A Green Light: Book 1: The Kingdom of Children

By Ray Mooney

In Book 1 of A GREEN LIGHT: THE KINGDOM OF CHILDREN crime writer, playwright and screenwriter, Ray Mooney, masterfully explores the development of an ordinary boy into a cold-blooded killer.

Johnny Morgan is born into a suburban working class catholic family where he matures, on the one hand, within the strict regime of Catholicism and on the other, within a knockabout world where brute force and cunning are the preferred means of dealing with authority and survival.

The result is a value system of never dob anyone in, a misunderstanding and arrogance of sexual knowledge, and a yearning to be thought of as the best.

Morgan discovers there is a natural order of balance within society, and that forces of disorder, such as himself, are soon brought to task; that certain individuals are given an unofficial green light to have their way with him. He learns he can withdraw their green light by disrupting the natural order.

Morgan excels in street-wise cunning, a larrikin delinquent, torn between the feral and the ordinary human being.

The story is based on the author’s personal experiences, and those of his close friend, Chris Flannery, aka Mr Rent-A-Kill, Australia’s infamous hitman, missing, believed murdered.

The Kingdom of Children is approximately 58,000 words and is specifically formatted for Kindle, with an interactive table of contents.

The series has been developed from Mooney’s highly successful book, A Green Light, published by Penguin, Australia, in 1988, which became Penguin’s second biggest fiction seller for that year and established an industry of crime fiction within Australia.

Praise for Ray Mooney’s crime thriller A GREEN LIGHT.

Ray Mooney’s A Green Light, the most powerful crime fiction book I’ve ever read. – Alex Miller, Booktopiablog 2013

‘This is the most important and powerful book on crime ever written in Australia, if not anywhere.’ -- Barry Webster, Pulp Fiction, 3RRR.

‘Mooney’s handling of underworld dialogue is masterful...What we have in Johnny Morgan is an absorbing character study of one of the most unpleasant sides of modern-day society.’ -- Ian Freckleton, the Age.

‘A novel with the ferocious veracity of A GREEN LIGHT should make us all stop and think, and think again, about the patterns of power in our society’ -- Professor Stephen Knight, Sydney Morning Herald.

‘If the book stimulates one to think about crime, as it did for me, then it goes some of the way to meeting a higher goal. In the context of crime and prison literatuire I think A GREEN LIGHT is a valuable contribution.’ -- Michael Bersten, Lawyer, Legal Service Bulletin.

Dr Jocelynne Scutt wrote, ‘...for those of us who care about changing the mindless world of men, A Green Light is compulsory reading.’

About the author

Ray Mooney is a specialist in crime, regarded by many as Australia’s best fiction crime writer.

He’s written more than 20 plays specialising in crime, numerous films scripts, including the cult film, Everynight Everynight, co-authored with director Alkinos Tsilimidos and nominated for an AFI writing award. The film received numerous awards throughout the world.

His non-fiction book, A Pack of Bloody Animals, about the Walsh Street murders, set the cat among the pigeons, with its sensational revelations within police and criminal cultures.

He taught novel writing at tertiary institutions for twenty years.

A Green Light: Book 1 - The Kingdom of Children is approximately 58,000 words and is specifically formatted for Kindle, with an interactive table of contents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ray Mooney
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780987593603

Ray Mooney

Ray has been a freelance writer and lecturer in creative writing for three decades, specialising in novels, plays, film scripts and non-fiction books. He’s one of a handful of writers with major success in each category.His plays have been produced throughout Australia. His novel, A Green Light, became Penguin’s second biggest fiction seller for 1988. His screenplay, Everynight Everynight, co-written with director Alkinos Tsilimidos, won awards throughout the world and his recently published non-fiction book, A Pack of Bloody Animals, sensationally revealed another side to the Walsh Street murders.Ray specialises in crime and social injustice. His articles have appeared in many national and local publications including The Age, The Sunday Age and The Crime Factory.As an educator Ray lectured in novel, playwriting, screenwriting and short story writing at Holmesglen Institute, Box Hill TAFE and the VCA Film and Television School.Recently he completely rewrote A Green Light, regarded by many as Australia’s best crime book, into three stand-alone eBooks.His latest non-fiction book, The Ethics of Evil, about H Division, Pentridge, is due for release as an eBook.

