by Mark Furness
End – Under Eden. Part 1
THANK YOU FOR READING UNDER EDEN. Part 1: The Ebola Conspiracy.
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Part 2: Freefall will be published in Amazon Kindle bookstores worldwide on 21 November. Pre-order details are HERE.
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In Freefall ...
Gar Hart travels to London to farewell his dying father-in-law, Malcolm Halliday. A former newspaper editor, Halliday provides an unexpected lead in Hart’s quest to uncover links between Charles East and the shadowy British tycoon, John K Baker – links that Hart has dubbed ‘The Ebola Network’. But Hart soon learns that flying close to Baker can be as hazardous to him and his children as the real Ebola virus ...
The first chapter of Freefall follows:
THE RED Emperor restaurant on the King Street Wharf corporate eating strip on the western edge of the Sydney CBD was a roaring waterfall of voices. The glass and steel box was chock full of men and women in suits, with bigger waistlines and blander faces than the younger, finely chiselled mob that frequented the Babel Bar. Steele was already seated, with a bottle of white wine half consumed and a few heavily pecked starter dishes littering the table.
“Nasty,” I said. I couldn’t miss the parallel red and yellow scratch marks on the skin near his left ear.
“It wasn’t Karen,” he said, stroking the scratches, sliding his wine glass over the tablecloth so the waiter could get an easy pour. “One of my nephews in the swimming pool.”
I wasn’t convinced. Karen Steele was, on balance, a tolerant wife: volcanic at times. Steele, on the other hand, cruised through life like a basking shark, feeding opportunistically on stray delights. I was waiting for the right moment to talk to Steele about Karen’s appearance. The last time I saw her, her muscles were toned like she’d been going to the gym, she’d cut her hair shorter and dyed out the grey. She looked good and so did her clothes. My father displayed similar signs, including teeth-whitening, before he walked out on my mother.
“How’s Beth?” I said. I’d not seen his teenage daughter since her birthday almost three months ago.
“Karen reckons she needs counselling.”
He must have noticed the quizzical look on my face. “Beth,” he clarified.
Steele gazed blankly from our balcony table over the flashy wharves stocked with charter sailing catamarans and multi-story fibreglass cruisers. He clearly found the seas of family rough going, so I changed course.
“So what do you know about Bart Hills death? True he was a regular heroin user?”
“Ah,” he said, brightening. “The story’s changing a little. His flatmate says no. Apparently he was with a stray woman that night; they were playing magic shit with a Ouija board in his room, but she’s disappeared off the radar. She may have been the supplier. Cops say he got knocked by some extra pure. There were half a dozen other deaths around the city via the same gear. Of course none of the other corpses had a neon name like Hills and his dad, the baby whisperer, so there hasn’t been any publicity on that wider point - yet. No-one at my paper gives a shit about Jack Nobody and his girlfriend. But I’ve managed to squeeze in a comment piece for tomorrow. A community service announcement. Hopefully the weekend users will read it. ‘A little dab’ll do ya’ - that’s our message. Though the smack-head food chain should have twigged by now and diluted it for economic purposes.”
“I tell you what,” I said, “the Easts have thrown so much at me in the last couple of days, there’s got to be a serious cover-up. Problem is I can’t get a clean line on anything. Charles is kissing my arse one minute, then threatening me the next. His kids are working behind his back, or appear to be. Then the old fucker’s lunatic chauffeur turns up at the Pig this morning, dressed like a banker, with a stiletto in his jacket and tries to terrorise me.”
I told him what I knew about Oscar ‘Silver Dog’ Petersen.
“Tricky,” said Steele, swirling the dregs of pale wine in his glass, holding it up to the sunlight like he was trying to discern the future.
“What can you see?”
“Grief. Infinite grief.”
“You’re perking me up.”
“Ah,” he said, putting his glass back on the table and reaching across to pat the back of my hand. “Petersen’s probably just a run-of-the mill psychopath who’ll self-destruct. Unlike you, mate.”
I told Steele about the Easts’ murky links to John K. Baker and Cavalcade, and that something smelled around the drowning of Baker’s partner a few years ago, the event that put Baker on top of the Cavalcade heap in London.
“That’s great,” he said. “But you’re just telling me a story about some apex predators who like to share horses and yachts, and one fell in the water.”
