The countryside was riotous with blossom. It was the first week of September, and the dusky mustards and gaudy golds of the various wattles mingled with the whites and pinks of the flowering plums and cherries, heralding the arrival of spring.

The change of season brought a renewed vigour to social activity; roads were more accessible and the workers’ trips into town more frequent. It was also easier for those wishing to make the journey out to the work camps, and spring brought with it an influx of pimps, prostitutes and professional gamblers. All of which made Merv Pritchard’s job that much harder.

‘Hello there, Merv, how’d you be?’

‘G’day, Jack.’ Big Merv Pritchard stepped out of the police car and nodded to the muscular Irishman who was leaning against the wall of the administration hut, chatting to his offsider and having a smoke. ‘I’m fine, thanks. What brings you two to Spring Hill?’ His query was facetious and required no answer – as if he didn’t know what brought Flash Jack Finnigan and his fellow card sharp to Spring Hill on payday.

‘Oh, just catching up with a few mates, you know how it is.’ The Irishman, a roguishly handsome man in his mid-thirties, gave an easy grin and dragged on his cigarette.

‘Sure I do.’ Merv smiled pleasantly enough, but his eyes issued a warning which Jack acknowledged; the men understood each other implicitly. Then Merv disappeared inside the admin hut for his meeting with Rob Harvey.

Jack Finnigan was the most successful of the local gambling kings, and well liked throughout the work camps where he and his offsider, a taciturn Latvian known as Antz, travelled intermittently. Jack ran his operation like a legitimate business, which it was as far as he was concerned, and he had his own code of ethics. If a married man was foolish enough to lose everything he had, then Jack would give him a sizeable amount back with the warning, ‘always leave some to send home to the wife’. If the same man was to repeat his folly, then Jack would bar him from future games, refusing to take his money.

Jack’s motives weren’t altruistic: he knew only too well that one of the rules by which gambling was tolerated was that the men should have money enough left to send to their families. But he was nonetheless perceived as a good bloke by all, and he reinforced the perception with generous donations and sponsorships. Churches and hospitals had a great deal to thank him for, as did a number of local youth organisations and football clubs. As a result, the police turned their well-practised blind eye to his lucrative business in the townships and work camps, aware that it was a case of ‘the devil you know’. Jack’s card and dice games flourished, and the ever-popular traditional two-up, played throughout the work camps, was a different sort of game when the Irishman was there. Flash Jack was prepared to meet the wager of every serious punter present and the stakes went higher than ever. He also organised sporting competitions and boxing tournaments, occasionally competing in the latter himself, ‘for the fun of it’. And it must have been, for when Jack competed, the money was more than likely on him and he stood to lose a bundle. It was a well-known fact that, not only was Jack Finnigan a master in the ring, he would never throw a fight in order to pick up the winnings. Flash Jack Finnigan was an honest bloke, the men said, and they were right. In his own way, Jack was.

‘Saw Flash Jack and his mate outside,’ Merv remarked to Rob Harvey after they’d greeted each other and he’d settled himself in the chair on the opposite side of Rob’s desk.

‘Yeah.’ Rob nodded, knowing Merv’s remark was not confrontational, but rather a friendly warning to keep an eye out for trouble. ‘We were just chatting.’ Rob himself wasn’t a gambler but, like Merv, he understood the men’s need for distraction in their sometimes lonely and always isolated world.

‘And there’s a caravan parked on the back road about half a mile out too. Nobody in it, but I take it a pimp’s arrived.’

It wasn’t a question – Merv didn’t intend to put him on the spot – so Rob smiled and shrugged his ignorance, although he knew the men had been queuing up outside the caravan throughout the night.

‘I’ll send him packing as soon as he opens for business,’ Merv said.

‘Fair enough.’ Rob involved himself in neither the gambling nor the prostitution which was readily on offer, but he could sympathise with those who did, particularly those wanting for female companionship.

