Chapter 2 — Red

Red Jackson stands on the gravel at Kununurra airport, Western Australia, watching an army truck driving away into the glare of a low sun. He shakes his head. The regiment might know war fighting, but it knows shit-all about husband–wife communication.

In his hand is a letter from Mia that’s covered in mud: the imprint from the post office saying it was sent on the 18th of November, almost two weeks ago. Having fallen from the console of the truck to the floor, it was nearly destroyed by the driver’s boot. Fortunately, the driver remembered it and handed it to him just now as he got out.

Red stuffs the letter into his pocket, turns and walks towards the tarmac. There was a time when he would have torn it open on the spot. He stops in his tracks and pulls the letter out again. She didn’t have to write. The least he can do is read the bloody thing and read it now. A lot of blokes would give anything to have a woman like her.

Nuh! Red says the word out loud and keeps walking. She can wait.

He dumps his bag on the ground beside a wire-netting fence and looks up. A pink and blue sky seems to rush at him like a freight train: nowhere, then everywhere, kind of poltergeist. Maybe he should rip all his clothes off and slit a throat, just to see what happens, to see if someone in heaven gives a fuck.

Whatever! He needs to read that letter before he loses it. He adjusts his bag as a pillow against the fence, sits on the ground and then stands straight up again, dusting himself down.

Five hours ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about plonking his arse in the dirt. He’s been living in it for Christ’s sake. But half an hour from now he’s got a serious appointment: a shower, shave, jeans and white T-shirt appointment.

He takes out his knife and slits the envelope open. Inside is a pink sheet of paper embossed with a frangipani. Holding it up to the light, he smiles at Mia’s trademark loops, which have always made her letters a work of art. A whiff of rose-scented perfume floats off the page.

The first part is about how much she loves him. Next is a description of Oksy being an angel in the school nativity play. Then, it’s about the garden and the choir—nothing about Green Avenue. Her normal handwriting stops at this point and the last bit, which seems to have been added later, is a messy scribble.

I tried to call you, they said you were uncontactable. We need to get out of here. You’ve probably already seen that stuff on the internet about me and Tate. It’s a lie. I didn’t get drunk on Tate’s yacht … I don’t know if I want to do this anymore. I’ll be at Mum and Dad’s on Wednesday 2nd December.

Mia xox

‘Jesus!’ he says, running a hand over a freshly shaven head.

Wednesday the 2nd is only four days away; this has to have been one of Mia’s fundraising adventures. With Tate, of course! Maybe she didn’t get paralytic, but she probably had a few too many and flirted her arse off. It explains the looks Red got from the secretary at the base when he and his unit disembarked. It also explains why Mia’s mother, Ludya, has asked him to come and see her at the family cattle station.

‘This is shit,’ he says, holding it out.

He puts the letter down and sends her a text. The message bounces, there’s no signal. He gives up on the phone and takes out a lighter.

This time there’ll be no bullshitting around. It’s going to be either him or Green Avenue. No more arse kissing. No more Tate and company.

Sitting on his haunches, he tilts the letter against a tussock of dead grass and flicks the lighter on, touching an edge with the flame. A brown burn line moves up the page, the words darkening and crumbling into ash. He stands up and nudges the last bits in with the toe of his boot, Mia’s name disintegrating into grey powder.

A droning of aircraft noise fills the sky. He looks up at a green and white Cessna, circling and glinting in the sun. The plane swoops down onto the tarmac like a Wedge-tailed Eagle after prey. With a bounce and a puff of dust it races along the runway.

Red kicks dirt over the ash, picks up his bag and walks out to meet the plane. Why even bother going to see Ludya? She’s too damn sensible. She’ll have plans. She’ll talk up patience. She just can’t believe that her daughter’s more interested in saving the world than having a marriage. All Red wants to do right now is to kill something! Something like Tate. He shouldn’t go there, he doesn’t know all the facts. Yes he does.

The plane comes to a sideways halt not more than fifteen paces from him, blowing dust into his eyes. A single propeller whistles and screams all the way down to idle. A big man in a navy blue singlet and stubbies, with a head of steel-wool hair, climbs out of the cockpit into dull red sunlight.

‘G’day Merv,’ Red says.

‘Yeah good,’ the other man says.

