Neil Bramwell - Breaking Good

To Victor my brother, my rock

Prologue

The room was a shithole. The congealed remains of takeaways were piled next to a mattress partially covered by a crumpled sleeping bag and a sweat-stained pillow. Ashtrays overflowed and the smell of unwashed men sat heavily in the air. Dirty crack pipes poked out from between the cushions of two tattered sofas and lay conspicuously on the floor. On the coffee table was a lighter, some clear Ziploc bags and a torn Magic Eraser sponge, while a set of digital scales sat on top of the open safe.

This was my office, my bedroom, my den the hub of my dark existence.

In the corner, away from the window, I sat and stared at a 55-inch monitor. The screen was split into ten different feeds all coming from the security cameras Id recently installed inside and outside the factory and on the roads leading to my wrecking yard. Two mobile phones and a cordless landline lay inactive next to my laptop and printer. On a separate table was a two-way radio on a wavelength dedicated to wreckers and tow-truck operators. There were Post-It notes everywhere: Ring Tyson ; Troy H $300 ; a mobile phone number with no name attached. Open document binders spilled onto the shelving units and stacks of papers perched precariously on every available inch of desk.

I need to get on top of this , I thought, but just not now . One slow 360-degree swivel of the leather chair and I was back where Id started a restless inactivity. From downstairs came the soundtrack of a successful wrecking business; the clank of metal on metal as a stubborn car part finally budged; the screech of a demo saw chewing through a car door; the chatter of commercial radio; and the banter between the two lads working for me that day. This background noise was a rare reference point in a life without any order.

Axel, my pit bull terrier, nosed his way into the room and fussed around my ankles for attention. Not now, mate, I said. Cant you see Im busy? His face dropped and he skulked down to the workshop floor to pester someone else. Now, where was I? I thumbed purposefully through a stack of papers, finding nothing that needed attention. Check the phones, just in case. No messages. Send/receive emails . Nothing new.

Any other small business owner would have taken the cue to wind down for the day and turn their thoughts to a bit of downtime: a night with their feet up in front of the telly; a meal out with the missus and kids; or maybe a few beers down the pub. But I hated downtime. It made me anxious. I had to be doing something, anything. Its been an hour since my last hit. A quick puff and then Ill go downstairs and check on the boys.

The kit was in the top drawer of my desk. A standard crack pipe wasnt for me. A mate had warned me that standard pipes were a sure-fire way to fry your brain. I preferred the way the Asians smoked heroin chasing the dragon. My kit was specialised, for a pro smoker: a homemade, self-blown glass pipe in the shape of a miniature saxophone, some hairdressers aluminium foil and a modified lighter.

From the safe in the corner of the room I chose a decent-sized shard from my stash. There was probably about seven grams in the safe, with a street value of $2000, and there was about the same amount of cash, too. This rock would have weighed about three points (a point is a tenth of a gram), enough for a few big puffs. One point would have sufficed just a couple of months earlier. I ran some water from the sink in the washroom next door into the mouth of the sax, enough to fill the base an inch deep. I caught sight of myself in the mirror dark rings around my eyes like a giant panda. Thats what two or three hours of sleep a night does to you. Go easy on it tonight , I warned myself.

I tore off a section of foil. The stuff hairdressers used was much thicker and more manageable than regular cooking foil and transferred the heat more uniformly. Another trick was to use the smallest possible flame by taking the chrome cover off the top of a lighter and sticking a broken syringe needle into the jet to reduce the gas flow. This ensured the ice didnt cook. Often the flame had to be lit with a separate lighter and occasionally the modified lighters blew up. The foil was folded lengthways down the middle and a flat section was shaped at one end for the rock.

Holding the foil in one hand and the lighter in the other, with the mouthpiece of the sax between my lips, I fired the flame underneath the crystal. When it melted, I tilted the foil so that the liquid ran down the V-shaped funnel. As the liquid hit the cooler foil, the ice smoked and I chased the trail along the foil with the open end of the sax, sucking the fumes through the water. If there was enough left at the end and enough air in my lungs I could chase it back in the reverse direction. It was a wasteful way of smoking, because a lot of the ice vaporised, but it also burnt off some of the toxins. The water acted as filter for other impurities so that the smoke that I finally inhaled was much purer.

Whether its your first ever meth experience, or the tenth of the day, theres always that wow moment when your hairs stand on end and every nerve in your body pulses with pleasure. But the addict needs more and more to reach those intense highs, which then dont last anywhere near as long. As always, this one briefly hit the spot. Fuck paperwork and emails, Im ready to take on the world.

Anyone could see that business was booming. Racks of shelves, packed with salvaged parts, lined every wall of the workshop. Each item was meticulously colour-coded for make, model and year. Bigger items, such as full engines or doors, occasionally wheels, hung from the roof beams to create more space. Up the road was a paddock crammed with around two hundred cars, almost always Holdens and V8s in particular. Hoppers Crossing, a large suburb twenty-five kilometres south-west of Melbourne, next door to my home suburb of Werribee, was a Holden stronghold. People here took pride in their cars and were always on the lookout for that customised part which would improve performance or make their motor stand out from the crowd. My approach was simple if I bought all the available cars, thered be nothing left for the opposition. There was decent coin to be made and, although I was personally hurtling towards rock bottom, I somehow managed to run a good little business. The twenty-hour working days probably helped. But the exhaustion and numbness caused by my addiction meant that I was working hard, not working smart.

Dave, a young guy in his mid-twenties from Werribee, was different to a lot of the fellas who worked for me. He was clean and I trusted him not to steal from me. He kept his head down, his nose out of my business, picked up his wad of cash at the end of the week and never caused me any trouble. I didnt need to know whether he also signed on at Centrelink.

A new bloke, Billy, was sleeping in one of the other bedrooms upstairs while he sorted his shit out. He was an addict and basically worked for his next fix. I did plenty of deals like that. Perhaps I was seen as a soft touch because I often supplied ice on tick or sold to my regulars at nearly half the street value. But I was never short of buyers one-point customers, two-point customers, one-gram customers. Even at this level of discount, dealing paid for my next stash, my own habit, enough for the boys who were working for me, and a free smoke for almost anyone who dropped by. More often than not, these guys would then introduce a mate at some point.