South Pacific Affair
Page 23
www.facebook.com/drew-lindsay-author
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Pacific Island Affair is the 17th novel in the Ben Hood Thriller Series.
Why not try Coral Sea Affair (number 1)
Black Mountain Affair (number 2)
Flesh Traders (number 3)
The Dead Woman’s House (number 4)
The Men’s Club (number 5)
The Dark Affair (number 6)
An Explosive Affair (number 7)
A Lost Lady (number 8)
Treasure (number 9)
Charlotte’s Fear (number 10)
Dying in Paradise (number 11)
Disorganised Crime (number 12)
Atomic Blonde (number 13)
Gone (number 14)
Subterranean (number 15)
Island Magic (number 16)?
All books are available from eRetailers worldwide
Here is a sneak preview of Island Magic
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Island Magic
Ben Hood Thriller Number 16
By Drew Lindsay
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © Drew Lindsay 2014
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be produced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the author of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various places/products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission and is by no way sponsored by the trademark owners.
Acknowledgements
This one is for Warren Mills, a wonderful man and long time friend, full of life and dreams, many which he turned into reality. His passion for jokes and laughter were uplifting and will remain with me until the day I die. If he follows me beyond the grave, I’ll shoo him away saying: “No more jokes Warren. You’re killing me!”
Thank you Narelle for hours of proofing and formatting. The proofing of the manuscript was done in a Fale in the middle of the thick jungle of Fa Fa Island in Tonga and a Gecko crapped on the front cover. Just thought you should know.
Barbara once again put the magnifying glass over mistakes which somehow always seem to slip through.
Leonarda and I debated over two covers for this book. She won. Thank you for your design magic.
http://leonardaarmstrong.com
Lord Howe Island, Australia
Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes
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CHAPTER ONE
It was October on Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres east of the Northern coast of New South Wales, Australia. Spring was very welcome on the island. It brought more tourists and more importantly, the dollars carried with them although the vital tourist trade flourished throughout most of the year on the remains of this crescent shaped piece of volcanic rock. The island was a remnant of violent upheavals in the earth’s crust almost 7 million years ago.
This amazing island measuring around 10 kilometres long by 2 kilometres wide, was lost in the vast Tasman Sea between Australian and New Zealand until Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, Commander of the Armed Tender HMS “Supply” stumbled over it in February 1788, quite by accident whilst transporting convicts from Botany Bay in Australia, to the newly established island prison on Norfolk Island. He initially sailed past but on his return journey to Australia, called in for an ‘on site’ inspection and claimed the tiny island as a possession of Britain. The thriving whaling industry used it as a stop off land mass for many years. No one actually lived on the tiny island until 1843.
Now the island has a bakery, supermarket, gift shop, beauty shops, post office, hairdresser, liquor store, dive shop, churches, a police station, lots of accommodation ranging from back-packer to boutique, tourist guide places, a four bed hospital with a doctor and nurse, pushbike hire and a few cars if you can’t ride a bike, and two banks.
The history of the island is long and interesting. The history of the island is also long and boring. It all depends on your specific interests and point of view. The Rex family resided on the island for generations. No one liked that family much as they were considered to be descended from ratbags and convicts who should have been shipped off to Tasmania but had run into the thick jungle and hid for months while other island inmates were led away in chains. Years later, one of the male members of the Rex family went on a knife wielding spree in the tiny town in the early 1900’s. He was shot by a visiting goat farmer after the knife man had dispatched several of the local shopkeepers. A police officer from New South Wales was sent to live on the island some time later with instructions to keep the peace. The island has remained remarkably peaceful since that time. The local residents pride themselves and openly boast about their relatively crime free and peaceful existence.
61 year old Doris Rex resides in a large and rather forbidding looking residence on the edge of the cliffs at the eastern point of the Valley of Shadows overlooking Middle Beach. Doris, her husband and two young sons had lived there since the late 1950’s. The Rex family had owned this property for over 100 years. The Lord Howe Island Board (a NSW Statutory Authority) had attempted to force the Rex family to relinquish their land and residence to the State of NSW on two occasions, but had failed in both areas during subsequent legal proceedings.
The local residents considered that the various successes of the Rex family stemmed from the fact that the females of the family had been suspected of witchcraft and voodoo going back many generations. Doris Rex was considered the queen of all that was evil on the island. The Catholic priest had attempted to hold a demon elimination service on the edge of her property during 2010, but a passing cyclone put an end to his efforts and resulted in the death of one of his most loyal supporters when a tree branch fell down and crushed her skull.
