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Nine Men. A Perfect Crime.

Sean Currie (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
334 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-5368-1 (ISBN)

Infos

A GANG OF NINE MEN SET OUT TO COMMIT THE PERFECT CRIME

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Set in the grim, still-war-damaged South London borough of Battersea in 1962, a known gang of hard-core criminals plot the most audacious crime. The gang leaders, tough men John Russell and Daniel Geddes, have only one element missing, so they employ the services of the unknown young man, Billy Tumbler. But can Billy - mired in emotion and close to poverty - fulfill the work he has been engaged to perform? This is the authors first novel, revealing a detailed exploration into the work of the criminal mind of the time, along with the attitude of the police trying desperately to understand how it could happen, while focusing on the lives of the characters, inextricably entwined with their hopes, loves and fears. Read the meticulously researched story and see how the greed of some draws in the innocent lives of others around them. Imagine the feel, the sounds and the smells of a huge swathe of working-class South London, populated by millions going through their dour daily routines, where the tourists never tread.

Textauszug

0. The Rand

July 1886 - Pretoria, The South African Republic

The Minerals Prospect Manager, his name lost to the winds of time, sat behind his small wooden desk in a wicker chair, and waived George into the room, “Sit down, Mr. Harrison.” The manager had stern eyes, more gray than blue. He had not only had an awful day, but a dreadful month, so the eyes perfectly reflected his general demeanor. He didn’t want to contemplate his troubles right now. This, before him, seemed a compelling development, but he knew how not to reveal excitement, and anyway, it was just a rumor. He stood, lifted the window sash, and a gentle, warm breeze stirred into the room. He liked winters here in this bite-sized town. Sitting back down, chair squeaking as he adjusted to his regular, formal position, he gathered the papers and read the top one to himself again while his visitor sat still and quiet:

Affidavit: “My name is George Harrison, and I come from the newly discovered goldfields Kliprivier, especially from a farm owned by a certain Gert Oosthuizen. I have a long experience as an Australian gold digger, and I think it is a payable goldfield.”

George Harrison inhaled a long draw from the pipe he clenched between his stained teeth and exhaled thoughtfully. He wore his comfortable jacket, a shapeless brown tweed, frayed at the elbows. He parted his brown hair on the left, and a long forelock fell over one eye. He had arrived two days earlier and cleaned up in the rudimentary hotel, but his beard remained long and messy. He saw no point in shaving. His voice was loud, honking, and carried far, but he thought it better to allow the other man to initiate the conversation. The manager stretched his chin forward and adjusted his high collar and constricting tie, peered at his desk and tidied the two pens thoughtfully. Stroking the hair bordering his empty scalp, he looked George in the eye, placed down his statement, and pronounced, in a strong Afrikaans accent, “Now, Mr. Harrison, I’m told you believe you’ve found some gold here in the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek of the Třansvaal?”

George frowned, “Sorry, mate, the ‘zood’ what?” He could hardly comprehend these strange Dutch accents of the white people here.

The manager stared, “The South African Republic. The Transvaal, Mr. Harrison.”

“Yes, I found some gold, and I say it’s payable. I’m asserting a discoverer’s claim,” replied George straightforwardly. He didn’t come to waste time; he had a distance yet to travel.

“Well, slow down, please, Mr. Harrison. First, I need some further information. Why don’t you tell me your story? From the beginning,” suggested the manager.

George had taken twelve weeks to walk here, to Pretoria, so he reconsidered; a few more wasted minutes did not impose, and anyway, he saw value in the uncompleted paperwork lying at the edge of the manager’s desk. Clearing his throat, he began, “Well, let’s see. I arrived in Cape Town on a lovely summer’s day in January…”

“From where?” The manager interrupted.

“On a boat from Perth, Australia.” The manager asked if that is where he originated. “Nah, I’m from Bong Bong, New South Wales, same place as Joseph Wild lived.” The manager was unfamiliar with the name, so asked George to continue his story.

He explained how he had departed Cape Town a few months after arriving, because although the town was spectacular, it lacked any enticements for him. “I’m a prospector by trade, and made good moolah in the outback, but I heard the gold here was found different. I can now attest to that fact. Anyhow, I walked north from Cape Town, heading for Kimberly where I heard there were diamonds.” He had climbed out of the Cape Fold Mountains that protect the Cape, and the weather became sub-tropical and it rained. “Dear God—and he’s no friend of mine—I wished it had rained later on, but this is as dry as a nun’s nasty country you got here.” The low-lying narrow coastal zone soon gave way to a mountainous escarpment separating the coast from the high inland plateau. George walked and walked in a northeast direction.

