Devlin
Pool -
Passage from the Book
The distant sound of a car starting up
reached them, and racing to the front door, there was the Land Cruiser, with
the boat attached, just disappearing over a small ridge and heading away down
the paddock.
“What’s over that hill?” asked Zep to
nobody in particular.
“Dunno, but there is a road going along
the back of the property that way and there is probably another gate to access
it,” replied Barney.
“Back to the cars,” Zep yelled and then
called aside to the two constables, “Stan & Fred stay here. Check out the place.”
As they ran through the side gate, Zep
continued to call out to the other patrolmen.
“Check up that side road. See if an exit comes out that way.”
In the meantime, Barney had the unmarked
patrol car started and, as soon as Zep got in, he spun the car around, turned
onto the highway and headed north. He
attached the flashing blue light to the roof and switched on the siren. They rounded a bend just in time to see the
car and boat turn off the highway and down the Greenough Rivermouth
Road.
The police car followed, and with
superior speed and cornering, they made up the distance quite quickly. The driver in front could hear them and see
them looming behind through his rear view mirror, so he crossed to the middle
of the road and began weaving. The boat
on the trailer rocked precariously from side to side. It would be suicide to try to pass on this
side road with dense scrub closed in on either side.
The situation continued for about a
kilometre and then the road opened out a little as they came into the Greenough
Rivermouth Settlement. Passing was still difficult as there were
random clumps of bushes or street trees on either side. Then a side-track along the foreshore presented
an opportunity to get around, so Barney took to the left. They were passing parallel and alongside and
rounding a clump of bushes in front, when Barney called “Shee
. . . eit” and braked hard, spinning the wheel. The car broadsided on the gravel surface and
slewed to a halt amid clouds of billowing dust.
They had come to rest just a metre from a row of large granite boulders
marking the end of the picnic parking area.
He put his foot down on the accelerator,
spun the steering wheel, skidded around in a continuous dust cloud and turned
back along the side track to the main road to resume the chase.
“He has nowhere to go,” determined
Zep. “The sand bar is still open so,
with the river flowing, he can’t cross the mouth to go south. We will catch him at the river mouth.”
By the time they reached the sand bar,
there were numerous other vehicles of fishermen and tourists, but no sight of
the car and boat. There was a row of
granite rocks temporarily placed across the end of the road at the bar to prevent
intrepid fishermen from attempting vehicle crossings before it was safe even
for four-wheel-drives. At this time of
the year fishermen usually waded across the knee-deep water to get to their
favourite fishing spot.
“There he is,” called Barney, indicating
to his right along the beach. “He is on
the hard sand along the foreshore.”
#
With
no further thought, he took to the sand and followed. The tide was high so there was just a small
margin of flat beach with hardened sand, but as he drove away from the sand
bar, the beach began shelving. The Land
Cruiser in front had a reasonable start and when the hard beach petered out the
four-wheel-drive turned up onto the flat soft sand along the coast, dragging
the trailered boat with it. It was
proving to be hard going, but making steady progress.
“What’s up further?” asked Barney.
“About four kilometres further on the
shifting sand dunes meet the water line so there’s no way through along the
shore to get back to Geraldton,” replied Zep.
“What about tracks?” shouted Barney.
“There may be gaps between the dunes,
but I’m not sure. He may know of
something through or over,” mused Zep. “It will be difficult with the boat. He will have to stop and ditch it.”
“We can catch him,” shouted Barney, heading
the police sedan into the soft sand.
“I’ll follow him using his wheel ruts which will be compacted.”
They managed about a hundred
metres. There was a small dune that was
passed over easily by the clearance of the four-wheel-drive and the high profile
trailer, but it wasn’t by the conventional car.
It slowed their progress substantially and that was enough for the car
wheels to start spinning. The patrol car
bogged in.
Barney opened his door, saying, “Call
for some police four-wheelers to assist and then commandeer one of those
fishermen’s off-road vehicles. I’m going
after him. Try to catch up to us.” With that, he swung out and started running
across the sand. His fitness wasn’t in
question. His speed in soft sand would
be a problem.
The Land Cruiser and boat disappeared
over a small sand spit about a kilometre in
front. Barney found that running in sand
in his smooth leather soled street shoes was quite difficult. He considered the bare feet option but with
jagged shells, sharp sticks and hard stones he decided it might be unwise to
expose his soft feet to those elements.
