`No-one has it. I don't own one.'
`Well, when you decide to tell us where it is, you let us know.'
Yeah. Right. If Anthrax did have a hidden computer at uni, revealing its location wasn't top of the must-do list.
The police pawed through his personal letters, quizzed Anthrax about them. Who wrote this letter? Is he in the computer underground? What's his address?
Anthrax said `no comment' more times than he could count. He saw a few police moving into his bedroom and decided it was time to watch them closely, make sure nothing was planted. He stood up to follow them in and observe the search when one of the cops stopped him. Anthrax told them he wanted a lawyer. One of the police looked on with disapproval.
`You must be guilty,' he told Anthrax. `Only guilty people ask for lawyers. And here I was feeling sorry for you.'
Then one of the other officers dropped the bomb. `You know,' he began casually, `we're also raiding your parents' house …'
Anthrax freaked out. His mum would be hysterical. He asked to call his mother on his mobile, the only phone then working in the apartment. The police refused to let him touch his mobile. Then he asked to call her from the pay phone across the street. The police refused again. One of the officers, a tall, lanky cop, recognised a leverage point if ever he saw one. He spread the guilt on thick.
`Your poor sick mum. How could you do this to your poor sick mum? We're going to have to take her to Melbourne for questioning, maybe even to charge her, arrest her, take her to jail. You make me sick. I feel sorry for a mother having a son like you who is going to cause her all this trouble.'
From that moment on, the tall officer took every opportunity to talk about Anthrax's `poor sick mum'. He wouldn't let up. Not that he probably knew the first thing about scleroderma, the creeping fatal disease which affected her. Anthrax often thought about the pain his mother was in as the disease worked its way from her extremities to her internal organs. Scleroderma toughened the skin on the fingers and feet, but made them overly sensitive, particularly to changes in weather. It typically affected women native to hot climates who moved to colder environments.