“What? You reckon I should call it quits and go back to chasing fire engines like the silver dog says?”
“Let’s face it. You might be barking up a tree without a cat in it. And now you’re just annoying the tree’s owners.”
Steele’s phone rang. He walked outside to take it. Maybe Steele was right about the empty tree. I felt tired, flat as a dropped beer, as my father-in-law likes to say.
A whole roasted snapper was lying on a plate on the table of the diners beside us. I could swear it winked at me. I saw myself back in the bush with my head stuck in the wombat hole. I crossed my fingers that the fish wouldn’t start talking.
Steele returned from his phone call, ruffled my hair and sat down. He bared his teeth and pretended he was curling an invisible moustache with his fingers. He’d either scored some stimulating drugs, some information, or he was on a promise with a stray feline. Maybe all three at once, he looked that pleased.
“Cheer up. Just got something for you, hand-delivered a moment ago.” He pulled a white envelope out of his pocket. “I might have found the cat that’s up your tree.”
I took the blank-faced envelope. It was gummed and closed.
“Don’t read it here,” he said, pouring himself another glass. “We’ve knocked off for the day.”
“I need a hint.”
“It ties Henry East and Bart Hills together in a right nefarious little caper. But you’ll need a clear head to decipher it.”
We ate and drank, and in their absence, we verbally savaged most of the people we knew. It was a large list of names which took time to get through, so we were forced to consume several bottles of white then red.
“You know what I don’t get?” said Steele, filling his glass. “Your mate Charles East owns a billion bucks, give or take a hundred mill. Why wouldn’t he just put it all in the bank at five per cent interest per annum - I’m talking on average - and make what? Fifty million a year, like fucking clockwork! He pays the same price for a coffee as you and me. How much does someone want, for fuck’s sake?”
“Some people can never have enough,” I said, waving my empty glass at him.
My phone pinged. It was a text from Tania Watson: Just got your message. Angels Tears = my magic mushroom potion. Fell from my bag. Help yourself, but proceed with caution. I’m heading OS. Xx, T
“Hallelujah!” I blurted.
Steele grinned, like he knew I’d just got some good news, and then he waved like the queen at four fat men seated at the table beside us who appeared disapproving of my lowbrow religious outburst. “Pop y
our teeth back in,” he advised them.
Tania’s text had me feeling like I did when my parachute popped the only time I went skydiving. Now, in a hushed voice, I told Steele about my night at Moon Hill. The punchline, just received, was that Tania’s tequila was infused with hallucinogenic psilocybin from some Blue Mountain’s toadstools, meaning my brain had not stuffed up of its own accord. Steele wanted to drive straight out to the bush for a celebratory swig.
I pointed out that neither of us was in the best shape for driving. Steele countered that we could give it damn good crack. But I came up with a better idea.
“Call the Drug Squad.”
“Excellent thinking.” Steele hit speed dial on his phone. Nancy Cross, the Personal Wealth Editor of The Sydney Daily News, semi-secretly known as the head of the paper’s in-house Drug Squad, could get the best cocaine in the city. He left a voice message.
We decided to proceed to a newly opened bar named The Present, mainly because it was a short walk and would limit the wasteful gap between drinks. Soon we were clumping down stairs into the underground venue, gripping the handrail for which we were grateful, passing a neon sign that read: Welcome to The Present. No Past. No Future. Steele added bourbon shots to our opening order of red wine and cigars.
I remember clicking my jaw with the ambition of making a set of Olympic rings from the smoke. Through the resultant fog, I tried to explain to Steele the feeling I had about the East case, of sticking my hand through a hole in a wall into an invisible place and not being able to pull it back because something had grabbed me ...
THANKS AGAIN FOR READING. If you could leave a book review in your Amazon store, I would be very grateful. Reviews are vital to spreading the word to other readers – and helping authors like me to earn a living and write more stories. Please click HERE to review.
If you would like to read the Complete Edition of UNDER EDEN (Parts 1-3), just click HERE now for pre-order details. It will be released worldwide in Amazon Kindle bookstores on 30 November 2018.
Part 2: Freefall will be published in Amazon Kindle bookstores worldwide on 21 November. Pre-order details are HERE.
UNDER EDEN. Part 1: The Ebola Conspiracy
Copyright © Mark Furness 2018
Published by Liquorice Light Publishing 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or retransmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.