Ratso: The Bloody Rat

By Warren Forster

The explosion changed Bretts life forever. The body of his wife, Maxine, was blown apart; her guts had fallen on the concrete floor. Drugs and death is generated from a florist wholesaler. Brett is a screwed-up guy who has lost the plot and was now working for William, who is the boss of the florist. The fruit market owner, Palo, and his son Val knew drugs were distributed by the florist but have no proof. But they were determined to track it down in a lot of dangerous ways. Val and his Yankee mate Ratso kidnapped Jules, who worked for William, and killed her in a terrible way and disposed her body at the zoo in the lions den.

The whole deal exploded from there and brought it to the climax in Brisbane, where the only survivor is Brett.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543403992

Warren Forster

Warren Forster was an extensive traveler in his younger years and met a large number of a different range of people. He uses his knowledge of Australia and the many stories he has been told to add to his book.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Warren Forster.

ISBN:                        Softcover                        978-1-5434-0400-5

                                  eBook                              978-1-5434-0399-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/13/2017

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Prologue of Untitled Book

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Warren Forster Unnamed Novel Disc 2

Prologue of Untitled Book

Warren L. Forster.

Dawn was close. There was a waning moon, the last taste of winter. A thin ribbon of pink in the east hinted of the beauty in the day ahead.

She rolled over on her back, her body clock cutting in, opened her eyes and turned on the radio. The digital readout gave her four thirty am.

‘Shit, why can’t that market keep civilised hours?" she muttered.

She had no choice if she wanted fresh merchandise. The auction kicked off at six o’clock.

The shower was hot and felt good; she turned off the water and wrapped herself in a large fluffy towel. In the bedroom she looked at her body.

‘Not bad for forty eight’ she said out loud.

Parts had dropped somewhat but that was to be expected, she felt she still scrubbed up well. In the kitchen the automatic kettle whistled, Maxine fixed what little make-up she wore and sipped her coffee whilst brushing her long dark brown hair.

Roll back the hours to one thirty am and in the dark of the garage a figure light on their feet moves towards the Mercedes 280SE. The shadowy figure slides under the driver’s side of the car. A box the size of a cigarette packet is taped to a cross member and two wires connected to the starter motor terminal. This bomb was brilliant, so simple, a detonator with a time pencil, when the starter is turned a plunger is activated, it crushes a phial of acid which burns it’s way through a copper diaphragm, it will do so in twenty seconds. After that the mercury fulminate will detonate the Semtex-H.

The dawn began to flood the lounge with light. She locked the front door, went to the garage, put her bag in the back and made herself comfortable in the drivers seat. With as press of a button from the remote the garage door ground to life. The Metallic Gold Mercedes hummed hungrily. The effect of the blast was awkward. It did not go up and sideways but more at an angle, forward and towards the passenger side of the car. It blew off her left leg from the hip down and also her left arm below the elbow, in the nano second of life left to her she looked down through a golden haze and saw a red mass slip over the scat edge, flop onto the floor slide through the jagged hole left by the bomb. The last conscious memory was not of frilly white clouds but of a sharp wrench. She realised with a scream that never came that her internal organs had been severed from her body.

Chapter 1

The hull thumped. Twice in the last five minutes. The tide was ebbing. Brett knew he would soon have to ease the run-about off the sand bank, but put it off. He was tired and knew he would have to cut back on the hours and travelling he had been doing lately but it was a busy time. He did not feel fifty-five, he was in good condition, solid, five foot ten inches and weighed in at one hundred and fifty pounds. He had fair skin, brown hair and piercing green eyes that could turn very icy when he was upset. He also had a bad temper, which he had learnt over the years to control up to a point.

The fifteen-foot Ski-Craft was not that heavy and would slide off the shallow bank of Mud Island. A low area of sand, mud and scrub situated at the mouth of Port Phillip Bay. He sat back and sucked on his stubby of XXXX. There were four left from the half slab he had brought at the Portsea Pub last night. Hopefully they would last him. Brett’s vision drifted across the bay in the early morning darkness, to the whale like shape of Mount Martha to the northeast, his gaze swung down the shore with it’s twinkling lights towards Portsea t:aking in the villages of Dromana, Rosebud, Rye and Sorrento.

The scene resurrected an event from seventeen years ago. He had taken his wife at the time and his six-year-old daughter, Sophie, to the New Years Carnival at Rye. A slight shudder went through him. He had taken Sophie on a ride called the Pirate, which was shaped like an old sailing ship, it swung back and forth on a pivotal arm, as the speed increased it swung higher, you were strapped in. Sophie was very slight; as the speed increased she started to slip under the restraining bar. He remembered that he panicked but found he could not stop her slipping. He jammed his leg over her body; he knew he was hurting her. She screamed, all the other riders close to them thought it was funny and she was enjoying the thrill. All he thought of was her flying out of her seat and being smashed to bits in the machinery on the ground. The ride seemed to go on forever, it kept going higher and higher. Her mother stood at the side waving not realizing what was happening. By this time Sophie has slid down so only her shoulders and head were under the bar. He shut his eyes, let go of the re: training bar; he found that the G forces were pressing him back into the seat. He grabbed her with both hands and clutched her to his chest, she was now crying and held in tightly. The ride started to slow. He remembered the sigh of relief that left him. He smiled as Sophie started to laugh and say what a great ride it was, could they go again.

