Jack got out his phone and pulled up the post that Zara had written about the Jantarna incident. Turning it around, he let Crumbs read it. He must’ve been right about the prescription glasses because Crumbs left them in place while he read.

‘Why have you brought that up?’

Jack leaned forward. ‘It’s bloody genius, don’t you see?’

‘What, that someone has sabotaged the machine?’

‘If the mixer isn’t going, the animals aren’t being fed.’ As he said this, he realised what Dave had been alluding to in his phone call.

Crumbs took another sip but didn’t say anything else.

‘If the machine isn’t working, the animals aren’t being fed. If they’re not being fed, then they’re no closer to getting killed, are they? See, animals in feedlots lose weight if they’re not fed every day. They go backwards, you get me? And then there’s no point in sending them to the abattoirs. Whoever has done this has disabled the machine so the cattle have to be put back out on pasture or fed hay. They’d lose condition and bang! Shut down the whole feedlot for a little while. I realise it’s only short-term, but it certainly throws a spanner in the works for them. Means they lose money too. Whoever did this is not just standing around, protesting peacefully.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really, this is the sort of shit I’m talking about. One piece of metal and it shuts the whole place down. Why can’t we do this sort of thing?’

‘I didn’t read anything in there saying that it was done by activists,’ Crumbs answered.

‘That’s even better, don’t you think? It could be anyone—a pissed-off employee. Maybe the owner was fucking someone he shouldn’t have been. There’s a heap of reasons a person might want to do something like this.’

‘But, Jack,’ Crumbs leaned forward and stared at him through the darkened lens, ‘what’s the point in doing something like this if no one knows why it’s done?’

‘Because it’s about the animals, nothing else. We’d know we’d stopped them from being killed.’

Nodding slowly, Crumbs leaned back again and watched Jack, before abruptly changing the subject. ‘This protest tomorrow. You need to keep your anger under control. There’s no negotiation with that.’

Jack banged his fist lightly on the table. ‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’