Directive RIP

by Stuart Parker

  8

  In his fresh charcoal grey suit and with an uncharacteristically close shave, Furn did not much look like he had woken up with a dead kangaroo. The man he was eyeing off on the other side of the metal table, however, looked every bit like he had woken up with the worst kind of nightmares, the kind had in prison. It was Barry Jewel, decked out in the Port Phillip Correctional Facility’s dull grey prison issue jump suit. He had bloodshot eyes and a thick salt and pepper stubble and he looked a good ten years older than the thirty years his file credited him with.

  Breeze was watching them both as he leaned back against the grilled window of the prison’s interview room. He took his seat next to Furn, who was only now bothering to give the case file a cursory look over.

  ‘Don’t you wash?’ snapped Breeze at Jewel, wincing at the body odor emanating from across the table. ‘What is it, prison showers don’t appeal to you?’

  Jewel shrugged indifferently. ‘When you’ve got all the time in the world it’s amazing how hard it is to find the time to do anything.’

  Furn slapped down the case file. ‘Cooperate with us and we could offer you a little less of that.’

  ‘You offering me a reduced sentence?’murmured Jewel, eyeing him carefully. ‘The judge already gave me that just for looking sad.’

  ‘The judge noted that it was highly unlikely you were acting alone in the armed robbery of the Saint George’s Credit Society. He was being kind about that too. I’d say a guy with your brains would struggle even to open a bank account by himself.’

  ‘Most of the five hundred large has never been recovered,’ added Breeze. ‘I bet the partner who turned you in has polished your share up into a very nice shiny nest egg.’

  ‘You were a history teacher at Jordanville Secondary College?’ said Furn, leaning over the table. ‘I’d send a dog there if I wanted it to learn how to take a dump in the street.’

  Jewel screwed up his face. ‘Which one of you is supposed to be playing the good cop?’

  ‘A hole in the ground? Is that where you think the loot has been deposited?’ said Furn. ‘Maybe that’s where your loyal partners will deposit you.’

  ‘What partners?’

  ‘Wragg Dokomad. That’s your get-out-o- jail-free pass.’

  ‘I’d be glad to tell you all I know about him. All you’ve got to do first is prove I actually know him.’

  ‘Was it his handwriting on the Sapien calling card?’ said Breeze.

  ‘Fuck yourselves.’

  Both Breeze and Furn sprung out of their chairs, punching Jewel to the ground and kicking into him. Jewel rolled up into a ball, emitting a peculiar donkey sound.

  Furn stopped and looked at Breeze. ‘I thought you were going to hold me back.’

  ‘Ditto,’ replied Breeze.’ He produced one of his Victoria Police cards and dropped it onto Jewel. ‘Here’s another calling card for your collection. I’d be calling us if I were you. The Sapiens aren’t the only ones you wouldn’t categorise as nice.’

  Furn pressed the attendant buzzer, promptly eliciting the same burly, ginger-haired guard that had shown them in.

  ‘Where’s my boy?’ the guard snapped, admirably prompt in noting the altered scene.

  Furn pushed past him. ‘I think he’s crawled under the table.’

  ‘We don’t man-handle the inmates here.’

  ‘That so?’ said Breeze, taking on the reply with Furn already out the room. ‘Are we supposed to wipe our feet too?’

  He caught up to Furn along the drab grey corridor leading to the first of a long series of checkpoints that kept inmates from the car park.

  ‘I get the feeling that visit is going to cause more problems than it solves.’

  ‘I used to beat my brother up more than that and he still loves me,’ said Furn, dismissively. ‘Anyway, if Jewel kicks up a fuss we’ll shut him up with a hushed early release. Something tells me the quicker we can get him on the outside the quicker we can find out precisely why he deserves to be in here.’

  ‘I half follow you. Were you thinking of that before you laid into him?’

  ‘Were you?’

  Breeze winked mysteriously. ‘Just as I’m about to hurt someone my head empties itself of everything bar the moment itself. It’s actually quite peaceful.’

  ‘So, you hit him to clear your head?’

  ‘Probably not, but my head is clear.’

  Furn flashed his badge into the checkpoint camera. The heavy steel door slowly opened. Furn rubbed the badge affectionately on his shirt sleeve before re-pocketing it. ‘So long as it can get me out of a dump like this that’s all the shine I need.’