Murky Waters

By Pat Noad

These eighteen stories are about crime. That means they’re essentially about love, hate, greed, revenge and power. So they are, of course, also about relationships. Most of them explore how ordinary people can be driven to extraordinary behaviour. The characters in these stories are just that: they’re not gangsters, or terrorists, or professional crooks; they are simply ordinary people with ordinary lives – until stuff happens to them.

Most of the stories were written for the seven themed anthologies of short crime fiction published by CrimeWriters Queensland between 1996 and 2008. This writing and publishing group decided to celebrate dastardly deeds in their own backyard, so most of the stories are set in Queensland.

What is it about Queensland? Despite its sophisticated cities, this vast and varied northern state of Australia has something of the air of the last frontier with its wild weather, its magnificent but dangerous coastline, its steamy tropics and its harsh outback. It’s bred people who are survivors – and sheer survival can often be at risk – who are generous and resourceful but a bit contemptuous of rules, regulations and due process, who can be prone to take the law into their own hands. Other Australians see Queensland as the last refuge of the eccentric and the outlaw, in both private and public life. Some of these traits have seeped into these stories.

In the title story Murky Waters the pursuit of one news item uncovers a long-standing saga – and is the debut of journalist Annie Bryce, who went on to become the protagonist in a five-book series; she also features in Beyond Understanding and Deeds and Descendants, stories which reach back to dramas and scandals long past.

Motive drives stories as well as characters: Remembrance Day explores vanity and vengeance; The Greater Good sees a young woman in the nineteenth century rebelling against her choices in life; Taken at the Flood is about booze, fear and desperation.

The Invisibility Factor gives a woman of a certain age anonymity, which she puts to good use – or does she? The Great Divide finds a city girl battling the realities of life – and death – in the bush; in Jonah’s Legacy disaster strikes at a conference on whale research; Where’s Fitzy? has terrified outsiders trapped with redneck insiders in a New Zealand hunting lodge; in Love is like Measles infatuation comes at a high price; and Entrapment is all about power.

Some of these tales are set in the city; others happen at the beach, on an island, in the outback; and yet others travel elsewhere. Despite their diversity, the stories do, however, have one thing in common: they’re all intended to entertain.

Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pat Noad
• Release date: Jul 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987241252

Pat Noad

Pat Noad is an Australian author who divides her time between big city life in Brisbane and getting sand between her toes on the nearby Sunshine Coast, where a lot of her writing happens.Pat’s work as a consultant has taken her to all sorts of nooks and crannies of her vast and varied home state of Queensland. She finds herself intrigued by the old stories passing down the generations in this young country, a country which has matured into a sophisticated society so quickly since the First Fleet unloaded its convict passengers just over two hundred years ago – a country which generally looks to the future rather than back over its shoulder.Her stories often find the blazing Australian sun casting dark shadows from the past across the present, and long-dead skeletons rattling in family cupboards.Pat’s mystery writing sits at the lighter end of the crime fiction spectrum. She also enjoys writing about the ever-changing Australian society in which she lives, and reflecting on the changing nature of our world. She's written a series of five Annie Bryce mysteries along with two anthologies of short stories and essays. Her latest novel 'On the Edge' is her first venture away from crime fiction in novel form.

Book preview

MURKY WATERS

A collection of short stories

by

Pat Noad

MURKY WATERS

A collection of short stories

by

Pat Noad

Published by Pat Noad at Smashwords

Copyright © Pat Noad 2012

ISBN 978-0-9872412-5-2

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The stories in this book are works of fiction and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Murky Waters

Remembrance Day

The Invisibility Factor

The Great Divide

Jonah’s Legacy

Where’s Fitzy?

The Greater Good

Rats

Legwork

Taken at the Flood

Love is like Measles

Beyond Understanding

Something in the Air

Along the Line

Paradise Lost

Entrapment

Worldly Goods

Deeds and Descendants

By the same Author

About the Author

FOREWORD

Back to Table of Contents

It was back in the winter of 1996 that a small group of strangers met for the first time in a chilly, rather shabby room in Brisbane city. These people were established writers – or would-be writers – who shared a taste for the crime genre. The sparks of energy zapping around that afternoon ignited what was to become CrimeWriters Queensland, a vibrant writing and publishing group which went on to produce seven anthologies of short crime fiction over the next twelve years.