Having spent all his working life in the company of men, Rob Harvey was self-conscious with women, even those who found him attractive, and many did. When he felt the need for female companionship, he didn’t visit the prostitutes in town, but made a discreet trip to Sydney. Not to the brothels, but to the more upmarket bars where women were impressed by men from the Snowy. Everyone knew that Snowy workers spent up big – a ten pound note was called ‘the Snowy quid’ in Kings Cross – and as a result Rob was able to conduct his transactions decorously. He never discussed money, always giving the woman her promised ‘present’ in an envelope as she left his hotel room, the mutual pretence that she wasn’t really a prostitute being maintained throughout. Like so many others, Rob Harvey was a lonely man.

But Merv hadn’t come here today merely to discuss the necessary vices of men. There’d been an outbreak of thieving over the past several months – tools and copper cable had been vanishing at an alarming rate. Pilfering from the company was not uncommon, copper cable regularly went missing – copper fetched a high price – and there were always farmers keen to buy tools at half their market value from the workers who smuggled the stolen goods into town. But the current spate of thieving had been on a larger scale than normal and more professionally organised. Rob and Merv had been doing their homework.

‘You were spot on,’ Merv said. ‘It’s Slim Parker all right. We’ve been keeping a watch on him, and one of the boys saw him unloading the stuff in his garage, bold as brass.’

Wayne ‘Slim’ Parker was a small-time sub-contractor. A local with an eye to the main chance, he’d put himself into hock, bought a ’49 Fargo and for the past two years had arrived every month, rain, hail or shine, to deliver his supplies of tobacco, Arnott’s biscuits, Vegemite, tomato sauce and every other manner of work camp necessity. From the outset, it had been easy for him to load the empty truck with a few added goods for the trip back. But lately he and his mates had become greedy.

‘We didn’t book him,’ Merv continued, ‘I wanted to wait until we could tie up your end.’

‘It’s an Aussie mob,’ Rob said, and Merv rolled his eyes in mock surprise. ‘Yeah,’ Rob agreed. Whenever there was a scam, it was invariably the Aussies, and it really pissed him off. Why couldn’t they just do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay like the migrants did? He’d sack them when they were caught, and he hoped they’d do time – it’d serve them right – but of course that’d all depend on the magistrate. ‘I’ll give you their names,’ he said. ‘They’re stashing the stuff in a work hut near the old tunnel site.’

Half an hour later, the policeman left, the plan being to wait until Slim’s next delivery, so they’d catch the men in the act.

As he drove off, Merv decided that while he was out here he might as well pay another visit to the pimp’s caravan. The bastard wouldn’t be open for business in broad daylight so he wouldn’t be able to book him, but at least he could piss him off. God, he hated the pimps. Scum of the earth.

The caravan remained deserted, however, pulled over by the side of the road, locked and empty. But the pimp would be back for business tonight. And so will I, Merv thought as he climbed into the police car.

From behind a clump of wattles, Al the Frenchie watched the copper drive away. He’d been strolling back from Spring Hill after a card game with some of the workers just off the morning shift when he’d heard the car coming around the bend behind him. He’d automatically ducked out of sight, probably unnecessarily, but it was a habit of his. Just as well, he’d thought, when he’d seen the police car. How come the coppers were on to him already? Word had never got out this quick before. Good thing he’d holed the two girls up at the pub for the day.

Al cursed the copper. He wouldn’t be able to work out of the van tonight, and the van always turned over top money, far more than the pub, particularly on payday. He didn’t dare risk it, though – the bastard copper was bound to turn up.

Alain Duval, known as ‘Al the Frenchie’ on his home turf in Sydney, had been a small-time but relatively successful Kings Cross pimp for the past five years. No-one really knew where he came from. He probably wasn’t even French. His English was fluent, but his accent was an indecipherable mixture of European-Australian, and he spoke a hybrid gutter language that befitted his trade.

It was the way Al wanted it: he liked to be a mystery. Besides, he felt that he added a touch of glamour to the backwater that was Sydney. He longed for the Berlin of the twenties, before the war, when he’d been nineteen and beautiful. Canny too. It had been an easy step from prostitution – men, women, he hadn’t cared so long as they paid – to running his own racket. Everyone had wanted him then, he thought. They’d wanted to fuck him, they’d wanted to be fucked by him, and most importantly they’d wanted to be a part of his life, so it had been easy to fuck them back. Berlin loved beauty in those days. Berlin had been the most erotic, most decadent city in the world. But the war had fucked them all, hadn’t it? Now he was no longer beautiful. A lifetime of debauchery had caught up with him and he knew it showed. He was forty-eight years old and he ran a team of doped-up hookers in Kings Cross. Life was shit. But at least he was still canny.

