Non-Fiction — Highly Commended, Alan Hewitt
Alan Hewett has recently moved to Wodonga after spending seventeen years on a covenanted
fifty-hectare property in the Indigo valley. He’s retired from paid work and hopefully will have
more time to write now.
fifty-hectare property in the Indigo valley. He’s retired from paid work and hopefully will have
more time to write now.
Clock and Mouse
Clock was big. He’d been a big baby, over ten pounds. His sixteen year old mother screamed like a banshee having him but didn’t hang around too long after. His grandparents raised him but he terrorised them just like everyone else. At twelve he was six foot and still growing, solid too.
He could shovel the grub away.
He was tough from an early age. He wasn’t scared of anyone and pain never worried him. He would bash up any kid that took his fancy and take anything off them. One misguided father, sick of having his son coming home crying, clothes torn and his dinner money ripped off went after him. Clock hit him with an uppercut that forced the bloke’s teeth threw his top lip, not a pretty site and a salutary lesson for all.
Mouse was a premature baby who barely survived the first twelve months. It didn’t help that his mother smoked like a chimney and drank like there was no tomorrow all through the pregnancy. Mouse was always going to be small but he was tenacious, and clung to life like a barnacle on a ship’s hull.
He copped hidings from everyone, especially from Clock, but Mouse, although never endowed with smarts had cunning. He instinctively realised his key to survival was to ingratiate himself with Clock and live in his protective shadow.
Mouse hung around Clock like a bad smell. Clock wanted to break into places, but he was too big and cumbersome. Mouse could climb like a monkey and squeeze through the smallest gaps. If there was an easy way in he would find it. They broke into shops and offices. There wasn’t the security then, no cameras and few alarms. They stole whatever they could lay their hands on: petty cash, cigarettes, booze. They were inseparable and people learnt to treat Mouse with a bit of respect.
Clock’s reputation for violence grew. A fight broke out in a pub one night and it was very willing. The bouncer was a huge Maori called Sonny Swinson. He waded into the melee knocking people down with relish. Clock had jumped the bar and was trying to prise open the cash register. As the bouncer came towards him Clock lifted the register and hit him with it. Sonny let out a terrible scream, the corner of the machine had smashed his eye socket and his left
eye was dangling like a strand of spaghetti. Clock reached over and grabbed the eye, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.
The legend grew further when he got into an argument with a dealer over some drugs. The enraged dealer produced a hatchet honed to razor sharpness and swung it at Clock. He swerved, but the hatchet became imbedded in his hip. Clock battered the man senseless and staggered to a taxi rank where a petrified driver delivered him the emergency department of the local hospital. There are now hundreds of people who claim to have been there when Clock walked in, covered in blood, a hatchet protruding from his side, claiming he’d done it while chopping wood.
The dole and petty crime kept them in small change but occasionally they had to resort to ‘honest work.’ Clock had been stealing cars for joyrides since he was twelve. He could drive anything and despite never holding a licence drove tip trucks for a local firm. He only worked when he needed money and it had to be cash in hand. Mouse never held a job for more than a few days. He learnt to stuff up badly and get paid a weeks wage to be rid of. Mouse fell in with a dealer who wanted him to sell small deals, particularly to schoolkids. Mouse looked like a schoolkid anyway and he was so nondescript nobody took any notice of him.
Clock and Mouse were drinking together one night when Gary Felloes and his brother Keith walked in.
“Take a hike Mouse, business.”
You didn’t argue with those blokes, so Mouse made himself scarce. They came straight to the point. Gary outlined a plan so audacious that Clock
thought he was raving mad; they were going to knock over a hole in the wall.
Late on a Saturday night Clock and the Felloes’ opened the gate to the council yard. They had a complete set of keys. They started up a backhoe and backed it onto the back of a truck. Clock drove while the brothers sat beside him. No one spoke on the journey to the bank.