Four minutes later, as he reached the
rise of the spit of sand, he could see the car and boat about four hundred
metres ahead on an open sandy beach, with jagged reefs visible along the
foreshore just a few metres beyond the beach.
There was a narrow channel between the rocks and the car had been backed
fully into the ocean. The cabin cruiser
was afloat and there was a lone man just disconnecting the fastenings. He scrambled aboard as Barney closed to
within a hundred metres. The motor
started, the boat backed out, turned into the small swell and took off heading
north towards Geraldton.
Barney grabbed his mobile phone, scanned
the directory and punched in the number.
“Water police,” was the response after a
short wait. Barney gave the details and
was assured that a patrol boat would be leaving harbour and heading south as
soon as possible. They should be able to
intercept the runabout boat within thirty minutes.
As the mid afternoon sun blazed and the
reflection from the pure white beach sand glared into his eyes, Barney jogged
back towards the river mouth. He met Zep
halfway, being driven by a crusty old fisherman in his rusty old
four-wheel-drive Jeep.
#
A
short while later, back at the river mouth sand bar, Barney and Zep each phoned
different people. Barney monitored the
feedback from the water police, while Zep arranged for their other patrol car
to find them. He then sent additional
support to Stan and Fred, the officers at the farm house, with instructions to
turn the place over and search everywhere.
Finally he left a message at the police station for them to send some
form of four-wheel-drive tow truck or trucks to extract a patrol car from the
soft sand, and then drag a Land Cruiser from the ocean. That should give them something to think
about.
The results from the water police were
not encouraging. By the time the police
launch had rounded Point Moore and headed south, the small cabin cruiser was
aground on the beach sand near the caravan park at Tarcoola Beach. When the water police had arrived there it
was abandoned, and a patrol car directed to the scene shortly after found only
footprints heading up to the road.
Barney and Zep climbed into the rear
seat of the back-up patrol car to head back to Geraldton to continue the
chase. Zep grumbled, “My lovely
car. I let you drive for a change and
you just about wipe it out on granite rocks, run it over wet salty sand and
then bury it deep in soft beach sand.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Barney
grinning. “Perhaps I need to be given
more practice with driving it.”
Batavia
Shores -
Passage from the Book
The rapid-fire shots came from the direction of the
sea. Barney was hit twice from side-on across the chest, spinning him around
and dropping him over the back of the boardwalk. Zep spun to face the ocean,
pulling his weapon out, but he too was hit in the lower chest and upper arm.
Bleeding, he also toppled backwards, away from the seaside of the boardwalk. As
Fozzy saw Barney and Zep were both hit, he
immediately dived off the planking and scrambled across the coral between two
huts.
Barney and Zep lay
sprawled in the shelter behind the timbered boardwalk. Both were having trouble
breathing.
“You okay?” wheezed
Barney.
“Yes, thanks to the
great God Kevlar,” winced Zep. “The arm is just a scratch, deep, but I’ll live.
My backside hurts more from landing on this sharp coral.”
“You’re soft,” grinned
his partner. “Still got your weapon? Can you see them from where you are?”
Zep nodded and risked a
small peek from behind an upright pylon. “The boat’s in the open between these
two jetties. It looks like they are sorting out ropes ready to dock at the
left-hand jetty. They were cocky, assuming their first
combined burst of firepower would get us. Those two guns sounded like those
fully automatic pistols from the Fremantle job.”
“They did get us,”
grunted Barney. “Down but not out. Are you ready to
return fire?”
Zep replied, planning
their response, “I’ll fire at them to get them down while you go for the
waterline at the back of the boat and the motor. Anything up to ten centimetres
above water line on the side, near the rear, will leak as soon as the boat
takes off and digs the props in. Three, two, one – now!”
The fusillade was quick
and shocked the two would-be assassins into diving for cover. The motor roared
as their boat powered headlong out of sight behind the next jetty.
“Three into the near
waterline,” declared Barney. “But I couldn’t see the motor as it was an
inboard.”
“Let’s move along
further and make sure that they keep moving,” suggested Zep as he crept along
the sheltered side of the woodwork.
