Matthew Flinders' Cat Read Free Page A

‘Righto, on yer bicycle, son, ’ave a nice day.’
    ‘Yes, thank you, officer,’ Billy said softly, accepting this final insult. He turned quickly to where he intended to cross at Shakespeare Place, but the sudden movement caused his bad knee to give and he toppled to the pavement.
    The policeman stepped toward him, grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and hefted him onto his feet. ‘You orright?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, thank you, it’s...it’s my leg,’ Billy stammered, shaken by the fall. ‘I ...I...woke up this morning with a gammy leg. Bad knee, you see.’ He could sense how pathetic he sounded.
    The policeman nodded in the direction of Sydney Hospital, the next building on from Parliament House, ‘Have the hospital take a look, tell them I sent you. Sergeant Phillip Orr, they know me there.’
    Billy smiled weakly, ‘Yes, thank you, sergeant, I’ll tell them.’ By supplying his name, it was obvious Orr thought Billy would not have recalled their previous encounter.
    The policeman looked to see what traffic was approaching up Macquarie Street and then raced across the road, dodging between an oncoming white laundry van and a taxi approaching from the opposite side of the road. Billy watched as Orr turned down Bent Street, half running. He waited until the light changed to green and crossed Shakespeare Place, keeping to the Gardens side of Macquarie Street. For some strange reason, probably the adrenaline pumping into his system as a result of the fall, his knee felt considerably better.
    It occurred to Billy, who, like most drunks, was somewhat paranoid, that Orr might have so enjoyed the banter that it would become a regular morning occurrence. In his experience bullies were like that, returning day after day to repeat their intimidation and to enjoy the fear and humiliation it brought about in their victims. Orr was the archetypal beer-gut sergeant whose time had passed and, as further promotion was unlikely, he possessed a highly developed sense of injustice against his calling. Billy was simply someone to humiliate, a way of venting his frustration.
    Billy had experienced the same thing with several older cops, who were apt to show more interest in him than any of the other drunks in the area. They would bail him up on a fairly regular basis, curious to see if the grog had destroyed his once famous legal brain.
    The standard routine employed by the homeless drunk was to shout and hurl abuse when a police officer pulled him up. Most younger officers simply couldn’t be bothered going through the routine of an arrest and the subsequent paperwork involved and so moved on. But creating a fuss when cornered wasn’t something Billy knew how to do. Moreover, he’d long since given up trying to behave like a gentleman, which policemen such as Orr simply saw as an attempt to appear superior and took great pleasure in disabusing him of this notion. Now, when confronted, Billy made a point of showing how his brain had become addled by alcohol and that he was a pathetic, harmless creature. Criminal lawyers are, after all, good actors and playing the role of a gormless drunk wasn’t difficult. It was what a certain class of older police officer required, the satisfaction of confirming how far the mighty have fallen. For the most part the police would ask a few questions, cluck their tongues, shake their heads and move on. It was unusual for such a confrontation to go as long as it had with Orr, and Billy was annoyed that he hadn’t adopted his role of brain-dead drunk immediately.
    Billy again tried to recall whether he had given Sergeant Orr a hard time when he’d had him in the witness box, but nothing came readily to mind. Policemen have long memories and it doesn’t take much for them to feel slighted by defence counsel. There was an old saying among the constabulary: If the Law is an ass, then the lawyers do the braying and the police do the donkey work . Most older police officers who appeared for