As they pulled up outside the bank they were wearing balaclavas. Two of the Felloes’ cousins were positioned at either end of the street armed with walkie talkies. When they heard “all clear” from both, Keith jumped out and set up the ramps as Gary started the backhoe. He roared down and swung around to face the ATM. He lifted the bucket and smashed the bricks above the machine. It hung down and he scooped it up and thrust it onto the truck. Leaving the backhoe running the brothers jumped in.
“Move it!”
Clock took off; incredibly, it had taken no more than five minutes.
Clock drove to a factory where the cousins were waiting. They hauled the cash machine off.
“Dump the truck”.
Clock drove off accompanied by Keith in a car. When they returned they were greeted with the smell of burnt metal. The machine had been cut open and the other three were standing around drinking beer and laughing.
“What’s the joke?”
“No joke, guess how much?”
“You tell me.”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“Chrisssst.”
Detective constable Matt Blakemore sat in the car park. He’d devoured two cheeseburgers, a large fries and a milkshake. His stomach felt like a turtle swimming laps. But it wasn’t just his guts that were churning. The boss had delivered a king sized spray. Somewhere out there were a bunch of lowlife crims who’d made world headlines. The first time anywhere that a cash machine had been stolen and it happened on their patch. Everybody was screaming blue fuckin’ murder, the banks, the government, the brass. Everyone was taking the piss, the papers, the radio, and the smart arses on the box. And he had copped it in the neck, as if he was personally responsible.
“Get out there and rouse up every informant, stand over every grub, shake down anyone who looks suss.”
Well he had. Blakemore had a slew of low level informants. Some gave him information, some kickbacks and the good looking ones the occasional sexual favour. Nothing! Not a whisper, not a name, nothing. He’d threatened, cajoled, offered money, handed out a couple of backhanders, nothing. Either too scared or too out of it to know what the hell was going on.
He contemplated an early beer when he saw Mouse moving through the car park. A couple of school girls with skirts up around their arse, thirteen going on forty, met him. He watched as Mouse handed over a couple of deals and the girls passed him some money. Blakemore revved up the car and drove full tilt at Mouse. The girls disappeared, “get in maggot.”
Judging by the look on his face Blakemore wasn’t in a good mood. He’d busted Mouse twice before and been paid off but Mouse knew his luck was running out, he was in deep shit. He was petrified of going to jail. He would never survive inside unless he got a protector and he knew what that would entail.
Blakemore eyeballed him. “Whatta you know about the hole in the wall job?” Mouse blanched.
Blakemore wasn’t the brightest cop but he sensed fear.
“If you know anythin’ you little turd, spill it or I’ll make sure you go down for a decent spell, sellin’ drugs to schoolies ain’t too popular.”
They say a drowning man’s life flashes before him; well Mouse’s life, as dismal as it had been so far was dear to him.
“I seen Gary Felloes talkin’ to Clock, he told me to piss off.” Gary bloody Felloes, a bit out of his league, but…. Blakemore leaned close to Mouse, “say one word of this and…..” he didn’t need to finish the threat, Mouse knew where he stood.
Just before dawn Clock was woken violently by the sons of god yelling and pointing their weapons at his head. Any doubts as to his connection with the hole in the wall robbery were immediately dispelled when the police collected the bank notes neatly stacked around the bedroom.
At the same time two further raids were carried out on Gary and Keith felloes. They thought they’d covered their tracks but Gary had given his wife some of the stolen money. The cops threatened to charge her as an accessory if Gary didn’t come clean, which he did. Keith thought he was safe until the set of keys to the council depot was found in a jacket pocket. No one gave the cousins up and they were never implicated.
Because they’d cut up the cash machine and dumped the parts the bank was out for blood. There was no idea how much was stolen, no record of withdrawals. Most of Clock’s share had been recovered but Gary and Keith only surrendered some. An example had to be set. With their previous records the brothers copped ten years each, while Clock received five.
