How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling (5 page)

The picture swung open and behind was a large metal safe door.

‘Need a key.'

Neither of us wanted to say what we were thinking. We had buried the keys with Palmenter and there would never be any way of opening the safe.

‘Might be a spare hidden someplace.' Spanner looked around the room. Although it was neat, there was an impossible number of
places a key might be hidden and we didn't even know if there was one. I was wondering if Spanner might have some powerful tool down in his shed – whatever it was he had used to cut the barbecue plate from a grader blade would cut through anything. But cutting open the safe would throw us into a whole new level: somehow shooting Palmenter was much less than shooting Palmenter and then cutting open the safe. I was sure that was how the authorities would see it.

‘Is there anything in there we really need?'

‘Guess not.'

I was interested to read the real accounts and see what was in the safe but we were really just snooping around. We began picking out books from the shelves and looking at them, laughing that Palmenter might have such titles. Novels. I guess we didn't know, but we didn't think he was a reader. By now it was late, the house was quiet and everyone had long since gone to bed, and it would be best if we did too and left the office untouched, but as we were about to leave Spanner found a set of keys hidden behind a brass bookend. He opened the safe.

On the top shelf was a bunch of documents in yellow envelopes. These turned out to be passports and personal documents, genuine drivers' licences, birth certificates. I leafed through them. None of them meant much until I came to Arif's. Arif. Palmenter must have taken and hidden Arif's possessions. I wondered why he would have kept these documents hidden rather than bury them out in the pit with the clothes and whatever else Arif had. And these other passports, whose were they? Another envelope had some banknotes in it, several types of strange foreign ones neatly banded with their own type.

The bottom half of the safe was a file cabinet on rollers that slid out to reveal a suitcase that Spanner lifted out onto the desk and opened. There were more banknotes. It was full of tightly bound American dollars, Australian dollars and Euros. Mostly it was just stacks of banknotes but there were also some folded manila envelopes with smaller denomination notes, a few thousand worth in each envelope. In the main bundles there must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars of each currency.

Spanner whistled. ‘Jeez!'

He picked up a bundle of fifties and leafed through them, counting.

‘Couple of hundred or so. That's, um...'

‘Ten thousand. Ten in each stack, two rows of five, fuck! That's half a million bucks. And there's a bit more in American and Euros. Must be close to two million total.'

‘What's he have so much cash for?'

‘Who cares? Cash business. Going in and coming out. He wasn't doing it for the charity.'

‘How much do you reckon they pay?'

‘Word is about five grand for the boat trip. Chopper, renting the vans for the trip south'd be about that and more. My guess is he took as much as he could. Took everything they got.'

Everything they've got. How we treated these people, what we did to them was something known but not talked about, because if you talked about it most likely you would find yourself having to do something about it. None of us was brave enough. Y'know, if you don't talk about something, it either doesn't exist or it goes away, so we ignored the faces we saw and turned a blind eye to Palmenter and his cowboys and how they mistreated these people.

‘So this might be from just a few trips.' Despite myself I was calculating how profitable the business was.

Spanner probably didn't know as I did that the legitimate side of Palmenter Station was going broke. Suppliers were never paid unless they asked and letters of demand regularly came from banks and collection agents. Palmenter would bring in a bundle of mail from Darwin and throw it at me. I'd open and sort it all, show him the urgent demands. ‘Cunts,' was all he'd say, and scrunch up the letters and throw them in the bin. Sometimes, just to get things paid, I'd forge his signature on a cheque and add it to the pile of outgoing mail. I suppose he posted them.

‘Why would he keep it all as cash?' I asked.

‘Who knows,' said Spanner. ‘Better put it back.'

‘Why?'

He looked at me but he didn't answer. I think Spanner would have been happy to continue forever as before and maybe he thought that by putting the cash back, life would go on much the same as ever, only without the occasional appearance of Palmenter.
But that was not going to happen.

‘Okay,' I said. ‘We wait for the dust to settle. If no one comes for it, then we split it. If someone comes asking about Palmenter, knows his business, the cash had better be here. We leave the office as we found it.'

He seemed happy at that.

‘If no one comes for it we take half each,' I added. I was thinking about what I might do next. Surely the next thing, whatever it was, would not be as bad as this.

