How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling (12 page)

Anyway, I would be back with the cash in a couple of weeks and it would all be over. I would stay at home for a week or so and my mum and dad would forgive me. I would tell them about the money, some of it. I would explain that I had been paid well and then I would take off overseas for the backpacking holiday I had always wanted. But right now I was on my way back to Palmenter Station and I was a murderer and I had to lie low and sort out this final muster and get my share of the cash. When I came back things would be different. I could relax and be myself, myself with a secret million dollars that I could never tell anybody about.

I started to write them a note. What could I say?
Dear
... I wrote, and then sat staring at the paper. What could I say? I could not even work out how to start, and as I sat in the van I thought about all that had happened and how I came to be sitting in a van outside my parents' home, writing a note that said I would be home soon, but that I must first go back to a place that had effectively kidnapped me.
Why? To collect a million. And why were they giving me a million dollars? They weren't. I was taking it. I had shot Palmenter, a thug with underworld connections. I had shot an underworld figure and was stealing his million dollars.

With sudden cold certainty I knew someone was going to come looking for me. Palmenter must have friends or associates who would come looking. What did Newman say? Sort out Palmenter's boys. Already they were asking and Newman had told them to talk to me. And when I wasn't at the station they would search the office and not only find all the money but they would find all the letters from my family. Foolishly I had left them on the desk. I had been reading them all the night before I left but I left them because I did not want to have anything personal on me if we were picked up in the van on the trip to Melbourne.

It was such a sudden and real thought I began to look around up and down the street to see if any other cars were casing the place. I really expected to see someone, but the street was empty. I had to go back to the station and destroy all the letters and all the paperwork with my handwriting on it.

By the time I had driven across town I had calmed down and I decided I could at least visit Simon. It was sort of on the way.

This street was busier. People were up and about, some schoolkids walking as a group with their parents behind. It was such simple, happy, suburban life that I wanted to cry. I wondered if Simon had any kids yet, if he still worked the mines, what his wife did.

I had determined that I would go in and the way to do it was to not stop outside and think. I'd park and get out and walk straight up to the door. So that's what I did. I parked and got out and walked straight to the door, and froze. I waited an age and was about to leave when the door opened.

A woman in her late twenties stood looking at me. When she opened the door I had turned to go but now I was half turned on the front step and she was in the door looking at me and we stayed like that for a very long time. I had not met her before but she was looking at me like she knew me.

‘Simon?' was all I could say.

‘Nick? Is it Nick. Oh my God, it is you!'

‘Are you Michelle? Is Simon here?' I must have sounded so formal.

She shook her head. ‘He's at work. But come in.'

She came out to greet me and take me inside, but her friendliness, the fact she recognised me, the fact that obviously I had been talked about and missed and that she knew me – something in me cracked and I began to cry. Not the quiet sobs of before as I hurried from the detention centre, this was full-blown, out of control crying. She put her arms around me and hugged me and that made it worse. She dragged me inside.

‘Where have you been? Simon's been trying to find you. What is the matter? Are you all right?' She talked and talked, asked questions, made me coffee, made me breakfast, and I do not recall saying very much at all. She let me take my time.

Eventually I recovered enough to tell her things had been tough but that I was on my way home. I had a few more things to sort out before I was back in the city for good.

‘What sort of things? Where have you been? Everyone's been looking for you. Last they heard was Alice Springs, then nothing. You didn't answer letters. Simon's been trying to find your station. Police up there didn't want to know. Are you all right?'

‘I've been on Wingate Station. It's very remote. No phone or anything.' If Simon had been there I might have said more, told the truth, admitted to him about Palmenter. ‘Tell him not to worry, I'll be back soon.'

‘He's home in a few days. Where are you staying? You can stay here if you want.'

‘No, I've got to drive back, finish off some things. I've promised the guys to come back and run one more muster, then I'm coming home.'

She looked at me kindly, concerned. I felt I had to explain my outburst. Grown men don't break down like that even if they have been missing for a few years.

‘It's about a girl. I had to come to Melbourne to see a girl. But that's all over now.' I gave a shrug. Maybe she believed me.

‘Oh.'

‘Sorry to ... you know.'

‘You okay now? Do you want to talk about it?'