I was one of the would-bes in that group, and CrimeWriters Queensland proved a wonderful apprenticeship for me as a writer. It provided focus and deadlines, generous critiquing and advice, and demanded high standards for publication in the themed anthologies (typically, sixty-plus stories would be entered for each, of which only sixteen or seventeen were selected for publication by an external high profile author of crime fiction).

This is how I found my voice as a writer, discovered I had a slight feminist bias (no surprise to those who knew me!) and a passion for the shadows of the past, which I love to cast over my stories. Our home state of Queensland provided fertile ground for us all, whatever our writing tastes.

Most of the stories in this collection were published in the seven anthologies. Others were successful in competitions. Sifting through them for this collection has taken me right back into all those noisy monthly meetings where ideas, arguments, critiques and expert information on crime and criminals bounced off the walls – and we always emerged looking a bit dazed.

Membership changed over the years, of course; many of our members have gone on to publish novels, poetry and how-to books, and others have had screenplays produced and stage plays performed. We all learned so much about the business of writing, as well as the creative side of the equation. My five novels in the ‘Annie Bryce Mystery Series’ are written around a character who made her first appearance in the second of the seven anthologies, in the title story of this collection.

I hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed the whole experience of writing them.

Pat Noad

Brisbane, 2012

MURKY WATERS

An Annie Bryce Mystery

Back to Table of Contents

My knuckles went white as the cable tightened. Hardboiled? I was working on it, but my heaving stomach was letting me down. I held my breath as first the arm, then the head, then the torso was slowly winched into view. Murky water drained off the corpse's grey suit.

I swallowed. ‘Got that?’ My voice seemed to come from a long way off.

Steve's grin was positively wolfish as he lowered the videocam and grabbed the still camera. ‘Great stuff. Now if it had only fallen to bits on the way up - that’d be a shot for the Walkley!’

That did it. I threw up into the river.

Steve looked at me in disgust. ‘For God’s sake, Annie, you’ve got to get right over squeamish if you’re serious about crime reporting.’

It was hard to argue with that. Wiping my mouth and dabbing my forehead, I collected myself as the police boat drew into the bank. An ambulance had arrived.

Steve brightened. ‘On the other hand, you look just right for a realistic lead in, you know, ... A Sickening Drama Occurred This Morning ....’. As he thrust the mike at me and disappeared behind the videocam all I could see was untidy brown hair and a ginger heard bristling with enthusiasm.

Acutely aware that I had gone all green and clammy, I gritted my teeth and complied. I was beginning to the hang of this.

‘And give me some descriptions to go with the shots, the river, the cliffs, people going to work while the corpse gradually emerges,’ Steve was unstoppable. ‘I'll see if I can flog it to TV or the papers ... this could be a break for us.’

‘Come on, let's talk to the cops.’ I tried to retrieve the situation by sounding tough.

The corpse was male (well, we'd seen that), fortyish, with a head injury. No ID yet, but that suit hadn’t looked cheap. He couldn't have been in the water long. We'd seen the police helicopter hovering beside the Kangaroo Point cliffs as we drove along River Terrace, and we'd made for a vantage point when Steve spotted the police boat on the way. You never knew when a scoop would turn up in the reporting business.

Mind you, one body didn't make a scoop. Unless it was famous. As a freelancer, I needed a scoop, preferably a big one, and soon. I'd turned to crime because that's where the dollars were if you were any good at snooping, sleuthing and writing. Local history, where I'd done my apprenticeship, was my real love. There were no dollars in that. None. Zilch.

‘Probably a drug deal gone wrong,’ Steve said as he manoeuvred the car out of the lane at the bottom of the cliffs, and we resumed our journey to the Law Courts in search of a saleable story. He looked thoughtful. ‘I seem to remember another stiff being fished out of the river around here last year. Don't recall that was ever solved ... might be worth checking the records.’