As bad as this. I had just shot Palmenter. I was stealing two million dollars from a safe and I was getting an innocent man involved. I had shot Palmenter and we had buried him in his 4WD and now I was about to steal all his money. Why did I do it? It was going to look pretty premeditated to the police when they found out. And they would find out eventually. Palmenter couldn't just disappear and no one miss him. Spanner might talk. If someone came asking for Palmenter, how did I know Spanner would not just tell them outright that I had shot him? If Palmenter's thugs arrived – and that would only be a matter of time – they'd pretty soon get the truth out of Spanner. Perhaps I should eliminate Spanner as well. He didn't look very strong, although these wiry types often fooled you. I would have to hit him over the head with something heavy from the shed. Do it in the shed when next we were down there. He was the only one who knew. Hit him over the head and shove him into a van and bury him in the pit and no one would know. More money for me. I looked at Spanner and suddenly I felt sick.

‘You okay?' Spanner eased me into the chair. ‘You look like you're gunna faint. Pale as a parlour girl.'

I sat down. I couldn't speak. I closed my eyes and all I saw was Palmenter's pale neck, wrinkles and stray grey hairs. I opened my eyes and Spanner was packing the suitcase back into the safe, but it was no good, I was compelled to close them again, to see the film to the end but the end never came, it just played over and over Palmenter's revolting bull neck and then nothing, a slight pause, a blink, then again that reptilian leather skin, his pig grunt, and suddenly he turned to face me and it was Spanner not Palmenter and my hand was holding the gun.

‘I could buy my fishing lodge.' Spanner sat opposite me and spoke. I looked at him. ‘We go halves. A million each. I could afford to buy that camp up on the Gulf.'

‘Be sold long ago,' I said weakly.

‘Okay. We go halves.' Spanner either didn't hear or didn't want to hear me. He seemed to be suddenly invigorated. I sat there as he went on, grateful not to have to close my eyes and watch that horror film again. ‘Lie low for a couple of weeks, then we split the cash, get outta here. I'll buy that fishing camp. You're welcome to come too, if you want. No more mechanics for me. I can cook, run a few lodges, take people fishing an' show 'em how to catch the big ones. Barramundi, coral trout, barbecues each night, fresh fish cooked on coals right there on the sand. It's what they all want, the doctors, lawyers, city folk stuck at their desks got plenty of cash. Time-poor, that's them.'

‘Palmenter is a bit time-poor,' I said. I couldn't help it.

‘You done everyone a favour. We all wanted. You just got the balls.' He paused for a moment. ‘Half is okay by you? 'Cause, well, just you and me.' Perhaps he thought that I wanted more. ‘You and me, only ones that know, we better just act like nothing happened.'

Was he threatening if he didn't get half? It really didn't matter.

‘Half is okay.'

‘Okay. But not for a few weeks. No one gunna miss him. 'Round here, anyway.'

‘Anyone in the city? Business partners? What about Mrs Palmenter? He must have family.'

‘Margaret?' he laughed.

The thought was a shock. Palmenter and Margaret.

‘Is she...?'

‘No! It was a joke. There's no one.'

‘Business partners?'

‘I don't think so. He has only ever come in here by himself or with the shooters. Or with Margaret. She just looked after the girls, made sure they were healthy.'

‘I meant others. They'll come looking. Put two and two together. Us missing, money gone.'

‘If he's got anyone. If there is, they'll be asking within two weeks. Anyone close, that is. We just gotta play it cool, say nothing. That
sort of cash,' he indicated the safe, ‘isn't legit. Ain't no one gunna know it's here. Or not the amount, anyway. We hide the key, lie low, wait for a couple of weeks.'

We both realised we were talking in circles and stopped. We sat silently. His talk and plans for the fishing lodge had at least got me away from thinking about shooting Palmenter. What could I do with a million dollars? I had been quick in my own mind to assess that Spanner was stuck in his familiar world and yet here was he more prepared than I to set out and do something new. I could travel. I could invest. I thought I had enough business sense to turn a million into a few million. At school our team won the sharemarket game, turning our initial thousand dollars into seven hundred thousand. That was pretend money of course, but the principle was the same. If I could do even a bit of that again I'd turn it into several million. Set me up for life.

I must have dropped off because Spanner was shaking me awake.

‘Mate, go get some sleep. The chopper will be here first light. We better be ready to run this import or they might smell a rat. Let them fly everyone in as usual but we'll send them south as soon as we can. Not like he done. We don't tell anyone. Not even Cookie.'

