27
Every library had its resident pedophiles. They could be as brazen as they were discreet. Known sites could be flagged at the counter and the cops summoned, but the pedophiles were a step ahead of that game. Only the unsophisticated or careless would ever get caught. Or those stuck in self-denial regarding the complicity of their actions. Barry Jewel considered himself one of the lucky ones: he revelled in being a social outcast. A five year old Cambodian girl didn’t look any less beautiful knowing that everyone in any given moment would want him dead – except, of course, in the chat room.
One week out of prison and he had already reacquainted himself with all his favourite library computers and corners. The inner city ones, where his anonymity was preserved by a high turnover of users and staff; where no one looked each other in the eye - the tell-tale sign of self-contained perversion. No printouts, no memory sticks, no forwarding. Just peruse, cherish and repeat. There were hundreds of links, thousands of pictures, and Jewel would experience them all. But not today. It would take tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next. There was no greater challenge than insatiable desire.
Jewell, moist lipped, glanced from an intriguing blindfolded girl on a bed to his watch. Four o’clock. He had reached his ninety minute limit. It was a rule he never broke. Not unless he was in Pattaya, Kuta or one of his favourite other holiday spots. He set about deleting his history from the computer, covering his tracks, inserting a virus that would cast doubt on the testimony on the most sophisticated of computer forensic officers – not that it would ever come to that. Someone on another computer announced his existence with a cough. What was he up to? Even if he was a member of the community, Jewels would not want anything to do with him. Jewels was only interested in people when they were appropriately embedded in none too flashy usernames.
One of the few men in the history of marriage to be divorced for being too clean, he checked and rechecked that the computer had been absolved of him. Rubbing his prints off the keyboard was the important final step. He wouldn’t sleep if he didn’t.
Once satisfied, he left the library for a café across the street. The service was slow but what he was mostly paying for was a place to unwind, to think. He needed to find a way back deep into the game – which was the way his community referred to the so called normalcy behind which they could indulge their true inclinations. A high school teaching position had been a priceless cover. With a felony conviction, that was irretrievably lost. If a few more slaps from those police could have led to a full pardon rather than merely an early release, he would have gladly coaxed and submitted.
The latte was already cooling by the time it was brought to his table. His fingers were preoccupied with the business card the journalist had pressed into his hand at his front door earlier in the day.
Gerr Doolan. Freelance Journalist.
Jewels natural aversion to any sort of scrutiny, let alone from the press, had made him standoffish. On reflection, however, the encounter might have been more fortuitous than invasive. Doolan only seemed interested in the cops who had roughed him up. He had told him that they were called the Rogue Intercept Police and that they had a long history of brutality and misconduct. Apparently the Office of Police Integrity was hamstrung in acting against them. Doolan, spectacles planted on the tip of his nose, was taking it upon himself to rectify the situation.
Jewel had closed the door on him before the checkbook could make an appearance. Ten grand for an account of his nightmare interrogation at the hands of those cops was reasonable. And with his ex-wife no longer even accepting alimony payments he could stretch that out a long way. He could become a police brutality counsellor or some such nonsense. He could get back into the game in style. And the other advantage was that if the press built him up as a victim, it would near guarantee him immunity from his real transgressions. Once the press took him on board, their fates would be entwined: the self-serving media would seek to maintain their own standing in the community at all costs.
Jewel returned the business card to his wallet. He decided he would call the number at the bottom after his usual hour at the gym. Ten grand and he would talk. He took a sip of latte. He enjoyed his conspiracy more than he did the coffee.
The café was pleasant enough. A lot of wood and primary colours. The other customers could hardly fit into the small round tables with all their shopping bags. Undoubtedly a bunch of crap only as attractive as the mark down stickers on the price tags. Each to his own.
The sunshine that greeted Jewel out on the footpath was a call to walk the three kilometres to his one bedroom apartment in South Yarra. No need to rush. On a day like today, Melbourne, with its grand Flinders Street Station and Princess Street Bridge, was the most fabulous city in the world. So much atmosphere to soak up on the way home. And, to top it off, there was the pleasant stroll along the Yarra River, culminating in the Melbourne High School, where he was an old boy and where he often felt his own personal history was ruthlessly swallowed up into insignificance by the rich history of others - but today he could be more optimistic. Dear Doolan was going to make his name into something big. Something to bring up in the dinner parties he would be too big to attend. He was perfectly positioned to do just that. There was nothing a predator enjoyed more than being mistaken for a victim.
Passing the local skateboard park by the Yarra River, an imposing pack of bad mouthing youths was milling around. They were flicking cigarettes at each other, posturing and shouting in a hard, throaty tone. The only school that could possibly have retained such bad apples was reform school. Jewel held his line as he passed them, did not even flinch as he became the focus of their disdainful glares.
‘Who’s this idiot?’ a towering beanpole murmured with his overgrown Adam’s Apple.
‘I think that’s wallet in his back pocket,’ taunted another. ‘A nice, fat juicy one.’
Jewels didn’t feel anything and he got to thinking that real fear might have been similar to measles in that you only had it once. Walking into the Ivanhoe branch on the Saint George’s Credit Society for his first armed robbery had been his measles moment. He literally vomited inside his balaclava with his fear. Since then though, right through his subsequent arrest, trial and incarceration, and even that fateful interrogation with the Rogue Intercept Police, he had been unflappable. What he was doing now was still just a pleasant walk on a sunny day.
The wallet in his back pocket remained unassailed, the delinquents, warded off by his menacing countenance, returning to physically and verbally assaulting each other. Jewel hadn’t done anything in particular to get out of a tight spot. He simply hadn’t cared about it.
