Directive RIP by Stuart Parker
19
Another day at the Regent Hotel and the baths were getting longer. Furn was taking his with the morning paper that came with the room service. With its bottom languishing in bubbles, he was rereading an article by Dan Fessendon, the veteran freelance crime writer, trying to determine if he was acting as Riley’s unofficial media liaisons. The article questioned rather than condemned the use of the X-ray glasses in pulling murderers off the street. Fessendon suggested that although the outcry from the community and religious leaders was understandable, it was highly unlikely any of them could have protected society from such a ruthless underworld figure as Rufus Ray. Nonetheless, the society being protected had the right to demand the Rogue Intercept Police stand down until a Charter of Conduct could be ratified. That last line sounded exactly like the kind of thing Riley would blurt out after a few lonesome lunch time drinks in one back alley bar or another, content at least that the bill would remain the property of the Victorian Police Force whether or not it wished to officially acknowledge its existence. Furn supposed he was in that regards just another bill. At least, it was being written in a five star hotel.
Somewhere between moving on from Fessendon’s article and the newspaper getting completely waterlogged, he found himself with company in the bathroom. There was nothing on Nashy’s feet to make a noise on the cool black tiles and nothing on her body except a pink bath towel. She took it into the bath with her. Furn had noticed a pattern with this: the only things she took off in his presence were those belonging to the hotel, and no matter how soiled or soaked they got, they always came back spotlessly clean the next day. She tossed the towel onto the floor. He did the same with the newspaper. Nashy waded through the bubbles onto his lap. The kiss he got, the one in which she put her whole being into it, he had only experienced once before: around the time she had first left him. This time he clung onto it until he was sure it was exhausted. It was a mutual climax of sorts the way they pulled back from each other.
‘Are we checking out?’ Furn asked.
Nashy remained on his lap, fidgeted with his chest hairs as though looking for a way in. ‘Odierno stepped in front of a surveillance camera in Sydney - well, actually, people on a first name basis with the scam he’s pulling refer to him as McNaught. Heard of him? In my real job with the Feds he would be considered the main event.’
‘Yeah? I haven’t heard of him.’
‘Tony McNaught is one of Australia’s most successful armed robbers, if you use the criteria alive, at large and untouched. There are a lot of cops who would like his collar on their records. What the Force would save in reward money it would repay in the tin and ribbon of medals. Riley is already on his way up to Sydney. There’s a car coming to pick us up. We’ve got half an hour to pack our bags, though I’m taking a bath instead.’
Furn ran his fingers down the soft skin behind her ribs, stopping at her slim waist. Her mouth was still near enough to kiss, but there was something about her eyes: they weren’t going to close if he did kiss her - they probably wouldn’t even blink.
‘Why don’t you hang back, settle yourself for McNaught?’ he said. ‘You’ll get yourself a bigger desk yet. And a stable enough life to start decorating it with family holiday photos. Leave Dokomad to me.’
Nashy swallowed with a barely perceptible bitterness. ‘I didn’t just follow your girlfriend around. You split a lap dance with Healy Smith at the Underground Gold Club. Remember that? After you get kicked off the force, you’re going into radical politics, right? So, the more tainted you get the more those kinds of friends will stick to you.’
Furn smirked cruelly. ‘What I’m doing now is the only kind of policing the Right Nation Party would tolerate. Anyway, all I really know is that when I’m put out to pasture, it’ll be one with plenty of manure.’
‘There’s something else you know.’
‘What’s that?’
Nashy’s mouth went to his with a sharp kiss. ‘You know this water’s getting cold.’
‘Yeah, you’re right, I know that.’