Chapter 3
Frank
The Camry’s headlights swept the garage wall as I pulled in.
I killed the lights and the engine, dropping myself into darkness.
The overhead bulb had blown years ago, back when my brother Willy had still been alive.
He’d nagged me to change the damn thing, whining about how dark it was in that stupid little garage.
I’d told him to fix it his damn self. Good thing he hadn’t. Much safer this way.
I sat for a moment with the engine ticking down, watching the rearview mirror. The backstreet was empty and quiet, except for that bloody mutt up the road that barked all damn day. I should’ve picked up some rat poison while I was at the shops. That dog was going to be the death of me.
Nah. Probably not. I thought I’d be dead by now. Turns out I’m tougher than I gave myself credit for, though the pain roiling in my belly was testing the fuck outta me.
I got out of the car, moved to the rear, and hauled down the tilt door.
Damn thing screeched louder than the bats that swarmed the southern swamp back at Koolaroo every summer.
I dragged the door the last foot, dropped the latch, and stood with my back against the warm tin in the pitch dark, listening.
My heart was going like it had at my first rodeo. My bladder was worse. If I didn’t get to the dunny in the next two minutes, I was going to piss myself. Or shit myself. Probably both. I was sixty-three years old, and I couldn’t hold it like I had on all them cattle musters.
I shook away that line of thinking. Last thing I needed was to think about the good ol’ times.
I grabbed the grocery bags from the back seat, lined them up at the side door, and stopped to listen again, but heard nothing but my own heartbeat and the wind moving through the lemon tree and the frangipani.
Leaves shifted. Grass swayed. That stupid clothes hoist turned around and made that squeak that pissed me off as much as that damn dog.
Other than that, everything was still.
It took six trips across the yard and up the rickety back steps to get everything inside.
I’d bought more than I’d planned at the grocery store.
But I’d been living on tinned soup and stale bread for weeks, and I couldn’t take any more of that crap.
I’d bought eight loaves of bread, six packs of sausages, and tins of soup, but ones different from the last time.
I’d also bought bulk dunny paper and a pile of other stuff I hadn’t known I wanted until I’d seen it.
Best of all, I’d bought four bottles of rum.
Once everything was inside Willy’s house, I shook four Panadol into my palm and knocked them back dry.
My hand trembled. Fucking cancer was pressing on something in my guts that was making my eyes water.
And that was saying something. I’d had my share of injuries in my life.
I had scars all over my body to prove it, too.
But this pain was going to be the death of me. Literally.
I knew what it was. I’d googled it, which had probably been a mistake. The cancer and all this pain were gonna get worse.
I’d been throwing back four Panadol at a go for weeks now, but it barely took the edge off.
However, going to a doctor was out of the question, and a hospital wasn’t an option either.
Bob Ackerman would have eyes on both. Hell, Bob would have eyes everywhere by now.
Going out today had been a risk I shouldn’t have taken.
But I needed rum. And sausages. And dunny paper.
I grabbed the thirty-pack of dunny rolls and made it to the toilet with about two seconds to spare.
When I came back to the kitchen, I was sweating, and my legs felt like wet rope, but the worst was over.
I turned on the TV. NCIS was on again. I’d never seen the show before I came here.
Couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. But it was better than the crap on the other channels.
Who the hell watched Farmer Wants a Wife?
What a load of bullshit. Farmers don’t want wives.
They want rain, sunshine, and good breeding stock. No wife was ever gonna beat that.
I put four slices of bread in the toaster and started putting my supplies away.
Freezer first. Bread, then the sausages, packed around the crap Willy had left behind when he’d died, including some mystery meat in a Glad bag, and a packet of peas that had fused into a solid lump. I should throw them out. Maybe tomorrow. If I wake up.
The toast popped, and I slathered it with margarine and a thick layer of Vegemite, took a bite, and washed it down with a swig straight from the rum bottle.
“Ahhh. Fuck yeah. Now, we’re talkin’.”
I pulled the leftover cash from my jeans and dumped it on the dining table. Paying cash was smart. Can’t track cash, especially this cash—Bob’s laundered money. And I was using it to keep me hidden from Bob himself. Funny, that.