‘You have got to be joking’ he thought ‘no fucking way’

That night held good and bad memories; his life at that time had been full, a good job, a wife who loved him and a great family.

The scanner in the boat bought him back to the present, the red light had been flickering and the volume had been turned down. He heard faint voices; quickly he turned up the gain control on the Sony ICF Pro. The scanner’s digital read out repeatedly flashed through a sequence of channels pausing only when the frequency was in use; he heard a couple of quick exchanges from the Rosebud police to one of their cars. Then the Portsea car put in a ten-eighteen, which made him laugh, as he knew the call sign was to tell the cops in the patrol car that they wanted extra olives on their pizza. Typical of how busy it was down here in April. None of these Portsea cops would ever die from over work that showed in the size of most of their bellies. This area of the bay was a great place to be posted; you were not only working for the Victorian Government but also for the rich and would-bee’s of this village. You would not call them corrupt but from the sergeant down their main job was to make sure that no outsiders caused any problems to the silver tails who either lived or week ended in the area.

A slight breeze rustled the water and sent a chill down his spine. The stunted tea tree shrubs on the fore shore cast a shadow across the sandy beach; little soldier crabs scurried away from the gently lapping waves to the safety of their holes. He looked at his watch, saw he still had two hours to wait until the Asu Mai came through the Heads and headed up the East Channel to drop anchor off Williamstown. He jumped out, picked up the sand pick and rope, b1rought it back about ten metres closer and sank in the muddy sand. He then pushed the boat back to make the line taunt; this allowed the boat to float freely. He stretched and did some knee bends to loosen up his back and legs.

Time to reflect, life moves in funny ways, his life had changed so much in the last two years. At that time he had been happily married and looking forward to the easy end of a long and reasonably successful business life. Money was :always a problem, as usual with most people not enough but with more hard work and a few right breaks in the next five years things could be good. Then the shit hit the fan. On his youngest daughter, Sophie’s twenty first birthday party his wife told him she did not love him anymore. Their age difference was now to great and she wanted to trade him in on a younger model. The words sent him into a state of shock. When they first met she was twenty one and he, thirty three, she had a little boy, two, and he had a daughter three, at the time age did not matter. He thought at the time it’s funny age does really matter. He had finally moved on. It had taken a lot of pain and heartache, as he still loved her but the fine line between love and hate had been stretched very thin as in the settlement of property, she, in his mind had robbed him blind and deep down he felt be would at some stage require revenge, he knew that revenge was much tastier served cold, he would wait his time. She had moved into a new relationship, so that was that. God help her new partner.

Now he was into a business that was shonky but there was good money to be had. The risks were minimal as far as the authorities were concerned as long as the right people received their pay off. Cocaine and Heroin. It was a license to print money. The small group he was associated with had been operating for over twelve years. They’d never been touched by the police or Federal freaks. He had never seen a set up as simple and well run as this. The total number of bodies involved in Australia was fifteen. There had only been two disciplined in that time. Nicole, the bitch, was six metres under the Harbour Tunnel foundations covered in concrete. Bazza had his dick and balls cut off, shoved in his mouth, then dumped in the front yard of a federal scum’s house. The Narc’s in Canberra did not want to know so they quickly disposed of the body in a small country towns bone orchard.

Brett had been dragged into drugs a while back when a friends daughter who was heavily into it and had died from an over dose of some really bad shit. He justified his involvement now by thinking that he could keep some of the bad crap hitting the streets, he had sat in the bottom of the pit with young kids heating up spoons over candles and stoves, shooting up, all of them dying inch by inch.

He would never thought when he made that trip to Sydney from Brisbane to stay with William and his second wife Liz for a week after his break up he would be sitting in this boat in the early hours of the morning. They had a great penthouse unit in Mosman right on the harbour looking down on the ferry wharf and the eighteen-foot sailing club. Brett pondered at the time on how Will was making his money these days. In the thirty years they had been friends, Will had done most things, real estate, dodgy companies; car and boat sales were just a few. He had remained squeaky clean and with his situation at the moment certainly looked as if he was kicking arse. He was a very imposing man, very tall, had turned grey early in life, which really set of; he kept his hair cut short and always wore designer stubble on his face. Liz was a forty-year-old brunette and had been with Will for ten years, she loved him and there was no doubt of his devotion to her, they made a great couple.

Brett had arrived in Sydney that morning; it had been raining buckets since he had hit Newcastle. So he had taken it easy on the freeway, as on the last part of the trip there were plenty of dickheads moving at bit to fast for his liking. So instead of arriving for breakfast as arranged it was not until eleven that he negotiated Military Road through Spit Junction. He looked in his Melways to check the way, turned right at Mosman Primary School and headed down towards the bay. He found the street and parked outside the unit, a grey-headed guy was washing the footpath, he looked up as Brett got out of the car.

‘Are you Will’s mate’ Brett nodded ‘Well, heres the key to the flat, my name is Cec, I do the gardens and wash cars to’ looking at the filthy Falcon.

‘I’ll remember that, thanks mate’ Brett picked up his gear and headed inside.

Brett was sitting on the balcony when Liz arrived. He had just poured his fourth J&B, as usual when he was pouring the shots got heavier, it was