The safe was still open and I swung around in the chair for another look inside. There was nothing of particular interest so I began sifting through the files in the cabinet. I was dog-tired and needed a shower but I couldn't leave the room. The top drawer held accounts, neatly labelled in my own handwriting and I realised why Palmenter had got me doing the books in my back office. Here was my handwriting, my work neatly hidden away in the safe with all the incriminating records.

The bottom was a series of files that I hadn't seen before, each headed with a date that must have related to a particular import, because each file held personal details of thirty or so people. It was incredibly incriminating and I wouldn't do it like that, I thought. Funny how even though you are planning to take the money and disappear, some part of you is calculating better ways to do things.

I pulled several out and took them to the desk. Spanner was idly dreaming of where he was going with his million and not really
paying attention to the files, just flicking them over. I was only half listening as he listed names and places he dreamed of, because the files were the records of everyone who had come in via the station. A lot of the files contained just a name, a few details such as age, gender, the country and village they were from. Some had a bit more detail, brothers and sisters, parents. I recognised some recurring names that must have been the people and places along the route they took.

Spanner was by now talking about the Caribbean and luxury yachts and suddenly his voice went quiet.

‘Here's a whole bunch of letters for you. From Simon Smart. Is that your brother?'

But I hardly heard him. Lucy's file was trembling in my hands as I opened it to find out what had happened to her.

After every muster there was a party of sorts at the homestead and it was at one of these that I met Lucy. Palmenter wasn't what you'd call a party animal. For the most part, life on the station was pretty dull, but with all the hard-drinking people who came in for the muster, a party was bound to happen and it was just something that he had to let alone. The muster crew worked hard, and they played hard too.

I was fresh out of school and quite naive, but I feel stupid that I didn't realise what was going on. My school experience included much, but nothing of girls or sex. Well, nothing practical. There'd been a lot of schoolboy brag and bravado but when we'd see the actual girls from St Mary's down the road, when we stood in the queue at McDonald's and flirted with them, it was as if they were from a parallel world that we had no idea how to get to.

It was much the same at the station in a more reserved sort of way, with none of the skylarking but other more subtle ways to get noticed. The women, girls, sometimes up to ten of them, supposedly worked in the kitchen with Cookie, or did jobs around the house, cleaning and stuff. Palmenter usually arrived with them a few days before the main muster and then he would leave as soon as import was over. Margaret and the girls stayed on longer. They seemed to get a lot more time off than us blokes, and often I'd see Spanner lending Margaret one of his vans so she could drive the girls down to the waterhole or go picnic at a place we called the bluff. That was a limestone ridge along the river. You could sit up on the flat top of it and have a great view down the dry creek, you could follow with your eyes the course of the river by the ribbon of trees from just below where their white trunks contrasted with the light green of
the leaves, to far off where the green was darker and was all you could see. The rest of the view was dusty-coloured spinifex or red sand. Lucy showed me all these places when, later, we would sneak off to a picnic, to be alone. I'm talking dry season, Christ, you wouldn't go out there in the wet.

They were like the girls from St Mary's. Of course I was interested. I once asked Spanner about who they were.

‘Don't go there,' he said. ‘He'd have ya balls.'

‘Why? It's a free country. He can't stop me, can he?'

‘Maybe wouldn't have to. There'd have to be some of you left after Margaret finished with you.'

‘Margaret?'

‘Yeah. Last thing she'd want is to have you complicating it all. She's as tough as Palmenter.'

And that was it. I didn't know him well enough back then to ask him more.

The night after that particular muster we had a barbecue in the machinery shed. Spanner parked the grader and vans outside and wheeled out some portable barbecues and tubs of ice. A tinny stereo played both kinds of music and the muster crew and the truck drivers lined up in a sort of circle drinking and carrying on. I can't remember if the chopper crew were there; I thought they were but they never came to any of the parties after that so perhaps I'm wrong. I'm sure Palmenter didn't come, he must have stayed inside the homestead. It was dismal at first. There were about twenty of us blokes and a couple of wives of the muster crew who were later arguing with the men. It is important when you run a party to either have enough girls for everyone, or just none, no wives. They complicate things.

One of the muster crew had a guitar and thankfully he played better than the stereo so things started to warm up. Cookie carried out some steaks and set them on the bench, we began cooking them and drinking and because we had something to do it was soon all right. And then the girls arrived.