They shake hands. Red looks into hard blue eyes that seem to have heard the gossip. The same eyes stare at a Latin regimental motto on Red’s T-shirt, Foras Admonitio. Red braces himself for the translation and the comment that always comes: the same one every time.

‘“Without warning?”’ Merv says. ‘Why the fuck would you do it any other way? Warnings was what screwed us in Nam.’

They get into the cockpit. It’s hot. Horizontal sunbeams glance through the windows. Merv jokes about having to fly home like a bat in the dark.

‘Sorry,’ Red says, ‘It was a last-minute request from Ludya.’

‘Another skirmish with another hostile.’

‘Not Ludya mate, she’s the legend of the family.’

‘Your funeral, boy.’ Merv slaps him on the back. ‘What’s your mate Paddy call her? The “Dura” somethin’ or other.’

‘“Dura Mater.”’

‘Means “Tough Mother” eh?’

‘Yep.’

‘Walkin’ into the dragon’s lair son. Waste of a good Saturday night.’

‘Every woman’s a dragon according to you.’

‘Like ’em like that.’

Red puts on headphones and buckles himself in, enjoying the familiar smell of dust, leather and gun oil. One day he’ll be back here, with or without Mia. He could go jackerooing again.

Merv runs his fingers over lights and buttons and speaks into a microphone. There’s a crackle of radio voice from somewhere. Instructions are given about flight clearance.

Merv guns it, and one-hundred-and-fifty horses strain forward. The brakes come off and the old tail dragger charges down the runway and jumps into the air, flying over a town that glows like blocks of gold Lego in a vegetable garden. There’s the school where Red lost his first fight, the chalky orange hill he used to climb and the bend in the river with the cliff for jumping in. And right there on the edge of town, an intersection where his mum, dad and two brothers had been fatally T-boned by a road train with no brakes.

‘So what is it with this “drunk on the boat shit?”’ Merv asks. ‘Ain’t really like her is it.’

‘Nope.’

‘For Christ’s sake, mate—she wouldn’t be screwin’ him would she?’

‘Nuh.’

Red’s already told himself that a thousand times. But shit happens.

‘The sun’s shining,’ Merv says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. ‘What more can a man ask for?’

‘Yep.’

A straggly line of smoke drifts up from a row of hills dotted with green and blackened with burn-off. The smell of campfire fills the cabin. Merv adjusts their course; the smoke clears and Red’s looking down on thin white tree trunks, gashes of brown rock and patches of green. Those swaying trees could be waving to him.

‘Jungles are shit,’ Red says.

‘Yeah mate,’ Merv says. ‘Give me a hundred years of this any day.’

‘Perfect.’

‘Almost as good as a grenade up the arse of a slope.’

‘Might get out soon, I reckon.’

‘What was it this time? Peacekeeping for druggos or killing Arabs?’

‘Killing.’

‘Yeah, well, we killed a heap a slopes and look what happened—they own us now.’

‘Shaz still in rehab?’

‘Yeah, good—on the methadone. And you know what? She’s talkin’ up family. We gone to that counselling shit. Done us good, boy. Should try it yourself.’

‘What, sit around and talk shit?’

‘It’s not like that mate. They got us doin’ stuff. Even rigged up a big surprise anniversary for us. Half the town was there: me, the white fella with me white mates, and her, the black girl with her tribal mob—and not one fight! Just bloody cryin’ they all was.’

‘Yep.’

‘I’m serious, boy. Shaz talked me into being Santa at the friggin’ town Christmas Tree for Christ’s sake.’

‘For real?’

‘Yeah. Shaz was even talkin’ about you and Mia—y’know, like in the old days. The four of us goin’ on a trip somewhere.’

The conversation grinds to a halt. What the hell happened to those days?

Did they ever happen?

Half an hour ticks by. A call comes from Mia. Red fumbles for the phone and nearly doesn’t get it out in time. Why does she sound so scared? She says she’s seeing a barrister about the ‘drunk’ story. How come she can’t tell everything now? She will when she sees him. She says she has to go to a meeting at Green Avenue. She says goodbye and hangs up. Might as well have not called. Bloody hell! Even Merv is embarrassed.

‘Nice to see the Styx runnin’ again,’ Merv says, pointing down at a straggly green line of creek.

