`Oh yeah. What kind of trouble am I going to be in that the first people I call are the AFP?' Anthrax replied.
Anthrax would put up with his father coming along so long as he kept his mouth shut during the interview. He certainly wasn't there for personal support. They had a distant relationship at best. When his father began working in the town where Anthrax now lived and studied, his mother had tried to patch things between them. She suggested his father take Anthrax out for dinner once a week, to smooth things over. Develop a relationship. They had dinner a handful of times and Anthrax listened to his father's lectures. Admit you were wrong. Cooperate with the police. Get your life together. Own up to it all. Grow up. Be responsible. Stop being so useless. Stop being so stupid.
The lectures were a bit rich, Anthrax thought, considering that his father had benefited from Anthrax's hacking skills. When he discovered Anthrax had got into a huge news clipping database, he asked the boy to pull up every article containing the word `prison'. Then he had him search for articles on discipline. The searches should have cost a fortune, probably thousands of dollars. But his father didn't pay a cent, thanks to Anthrax. And he didn't spend much time lecturing Anthrax on the evils of hacking then.
When they arrived at AFP headquarters, Anthrax made a point of putting his feet up on the leather couch in the reception area and opened a can of Coke he had brought along. His father got upset.
`Get your feet off that seat. You shouldn't have brought that can of
Coke. It doesn't look very professional.'
`Hey, I'm not going for a job interview here,' Anthrax responded.
Constable Andrew Sexton, a redhead sporting two earrings, came up to
Anthrax and his father and took them upstairs for coffee. Detective
Sergeant Ken Day, head of the Computer Crime Unit, was in a meeting,
Sexton said, so the interview would be delayed a little.
Anthrax's father and Sexton found they shared some interests in law enforcement. They discussed the problems associated with rehabilitation and prisoner discipline. Joked with each other. Laughed. Talked about `young Anthrax'. Young Anthrax did this. Young Anthrax did that.
Young Anthrax felt sick. Watching his own father cosying up to the enemy, talking as if he wasn't even there.
When Sexton went to check on whether Day had finished his meeting, Anthrax's father growled, `Wipe that look of contempt off your face, young man. You are going to get nowhere in this world if you show that kind of attitude, they are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.'