‘Yeah. No. I'm all right. I'll be okay.'

‘Simon is at a camp near Port Augusta. If you're driving north why don't you visit? I can email him and tell him you are coming. You should go see him.'

‘I might not have time.'

‘You should go see him. I'll email him, he'll be expecting you.'

I left with the address of Simon's camp but I only half promised to go there, it was a relief to be back on the road. Michelle had promised to call my parents for me and tell them I would be back in a month. That was enough for now, I thought.

It takes two full days when driving alone to get from Melbourne to Port Augusta, and by that time I had decided I would drive right past the turn-off to Simon's camp. I justified it to myself as that I didn't have much spare time and anyway I would soon be back. I'd go there on my way south in a couple of weeks. One more muster, collect my cash and keep the van I was driving to go home in.

But before I knew it I was driving the wide gravel road that led west off the Stuart Highway. If you had asked me, I might have pretended I was not stopping but the road goes nowhere else and the outback is the same all over. Same as on Palmenter Station: if a car drives anywhere on our roads we feel it, so Simon would sense I was arriving even as I turned off the main road.

Anywhere along that hundred kilometres I could have turned around. But I didn't. I arrived, and immediately felt the need to leave. Simon and two others were lounging in the shade next to a caravan that served as the camp office. As I drove up he came to greet me. I was expected.

‘Don't you blokes do any work out here?' I put on a brave face. Seeing Simon now I suddenly realised how much he looked like my father. This was going to be hard.

‘Nick!' He shook my hand, pulled me in to hug me. ‘How've you been?'

‘Long time.' I was trying to be casual. No big deal.

‘Too long. We were worried. Folks have been really concerned.'

‘Yeah. Sorry. It just got, y'know, a week, a month, a year.' I
shrugged, tried to be dismissive. I had to maintain composure in front of these other two who I didn't know. I had nearly blabbered the whole story to Michelle. ‘We don't have a phone on the station. It's really remote out there.'

‘You can't have been that remote.' He knew something else was up. ‘Everyone has sat phones now. How do you operate? No one can run a place without a phone. I tried to find Wingate. I wrote to you. Did you get my letters? They never came back. You should have answered them.' He grabbed my bag from the front seat and headed towards the caravan. ‘Stay the night. No one else here. Drill rig is due tomorrow.'

‘The boss was a bit funny about, it was a bit, well, I only just got your letters.'

‘Michelle says you were upset. She says–'

‘Girl trouble,' I said, interrupting him. The two other blokes were watching us so I forced a laugh. ‘I'm okay now.'

Simon put my bag on the table and introduced me to the two whose names I don't remember. At my mentioning ‘girl trouble' they tutted in sympathy.

‘Look, really, I can't stay. I have to get back to Wingate. I was driving this way so thought I'd drop by.'

He looked at me and knew I was serious, and that despite the years apart we knew as brothers do when to ask questions and when not to. I shared a beer with them and we talked about stuff and then, because I at least owed him something, as we walked to the van I explained.

‘I have to go back and sort some things out. I'm in charge now and they are relying on me to be back soon. We have some serious shit to deal with but it's no biggie. Life's tough in the outback.' I tried to sound cavalier, as if serious shit was something I was used to dealing with, as if perhaps this particular serious shit was only a little bigger than what I was used to. ‘Soon as it's sorted, a month or so, I'll be back.'

‘What sort of shit?'

‘I can't say. Look, can you let Mum and Dad know? I asked Michelle to but if you talk to them as well.' And then, to distract the conversation away from me, I added, ‘Married! She seems great.'

But it didn't work. It had taken him no time at all to know this
was not about a girl and now he thought I was in trouble. We were alone by the van so we could have talked a bit more openly. What would have happened if I had confessed then and there?

‘Don't try to deal with it by yourself. What's really happening?'

‘It's financial. Place is losing money and I'm trying to sort it out. I've been in charge of the books so I've known for some time. They rely on me to keep the place going.'

‘You are getting paid, are you?'

I tried to laugh that off. No one got paid. Palmenter kept all the money to himself and as I now knew, kept most of it in a suitcase in the office.

‘I've negotiated a deal. I'm due over a million bucks. That's why I have to get back, make sure this deal goes through and I get my share.'