Doris’s husband died of cancer in 1999. Her youngest son James drowned while swimming in North Bay in 2001. She now lived with her 30 year old son Peter. This rather strange individual was considered to be quite mad and given a wide berth by the local residents. He had often startled visitors to the island by peeping at them through various resort windows and had been detained on several occasions by the local constable. Charges had never been laid. Peter Rex often vanished for weeks at a time into the thick and almost impenetrable jungle which clings to the towering Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower at the southern end of the island. These island peaks are often shrouded in cloud. At other times he would wander for days through the huge expanse of thick, towering banyan trees and over 40 metre high forests of Kentia palms which leave forbidding darkness throughout the Valley of Shadows at the rear of his family home.
Doris Rex was a stunning woman in her youth. She was now in her early 60’s and remarkably had retained her beauty although she struggled from time to time with weight. Her impressive breasts were now quite large, as was her body generally, although well proportioned for a woman standing at 5 feet 10 inches tall. Her skin had remained almost wrinkle free, notwithstanding a suntanned complexion. Her full lips and beautiful face were framed in shoulder length bleached blond hair. The local women put all this down to magic potions and witchcraft. Actually Doris’ deceased mother was a beautiful woman when she died at the age of 70, so Doris’ beauty was inherited.
Doris rode a bicycle on the island. Admittedly, it did have a small petrol engine but she only engaged the engine on hills. She rode to keep fit and to annoy t
he local residents around her same age who couldn’t ride a push bike to save their lives. In this regard Doris rarely ventured into the town, but her son Peter was totally unreliable where shopping was concerned, and supplies eventually ran out, forcing her to confront the local shopkeepers at least once a month.
The arrival of an American film crew on Lord Howe Island was a source of joy for many of the residents, mild annoyance for others and straight out hatred for some like Doris who barely tolerated the limited number of visitors allowed on the island at one time. Last rumoured that was around 400 but it didn’t seem that anyone was counting heads with any degree of accuracy. Some of the actors and film crew strutted around as if they owned the place. They were pandered to by the local shop owners. Even the island policeman seemed to be at every beck and call although Doris felt that may have been an unfair assumption on her part due to the fact that she hated the local policeman with a passion. He had arrested her once for alleged prostitution. She had been publicly humiliated for months but eventually had the charge withdrawn due to lack of evidence.
She had attempted to force a previous policeman to thoroughly investigate the death of her 17 year old son James, as the body had been found with a small length of rope tied around its neck. Doris felt he had been murdered. The policeman produced evidence that it was a habit of James to go spear fishing with a bag line around his neck and that his death was most likely due to a shark taking his catch bag and dragging him and the line around his neck into deeper water where the young man had eventually drowned. The catch bag and the spear gun James had carried on the day of his death were never located.
In order to avoid damage to the delicate coral and marine environment surrounding Lord Howe Island, anchoring is prohibited. Visiting vessels must book any of the available moorings. The American film crew had a 165 foot motor yacht, “South Sea” moored in the lagoon on the western side of the island. This magnificent yacht was an integral part of the movie plot involving the takeover of the yacht and its very wealthy passengers by a crew of mutineers. Many of the film crew had arrived on the luxury yacht with others arriving by privately chartered planes out of Sydney.
The female lead for this multimillion dollar Hollywood block-buster was the very popular Brenda Grant. (Coral Sea Affair) Doris had watched from a distance as this amazingly beautiful young starlet performed for the cameras. Her beauty, confidence and poise dragged millions of people into cinemas worldwide. Doris reflected on her own youthful looks of years ago and wished she had been given the same acting opportunity as Brenda Grant. Then again, she accepted that Brenda Grant had a special “something” as a movie actress that she would never possess. That made her loathe the actress even more.
Filming a potential block buster film had the full support of the Lord Howe Island Board as the expected international publicity following release of the film would be priceless. On day 6 of filming, the movie people shifted from in and around Blackburn Island which was situated just off Lagoon Beach on the western side of Lord Howe Island, to the much smaller and secluded Salmon Beach towards the south. For the purpose of the film, some of the passengers of the luxury yacht had been killed on Blackburn Island and other passengers including Brenda Grant (known as Roxy Callan in the movie) were forced to write letters demanding money from very rich relatives. The film director was the relatively new but extremely talented Randolph Pickering. This thin, 5 feet 7 inch bearded man with fair hair hanging well beyond his shoulders was stomping up and down the beach in one of his eccentric tempers, berating everyone including Brenda for not following his instructions. Brenda, as usual, told Randolph to go stuff himself and retired to a makeshift tent which had been set up on the edge of the thick gardens at the edge of the sand. She took a vodka mixer drink from her ice filled esky, unscrewed the lid of the small bottle and was about to take a large gulp when the bottle was ripped from her grasp. She turned, extremely startled. The man facing her had rather long, unkempt brown hair with dark brown eyes and a long face with deeply suntanned skin. He had a small mouth and was extremely thin and tall. He stood over her for a moment, staring at her, the bottle of vodka mixer in his hand. ‘This will kill you.’ His voice was soft and quite highly pitched.’
