discoveredinalj | Discovered in the Style of . . . . . Australia

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The style was moth2fic's suggestion, so you can blame her for this!

Imagine, if you can, what it would have been like if CI5 was an Australian law enforcement agency …

Summer in the City

Conversation in a Capri

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

The Lovin' Spoonful

The early morning sun was beating down; hard, bright and unforgiving, reflecting shafts of light off the tightly closed windows of the TAB office across the street from where Bodie and Doyle were sitting in the gold Capri.

“Gonna be a scorcher today, mate.” Bodie shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat, his arm sticking to the leather upholstery his shirt to his back.

“Too right,” agreed Doyle, lifting the sunglasses off his nose to wipe at the sweat already gathering underneath. “And we’re stuck out here like a coupla galah’s waiting for Santini to make his move.”

“Bet he’s sitting in air condition comfort in the back office too.”

There was silence for a moment as the partners considered their lot in life and their instructions from their boss, the pommy import, Major George Cowley. Cowley had seemed to think it was a good idea to set up an observation point outside the suburban TAB where Giovanni Santini, crime boss with a penchant for illegal gambling and a side industry in drug dealing, had his unofficial HQ. They were to wait for Santini to leave the premises for a suspected drug drop and follow him. Cowley hadn’t counted on the blistering heat of the day. These poms never did.

“You going to the boozer tonight?” Bodie opened his window a notch to let in an imagined breath of cool air. Even the lorikeets had given up their early morning chatter and were now only half-heartedly squabbling in the tall bottle brush the Capri was parked under.

“Dunno, thought I might watch the game.”

“What, footy? Wanna stick with a man’s sport, cobber. Not that aerial ping pong.”

“You talking about rugby, the cockroach game? Supposed to be a gentleman’s sport innit?”

“Yeah, well, played by gentlemen. Which lets your lot out then. Better stick to your own brand of hooliganism.”

Doyle reached over and gave his partner a none too gentle punch in the ribs.

“Hey, what’s that for?” Bodie was indignant.

“Being a drongo. What’s goin’ on at the boozer anyway?

“You know, Johnson’s bucks night.”

“Oh yeah, he’s marrying Cheryl isn’t he, that sheila from the minister’s office.”

“Yeah, that’s her. A right bottler, fancied her for a while. You went out with her once, didn’t you?”

Doyle nodded but maintained a stoical masculine silence on the matter. Bodie didn’t push it. For now.

“How come she’s with a dipstick like Johnson?” he asked instead.

“After the big chance, mate.”

“What? With Johnson?”

“Yeah, his father’s a high court judge, young Cheryl’s got tickets on herself. Dead set on joining the chardonnay set.”

“In that case you had buckley’s with her, mate.”

“Too right. She gave me the flick after the first date when I took her to Maccas and she realised I didn’t have a brass razoo to me name”

“Ah, a rooster one day, a feather duster the next.” Bodie sympathised. “Still, even blind freddy could see you were broke if you took her there.” Bodie reached across and patted Doyle on the leg. “Never mind, I still love you, even without a brass razzo.”

Doyle looked over at his partner, but didn’t say anything. Bodie looked back and was equally as quiet. The silence stretched.

“Do ya ….,” Doyle started when he finally began to feel a little uncomfortable, but he got no further as the object of their observations exited from the door of the TAB. Tony, Santini’s bodyguard, built like a brick shithouse and equally as intelligent, was with him.

“There’s movement at the station,” Bodie said, turning the key in the ignition as Santini and Tony entered the Holden parked under a gum tree outside the TAB. Tony was in the driver’s seat.

“Forget Banjo Patterson, just drive,” Doyle barked, so Bodie did, pressing down on the accelerator at the same instant that Doyle spoke sending the car into an almost skidding start. “Easy, mate” Doyle told him. “You don’t want them to spot us.”

But it seemed Santini was in a hurry because the Holden was almost up to the intersection by the time Bodie had left the kerb.

“Don’t lose them!” Doyle cautioned.

“Make up your bloody mind, mate.” Bodie grumbled. But he revved the car up a notch and the Capri responded by leaping forward. They were closing the distance but Santini’s Holden was already speeding down the main road and out into the open and mostly deserted wasteland that bordered the suburb when they made their own turn at the intersection. Bodie responded and the Capri’s speed went up another notch.

“Should stop the bugger and give him a ticket.” Doyle was holding onto the dangling seat belt by now but didn’t make any move to put it on. He was no sook who needed to wear a seat belt.

“Have to catch him first. And I’m nearly going flat out as it is” Bodie added to the speed once again as the Holden in front of them edged a little further in front.

“They must have spotted us.” Doyle gripped the cloth of the belt a little tighter as Bodie made a quick overtaking manoeuvre on the narrow road. He turned his head slightly as they powered past the Morris Minor that had been in front of them. The driver’s mouth was a huge O of surprised disbelief and Doyle grinned.