The boat was still
lingering there, but it had pulled further out to sea, and it was now facing away
from them, almost out of the pistol range of both parties. One of the men was
leaning over, looking at the holes in the back of the boat. Zep took careful
aim over the extreme distance, and another hole appeared in the hull but
halfway up the rear of the boat. That convinced the killers to give up. They
took off seawards out of range and then slowed and turned in a wide arc to the
south.
“They definitely didn’t
expect armed resistance,” murmured Barney. “It does look like they aimed to
kill both of us but tried to miss Fozzy.
They must want him alive.”
“Where’s Fozzy?” enquired
Zep, looking about.
“He dived between those two huts back there,” replied
Barney. “He got out of harm’s way real quick.”
For the next fifteen minutes, they searched everywhere
in the vicinity, but Fozzy hadn’t gone into hiding.
He had fled.
“The boats. The crayboat,” called Barney as he took off towards the north
end of the island. “He won’t want to use his own cabin cruiser if it’s nearly
out of fuel.”
Zep followed, feeling
the pain in his bruised rib. Perhaps it was cracked. And his backside really
did not want him to run fast. He ran uncomfortably after Barney, along the
undulating boardwalk between deserted shanties and the placid ocean, over the
uneven ground that crossed piles of rough broken coral.
As Barney reached the
vicinity of the northern jetty, he saw the stern of the Fizzogg moving away from him. He
called out, but he wasn’t heard over the roar of the motor that was under
strain to develop the maximum speed in the shortest time. Fozzy
was headed north, towards the Wallabi Group of the Abrolhos Islands, where there were dozens more of places he
could hide out.
Zep arrived wheezing
and looking quite ill.
“Hold on, old boy. Stop
right there.” Barney could recognise the symptoms of a cracked rib. He had
experienced it once himself on the football field and had seen others with the
same problem. The team medical staff always recommended patient immobility
until it was ascertained whether there was a punctured lung or a possibility of
one. Only the foolhardy or stupid players continued on regardless. Barney
lifted Zep’s Kevlar vest and tenderly ran his fingers around the growing
bruise. His partner sucked in air and winced. The rib appeared to be intact,
but it might still have a hairline crack. He also wrapped a handkerchief around
Zep’s bloodied arm as a temporary measure.
“Dr Merrick recommends
total bed rest for you for a week,” he pronounced, grinning, and Zep grunted in
pain.
“Piss off, Barney. We
got things to do, a felony boat to report, a fugitive boat to chase, fuel to
collect.” He gasped as he staggered off towards the fuel depot and to the radio
in the cabin cruiser.
While Barney struggled
with the intricacies of the refuelling, Zep climbed into the cabin cruiser and
radioed the water police. He gave details of the assassins’ boat, which they
noticed heading in a southern direction. He warned that they were armed with
machine pistols and prepared to use them. Next, he gave the description of
Foster’s crayboat, last seen heading towards the
northern groups of the Abrolhos Islands.
“The airport tells us
we can only have one rescue plane to put into the air,” the commodore informed
him. “For this morning’s search, we diverted a volunteer private plane for a
few hours, but the owner has now flown on to Morawa.
The search-and-rescue pilot is just about buggered. He has been out all morning
since sunrise and then most of the afternoon.”
“Did they find the
missing boat?” enquired Zep.
“No,” was the
disappointing reply. “They covered the whole area but found no trace. They
called it off an hour ago. I’ll send him out as soon as he refuels.”
Thirty minutes later,
in pursuit of Foster, they headed away from Rat Island in the Easter Group and
north across the turbulent open ocean between the main island chains of the Abrolhos. As Zep steered, Barney dressed his bullet wound
using the boat’s medical kit. The computer chart of the Wallabi
Group to the north suggested that Pidgeon Island was the most likely
destination, so they decided to head that way until the spotter plane could be
allocated to the crayboat search.
*
It was less than an hour before sundown, and they
hadn’t sighted the Fizzogg.
The sports cruiser should have had the closing speed, but the crayboat had the head start and an unknown direction. The
commodore radioed back to say that the plane had just sighted the villains
leaving Bushby Island and heading for the mainland.
“Did you get their registration number on the front of the boat?” inquired the
commodore.
