I’d given that fancy bottle of Chivas to Willy for his fiftieth birthday. I’d spent more on that one bottle of scotch than I’d ever spent on a woman in my life. The grog was long gone. The box wasn’t. Trust Willy to keep something like that. When I’d gotten to his hospital ward with that box, my brother had acted like it was the bloody crown jewels. I couldn’t believe he’d kept it all this time on his sideboard like a trophy.
Damn sentimental bastard.
I clicked the biro on my chin a few times and flipped to a clean page.
Writing down sixty-three years of secrets was taking me forever, and I never knew which one would come to my head until I sat down.
It took me a while to come up with the title for this one. I sat there with the pen in my hand, staring at the cupboard where the duffel bag was hidden, thinking about Bob and his cash.
Then it came to me.
The laundry that don’t smell too good.
I chuckled as I underlined it.
* * *
Bob was makin money on the side long before he came to me. Backhanders from blokes who needed charges to disappear. Payments for info that shouldn’t never have left the cop shop. But he couldn’t put that cash in his bank account. Not without havin to explain where the hell it come from.
So he started givin me cash and gettin me to do stuff for him. Burn paperwork. Bury stuff. Koolaroo’s a big place, and it’s easy to lose things out there. Though I’ll let you into a secret. I remember every place I put stuff in the ground. Includin the bodies. And I ain’t afraid to dig that shit up and use it against Bob if I need to.
Truth is, I liked havin the cash. Especially with Declan makin it fuckin hard to get my hands on Koolaroo money.
About 12 years ago, Bob came out to Koolaroo. Brought one of them fancy bottles of Bundy rum, and I knew straight away he was about to ask me for a real big favor.
He said he had a problem. A 300,000 dollar problem. All cash. Sittin in a lockup he couldn’t touch without someone askin questions. I told him I didn’t want to know where it came from. He said I didn’t need to. What he needed was for it to become Koolaroo money.
I was runnin 12,000 head that year. Good year. Sold a mob in October and cleared good money at the saleyards. Cash from the agents, proper invoiced sales, all above board.
So all I had to do was inflate the numbers. Invoice for 1,200 head when I’d moved 800. Add a line for contract musterin work that never happened. Invoice for a bore pump that never happened, so I made a receipt that looked legit. Spread it across enough transactions that none of ‘em looked too large to flag.
Cash went in the safe. Safe money went to the bank. Bob’s cash disappeared into Koolaroo’s legit turnover and came out the other side clean.
Nothin complicated. Just money in. Money out.
I kept a cut for the trouble. That was my idea, not Bob’s. The bastard thought I’d do it for nothin, given our history and all. But fuck that. It was my neck on the line. They’d believe him over me any day of the week.
That’s the thing about him bein a cop. He was untouchable.
I was just a dead man walkin.
* * *
I swigged the rum, ate another Tim Tam, and thought about what to write next.
* * *
After that first lot went through just fine, the cash kept comin. And the amounts kept gettin’ bigger. Bob got more confident. And smarter. But also fuckin stupid.
Soon I had more money than we could wash, and we started hidin it in plastic bags in a cave we found decades ago, the one with them ancient hand and croc paintin’s that them black fellas did. The one where we buried Kat. And a few other dipshits.
But the money kept comin, and we figured that cave weren’t the best place to put millions of bucks. So we started hidin what couldn’t be washed inside the outstation walls. Bob watched some videos on the computer about puttin up plasterboard, and after a weekend out there, we’d hidden millions in them walls. Ain’t nobody findin it unless they know exactly where to look.
Even when I took the cash, I patched the wall back up good. Like nothin was missin. Bob’s gonna flip his lid when he figures that out.
* * *
My guts twisted and growled like a rabid dog. I dropped the biro on the pad and dragged my sorry ass to the dunny again.