How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling (9 page)

As it turned out it was a year later that I left the station for the first time, and that was when I drove down to visit Lucy.

I decided I would go to Melbourne in one of the campervans. I could easily hitch a ride with one of the last groups and by the time they were ready to go it would be ten days since the previous one and that was long enough to wait. When I was in Melbourne I would abandon the van and there would be nothing to link me to Palmenter Station. Except the million dollars in my backpack. If we departed early then Simms and Charles would be less likely to see me go, Spanner could take his half and head his own way and I'd go mine and we'd be well away by the time anyone started looking for us.

The idea came that first day, when Spanner and I were in the office doing the false papers and I found the file on Lucy. But I didn't say anything then. The idea grew, however, as we were loading that first lot into their vans and sending them south. Why wasn't I going too? They were so happy. Well, not happy: relieved, thankful. We had forgotten this part of it because recently, well for at least the last year, Palmenter had been meeting the imports somewhere in the bush and we never got to see them at the homestead. Now, as I handed them false documents with a new identity and explained as best I could that this was now who they were, I had two thoughts. The first was that Palmenter had not been doing this and that any of them who arrived in the cities would have to start with nothing. And secondly, that Lucy was one of those. She would have nothing. I had seen Palmenter's handwritten note on her file:
Handed to Trent. Sent to Maribyrnong.

Palmenter had kept me away from this part of the operation, at first by sending me out on bore runs and then by keeping me busy
with accounts. Their faces and smiles of gratitude were new to me. Whatever your politics or religion, whatever you think about what we were doing, it felt great to be helping people. Finally they had made it: survived floods or famine or religious persecution, they had crossed war zones or deserts or mountains and at least one ocean to get this far. Now, they faced a whole new life in a new land and we were the ones who were sending them off on the final leg of their journey.

I determined I would go too, find Lucy, find out what happened. Until I read her file I hadn't realised that Lucy was a refugee, that she was one of them, that all the girls were. I thought Margaret and the girls came up from Melbourne to work with the muster.

I didn't tell anyone my plan. First, we had to finalise what we thought would be the final muster and import.

Normally we would spread out the departure of the vans but, without discussing it, Spanner and I had understood we wanted to get everyone away as quickly as possible. Charles and Simms, Cookie, they all accepted it as going back to the old way and agreed it was a good idea. None of us had liked the new way. Spanner and I watched as Charles led the last of the imports to their van. I was thinking that this was it, it was over. There would be no more ‘musters' or imports. I would lie low for a while, then take the money and run. It didn't occur to me that we might have to cancel anything, that there might be something like a standing order, a regularity to the whole system. We were the end point of something that began far away and if at the station we said ‘no more', it would be someone else's problem. We – I – never dreamed the entire outfit was not Palmenter's brainchild. But it was like a massive pipeline of people flowing towards us. Now they came twice a month, twenty or thirty a time, with boats and choppers and other businesses and people all relying on it and we were the main point in that pipeline. We couldn't just stop. Perhaps Spanner knew this. I never asked. It became a moot point.

I was thinking of this and nothing much, waiting with Spanner in the shade, watching Charles teaching the last lot to drive. The van spluttered and jolted down the driveway and stalled. I didn't think they would get far and that suited me because my plan was to grab my half of the money and leave with them.

‘Beer tonight to celebrate,' I said.

‘Not waiting till tonight,' answered Spanner. He walked across to refuel Charles's truck.

The chopper crew came over to me and the one I knew as Newman spoke.

‘Where's Palmenter?'

My heart jumped. ‘Dunno.'

‘Whaddya mean? Where is he? He didn't come to the collection.'

‘He's not here. He left. Yesterday.'

‘Is he coming back? What about the money? We can't wait around for him.'

