Chapter 1
Two Australian Federal Police (AFP) crime prevention and containment officers, stopped off at café when returning from assisting in a failed drug bust when the warehouse that had been under covert surveillance for three weeks was raided. It was found to be empty but booby-trapped and three police drug squad members were hospitalised by the multiple explosions, none critically injured.
Rick Mellow and Sonny Williams' mid-morning coffee and burgers had just been delivered to their table when Sonny froze, eyeing a slender guy with thick curly straw-coloured hair and not quite 6ft tall approaching the food and drink bar to place an order.
He grabbed his phone and opened 'Australia's Most Wanted List'.
Rick, peering to see was his partner was doing, asked, "Who do you think he is?"
"Hold on."
Sonny didn't find what he was looking for and switched to the agency director's password protected list of labelled 'Bad Bastards and Hot Suspects' wanted for questioning on possible involvement of assaults of VIPs.
"Ah, got it," he said gleefully, turning his phone to his sidekick.
Rick read the brief description and looked at the photo and then at the guy at the bar and said, "So, That's Cuth Cooper. He doesn't look like a guy with his reputation. I was expecting him to look like a real baddie, 6 ft 6 in tall, a mass of black hair and muscular, with shoulders twice as wide as his hips."
Sonny growled, "You read too many comics and watch too many crime movies. Come on, let's apprehend him."
"We should call local police for assistance."
"Fuck that, but let's finish our food and then make our move."
"Why take the risk, Sonny? Local cops could be here within minutes."
"We're the Feds, that's why."
Five minutes later, the two Federal Police officers approached the male, in his mid-thirties, eating alone in the café near the side windows and Sonny barked, "Cuthbert Cooper?"
Cuth pushed his chair back clear of the table astonishing quickly but remained seated and said calmly, "Cuth Cooper, yes. Who wants to know?"
The two plainclothes national police office tensed, as if expected trouble, and the senior officer said, "I'm Sergeant Sonny Williams of the AFP, we have the authority to take you in for questioning."
"Well, Sonny, show me your arrest warrant. If you don't have the paperwork, I'm going nowhere with you and your girly mate."
Tension between them soared.
Sonny intoned that Cuth was wanted for official questioning, not arrest and pulled his side-arm. Cuth sprang at him, seizing the extended arm.
Sonny screamed as his pistol dropped to the floor and he fell to his knees, holding his arm in pain. He glimpsed his partner dropping already unconscious with his hand still inside his jacket holding his weapon ineffectively.
"Calm everyone," Cuth called. "Call the cops to arrest these two thugs. I'm out of here before the cops apprehend guys like me as an innocent witness."
He walked out calmly to his dirty cream Ute (utility vehicle) and drove off without smoking the tyres.
Cuth headed along the street heading south, as witnessed by the gobsmacked patrons watching at his exit from the café and noting he was heading in a southerly direction. At the next set of traffic lights, Cuth turned off to the motorway and resumed his journey north to where he was based in the northern coastal area of the State of New South Wales. But instead of going to his parent's home where he lived, he went to the Riverside home of his mum's oldest sister, Aunt Jess, who was widowed and worked as a regional senior Crown Prosecutor in the State's court system.
Cuth parked in on the front lawn and fell asleep.
Banging on the window awoke him just on nightfall and Aunt Jess yelled, "Cuthbert, are you drunk or are you in trouble, either of those are usually being behind your visits to me."
"Hi, Jess," he said, winding down the electric window and stretching.
"You've always called me Aunt Jess."
"I'm 34 now Jess, the title of aunt is for legal documents and for aunts to keep their young nieces and nephews in their place in pecking order."
"Cuth, you began being an arrogant and boundary-pushing when still a little bugger, and what's changed?"
"Thanks for that honourable title, Jess. Would you please remind me who are your top two most interesting \of you 40-something relatives who bother to visit you?"
"What's this, Wednesday Nigh Quiz Show?"
Cuth started at her and she grunted and said, "Very well, at No. I position is your mother and I reluctantly admit at No. 2 is you, both holding those ratings by a long shot."
"I'm hiding from the Feds and ask for sanctuary by staying with you."
"Why me?"
"No self-respecting cop would dare visit your home or call at your office asking if the famous Crown Prosecutor Jessica Holmes would dare hide an alleged criminal."
"Oh, really?"
Cuth said the emphasis was on an alleged and successful resistance to being apprehended was an action probably illegal under law.
Jess sighed, yanked her oldest nephew's unlocked door of the pickup open, and said they couldn't discuss such a serious matter out in the open. She ignored Cuth when he said that ordinary citizens wouldn't have a clue on what was being discussed.
"Get a beer and bring ice for my gin," she ordered, walking to the day room with her gin bottle and crystal glass on a tray from the dining room dresser.
They clinked beer bottle and glass in an unspoken toast and Cuth said, "I was heading home from Dubbo. I had visited there when called for pre-nuptial sex by an old flame who gets married this weekend."
"Cuthbert, now that's disgusting."
"Is that so. Contrary to your thinking, I fully approved of the womanly invitation."
"After re-crossing the Blue Mountains homeward-bound, I stopped for a coffee, fried eggs and hash browns when I was jumped by two Feds, with the sergeant saying I was being apprehended for questioning by a senior Fed officer. I asked him to show me an arrest warrant."