Ahead of them, the creek threads its way around a semicircle of black-tipped hills, a landmark of Mia’s family cattle station, Caradoka. As they get closer, the creek separates into two thin green lines bordering a sliver of brown. The motor changes pitch and they come down over hills of chocolate-brown rock, scraped and scarred by glaciers: a geological fact that Mia’s dad, Bill, likes to tell every visitor.

Red smiles to himself—he likes Bill. He would have made a great scientist or one of those raving naturalists with their own TV shows.

Merv takes the Cessna into a long U-turn until they’re flying back towards the sun. A shimmering iron roof appears, the word ‘Caradoka’ painted on it in black. Without that metallic gleam, the homestead would be hard to distinguish from an endless patchwork of mauve-tinted dirt, wattle and spinifex. One of those patches being the airstrip, which Merv is lining up.

The Cessna goes into a long, smooth dive, levelling out to horizontal. Horses surge along a fence line. A widening brown V rushes at them, a windsock flashes past and the cabin jolts as tyres grip with a roar.

They taxi towards a big shed, its frame silhouetted by the sunset. Merv pulls the plane into a U-turn and stops in a cloud of dust. Red apologises again for making him squeeze in this extra job. Merv laughs and says he’ll be using the sonar to get home.

‘Good luck, boy,’ Merv yells, jerking his thumb at the door. ‘See ya tonight. It is tonight ain’t it?’

‘Yep,’ Red says. ‘In the truck with Buddha.’

Red yanks his bag out and only just manages to slam the door shut before Merv cranks up for take-off, showering him with a gravelly prop-blast. Detouring around a mound of spinifex, Red walks towards the shed, its outline black and stark against a gold and purple sky. No sign of Ludya yet. The air is cool here.

Whatever happens next is bound to be awkward, but not as ugly as Merv would have him think—Ludya’s too much of a lady for that. Either way, Red’s got his exit plan worked out. An hour from now, he’ll be catching a ride in a truck to Merv’s cattle station, Glen Argyle. But instead of staying a week, it’ll be a night, then home.

While he walks, he does a mental check of the old and the familiar: the family’s beloved red helicopter sits on its pad out in the open, gleaming in the twilight. Deep inside the shed, he can just make out the Mercedes flanked by a Caterpillar grader on one side and a four-wheeler bike on the other. An empty space next to the four-wheeler means that Bill is not at home.

And there’s Ludya, almost invisible in the fading light, walking up from the house, a green scarf tied around her head. Behind her, he can see the lights of—as they’ve shown everyone on Facebook—a new homestead. The scarf means this has been an at-home day. Ludya will have been cleaning, cooking biscuits and making coffee, perhaps even for him, knowing her.

They meet and shake hands.

‘Welcome—I think,’ she says, looking up at him.

‘Hello—’ he says and then stops, wondering if this is a good day to call her ‘Mum’.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘You can still call me “Mum.”’

‘Mum.’

Red waits for her to turn around and walk but she stands there looking at him, as if she might be about to cry. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but it seems she’s still got the jeans and white Longhorn shirt happening. Her feet, however, are now in joggers instead of boots.

‘That man,’ she says, pointing up at the fading drone of Merv’s Cessna, ‘is insane.’

‘He is,’ Red says.

‘What are they feeding you son? You’re taller.’

‘Nope: still the six one-and-a-half. Must be these,’ he says, lifting a boot.

Red looks away. Even in this poor light, he senses a blankness in her face. Her shoulders are hunched. What does he expect? Here she is with him, the bloke who married her daughter and made a mess of it.

Ludya smiles as if she’s seen what he’s thinking, the smile showing a gap where a horse once kicked out a tooth, which she’s proud of. Straightening her shoulders, she becomes a bit more like her bright, big-busted Slavic self. Eskimo eyes are smiling; the magic is still there.

There’s a screech overhead. A falcon flaps past with a twitching lizard in its claws.

‘Beautiful, aren’t they,’ Ludya whispers.

‘Yep.’

Red follows Ludya past lumpy shadows of pepper tree to the front gate of the new homestead. Here, she stops to point out the carefully laid garden lights—shining like stars under the shrubbery—and the fact that the gate has been left untouched and unpainted, including its sheet of rusty iron with three bullet holes.