Book preview

A Green Light,

Book One

The Kingdom of Children

By

Ray Mooney

Contents

Title

Copyright

Don't you realise who you're talking to?

Johnny Morgan, 4 years old

Busted at seven

Who do the nuns kiss?

The best bracken cutter in all the land

Nana Morgan

It was Johnny Morgan, Sister

It's a mortal sin to miss mass

Heaven's just a place of make-believe

God doesn't do things like that

Green plums

The Coote up there

Make me, Fatso

Life's one big picnic

The best things come in small packages

Five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers

Leader of the front row

Tarzan's going to die

I'll call the police

I wish I was a fish

The black heathens in Africa

Fat and Skinny

Corrigan

Sister Anna carried the banner

Corrigan again

The school fete

Busted again

Off to the footy

The day he hid under the couch

What's wrong with comics?

The Phantom only punches bad people

The things you do for love

The Tooth Fairy

Popeye eats cabbage

Tooth loose

The privilege of becoming the second Eve

Show us what's under there

Blackberries and bombs

Morgan beat a sixth grader

Sunday in the park

That's a poison eye

It was Johnny Morgan, Sister

Look what you've done!

Off to the best school in the land

A cup for second place

The legacy of Edmund Rice

Down the up escalator

Say goodbye

The house of The Lord

Prefects

Homesick

A day in the life

The worst reader of all time

The boatshed

Chips and Dairy Queen

George to the rescue

A new era

You took it, didn't you, Morgan?

Practise your dead-butts

Old Bill

Old Bill must have said something

Brother Fox?

Goodbye, Scottie

Have you heard this one?

Angels with six wings

The power of miracles

The dead language

A rude awakening

Peyton Place

Grab this

Not bad for a boy

Mrs Lamb

Vale Uncle Laurie

The body and soul of the devil

A tad young for the game

The best laid plans

He can work in the bar now he's fourteen

The Black Pope

Saturday

I'm not a dill

The Jazzers

The Railway's Gym

Race you round the block

Geez, you're a dirty bastard

Leave her alone

Let's see what you've got

The Rockers

Black Sunday

No longer a boy

You want to end up a cretin?

My shout

A recurring nightmare

Twelve with a ten

Copyright © 2013 by Ray Mooney

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in Australia

First Printing, 2013

ISBN 978-0-9875936-0-3

Bow Wow Productions

PO Box 47

Kangaroo Ground, 3097, Australia.

The main category of this book: 1. Crime.

Other categories: 2. Sexual abuse. 3. Delinquency. 4. Catholicism.

5. Christian Brothers. 6. Boarding schools. 7. Coming of age.

Editor: Lois Jessop

Production: AWM Agency

Dedicated to:

Andrea (AB) Bishop

Acknowledgments:

To Julie Watts, editor of the original book, A Green Light, published in 1988, but now completely rewritten. To Brian Johns and Bruce Sims from Penguin Books Australia. To Julie Van Kesteren, Alex Miller, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Wilde Mooney and Autumn Mooney for their creative support and encouragement. What a team.

ProloguE

Don't you realise who you're talking to?

Morgan had met Bushytail twice and wasn't certain how to take him, but there were things he disliked. He was old and wore a hat and in Morgan's world that put him at the back of the queue.

Morgan drank from a stubbie as he watched Bushytail patch the wire netting around the chook pen.

'What would've caused that?'

Bushytail didn't look up and that annoyed Morgan.

'Wombat.'

'I'd have thought it'd be a fox.'

'Stubborn creature, yer wombat,' said Bushytail, glancing at Morgan.