I probably looked as despondent as I felt. ‘Drunks probably fall into the river and drown all the time round here,’ I pointed out, ‘with all those bars at Southbank - and before it turned yuppy for Expo, it was Brisbane’s skid row.’

‘Maybe that's an angle for a feature we could sell... ‘The River of Death’, or something. I'll come up with the visuals if you've got time to get into the records.’

Steve had learned a lot about creating opportunities while he tried to make a go of freelance photography, and we had sort of fallen into a working team. Which had yet to make any money.

Time was something I had plenty of, and what’s more, I love digging around records. Research is more my bag than observing smelly dripping corpses which could disintegrate while I watch.

Steve drew a blank with our photojournalistic efforts. Too gruesome for the news, said the telly. Not much of a story there, said the papers, we've got what we need.

I found about ninety records of deaths in that stretch of the river over the last fifty years. The list started with a Walter and ended with a Wayne. I tried sorting them out. Some had been injured, some had just drowned, some had never been identified. Some were deros known to the police, who had been written off as accidental deaths. A few were criminals who had probably been murdered but only one conviction was recorded.

There was one other group: well-dressed well-heeled males, mostly respectable business men, all sustaining a head injury, all found dead in the same stretch of river between Fort Lytton and the Indooroopilly Bridge. None of the deaths had been explained. All victims had been reported missing by concerned families. Our recent corpse could belong here, as number eight. The first was in 1945. The last was two days ago.

Wayne Johnson was the name of our corpse. Forty-two, married with two children, he owned a string of coffee shops and had been to a regular marketing breakfast at Southbank with his managers. About eight, Wayne had set off to walk under the cliffs to his office near the fashionable Dockside development. He never arrived. He'd been knocked out, dumped in the river and drowned. There were no obvious suspects. Drugs weren't on the agenda.

I reached for the phone. My well-worn contact in the force sounded even more long suffering than usual.

‘Seven similar deaths in the river, you say. Over how long? Fifty years? You did say fifty? Struth Annie, over that time ... Files? For a news story? I'll have to check that with the boss...’ I distinctly heard him mutter ‘like hell’ as he hung up. I gave up for the day.

It was Wednesday. On Wednesdays I was required to report to my parents for dinner. Since I'd gone freelance my mother insisted on feeding me once a week. Sometimes, like today, I was glad. Surreptitiously, of course.

‘Bad news, Annie dear,’ Mum’s nose wrinkled as I wandered into the kitchen, ‘your Dad's Uncle Kevin has turned up from Mackay to stay for a few days. What a trial that man is ...’

Uncle Kevin. Now there was a possibility. I wondered how his marbles were holding up. Uncle Kevin had been a policeman for forty-five years, mostly in Brisbane. He was exactly the stuff the Fitzgerald Inquiry into official corruption was made of - Irish, trenchantly working-class, educated on the streets and in the pubs, an eye for expediency over justice, a fondness for crooks, a personal calculator for right and wrong and a contempt for women. Fortunately he'd retired well before the lid blew off police corruption in Queensland, and while he'd rated a passing mention at the Inquiry, nothing had been pursued. For his part, he simply didn't understand what the fuss was all about. People who weren't part of the force had no idea how it all worked, he kept saying. True enough. When they found out they were horrified.

‘I might have a go at pumping him. How is he, er, mentally? He must be getting on now.’

Mum sniffed. ‘Eighty-four, he says. And more boring and offensive by the day, believe me.’

Eighty-four. There was obviously no time to waste here. Steeling myself, I fronted the male sanctum where Dad was trapped with Uncle Kevin and a dozen stubbies. Dad looked really glad to see me. Uncle Kevin, was balder, redder, fatter and wheezier than I remembered; he glared at me.

I helped myself to a beer and waved Uncle Kevin on to finish his interminable story, prepared to suffer for my profession. He was still rambling on when Mum rescued us for dinner half-an-hour later.

During the meal I smiled and nodded at Uncle's unspeakable views and kept his beer topped up while Dad looked ever more amazed.I waited for coffee to mention the river deaths.