The strategy continued to be effective for the remaining twenty five minutes to his flat. There, Furn made his move.
‘Busted!’ he yelled.
He grabbed Jewel by the shirt and used his forward momentum to viciously fling him inside. Furn used him to rearrange the immaculately tidy living room, the way a bar pool player liked to spread the balls in an opening break. Jewel was smashed through glass cabinets, display vases and framed holiday photos of third world beach resorts. Furn didn’t stop until he was too dizzy to continue, and then he dropped Jewel into a leather recliner.
‘Child pornography,’ he gnarled. ‘You won’t have many friends in the penitentiary playground.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jewel tried to keep himself composed but his eyes couldn’t refrain from widening when he realised who he was talking to. ‘There’s nothing in this apartment to connect me with anything of that nature.’ His voice sounded meek.
Furn stood over the recliner with hands on hips. ‘I know. Just a whole bunch of National Geographics. You don’t mind if I borrow a couple?’
‘You’re nothing more than a thug and you’re going to be exposed. The newspapers are onto you.’
‘You talking about Doolan? He wants me but he ain’t going to start quoting a pedophile.’
‘Stop calling me that.’ Je
wel tried to get out of the recliner only to get punched back into it.
‘I’ve been keeping you in seats a lot today,’ said Furn, kneading the impact of the punch out of his knuckles. ‘Your latte at the Venice Cafe was slow in coming because I was in the kitchen flashing my badge. I wanted to keep you occupied while I checked on your little adventures in the internet cafe. The staff at both premises were very cooperative. And the computer forensics officer accompanying me was also glad to help out. He couldn’t say for sure what you were up to, but it was obviously very bad.’ He methodically lit up a cigarette. He still considered himself a non-smoker; it was just a busy week. The smoke settled in his lungs like a London fog. ‘Despite all your carrying on, this isn’t the first time you’ve been accused of pedophilia, right? The silver statue has a sharp pair of eyes. You were loitering around the river, lecherously ogling all the little boys and girls out on their family excursions. McNaught spotted you. And the severe alternative punishment he enforced? Rob a bank and go to prison for it. You’d agree to that. Better than being placed on a sexual offender register. That would really curtail your social agenda.’
Jewel was still rubbing his inflamed chin. Perhaps he was hoping for a genie to pop out in the form of a suitable explanation.
‘I, I....,’ he muttered.
‘Although the punishment was handsomely profitable for the Sapiens, it failed miserably in protecting the community,’ continued Furn.
Jewel latched onto that. ‘I’m only out of prison because of your gross misconduct.’
‘I can do worse to put you back in.’
‘It’s not going to happen. And you know I can take a beating.’
‘You are beaten. McNaught’s in custody. He’ll sell you out for a year or two off his sentence. Even in your so called reality, you could understand that.’
Furn sucked the guts out of his cigarette, watching him squirm.
‘I’ve got something on the Sapiens,’ Jewel said, his head slipping into the hand that had been doing the rubbing. ‘The woman who runs it, I can give her to you.’
‘Oh, yeah? What’ s her name again? It seems to have slipped my mind.’
‘Dr Zulma Pei. That’s the only thing that’ll come for free.’
‘You’re selling paper for gold. Dr Pei hasn’t done anything to me personally except cajole an old woman into trying to take my head off with a concrete block. But all in all, the poor dear was trying to make herself useful.’
‘Well, what have I done to you?’
Furn shunted the cigarette out of his mouth and ground it into the carpet. ‘Nothing. Okay, here’s a deal. If you try to negotiate, I’ll probably just shoot you in the face. You can buy yourself twenty four hours by giving me what your mate Doolan would call a scoop. But if you blink twice I’m going to assume it’s all bullshit and the deal’s off.’
Apparently Jewel had some grand designs on those twenty four hours, for he responded in a hurry.
‘Canter Collins, one of Pei’s original partners in crime is currently residing in Toowoomba. He has a light aircraft license and a Cessna he uses for crop-dusting. Everyone thinks Zulma and her father disowned each other. That’s why the cops will not even suspect something so ridiculously obvious. I can tell you where they’re planning to fly. Papua. From there, who knows.’
‘Sounds like a load of bull,’ said Furn despite himself.
‘If you’re intending to stop them you’re window of opportunity is running out fast. Pei is exceptionally efficient. She will already have collected all the loot from the drop off points and will be motoring up to Toowoomba as we speak. Your one saving grace is that she’ll be sticking steadfastly to the speed limit. Obviously she won’t want to risk getting pulled over.’
‘How do you even know she’s involved in the Sapien’s? You were never her patient.Which doesn’t surprise me. The screwballs that need counselling the most are the ones that never get it.’
‘When you are getting blackmailed, you have a vested interest in getting some intel of your own. Following McNaught, all roads led to Zulma Pei. They were lovers. Between them they could have afforded a hotel room or two, but at least one of them had a fetish for bar toilets. I slept through the whole first term of high school keeping an eye on them.’
‘And what about the rest of it?’
Jewel looked up at him, a spark of defiance lighting up his eyes. ‘I’m good with the internet.’
‘I see.’
‘Now I’ve more than earned that twenty four hours. If you break the deal -’
Furn whipped out his gun and shot Jewel once in the stomach. Despite the silencer it had been a very fluid motion. Jewel lurched sideward, his face contorted in shock and agony.
‘That shot should give you twenty four hours,’ gnarled Furn, taking out his handcuffs. ‘Guess I’ll be a little too preoccupied to confirm it for myself. So, if you don’t last that long, let me apologise in advance.’