Jake shushes me. “We’re about to get to the good part, Renaldo.”
I watch as Mrs. Muldoon punches a code into the metallic box over the door. The lock clicks, and she glances over her shoulder. “Hurry up.”
The camera sweeps inside Thrasher’s office, and I squint, unsure if I’m seeing right. It’s a total pigsty. There are empty take-away bags all over the floor, besides towers of folders, a golf bag filled with dirt-encrusted clubs, and a coat rack bulging with stained hi-vis vests and oilskin jackets.
“Urgh,” Video Colin and I say at the same time.
“What a shithole,” Video Jake mutters, rotating to show a huge desk with a massive computer monitor surrounded by loose chips and takeaway coffee cups. Colin swears, and Jake jolts around to reveal that Colin stepped on a slice of pizza. “Jesus.”
“Fuckin’ grot,” Colin grunts, trying to kick it off.
“Why am I not surprised this is what Thrasher’s personal space looks like?” I say, eyes glued to the screen.
“Because you’re a bright one,” Jake says. “Look, we’re about to see the safe.”
Sure enough, the camera turns to the window where a grey-metalvault, almost as big as I am, is parked in the corner like an unexploded bomb.
“God, I wanna look in there,” Video Jake mutters. “Mrs. Muldoon?”
She must shake her head because he lets out a frustrated huff and heads for the desk.
The camera pans, and Video Jake lets out a laugh. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me...”
The camera zooms in on Thrasher’s crumb-coated keyboard. Taped above it is a yellow Post-It note.
Login: DanThompson1
Password: BigDickInCharge
Back shed: 2007
Front shed: 2008
Safe: 2009
“2009,” Video Jake chortles. “Real master at work, ain'tcha, Big Dick? Where’s the back shed, Col? And the front shed?”
“Never mind those.” Mrs. Muldoon heads to the safe and punches in 2009. The door squeaks open, and the camera lurches forward. I clap my hand to my mouth. The bottom shelves are packed with binders and what looks like wads of cash, presumably to pay the illegal workers, but the top two shelves are stuffed with passports. Dozens of them, all stacked in rubber-banded bundles.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, barely able to believe my eyes.
“Jesus,” Video Jake says, all humour gone from his voice. “These aren’t…? There’s so fuckingmany…”
Colin leans closer. “Mate…”
“They’re from the workers,” Mrs. Muldoon says flatly. “They wouldn’t be able to leave this place without ’em.”
In the video, Jake grabs a stack of passports and unbundles it. The top one is stamped with the gold crest of Fiji. Jake flips it open with careful fingers. The camera focuses on the photo of a young woman, hername and the identifying passport number.
“That’s enough for Betty,” Mrs. Muldoon hisses. “Let’s?—”
“Hang fire,” Jake says as he closes the passport and opens the next one, shuffling the precious documents like cards. He does it quickly, flipping each open to show the inside page, the name, the photo. “Grab the folders on the bottom shelf, Col. Quickly.”
Colin does as he’s told and starts holding up pages so Jake can record them between passports. It’s hard to make out anything on the tiny phone screen, but bolded words jump out at me. PAYROLL. ACCOMMODATION. INCIDENT REPORT.
I press a finger to my lips, terrified and awed as Jake sears the pages into evidence.
“We need to go,” Mrs. Muldoon says tightly. “You said five minutes, and it’s been five minutes?—”
