Ecstasy Lake Read Free Page B

hadn’t seen him for a couple of years and, to be honest, Steve, he didn’t look too good. He was thin, his face was lined, he had sores, he smelt like shit. He was sweating and sniffing the whole time and generally he wasn’t nice to be near.’
    â€˜Alcoholic?’
    â€˜Addict. Heroin.’
    â€˜Hiskey was a smackhead?’
    â€˜He was. Had been for years. He kept it hidden for a long time, but I knew. He used to hit me for money.’
    â€˜And you paid up?’
    â€˜For a while I did. Until I found out he was using my money to feed his drug habit.’
    â€˜He was getting you to pay for his habit? What a dick.’
    â€˜Addicts are not honest people.’ Tasso picked up his rod and spun the reel a few times. ‘So, for a long time I had nothing to do with him, but you never completely get rid of someone like Hiskey. He was a mate. When we met up, he was excited about something. He pulled those two bits of paper out of his pocket.’ I was still clutching the second one. ‘We were at a bar. He’d had a bit to drink by then but he was coherent. He said he’d discovered a massive gold deposit and wanted my help to develop it.’
    â€˜What did you say?’
    â€˜The first thing I said was, how massive? And he said thirteen million tonnes. Minimum.’
    â€˜That’s something.’
    â€˜It is. Given that gold is worth fifteen hundred bucks an ounce at the moment, what you are holding in your hand, my friend, is ten billion dollars. Minimum.’ He watched me to see the effect. I pretended to let the paper flutter over the side of the boat. He laughed. ‘Only you would do that, Steve.’
    I said, ‘Okay, you’ve got my attention. Ten billion dollars is big money, even for you.’
    â€˜Yeah, he had my attention by then, too. But you know what prospectors are like. They’re the world’s biggest optimists; they exaggerate; they always reckon they’ve found the big one. I told him to start at the beginning, so he did. He was part-owner of an exploration and development company; it’s called Black Hill Exploration. They’d found a few ore bodies in the past, enough to keep the operation afloat, but things had flattened out. Mick was working several exploration licences and turning up nothing. They’d been drilling left, right and centre and all they got was shit. But one day he was wandering the bush on one of the exploration leases when he stumbled on an outcrop of rock that he said just had a look about it. He thought it might contain mineralised gold, so he took a few samples and got an assay done. That was the first sheet I showed you. Things had been going downhill for Hiskey in the real world. Black Hill wasn’t the best-run company in the business and they were always having cash-flow problems. Mick was a heroin addict, and being a heroin addict is expensive, very expensive. And, perhaps worst of all, he had a personal problem with the co-owner of Black Hill, a guy called Hardcastle.’
    â€˜A personal problem?’
    â€˜Yeah. Hardcastle was fucking Mick’s wife. Sonia. Remember her?’
    â€˜Vaguely, yes. Pretty; I remember that. Too pretty for Hiskey.’
    â€˜Evidently. So that’s why Mick wanted to do what he wanted to do. Hardcastle was doing the dirty with his wife, so Mick decided to keep the find to himself.’
    â€˜Even though Black Hill owned the exploration licence.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    â€˜So we’re talking fraud.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Tasso unpeeled his sunglasses and looked at me. He squinted in the glare but I guessed he wanted me to see his eyes. They were as energised as they ever were. ‘But who would be the victim, Steve? Just some dick who was porking Hiskey’s wife on the sly.’
    â€˜I suppose so.’ Tasso’s squinting black eyes were scrutinising, moving back and forth. ‘Keep going.’
    He re-donned his