White lies. It is a lot easier to bend the truth than to ignore it. And once bent, it is a path easier to follow. When I enrolled at Charles Darwin University I wrote down that the success of Palmenter Station was because of my financial and business planning. I had to, because the MBA is reserved for postgraduates or businesspeople of some experience and I could hardly write
I drove the bore run and kept the paperwork neat.
Or that I had shot and killed the boss. Maybe that conversation with Simon was where it all began, with me pretending I was something more than I was.

Things have a habit of not going how you plan them and having already said too much to Simon I got out of there as quickly as I could.

During the long days driving back to Palmenter Station I decided that I would try to find Lucy's family and bring them in. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess it was that trip, bringing in Lucy's family, that set Spanner and I on the road to being people smugglers ourselves. You sit by yourself driving the van and the road is dull and long and you get sick of singing along to the CDs so eventually you just sit and drive and the world outside rushes up and under and away behind and you start thinking, and while you are thinking the sun comes up on the right and then it swings overhead then it falls a slow decline to the left. Ever noticed how it takes longer to fall down from the top than getting up there in the morning? You stop and refuel and have fleeting words with other travellers or a truck driver. You buy food and pay the attendant who has the same conversation she has had with every other customer with that faraway look of those who are going nowhere.

The real world rushed up with the tarmac and retreated behind and in my little world inside the van I thought of Lucy and what she meant. Had I loved her or used her? Had we used each other? Do we all use love to battle against loneliness? I don't know. What I did know was it was because of me she was in that place and I had the power to help.

And then I thought of Zahra, the way she took so much care cooking the food, about how you could tell from that that she cared about everything she did. I wondered how could that be, to continue to care for the smallest thing when all around is war and destruction and poverty and hunger and people living by whatever means they could.

Then Tariq, his noble pride, his reserve. And Noroz. All of them. How we hadn't shown any regard for them in catering their food. You are refugees, you are hungry, you will eat anything. Emma prematurely aged, her young eyes weary but clear, at once hopeful and afraid. What would the rest of her life be?

Arif. Annoying as he had been, he deserved better. While Emma waited for what life would deliver to her, Arif had set out to find, to demand and demand until he got what he wanted. Or not – as Palmenter delivered it to him.

All the girls who had come into the station, separated from the rest of the import and sent south to work until they paid off the cost of their passage. How much would that be? How long? Would they ever be free? They had no choice but to place their trust in others and hope for the goodness in people, a goodness denied to them in their home land. By bad luck they came across Palmenter.

It seemed to me I had a duty to help, and the least I could do was find Lucy's family and bring them to her. Because of me, she was in prison, a detention centre, while her family waited helplessly.

But it wasn't me. It was Palmenter. Palmenter who had killed and casually kicked sand, who had watched the van and those five bodies burn and said no one would miss them. It was Palmenter who took their money and then their freedom and at some point started taking their lives. Was Arif the first? I had thought so, but Lucy said she heard someone named Sami being beaten. Screaming. And then it went quiet. Who was Sami? A girl or a woman who was maybe dead and did not even have me to remember her. She was one of the many girls who came and left the station, most of whom did not even get a name.

Everyone should have at least a name. I tried but could not remember her. I did not recall Lucy having any particular friends. In my mind all the girls became one crowded memory of people who came and went with the musters, people who would all have someone somewhere. If Sami were dead – or alive and working in a brothel with all the others – there was nothing I could do about it. But what I could do was help Lucy and her family.

As I tried to find individual faces all I saw was the looks of the men and older women, the mix of fear and hope as they climbed into the vans with their new names and new friends, the strangers
we sent them off with. And I remembered then the recent looks on the faces of Spanner and Cookie, Charles and even Simms as we sent people off with new hope. For that was what it was: we supplied not food or vans or maps or driving lessons. We supplied new hope. What had Newman said to me? ‘Can't say that I disagree.' These blokes I worked with were not bad people.