It had been too easy. I knew it. Of course, that was what all the cash was for, and I remembered now that after every import Palmenter would disappear into the house with Newman and Rob. I had assumed they had a beer or something, that Palmenter would overcome his grumpy nature for long enough to have a drink with them to keep them happy. Station country runs on a beer at the end of a job. Wouldn't matter how good a deal you made outta someone, if they didn't share a beer with you after you wouldn't want to work with them again.

‘Sure. He's left me in charge. I'm the station manager now.'

The chopper crew looked at me quizzically but I didn't introduce myself. Newman had met me, they had all seen me over the last few musters taking a more pivotal role in the running of the place. Still, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could spit, so I didn't want them to know my name.

‘You want a beer?' I asked.

‘Jeez, fuck, we just gotta sort the fuckin' cash so we can get outta here.'

‘Okay. Wait a minute.'

He looked at me funny as I walked off to the office.

Was it the whole amount, two million? Surely not, but I could hardly ask them how much. Did they even count it? Perhaps I should give them the suitcase? They hadn't followed me so I thought that meant it was either not that much or they took the payment without counting. That would be the stuff of movies where the payoff is a high-tension stand-off and the cash expert sniffs and counts and hold samples up to the light while trigger-happy bodyguards face off
across the room. I went through the desk. Perhaps Palmenter had a bundle of cash ready for them. He wouldn't open the safe and count out a lesser amount from the suitcase in front of the crew. But of course, there was nothing. I had interrupted his day.

I wondered if Spanner knew. He had been here for years, from the beginning, and I was finding out he knew more than he let on. How could I talk to him without the chopper crew seeing me?

I stood at the window and saw several things as if in a dream. I saw Spanner had finished refuelling Charles's truck and he looked up and saw me. I signalled him to come over and as I did, I was realising I was free to go anytime because we had unlimited access to the fuel. I saw the last van bunny-hopping away down the drive and I calmly thought, not ‘there goes my lift', but that the driver had several thousand kilometres to learn to drive before he got to the city. I saw Charles climb up into his cab and follow the last van down the road and I knew I would not see him again – by the time he returned with a load of vans we would be gone, because for us it was all over.

Spanner and I talked through the open window.

‘Newman wants to be paid. I don't know how much. They're all waiting out the front.'

‘Ask 'im.'

‘Can't do that, they might smell a rat. They wanted Palmenter. I told them I was station manager now.' He raised his eyebrows at that. ‘He did offer that. That was why, y'know, it happened.' I didn't want to say ‘I shot him'.

Spanner was looking at me funny, like I had made some monumental fuck-up.

‘Is it the whole lot? Do you know?' I asked.

Spanner hadn't even looked at me like that when I ran over to get him after I shot Palmenter. He simply looked at me and asked if he was dead. Then he asked if I was all right like you might ask if someone was okay after a minor car accident. Then he said, ‘We'd better get rid of the body before any of the crew gets here.'

‘Manager?'

‘Yeah. He said I was the only one he could trust. He wanted to get rid of Newman. He told me to shoot him, take him out to the pit and bury his body.'

‘Arsehole.' Who did he mean? Me, Palmenter or Newman?

‘He said Newman was not happy about things. Had been complaining about the way we've been doing things and was going to set up a rival operation. I was to go with him after the last chopper load and then I was supposed to kill him and bury his body out there. Palmenter said Newman was demanding money,' I added, realising as I spoke it that none of it made sense.

Exactly what Newman thought was wrong with the way we had being doing things, I wasn't sure. The old way, the way Spanner and I were doing it now, made the homestead a very busy and chaotic place and all of us were frantically at work until the last of the vans left.

We didn't know the exact reason for the change but sometime – it was about the time of Arif – Palmenter did all the handovers. He would drive out with them on the first part of the trip and we began waiting up to a week between departures. Although the homestead was crowded while they waited, it was altogether more relaxed for us. We were supposed to have nothing to do with the imports, but sometimes they would give little gifts of gold or jewellery or buy food and clothing off us. I presumed that Palmenter thought if we got our hands on cash or some of these gifts that we could sell, it would be a way of escape, so eventually the imports didn't even come to the homestead. I couldn't think where they went instead. Probably someplace in the scrub where the chopper would land. A variety of places. Maybe that was what Newman objected to, although I thought it made good sense to mix it up a bit.