Al the Frenchie was indeed more cunning than most of his contemporaries. He’d been practising his trade in the Snowies for a number of years and he was yet to be caught. His visits were fleeting; he stayed for only several nights and was gone by the time the word had got around. He considered himself a valuable commodity on the Snowy: the workers needed to be serviced, and he was there to provide the women to do it. Shit, he thought, the hookers were hopeless on their own; they were slags, with no sense of business. But the Snowy was also a source of fascination to Al. All those Europeans working themselves into an early grave, he thought, earning a good quid it was true, more than they would in their home countries, but to what end? Accidents were rife, they lived for a quick visit into town every third payday weekend, and there was always a queue a hundred yards long outside his caravan. Shit, he thought, who’d want a life like that? Australia, the land of opportunity. Well, it was. For those who knew how to take advantage, and he did. In Al the Frenchie’s view, there were those who earned their money the hard way, and there were those who profited from their labour.

As Al watched the copper drive off, it irked him to think that he’d come all the way out to this arse-end of the world just for a one night stand. What the hell, he thought, there were other ways to make money. It was payday, Flash Jack Finnigan was at Spring Hill and there’d be big dough around tonight. He’d stay for the game, he decided. There’d be other strange faces turning up at the camp – Jack had a regular following, and all sorts fronted for play wherever the Irishman went. He wouldn’t call attention to himself, he’d watch from the sidelines, he decided, and who knew, perhaps he’d come out the winner in the end. Workers were renowned for being careless with their cash and Al’s fingers were nimble. They always had been. Ever since the good old days in Berlin.

‘Come in spinner,’ the boxer called.

Behind the corrugated iron hut that was the wet canteen, dozens of men were gathered around the ring of steel cable staked to the ground. Two men stood on the flattened surface in the centre and, as the boxer stepped back and the spinner raised the wooden kip in his hand, the crowd fell silent.

With a deft flick of the wrist, the pennies resting on the kip were sent spinning high into the air and, as they landed, the boxer stepped forward. The coins were resting heads and tails up.

‘No throw,’ he announced, to the spinner’s annoyance – it had been the third ‘no throw’ in succession. The boxer called in a new spinner, as the rules demanded after three ‘no throws’, and the kip changed hands. The babble of men’s voices resumed, until the next cry. ‘Come in spinner.’ And, for a brief moment, silence once again reigned.

Flash Jack stood among the crowd, to all intents and purposes just another punter, but his presence was forcing the stakes higher. Men pooled their bets, knowing that Jack would meet their wager, and the common aim was to beat the Irishman. Jack never controlled the two-up games – that was another understood regulation by which gambling was tolerated. Two-up was run by one of the workers, to protect the men from professional gambling sharks who might use weighted coins or manipulate the game in some way to their advantage. Jack abided by all the rules.

‘Heads!’ the boxer called.

‘Lucky by name, Lucky by nature, eh?’ Flash Jack Finnigan called across the ring, as he doled his money out to the runner.

Lucky returned a smile, accepting his winnings from the runner. If he’d had a quid for every time someone had said that, he thought … But he had to admit, these days he agreed with them, life was good. And tonight he was certainly having a run of luck. Not that it would have bothered him overly if he weren’t. He’d lost and won heavily on two-up in the past.

Lucky had never been a gambling man in his younger days, and he still didn’t consider himself one. But like the others, he earned big money and, like all those with no family commitments, there was little to spend it on. What else was there to do with one’s time, locked out here in the company of men? Besides, he enjoyed the simplicity of two-up. He played it with equal simplicity: he chose to bet heads or tails and then he stuck with it. The game usually favoured one or the other. Tonight it was heads – fourteen out of the last twenty throws had been heads – and he was doing well, a hundred and sixty quid to be exact, close to two months’ wages. He’d stick it out for another ten throws, he decided. Then he’d call it quits, since he was on the morning shift.

