Blood in the Dust (A Zoe Carter mystery)

By Pamela Lamb

Zoe Carter stares in horror at the pool of blood lying in the dust at her feet. She has come to the camp site at the bottom of the Mitchell falls, deep in the remote Kimberleys in Western Australia, to meet her boyfriend Martin. But where is he? And where is his boss, the archaeologist Dr Dirk Smithers?
Somewhere in this vast, ancient landscape a killer lurks, a killer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. But what is there in the Kimberleys that’s so precious it’s worth killing for?
Zoe’s search for the answer takes her from the Mitchell plateau to Darlington Station, a million acre cattle property in the heart of the Kimberleys, and to Broome where she discovers there is more than one person seeking the prize.
But who will get there first? And, at the end of the search, how will Zoe escape from a situation that threatens not only her own life but Martin’s too?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pamela Lamb
• Release date: Aug 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987391605

Pamela Lamb

Must ... stop ... writing ... Sometimes I really wish I could. It gets in the way of real life. At the weekend I prefer sitting in front of the computer with my pretend friends instead of going out with my real ones. It destroys my sleep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night knowing I need to change one word in the paragraph I wrote the evening before - and I have to get up and do it. And it makes me a dangerous driver. Get me on the road and my characters start having conversations in my head. And why are they so much more lucid and logical then than when I attempt to scribble them down at the next red light?I write because I love language. I love English with its collection of mongrel words. It's like an enormous button box where you can pick between half a dozen languages each one of which holds the history of Britain at its heart. I love the shape of words and the sound of them. I love what you can make them do on the page. And what you can make them do to your readers. Laugh, cry, stay up at night.What I like best is having a conversation with a reader about one of my characters. The reader talks about my character as if s/he is a real person. Discusses the character's motivation. Speculates about what the character did after the end of the novel. And I think, but it's all made up. Every bit of it. Out of my head.Then I know it is all worthwhile. Bringing characters alive to walk on the page. Creating a world for them to live in. Immersing myself in the shape and rhythm of a novel in the making. It's exciting stuff. And it's even more exciting when the book is finished and I hand it over to you, the reader. Enjoy!

Book preview

Blood in the Dust

Pamela Lamb

Published by Agneau Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Pamela Lamb

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be resold 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 are 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.

Chapter One

The helicopter lifts up from the rough grass and clears the trees. Looking down I can see the car park, the office, the tents where the crew live during the flying season. Beyond, the empty green and red landscape of the Mitchell Plateau with the Timor Sea a hazy blue line on the horizon. I speak into the radio, bank the helicopter and fly over the falls. It’s the dry season in the Kimberleys and the crew is busy ferrying tourists to and from the top of the falls. I’m lucky I know one of the crew members from the old days crop-dusting in western Queensland and I’ve been able to borrow a helicopter for an hour.

Somewhere at the bottom of the falls, amongst the desiccated rocks and rough scrub of the plateau, is a slab of black rock, just big enough to land a helicopter. A short walk beyond the rock is a dirt clearing tucked under a craggy cliff face. In the clearing is a rough bush camp. And in the camp is Martin. Boy friend. Ex-boy friend. Whatever he is.

The rock is wet with spray from the waterfall and I can hear its thunder as I touch down with infinite care. Today my skill is not for show but for safety. I follow a narrow track that winds uphill between the rocks. It’s still early in the day but the heat bears down on my head and brings up the buttery fragrance of the spinifex growing in green clumps beside the path. The track rounds a red overhang and I struggle over smooth rocks. This would be a watercourse during the Wet and it doesn’t make for easy walking. In front of me is the camp. Canvas pyramid tents. A tarpaulin sheltering camp chairs and plastic boxes. In the middle of the clearing a fire has burned down to red ash. Nobody there.

Beyond the clearing another track leads upwards towards the archaeology site. It’s a dirt track, created by feet instead of water, and easier walking. The cliff towers above me, casting the track into black shade. The scream of cicadas assaults my ears. Another neat camp perched on a narrow sandy shelf at the base of the cliff. A shallow excavation brushed clean, plastic bags of artefacts arranged in neat rows, a shade sail erected over a pile of red dirt. Sieves, trowels and brushes on the heap, showing where work is in process. Nobody there.

I approach on careful feet. ‘Martin?’ My voice sounds loud in my ears. ‘Martin? Are you there?’

Panic rises. I feel my heart beating in my chest. I skirt the excavation. Enter the hot shade of the sail. There’s been a struggle here. Scuff marks in the dirt. A shovel knocked over. And blood. A pool of blood lying in the red dust. Nothing else.