Clock eventually found himself sent to Dhurringle, a minimum security prison. It was like a breeze compared to Pentridge. Clock’s biggest problem was boredom until he wandered into the gym. Always naturally strong he had never exercised seriously in his life. Now he began to pump iron with a vengeance. Aided by cocktails of speed and steroids he put on large slabs of muscle at an alarming rate. Drugs of all sorts were never a problem; the screws turned a blind eye so long as everything ran smoothly.
Halfway into his sentence Clock was outside sunning himself when a joker he’d never seen before sat down next to him.
“Message from Gary. One of his nieces works for an insurance mob. She was filin’ some papers when she saw her uncle’s name, so she had a sticky. Seems a jack copped a nice backhander for catchin’ youse. Named his informant. Yer mate Mouse. Gary said you’d deal with it.”
Clock was out in three years. With the connections he made inside he became very entrepreneurial. He was often used as a standover man to recoup bad debts. He rarely had to resort to violence but when he did it was short and brutal. If the victim had no cash, he would ‘confiscate’ whatever valuables were around. On one occasion he discovered a crossbow with six metal bolts. These he kept for himself.
Mouse had decided to go straight. He’d found a job in a garden centre, which to his surprise he enjoyed. He even shacked up with a girl who worked there. He was enjoying life until Clock rang him.
They moved a stack of chop chop from Myrtleford to Keilor. Clock drove and any reservations Mouse might have had evaporated. Clock was in good spirits and regaled Mouse with prison tales. Listening to him Mouse relaxed, Clock made it sound that jail was like an extended holiday. He flexed his massive arms as if to vindicate his words. The job paid well and Clock indicated there were plenty more. When he dropped Mouse off he grabbed him by the shirt,
“say nothin’ to nobody.” Mouse nodded.
The call came on a cold winter’s night.
“Meet me at the end of yer street, rush job.”
Mouse told his missus he’d be gone a couple of hours at the most.
Clock was waiting in a black Land Cruiser with tinted widows.
“Nice wheels.” Clock merely nodded. Mouse sat back. They drove through the western suburbs and then out on the Western Highway. At Bacchus Marsh they turned south. They passed a sign ‘Brisbane Ranges National Park’ and suddenly Clock turned onto a dirt road. Mouse felt a prickle of fear run through him.
“Where we goin’?” Clock said nothing.
Mouse sensed that something terrible was about to happen. In desperation he tried to unlock the car door and jump but Clock lashed out with a savage punch to his jaw.
They drove on until they reached an intersection Clock manoeuvred off the track and into the bush. He stopped the car. The sky was brilliant with stars and a sliver of a moon. A freezing night. He walked to the back of the car and pulled out a length of rope. He opened the passenger door and yanked Mouse Out. He was semi conscience from the blow and his jaw hung slack.
“Get yer filthy clothes off, dog.”
Mouse could barely comprehend what he was asked to do. A vicious kick sent him to his knees. As if in a dream he stripped off his clothes. The cold revived
him as Clock grabbed him and dragged him to a tree highlighted in the car’s headlights.
He pushed him against the tree and began to wrap the rope around him tightly. Clock walked to the back of the car again.
Mouse could see nothing in the glare. He tried to speak but the words were slurred. Clock placed a bolt in the crossbow and stepped closer.
Taking aim he shot it into Mouse’s left shoulder. The cry of pain that emanated from Mouse was so loud, so primal, that Clock stepped backwards. The scream continued, a piercing wail that filled the empty night.
Clock rummaged in Mouse’s clothes. He stuffed his dirty underpants in his mouth and tied his shirt around. Then he calmly took aim again and shot a second bolt into his right shoulder. Mouse’s body shuddered and writhed. The third bolt struck him in the left thigh. Mouse convulsed and hung still, passed out from the pain. Clock slapped him awake and fired the final bolt into Mouse’s right knee. Mouse slipped into unconsciness again.
Clock collected everything up and threw it in the car. He drove back into the city and parked. He made a short ‘phone call. He then poured petrol over the car and set it alight. He walked to the end of the street where he was picked up.