There were six of them. I hadn't seen the girls when they arrived at the station but here they were. They walked across
carrying plates of salad and stuff, being led by Margaret like a mother duck with her ducklings. Suddenly it went silent, everyone stopped talking or carrying on and watched them. Lucy was one of them. They walked across from the homestead with all eyes on them and an expectant hush, an expectant and almost evil hush, like before you slaughter one of the beasts for meat and despite all the bravado and derring-do just before the bullet, or just after, everyone stops, goes quiet. Big blokes and all, they all feel it but none say it. Then the guitar began again and I swear it was just like at the bus stop when the St Mary's bus pulled up, us all showing off and skylarking, talking louder than we needed to and all the time half looking at those girls.

I'd had a few beers and I didn't usually drink so much. A beer or two with Spanner in the late afternoon was all. I was a bit tipsy. Spanner had said not to go there so I was trying to ignore the girls and all the machismo, raised voices. Some of the guys were dancing, I remember people coming and going, I had a few more beers and went out to where the machinery had been parked to make room for the party. I climbed up and lay on the flat bonnet of the grader, by myself with the machinery and the vast sky and the endless black distance. I watched the stars. The air was so dry and the stars so brilliant and I was thinking that this was not me. I did not belong here. It was so beautiful, it was good fun, everyone was having a good time but I didn't belong. Suddenly I was homesick. I began to cry. I was at a party but I was alone, and instead of enjoying myself I was thinking of home where I had left without saying goodbye. I had not talked to Mum and Dad or had a letter from them and I wondered did I even belong back there. Were they that angry with me?

‘Why are you sad?'

Through my quiet tears I saw that someone had come out and was standing near the grader.

It was Lucy.

I didn't answer right away. I dried my eyes and thought about it for a long time.

‘It's just so beautiful and it makes me feel so lonely.'

She climbed up next to me.

‘Well, you don't have to be by yourself. My name is Lucy.' She
lay back beside me. ‘You are right, it makes us alone to look at the stars that there are so many and yet all of them are alone too, but it is so beautiful. We...' but she stopped, didn't finish. She had an accent but I couldn't place where from. Not American or British, an accent from speaking a language that is not your main language.

We lay there side by side and I was wishing I knew what to say to her, was wishing I knew more about the stars and constellations so I could tell her something, impress her that I knew something. All of the years of school and exams and certificates and learning and I could think of nothing at all useful or interesting. Nothing.

‘Do you think there are worlds out there too?' she asked. She took a swig of my beer and handed it back to me. I put my lips to it, the place where her lips had been, but didn't drink. I didn't want any more beer.

‘Sure,' I said. ‘That one,' and I pointed at one of the brighter ones. ‘I can see some people looking down at us. One of them is pointing. Shh. Shh, oh, no, be quiet everyone, I can't hear what he's saying.'

She laughed and shuffled closer, put her head right next to mine. I could smell her hair.

‘Which one?'

‘That one. The one next to that bright one. You can see the people over on the left side. It's too hot if they go too close to the bright star so they have to go on the far side.'

I could feel the heat of her body, her breath as she turned her head slightly to mine.

‘How many are there?'

‘Just two. A boy and a girl.'

We lay for a while longer, I remember that, my arm was touching hers and it was soft, electric, but then somehow suddenly we were kissing and it was not at all like touching my lips to the can where her lips had been. Her lips were wet and cool and soft and the taste of it I can remember but can't describe. Her breath was hot, and I was forgetting to breathe then wondering how to breathe and where to put my nose but our lips stayed together and our mouths opened and we were one person, one mouth, just a mouth and lips together and my body had evaporated except that suddenly I was aware how hard I was. I wanted to roll our bodies
together but didn't know if I should, then Lucy's hands found me, rubbed me through my jeans. Do you know how difficult it is to make love on the bonnet of a giant grader? It was lucky because the difficulty of that hid my inexperience. But she did everything, she lifted her dress and slid me inside her, and I came just about right away and it was the most fantastic thing. We lay together on the tractor looking up at the sky and she finished my beer. I felt soft like I had melted into the hard metal of the tractor, how I had been hard, harder and more urgent than that yellow metal, and then soft, fantastic, spaced out, a little drunk, in love, in touch, a part of the sky and stars and universe and content and I began to cry again because I also felt somehow even more alone and insignificant and also that I had done something I shouldn't have done. Not because of Palmenter, no, because of Lucy. I wanted to be with her forever and yet I knew nothing about her. Only her name. Lucy.