Morgan sniggered and shook his head to let Bushytail know he wasn't a wombat.

'Only gotta walk round, but he'll spend half his night burrowing through.'

That was another thing Morgan disliked: people who talked in metaphors and riddles. He picked up two sheep's knuckle-bones and wondered what type of life Bushytail had lived. He looked as if he'd worked hard all his life. But was he the accumulation of his experiences? Was he in control of his destiny? Morgan wanted to know because sometimes he felt he was an unanchored vessel in the current of other people, despite being thirty-two.

'You wanta put a few baits out,' Morgan said.

Bushytail glanced to see if Morgan was joking.

'For the foxes, I mean.'

'Way I see it, yer fox is entitled to a life.'

He hadn't expected Bushytail to defend the fox.

'Thought Wendy said they killed your last lot of chooks?'

'They did,' Bushytail said disdainfully, indicating that he might be annoyed at Morgan for something else.

'Well?'

'Only meself to blame,' he forced himself to say.

'For the fox killing your chooks?'

'Used ordinary netting.'

'Well that explains it,' Morgan said sarcastically. 'I'll tell them back at the club not to use ordinary netting for their fuckin' chook pens.'

Bushytail didn't react.

'Though they'd probably know without having to be told.'

Bushytail glared with a look old farmers give city fellows.

'Yer cunning old fox, yer see, he scares the dickins outa yer chook so the idiots put their heads through the netting and - chomp!'

'Ar,' said Morgan, genuinely surprised. 'So what did you do?'

'Cooked the biggest chicken casserole you've ever seen.'

It was Bushytail's turn to snigger.

'To the fox, I mean.'

'Nothing. Yer tamper with the natural set-up and yer asking for trouble.'

'So he knocks your chooks and you cop it sweet?'

Bushytail shook his head, indicating that Morgan had much to learn about life.

'Rewired it with chicken wire. Something I should've done in the beginning.'

Bushytail moved to another hole. Morgan watched a rooster grab a submissive hen by the neck and mount her.

'Got a bit of dash in him,' Morgan said, knowing he was a rooster and Bushytail an old hen.

'Just a young'un.'

'Could've fooled me.'

'Got a lot to learn.'

'Hah!'

Bushytail took a chicken carcass from the slops bucket and tossed it into the yard. The hens squabbled and fought as the rooster was relegated to spectator. Bushytail smiled to let Morgan know there was more to life than being a young rooster.

'That's yer natural order. There's a natural order in everything, son.'

'I'd still rather be a rooster.'

Bushytail carried some wire netting through the yard and the rooster flew at him, pecking him on the ankle.

Morgan laughed.

'I'd say he's learnt more than you give him credit for.'

Bushytail grabbed the squawking rooster and carried him to the woodblock where he chopped his head off. He grinned at Morgan as the headless rooster flew into the netting.

'When something upsets yer natural order, son, yer do something about it.'

The beast within Morgan stirred. He wanted the old bastard to know that there was no such thing as a 'natural order', that it's old bastards like you who're always putting up chicken wire that creates the 'natural order', that in his kingdom there was no chicken wire.

Bushytail was still smiling.

'Yer a long way from the city up here,' said Morgan, giving Bushytail the opportunity to change the subject.

'The benefit, son, is that yer yer own person.'

Morgan looked at the vegie garden and compost as would a city person.

'Pa used to put it. . . how?' said Bushytail, pretending to search for the right words. 'Better off being the head of an ass than the tail of a horse.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Bushytail watched Morgan throw a knuckle-bone at a hen.

'Only thing I remember my old man saying was, It's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.'

'Heard a lotta folks say that. Can't remember any of them amounting to much, though.'

Morgan looked at Bushytail.

You old fool, he thought. Don't you realise who you're talking to?

Johnny Morgan, 4 years old.

'Mummy, Mummy?'

'Yes, Johnny?'

'I had a dream.'

'Tell me about it, darling.'

'I…I'

'Don't stutter, darling.'

