Directive RIP

When she was in Melbourne, Detective Azu Nashy of the Australian Federal Police usually stayed with her aunt, Anne Prose. It was a quiet verging on dull experience, but she was not with Furn anymore.

  The Prose house was double storeyed with four bedrooms and ensuites and still hadn’t been big enough to keep wife and husband out of each other’s hair. It was only during the messy divorce that it became apparent each had actually been paying any kind of attention to the other – but it came in the form of accusations. Still, Prose did not regret her choice of man: the fact that he had preferred boats to houses clearly swayed the settlement in her favour.

  ‘Hi Furn,’ she said, answering the front door in a red cotton dressing gown which betrayed her recent paunch - retribution for cancelling her yoga lessons?

  ‘How have you been, Anne?’

  ‘Can’t complain. It’s good to see you again. Azu’s upstrairs. The house rules are still the same. All weapons at the door.’

  Furn placed his piece in the designated shoe box, surprised by the two pistols, flick blade and knuckle-dusters and capsicum spray already there.

  ‘Does she have company?’

  ‘No, but I don’t envy whoever she is expecting.’ Prose smirked, lines of unabsorbed facial cream showing up on her glistening cheeks. ‘Azu didn’t say much when you guys broke up. The only discernible difference was this box got fuller.’

  ‘It’s part of a wider trend. Automatic weapons are replacing diamonds as a girl’s best friend.’

  ‘Not this one.’ Prose pointed a thumb at herself. ‘I’ve just been baking cupcakes. Want to try one?’

  ‘Not off duty,’ Furn murmured.

  ‘Her new boyfriend is already leaving meatballs in the fridge. Not bad since he lives in Canberra. Might be his way of marking territory. Has it home delivered from the local butcher.’

  Furn flicked off a parting wave as he stepped past her and headed upstairs. The carpet was ghost white and received as much shampoo and treatment as a pandered poodle. The paintings along the staircase began with a print of Monet’s Impression Sunrise and then were followed by a series of Prose’s art school attempts of recreating it. The first couple was shaky while those done during the divorce period were murderous; by the top of the stairs, however, they were bordering on the serene. They left Furn with only a couple of metres of blank wall space to Nashy’s door.

  His knock brought her out into the passageway, though from a different room. Her hair was dripping, a white towel draped around her superbly athletic body. She had chosen the upper floor’s furthest bathroom and she worked her audience, hips swinging, boobs jutting outwards like feelers. Even with her contacts out she knew what Furn’s eyes were doing.

  ‘Hello Furn,’ she said. ‘It’s interesting to see that Aunt Anne still lets you in. I’ll have to talk to her about that.’

  She stopped in front of him and with a second towel she had been carrying, she began squeezing out water from her hair. Her hair was the colour of wet brown sugar and it combined breathtakingly with her large opal eyes. Furn remembered the old routine, how she would sit naked on her wooden stool and painstakingly blow dry it to perfection. It had taken a girl the quality of May to get that image out of his head – but now there was this address in his hand. And each pen stroke was like the lash of a whip.

  ‘This is your hand writing,’ he said.

  Azu Nashy enjoyed the wisp of desperation in his voice. ‘Normally I’m on the sisters’ side but I’ve been appointed the permanent liaison between the Federal Police and the RIP. Makes it easier for us to borrow you when we don’t like the smell of something. That’s why I got to join in on the fun in Canberra today. I think the PM was on the verge of making a pass at me. Not that I’d blame him. There’s not much else to do up there apart from screwing the country.’

  Furn held the address up higher, wanting Nashy’s monologue to get around to it.

  ‘A perk of the job,’ Azu said. ‘Good cops can recognise the self-destructive streaks in their suspects. In this case I’ll enjoy recognising it in my colleague.’

  ‘I didn’t cheat on you.’

  ‘That’s true. You made love to me and then you didn’t make love to me. Are you flattered that’s all it took to make me want you dead?’ She was standing with hands on hips like her towel was made of Kevlar.

  ‘I’m going to treat this address like I did our fling,’ said Furn flippantly. ‘Maybe I’ll go there and maybe I won’t go there.’

  ‘You’ll go there.’

  ‘Why so confident?’

  ‘Because, colleague, it’s part of that streak.’

  Furn turned for the stairs. ‘Maybe I just prefer women who keep heels in their shoe boxes.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ Azu called out as he disappeared down the stairs.

  Furn purposefully left his piece in the box, not merely to in some way spite her. He sensed in the situation ahead it would be the safest place for it.