“I stopped along the Karoo and got into some ostrich farming. They were as big as a boomer, some of them, but good leather and lean, tasty meat.”

“Boomer?” enquired the manager.

“Boomers! Big roos!” he explained, and the manager nodded knowingly without understanding. As George had walked on, the landscape hardly changed; no wind, no rain, just stale raw air. Inconceivable formations of canyons and immense rock structures sat in the distance, circling the desert like a tremendous empty stadium, with red, rocky stands that he knew existed, but remained remote and out of reach. Each time his eyes wandered back to study the distant landscape, it seemed only a projection on the horizon. “I worked my way north as a handyman, a no-money prospector, sometimes digging for diamonds.

“I tell you,” George continued, “I saw animals I never sawed before; elephants, for Christ’s sake! Rhino, buffalo, lions, the zebra, and diff’rent antelopes. I got a little malaria fever; damn mozzies everywhere. I stayed for a while in a town called Prieschap on the Orange River.” The South African central plateau contains only two major rivers: the Limpopo, and the Orange, which flow east to west, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. “I had to stop there for a while, ʼcos I had no way of crossing. Eventually, an Englishman called John Smith came along. He’s an outstanding man. He had wagons, and he was going to Kimberly. We crossed the river; you know that takes you into the Orange Free State, headed for Kimberly.”

The manager interrupted, “I thought you were a gold prospector?”

“Right, I am, but you can’t walk past Kimberly without looking for diamonds,” replied Harrison, as if the manager had either not been listening or didn’t understand the business of prospecting.

“Please continue, Mr. Harrison.”

“Well, the landscape got flatter and harsher, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Cactuses, tumbleweeds. Dust devils, dead grass. Some nice desert flowers after the rain, but then flash flooding. I’d never sawed that before. Do you know what I remember most?” The manager, listening carefully, slowly shook his head.

“The sensations.” George seemed to hesitate, reluctant to recall, perhaps, but then continued, “The wind; whistling and howling. So many birds I saw. And sometimes the sound of my own footsteps, the heavy silence. And yapping wild dogs.” Harrison seemed to drift away with contemplation of the walk. He continued, nodding, “And the arid air, dust. My sweat, my dry mouth, bloody warm canteen water, the bitter taste of insects. And thirst and hunger.” There was a brief silence, except for the baying of a horse outside.

Grassland had dominated George’s walk, particularly on the Highveld. There were few trees, but a high level of plant diversity, especially on the escarpments. He consumed succulents to slate his thirst while saving water. Further northeast, the grass and thorn turned slowly into bush savannah, with denser growth.

The sunburnt, barren land became an eternal desert stretching for miles, and George admitted he had misjudged the distance and hardship. The intense sun blazed down on this harsh, yet ethereal, wilderness of red rocks, imbuing the lonely walker with the feeling of isolation in a giant, empty land. He believed himself the only man within many miles. When the sun set, the last rays of light scorched the desert gold, and the final beams of crepuscular sunlight perforated the horizon, like an arrow pointing him northeast. The incredible landscape changed into a vast, freezing cold nothingness.

The manager felt the story was colorful and truthful, but led nowhere. He felt he needed to interrupt, “And Kimberly?”

George smiled the knowing smile of the hardened professional. “Thousands of men have already blunted their picks and spades there. And came back cleaned out, backs aching, finding nothing. And the British are there,” he warned, “financing everything, digging deep, expensive mines. I had a look round for a month, but there’s nothing in the way of diamonds for the average bloke to find.”

The manager knew that during the recent years of the Kimberley rush they found some gold in the Transvaal, primarily at Barberton. It was never enough to tempt the diamond men of Kimberley. Yet this did not discourage prospectors. The problem being they were seeking gold as it had appeared in California and Australia before. They stumbled about like blindfolded men, groping their way towards what they believed would be the “mother lode,” from which had sprung the traces of gold they had found so far.

Harrison detected the manager’s keen interest, so he carried on, “So, I moved on. Heaps of people said there were gold and diamonds north of the Free State, so I headed there. You see, if there’s gold or diamonds, I will find them. I just can’t compete with big moolah. People said I couldn’t walk a long distance. Some said I would die hiking north of Bloemfontein and others said I would die of hunger or be eaten by lions. But I don’t die easy, Mr. Manager.”

The listening man nodded perceptively, while George went on, “Half way there it was my good fortune to run across the Oosthuizen family. They have the Highvelt farm of scrubland in Langlaagte, which I guess you know means Long Shallow Valley. Which it is.”

It was May by then, and a warm, scented wind, full with the hot oily smell of pancakes and sausage cooking on the stove by the roadside, drew him towards the farm. “They...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.1.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-5368-4 / 1098353684
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-5368-1 / 9781098353681