“You reckon?” Bodie’s tone was sarcastic as he glanced at his partner, his eyes meeting Doyle’s, who was still grinning, his own eyes shining with the thrill of the chase. Bodie turned his attention back to the road again. “Think maybe it had something to do with us sitting outside the TAB like shags on a rock and …”

Whatever he was about to say was lost in the moment as Bodie did something he’d never done before, even in sticky heat raised slime that covered the tarmac in summer, he lost it as he took a corner at breakneck speed. Later, much later, he claimed it was because Doyle had distracted him but when asked quite politely by his partner what that distraction had been Bodie refused to answer. Whatever the cause the Capri did a sharp fishtail to the left, which Bodie tried to correct only the large rock that sat on the edge of the road got in the way. The front tyre hit the rock with enough force to tip the car onto its side giving them a first-hand idea of what it would feel like being a stunt driver in the pictures as the car continued on two wheels for a few yards before tipping completely over.

After the noise of screeching breaks, protesting rubber and rending metal the uncanny silence as the car came to rest on its roof was almost deafening. Then, gradually sounds began to penetrate. The hiss of steam from the radiator and a gentle clicking noise from the still turning front wheels joined the various creaks and pops from settling metal.

Bodie stirred, opened his eyes and found himself angled against the roof of the Capri. He moved tentatively and, miraculously, felt no pain. There was a movement beside him and he managed to turn his head for a view of his partner.

“Howzit Razza? You okay?”

Doye had somehow managed to keep hold of the seat belt, which probably stopped him bouncing around the car and saved him from serious injury. He looked back at Bodie, a slight smile on his face.

“Yeah beaut, mate. Be even better if I can get out of here. What about you?”

“Bonzer. Think I’m stuck too, though.”

“Hang on, reckon I can get my door open.” Suiting action to the words Doyle gave a shove to his door, which co-operatively sprung open. Just as he tumbled out onto the verge a loud shriek of demented laughter split the air, drowning out the creaks and grumbles still issuing from the upside down Capri. Doyle stared up at the gum tree inches from the damaged car.

“Rack off, you stupid bird,” he shouted. The kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree stared back then opened its beak to another burst of hysteria.

“Razza, forget the bird, get me out of here.” Bodie’s plea was irresistible.

Doyle hurried around to the driver’s side of the car and between him pulling and Bodie pushing as much as he could they managed to wrench open the door. Doyle grabbed hold of Bodie’s shoulders and dragged him out.

They both lay on the road surface for a moment, breathing harshly, before making it to their feet. They looked at each other, looked at the Capri with its still revolving wheels pointing to the cloudless sky, then took in the RT that had been flung from the car in the roll over and lay in the dirt of the verge like some horrible omen of doom.

“Well, that’s stuffed the op,” Bodie said philosophically.

“The Capri’s carked it,” Doyle supplied.

Bodie picked up the RT and pressed the connect button. It worked.

“Better give Cowley a shout.”

Doyle nodded. “Goodo, he’s not going to be too stoked though.”

Doyle was right, Cowley wasn’t at all stoked. In fact he was so not stoked that he gave them an earbashing on the RT then again when he arrived at the scene.

“The whole operation has been a waste of time, all because of your stupidity,” he told them for the fourth time since he’d found his agents sitting dejectedly in the dirt beside the deceased Capri. “Ach, just go home, there’s nothing more to be done here. I’ll need to call in the other agents and reassess the situation. But I want your reports on my desk first thing in the morning.”

“How are we going to get home, Sir?” Doyle queried.

“Shanks’ pony, lads. Shanks’ pony. I’m sure even you colonials have heard that expression before,” Cowley told him, his Scottish brogue even more in evidence than before.

They both watched as he swept into his air conditioned Monaro and left the scene with a squeal of breaks and a cloud of dust and flying stones.

Once the dust had settled Doyle adjusted his sunglasses and brushing the last of the dust off their clothes they began walking.

“What’dja reckon about that booze up tonight? Fancy going?” Bodie asked.

“Bloody oath! By the time we get back, mate I reckon I’ll be ready to drink the boozer dry.”

“What about the footy?”

“We can watch the replay later at my place,” Doyle decided. He fiddled with his sunglasses again for a moment, then spoke again. “Did ya mean what you said before?

“Huh?”

“You know back in the car, before the prang.”

Bodie opened his mouth to reply but the raucous notes of the kookaburra drowned out his voice so he leaned in closer and spoke in Doyle’s ear. The response must have been pleasing because Doyle could be seen to smile as they disappeared into the heat haze of the hot summer day.

End

Title: Summer in the City or Conversation in a Capri
Author: Fictionwriter
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Notes: Written for the ‘Written in the style of’ challenge at