*
Awakening from a medicated sleep was a feeling Furn knew well enough, having suffered many an injury in what a department shrink had described in his file as “a pathological unwillingness to show discretion.” He tried to shake his head clear, albeit softly, for if there was pain lurking about he did not want to risk waking it too. Still, he was more comfortable than he might have expected. Sunshine was warming his tightly fixed eyelids and he was lying on a cushioned bed. He would have been glad to remain in that spot all day if not for the memory of the previous night. There had been that gun to his head and that chilling voice accompanying it. What had happened next he was not sure. An injection of propofol, a blast of sevoflurane? – whatever it may have been, the gunman had certainly been efficient in its delivery. Furn told himself to quit stalling and open his eyes. Like a maiden voyage, he wished he had a bottle of champagne to smash across the bow.
His eyelids moved with reasonable ease and as soon as he was able to focus he realised he had never started a day quite like this. He was curled up in the backseat of his car with a dead red kangaroo inexplicably wedged up against him. The car was stationary and his arm was numb with the weight of the kangaroo upon it. The unfortunate animal was cold, still and of a distinctly gamey odor.
When a cigarette promised to be a breath of fresh air, it was time to take one. The psychologists had got him down to a pack a year, though he hadn’t really smoked until he started seeing them. There was a pack of Marlboros in the glove box, which took some clambering to reach. Once he had a cigarette lit, he filled his lungs with smoke and that matched well with what was going on in his head. He wondered if there were friends who would do this as a practical joke. He noticed a pink ribbon around the kangaroo’s neck. Yeah, he knew a few people who might do that. And there would be not much he could do about it: in this line of work there was about as much chance of choosing your friends as there was your family.
Furn got out of the car and puffed some more on his cigarette. In his vicinity there was an old man walking a proud looking Dalmatian and a mother marching her brood off to the local primary school.A pleasantly typical scene and Furn wondered where he fitted in amongst it all. In the end, all he could come up with was getting back in the car with his cigarette and that kangaroo. He knew May would take the smell of cigarette he brought with him as an indication she had gotten to him, but, in reality, she would have to share credit for his fast emerging headache with a luscious bartender, a gaggle of annoying ballroom dancers and the kind of tranquilizer that gave race horses a good night’s rest. The car engine was not so encumbered and fired straight away. Furn slipped it into first and noted that the clock on the dashboard read: 8:46. The drive to the County Morgue was brisk, which in peak hour traffic probably meant he was doing something illegal. He parked in a reserved spot, wrapped the kangaroo in a blanket usually used for under-body maintenance and headed into the morgue; he was cheered by the thought the coffee there was usually pretty strong and bitter.
The Melbourne City Morgue had undergone a complete refurbishment the previous summer, and the only thing that distinguished its entry from the average hospital was the lack of in-patients and the absence of stethoscopes. The hallways were peach yellow and the polished floors dark grey. Furn ignored the mounted brass plates pointing here and then. With a large, deceased marsupial under his arm, people were going to notice him. Unsurprisingly, it was at first a couple of security guards; they still managed to take his badge seriously and fetched Dr Dong Dang an Assistant Coroner and one of the select few pathologists who didn’t possess a dourness to resemble his clients.
‘Is that a damned kangaroo?’ he asked. ‘What the hell are you bringing it here for?’
‘Why do you think?’ Furn replied. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Well, I’m not a vet and I’m not in the meat pie business either.’
‘This isn’t some road kill victim that’s been hopping around looking for sympathy. It could be a crime victim.’
‘You’re serious?’
Furn unceremoniously dumped the kangaroo upon a nearby steel trolley. ‘Pathologists don’t do referrals, right? I don’t need the RSPCA and I don’t need a taxidermist. Run some blood tests; find out if the cause of death is in anyway malicious. It’s to do with an important case.’
‘Kangaroos don’t die in drive-by shootings, you know. It’s called hunting.’
Furn was starting to feel queasy. Whether or not the deliciously bitter Coroner’s blend would help or harm remained to be seen.
‘This is an official police request,’ said Furn. ‘We are the Rogue Intercept Police and we move in particular circles.’ He headed for the staff canteen. ‘Trust you’ve got an assistant to help you move it into the lab.’
‘Yeah, I’ve got an emu and a dingo outback,’ Dr Dang snapped with his Vietnamese accent momentarily strengthening as his voice quickened. ‘My morning’s already taken up with you guys. You’re making so many deposits you must think I’m the laundromat, right?’
Furn figured he was referring to the Dockland’s run-in. He didn’t have the heart to tell him there would likely be more where that came from. The Sapiens weren’t an offshoot of any pacifist society. If dead kangaroos were how they began acquaintanceships, he had to wonder how they ended.