'I…I…was driving Ajax's car and…and…'

'Tell me.'

'And I started it all by myself…and…and I drove it real careful…and I went up the mountain…and…I didn't have a accident…and…and I was faster than everybody…and…'

'Where were you going, darling?'

'Kindy of course.'

Busted at seven.

Johnny Morgan had always called his old man 'Ajax'. Nobody really knew why. Nana Morgan said Ajax was a famous racehorse and as his old man was a 'famous' gambler it seemed appropriate. Ajax said it was because he was the strongest man alive, carrying the world on his shoulders. But Morgan was the only one who called him Ajax. His relatives scolded him for not saying 'Dad', but every time he yelled 'Ajax' his old man would answer 'Yes, son' so everybody could hear. That made him feel different but special.

Ajax was a bookie who also ran illegal place-cards on the horses, and Sunday mornings, after Mass, seven-year-old Johnny would watch him calculating his earnings on the kitchen table, like Scrooge in his money-filled vaults. Ajax could stretch an elastic band six times round a bundle of money. Sometimes there was no need for the elastic bands and Johnny could use them to kill flies.

The coins were kept in the bookie bag which hung like a giant Christmas stocking in the locked garage.

'Ajax?'

'What?'

'Can I play in the garage?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'It's full of spiders, that's why not.'

'But you go in there.'

'Don't be cheeky. Now go and clean your room.'

He waited until Ajax had gone to pay the winning bets.

'Mum?'

'What is it, love?'

'I'll fill the coal bucket if you like.'

'All right, but don't make a mess.'

'I won't. Ar, Mum?'

'What is it now?'

'The door's locked.'

'The key's in the cupboard in the wash-house. Be sure and put it back.'

It hung, begging to be opened, with JACK MORGAN printed in black on the sides. Johnny could see the kitchen from the garage door. His old lady was at the sink. He climbed on a bag of coal, reached up and opened the metal catches at either end. The loud click set his heart racing so he quickly shut the bag and put it back. He scooped the coal into the bucket and raced out, vowing never to do that again.

He had to wait three days until the coal was used.

'Mum?'

'What is it, love?'

'I'll get the coal if you like.'

'What's come over you?'

'Ar, well, you know Sister at school?'

'Of course.'

'Well, she said we should do a good deed each day for our parents.'

'What happened to yesterday's good deed?'

His old lady had a sense of humour.

He'd just climbed onto the coal bag when he heard the back door of the house slam and in his panic fell and skinned his knee. As he hobbled past the clothesline she asked what happened.

'Tripped,' he said, bursting into tears.

'Never mind, love. You can have a lolly for being such a good helper.'

Tears were his best friend.

Three days later he grabbed two threepenny bits from the bookie bag. That night he couldn't sleep.

'I'm sorry, God. I didn't mean to take them. If you don't tell Ajax I'll put them back. I promise I'll never do it again.'

God didn't dob and although he didn't return the money, his old man was none the wiser.

On the way to school next morning he bought a bag of lollies and a Phantom comic. Hosie, his schoolmate from a higher grade, said that making a promise to God wasn't a real promise because no one else would know, and for another tuppence they could've got a box of yesterday's cream cakes.

Soon he was grabbing handfuls of threepenny bits and the only person God told was the man in the milk bar.

'Yer old man havin' a good trot, eh?'

'Eh?'

'Reckon a man's a mug for not doin' the place-cards himself. Would too if the coppers'd let us. How many musk-sticks, you say?'

He couldn't sleep for fear of the milk bar owner telling Ajax, but luck was on his side. He figured that by part-filling the coal bucket, but making out it weighed a ton as he passed the old lady, he could get into the garage every second day.

The problem was the rattle of coins in his pocket. So he tied them into the corners of his hanky and stuffed his pockets with marbles. That way he could also carry aniseed balls. The trouble was untying the knots with his bitten fingernails; but who cared when you were the most popular kid in the class. Nobody else had lollies to share each morning or the latest comics to swap.