Paying cash had been a pain in the ass, though. The damn grocery store had nothing but self-checkouts, which I’d never laid eyes on before in my life. Whatever happened to checkout chicks? Some pimply teenager had sorted me out in the end, but the way he kept looking at me made me fucking nervous.
Same story at Thirsty Camel. All I wanted was Bundy Rum. Would’ve bought ten bottles if the idiot behind the counter hadn’t made such a bloody hoo-ha over nobody using cash anymore. He even needed a calculator to work out my change.
Damn world was getting dumber every day.
As I ate, I shoved the tens and twenties back into the duffel bag with the other bricks of cash I’d stolen and put the bag back in Willy’s sideboard cupboard.
I’d never thought having loads of cash on hand would make me sweat. It sure as hell had when I’d hauled it from the eastern outstation to my hideout on Koolaroo. From there, I’d loaded the cash and all my supplies into the truck I’d stolen from those Henderson idiots a few months back.
Dumb shits probably hadn’t even noticed it was gone yet. They ain’t never gonna find it either. Not after the way it went up in smoke once I’d finished with it. A smile worked its way across my face.
The smile didn’t last, though. Thinking about the truck made me think about Razor.
He was a mighty fine horse, and it pissed me off that I’d had to let him go.
But I couldn’t take him with me. I just hoped I’d left enough blood on his saddle to sell my story.
I still had a scab over the cut I’d made on my forearm to drip that blood.
I’d smeared enough to make my dipshit sons think something bad had happened.
They probably figured I’d fallen off Razor.
I ain’t never fallen off a horse in my life.
I’d fallen off the wagon plenty of times, though.
I took another long pull from the rum bottle.
My guts went sideways halfway through my second piece of toast. Damn cancer was reminding me it hadn’t gone anywhere. Like I needed reminding. Damn pain kept me awake most nights.
On the TV, something exploded on NCIS. I watched the scene, ate, and tried not to think about how many more Vegemite toasts I’d get in me before the Reaper did his job.
I’d lost weight since I’d been here. Willy’s T-shirt moved on me like the thing was a tent. Willy had been a big bloke even at the end. Not surprising given the junk he’d eaten and the fact that he hadn’t done jack shit all day.
I was lucky I’d never gotten around to clearing out his stuff.
It had made leaving Koolaroo easier. All I’d needed was the clothes on my back, because everything else was here.
I’d originally planned to stay in the hideout on Koolaroo until I up and died.
But after three days in that cave with them stupid hand paintings, I’d gotten sick of digging holes to take a shit.
Then I remembered this place. At least here I had a real dunny and a bed.
Willy’s clothes smelled like laundry powder and not like him anymore. That was both a relief and a disappointment, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Google said weight loss was to be expected with my kind of cancer.
When I’d tried to find out how much, it hadn’t given me a straight answer.
Then again, I was no good with computers.
Every time I’d tried using the one in Declan’s office, the dumb bastard had turned up and made the whole thing impossible.
I finished my toast, tore open a pack of Tim Tams, and groaned out loud at the first bite. A chocolate biscuit had never tasted so damn good.
I drank more rum and ate more Tim Tams as I watched the end of NCIS. They got the bad guy. They always did on those shows. It was never that easy in Winton, though.
Damn hard when the cop was the bad guy.
I turned off the TV and thought about calling it a night. But the pain was still gnawing at my guts, and until the rum took the edge off, sleep wasn’t happening.
I pulled the notepad across the table toward me. The bottom edge of the foolscap pages was curling up. I’d bought three of these notepads at the shop on my way here, and I was halfway through the second pad. Maybe I should’ve paid a bit more and bought proper notepads.
After all, the notes on these blue-lined foolscap pages were going to change history.
Bob Ackerman’s history, anyway.
Every page I’d written so far was folded square and put into the wooden Chivas box on the sideboard cabinet behind me.
I’d given that fancy bottle of Chivas to Willy for his fiftieth birthday.
I’d spent more on that one bottle of scotch than I’d ever spent on a woman in my life.
The grog was long gone. The box wasn’t. Trust Willy to keep something like that.
