poured a cup and lifted the lid on silver vessels containing milk and sugar.
I said, ‘Thank you,’ again and felt as if I should tip her.
Almost as soon as I took a swallow the receptionist said, ‘Mr Van Keppel will see you now. Please take your coffee in with you.’
I’m too old a hand to fall for that. Balancing a cup in one hand is no way to meet someone you want to be forceful with. I replaced the cup on the tray and went through the polished teak door. The office was surprisingly small and surprisingly tasteful. I’d been expecting something Texan in style, but it was more modest-standard size desk, filing cabinet and bookshelf. No wet bar in sight, no conversation pit. It was about twenty notches up on my office in Darlinghurst but I felt comfortable in it. Watch yourself, Cliff, I thought. That’s how he wants you to feel.
Van Keppel was a medium sized man with thinning sandy hair and an outdoors look-weather-roughened skin, faded grey eyes and work-enlarged hands. He came around the desk and we shook. Strong grip, but not too strong.
‘Sit down.’ The accent was South African touched with something else, maybe Australian. ‘I know you’re working for Jack Brown, looking into the trouble he’s had. I agreed to see you because I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea if I hadn’t, but…’ He spread the big hands. ‘I don’t know how I can help you.’
‘I take it you could buy Jacko out?’
That surprised him. ‘Is he thinking of selling?’
I smiled. ‘No, I just wanted to see how the idea struck you.’
He nodded and didn’t say anything. He was good. A people manager.
‘Would a community bank be a thorn in your side?’
‘It’d depend on its policies and its size. But I would think not. We could get along.’
‘We?’
‘The larger operations.’
‘Who are well organised.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Wouldn’t it be tidier if you mopped up the small-timers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t you have helped the Carter’s Creek bank to stay open?’
‘Probably.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘We bank in Sydney.’
‘No feeling of obligation to the area, to the community?’
‘Western Holdings sees itself as part of the global community, Mr Hardy, and-’
‘Which is no community at all.’
He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘-and our obligation is to our shareholders.’
And that was about that. We batted it around for a few minutes without me scoring any runs. We shook hands again and I left. The coffee had gone, which was a pity. I’d have drunk it cold. It was good coffee.
I talked to old Harry Thompson, Syd Parry and Lucas Milner but got nothing useful from them. They all seemed fond of Jacko and worried about their jobs. None was particularly interested in the community bank idea one way or the other. They took it in turns to drive into Cobar to bank and seemed quite happy with the arrangement. Thompson and Parry were single and occupied fibro sleep-outs in a paddock behind the farmhouse. Milner lived with his wife and child in a house he’d built by the creek a kilometre away. Jacko had made a subdivision for him and he owned the acre block freehold. When I asked him if this was his country he smiled.
‘No, Mr Hardy. I was brought up in Redfern. I came out here ten years ago to get away from all that shit.’
‘What d’you mean?’
He rolled a cigarette, lit it and blew smoke. ‘I mean all that political shit. I believe in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and that’s all I fuckin believe in.’
Over the next few days I drove around the district talking to various people. I had a chat to Sergeant Vic Bruce, who’d heard some talk about the threats to Jacko but didn’t seem very interested.
‘Town’s dying, Hardy.’ He laughed, signalling a joke coming. ‘And I’m dying to get out of it.’ I guessed he’d used the line a few times before.
Roger and Betty Fairweather, the parents of Jacko’s late wife, were guarded. Without actually saying so, they implied that they blamed Jacko for their daughter’s death. But I got the feeling that it wasn’t a strong emotion, more an expression of loss than an accusation. Her two brothers, who’d owned a smallish farm carved out of the original property, had recently sold to one of the big operators and moved away. They’d gone before the threats started.
I was running out of suspects. I kept an eye on Kevin but, apart from reluctantly doing some desultory work on the property, he spent most of his time in the pub drinking with his mates. He had a motive-the hope that his father would sell up. But as he seemed to be relying on Jacko to stake him in some way and didn’t have the gumption to get away on his own, it seemed unlikely he’d have been able to mount the campaign.
I mostly steered clear of the pub, especially when the old Bedford truck that belonged to Kevins mate Jimmy was parked outside, and that was most of the time. I didn’t fancy another run-in with Jimmy. But I did manage a talk over a beer with Ted Firth. I pumped him a bit, asking about word processor users and people who might oppose the community bank idea. I had another of his wife’s massive sandwiches, but otherwise I got sweet f.a.
Jacko seemed to perk up although I told him I wasn’t making progress. It seemed he was and apparently he’d had a good response to a call for a meeting in town in a couple of days time to discuss the bank proposal.
‘I’ve got an offer of state government support,’ he told me after we’d demolished another of his microwaved dinners and I was working on a scotch and water. ‘Well, a sort of expression of interest, you might call it. But it’s something, and maybe I can swing some of the waverers with it.’
He’d told me how the bank could be funded on the basis of the value of the properties the shareholders held and how capital could be raised and invested. That sort of talk bores me and I’d barely listened but I gathered that those coming into the scheme would be staking their futures on its success.
I yawned. I hadn’t done any investigating that day but I’d chopped some wood and scythed some long grass-the sort of things city slickers do when they visit the country. Do once. ‘Risky, is it?’
He shook his head. ‘Not if it’s done right. Unless we get some capital and modernisation into these farms, and kick the country towns back into life, we’re going under anyway. I have to make them see that somehow.’
Jacko had convened a meeting to be held in the school hall two nights away. He asked me if I’d go with him to meet some of his supporters.
‘I’m more interested in meeting your detractors.’
‘There’ll be some of them as well.’
I agreed to go and I filled in the daylight hours tramping around the farm, fishing without success in the creek and working my way through a few of the paperbacks in Jacko’s scanty library. In with the novels and non- fiction were a few expensive hardbacks which turned out to be school prizes for Kevin. He’d attended a boarding school in Canberra and had won prizes for geography and economics in his HSC year and for a few other subjects earlier on.
When I was sure he was well out of the way I sneaked into his room and looked it over. No computer, no rifles, just the usual young person’s detritus of clothes, sporting goods, magazines and keepsakes. A framed photograph lay face down on the chest of drawers, I turned it over, being careful not to disturb the dust that had gathered around it. It was a family picture-Jacko and Shirley as the proud parents of teenagers Debbie and Kevin. At a guess it had been taken two or three years back. Kevin’s expression was cheerful and hopeful, not the miserable scowl he wore nowadays.
Kevin’s sporting trophies-for football, basketball and tennis-lay in a jumbled heap in his closet along with a
