Two hours later there was a knock on the door.
"Anthony Wilson Tannin?"
"Yes."
"We understand that you are the owner of a wild ape."
"Well, not exactly. You see ... "
"Look, son, it's like this. Either you nip down to Franskston and have a chat with Sgt Kennedy, possibly making a voluntary statement, or we take you in as an accessory before the fact."
That was a nice touch, calling me "son". The young copper at the door couldn't have been more than half my age.
Anyway, I got his drift. Three and a half hours later, after an inordinate amount of time stooging around the back streets of Frankston looking for the police station, I was there.
Sgt Kennedy had gone home. "Wait here" the officer behind the desk said. I waited.
And waited.
Half an hour later, they told me that the ape had been transferred to the Dandenong lockup, but that I could see him there, first thing in the morning. Seeing it was already after midnight, I figured the best thing to do was find a motel. I was dammned if I was going to drive all the way home again, only to come straight back again.
In the morning, I checked out and drove over to Dandenong. (That only takes a half hour or so.)
You know how you get a sort of picture of people that you've only met on the phone? Well, I expected Sgt Kennedy to be a big, thick-set copper with a paunch and of no determinable age. But he was nothing like that: he was tall and slim, with thinning blondish hair and about 30-something. He was actually quite a nice guy, once you got to know him.
We went down to the cells and there in 5B was the biggest ape I've ever seen. Not tall, but enormously fat; great rolls of belly like the Michelan Man, and a paunch that hung down so far that his bandy orange legs barely touched the ground. He had his back to me but I could see right away that it wasn't Tea. Possibly a relative, though. The pattern of the orange curls on his back looked somehow familiar.
)