Six months earlier - Cairns

The plane descended through thick grey clouds. The fuselage bounced and juddered. Rain streaked the porthole. Thick cloud gave way to trailing grey rags through which I could see a sodden green landscape. The plane banked steeply then came in fast over Holloways Beach. The landing was rough, reminding me why I preferred to fly helicopters instead of trusting my life to the commercial cowboys.

Walking to the terminal was like pushing my way through a wall of heat and moisture. Fabio was waiting in the baggage hall. I hadn’t seen him for more than three years but all he’d done in the meantime was add girth to his already impressive gut and grey to his long beard.

‘Zoe Carter!’

Fabio’s bear hug reminded me of his liking for rum and his aversion to shower water. It was not an altogether unpleasant smell and familiar enough among the rough crew that flew the Gulf out of Cairns.

I grinned. ‘Yeah, mate. It’s me all right. What’ve you been up to?’

A steady diet of rum and Coke had done its work rotting Fabio’s teeth and his answering grin revealed a diminishing collection of blackened stumps.

‘Not much. This your bag here?’ Fabio hefted my swag onto his shoulder and led the way out into the afternoon soup.

The crew had taken possession of a third-rate concrete block motel at the edge of the airport. My room had a rattling air conditioner, a damp stain down one wall and a permanent brown ring in the toilet. I pushed Fabio out of the door, cracked a beer out of the fridge and lay on the bed. My hand reached for my mobile phone. I needed to call Martin to let him know I was in Cairns before he arrived home from uni and wondered where I was.

I’d never been with a man long enough to know how to leave him, if that was what I’d just done to Martin. Left him on a Wednesday morning while he was at uni marking assignments for his tutorial students. Left him to come to Cairns and fly helicopters with Fabio and the rest of the crew, which was what I did before I joined Brightsward and never thought I would do again.

Because I had it all, right? Zoe Carter, helicopter pilot and environmental activist. Working directly with Eric van Eps, Brightsward’s founder and CEO. Adopted sister of his granddaughter Madeleine. And Martin’s girl friend. Martin had asked me to marry him on the flight home from New York eighteen months ago. I hadn’t said yes, but things were good between us. Very good.

So what was I doing here, lying on a damp bed in a cheap motel in Cairns with Fabio banging on the door wanting to know if I was ready to go out and get pissed? One word. Boredom.

I didn’t call Martin. You can call it cowardice, if you like, except I’ve never considered myself a coward. Whatever it was, I put the phone down, opened the door and allowed Fabio to take me to the nearest pub.

The next morning, with the thump of a hangover behind my eyes, I took off into the hovering clouds and headed for Karumba with a load of nappies and toilet paper for its stranded residents. Up here in the tropics, the monsoon was in full swing and already the Gulf towns of Karumba and Normanton were cut off by road. And, from what Fabio had said last night, likely to remain so for weeks to come.

I flew west with the clouds a grey ceiling just above my head and tried to enjoy my new-found freedom. But thoughts of Martin drifted into my mind as it was inevitable they would. I remembered taking off from the roof of Eric’s New York mansion with the house a column of flames beneath the skids of my helicopter and seeing Martin’s upturned face from the footpath below. He’d come from Australia to save me except I’d run headlong into danger by then, after my usual style, and had very nearly died as a result.

I rang him from the pub overlooking the swollen, sluggish Norman River and he answered straight away. It was strange for Martin to be home during the day and I wondered if he’d been waiting for my call.

‘Zoe? Are you all right? Where are you? ‘

‘I’m in Karumba.’ I took a gulp of cold beer. ‘Listen, Martin, I’ve taken a job in Cairns. A flying job.’

‘When did you decide to do that?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Why didn’t you let me know? I’ve been worried sick.’

Which hadn’t occurred to me. I wasn’t used to people worrying about me. It hadn’t happened that often in my life. Guilt rushed in. I picked up a paper napkin and wiped my hot face. The afternoon humidity was on the rise, bringing with it swarms of biting insects from the mangroves across the river.

‘I’m sorry Martin. I just needed to get away, that’s all.’

‘So have you left me or what?’ Martin’s voice was thin in my ear. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have on a mobile phone. ‘I notice all your stuff’s gone.’

‘I don’t have much stuff. And I dunno about leaving you. It depends what you want to do.’

‘How long are you going to be away?’

‘A couple of months.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then I’ll come back to Brisbane. I’ll need to sort things out with Eric at some stage.’ Another gulp of beer. The condensation had made the glass wet and slippery in my hands. ‘Martin, can you let Madeleine know where I am? And Eric. Tell him he can stop paying me, if he likes.’

