Free Into the Darklands by Nigel Latta

and I realised he wasn’t as pissed as I’d first thought. ‘How can you do it?’
    Men often ask the question in a slightly aggressive way, like they’re pumping up for a fight. Women more often come in a little easier, more interested than angry. Whatever the case, everybody has that little glint in their eye, that give-me-a-peek look. Geoff looked like he was itching for a lynching.
    ‘Beats working for a living, I guess.’
    ‘Did you see that guy in the paper?’ Geoff asked. ‘The one who molested his daughter for years, and did all kinds of sick shit to her?’
    I nodded. ‘Yup.’ Actually I’d spent a little bit of time chatting with the man in the paper, but I didn’t think it would help things much to point that out to Geoff.
    ‘So what would you do with him?’
    ‘Well, I’d like to hang him, but like I said, I’m no good with knots.’
    Geoff wasn’t going to play. He wanted a serious discussion. I looked around desperately for a familiar face, but in the last few minutes the party seemed to have been gatecrashed by a busload of strangers. I was on my own.
    ‘How the hell is a bit of counselling going to stop someone like that?’
    He said the word counselling like he was talking about something the cat had just sicked up on the rug. I didn’t mind the fact that he was having a go at counselling—God knows I do enough of that myself. The thing that really got me was the fact he was having a go at me. Geoff wasn’t just passing judgement on the field, he was passing judgement on me. He was calling me a tree-hugger. That was what really pissed me off.
    I don’t mind a debate; in fact I think talking about this stuff is incredibly important, but I don’t like being disrespected simply because I choose to work in an area most people don’t understand. My job, at the end of the day, is to protect people like Geoff and his kids. My job is to sit at the edge of the flock and try to convince the wolf not to eat the lambs. Which is fine, but when someone like Geoff says I’m the problem, it makes me a little cross.
    ‘Well, what would you do?’ I ask him.
    ‘Put a bullet in his brain.’
    ‘Fair enough. How?’
    ‘What do you mean? I’d just shoot him.’
    ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Geoff, but we aren’t allowed to shoot people in this country.’
    ‘Well, we should be,’ he said.
    ‘That may be, but we aren’t, so what are you going to do?’
    ‘Put him in jail forever then.’
    ‘For the rest of his life?’
    ‘Yeah. Problem solved.’ Geoff looked well pleased with himself. Clearly this man was a resource the Minister of Corrections had overlooked.
    I shrugged. ‘That’s not going to work either, Geoff. Do you know how much it costs to keep a guy in jail for a year?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Just over $50,000. It costs about $73,000 in maximum security.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, do you know how many people there are who commit sexual offences in this country every year?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Shitloads.’ I’ve never had a good memory for statistics but have found that ‘shitloads’ will suffice most times. ‘So it’s going to mean big tax increases if you want to keep all those people in jail for the rest of their lives. You want to pay more taxes?’
    ‘If it kept those bastards off the street, I would.’
    I didn’t believe him, but I let that one go. ‘OK, so how are you going to convince the politicians to raise taxes to pay for keeping these people in prison forever? Because they have to sell it to us voters and we don’t even want to pay more tax for a better health and education system. Why would we want to pay more for sex offenders?’
    ‘Well, why did the country all vote for tougher sentencing then?’ Geoff asked, with a got-you-this-time smile.
    ‘They didn’t.’
    He screwed up his face. ‘Yes they did.’
    ‘No they didn’t.’ I took a sip of beer and smiled.
    ‘Ninety-something percent of the country voted for tougher sentences. What are you,