I must have crossed in the Northern Territory but I didn't notice when. At some point it got dark and I must have turned the lights on but I couldn't remember doing it. I kept driving, and then later I woke up and the car was still driving itself. Luckily there was no other traffic and I had slowed to a crawl before the roar of the gravel shoulder woke me. I pulled off the tarmac and crawled into the back but I lay there unable to sleep. In my confusion of leaving Melbourne I hadn't thought to buy any food. I wasn't hungry anyway. I made black coffee and drank it sitting on top of a collection of boulders. The moon was rising over the far-off ranges and spreading its soft light over the desert and far far away to the north I could see the lonely lights of another car. It was cold and I pulled the sleeping bag around myself and lay down on the rock to watch the stars. I felt sad and happy at the same time. I remembered all the good times we had at the station and, for what it was, these people were my friends. As I fell asleep I decided that a feel-good delivery such as Lucy's family would be a good way to end it.

I might make it sound as if it was all bad all the time, but in reality when Palmenter was there we learned to be invisible and we did our jobs and kept out of his way as much as we could. When he was away we entertained ourselves with picnics and barbecues, waterhole swims, drinking beer and smoking Cookie's power weed or munching on his magic biscuits. I got good at table tennis but I could never beat Spanner at pool.

‘My misspent youth got me something useful,' he'd say. Because we had no cash, and none of us ever got paid by Palmenter, we would bet stupid things. Cleaning roster for a week, or to wash the grader, a task as pointless as it was impossible. Simms collected a group of small rocks and called them his pets, and he would bet
with them. Funny thing is we all began to covet his pets even to the extent of having favourites. You could simply walk out beyond the perimeter and pick up as many as you liked, but they were all wild, feral, not house-trained. Eric was the favourite. He was a rounded grey riverstone with flecks of white quartz across his back. He was the perfect size and shape to fit in your palm where he would lie sleeping.

Usual thing was, I'd win Eric from Simms in table tennis, Charles would win him from me and then Spanner would win him off anybody in pool, then after making Simms stew for a while Spanner'd let him win again. Then, the whole thing would start again.

During the windy season, the time after the wet when the east wind blows relentlessly from far across the desert, we went land yachting.

Spanner had welded some old car wheels together onto a triangular frame, a single at the front and two sets of doubles at the back so it would not bog in the sand. It was steered with a big tiller, a length of pipe that ran back from the front wheel, although steering is not an accurate word to describe what it actually did.

He had welded a long mast to the frame just behind the front wheel, and made a sail from tarpaulin. This was stitched with a hollow hem that slid down over the tapered mast and a rope that led from the rear corner of the sail overhead and around a second shorter mast at the very back. In the shed it was easy to roll the sail around the mast and this was the theoretical way it would be done in the field. For a seat he had welded one of the kitchen benches across the back and then laid an old mattress so that you sat on the mattress leaning back against the bench and holding the tiller in one hand and the sheet rope in the other.

I had seen him building something in his shed. He was often constructing things and I hadn't asked him what it was for. One day – Palmenter had just left and was unlikely to return for a day or two – Spanner came and got me. It was a cold morning but by later in the day it would be hot, and a strong wind blowing. The tamarisks around the garden echoed and haunted, doors slammed and swirls of dust rose and fell across the compound.

‘Wanna see my new girl?'

‘Yeah?' I was doubtful. ‘What is it?'

We stood in the shed admiring it. The thing was ridiculous. It must have weighed a ton. Once rolling, not much would stop it. I wanted to laugh but I knew not to laugh at anything Spanner made, not because he would be angry or upset but because I would be proven wrong. Whatever it was would turn out to be magnificent. Perhaps not elegant or stylish, but more than capable of doing whatever Spanner had set out to do. In this case it was to sail across the sandplain powered by the wind. Harmless fun.

We towed it out to the disused landing strip that was behind the helipad. Helipad is a nice way of saying bare bit of ground. Disused landing strip is a nice way of saying the scrub here was marginally smaller, but we needn't have bothered. As soon as Spanner rolled out the sail, the thing started moving, slowly at first, slow enough that we could walk beside it, then run, then he jumped onboard and I couldn't keep up. I followed in the grader as he bounced across the sand, over shrubs, up and down small gullies trying desperately to steer away from the bigger trees and holes. Trouble was, the front wheel bounced and dug in in equal measure. Steering was so erratic. I should say it was hit and miss. Mostly miss. One hit. He hit a tree. It was a small tree that sort of folded over in slow motion as he drove over it, bent under the frame and then stood up again from underneath. The land yacht was snagged. Spanner rolled up the sail.

