Jeff Edwards is a long-term resident of the Penrith area on the outer fringes of Sydney, New South Wales, and he and his family have developed strong community ties through their business and sporting activities.
Jeff joined the CMF at age eighteen as a radio operator and was later conscripted into the regular army as a keyboard operator where he served in Canberra at Army Headquarters.
Today he runs a commercial agency supplying Process Serving and Investigation services to the local legal community.
Photography was Jeff’s main pashion until he chanced to sit down one quiet day to write a few paragraphs, fully believing that no one would ever see those words. However, the characters he created took over and demanded to be heard.
Ultimately those first few words grew into Watching, the first in the Jade Green series of novels. This was quickly followed by his second novel Legacy, and The Fund continued that saga.
The Iceman is a stand alone novel, but the characters from the Jade Green series will be back in The Song of Mawu.
Published in Australia by Sid Harta Publishers Pty Ltd,
ABN: 46 119 415 842
23 Stirling Crescent, Glen Waverley, Victoria 3150 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 9560 9920, Facsimile: +61 3 9545 1742
E-mail: [email protected]
First published in Australia January 2013
This edition published 2013
Copyright © Jeff Edwards 2013
Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design
The right of Jeff Edwards to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of people living or dead are purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Edwards, Jeff
The Iceman
ISBN: 9781742982700 (ePub)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Conversion by Winking Billy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank John Campbell for his tale of an ill-fated midnight swim across the Nepean River in the 1950s which provided the base upon which this tale is built.
John is currently president of the Nepean Rowing Club and has served the rowing fraternity of Penrith for many long years.
Another feature of the club he represents is a group of old rowers who meet at the clubhouse every Tuesday morning. They like to refer to themselves as ‘The Coffee Club’ and their existence inspired my Old Codgers; however, they do not resemble my characters in any way, shape or form.
I’d also like to thank my wife Lyn for her help as my initial proofreader and full-time cheer squad.
Most important of all I’d like to thank the readers who have gone out of their way to tell me how much they enjoy my work. Your words of kindness inspire me to keep dreaming.
This book is dedicated to my brother Lewis Owen Edwards who was taken from us far too soon, and to his wife Robyn and children David, Wendy and Matthew who had the painful duty of watching him go.
Lew was the practical one who allowed me to become the dreamer and writer.
We all miss you, bro’.
PROLOGUE
I
t lurked below the surface like a malicious spider tending its web.
Ever present since time out of mind, ever alert, it never rested.
The Iceman lay in wait for its next victim and the passing of time meant nothing. If time is what it took, the killer was prepared to wait for decades and it had done so on many occasions.
Sometimes there might be as many as three or four victims in the space of a year, but those were rare. Usually they came after a space of many months or years, long enough for the memory of the previous victim to fade from minds of those who now dared approach the Iceman’s territory.
In recent years, and long after our story begins, the Iceman’s true nature was identified by those who sought to solve such mysteries and who loved to debunk the ancient legends. Even this mattered little to the Iceman. It remained where it had always been and continued to do what it had always done while ignoring the passing of time and the futile attempts of those who had sought to reveal the Iceman’s true nature.
Signs might be posted to warn the public of its presence, but these merely slowed the numbers of victims but never stopped them completely. There were still enough of the drunk, the fool-hardy or the stupid to ensure that the Iceman would continue to hold sway over its territory and to ensure that the legend continued.
Above the Iceman life went on as if nothing of note lurked below. There the summer sun shone and the river flowed gently while waterfowl dived for their dinner amongst the reeds and rushes that lined both banks.
An untrained observer looking across the expanse of water would find it hard to reconcile the warnings with the placid scene before him and this had led many a victim to his doom.
On the bank opposite the village of Henswytch was a short stretch of level ground interspersed with willows which suddenly gave way to a low but very steep cliff where the river had dug its way through a previously flat area to its present lower level. At the top of this cliff and running along its rim, a stand of ancient oaks stood sentinel before surrendering to the expanses of open country beyond. Here the rest of the ancient forest had been cleared centuries before and numerous farms now made full use of the rich alluvial soil.
Downstream from the village on a rise above the river and out of reach of its occasional flood waters stood an ancient fieldstone farmhouse that had been for generations the ancestral home of the Stevens family. In the prosperous years before World War I the family had moved to larger, more palatial premises which were closer to the township and left the cottage vacant. On the death of Samuel Stevens it had been bequeathed, along with the field surrounding it, to the people of the village for its explicit use as a clubhouse for the yet-to-be-formed Henswytch Rowing Club.
Samuel had been an avid sculler from his days at boarding school and later at Eton. His sons had eagerly followed in his footsteps. The less wealthy men of the village of Henswytch had been induced to follow the example of the town’s principal land-owner by the sums of money that could be won by betting on the outcome of the events. Henswytch in its early years had never been large enough to be able to assemble enough able-bodied men in the one place and at the one time to form either a football or cricket team, while a boat crew of strong-backed farm workers could usually be found to man a quad scull, or at the very least, a coxed pair.
The other and far more logical reason for their interest in rowing was that the village was located in an ideal place for this particular sport, on the banks of the Henning River. Winding as it did through the Ladscombe Valley, the Henning River had for some reason known only to nature