Diaries

Stuart Jackson

Description

Off the barren west coast of Tasmania a fishing boat crew drag two sailors from the ocean. The only clue as to why they were there is held in a sailor's diary – written in a foreign language. Unravelling the mystery, the Australian authorities must find the vessel on which the sailors had sailed before other interested parties get to it first.

The discovery of the vessel becomes a deadly race when a saboteur is despatched to ensure that it will be destroyed, regardless of who or what is on board.

Elsewhere on the island novelist Nora Christie uses the diary of Captain Abbotsley to research her latest book. Abbotsley had been sent to oversee convicts at Australia's most notorious and isolated settlement – Sarah Island on the west coast of Tasmania – in the early 19th century.

Nora has no idea what events will be unleashed from what the Captain has written nor that his extraordinary writings will impact tragically on her and his modern-day descendants.

Nora's brother, James Christie, becomes a key part of both mystery strands, as they are woven together by two shipwrecks and the lure of lost treasure and a deadly confrontation on a stormy day on the rugged cliffs of southern Tasmania.

Diaries can be deadly.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456626716
• Langue: English

Extrait

DIARIES
 
A Novel
 
Stuart Jackson

Copyright 2016 Stuart Jackson,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2671-6
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

 
 
 
As before, this book is for my lovely wife, Loretta.
 