‘I was aiming for it,' he explained. ‘It wasn't going to stop.'

‘Yeah, sure. Why not just let go the sail?'

‘Well, you try it.'

He reached in under the seat and pulled out the chainsaw. Spanner thought of everything.

As he cut down the tree I was calculating how far and how fast the wind was blowing. About thirty kph, all the way to the Gulf. Then into the sea. Be sort of funny to escape this place and end up drowned in the sea. Pass the refugee boats on their way in. If we could veer a bit to the left we might miss the Gulf, end up in Broome. We'd have to jump off onto Cable Beach as we went past. Camels and sunbathers jumping aside as this rumbling shuddering rolling monster tore past. They'd hear it well before it arrived. I had an image of Cable Beach, serene, midmorning, tide out, and people slowly sitting up, saying, ‘What's that noise?'

‘Forget it,' said Spanner after my attempt, as if he was reading my mind. ‘But let's go get Charles. He can grade the landing strip for us.'

The land yacht was christened
Matilda, King of the Desert.
I forget how the name came about but
Matilda
was a she, despite being a king. We spent afternoons when we could, towing her to the upwind end of the old airstrip and then sailing it back. We set up drums as an obstacle course, then as a demolition derby. If you hit the drum a glancing blow with the rear wheels you could set the drum flying, or spinning across the sand. Each time when we had finished we would tow it up to the top and park it ready for the next session that might be in a week, a month.

One time we all crowded onboard and sailed at no diminished speed across the spinifex until we found the creek, and we picnicked on the sand in the shelter of trees growing in the creekbed.

We dreamed of using it in the wet, sliding and slewing our way across the mudflats, but it needed the strong trade winds to move it and they only came in the midyear. In the wet, wind came in short sudden bursts before the rain. The day would be full of wet heat, clouds gathering in the north and rolling around the sky until out of somewhere came a wind, cool, strong, sweet, and then the sudden hard din of relentless rain that left mud puddles and impassable roads.

I think Palmenter only ever asked what it was once, and I heard Charles tell him it was a wind indicator. From the homestead all you could see was the mast of it when it was parked out on the airstrip. Cookie had tied a bra to the masthead so it looked a little like a wind sock.

One of the funniest times was when we had been at the waterhole all one afternoon, smoking some of Cookie's finest, and swimming, relaxing. Simms might not have been so bright but he was a great swimmer and, as we were to discover, he had a talent for mimicry. Palmenter used to bully Simms around a lot, he was his lapdog, so I guess Simms had a lot to imitate. Simms was a decent bloke. So was Charles.

I was lying in the shade and Spanner was next to me drinking a beer. Charles had made a small fire and Cookie was barbecuing meat on it, slowly, the way he used to get this fabulous smoky flavour into the meat.

The conversation, sporadic though it was in the late-afternoon cannabis haze, always turned to Palmenter. Palmenter had been away for a few weeks now, hence the relaxed picnic. We were wondering why he had been gone for so long.

‘I reckon he's been arrested. He's never coming back. Cops locked him up and have thrown away the key,' said Spanner.

‘Nah. He's found a girl. Shacked up with her over on the Gold Coast.' Cookie didn't raise his head from where he was resting as he said this. He giggled at his own joke.

‘Girl! Why would he want one of them when he can have all the ones he wants. For free.'

Something in the way he said this compelled me to look up. Simms stood up on the flat rock at the edge of the waterhole. He walked up and down exactly as Palmenter did, that strutting busy self-important way that Palmenter had of walking, as though everything he did was urgent and you were in his way, distracting him.

‘Madam, line the girls up.'

Simms paused, pretended to be choosing. Despite Simms being thin and Palmenter fat the imitation was uncanny. He stood as Palmenter would have stood.

‘Mmm, this one. Come!' Simms pretended to lead her away, still walking exactly as Palmenter did. ‘Now, suck my cock.' He stood thrusting his hips out, hands on hips and looking across at something in the distance. It was the posture that Palmenter had whenever he stood on the verandah watching the goings-on of the camp. Gazing into the distance but seeing everything that was happening nearby. Simms was hilarious.