Last month, Anton Goldberg was charged with robbing a drycleaner in a shopping centre called Highpoint. Anyone who doesn't live around here calls it Knifepoint and, sure enough, Anton was armed with a long machete, the kind you'd use to clear a path through the jungle. He's got more prior convictions than brain cells which means he won't get bail, so he's wallowing in the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall, trying to find a lawyer who'll argue that society is to blame. 'If someone had bloody taught me to read,' Anton declaimed on a crackling phone line from Ravenhall, 'then I would have seen the fucken sign that said Security Personnel Patrol This Fucken Area. Then I bloody fucken never would have bloody knocked the fucken place over.' For some reason, criminals in the western suburbs have a reputation for being slow-witted. Excerpted from The Midnight Promise by Zane Lovitt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