When I’d gotten to his hospital ward with that box, my brother had acted like it was the bloody crown jewels.
I couldn’t believe he’d kept it all this time on his sideboard like a trophy.
Damn sentimental bastard.
I clicked the biro on my chin a few times and flipped to a clean page.
Writing down sixty-three years of secrets was taking me forever, and I never knew which one would come to my head until I sat down.
It took me a while to come up with the title for this one. I sat there with the pen in my hand, staring at the cupboard where the duffel bag was hidden, thinking about Bob and his cash.
Then it came to me.
The laundry that don’t smell too good.
I chuckled as I underlined it.
Bob was makin money on the side long before he came to me. Backhanders from blokes who needed charges to disappear. Payments for info that shouldn’t never have left the cop shop. But he couldn’t put that cash in his bank account. Not without havin to explain where the hell it come from.
So he started givin me cash and gettin me to do stuff for him.
Burn paperwork. Bury stuff. Koolaroo’s a big place, and it’s easy to lose things out there.
Though I’ll let you into a secret. I remember every place I put stuff in the ground.
Includin the bodies. And I ain’t afraid to dig that shit up and use it against Bob if I need to.
Truth is, I liked havin the cash. Especially with Declan makin it fuckin hard to get my hands on Koolaroo money.
About 12 years ago, Bob came out to Koolaroo. Brought one of them fancy bottles of Bundy rum, and I knew straight away he was about to ask me for a real big favor.
He said he had a problem. A 300,000 dollar problem. All cash. Sittin in a lockup he couldn’t touch without someone askin questions. I told him I didn’t want to know where it came from. He said I didn’t need to. What he needed was for it to become Koolaroo money.
I was runnin 12,000 head that year. Good year. Sold a mob in October and cleared good money at the saleyards. Cash from the agents, proper invoiced sales, all above board.
So all I had to do was inflate the numbers.
Invoice for 1,200 head when I’d moved 800.
Add a line for contract musterin work that never happened.
Invoice for a bore pump that never happened, so I made a receipt that looked legit.
Spread it across enough transactions that none of ‘em looked too large to flag.
Cash went in the safe. Safe money went to the bank. Bob’s cash disappeared into Koolaroo’s legit turnover and came out the other side clean.
Nothin complicated. Just money in. Money out.
I kept a cut for the trouble. That was my idea, not Bob’s. The bastard thought I’d do it for nothin, given our history and all. But fuck that. It was my neck on the line. They’d believe him over me any day of the week.
That’s the thing about him bein a cop. He was untouchable.
I was just a dead man walkin.
I swigged the rum, ate another Tim Tam, and thought about what to write next.
After that first lot went through just fine, the cash kept comin. And the amounts kept gettin’ bigger. Bob got more confident. And smarter. But also fuckin stupid.
Soon I had more money than we could wash, and we started hidin it in plastic bags in a cave we found decades ago, the one with them ancient hand and croc paintin’s that them black fellas did. The one where we buried Kat. And a few other dipshits.
But the money kept comin, and we figured that cave weren’t the best place to put millions of bucks.
So we started hidin what couldn’t be washed inside the outstation walls.
Bob watched some videos on the computer about puttin up plasterboard, and after a weekend out there, we’d hidden millions in them walls.
Ain’t nobody findin it unless they know exactly where to look.
Even when I took the cash, I patched the wall back up good. Like nothin was missin. Bob’s gonna flip his lid when he figures that out.
My guts twisted and growled like a rabid dog. I dropped the biro on the pad and dragged my sorry ass to the dunny again.
When I came back, I poured another rum and glanced out the kitchen window at the backyard.
I had my hand on the bottle when I saw movement. Low and fast, along the side fence. Two men broke from the fence line, crossed the yard in a crouched run, and dropped behind the lemon tree.
I hit the floor. Knees screaming. Bottle still in my hand.
I pressed my back against the kitchen cupboards and sat there with the rum and my heart hammering so hard I felt it in my teeth.
Slowly, I inched up. Just enough to see over the sill.
Two men were crouched behind the lemon tree.
Fuck.
They’d found me.