‘Bill’s idea,’ she says, laughing. ‘The rest is my little bit of Melbourne.’

While Ludya boasts about the lights, Red runs a finger along the steel tubing of the gate, wanting to say something about the fucked state of Melbourne.

‘Nice place,’ he says.

‘It’s a dream come true, darling.’

Mosquitoes sing. They walk through the gate to the veranda. Ludya opens a screen door and they step into a kitchen of bright bulbs, slate and stainless steel. An air conditioner blows a cool breeze.

Brushing past him, Ludya leads the way to a carpeted room with a big table of yellow and brown mulga wood. Sitting on the table are three tall candles and a vase of freshly cut yellow roses. Ludya strikes a match and moves it across the candles until each has a gentle flame. She turns the lights out and the room fills with flickering light.

A vague sense of embarrassment comes over Red. He should have known. Ludya isn’t the type to give the cold treatment. Here she is right now, making out his visit is a special occasion—even down to perfume, soft-pink lipstick and roses.

‘Bill got his way in here,’ she says. ‘I wanted floorboards.’

‘I like the set-up,’ Red says, ‘It’s—’

‘I know: laid out the same as before. We decided we liked it just as it was.’

It is just how it was: all the family photos, his and Mia’s wedding and his regiment portrait, all on one wall. Bill and Ludya’s wedding photo has been replaced by a recent one of the two of them in the garden, Ludya with a mischievous smile, her hair up in a bun, and Bill bald as a badger with a smile cracking that brick-red face. A crucifix and a large portrait of Bushka are on another wall: the portrait a reminder that for all the deep Aussie breeding on the Harwood side of the family, the Kourdakov line runs strong and deep, too romantic and impractical, Red thinks.

‘We did this other wall a bit differently,’ Ludya says, pointing to an autographed portrait of American country music singer Johnny Cash.

Red smiles. Bill has finally gotten his autographed original and Cash has finally gotten his space. Although this is a Catholic home, Johnny Cash is the saint Bill and Ludya love most of all. And Red doesn’t mind him either.

‘Isn’t Johnny a beautiful man?’ Ludya says.

‘He wouldn’t have said that,’ Red says, laughing.

‘And this, darling, is “sunset window mark two.”’

Ludya walks to a heavily curtained part of the same wall and slides the drapes back.

A deep violet colour floods into the room through a floor-to-ceiling French window. Red recognises the carved leaf pattern on the frame as the same as the old one.

Ludya opens the window and points Red to a row of leather lounge chairs facing it. Pulling off her bandana and flopping shoulder-length grey hair down around her face, she sits down next to him. He’s almost glad he came.

You’re better than that, he remembers her saying to him once, when he got involved in a feud amongst the ringers. And now as they sit close, talking in circles whilst looking at a square of violet with just one star showing through, he marvels at her ability to sweeten things. A no-bullshit lady of class, even if she wants to murder the man she’s sitting next to.

For a minute they just sit there and take in that darkening square, which now has three stars and a lumpy silhouette of hills along the bottom: the beloved Black Hills of Caradoka. He turns to Ludya, waiting for her to go first. She keeps her eyes on that sunset, her profile reminding him so much of Mia.

She looks at him as if to say, So?

‘I miss this place mum,’ he says.

‘I miss my girl, I miss you and I especially miss my little princess,’ she says. ‘Thank God you’ll all be here on Wednesday—for a month.’

He swallows a lump in his throat. He didn’t realise it would be a month. A month is a long time. Ludya takes a tissue from a box and blows her nose.

‘I tried to talk to her on the way here,’ Red says.

Tears brim in her eyes.

‘What would you like soldier boy?’ she asks, looking at the candles. ‘Coffee, Coke or Scotch?’

‘I feel like a Scotch, but—’

‘No, no it’s okay. The Scotch has been getting a workout lately.’

Drawing the curtains, she hurries into the kitchen, leaving him with the candles. A shot of liquor is just what he needs. In quick time she returns with the drinks, full to the brim, nearly spilling his as she puts them on the table.

Clinking his glass with hers, he takes a long mouthful, puts his glass back on the table and turns to speak his mind. She beats him to it.