“We were too busy
dodging bullets and returning fire to take in the scenery,” apologised Zep.
“No matter,” grunted
the officer. “The water police will lie in wait for them.”
“I wonder how they
plugged the holes,” mused Barney. Zep laughed but stopped as he grimaced in
pain.
“We are terminating
this search forthwith,” declared Barney. “The plane can find him tomorrow
morning. I’m going to get you to the hospital before you collapse. Then it
would have to be me who has to give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“Yeah,
right. And that’s going to happen,” smiled Zep sweetly and
puckered his lips.
*
The night was almost pitch-black, with the lunar cycle
nearing its darkest new moon phase. They were some ten kilometres out of
Geraldton and looking at the on-screen navigation map, when Barney queried
their course, “Do you know how to get into the Marina at night?”
“This screen shows all
the rocks and reefs, so if I take it slowly, I should have no problems. The first
rocks begin around eight kilometres out. So I guess we’d better slow down to around eight knots.”
They crept towards the
coast, with Zep keeping one eye on their own course plot on the screen and the
other on the locations of rocks and reefs shown on the screen. Barney stared
ahead into the poorly lit night, seeing dark shadows loom as the occasional
large waves surged towards them. He was too concerned to even think about his
normal queasiness in a pitching boat.
When they had achieved
a position that was about four kilometres out, they were congratulating
themselves on having achieved the first part, when a moving dot appeared on
their radar screen. A large boat loomed suddenly out of the gloom, and a
powerful searchlight flared and pinpointed them.
“Armed
police! Don’t move,” was the dreadful noise screeched through
a megaphone.
Barney and Zep blinked
into the light like animals caught in car’s headlights seconds before they
became roadkill. At this distance, they did not dare to make any move, even to
reach for their badges. They put their hands into the air and waited for the
water police to come alongside.
“Senior Detective Zep
Marcon and Detective Barney Merrick,” Barney hollered forcefully when the
police were in hearing range.
“Stay right where you
are. Keep your hands well above your heads, away from your holsters,” demanded
one officer loudly as three water policemen boarded with service weapons drawn
and pointed. “Now, one at a time, slowly get your warrant cards out and show
me.” They did so.
“We’ve got the wrong
boat,” the water-police officer called out to his patrol boat after he had
inspected their IDs.
“Damn,” said the boat’s
commanding officer.
“Damn,” said Barney and
Zep simultaneously.
“So you missed the
other boat?” groaned Barney.
“You were the only one
approaching Geraldton,” came the reply.
“Perhaps they didn’t
make it with your bullet holes in their hull,” Zep considered hopefully. “With
this darkness, we can only wait until first light tomorrow to search for them.”
Batavia
Shores -
One Review
BLUEINK REVIEW – A STARRED REVIEW
Batavia Shores
Ken F. Stewart
Xlibris, 245 pages,
(paperback) $16.13, 9781499011357 (Reviewed: October, 2014)
Series fiction must invite new readers
into the fold while sparing fans too much repetition. Batavia Shores is
a sequel that gets the balance right — and delivers a ripping yarn as well. If
it proves to be the second of many, there should be plenty of readers on board
for the journey.
Barney Merrick and Zep Marcon,
detectives who first appeared in author Ken Stewart's Devlin Pool, find
that one thing leads to another with deadly force in this tale. What at first
seems to be a simple carjacking sends the two on an extensive investigation;
drug runners, gun smugglers, and international terrorists all have ties to the vehicle. If that's not enough to hook you, there's a subplot
involving two Aboriginals (the book is set in Australia) in a feud that
requires balancing tribal and mainstream law and customs for a true meting out
of justice.
Stewart is a deft writer; this book is
at times overloaded with action, but the plot unfolds with precision and never
drops a stitch. A few typos don't distract from the action, which includes
someone falling into an open grave. Merrick plays football for a local league,
and their exploits figure into the story in unexpected ways; a reluctant
witness becomes remarkably willing to talk when she learns a local sports
legend is asking the questions.