Jack Finnigan continued to back the spinner, who always tossed for tails; he was sure that the run on heads had to end. And Lucky bet a further twenty quid, again on heads, a number of the men pooling their fivers and tenners to join him. Lucky was on a winning streak, they’d decided, and Jack Finnigan, who was meeting the wagers and backing tails, was the loser. It was a good game for many tonight.

Al the Frenchie stood quietly at the back of the crowd. He didn’t bet – he never did, he considered betting a mug’s game – but he watched the play closely. The man with the bung eye was clutching close to two hundred quid in his hand, and he was one of those careless with money, Al could tell.

Out of the nine following throws, five landed heads. Lucky was still well and truly a winner, but his simplistic rule of play wouldn’t do him any favours if the next toss came up tails. It was his last bet for the night and he wanted to be adventurous, so he put a hundred quid on heads.

It was a lot to place on one throw and Lucky’s supporters voiced their approval loudly, pooling their own bets and looking to Jack Finnigan. There were smaller side bets going on, but the big money was all resting on the Irishman. Three hundred quid in all. Would he match it? Of course Jack did.

‘Tails,’ he said, nodding to them and flashing his easy smile. What the hell, losing at two-up kept him onside with the men. Antz’d be picking up a fortune in the wet canteen where a manila game was currently in progress, and he’d shortly be joining him to set up a pontoon table.

‘Come in spinner,’ the boxer called.

Silence again, as the pennies spun dizzyingly, seeming to halt in mid-air before starting their downward spiral. Then they landed, one with a gentle thud, the other rolling several feet before coming to rest.

‘Heads,’ the boxer announced. The men who’d been following Lucky’s lead roared.

The Irishman shook his head good-naturedly as he counted out the notes. ‘You’re breaking the bank, Lucky,’ he called, and the men gave another cheer – that’d be the day.

Al the Frenchie watched the runner cross to the man with the bung eye first before doling out the rest of the winnings to the other punters. He watched while bung eye gave Jack a wave and made his farewells. Several tried to persuade him to stay, but bung eye said he was on the early shift, and his mates slapped him on the back before turning their eyes to the next toss of the pennies.

Al edged around behind the crowd. Bung eye was stuffing about three hundred quid into his pockets as he walked off. Not a bad night’s takings, Al thought – the girls would have scored around the same with one night’s work in the van. If he could pull it off, it’d make his trip to Spring Hill worthwhile. He watched bung eye walk up the slope away from the mess hut and the wet canteen, towards the lines of huts and barracks. He didn’t follow him, but walked off towards the bushes at the edge of the settlement where he could observe bung eye’s progress without being observed himself. He had no intention of mugging the man; apart from the backhanders he dished out to the girls when they needed it, Al avoided violence like the plague. But it wouldn’t do any harm to find out exactly where bung eye was headed.

He kept to the bushes, dodging among them, following the man’s progress. He watched as bung eye walked along the road past the lines of barracks towards the row of snow huts. A single cabin, he thought. Promising. Then he watched as bung eye kept walking past each of the huts before disappearing into the one at the very end. Al couldn’t believe his luck. Things were looking distinctly possible.

Al the Frenchie’s presumption that he’d go unnoticed at the game had proved erroneous from the outset. Certainly there’d been men other than Spring Hill residents present, at least a dozen or more workers from other camps, and Al had been careful to hang back at the rear of the crowd, but word had been passed down the line nonetheless. One of the men who’d visited the caravan the previous night had recognised him and sent out a warning that the pimp was at the game, and Al had become aware of the odd muttered remark, the nudge of an elbow, a pair of eyes darting in his direction. They wouldn’t rat on him, he knew it, they wouldn’t want the girls to be sent packing, but he’d quickly abandoned any thoughts of pick-pocketing. Pity. It would have been so easy. The men were slack with their money and their wallets, he’d even seen one man’s pay packet sticking halfway out the back of his hip pocket. Unscrupulous as some were with company property, there was no thieving in the camps. The workers trusted each other. Al had done a quick rethink and stayed put, a mere observer of the action.

