The Big Whatever by Peter Doyle

Author:Peter Doyle [Doyle, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Crime
ISBN: 9781891241796
Google: tThwCQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00YQD9QCA
Publisher: Dark Passage
Published: 2015-07-13T12:00:00+00:00

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

He looked at me now, his smile gone. Waiting for me to make my move. All right Jacko, here we go.

“But I know what you’re up to, you thieving cunt, so keep that in mind.”

He kept looking at me.

“Sheep and cattle duffing, right? How many head a year you moving, Jacko? Fucking plenty, I’ll bet. Using your trucks. You want to talk about that too?”

Dig, this was fifty percent guesswork, but it stacked up: the closed meetings with dodgy characters, the fleet of trucks. I’d picked up bits and pieces of news, too – thousands of heads of livestock being stolen from properties out west, some of which were bigger than European principalities, their stock spread out over hundreds of square miles. A poor cocky wouldn’t know until days or weeks later, by which time his stock had been sold, maybe more than once.

Jacko held the look for another second or two, then laughed, shook his head and patted my arm in a friendly way. He stood up and said, “Fuck me, I’m worse than an old sheila, eh? No offence meant. I overstepped the mark a little bit there, and I’d be grateful if you put it out of your mind,” and went and paid for our tea. He came back, “Well, we better go and see about getting this happy couple properly hitched, eh?” And that was that.

My mind was racing the whole time I played the reception that night. Jacko was running his thieving trade very smoothly, thank you. He had more than a few rough types on the payroll. And he must have had someone in authority onside. A copper, maybe a team of bush coppers. Yeah, there had to be an entire network – otherwise it couldn’t be happening on such a scale. We were in New South Wales at the time, but Jacko’s business seemed equally at home in Victoria, Queensland, even South Australia. Which meant he’d probably have heavies and crooked cop mates throughout the four states. Fuck me, the guy could be the Little Caesar of the western boondocks.

When the gig finished, I got in my car and drove away – and kept driving. When I became too tired to go on, I pulled into an abandoned quarry, slept in the car. I woke after three or four hours and drove again for another couple of hours. Pulled into some dump of a town and ordered breakfast in a café. The old lady serving me smiled and said, “Oh hullo. You’re with Doris’s group, aren’t you? I saw you at the ball last month. What are doing all the way over here?”

I looked at her open-mouthed, mumbled something. I’d forgotten: out here you can drive a hundred, two hundred miles to the next big town and it’s like you’ve strolled across Oxford Street from Darlo to Surry Hills. They’re half a day of high-speed driving apart, but they’re neighbours. And don’t forget the bush telegraph, so fast that people in those two towns could be a couple of old chooks magging over the back fence.

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