If Stewart wanted to slow the action
just a bit and flesh out character and setting more, it could only make a good
thing better. However, with it's
gritty violence and breakneck pacing, Batavia Shores is great as is, and
sure to be a hit with mystery fans.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
Rhoda: Her
Life and Times
Ken Stewart:
2015
Ken Stewart
is to be congratulated for his endeavour to deliver a family history beginning
with a recent ancestor, Rhoda Stewart (Nee Bennett, 1857-1948). The story
starts as a biography that morphs into a story of an extended family. This
impressive work is probably intended to inform the current generation of the
author's family. From an Australian perspective family migration stories have
an intrinsic interest for those beyond the family.
The story is
based on what are known to be key events in Rhoda's life as told by past and
present family members, consequentially the story is episodic. Stewart appears
to have made good use of whatever public records exist. His visits to many of the sites including walks in the streets where
family members one lived and died is laudable. This has enhanced his capacity
to imagine the life and times of the actors. Good use of websites has injected
historical authenticity into the narrative. However, the absence of primary
historical sources such as diaries, letters and mementos means that the author
has not been able to identify the motives and emotional states of the actors or
the dynamics of the relationships among family members. Despite this constraint
Stewart delivers an interesting intergenerational family story that connects
with the big themes of Twentieth Century history.
There are a
number of events and relationships that define this family history. One event
is the premature death of Rhoda's father in 1865. To ease the burden of
economic hardship Rhoda, then 14 years of age, begins life as a domestic
helper. A strong theme is her willingness to seek employment opportunities in
other places. This includes leaving England for Bangor, Ireland. Here she meets
her husband Andrew Stewart. In 1881 the married couple move to Glasgow where
they have four sons and a daughter. During this era the availability of cheaper
sea and rail transport enables chain migration of other members of the Stewart
clan to move to Glasgow seeking employment. There is good treatment of the
industrial conflict and social unrest in the Singer factory and then at the
John Brown shipyards in Clydebank where members of the family sought
employment.
It is in
Clydebank where the family senses that war is coming. The shipyard is building
naval vessels, including ships for the new Australian fleet. They meet
Australian sailors who have come to the shipyard for the proving trials of the
ships. This enables family members to imagine an alternative future in this new
nation. Rhoda's second son Henry signs on as a crewman on an immigrant ship to
Australia. His letter from Fremantle informs Rhoda and James' decision to seek
assisted migration to Fremantle. The migration begins with Andrew and two sons in
1910. On arriving these urban factory hands embark on
a new vocation as farmers on the frontier district of the Narembeen district.
It is not until 1913 that Rhoda and the other sons follow leaving their now
married daughter. On the journey to Fremantle Rhoda begins what is to become a
lifelong connection with members of the Anderson family who also take up
farming in Western Australia.
The book
offers insight into life on the agricultural frontier in the south west of
Western Australia during the early Twentieth Century. The ability of rural
settlers to learn from and to assist others are strong
themes of life in this story. For the Stewarts a key theme is the importance of
family and friends as they seek a better life. The hard physical work of land
clearing, cropping, building, fencing and getting the harvest to the railway
reveal the resilience and stoicism of these settlers in the face of adversity.
The efforts of the genteel working class were one of the great unrecognized
human resources of the fledgling nation.
Then there
is the Great War and the loss to the district of the young men who enlist. The
author follows the stories of the sons who serve and who do not return. In the
aftermath of war harsh seasons in the marginal lands of Narembeen eventually
force many family members to leave the land and again become urban dwellers in
the suburb of Cottesloe, Perth. The births of grand children and their
contribution to the Second World War (Or what some historians now call the
final phase of the 30 year war) then become the centre of the family story.
Here the narrative loses coherence as the number of actors
increases.
Although
primarily a family history the story is also a contribution to migration,
railway and district histories. The extended family is itself a good example of
chain migration. The work also throws light on the experience of land
settlement on the frontier in Western Australia.
A troubling
aspect of Stewart's work is the inclusion of fictional events. To be fair the
author forewarns the reader. He fesses up to the specifics of the imagined
events in a postscript. The series of fictional letters from Australia
(Chapters 10, 11) highlight the author's understanding of the historical
context. It would have been better to indicate each historical fiction event
within the text. This enables readers seeking historical authenticity to
readily separate the fictional events. Essentially the work remains an
authoritative source.
Correction:
p.54 - the
first HMAS Australia was a 12 inch (305mm) 8 gun battle cruiser
Michael
Harvey