Now, as he watched bung eye close his cabin door, Al decided to come back in the morning. He’d heard him say he was on the early shift, and if the coast looked clear when the workers had gone, it’d be relatively simple; he’d done it before, the men rarely locked their doors.

He returned to his caravan. The copper would have been and gone now, realising the van wasn’t open for business. The bastard would be back tomorrow to move him on, but Al would be long gone by then.

Early the following morning, the two-up ring was deserted, but inside the wet canteen, dense with cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer, the card games continued; the heavy-duty punters were there for the long haul. Jack and Antz had worked throughout the night, and would no doubt work throughout the following night too. As the day wore on, they would take it in turns to grab half an hour’s kip in the back of Jack’s Mercedes – it was all they needed. Jack and Antz could deal cards for twenty-four hours straight with no more than a catnap in between. They’d trained themselves to do so. The official ruling that gambling was permitted only on pay night was regularly overlooked and the card games could go on for several days, the keenest of the punters paying others to work their shifts. Jack and Antz needed all the staying power they could muster.

‘Franta, he tell me you win big last night,’ Pietro said when Lucky had completed a head count of his work team. The men were milling around the trucks not far from the mess hut, about to head off to the work site, a good half-hour’s drive from the settlement.

‘I did.’ Lucky climbed into the truck’s cabin. ‘Want to ride in comfort? First in first served.’ Lucky always drove the lead truck, and it was always his catchphrase when he offered the passenger seat. Pietro piled in beside him while others of the team clambered into the open back. ‘You coming to Dodds tomorrow? I’ll be shouting the bar.’

‘I will be there, yes,’ Pietro said. ‘I take Violetta to Dodds for dinner and dancing.’

‘Good. Then we’ll meet up for a couple of beers beforehand.’

There was a signalling tap from behind and Lucky checked in his rear vision mirror to see that the men were all safely seated before pulling out into the street, the several other trucks following in convoy.

‘So how was your night, Pietro?’

‘Is very good. Vesna, she cook me dinner, after we practise our English. Vesna, she is very good cook, I think.’

Lucky smiled to himself. Pietro would have to be the only man on the Snowy who chose English practice in preference to a Flash Jack Finnigan gambling night. But then Pietro never gambled. He never had. He didn’t know how to.

Nine hours later, the trucks returned and the men piled out, tired, grubby, but in excellent humour. It was a Friday and Jack Finnigan was in Spring Hill.

‘Will you be coming to the game tonight, Lucky?’ Franta the Czech asked as they walked up towards the barracks.

‘I think I’d be pushing it, two nights in a row,’ Lucky smiled, ‘but I’ll see you for a beer in an hour or so.’

He walked past the barracks and the row of snow huts to his cabin, intending to collect his towel and fresh clothes and head straight for the ablution block. He’d get there early so he wouldn’t have to queue for a shower.

He knew he’d been robbed as soon as he opened the door – the thief hadn’t been subtle. But whoever it was had been quick and efficient, he realised, in and out of the hut within a matter of seconds, it appeared. The top drawer of the lowboy sat upside down on the floor, its contents tipped out beside it. Nothing else had been touched; the thief had immediately found what he was after. Lucky knelt and sifted through the mess of papers and toiletries that lay scattered about. His wallet was there, but the hundred pounds he’d put in it wasn’t, and neither was the envelope in which he’d put the rest of the money, intending to bank it.

In the five years he’d been working on the Snowy, Lucky had never known of a worker’s room being burgled. Men’s possessions were safe in the work camps; they trusted each other. It was only when they went into town that they needed to be wary.

He was angry, but he was also bemused. The thief was a stranger, he thought, a stranger who’d been at the game, and knew he’d won big. But the strangers who’d been gathered about the ring, pooling their bets along with the locals, had been men from other work camps, and they’d arrived together. He even knew a couple of them, he’d shared a beer with them in Cooma. They wouldn’t stoop to such an act.