"He began pulling his weapon and I moved to prevent being clubbed over the head and unintentionally broke his wrist and he dropped to his knees screaming, and I hit his effeminate colleague who was fumbling in his jacket for his firearm. My right first landed between his eyes and he dropped, out cold. I invited everyone to remain calm and to call the cops and I walked out and drove off normally."
Aunt Jess said grimly, "Would you swear in evidence in the Court if I represent you that you honestly thought you were being arrested illegally and honestly believed that sergeant was pulling his weapon to club you?"
"Yes, absolutely."
"Very well, I'll defend you if necessary."
"What, without me explaining why?"
"I'll possess those details in due course. But for now, I can picture the situation and say you were entitled to demand and be given documentation justifying being brought in for AFP questioning on some matter. It could be considered reasonable for you to immobilise the two Fed officers acting aggressively with provocation. Consequently, it was reasonable for you to flee into hiding in believing the Feds would be out hunting for you and with it being likely they would be eager to show the displeasure of the AFP with at least a touch of brutality."
"Gawd, this is far more than what I half-expected from you."
"Cuth, you are my favourite out of all my nieces and nephews."
Later, Cuth called an old school mate Ian who worked in AFP admin to learn who was the senior officer wishing to question him. He found it was an Assistant District Commissioner whose brother Cuth had allegedly brutally assaulted.
"Thanks Ian, I only needed the DC's name. Can you wipe details of this call?"
"What call, pal?" Ian sniggered. "This sounds a little dodgy, the action sounding much like a planned brotherhood vendetta. I suggest you get your aunt, one of the best CPs (Crown Prosecutors) in the State, to negotiate an out-of-Court settlement in your favour. The Fed cops involved so far are probably under the impression the guy you assaulted was one of their own."
"Thanks mate, great idea."
Cuth brought Jess up to date saying he'd contacted a old school friend in Canberra (Australia's Federal capital) to arrange a meeting, ideally in Sydney, with Cuthbert and the Assistant DC, who was the complainant, and legal reps.
"That's fine and it will have to tie in with my busy schedule, Cuthbert. I'll divulge I am your aunt but if the Assistant DC doesn't divulge his relationship to the complainant, don't say a word to anyone about that as it could be a lethal weapon to fire during closing negotiations."
"You are referring to a brotherhood vendetta?"
"How is it you know about that phrase that carries significant weight, when proven in Court, Cuth?"
"Oh, I play social footie and tennis with some lawyers and they don't always talk about game wins, sensational moves and hot babes. Will you add that phrase to your adversarial notes?"
"Yes," she said, looking at her nephew as if wondering who had he been talking to or what law practice book had he been reading.
* * *
Next morning, with Jess gone to Coffs Harbour to prosecute as a barrister some poor sod on behalf of the State's Director of Public Prosecutions, Cuth was sitting at the cleared breakfast table in just his underpants and reading the 'Sydney Morning Herald' when a woman in her forties bowled in.
"Oh hi, Cuthbert. Mrs Holmes told me last night to expect to find you in the house. I'm Mrs Cross and I'm here to prepare dinner for two tonight and do her supermarket shopping as she gets pestered so much in this small town when she walks about in the town centre. She's our most distinguished resident."
Cuth stood and said, "Hi Mrs Cross. Do you have a user-friendly first name?"
"What? Oh yes, call me Erica," and glancing at his impressive bulge said, "Oh my, aren't you a big young man. Look, get dressed and go on to the street footpath, turn left and three houses along, knock on the pink front door and introduce yourself to Alexis, my niece about your age from Sydney. She is bored to distraction. Should you get lucky, please use protection."
Cuth walked down the street thinking no one would have a pink front door, but there it was. Omigod.
He vaulted the picket fence and knocked on the front door, half-expecting to be told to bugger off.
The pink door opened and Miss Australia as she appeared entitled to be called on appearance alone, stood before but scarcely in all her glory. She wore those horribly-designed baggy jeans that give wearers a butt that matches the rear view of a bus and her sweater was too floppy to give a guy any indication of shape and volume of her tits. That would be intentional, of course, a cultured urge for neutralising disfigurement arising out of several generations of the Women's Lib Movement.
Cuth accepted the cause was stimulated by the desire of females to survive as individuals in the so-named 'Man's World'. Fair enough but that 'cover everything' clothing, ugh!
Well the face was okay, very okay, and perhaps in a bikini, the revelation of her womanhood would be enough to turn him goofy. He should be nice to her because apart from discovering whether she had real sexual appeal, it was the neighbourly thing to do.
"Erica..."
"You, a stranger, already call my aunt by her first name?"
He stood thinking was it time to shoot through (leave hurriedly).
"So, you're the Cuth Cooper that Aunt Erica said that her first sighting of made her knees wobble."
"Huh? You're kidding me."
"No, it's the truth, I swear. She just called to say she was sending over the handsome Cuth Cooper, Mrs Holmes's impressive nephew and then blathered on about your presence as being impressively manly, that I thought I should take with a grain of salt. But as it turns out, you stand before me as a tower of muscular candy sugar."
