, then herded the ‘guards’ into the van and slammed it shut.   As one, they jumped into the Commodore and took off for the street, turning towards us.   It had all taken no more than twenty seconds.

“Now!” I yelled, and Elliott tramped on the accelerator and hauled the Ford across their bows.  

It was perfect timing, if I do say so myself, forcing the Commodore to a tyre-smoking stop and leaving the driver no space to consider alternatives, like taking to the footpath.   Before he could even think about it, we were out of the car.    Behind the Commodore, another police Ford was braking to a stop.   A third was racing in from the far side of the car park.    It would be only moments before the ‘guards’, re-armed from their cache within the van, would be back on the scene.

It was Charge of the Light Brigade stuff - guns to front of them, guns to the side of them and guns to the rear of them, and your truly, adjacent to the front passenger seat, loudly suggesting to Glover that he should show me his hands.   Initially he did, more out of shock than obedience, probably.   Then his eyes blazed with fury and his hands dropped.   For all I knew, they were heading for the 12-gauge he’d been carrying.   I fired.    At that range, the nine .30-calibre steel balls just about took his head off.

I felt none of the revulsion you’re supposed to feel when you blow away a fellow human, crim or no crim.   Not then.   I was just glad to still be alive.   

I watched while Glover’s mates, splattered with blood and brains and thoroughly panicked, struggled to get out of the car and into the relatively safe custody of the rest of the Squad.   Senior Sergeant Pickering, who’d planned our little reception, came rushing up.   He took one look at Glover and swallowed.   “Jesus!” he breathed.   “Oh, Jesus!   Not another one?”

He was being rhetorical, alluding to the bucketing the Force’d been getting from the media about its penchant for shooting first and asking questions later.

“It was him or me,” I explained.  

Pickers raised an eyebrow at Elliott, who shook his head.

“I didn’t see it that way,” he said.

None of the others had seen it my way, either.

Pickers stared at me.   Pessimistically.

“Come off it,” I said, but his expression didn’t alter, and I knew I was in deep shit.

Two hours later, I was suspended.

Sometimes you wonder who your friends are.

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