Theft: A Love Story

Butcher showed no curiosity about the Japanese cattle dogs until he had us all crammed in the sandy ute. The motor was ru

Marlene asked me, What do you think, Hugh?

I said it was very nice and to be fair it may not have been these chemicals that hurt my head. In the apartment I had detected the odour of my father's .22 after detonation—CORDITE— the rabbit still writhing on the ground before I stretched his neck. As I said, there was generally the perfume of an INTRUSION but if this was legal or not I could not say. I knew the cattle-dogs were the THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE to an exhibition in Japan and when I saw how Butcher stroked the pages he was like a dog himself, licking his dick in the middle of the road in dire danger of being run down by a truck.

Before you could say JACK ROBINSON we were in the RECEPTION AREA at police headquarters and Butcher must have thought he was playing in the Grand Final at MADINGLEY PARK because he darted over to the wing imagining he could drive up towards the goal but he was out of bounds and we were instead required to fill out our names at the front desk.

I didn't like to pay attention in these circumstances. The smell of floor disinfectant very strong.

Detective Amberstreet no longer with us.

That was the news we were finally given and all Butcher's previous politeness was revealed as so much bad milk floating in a cup of welcome tea, but just as he commenced his rant, Marlene took his receipt from him THANK THE LORD and showed it to the WELL-SPOKEN SERGEANT at the desk.

She said we wished only to collect property that had been held in a case now settled.

The well-spoken sergeant offered to escort Marlene.

Thank you, she said, but I know my way.

In the lift her colour was rising and as she had a SCANDINAVIAN appearance this was very attractive although a puzzle, never mind.

Up on the third floor we saw "ART" written on the wall as Butcher had already described and inside there was a policewoman, also a sergeant with a huge SCHNOZZ like an anteater which she lifted expectantly towards us. Bless me, save me. HUGE NOSTRILS. Behind her was a great mess looking more like Eddie Tool's lube bay or Jack Hogan's overnight express service which our father once used to send meat to America although that was ONE DREAM GONE SOUR as the saying is. All ma

Butcher had no interest in Stewart Waltzer or Jack Hogan. The Marsh was dead to him and he surrendered up his receipt to the sergeant who poked her nose into the contents of the cage, turning over this or that item, peering sadly at the labels. I was already electric in the forearms but when I witnessed Butcher enter the cage WITHOUT PERMISSION I became lightheaded as the saying is.

The brain is a fu

She was like a clerk at the post office a LITTLE HITLER checking the receipt number against the tag stapled cruelly to the corner of the black canvas. My mother's words rising from the night of Main Street. The Nose matched the tag against a REGISTER but she did not know who she was dealing with.

She was not an anteater but an ant, a blowfly on the wall of the palace of a king, and when my brother smoothed out the canvas I had once cut for him so perfectly, he was as FURIOUS and TENDER as he had been when we laid out our mother and placed the pe

YOUSE NOT MAKING IT EASIER.

FUCK ME DEAD DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE

DONE?

She said he would be fined six hundred dollars for obscenity if he didn't watch himself. This threat made my brother create a shower of slippery twenty-dollar notes which was confusing to us all. Then, bless me, he gave us all a lecture. The Summary Offensive Act allows a man to say what he bloody likes if there is reasonable excuse. And he never saw such REASONABLE EXCUSE in his life than the behaviour of ignorant Croats— what was that? I did not know—ignorant Croats who had ripped his work of art apart. Was this the result of X-rays? He laughed nastily. He would have Amberstreet locked in gaol.

She said Amberstreet was overseas.

He said he did not give a flying fuck. He pla

If I could have found my way out of the building I would have run away but instead I picked up the money he was wasting and then I assisted Marlene, carrying the canvas towards the lift while the sergeant was left with the receipt. My brother was not himself. Finally he came and wrenched the painting from us and threw it across his shoulder and this was obviously not the right mood to begin a BUSINESS LUNCH with Jean-Paul.