Deadline: More dirt to be uncovered in Slug-gate inquiry

The Slug-gate probe will look at whether a council fat cat is in cahoots with an inexplicably senior policeman who allegedly tried to cover up the scandal. The latest crime buzz with Andrew Rule.

Andrew Rule writes it ain’t over until the fat lady sings when it comes to the Slug-gate investigation.

Melbourne’s top crime writer Andrew Rule with his weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

THROW DOWN YOUR GUNS, SLUGS ETC

As Slug-gate enters week two, things are looking bleak for garden slugs and the sort of vermin who might allegedly conspire to plant them to destroy and perfectly sound, clean business.

That being I Cook Foods in Dandenong, target of an alleged sabotage attempt cooked up by people at Dandenong Council.

Chief Commissioner Shane Patton. Picture: Alex Coppel

Ian Cook owned I Cook Foods. Picture: Alex Coppel

A council inspector, the wonderfully-named Elizabeth Garlick, entered I Cook Foods premises on a hot February day two years ago with a bunch of tissues in her pocket, bobbed down for 17 seconds and came up with a slimy allegation of a slug on the floor.

True, she was pointing at a slug — of a variety not found in that district, and one that wasn’t there a few minutes earlier. And it was beside a piece of slimy tissue that was photographed in situ by factory co-owner, making crackerjack evidence of a “throwdown”.

Former detectives Paul Brady and Rod Porter have heard all about “throwdowns” and “throwaways”, those usually being guns, sometimes explosives, in their previous line of work. That’s why they immediately suspected that Garlick’s slug story was just too cute.

A photo showing a slug found in the I Cook Foods (left) facility in Dandenong that was sent to owners, compared to the original photo (right) taken during a health inspection.

It’s all a bit embarrassing for police chief Shane Patton, who will be investigating whether a fat cat at Dandenong Council is in cahoots with an inexplicably senior policeman who has allegedly tried to cover up Slug-gate.

And who was once at the centre of a notorious throwdown case still legendary in police circles.

The one where a bent armed robbery detective rushed a sawn-off rifle from St Kilda Rd to the outer suburbs to help out a crew that happened to shoot an unarmed robber.

Investigations continue.

It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

DEAD HORSE BACK IN TOWN

So who killed Big Tony?

We don’t mean Tony “Bigwig” Mokbel, who’s still all banged up wondering if he should risk appealing against his sentence on grounds Lawyer X was two-timing him with police while being paid to work for him.

We don’t mean Tony “Big Brother” Madafferi, who’s alive and well and keeping a low profile in the fruit and veg business while bikies and other undesirables commit badness on the dark side.

We mean Big Tony the horse — as in Anthony Van Dyck, the Epsom Derby winner who copped a bullet after breaking down in the Melbourne Cup last spring.

AVD’s sad end in front of a television audience of multi-millions was the biggest thing in Australian racing since Winx bowed out a winner.

The next biggest thing happened this week – the release of the report on the horse’s controversial demise, which comes wrapped inside a longer report on the problems of importing horses to run in big races here.

Anthony Van Dyck died after breaking down in the Melbourne Cup. Picture: AFP

But if the racing bigwigs think wrapping one report inside the other will dilute the bad medicine, they’re dreaming.

Trackside sources are fizzing at the bung to claim that the VRC, the club that runs Flemington (translation: Melbourne Cup carnival) is spoiling for a showdown with the body that runs the industry in this state, Racing Victoria.

In other words, it’s a falling-out over the fallout from the death of a horse that fell over dead.

The devil is in the detail and our sports writer colleagues have nailed it before the report went public.

There’s plenty to choose from, according to Deadline’s impeccable sources.

One is eye-catching: Anthony Van Dyck had a nerve-block procedure on October 9 in front of vets, whose jobs are mostly to get overseas horses to race here.

A nerve block can only be usefully used on a horse with lameness symptoms because, like dye in plumbing pipes, it indicates what is wrong rather than what is right.

What the combined racing brains trust did NOT do was take the horse a few hundred metres down the road from the Werribee training base to be scanned using the million-dollar machine touted as the saviour of horses with dicky legs.

Why not? Could it possibly be because no one wanted to tell the international owners, or world-famous Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien, that their star entrant might not pass muster?

Instead, maybe, everyone just told each other it would be “all right on the night.”

Which might be okay for showbiz, but not on a racetrack. Imagine if a jockey was killed because an unsound horse was negligently let run, more or less as a promotional stunt.

Hypothetically, of course.

LIVE HORSES BACK IN THE BUSH

Pooba Govender is a NSW doctor who speaks really well to patients but not to curious Victorian reporters who keep hearing stories about harness horses he owns running wild with the brumbies in the forest across the border from Echuca.

Doc Govender doesn’t want to be quoted on anything to do with his rumoured rift with colourful trotting trainer Tony Peacock, who’s based on a property at Moama.

But Peacock is a little more forthcoming about the collapse of the horse breeding partnership.

He confirms that close to 70 pedigreed, registered and freeze-branded standardbreds have got out through tumbledown fences and into the bush. Some have been found but many have not, including a brown filly that’s a half sister to the Group 1 winner Mach Beauty, recently retired after winning $1.6m.

Anyone catching “brumbies” in the bush between Moama and Deniliquin might like to look up the filly’s brands. She is now a two-year-old, all set for a brilliant career on the track if only she can be found.

Her pedigree breeding is interesting. She is out of Falcon Black Beauty. Her daddy is Captain Treacherous. If they get her back in harness they could call her Breach Of Promise.

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