Newman came and went with the chopper and normally had nothing to do with anything at this end. If Palmenter was supposed to be paying him, that proved Palmenter was in charge of the whole thing. But the way Newman had asked to be paid didn't seem like extortion. He simply said we had to sort out the money. Like a contractor wants to be paid. As usual, Palmenter had fed me bullshit. It was only much later, when I understood more about the real nature of it, did I realise that Palmenter had set up Newman and I, that both of us were expendable. For now, I thought Newman must have realised what was going on and objected, and that was when Palmenter came to me and called Newman a double-crossing
bastard. He gave me a test; if I passed I would be manager.

I think everyone thought I knew a whole lot more than I did, that working from my little office I talked with Palmenter more than I did and that I helped plan things. But in reality, after I had tried to escape, Palmenter didn't trust me and I spent my days sorting the paperwork and files and handwriting neat labels on everything.

‘He said I was the only one he could trust to do the job and that then I would be station manager.'

Spanner continued to look at me as if he couldn't decide whether he was pissed because I was offered the opportunity to be manager over the top of him who had been there so much longer, or at Palmenter for wanting me to do his dirty work and kill someone, or at Newman for threatening the whole operation, or himself at being so stupid and being stuck in this backwater when all he had to do was demand cash for silence but do it in a smarter way than Newman.

‘That's our answer, then. Tell him Palmenter wants him dead and he'd best get outta here and lie real low for a very long time. Without the cash.'

‘Don't you get it? It's all bullshit. Palmenter made it all up. Or most of it.'

‘So don't give them anything.'

I shook my head. Newman had asked about the money with no sense of threat or extortion. A payment would normally be taken care of by Palmenter and if I was now station manager, it was something I ought to know about.

‘Must be one of those brown envelopes. They've got about fifty grand in them.'

‘Okay. Give him one of those. No more.' Spanner looked away to the midday glare. ‘Fuck. Well, I'm not giving up my money.'

Funny how we get to own things after such a short time. All he had done was help me shift a body. Bury a car. But I agreed with him because half of the money was mine and I had decided that a million was enough for me. So what if I had come about it illegally? Wasn't that exactly how Palmenter got it? I felt no lesser attachment to that money than if I had worked years and years in this godforsaken place and saved the pennies out of each pay.

‘You're better with words than me,' said Spanner. ‘I'll go get him, bring him in there. We threaten him, give him fifty grand for the work with the chopper. Let's hope that's the end of it. Better fuckin' be, 'cause I'm outta here next week.'

So that is what we did, and it went about how you'd expect, that is, not at all. Firstly the pilot was in on it and the two of them must have had wind of something, that Palmenter was going to do the nasty to them, because while the pilot stood guard over the chopper, Newman and a new guy who looked like a tattooed Viking came into the office together. The Viking stood by the door like a statue with his arms folded and a duffel bag at his feet with the handles rolled open like he might want to get something out quickly. Two things occurred to me. One was that Palmenter didn't expect me to succeed and that he would not have minded if I had been shot instead. The second thing was that he had probably planned to coerce Spanner to knobble the chopper so it went down somewhere over the Gulf country. Private mustering choppers went down all the time and this one, flying low and unseen by coastal surveillance radar, would crash unnoticed. The crew would perish, if not in the crash, shortly after of thirst, or hunger, or crocodiles.

‘Palmenter wanted you dead,' I said, ‘but I talked him out of it.' Newman raised his eyebrows at that. Nobody ever talked Palmenter out of anything. ‘He's left me in charge now, gone to look after other things. I promised him I'd sort things here. You wanna set up your own operation, fine. You wanna go to the Feds, fine. We've got things pretty well organised here and you can do what you like. But just so you know what you're dealing with.'