Two bushwalkers found Mouse a week later. Clock was interviewed but had a half a dozen witnesses who swore he was playing poker all night. He’d wanted Mouse to suffer, so he was bitterly disappointed to learn that instead of a slow, lingering death, he’d choked on his own underpants.
He could shovel the grub away.
He was tough from an early age. He wasn’t scared of anyone and pain never worried him. He would bash up any kid that took his fancy and take anything off them. One misguided father, sick of having his son coming home crying, clothes torn and his dinner money ripped off went after him. Clock hit him with an uppercut that forced the bloke’s teeth threw his top lip, not a pretty site and a salutary lesson for all.
Mouse was a premature baby who barely survived the first twelve months. It didn’t help that his mother smoked like a chimney and drank like there was no tomorrow all through the pregnancy. Mouse was always going to be small but he was tenacious, and clung to life like a barnacle on a ship’s hull.
He copped hidings from everyone, especially from Clock, but Mouse, although never endowed with smarts had cunning. He instinctively realised his key to survival was to ingratiate himself with Clock and live in his protective shadow.
Mouse hung around Clock like a bad smell. Clock wanted to break into places, but he was too big and cumbersome. Mouse could climb like a monkey and squeeze through the smallest gaps. If there was an easy way in he would find it. They broke into shops and offices. There wasn’t the security then, no cameras and few alarms. They stole whatever they could lay their hands on: petty cash, cigarettes, booze. They were inseparable and people learnt to treat Mouse with a bit of respect.
Clock’s reputation for violence grew. A fight broke out in a pub one night and it was very willing. The bouncer was a huge Maori called Sonny Swinson. He waded into the melee knocking people down with relish. Clock had jumped the bar and was trying to prise open the cash register. As the bouncer came towards him Clock lifted the register and hit him with it. Sonny let out a terrible scream, the corner of the machine had smashed his eye socket and his left
eye was dangling like a strand of spaghetti. Clock reached over and grabbed the eye, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.
The legend grew further when he got into an argument with a dealer over some drugs. The enraged dealer produced a hatchet honed to razor sharpness and swung it at Clock. He swerved, but the hatchet became imbedded in his hip. Clock battered the man senseless and staggered to a taxi rank where a petrified driver delivered him the emergency department of the local hospital. There are now hundreds of people who claim to have been there when Clock walked in, covered in blood, a hatchet protruding from his side, claiming he’d done it while chopping wood.
The dole and petty crime kept them in small change but occasionally they had to resort to ‘honest work.’ Clock had been stealing cars for joyrides since he was twelve. He could drive anything and despite never holding a licence drove tip trucks for a local firm. He only worked when he needed money and it had to be cash in hand. Mouse never held a job for more than a few days. He learnt to stuff up badly and get paid a weeks wage to be rid of. Mouse fell in with a dealer who wanted him to sell small deals, particularly to schoolkids. Mouse looked like a schoolkid anyway and he was so nondescript nobody took any notice of him.
Clock and Mouse were drinking together one night when Gary Felloes and his brother Keith walked in.
“Take a hike Mouse, business.”
You didn’t argue with those blokes, so Mouse made himself scarce. They came straight to the point. Gary outlined a plan so audacious that Clock
thought he was raving mad; they were going to knock over a hole in the wall.
Late on a Saturday night Clock and the Felloes’ opened the gate to the council yard. They had a complete set of keys. They started up a backhoe and backed it onto the back of a truck. Clock drove while the brothers sat beside him. No one spoke on the journey to the bank.
As they pulled up outside the bank they were wearing balaclavas. Two of the Felloes’ cousins were positioned at either end of the street armed with walkie talkies. When they heard “all clear” from both, Keith jumped out and set up the ramps as Gary started the backhoe. He roared down and swung around to face the ATM. He lifted the bucket and smashed the bricks above the machine. It hung down and he scooped it up and thrust it onto the truck. Leaving the backhoe running the brothers jumped in.