'Come here,' his old lady shouted. A thrill of fear rushed through him.

'Look at your pockets. Look at his pockets, Jack.'

His old man showed little interest.

'They're all torn. What've you got in them?'

'Nothing.'

'Come here.'

'There's nothing.'

'Then what're these?' she said, pulling three hankies out.

He couldn't think.

'What do you need three hankies for?'

'To play with.'

'Play with?' scoffed Ajax.

'Oh, I wish you wouldn't tie knots in them,' she moaned.

He silently prayed that she wouldn't find the money and promised God he'd never do it again.

'Ar, look!' she cried, removing three congealed aniseed balls. 'Where'd you get these?'

'Off Hosie.'

'Where does he get the money?'

'His father's rich,' he said, glancing at Ajax now shaking his head in disbelief. 'Fair dinkum.'

As his old lady went to wash her sticky hands he grabbed the hankies and darted out the door.

'Bye, I've gotta go.'

'Come back here,' she shouted.

He breathed again, feeling as though he'd been waiting to get the strap from Sister. But life was exciting.

He'd just reached into the bag when the garage door opened and his old lady shrieked. The shock sent him backwards and he hit his head on the ground. She ran to him and cradled his head as the tears flowed.

'Ough, ough . . .' he moaned, half-dead.

'Everything'll be all right. It'll be all right, Johnny.'

It was his smile of relief that gave the game away.

'What were you doing in your father's bag?'

'Ough, ough…'

'Johnny?'

'Nothing.'

'Don't lie.'

The tears streamed down his freckled cheeks.

'Stop grizzling. I want you to tell me what you were doing in your father's bag.'

'Just having a look.'

He could tell from her expression that previously unexplained things were starting to make sense to her, like the pile of new comics that 'Hosie swapped me', the bag of marbles 'I won off the new kids' and the meals he hadn't eaten because 'I've got a rotten stomach ache, Mum'.

'Have you been stealing from your father's bag?'

'I have not. I haven't. Have not. I was just having a look.'

'I want you to look me in the eye,' she said, gazing into his steel-blue eyes.

'I haven't, Mum.'

'Now listen to me.'

'I didn't, Mum, honest.'

'Listen.'

'Honest, Mum.'

'We're not rich, Johnny. We haven't got money to waste and we certainly can't afford you to go stealing what we have got.'

'I didn't, Mum, honest.'

The tone of her voice told him he was in for it, but probably not a thrashing. She had worse punishments, like not talking to you for a fortnight.

His Nana repeatedly told him the story of how he came to be named Johnny. Before he was born, his old lady was sick and not expected to live. Ajax took her to the hospital.

'Promise me one thing, Jack?'

'Anything.'

'If anything happens to me, promise me you'll call our baby Ray if it's a boy?'

'Ray, why would I call it bloody Ray?'

'Or Raylene if she's a girl?'

'Raylene?'

'It's mum's favourite name.'

'If anything happens to you, love, I'll call it Hooray.'

She wasn't known for appreciating other's sense of humour and refused to speak to him for weeks so he named the baby Johnny, after himself.

'Are you listening to me?'

'Yes, Mum.'

'You'll always be caught for the things you do wrong in life. I want you to remember that. Sooner or later you'll always be found out.'

'I didn't take anything, Mum. Honest.'

'God can see everything you do. You know that, Johnny? Everything.'

Of course he knew that. The Sisters told him every day that God saw and knew everything, even what he was thinking.

'If you do something wrong, God knows and he'll punish you. You'll burn in hell forever and ever.'

'Mummy?' he said, grasping her slender arm.

'Did you hear? Forever and ever!'

'Mummy?'

'What?'

'You won't tell Ajax, will you?'

He was seven years old and busted for stealing. Life didn't look too exciting.

Who do the nuns kiss?

'Of course he likes school,' his old lady said. 'You like school don't you, Johnny?'

'Course,' he lied, remembering the best thing that happened to him was having measles and being sent to bed