Lucky had been so intent on the game that he hadn’t heard the whispers about the pimp, and the only other strangers he could think of were Jack Finnigan and his offsider. It wouldn’t be Jack, he knew that. Whether or not Jack was the soul of propriety he made himself out to be was perhaps a dubious point, but Jack Finnigan would certainly not risk soiling his reputation. The dealer maybe? The Latvian called Antz? Doubtful, but who could say?

As he sat on the floor, replacing his possessions in the drawer, Lucky cursed the man who had robbed him. Not so much for the money – easy come, easy go, he thought – but for the arousal of his suspicions, for the betrayal of trust which existed in this unique society of men in the wilderness.

He picked up the envelopes that were strewn about, and his pad of airmail writing paper. He’d forgotten it was there – he hadn’t written a letter for three years, not since his father had died. And he’d stopped corresponding with his old friend Efraim Meisell when he’d first come to the Snowies. He’d severed all ties with the past, even with the man who’d saved his life, he thought guiltily, as he placed the writing pad in the drawer. Then he saw the photograph, sitting on the floor. He’d forgotten that was there too. He picked it up. Ruth, radiant, captured laughing and exasperated by Mannie’s patience. He studied the photograph for quite a while before slipping it into his wallet. There were some ties with the past that would never be severed, he thought.

Lucky stood and slid the drawer back into the lowboy. He’d shower and then join the others. He’d have to borrow some money to see himself through till next payday. The thief had cleaned him out – the bastard.

‘You’re a bastard, Al, that’s what you are. A low, thieving bastard.’

Al cowered against the dresser in the corner, eyes darting towards the French windows that led to the balcony, but dismissing escape as an option. It was dark outside and even if he made it onto the balcony he’d probably break a leg jumping to the street one floor below.

The shock of his hotel door being kicked open and the appearance of the enraged Irishman had terrified Al, and his mind was racing. What the hell was Jack Finnigan doing in town? He was supposed to be in Spring Hill. How had the Irishman known where to find him? How did he even know his name? The men at camp must have told him, but why would Jack leave his game in full swing? Why would a few hundred quid nicked from a punter be of any importance to Flash Jack Finnigan?

Shit, Al thought, if only he’d left town earlier. But Friday was a top night for local trade, and he’d sent the girls off to do the rounds of the barracks at Cooma East. He’d been so sure he was safe. Nobody could prove he’d nicked bung eye’s money, and even if they suspected him, the workers from Spring Hill didn’t come into town until Saturday. He’d intended to be well away by dawn. Shit, shit, shit, he thought, if only he’d left earlier.

He tried to dredge up an air of nonchalance. The one option open to him was to bluff it out, and he relinquished his hold on the dresser, squaring his shoulders and running a casual hand through his hair.

‘That was quite an entrance, Jack. You gave me a fright, I have to admit.’ He painted a smile on his face, but his pulse was racing – there was murder in the Irishman’s eyes. ‘I don’t believe we’ve actually met, although of course I know who you are. Everyone knows Flash Jack Finnigan.’ The ingratiating laugh came out more of a strangled giggle. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. The name’s Alain.’ He offered his hand. ‘Alain Duval.’ And he stepped forward straight into Jack’s fist.

Jesus, what had happened? He was flat on his back, a ringing in his ears, one front tooth missing, several others loosened, and he was looking up at the powerful thighs of Flash Jack Finnigan standing over him.

‘Save your smarmy shite, you low thieving bastard, just give me the money.’

Al sat up and scuffled on his backside into the corner by the dresser, blood dripping from his chin.

‘What money, Jack? I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear it …’

But in two strides, Jack was once again towering over him.

‘No, don’t hit me,’ Al begged. ‘Please. Please. I’ve got money. You can have it. You can have all of it. Don’t hit me again. Please.’

The Irishman leant down and grabbed him by the shirt collar and, as Al was hauled to his feet, he felt the trickle of urine down his legs.

‘No, no, please. It’s there. The black bag in the top drawer. You can have it all.’

