Toothbrushes their uses

      The platinum-blond decedent had something in his hands I’d not noticed, given they were clenched into fists and lashed with the ligature and rigor mortis was setting in. Tosh, who’d been meaning to play golf but would now have to write and submit an incident report before ceasing duty, drew my attention to it as he deployed the nine eleven: it was the end of a sharpened toothbrush, a common prison shiv. Tosh indicated puncture wounds to each of the inmate’s thighs which, in contrast to those I’d seen or thought I’d seen, were jagged and bloodied. Making no attempt to resuscitate the man, although required to do so, Tosh began marking out the perimeter using tape from the office. Each DIC must be treated as a crime scene.

      ‘Remps up the buzz. Any pulse?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Good.’

      ‘What do you mean ramps up the buzz?’

      ‘This is a choke and stroke. A choke and a stroke from a man of the cloth, our Reverend Rocky Buzzacott, wirst of the wirst. Choke and a stroke gone wrong.’

      ‘Why isn’t the AS here? Doesn’t the OIC have to confirm from the FRO what action has been taken?’

      ‘Sittle down Leddy. All is under control. Duty Off has been informed and is notifying the filth.’

      ‘And the ambulance?’

      ‘Yis. Now did you require counselling?’

      I did, but am still waiting as I found myself ordered by Laid-Back Lester to watch another cock in action, this time pissing into a jar. A random is generally done at the hour of Lauds when piss is least dilute. Two male officers, which back then was most, and well I recall my first rencounter with my first female officer, who’d hair like Lola in Run Lola Run, and silenced a yard full of outlaw bikies by telling them how she often pushed her husband’s bike off its stand, came into the gatehouse saying ‘who do I need to fuck to get a coffee round here?’ Last we heard of Gillian she was governing Dillwynia — in this case Tosh and me, were to watch the micturition, having first conducted a strip search, then screw a lid on the warm jar and affix a seal in the inmate’s view. The details would be written on the seal. The security seal number would be entered on a form and the inmate asked to read both form and sticker and attest the numbers matched but he couldn’t produce could he, so he had to be placed in a dry yard for two hours but we didn’t have one, so I was consigned to remain in his slot and watch he didn’t try to ‘flush’ i.e. guzzle water, all pretty pointless as rockies are rarely on the gear and seldom subjected to a random. But it got me out the way. And by the time the two hours was up, the body upstairs had been removed — I reckon Lester hadn’t even seen it — and I was sent in with mop and bucket to rid the slot of shit and semen. I told them in Rome the man had been a gasper like Michael Hutchence stroke David Carradine but they didn’t seem interested. I also thought it strange that no one had bothered to interview me, but when I remarked on this to Tosh he replied ‘You are jest a baggy.’

       I didn’t ask the inmate’s name and as Tosh had removed his door tag, it wasn’t till I was driving home through Pomeroy it hit me. I had seen that head of hair. I’d seen that man before.

      You could never actually count on going home till you made it out the gate.

      We had some twenty-five years beforehand given each other a perfunctory nod, but we’d moved in different circles and attended different schools. I’d gone to Goulburn High (Justice and Tenacity) while he’d been at St Pat’s (Age Quod Agis). It would have been the year after I left Goulburn we met and all it amounted to was a nod of the head.

       Autumn term was Michaelmas term at Sydney Uni in them days and during Easter break I came home to Goulburn on the train. I still had Brenda my Catholic girlfriend, and as all Tykes, which didn’t include me or my father, we being lapsed Tykes, ex-Tykes, would faithfully visit the Stations of the Cross, which since 1955 had meant traipsing round the Presentation Retreat, I’d said to the lovely Brenda, with a vulpine cunning, I don’t really want to be traipsing round with three thousand people come Friday, but I wouldn’t mind seeing these statues that I’ve heard so much about. See, I figured once I got her into that garden I could paw her about. Medieval Muslim writers allude to the monastery garden with a smirk, suggesting an ancient association with sex and alcohol. Up we went to Marys Mount early that Holy Week, and I recall being mightily delighted to see the garden, as I thought, deserted. Women were debarred from the monastery buildings though not from the monastery garden. Yet just as I was making my move, I heard a voice shout ‘Brenda!’

      Looking up, I see a youth about my age, barefoot and wearing a long black mantle, clinging to a cross on a plinth. He is using a toothbrush to clean between the marmoreal