“Move it!”
Clock took off; incredibly, it had taken no more than five minutes.
Clock drove to a factory where the cousins were waiting. They hauled the cash machine off.
“Dump the truck”.
Clock drove off accompanied by Keith in a car. When they returned they were greeted with the smell of burnt metal. The machine had been cut open and the other three were standing around drinking beer and laughing.
“What’s the joke?”
“No joke, guess how much?”
“You tell me.”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“Chrisssst.”
Detective constable Matt Blakemore sat in the car park. He’d devoured two cheeseburgers, a large fries and a milkshake. His stomach felt like a turtle swimming laps. But it wasn’t just his guts that were churning. The boss had delivered a king sized spray. Somewhere out there were a bunch of lowlife crims who’d made world headlines. The first time anywhere that a cash machine had been stolen and it happened on their patch. Everybody was screaming blue fuckin’ murder, the banks, the government, the brass. Everyone was taking the piss, the papers, the radio, and the smart arses on the box. And he had copped it in the neck, as if he was personally responsible.
“Get out there and rouse up every informant, stand over every grub, shake down anyone who looks suss.”
Well he had. Blakemore had a slew of low level informants. Some gave him information, some kickbacks and the good looking ones the occasional sexual favour. Nothing! Not a whisper, not a name, nothing. He’d threatened, cajoled, offered money, handed out a couple of backhanders, nothing. Either too scared or too out of it to know what the hell was going on.
He contemplated an early beer when he saw Mouse moving through the car park. A couple of school girls with skirts up around their arse, thirteen going on forty, met him. He watched as Mouse handed over a couple of deals and the girls passed him some money. Blakemore revved up the car and drove full tilt at Mouse. The girls disappeared, “get in maggot.”
Judging by the look on his face Blakemore wasn’t in a good mood. He’d busted Mouse twice before and been paid off but Mouse knew his luck was running out, he was in deep shit. He was petrified of going to jail. He would never survive inside unless he got a protector and he knew what that would entail.
Blakemore eyeballed him. “Whatta you know about the hole in the wall job?” Mouse blanched.
Blakemore wasn’t the brightest cop but he sensed fear.
“If you know anythin’ you little turd, spill it or I’ll make sure you go down for a decent spell, sellin’ drugs to schoolies ain’t too popular.”
They say a drowning man’s life flashes before him; well Mouse’s life, as dismal as it had been so far was dear to him.
“I seen Gary Felloes talkin’ to Clock, he told me to piss off.” Gary bloody Felloes, a bit out of his league, but…. Blakemore leaned close to Mouse, “say one word of this and…..” he didn’t need to finish the threat, Mouse knew where he stood.
Just before dawn Clock was woken violently by the sons of god yelling and pointing their weapons at his head. Any doubts as to his connection with the hole in the wall robbery were immediately dispelled when the police collected the bank notes neatly stacked around the bedroom.
At the same time two further raids were carried out on Gary and Keith felloes. They thought they’d covered their tracks but Gary had given his wife some of the stolen money. The cops threatened to charge her as an accessory if Gary didn’t come clean, which he did. Keith thought he was safe until the set of keys to the council depot was found in a jacket pocket. No one gave the cousins up and they were never implicated.
Because they’d cut up the cash machine and dumped the parts the bank was out for blood. There was no idea how much was stolen, no record of withdrawals. Most of Clock’s share had been recovered but Gary and Keith only surrendered some. An example had to be set. With their previous records the brothers copped ten years each, while Clock received five.
Clock eventually found himself sent to Dhurringle, a minimum security prison. It was like a breeze compared to Pentridge. Clock’s biggest problem was boredom until he wandered into the gym. Always naturally strong he had never exercised seriously in his life. Now he began to pump iron with a vengeance. Aided by cocktails of speed and steroids he put on large slabs of muscle at an alarming rate. Drugs of all sorts were never a problem; the screws turned a blind eye so long as everything ran smoothly.
