The message in the pamphlet I’d read came back to me-’free from feral animals’. Driberg’s weatherbeaten face cracked into a smile when he saw that I understood.
‘You’ve got it, mate. I made a good living here, logging and sandmining. Me and some other good blokes. Doin’ no harm at all. Then the fuckin’ greenies and tourists took over. Well, they’re in for a surprise. When I let this lot loose their paradise is fuckin’ gone forever.’
It was dangerous to ask but I had to know. ‘The boys?’
‘Nosey little bastards. Spied on me and found out about this place.’ He drew a finger quickly across his throat.
‘Why did you admit to seeing them?’
He spat down at me, missing my face by a couple of centimetres. ‘Yeah, I fucked up there. Panicked a bit. I wasn’t sure who else’d seen them or where so I tried to keep it vague. You pressed too hard, mate. Should’ve taken the hint.’
‘Where’re the boys?’
‘Six feet fuckin’ under, where you’re goin’ to be. This sand’s easy to dig.’
‘You won’t pull it off, Driberg. People know about me. I’ve got a vehicle…’
His laugh was harsh and almost out of control. “That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t know the island. In the old days, before the four-wheel-drives, cars and trucks were always getting stuck in the sand. Know what happened to ‘em? The sand swallowed ‘em. Must be hundreds out there off the back beach.’
‘The lighthouse keeper. He must know…’
‘Automated a year ago. That’s when I started this up. I really love those pigs, you know? They’re going to breed like crazy and rip shit out of this place. You’ve pushed me ahead of schedule a bit but I’m flexible. I guess now’s the time. It’ll take a bit of organising but I’m ready for it. Have to drop them all off in the right places. Say a week and it’ll be done. I’ll shoot through and who’ll fuckin’ know?’
Thinking was beyond me. All I could do was react out of anger and helplessness. ‘You redneck lunatic,’ I rasped. ‘You should be locked up.’
His fierce grin turned sour and ugly. ‘Just for that, cunt,’ he hissed, ‘I’m goin’ to feed you to the fuckin’ pigs.’
He moved to step over me. What he’d said pumped adrenalin and fear into me. I pulled my knees back, pivoted on my bum and lashed out with both feet at his leg. I caught him right on the scar and he screamed as I felt something give in his knee. He went down hard with the leg buckled under him. He lay on the sand, winded and gasping. I scrambled to my feet and did the only thing I could do-I launched myself forward and fell on him with all my weight. I heard ribs crack and he moaned as the breath rushed out of him again.
The animals in their pens and hutches were setting up a cacophony and I realised that I was adding to the noise by swearing in a continuous stream as I struggled up and off Driberg. I scrambled away from him and couldn’t get to my feet again-my legs wouldn’t obey my brain. I needed to get my hands and legs free but the straps were hard and tight. Driberg was stirring. Off to my right was a pen with corrugated iron nailed all around it. I wriggled and crawled over to it, praying that Driberg was a bush carpenter. He was. The sheets of iron didn’t quite meet at the corner of the pen and there was a raw edge I could reach if I could only stand up. I could see Driberg slowly coming to life and fear got me on my feet again. I backed up to the iron, located the edge with my fingers and began to saw at the straps. Driberg was only a few metres away. He gasped, spat, saw what I was doing. There was a steel stake leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing and he began to crawl towards it, blood dripping from his battered face. Then he was up and hobbling. I sawed at the strap and felt it fray and then break. Driberg had his hand on the stake. I bent down and my clumsy, cramped fingers seemed to take an age to undo the strap around my ankles. I got it free just as Driberg shuffled within reach and swung the stake. I ducked and he missed. He fell, dropping the stake. I pounced on him; his contorted face swam up towards me and I delivered the best head butt of my life. I got him solidly on the nose and I heard and felt the bone break and the cartilage collapse and I was glad.
I had sadness, anger and fear to exorcise. I found a. 303 rifle and ammunition in Driberg’s shack and I shot every one of the animals big enough to take a bullet. The rabbits and rats were securely held and I left them for the authorities to deal with. I took Driberg back to Cathedral Beach and made the phone calls to Hervey Bay and Sydney and gave all the explanations. I wasn’t there when they dug up the bodies of Horst Bucholtz’s kids nor when they held a kind of commemorative service for them on the creamy white beach south of Sandy Cape. Bucholtz sent me a photograph of the event and I’ve kept it. Great beach.
Cross My Heart
‘You know me, Cliff,’ Tommy Herbert said, ‘honest as the race is long.’
Tommy was a jockey and life was a joke to him. He’d broken his neck as a twelve-year-old riding trackwork, survived to become a moderately successful rider, and regarded every day of his life as a bonus. He was still making jokes even though he’d copped a five-year suspension that would certainly end his career. Tommy was nearing forty, having trouble with his weight. He was pretty well-fixed but he needed another couple of good years of steady earnings, saving and investment to set him up.
‘I never heard any different, Tommy,’ I said.
‘Have I ever put the handbrake on? Sure, when the horse was ready to kill itself trying and had no hope. Have I ever backed a horse I wasn’t riding? Yeah, when I’d lost the ride on account of my weight and I knew it was a good thing.’
‘Jockey’s aren’t allowed to bet.’
Tommy lit a cigarette and fanned the smoke. He said he hated smoking and only did it to keep his weight down. Maybe. He was tall for a jockey, about five foot five and he didn’t have a beaky nose or a squeaky voice. Pass him in the street and you wouldn’t guess his profession unless you looked at his hands and wrists. They were over-developed and odd-looking. ‘I’d sorta announced my retirement. Then I de-retired.’
I smiled. ‘You’re stretching it, mate, but I take your point. No batteries, funny whips, six-way turf talks with other riders?’
‘Cross my heart,’ he said. ‘You don’t hear that any more do you? Be a good name for a horse.’
‘So, what d’you want me to do?’
He stubbed out the cigarette which looked like a matchstick in those huge hands. ‘I got five years for involvement in race-fixing. I’m appealing. Hearing’s in two weeks. I want you to investigate those four bastards that put me in this and get them to change their bloody stories.’
‘It’s a bit late in the day.’
He shrugged. ‘It was all such bullshit I didn’t take it seriously. I set the whole thing up? Me? I was into Brucie Bartlett for two hundred grand? I never even met the man.’
I believed him but I had to play the devil’s advocate. ‘The way I heard it, there’s a tape.’
‘He rang me. It was weird. He said all these strange things. I was tired and pissed-off. I’d been in the sauna for an hour and hadn’t eaten for a day. Low blood sugar. I didn’t know what I was saying. It sounds bad but it was all a fake.’
I like the races enough to go to the track half a dozen times a year and have TAB bets once or twice a month. Mostly doubles and quinellas when I get the time to nut them out. I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but factor in the pleasure and excitement and I’d reckon I’m about even. I’d met Tommy when I was bodyguarding a horse five or six years back. The horse got to the post and won with Tommy on top. I backed it and won money. I saw Tommy from time to time after that-we jogged together at Bondi a few times, went to a couple of fights. He was an acquaintance more than a friend but I liked him and wanted to help, but business is business.