Free How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling by Martin Chambers Page A

a bit of time to get delivered, arrive home about the time you do.’
    He said it with such derision, as if wanting to contact my family was the thing of a weakling. Despite my carefully worded request and calm forethought I saw red. I called him an arsehole and stormed off. I was so furious that I might have done anything but Spanner told me to play it cool, to take it easy.
    â€˜He’s right, the roads are all closed. Plus, he’s just not worth it.’
    He didn’t say she’s not worth it, but that Palmenter was not worth it.
    Of course I didn’t leave after the wet and I know now that my letter never got delivered. I think what happened to Arif soon after was a plan by Palmenter to keep me tied into his schemes and make it so that I could never leave. He made a decision who to keep, who should go. I was useful to him. I looked tough but I was a weakling who could do the books and keep the paperwork in order.
    I am sure I owe my life to Spanner because he calmed me down.

7
    It was the build-up to the wet. Everyone was short-tempered and even the smallest thing irritated. Palmenter and Arif were walking towards one of the vans and Arif was talking and jerking his arms for emphasis. Palmenter was listening, or at least he appeared to be listening, as he motioned towards the car. When he saw me he signalled me to come too.
    â€˜Come on, let’s take a drive.’
    I didn’t know what was going on. I could tell that, like me, Palmenter disliked Arif’s in-your-face way of talking. Arif would look close at you, stare straight at you as if to challenge. It was annoying.
    I knew my way around the station pretty well by now and I couldn’t think where we might want to drive to at such short notice. It was three hours to the roadhouse and town was an overnighter. Not that I’d ever done it. Cookie and Charles were the only ones who ever got to leave the station. I thought perhaps Palmenter was going to show us something to do with sacred sites.
    Arif had asked about these and we all knew there were sites. Most were so sacred we were not allowed to go near them. Recently, when Spanner said something about sacred sites, I had asked him where they were. He answered that no one knew and I wondered why he had mentioned it.
    â€˜They’ll let you know if you get too close,’ he added.
    He was referring to the muster crew, who sometimes made reference to the special places they had charge of in a way that made it clear they were sacred. The crew lived a fairly traditional life on the station somewhere but I had no idea where. From mybore runs I had discovered just how big the station was, and it was no real surprise that after the muster they could disappear as if melting into the land. I wished I could have stumbled upon a group and that they’d take me in, not only to escape Palmenter but so they could show me some of their old ways, share some of their secrets. Because there was something more out there, something spiritual. The longer you were out there the stronger it felt.
    Out on the bore runs I would park on a rise and see in every direction: spinifex and grassland and shrubs and the snake path of trees along a watercourse, a shimmering endless view where even the tiniest bit of glass, a car, a movement or smoke from a campfire would have shown up as a beacon. I could never see them, but I was certain they would know where I was. At muster time they appeared as if by magic in their beat-up old cars and descended on the homestead, crowded out the canteen drinking our beer, then disappeared as quickly when it was over. And I knew, even before Spanner said it, that if I had come close to a place I was not supposed to go they would be there to stop me.
    Arif was a Moslem. Palmenter called him a raghead.
    â€˜Where is that thieving raghead?’ he’d ask, as though Spanner or I were supposed to know. Thing was, we usually did, we’d have seen Arif heading someplace