‘I flew down there last week,’ she says. ‘That house of yours is like Fort Knox now—security guards, metal screens on the windows.’

‘And for some reason I have to be the last to know,’ he says.

‘I’m her mother,’ she says, looking at him and through him. ‘I can pick her lies a mile away.’

‘Lies?’

‘She tried to hide it from me, but I found my beautiful girl crying in her bedroom.’ Ludya takes a deep breath and adds, ‘He assaulted her.’

‘Tate?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean he raped her?’

‘He did. And he took her wedding ring.’

‘Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?’ Red shouts, standing up and slapping the table.

A candle falls over.

Ludya’s face has a ‘just been punched’ look about it. Red apologises for reverting to army speak, puts the candle upright, lights it again and sits back down, this time on a chair that’s facing her.

‘She begged me not to tell you,’ Ludya says. ‘She’s terrified you’re going to kill him.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Tate threatened to kill you if you try anything.’

Red holds back a smile. Can’t they see? Tate’s talking shit. How many targets would this old creep have ever slotted? Getting him will be too easy. The complicated bit will be getting away with it.

‘Has she gone to the cops?’ Red says.

‘He said he’d kill Oksy if she did.’

Ludya sobs, pulls a handful of tissues from a box and blows her nose. She keeps talking, her bony fingers clutching her glass like Oksy’s already dead. A Fight Club maxim comes to mind: ‘Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.’

Why not just do them all a favour and blow your fucking head off?

‘This is bullshit,’ he says.

‘Tate’s wife’s been talking to Mia.’

‘Claudia?’

‘That’s her. She caught a taxi to Mia’s the other night.’ Ludya smiles on one side of her face as she speaks. ‘She was stoned off her head and raving on about Janie.’

‘I’m going down there tonight,’ Red says, standing up.

‘But they’re coming here on Wednesday.’

‘No! We need to get them out now!’

‘So you do actually care?’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s like this, Red Alexander Jackson,’ Ludya says, standing up and facing him. ‘You’ve been flitting in and out of these bloody war zones for years. Where were you?’

Red turns and looks at the night sky. He knew this would happen. He needs Buddha and that truck. Sure he’s the bad boy, the soldier off on his missions, but what about Mia and Green Avenue: Miss Popularity?

‘Please, son,’ Ludya says, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You know for a fact there’s men down there watching her every day, hoping she’ll fall into their arms!’

‘Yeah, well—’ Red stops. He was about to say, They grabbed this time didn’t they? Instead, he says, ‘Last time I was there she spent most of the day at a fundraiser with Tate.’

‘And you were there for just one day?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Haven’t you ever heard of a woman’s “lying privilege?”’

‘A what?’

‘She wants to know if you’re serious. If you’ll fight for her, so she sets you up.’

‘Could’ve fooled me.’

‘She sure did. And I have another question for you.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Are you just wanting to play knight in shining armour for the rest of this marriage?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘You know how to kill the terrorists out there, but what about the terrorists in here?’ Ludya asks, pointing at her chest.

‘What the hell?’

‘She’s married to a man who won’t let her share her dreams with him. That’s a life sentence.’

‘It’s the same for me,’ Red says. ‘Where to from here?’

‘It’s called a tender heart son! A woman needs a man with a tender heart.’

Ludya reaches into a glass cabinet, takes out a portrait photo of Mia in her high-school uniform and puts it on the table. There she is, the girl with the flawless tan, sunny eyes and hair in braids, looking just like she did when she came home for holidays. He would be in the Landcruiser, watching her walk across the tarmac, falling in love with her and knowing he was too far down the food chain to ever get close.

‘Tell her,’ Ludya says. ‘Go on, tough guy! Tell her you’re more afraid of being vulnerable with her than you are of dying in some bloody godforsaken war.’

‘Vulnerable?’ Red asks. ‘You’re sounding like the army shrink.’

‘The shrink? So you’re actually talking to a counsellor?’

Ludya keeps going, wanting to know what this army counselling is all about but Red’s not listening. No way he’s telling her about the ‘Barbecue’: the name the unit’s coined for the shit that went down on his first tour. What do they expect when they send trained professionals in to sort out a bunch of school-aged suicide bombers? How the hell could he ever tell Ludya or Mia that sometimes Oksy’s footprints trigger a flashback: a smoking stump of human flesh that was once a seven-year-old kid running at him? He can’t and he won’t. And he doesn’t regret it. Those little fuckers got Snake and Ben. What do they expect?

