Furn knocked on a front door that had lost most of its paint and was water stained from the leaks in the roof spouting above.
‘Who is it?’ came a hawkish female voice from within the house.
‘Janet Murgier, is that you?’
‘Janet Murgier? Who the hell is that?’
Furn took that as a yes and the next time he touched the front door of 13 Gilrose Avenue it was with a battering ram in hand. The backstreets of North Altona warranted stronger front doors than this one. It flew off its hinges and took a chunk out of the wall on its way into the living room.
Murgier sprung off her couch and out a rear door, a whip of ginger hair and a freckled cheek the only glimpse the two police officers got.
Azu Nashy entered the premise first, balanced and deceptively quick, her pistol confidently pointing the way.
‘I’m left.’
Furn stopped inside on the right, and was astounded by what he saw. Televisions, stereos, refrigerators, microwaves, digital players and cameras; it was an entire warehouse worth of electrical goods crammed into one small house. Murgier was better at stealing than she was at selling - perhaps, she was a hoarder, which was not the most profitable trait for a petty thief to have. Furn kept low, weaving watchfully between the appliances, aware she must have had help to carry this lot.
The house plan had indicated a circular layout. Hopefully Nashy was herding Murgier to him. He couldn’t wait to get her hand-cuffed, so that he could start smashing up the place. It would be bad publicity and it would feel so good. The only TV he had ever broken was after a girlfriend walked out on him, which he supposed hadn’t made much sense seeings the one thing she had not been dating him for was the quality of his TV set.
He was through an arched doorway into what he supposed was the living room, though now there were washing machines on top of everything else. That front door had probably been taken off its hinges more than once to fit in some of this stuff. It was getting ridiculous.
There came a shrill female scream from the other side of the house. Furn knew it wasn’t Nashy because she simply didn’t scream. He kept himself from running, but his skin suddenly felt cold like all those refrigerators had been opened - it was the feeling of danger.
‘There’s someone else in the house!’ Nashy shouted.
There was the roar of gunfire and the relative comedy of ricochet. Furn had to decide whether to rush in or hold his position. He took a step forward only to realise he hadn’t decided yet. He ducked down low, realising there was enough metal in the house for a bullet to ricochet a good lap or two. What came at Furn, however, was bigger than a bullet, and he didn’t react in time. It struck his back, knocking him completely off balance. It was a microwave and the electric cord was left draped loosely over his shoulder. Two huge hands flung him viciously into a refrigerator and without pause, the large man charged into him, brutally trying to rip free his pistol.
Furn, however, retained both hands on the handle and a finger on the trigger; he recalled the glue his first hand to hand combat instructor, Toothless Jock, had coated his palm with all those years ago. ‘This is how you hold onto a gun!’ he had cried. As Furn’s head was rammed hard against the hard corner of another appliance, he was hearing him again now. Erect veins ran along his assailant’s fiendishly large biceps like metal piping. Furn would have to bend them in half in order to point the gun where he wanted it to go. He was struggling, however, merely to hold his own and saved the meagre remainder of his fast draining strength for a better idea. He needed to think fast, for the man against him was clearly not going to settle for a draw. Nashy was not to be relied on either - the idea of them watching each other’s back had ended with the raid’s commencement and with someone like Janet Murgier to chase after.
Furn frustratedly stopped trying to think his way out of his plight and instead used his head as a club, smacking a fearsome blow just above his assailant’s ear. It earned him a smidgeon more movement with his gun and he used it to shoot out a television screen directly ahead. The man discounted it as desperation, happy for Furn to empty the whole clip in that direction if he so cared.
‘I did that to my own TV when the evening news showed how your partner, Breeze, got shot,’ he spat, ‘just ‘cause I wanted to give him some of this.’ The man drew a fist back in preparation for a fierce punch. But Furn still had piece of mind to counter, driving the arm upon him into the jagged glass of the shot out TV screen. The scream it elicited was loud and the copious amounts of blood that flowed were an effective lubricant as Furn easily slipped away into space. He glanced down at his now uncontested pistol: it was rare for there to be so much blood on a gun that was yet to be used. He was tempted to rectify it when Nashy came storming into the room.
‘Are you okay?’ she hollered down the length of her own pistol.
‘Depends who you’re talking to,’ Furn replied.
‘You with the gash on your head.’
Furn dabbed his forehead and came away with a smear of blood. ‘It’s nothing much. After what we’ve been doing in that hotel, a beating is just what I needed.’
Nashy kicked the man’s legs out from under him. ‘Get down on your stomach. A fool like you gets handcuffs for band aids.’
As Nashy stabbed a knee into his back and roughly applied the handcuffs Furn took a closer look at the face. The man’s identity was contorted with agony in a living abstract picture.
There was the goatee beard, the concave forehead, the pronounced ears, the jutting chin, the bulldog nose, the designer suntan in a sewer complexion. Furn sighed and went to his phone. The line opened quickly though the Riley acknowledging grunt required some patience.
‘Better bring a couple of squad cars and an ambulance,’ said Furn. ‘Murgier has been secured.’ He looked to Nashy for confirmation and got it with a preoccupied nod. ‘We’ve made a bit of a mess but it’s not all good news. We’ve recovered a whole lot of stolen property and made the kind of arrest that could only be described as promotion worthy.’
‘Rufus Ray was there, after all?’
‘That’s right. The best we can do to salvage the situation is rough him up a bit more than we should.’
‘Nah, you’ve actually done something right for a change. No need to spoil it. The morning papers have already sullied us over those glasses. Let’s see which runs the longest, the good news or the bad.’
‘Fine.’
Furn replaced the phone with a cigarette. There was the siren of a police car out and about. Riley wasn’t that fast: probably a neighbour on speed dial.
Nashy had the handcuffs on Ray now, quick and easy.
‘Chained to a desk yourself, but you haven’t forgotten how to do some chaining of your own,’ Furn observed.
‘Very funny.’
Furn patted the bloody gash with the back of his hand. ‘You got any cloth on you that wouldn’t cause an infection?’
‘Yeah, I changed my boxers this morning.’
Furn smirked and lit his cigarette. The old, dirty habits felt new again.