I must have fallen asleep. I woke and she was gone, everyone was gone, the place was quiet; everything was just as it had been except that the stars had moved around the sky a bit and I felt a little better. It was so quiet I could almost hear the stars twinkling, the little crackling noise of their fires across light-years and I knew that not only was I insignificant, but so are we all. I lay for a while, then drifted across to my room, to bed. It hadn't been a dream. I could still taste her and feel her lips on mine. Lucy.

The next few days got back to the routine of station life but for me it felt more like the pointless and futile shuffling of deckchairs. The muster crew left, the canteen was quiet at mealtimes and things were more relaxed. Palmenter drove off before dawn one morning as he usually did and the only difference was his white 4WD missing from the shed and a palpable lack of tension around the place. Margaret must have left with him so I began seeing Lucy more often. Spanner warned me a couple of times.

‘Don't go there.' Or, ‘If he finds out he'll be furious.' What would he do, sack me? Of course there was also bravado – I don't care look at me I'm not scared of Palmenter – and also a showing off: I got the girl and you blokes didn't. But who was I kidding? Palmenter scared me. When he was away everyone just went about station life
and ignored us, so Lucy and I spent most afternoons and evenings together, but always there were Spanner's words in the back of my mind.

After the heat of the day we would walk around the settlement, out around the firebreak that took us on a circuit behind all the buildings. It was like walking around an island, the waves of spinifex and scrub washed the shores of our paradise and we talked of lifeboats and rescue, of many things. I didn't find out much about her but I do know she had lived near the sea because I remember that island thing. The spinifex was an unswimmable ocean and a voyage across would lead to either freedom or certain death. It depended on your state of mind.

The girls weren't allowed to eat in the cafeteria, a rule that for some reason persisted even when Palmenter wasn't around because I don't think anyone would have cared. After dinner Lucy would sneak out to my room and we would make love, or sometimes I would take a blanket and we would go for midnight walks and lie together and talk of stars and other worlds and life and infinity. A few times, we borrowed a car from Spanner and went for a picnic or a swim down at the waterhole but it was difficult to do that because Palmenter strictly rationed the fuel.

Funny how time is. The weeks after I first arrived I was kept busy, the hours passed quickly but the weeks dragged. It seemed like a lifetime but in fact it was only a few months after I first arrived that Lucy and I met. Now, with Lucy, the days dragged but the weeks flew by. I stopped thinking so much of home and I remember Palmenter commenting to me that I seemed to be enjoying the place more. A muster and an import were due. He had arrived: the first sign was his car was in the shed, and suddenly everyone seemed on edge. The tension at mealtimes came back. Spanner drank a few more beers each day and preferred to stay by himself in the shed. No one said anything, but you just knew it was down to Palmenter. Lucy and I kept seeing each other but she didn't stay in my room overnight and we didn't make love anymore. She said it was because she had a lot of work to do but I knew it was something else, something she couldn't talk about. She wasn't herself on our
evening walks. Occasionally she would let me hold her hand, but it was fleeting, cautious. I felt we were like misbehaving children.

The last time I saw her was three days before the muster. We all knew a muster was coming. Cookie had to do extra food, Spanner was busy, Charles arrived with the truckload of vans, and Palmenter himself was forever coming and going, roaring into the compound in a cloud of dust. He would make calls on the satellite phone while standing on the verandah and would glare at anyone who dared to come near him. One morning, without warning, Palmenter called me over and told me I was to do a bore run. Spanner would organise a 4WD van for me and a map of the tracks I was to follow. He wanted me to leave that day, after lunch. I tried to find Lucy to tell her but every time I went near the homestead Palmenter was there, he seemed to be watching me. Why was it so urgent to suddenly do a bore run? I'd done them before but now I needed a map, had to go further, all the way out along the eastern boundary. Why? Was this some sort of punishment because of me and Lucy?

The night before, Lucy and I had met by the water tower. It was all innocent enough, I wanted her to spend the night in my room, I missed waking next to her, I said, feeling her warmth and softness during the night, I wanted to lie all night curled together with her. She said soon, not tonight, and then when she saw Palmenter watching us from the verandah she hurried away.

Stupid. I shouldn't have cared. I should have gone after her but Palmenter was watching and in my head I was thinking what Spanner had said and also that if Palmenter found out he would be furious and although Lucy and I might walk together as if we didn't care, in truth I was scared. I busied myself about the base of the tower, pretending to do something with the valves and water outlets. I could say that I was trying to protect her by not being too obviously with her, but that would be a lie.