‘Red, darling,’ Ludya says, taking his hand. ‘You’re shaking. Am I overdoing it?’

‘It’s alright,’ he says.

‘My Bill and the other Harwoods were never much good at this.’

‘Unlike the Kourdakovs.’

‘Don’t knock it, darling,’ she says. ‘At least us Russians put it out there.’

‘Anything else?’ He looks at the clock on the wall, which says 6:27 pm.

‘She’s my girl, you hear, my only girl!’ Ludya places the portrait back in the cabinet. ‘And she always will be.’

Red thinks of a hundred things and of nothing. He stares at the floor, the wall, anywhere except her. The distant rumble of a truck breaks the silence. His ride to Glen Argyle is here. The clock moves to 6:29.

Thanking her for taking the time to put him in the picture, he walks away. Ludya follows, talking at the same time as him: both of them offering shotgun apologies for everything. She beats him to the screen door and holds it open.

He stops in the doorway. Ludya puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him more advice but he’s not listening to a word. There’s a Glock revolver in a floor compartment under the bed at Jacaranda Street. Mia knows about it, but he forgot to tell her that the two spare magazines are empty and the one in the gun only has five rounds. She needs to restock and he needs to tell her he’s on his way home. With Claudia behaving like she is, Tate will be watching and listening-in on everything.

‘Is there something else you wanted to talk about?’ Ludya asks and asks again.

‘Tell Mia we can’t talk on her phone,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Just tell her that we can’t talk—but we will be able to soon.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Don’t say anything about this,’ Red says. ‘But I’ll have a live and ready-to-go smartphone delivered to her tonight. It’ll have a fake ID. I’ll call her once I know it’s been delivered.’

Looking as if she’s trying to say something but can’t, Ludya nods. The door closes with a bang and Red steps out into a million mossies and a billion stars. If only he was already there with Mia and Oksy. Mia shot a man once; she could do it again. She might have to.

He picks up his bag and walks up the hill towards the shed. The smartphone idea seems the most sensible. He knows a site that sells ones with fake ID and message encryption. This way Mia can use her old phone for normal stuff; her apparent silence will leave Tate a little pleased with himself, a little complacent. The unexpected is good right now.

There’s a loud roar up on the hill. Headlights silhouette trees, billowing clouds of dust roll up and over the shed and the noise gets louder.

Red hurries up the slope and reaches the shed just as a big white Kenworth truck comes to a stop, sending more clouds of dust over him and whatever else is in the shed. Emblazoned up on the truck’s bull-nosed wind-deflector is a caricature of a grinning Buddha, sitting cross-legged and wearing a terry-towelling hat: an Aboriginal flag in one hand and a football in the other. Although Buddha’s Aboriginal, he looks as white as most white fellas. Below in the cabin, Buddha himself sits behind the steering wheel, laughing, his bull neck and closely cropped head looking Shrek-like.

Pulling the passenger door open, Red steps up into the cabin and throws his bag on the floor. Buddha turns the volume down on a talkback radio show and they shake hands.

‘What’s goin’ on shag?’ Buddha says, punching him on the shoulder.

‘Not much,’ Red says, shaking his head at the word ‘shag,’ which for Buddha—and anyone who has grown up in Broken Hill—is a word with a dozen shades of meaning, from ‘dickhead’ all the way through to ‘mate’.

‘What are you so grumpy about?’ Buddha asks.

‘Nothing. What’s so funny anyway?’

‘None of your business, shag.’

Buddha puts the machine into reverse: the cabin rocking from side to side as he backs the trailer in a semicircle.

‘It must’ve been pretty good.’

‘It was,’ Buddha says, laughing. ‘Our cricket captain just got reprimanded for name-calling on Twitter.’

‘Serious?’

‘Yup!’

‘So what did he say?’

‘Called their captain “Queen Victoria!”’

‘I like it.’

‘Everyone does.’

‘Great way to get some heat into the Ashes, mate.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Buddha says, punching Red’s shoulder. ‘We better get out of here before you get funny.’