More tales from the crypt, or... Two of the only three times I have ever been physically scared by another human-being in My Life.

Many long years ago, for a variety of reasons, including telling a copper that my name was Scott Fuckalltodowithyou, I found myself temporarily without freedom. After the coppers had finished trying to fit me up for an armed robbery - they even had 'eyewitnesses' who would swear that it was me who stuck up the ANZ bank eight months before I had ever visited the town concerned - the coppers informed me that they had warrants for outstanding fines totaling $2200, or 44 days back then. "Sweet as a nut" I said, "You've already got me, let's get it over with"
I was then informed that, by law, I had to be given seven days grace as a last chance to pay. "But I'm not gunna" I said, "Let's just get it over with"
No dice. They kept me in custody for four days, including a night in Pentridge where I spent the night in the hospital ward, there being no room at the inn. While there, I won 16 cartons of cigarettes playing 'Red Aces' with Billy 'The Texan' Longley and an armed robber from Geelong who had some sort of infection in his 'nads and had to rest his legs in a set of gynecologists' (help me, spell-checker) stirrups. He had to have ointment rubbed into them by a nurse every three or four hours. He preferred to have a male nurse do it, because he reckoned the women didn't know the difference between "Gently massage ointment into testicles" and "vigorously knead dough until all air bubbles have been removed".
He thought he had troubles; I'd just won the jail equivalent of about two months wages from Victoria's most famous criminal. I didn't sleep much that night, but I needn't have worried, Billy is a man of honour, at least he is when he probably extorted the smokes from some-one else in the first place. I was being let out in the morning anyway, so I gave them back when the screws came to get me.
At the time I was sharing a house *NOT a synonym for fucking* with the woman who was the mother of the kid whose birthday party I described way back when. The kids' father was currently serving fifteen years for attempted murder. Of the mother.
A Painters and Dockers 'agent'; he told me once, when we went to visit "I like you, you look after my kids" then he leaned in close"O.K." He said it quietly and he's only a little bloke and he was in custody and I wasn't, but I shit myself.
Taking this into consideration, I thought it was probably not the best idea for the coppers to come and take me from the house and get the kids all traumatised again, so, allowing for the evil reputation the local Police Station cells had (Very icky, indeed) I decide to front up at Russell Street when the week had elapsed and hand myself in.
Your time in custody in those days was counted by calendar, so if you were locked up at 11.59 p.m., as soon as the clock ticked over at midnight, one day came off your sentence. With that in mind, I spent the afternoon beatng my liver into submission and fronted up at H.Q. at about 11.00p.m. I don't know what it's like these days, but back then you walked up Leonard Teale's steps and turned left, pressed a buzzer to be let into a little ante-chamber and pressed another buzzer to be let into the cop-shop proper.
It was there that the trouble started. The coppers couldn't find the warrants. They tried Bendigo, where I was picked up, but they had sent them on. They tried Moe, where they had sent them to, but they had yet to arrive. "But they're on record!" I slurred. To no avail, they have to have the physical document in front of them (or another copper on the other end of a phone can tell them he has them, apparently). I must have got on their tits a bit, because eventually they made me wait in the ante-chamber. While waiting there, the buzzer for the street door sounded and in came a little procession comprised of a couple of regular uniforms, a couple of those Harry Hardcore types who wore the jodphurs, a plainclothes guy and a bloke who looked like that comedian, Carl Barron or whoever it is that does those laundry powder ads. (Might be fabric softener now that I mention it. Whateva.) Carl, for that is what I choose to call him, was cuffed and ankle shackled. The coppers sat him down next to me and a couple of them disappeared inside. Carl was very well behaved, very self-contained and still - no itching or shuffling of the feet for him, thankyouverymuchindeed. After a few minutes he turned around and looked at me. Now, I'm not much given to Marvel Comics/Justice league "pursue the evil-doers" kind of language, but my first thought when Carl looked at me was "This is an evil man, his soul is damaged"
I shit you not.
You know how, in crappy novels, they say "He looked right through me"? He didn't. Or they say " I felt like he was staring into my soul"? I didn't. There was no change of expression, or any real expression at all, he just looked at me as if we were both passengers on a train. And yet, even though he was cuffed and shackled, with numerous burly, armed coppers in evidence, when he looked at me I experienced a level of fear such as I had never experienced in my life. Even as I type this eighteen years or so later I feel illogically uneasy, as if by recalling the memory I may invoke the actuality. Pretty stupid, huh?
I was fucked if I was going to be locked up with Satan Barron so I buzzed the coppers, told them I changed my mind and got them to let me out. As soon as the street door opened every news camera in the southern hemisphere hit the lights and reporters started yelling questions. Raising my arms in victory I began, "I'd like to thank the Academy, Mum and Dad, the director.." only to be returned to the darkness with a chorus of "Fuck off, dickhead" Aah, fickle media.
The next day, after a night which would take many days to describe ( but which did include a gay guy paying to watch a surprisingly pretty prostitute perform oral sex on me in the back of his car as a reward for getting it - the car - started for him. Such was my brief career in porn.) I found out from the rag that Carl Barron was in fact a fairly unsavoury character who had killed a couple of people ( Hell's Angels, I think.), cut them up and stuffed their bodies into forty four gallon drums and dumped them in the Yarra, the famous - at the time - 'bodies in the barrels' case.
Actually, thinking back, it may have been only one barrel. But it was two bodies.
Very rude of him, anyway, that's a public waterway.