She encourages, supports – and reads the drafts before anyone else!
Chapter 1
THE SAILOR’S DIARY
Strahan, West Coast Tasmania
Tyler Moore was always glad to see the navigational light on Cape Sorell.
No more so than with two dead sailors on board.
When Moore and his crew had picked the pair out of the ocean one was still alive, but within thirty minutes of getting them aboard the fishing boat, the second one too was dead.
It wasn’t that Moore saw the Cape Sorell navigational light very often as a light, because he preferred to avoid going into Macquarie Harbour at night time, but it was a promise of a safe haven. Moore, like most other fishermen who took their boats into the waters around Tasmania, knew too well the vagaries of the ocean and the winds. The waters could be calm and sedate one minute and violent and unforgiving the next. Winds swept in from the vast ocean expanses to the west or the south, unfettered by any land mass, forcing torrential gales and icy blasts before them.
Macquarie Harbour had had a bad name for a long time and it was because it was a treacherous place and there never seemed to be enough information for the fishermen. A fisherman, or anyone boating in the area, needed reliable information about wind and swell. The CSIRO wave rider buoy off Cape Sorell and Maatsuyker Island, to the south, gave good data on swell indications, but the buoy didn't provide wind data and it had reached the stage where the information from the automatic weather station at Strahan couldn't be relied upon. They identified a need for another wave rider buoy, at Bonnie's Patch near South-West Cape. If they knew where the swells were originating from, the fishermen could work out the direction themselves.
Christ, Moore thought, information was survival in this place - survival so you could fish to the optimum and survival just to stay alive.
The sea was unforgiving and – unforgiving – it killed.
He used his radio constantly, but he still had a preference for the many years of experience he had himself and that of his father and his uncle with whom he had fished in his teens. You could stay alive on those feelings, sense the increase in the swell, waves that grew without wind over them, pushed ahead of moving, swirling storm winds. You could smell the rain, see the way the clouds changed as they scurried across the sky and skimmed low on the horizon, and feel the tension in the stomach.
When it got like that you headed for safety.
And on the west coast there were precious few anchorages where you could be safe until the storms had gone. North from Port Davey, itself just north of South West Cape, there was only Macquarie Harbour and there was a lot of sea to travel. And provided plenty of time and distance in which to die.
Which was why the sailors were dead now.
Moore swung the Carrie Ann round to starboard. On his port side was the Kawatiri Shoal and he lined the bow of the boat up between the two lights ahead. One, on the starboard, sat squat on a short headland of rocks, backed by the low, green-grey scrub, and the second, on the port side, taller, and more like a lighthouse, sat on Entrance Island, flat and rocky. Between the lights the water swirled, ahead of calmer water. The flow of water through here was affected by the tides, but also by the local wind conditions and recent rainfall. "Hells Gates", it was called, with good reason, he thought, and entrance to Macquarie Harbour.
Moore had no idea how the sailors came to be out in the middle of the ocean, miles from anywhere. And he wouldn't even have found them if he hadn't taken the Carrie Ann further west than he'd intended. They'd picked up a strong signal and headed for it, extra fish were not to be ignored, and then Luke had seen the light flashing between the waves.
Moore passed the light on Bonnet Island and felt better, the channel widening now, pulling the Carrie Ann around to an almost due easterly track. Macquarie Harbour opened up in front of him. Huge, wide, calm and safe, backed in the east by mountain ranges that folded into each other, that changed colour and kissed long, low dark grey clouds.
The sailors had been in a faded orange rubber raft which was in danger of swamping. Would have, had they not been found. The floor of the raft was awash with water where they lay, lifeless. Graham was the better swimmer among them and he'd tied a rope around his waist and gone over the side and swum to the raft and then shouted back that one was alive. He'd tied the rope to the raft and scrambled into it as Moore and Tommy and Luke, Graham's brother, pulled them alongside. Graham was checking both of the men in the raft and trying to scoop water out of it to stop it going under.
Once alongside, Luke slid over the side and into the raft to help his brother lift the sailors up and get them up onto the deck. The first one was still alive, but only just. They wrapped him in blankets and then brought the second one up; he was dead. Moore got them to pull the raft aboard as well and then helped Luke and Tommy carry the sailor to a bunk below decks.
"Will he die?" Luke had asked.
"No idea, son," Moore had said. "No idea." But he'd looked in a bad way, even then.
He'd radioed ahead to let them know they were coming, to have a doctor ready, and he'd left Graham to chart a course towards Macquarie Harbour while he sat with the sailor. Moore guessed that he'd have been no more than thirty years of age, he had short black hair and there was a cut down the left side of his face that looked recent. It was white and swollen with the water.
Ahead of them now, Moore could make out the town of Strahan.
The sailor had opened his eyes maybe a dozen times, but never for very long. He'd looked in fear and amazement at his surroundings and at Moore. He'd tried to speak a number of times, but the effort had obviously been too much for him, and his eyes had fluttered shut, but before he'd died he'd mumbled something and although Moore had listened intently he had been unable to understand. The man had shivered uncontrollably and then died, his face relaxing.
Moore now nosed the Carrie Ann in against the wharf. There were more than a dozen people waiting. More than usual, he thought. The word had spread quickly, as it tended to. Doctor White stood on the wharf, his black bag in one hand, and there was a uniformed policeman standing alongside him. Harold would be quite excited about the prospect of having to investigate something new and different. Moore stepped onto the wharf and walked up to them.
"Tyler, how is he?" the doctor asked.
"He died."
"I'll go see," White said and headed onto the fishing boat.
Moore turned to the policeman.
"What do you think happened?" the policeman asked. "What boat are they from? We haven't got any alarms for overdue boats. Was there any wreckage? Do you ..."
"Hey, hold on," Moore said.
The policeman drew breath.
"What boat are they from?"
"No idea."
"Nothing?"
"Don’t think they’re fisherman,” Moore offered.
“What?”
Moore shook his head, glanced back down the wharf to where the bodies were being lifted off the trawler.
“Not kitted out like fishermen.” He drew his arms slowly apart as if to say to the policeman that they were not dressed like him.
“Maybe fell overboard, off a freighter or a container ship?”
“And they got a raft out to them. And then left them?”
“Stowaways?”
“Possible. You’d think they’d have picked a better boat to be in.”
“Maybe they were discovered and put over the side to teach them a lesson?”
“Maybe. And maybe their ship sank.”
“Sank? You think so?”
“How the fuck do I know?”
“I’m only trying to work out ...”
“Well, work it out then. Don’t just keep bloody speculating.”
“The raft. Anything on the raft? Any markings?”
“There is some writing, but it’s very faded.”
“Let’s have a look then.”
“However ...”
“What however?”
“However, the writing isn’t English.”
The policeman was stunned for a few seconds.
“That’s something, then. It might help ... I’ll get in touch with Hobart and see if they’ve any reports of ships in trouble.”
“Or missing?”
“Or missing.” The policeman nodded.
“This might help you,” Moore added, extending his hand out, holding a book in a plastic pouch.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t know. Maybe your experts in Hobart can help out.”
“Not in English either, I guess?”
“Right.”
“Did you have look at it?”
“Looks like a diary, a journal of some sort. A log. See here,” and he pulled the thin book from the pouch, opening it at a random page, “there are numbers, laid out like dates, and then some writing that’s just double-Dutch to me, then another lot of numbers, another date, and more writing.”
Moore turned the book open at the front page where a faded colour photo of a young woman was taped to the inside cover. He showed it to the policeman, snapped the book shut and handed it and the pouch over.
“It’s all yours now Harold. Yours and your experts in Hobart Town.”
Tyler Moore smiled to himself and backed out of the group of people that had gathered. He was never one for all this attention.
Chapter 2
THE VINCENT DIARIES
Melbourne
Henry Vincent was seventy-two years of age.
He'd woken at six-thirty which had been his norm for the past ten years, since Donna had died, and he'd showered and then made himself a bigger than usual breakfast. His doctor had warned him about eggs and butter and milk, but he still allowe