Chapter 27

I had made it all the way through the bitter winter in Canberra reasonably fit and healthy only to be struck down late spring with a cold. It didn’t make any sense. I’d gone from freezing cold outside to the warmth of our office complex and that hadn’t caused any ill health problems and yet when the days became longer and the nights warmer my body had said enough was enough. Thank heavens my mother wasn’t around. Her sympathy consisted of hot chicken soup a bowl with Vicks Vaporub and boiling water in it and a towel over my head. A head cold was no excuse for not your chores either. Your body may feel lethargic but Mum’s voice permeated every cell and none were allowed to rest. In fact, you got more time off when you were well. It was kind of a perverse logic she had. I did miss her though. I missed dad not as much and I sure missed Tom. Their letters were a reminder of a different life and with one year to go of National service, each day ticked off was part of a big countdown to returning to normality.

In Tom’s letters he was obviously pretty besotted with Jean’s sister. Didn’t figure him for being the romantic type. Bookworm yes. Intelligent yes. Smart arse definitely. He had been boosted ahead one-year level at school and was about to finish his final year. He had no idea he said about what he wanted to do. Probably Uni he said in his letter. In my reply I advised him against the armed forces saying the uniform may look good but wasn’t worth all the shit that went with it. I knew my letters were read before they were sent but I hoped that would get past the officer who read it and probably empathised with my thoughts. There was no word of Jean. It was as if a hole somewhere had appeared and swallowed her up. At some of the pubs that provided the only night life in Canberra, my basketball mates had tried pairing me up with some girls but somehow nothing worked. There just didn’t seem to be the depth of character I was looking for in any of the women I was introduced to. Perhaps I was being too fussy one mate had suggested but it was difficult to explain. He on the other hand wasn’t that fussy at all and made the most of the hormone induced rituals that both sexes engaged in to escape the rut and routine and dullness of their daily existence in Canberra.

Outside of work, there was sport, keeping fit and drinking. I was getting better and better at the latter and a number of times I am not sure how I made it back to the barracks and was well enough the next day to work. Unlike a lot of soldiers at the barracks I was a nine-to-five soldier. I didn’t have to parade. I didn’t have to attend any meetings on the base that weren’t JIO. It was a strange position to be in really and I wondered how others on the base viewed my freedoms. Perhaps I was a bit up myself in thinking that they even thought of me at all. I was a non-entity in reality. I didn’t associate with them. I sometimes ate in the mess hall but was an outsider to all their conversations. At times, as I walked past a group conversation would cease and only resume when I had moved on. Were they worried that I was spying on them? I too had such paranoia but, in my case, there was probably more genuine reasons for it. All throughout the JIO building you got the sense that you were being watched and every action scrutinised. If you were absent for any reason there was an inquisitorial debriefing by your superiors. I chose to work with a severe head cold simply to avoid that.

That sense of constantly being observed caused me to be even more wary about any documentation I had. That concern was well placed when I was called before the colonel. He had a book on his desk and I recognised it as one that I scrawled in and was kept in my room hidden in my mattress. He opened it, turned it so that it was facing me and instead of asking for an explanation he just stared at me. I stared back but across his shoulder at the calendar on the wall behind him. Nearly Christmas. Nearly my birthday. Nearly over.

Finally he asked, “What’s this, Downs? Why was it hidden inside your mattress in the barracks? You have a lot of explaining to do. I haven’t that much time so you had better start and don’t pad it out with lies. I have an inbuilt bullshit detector that has been honed over a number of years.”

I looked down at the dog-eared pages in front of me and sighed. However as much as it may have seemed a defeated sigh to the colonel, in reality it was a sigh of relief. Two weeks earlier I had realised the awful predicament I would have been in if my journal and my grid had been found. I decided on another hidey hole for that information. It was now securely filed away in a cabinet behind a cleaner’s storeroom in the dungeon. What the colonel had in his possession was a book that had the same front cover, looked as well-worn as the original journal but had different contents. It had taken a few days to ‘weather’ the book to look like the original. Its contents were as series of letters and initials and a number of columns dates and entries. They could have meant anything but the colonel’s suspicions were aroused.

“Well Downs, I am waiting.”

I picked the book up and scanned through the pages. I had somehow sensed that I had been watched and I was so glad that I had taken precautions and that this was found. Atkinson trusted nobody obviously. He observed, found weaknesses and then manipulated people. This was his strength and perhaps also his weakness as his confidence in his own judgements was high.

“Life in Canberra is as boring as shit sir….’ I began.

“Cut the preamble son. What is this shit?” he interrupted.

“I have been looking for patterns, sir. What you see are a series of dates, names and outcomes.”

Atkinson’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Outcomes of what? And whose names are they?” he demanded to know.

“Not of who sir. They are the initials of horses. The dates indicate when they ran. Numbers indicate odds and placings. I’ve got enough information in there to have a real plunge come the autumn. I know which horses will be coming back from a spell and what lead up races some will use to just warm up before they really strut their stuff.” I flicked to one page and pointed to one marked AD. “This one is Arcasian Daughter. She performed poorly in the Melbourne Cup carnival races and has been spelled ready for the autumn. There is a mark next to her which indicates she runs better clockwise. She will come in at long odds when she starts again in Sydney in the autumn. I figure she will need two races to get up to speed which will probably be on country tracks and then her first big chance will be at Randwick early April. Even if she places, she will have started around fifty to one and an each way bet will be a big win. And see that one FT, Fatima’s Trauma. That is a gun horse sir but those numbers next to him indicate he has been given heavy weights based on his early wins. Now he has lost a few the weight will….”

“I get it Downs. You’re a gambler but a smart one you would have me believe. However, that vice leaves you open to outside influences. I can’t have that, so you can give that up or you can give up working here. Your choice. I’ll keep the book while you think it over. Let me know at the end of the day at the latest.” He said with a smile that would freeze blood.

I left his office grateful for my foresight in scribbling out a lot of dates and initials and random numbers. I was also very grateful that I was able to give him a couple of examples. If he checked, and I had no doubt that he would, he would find that Arcasian Daughter and Fatima’s Trauma were in fact real horses and the numbers and symbols tallied. I was dead in the water if he had asked about many of the others in the book. He was right about me being open to influence. Whatever I chose, he believed he had enough evidence to manipulate me as he saw fit. And that was a position he enjoyed no matter who he came across.

By the end of the day I had made my decision and returned to his office. I was going to stay in the JIO. I asked for the book back insisting that I wouldn’t use it. He stared at me as if I had said something outlandish. Instead of handing the book over, he turned around, removed the calendar and opened the safe hidden in the wall behind it. He ceremoniously placed the book in the safe on top of other items. He closed the door and spun the combination lock.

“For safekeeping Downs, excuse the pun. When you finish up here, you’ll get it back I promise. You can then check to see how well your predictions went. You never know I could have saved you a lot of money.”

His voice was very chirpy and had a smug superior tone to it. He caught me looking longingly at the calendar. He must have thought I was wistfully staring at a fortune that had gone begging. But I wasn’t. I was wondering about the other items in the safe and who they belonged to and what the colonel was getting those people to do.