Halfway into his sentence Clock was outside sunning himself when a joker he’d never seen before sat down next to him.
“Message from Gary. One of his nieces works for an insurance mob. She was filin’ some papers when she saw her uncle’s name, so she had a sticky. Seems a jack copped a nice backhander for catchin’ youse. Named his informant. Yer mate Mouse. Gary said you’d deal with it.”
Clock was out in three years. With the connections he made inside he became very entrepreneurial. He was often used as a standover man to recoup bad debts. He rarely had to resort to violence but when he did it was short and brutal. If the victim had no cash, he would ‘confiscate’ whatever valuables were around. On one occasion he discovered a crossbow with six metal bolts. These he kept for himself.
Mouse had decided to go straight. He’d found a job in a garden centre, which to his surprise he enjoyed. He even shacked up with a girl who worked there. He was enjoying life until Clock rang him.
They moved a stack of chop chop from Myrtleford to Keilor. Clock drove and any reservations Mouse might have had evaporated. Clock was in good spirits and regaled Mouse with prison tales. Listening to him Mouse relaxed, Clock made it sound that jail was like an extended holiday. He flexed his massive arms as if to vindicate his words. The job paid well and Clock indicated there were plenty more. When he dropped Mouse off he grabbed him by the shirt,
“say nothin’ to nobody.” Mouse nodded.
The call came on a cold winter’s night.
“Meet me at the end of yer street, rush job.”
Mouse told his missus he’d be gone a couple of hours at the most.
Clock was waiting in a black Land Cruiser with tinted widows.
“Nice wheels.” Clock merely nodded. Mouse sat back. They drove through the western suburbs and then out on the Western Highway. At Bacchus Marsh they turned south. They passed a sign ‘Brisbane Ranges National Park’ and suddenly Clock turned onto a dirt road. Mouse felt a prickle of fear run through him.
“Where we goin’?” Clock said nothing.
Mouse sensed that something terrible was about to happen. In desperation he tried to unlock the car door and jump but Clock lashed out with a savage punch to his jaw.
They drove on until they reached an intersection Clock manoeuvred off the track and into the bush. He stopped the car. The sky was brilliant with stars and a sliver of a moon. A freezing night. He walked to the back of the car and pulled out a length of rope. He opened the passenger door and yanked Mouse Out. He was semi conscience from the blow and his jaw hung slack.
“Get yer filthy clothes off, dog.”
Mouse could barely comprehend what he was asked to do. A vicious kick sent him to his knees. As if in a dream he stripped off his clothes. The cold revived
him as Clock grabbed him and dragged him to a tree highlighted in the car’s headlights.
He pushed him against the tree and began to wrap the rope around him tightly. Clock walked to the back of the car again.
Mouse could see nothing in the glare. He tried to speak but the words were slurred. Clock placed a bolt in the crossbow and stepped closer.
Taking aim he shot it into Mouse’s left shoulder. The cry of pain that emanated from Mouse was so loud, so primal, that Clock stepped backwards. The scream continued, a piercing wail that filled the empty night.
Clock rummaged in Mouse’s clothes. He stuffed his dirty underpants in his mouth and tied his shirt around. Then he calmly took aim again and shot a second bolt into his right shoulder. Mouse’s body shuddered and writhed. The third bolt struck him in the left thigh. Mouse convulsed and hung still, passed out from the pain. Clock slapped him awake and fired the final bolt into Mouse’s right knee. Mouse slipped into unconsciness again.
Clock collected everything up and threw it in the car. He drove back into the city and parked. He made a short ‘phone call. He then poured petrol over the car and set it alight. He walked to the end of the street where he was picked up.
Two bushwalkers found Mouse a week later. Clock was interviewed but had a half a dozen witnesses who swore he was playing poker all night. He’d wanted Mouse to suffer, so he was bitterly disappointed to learn that instead of a slow, lingering death, he’d choked on his own underpants.