Brenda thought she should scream but he was very close, very agitated and had a bottle in his right hand. ‘I want my drink back!’
‘You’re going to be dead soon anyway,’ said the tall man. ‘My mother will make sure of that.’ He handed her the bottle. ‘You are a dead person.’
He lifted the rear of the tent and was gone. Brenda took a long drink, screwed the lid back on and stuck the bottle back in the ice. She walked outside and strode directly towards Randolph. He saw the look in her eyes and the determination on her face and took two steps backwards, holding up both hands. ‘I may have been a tad out of line Brenda, but I can’t spend all day in this fucking heat doing shot after shot because so called professionals keep….’
‘Shut up Randolph!’
Randolph closed his mouth.
‘Get me a phone.’
‘They won’t work on this island, you know that.’
‘Then get someone to bring the policeman here ASAP, and then he can take me to a phone.’
‘Brenda darling,’ Randolph took an uncertain step towards her. She towered over him and she could look very intimidating when she chose.
‘Don’t Brenda darling me,’ she said, bending down to stare him in the eyes. ‘Someone just threatened to kill me. I want the bloody policeman and then I need to make a call to Australia and this movie stops dead in the water until I get both those things.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Do you understand me Randolph?’ she screamed at the top of her extremely forceful lungs. The force of her breath blew his hair back slightly.
Randolph took another step backwards. ‘Kill you? Other than in this movie which as we all know is just make believe, no one is going to threaten to kill you darling.’
‘Do what I ask Randolph or so help me…’
Randolph turned to a small Asian woman standing behind the camera crew. ‘Pia. Come here!’
Pia walked quickly towards the film director. She looked unsettled but everyone on the set was quite unsettled. Randolph turned his back on the small woman with the pretty face and short black hair. ‘She wants to speak with the policeman. Go and fetch him. You’ve got a push bike somewhere. The movie stops until missy gets her way.’
‘What if he won’t come?’ asked Pia in a soft voice.
‘If you come back here without him, I’ll kill you,’ said Randolph.
‘Don’t say that!’ said Brenda. ‘Don’t even joke about that.’
‘Move Pia,’ he said, his tone menacing. The girl ran towards a large tent which had been set up on the lawn at the northern end of this particular beach and wheeled out a bright red pushbike. She peddled off towards the nearby township. Randolph turned to face Brenda. ‘The day was perfect for shooting. The weather was perfect, the stunts were perfect, the acting was bloody dreadful but not entirely from you my dear. I’ll deal with the culprits in due course. We could have wrapped up so much of this damn beach scene and now it stops because you think someone wants to kill you.’ Randolph walked away a few paces and turned to face her. ‘I want to kill you and if we get rain tomorrow, it’s likely I will.’
‘I could snap your neck like a twig,’ said Brenda.
‘Perhaps with your bodyguard Elizabeth whatever her name is to help you but she’s not here is she darling? Got a dreadful bug poor thing and had to fly home.’
‘It was more than a bug and you know it!’
‘I need to get this damn movie finished on budget and on time!’
‘You hate working on site,’ said Brenda. ‘You love being in the movie warehouse with all the lights and fake stuff. You hate location because you are a wimp.’
‘Don’t you ever talk to me in that manner!’
‘I’ll be in my tent,’ said Brenda, ‘and I’ll talk to you any way I damn well p
lease.’
‘And what do the rest of us do while you sit in your tent pray tell?’ asked Randolph.
‘Go catch a fish or something.’
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CHAPTER TWO
Adrian Crampton stood at the helm of the 69 foot motor yacht “Razor” as it slowly approached Lord Howe Island. He eased back the power of the twin Caterpillar C18 engines and radioed the island approach frequency.
‘You are late on arrival,’ a male voice came over the loudspeaker.
‘One of our engines has a splutter,’ said Adrian.
‘We can’t help you there, although we have a few old experts that might give you some advice.’
‘Are you with immigration?’ asked Adrian.
‘Police,’ said Senior Constable Alan Walsh. ‘Just hold your position for a few minutes while I check on something. Your mooring is in the main lagoon and to the south of a very large cruiser which is part of an American film crew. I’ll need to check that they are not in the middle of a shoot.’
‘Hugh Jackman or Russell Crowe?’
‘Brenda Grant. American.’
‘Holy mother. She’s hot! Is she signing bare chests?’
‘I couldn’t say sir. Stay put for a few minutes and I’ll radio you when the coast is clear.’
Adrian Crampton decreased power and swung “Razor” slowly from the southern end of the towering volcanic Balls Pyramid, towards Lord Howe Island. He set the engine to idle and put out a sea anchor which slowed the vessel to almost a complete stop. He was joined on the fly bridge by a young, strikingly handsome 23 year old youth named Jeffrey Fietz. ‘This happy island prides itself on the fact that they are crime free,’ said Fietz.