Читать книгу Vivienne. Just an ordinary suburban housewife… no more - Colin Palmer - Страница 5

The digital speedometer read 108. He would never get used to kilometres per hour he thought to himself. 108. That was more than the ton from where he came from. In an era where highway travel faster than about sixty miles an hour was becoming increasingly frowned upon by the great majority of law abiding citizens, 108 just seemed, well, flagrant. He almost wished he could lower the window and stick his finger up at the world and yell at the top of his voice ‘hey look at me doin’ a hunnard and eight’! Phil, his old buddy from the academy would appreciate it, even if nobody else did, Phil would.

The sadness swept across him like a huge tsunami, no, hang on, what did they call them here in ‘down under’? Yeah, right, tidal waves. What a joke! Tsunami sounded impressive, but tidal wave? Tidal wave sounded like a tired scientist had run out of intelligent ways to describe a particularly violent act of nature. Something akin to reporting a mass murder as a minor domestic dispute.

“You okay boss?”

The voice came from the driver of the big rig who was looking at him with those immense bushy eyes and the craggiest face he’d ever set eyes on outside of a morgue. He hadn’t laughed when someone had told him in Sydney that Peter Gallagher had a face you could only describe as a chocolate cake somebody had put a fist into, but now he could see the similarity was uncanny.

“Yeah I’m fine Pete. Why do you call me that?”

“What’s that boss?”

“Boss?”

“I call everybody boss. Besides, that’s who you are.”

“I’m not your boss.”

“Are”.

“Not really. I’ve only been seconded here for this investigation and if you asked me at this very minute what to do or even where we were, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. What sort of a boss does that make me?”

“Ah, an honest one.”

“That I am Pete, that I am. Anyway, you’re in charge of this here ginormous high tech piece of equipment and as far as I’m concerned, that makes you the boss.”

“Okay then,” Pete grinned. “In that case, I say we stop at Macksville for lunch.”

“Okay”.

“You like Australia so far boss?”

“The 200 miles of it I’ve seen? Yeah, yeah I do. And I’m not your boss.”

“Sure boss.”