‘I don’t want it all, you lowdown scum.’ Jack released his hold on Al and took the black zippered bag from the drawer. He opened it and upended the contents onto the top of the dresser, hundreds of pounds spilling out, notes floating to the floor. ‘I won’t have your girls working their fannies off for nothing, although Christ alone knows what pittance they get to keep for themselves.’ He counted out three hundred pounds. ‘That’s around what you nicked from Lucky’s cabin, isn’t it?’ he said, folding the notes into a wad and shoving them into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack. But take it, it’s yours. Take all of …’

The Irishman’s fist once again crashed into his face, and Al felt the cartilage of his nose crumple. He started to slide down the wall, but Jack grabbed him again, by the throat this time, and held him up.

‘You’d let others take the blame, wouldn’t you, you wormy bastard? Well, I’ve a mind to kill you right here and now. I’d be doing everyone a favour.’ He balled his hand into a fist. ‘You don’t deserve to breathe other people’s air.’

As Jack Finnigan hauled his arm back, Al gave a strangled scream.

‘No, Jack! No!’ He tried to turn his head away but the hand around his throat tightened its grip. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, his face contorting as he gasped for breath, waiting for the killer blow. But it didn’t come. He waited, heart pounding, but still it didn’t come. He opened his eyes, barely able to see through the blood and tears. The Irishman remained poised, arm drawn back, fist at the ready. Waiting.

Waiting for what? Al’s mind screamed. A confession? He could have it. He could have anything. ‘I took it, Jack,’ he blubbered. ‘I took it, and I’m sorry.’ He was gagging and sobbing simultaneously. ‘I’m sorry, Jack, I’m sorry.’ The circle of urine was widening about the floor where he stood.

Jack released his grip on Al the Frenchie’s throat. ‘I tell you what you’ll do …’ he began, but Al once again started to slide down the wall. ‘No, no,’ he barked, ‘you’re not to fall. Not yet.’

It was an order, and Al clutched on to the dresser for dear life, whimpering, doing his best to remain standing, although his legs were like jelly.

‘You’ll leave, and you’ll not come back, you hear me?’

Al nodded, dribbling blood, not daring to speak.

‘As of tomorrow,’ Jack continued, ‘word will be out, around every work camp, around every town, and if you so much as show your face, I’ll kill you for the lowlife rat you are. Do you understand me?’

Al nodded again.

‘Say it, scum.’

‘I promise, Jack.’ Al the Frenchie’s reply gurgled its way out through blood and mucus. ‘I won’t come back, I swear I won’t.’

‘Good. We understand each other. You can fall down now.’

Al didn’t see the fist this time, but he felt it hit him in the midriff like a pile-driver, and he collapsed to the floor clutching his broken ribs.

The Irishman stepped back to avoid the pool of urine that was threatening his Italian leather shoes. ‘I’ll leave you now, Al,’ he said, ‘right there where you belong. Lying in your own filthy muck.’

It was ten o’clock when Jack’s Mercedes pulled off the main road and wound its way into Spring Hill. The trip to Cooma and back had cost him three hours. Three hours when he could have been making a bundle at his pontoon table. The visit to the pimp had been an expensive exercise. But he was proud of his actions. Even as he’d tipped the pimp’s money out onto the dresser, he had not been tempted to recompense himself for his loss. He would give no-one rise to accuse Jack Finnigan of thievery. Not even a lowlife scumbag like Al the Frenchie.

In the wet canteen, where the indefatigable Antz remained at his station, the men cheered Jack’s arrival. They didn’t know why he’d disappeared or where he’d gone. Even those who’d told him about the theft of Lucky’s money and the pimp being at the game had not assumed for one minute that Jack would take action. Why should he?

A bunch of the men started crowding around the pontoon table.

‘Give me a few minutes, lads, I’ll just grab a beer.’ Jack wasn’t going to grab a beer at all, he never drank when he was dealing, but he’d spied Lucky seated at a crowded table in the corner. He’d hoped the man hadn’t retired for the night – it would have cost more valuable game time finding him in his barracks.

Lucky was mildly drunk, which was unusual, he rarely had more than a couple of beers. But the men had been so outraged by the robbery that they’d all insisted upon shouting him a round. Every time he’d tried to leave, someone had insisted it was their turn, and he hadn’t been able to resist the camaraderie. He’d been relieved to hear about the pimp. Of course he’d known all along that the thief wasn’t one of them, but it had been a relief nonetheless, it had restored his faith in mankind. Well, the mankind that was the Snowy anyway, he thought a touch blearily. He was feeling very mellow in the company of his mates, but he was heartily sick of the taste of beer.