‘Unsolved murders? Not many of them in my day.’ How could I have forgotten how perfect the force - and Uncle - had been in his day? ‘Mind you, we didn't always put things on record, not when we thought it wouldn't be fair.’ Of course not. We all knew that now.

‘I wonder if there’s anything about these river deaths that’s off the record,’ I mused, ‘still, it’s so long ago you probably don’t recall.’

His eyes glinted at the challenge. ‘Of course I remember. Clear as yesterday.’ Much clearer than yesterday, probably. ‘You'll see. It was in the forties, I was a sergeant based at Woolloongabba. It was still wartime, you young people have no idea what that was like ... anyway there was no street lighting, public transport was pretty scarce, petrol was rationed ... everyone near the river had a rowboat, and at East Brisbane they used to row across to the New Farm tram rather than muck around getting over the bridge.

‘Anyway we got this call one night from a very well-known family who lived on the river. They'd had a visitor for dinner, some boss of a factory, and their daughter – Therese her name was – had rowed him across the river to get the tram to his hotel. Well they set off together, but when she got to the other side he wasn't there. She swore she didn't know what happened. Said he just vanished. His body was washed up the next day near the old O'Connor Boathouse, with a head injury. He probably made a dive at her and got clobbered with an oar for his trouble. Anyway we never recorded that. What was the point, ruining the reputation of a respectable family and the life of a silly teenage girl? He would have asked for it, wouldn’t he? He was one of the class who thought he could get away with anything.’

‘No point at all,’ I agreed warmly. ‘What did you say the family's name was?’ I laid a bet with myself that it started with o apostrophe.

‘I didn't.’ Uncle Kevin looked at me sharply. ‘But I haven't forgotten, I know what you're thinking. It was Delaney. Old man Delaney died years ago, sometime in the fifties.’ Oh well, I thought, I was close enough. ‘Now I'm turning in,’ he announced. ‘How about a nightcap in front of the telly, Doug?’ The message was clear: women dismissed.

‘Arrogant old sod,’ Mum seethed as we did the dishes.

‘Therese Delaney. If she was a teenager in the forties, she'd be getting on for seventy now. Probably still alive. D’you remember the Delaneys of East Brisbane?’

‘Not sure. Did they run hotels?’ She sounded uncertain.

‘That'd figure. I bet Uncle got paid off for that blank page. Think of it, on the take for over forty years. I hope he leaves his ill-gotten gains to Dad.’

Mum bit her lip.

Steve and I mulled over the story so far. What story? Police Practices in the Forties? The Fatal River? Selling angles eluded us. He looked doubtfully at me over our cooling coffee in the West End markets.

‘Story or no story, I'm going to look for Therese.’ I’d made up my mind.

‘What's the use?’ He sounded uncharacteristically hopeless. ‘She's probably a respected matriach by now. You just can’t resist digging up the past, can you?’ He was getting to know me too well.

Almost skipping at the prospect of a day immersed in records, I took myself off to check out Therese. All I found was nothing. No record of death. No marriage. No entry on the electoral roll. Her father had died in 1957, leaving his very healthy estate to his widow, two sons and three daughters. The rest of the brood was easy to trace. I phoned the eldest sister, spun a story about researching a feature on prominent families in Brisbane in the thirties and forties, and arranged an interview the next day.

Marie Casey matched Steve's vision of Therese perfectly. Probably in her late seventies, well preserved and beautifully dressed, she welcomed me to her classy apartment in Hamilton. Silver-framed photographs of squadrons of Delaneys and Caseys were stacked on the piano and the lovely gleaming wooden bookcase. I had to remind myself sharply that I didn't care a fig for the trappings of the good life.

My local history background came in handy as we chatted about times and people past, while I took notes and viewed countless photographs. Therese, the youngest Delaney, was also the largest. She was huge, towering and glowering in all the family photos. Any oar she wielded would certainly be lethal. Her brothers and sisters had all evidently done well in life, displaying large attractive families in front of their impressive homes.

What about Therese? That was where the affable Marie dried up. Her eyes drifted away from mine. Silence. She poured more tea. Finally, concentrating hard on the folds in her napkin, she murmured that Therese had cut ties