Which I knew he wouldn’t do. I wasn’t aware of the precise situation with Brightsward’s finances, except that they’d been stripped bare by Annie Cormack to fund her nanotechnology project, and Eric’s personal fortune must have taken a battering when his brownstone house in New York burned to the ground. Add the GFC to the mix and it was difficult to imagine that Brightsward had the cash to fund anything other than the occasional capital city photo opportunity.

It was no wonder the main thrust of their activities these days was what Madeleine called the 3Ms - membership, marketing and merchandise. However, I also knew quite well Eric thought he owed me for saving his life and he would continue to pay me a salary even though I was doing nothing whatever to earn it.

‘I’ll call Madeleine straight away,’ said Martin. ‘I rang her last night in a panic when you didn’t come home. She needs to know you’re okay.’

There was a long silence. Sorry wasn’t a word I used often and I found myself incapable of using it twice in a single conversation, even though it needed to be said.

Then Martin said, ‘I know it hasn’t been any fun for you watching me write this wretched thesis. So you enjoy yourself up there and I’ll see how much I can get done before you come home. Okay?’

So right there was what I loved about this man and why I didn’t deserve to have him in my life, I thought as I ended the call and finished the rest of my beer. All the same I was glad I was up here and not down there, at least for the next couple of months.

Christmas came and Queensland was awash. All the inland river systems had burst their banks and were kilometres wide. The coast road south was blocked as town after town succumbed to rising flood waters. I was flying every day delivering supplies to isolated communities and to stranded motorists trying to get home for the holidays. Christmas dinner was a stringy roast in some roadside pub with a couple of English backpackers and an oath-ridden truckie. And the rain continued to fall.

In the New Year the monsoon moved south and rain began pelting the already sodden south-east corner of the state. Wivenhoe dam filled to capacity and the engineers opened the flood gates. On Monday 10th January a heavy storm created a wall of water that roared down Lockyer Creek heading for Ipswich and the Brisbane River. For the first time people started talking about ‘74, the year of the last big flood in Brisbane. With flood water coming from two directions and the rain still flogging down, the predictions for Brisbane were dire but there was nothing anyone could do except watch and wait.

On Wednesday morning, sick with worry, I called Martin at home. There was no reply. Although I’d bought him a laptop he’d refused to let me sign him up for a mobile phone. Now I cursed his intransigence. I knew from TV updates the hugely swollen river had inundated Brisbane’s riverside suburbs and I thought of Martin’s damp little house five minutes’ walk from the ferry stop at the end of the street. There was no way it could escape that inexorable brown monster.

I called Madeleine’s mobile and she called me back hours later. Like everyone else, she’d been out helping people clear their houses and she was exhausted. She had no news of Martin, none at all, except to confirm what I already feared. His house was under water.

By Wednesday afternoon TV images showed the city awash with brown water. With Fabio and the boys I watched the television coverage of debris sailing downriver on the boiling flood. The next day the Premier, her eyes black with exhaustion, made her now-famous speech.

‘As we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are. We are Queenslanders. We’re the people that they breed tough, north of the border. We’re the ones that they knock down, and we get up again.’

I was sitting in the room Fabio shared with Knuckles, a raw-boned forty-year-old Texan with fists the size of hams and a bad habit of letting them fly in bar-room brawls the world over. We’d been flying all day and now we were eating greasy pizza and drinking rum as if our lives depended upon it. Outside the rain trickled down from a leaden sky as it had been doing for weeks.

I seldom cry but just then I could feel a hard lump of tears lodged at the back of my throat. It remained during the following days of hard flying when my heart yearned to be with Martin shovelling the mud out of his house. It was still there when, a bare three weeks after her Queenslander speech, the Premier was back on TV warning of another threat. This time it was our turn. Cyclone Yasi.

The storm came in from the sea, the biggest in living memory. It headed straight for the north Queensland coast, steadily intensifying as it roared closer to landfall. By the time we began to feel its effects, it had been upgraded to a Category Five storm. Once they had finished evacuating the hospital, the airport was closed to traffic.

We spent the afternoon securing the helicopters then went down to the esplanade and stared out to sea. The storm was six hours away and, apart from the occasional gust of warm air, the atmosphere was oppressive. It felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere leaving us breathing through a wet sponge. A low pressure headache lurked at the back of my brain.

In the early gloom the town was closing its doors and the streets were eerily empty. We drove back to the motel and settled