‘Can I see you for a minute, Lucky?’

‘Hello, Jack. You’re back,’ he said rather foolishly, looking up at the Irishman. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Had to make a little trip. Can I have a moment of your time?’

‘Sure.’ Lucky rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘Let’s go to the bar.’

‘Oh. Right.’ The Irishman was going to buy him a beer, Lucky thought. He really couldn’t stomach another one.

They edged through the crowd of men, Lucky wondering how he could politely refuse the shout, but when they got to the far end of the bar, Jack didn’t offer him a beer at all.

‘Got a little present for you,’ he said. And with the sleight of hand possessed only by magicians and master card dealers, the Irishman transferred the wad of notes from the inner breast pocket of his jacket to the outer chest pocket of Lucky’s shirt. No-one, including Lucky, had seen the transaction. Jack’s hands had simply flickered in the air as if he were making a gesture. ‘Three hundred quid, that’s what the pimp nicked, right?’

‘It was a bit less actually.’ Lucky was mystified. What had just happened? Something had landed in his pocket, he could feel it through the cotton of his shirt.

‘Well, it’s three hundred quid now.’

Lucky dipped his hand into his pocket, about to draw out the money, but the Irishman stopped him.

‘No, don’t,’ he said. ‘No need to advertise. We’re just righting a wrong, that’s all.’

But Lucky drew the money out anyway. He stared at it, dumbfounded, a thick wad of notes, how had it got there? God, but he must be drunk, he thought. He shook his head, further mystified as to why the Irishman should feel it necessary to reimburse him for the theft. ‘It’s very kind of you, Jack, but I can’t take it. I can’t take your money.’

He handed the wad of notes back, and the Irishman appeared about to accept it. But he didn’t. Instead, he took Lucky’s hand in both of his, and folded his fingers around the money.

‘It’s not my money,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’

Lucky tried to protest further, but Jack wouldn’t listen.

‘It’s yours, Lucky, I promise you. I got it from the pimp. He said he was sorry. So put it away, all right?’

‘You got it from the pimp?’ Lucky’s look of incredulity was bordering on comical, and Jack grinned his flashy grin.

‘Indeed I did, and he was most keen to give it to me.’ The Irishman’s grin faded as quickly as it had appeared. ‘He’ll not be showing his face around here again, you can tell your friends that. I’ll have no thievery at a Jack Finnigan game.’ Then he gave Lucky a comradely pat on the shoulder. ‘Now the men are impatient and the cards are calling, if you’ll excuse me.’ And he headed off to the pontoon table, leaving Lucky clutching the wad of money and staring after him in amazement.

Jack Finnigan was pleased with the turn of events. True to form, his actions had not been as altruistic as they’d appeared to others. They never were, for there was an element of self-interest in everything Jack did. And what was wrong with that? He was a businessman, after all. Certainly, when he’d taken off after the pimp he’d been in a towering rage: the scum had damaged his reputation, even threatened his livelihood. If word got out that Jack Finnigan’s gambling events attracted thieves to the work camps, he’d be banned. Jack had wanted to kill the lowlife scum bastard.

But, during the drive into town, he’d realised that the episode could prove an invaluable public relations exercise if he went about it properly. And he had. Bugger the money he’d lost during the three-hour visit to Cooma, he now thought, the pimp had done him a favour. Lucky was a man well-respected throughout the camp, one to whom the others listened, and he would tell the men what had taken place in just the right way. He would tell them that Jack Finnigan had taken care of the pimp, that he’d returned the money quietly, without seeking praise, and that he’d banned the scum from ever showing his face again. All of which would get back to the bosses – word travelled like wildfire in the camps.

I’ll have no thievery at a Jack Finnigan game. It had sounded good, the Irishman thought, and it would sound good to the authorities too, when they heard it. He must remember to bandy the line around a little in case Lucky forgot to quote him – the man had had a few drinks.