The rust in Pike’s eyes turned to grit. Gusts of wet wind slammed at the car. He was jolted by a blast from a horn. Four foggy headlights hurtled at him. He swerved left. The oncoming truck swept by his right elbow, its horn still protesting. With a surge of adrenaline, Pike knew he had nearly fallen asleep. At ninety kph, jet lagged and exhausted, at night in a storm. Stupid!
Had he reacted half a second later, had he impulsively braked, surely skidding, he could now be dead.
Three more kilometres up the highway, he rang Alex from the Man o’ Ross Hotel in to the historic village of Ross.
‘I’ve been worried sick about you driving in this,’ she said. ‘What a pity your mobile phone battery is still flat. Dear, a storm’s belting the whole north coast.’
‘The pub’s still open,’ he stated lamely, staring up at the accusing head of a stag on the wall. ‘I’ll rest here for a while over a coffee. Let the worst of this bloody weather go and be home for breakfast.’
‘Please, please spend the night there, Blarn. Sleep in. Get a decent breakfast. I’m fine. I’ll be waiting with lunch. Stay there for me.’
Yeah, he admitted to himself, she’s right. ‘Okay. I’ll be there by midday. Any leads yet on the robbery?’
‘No. Sam Bond will be back tomorrow to talk about it with us.’
‘Good. Is Eva there?’
‘G’day, mate!’ his sister-in-law said on an extension line.
Pike took a comfortable room upstairs and drank a flask of rum from the quiet bar where he had drunk a black coffee. The rum would hasten sleep, he rationalised.
In Irishtown the phones ran hot that night with the juiciest scandal of the decade. No one was going to miss the showdown with young Blarney back from Prague at Sean and Mary’s farm.
CHAPTER 7
A shaft of sun beaming through the window woke him at 8.30. Last night’s thunder claps had metamorphosed into a team of drummers beating resolutely in his skull. Even to the alcoholic smoker, the stink of cigarettes and rum pervaded the room. He left the bed and opened the room’s two windows.
A shower of cold water drove out the demons as he contemplated his idiocy with the rum. To the west through a window he saw a sky of blue. White cumulus was bunched over the mountains like a flock of spring lambs.
He made a quick and chirpy phone call to Alex. He would be home before two.
Pike savoured eggs and bacon for breakfast. He smiled two hours later as the Ford passed little Elizabeth Town and crossed the creek that grew as it flowed north to the coast to become the majestic Rubicon River. ‘Don’t cross the Rubicon,’ Richard had counselled.
He kept on a steady 110 kph past the horror spot at the floor of a grassy valley where his parents had died. It was called Devil’s Elbow. He drove up a small hill of trees and radiant green pasture that reminded him of Ireland. The panorama of farmland brought a wave of excited anticipation, banishing his bleakness from last night.
At the Stanley turn-off, he stopped at the isolated service station, filled the petrol tank and tossed his remaining cigarettes into a bin. The highway continued west to Smithton and a score of settlements like Irishtown. And beyond to Cape Grim on the island’s far north-western tip.
He drove past the Green Hills to his left, where Liam Pike and Ninginny had raised their children and died. Bits of the stone chimney were the only remnants of their shanty. To the right was the long and shallow curve of Stanley’s bottom beach.
The odometer clicked to four hundred and ten kilometres from Hobart at the scenic lookout and information plaque facing the bay. A sign announced: STANLEY. AUSTRALIA’S TIDIEST TOWN 1996. The win had given the town a swagger. Summer tourists, at least, lifted the population of six hundred to more than a thousand.
Blarney’s Irish eyes were smiling as he anticipated being called Hellsbells. He had earned the sobriquet as he stood, aged sixteen, with blood streaming from the deep gash curving from the brow to his chin, on the boat Victor, long-lining for shark way out west in the Great Southern Ocean, a deep swell surging from Antarctica. It was the birth of his big G.
No one else on board knew if the injury was caused by the enraged wandering albatross he was freeing from a hook or a two-metre great white shark on the deck in the mayhem after Pike’s skipper Victor Harding’s wrist was nearly severed by the boat’s line hauler. A thunderstruck Pike had cried, ‘Hellsbells!’
When the boat returned to Stanley, the two other crew members had embroidered the drama at the pub. Young Blarney’s cry of Hellsbells was always an amusing sidelight. The name had stuck. The pub was the birthplace of most of Stanley’s notorious nicknames.
He opened his front door, to be greeted by their female golden cocker spaniel Tasman, and a chorus of cheers.
‘Surprise! Welcome home. Good on ya, Hells,’ from forty members of the Pike downline, plus his parents-in-law and Eva. Those who drove had hidden their cars around the corner by the path to the Nut.
Embracing Alex, he had a flash of regret at missing that doorstop sex.
‘Tonight, lover,’ she murmured, seeing and feeling his lust.
The welcoming party was a tonic he needed. He drew deeply of the familiar smell of old timber and carpets of wool. Alex’s parents Josef and Magda had made the place gleam. Alex led Pike to the small courtyard out the back door. The barbecue fire was grilling thick, marbled steaks. Lamb chops sizzled on the iron plate near a tub of new potatoes, boiled and golden in butter with fresh chives.
His neighbour and modest beginner in the Argo business, Dicky Allcock, was a contented victim of the town’s nicknaming mania. Few knew his real first name was Stanley. He clapped his leader on the back and cried, ‘G’day, mate. ’Ow ya goin’?’ The classic Aussie greeting was like a favourite song not heard for too long.
Everyone wondered about the robbery. Who could have done such a thing? Why? Pike made a quick inspection of the study. The computer seemed to be as he had left it. No, he assured the gathering when he returned to the courtyard, smiling. No real damage was done. It was an inconvenience, though. ‘And such a bloody puzzle.’
Alex held a glass of red wine. ‘Maybe it’s some grump we wouldn’t show the pitch to!’ she joked.
‘That rules out everyone in town,’ someone observed.
Their leader was back in charge, consolidating his posture. The local hero, now global. He and Alex faced a hectic immediate program, he announced, with the police investigation into the robbery, a stack of mail, phone and email messages galore. The couple exchanged smiles, thinking of bed. A family returning to Smithton undertook to deliver the Ford to Hertz.
Janet Pride, mid-thirties, buxomly sexy, sidled up to Pike. ‘Hells, the pitch you’re showing on Monday,’ she began. ‘At the O’Hallorans’ in Irishtown?’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he enthused. She was the town’s real estate agent. Pike stopped when he saw that she looked less than thrilled. ‘What’s up?’
‘You know that shrewd old coot, Rocky Shaw?’
Blarney nodded.
‘Rocky was in my office this morning. He said Sean rang him two nights ago and invited him and his wife to a meeting on Monday about some clever, easy