Читать книгу Pike's Pyramid - Michael Tatlow - Страница 14

‘Blarn, love,’ she said, ‘we’ve been robbed! The study’s been ransacked. Our Argo papers are gone from the file cabinet. Other stuff is scattered everywhere.

‘I hadn’t been in there when Richard rang me. The study window’s been forced open and closed again. They took heaps. All our CDs and DVDs. But only Argo stuff, I think.’

Pike’s first thoughts were of Alex. She must feel violated. ‘You okay? Are your parents still there?… Good. ‘The computer?’

‘It’s still on the desk. I haven’t checked it.’

He decided to warn her in case she accused Argo. ‘This phone’s on the table, the loud-speaker on so Richard can hear you, too. With the book pinched in Prague, we really needed those files. Call Plodder. Tell him it’s the heart of our whole business.’ He glanced at his apprehensive leader. ‘Plodder will want your fingerprints, and mine. Don’t touch anything in there, of course. I’ll drive home tonight.’

‘No, Blarn!’ Alex protested. ‘With the jetlag and this bad weather—’

‘No,’ her husband interrupted. ‘I’ll be there in five hours. I’ll drive a bit slowly. Five and a half then. I’m feeling fine. And get Eva up there for the night… I’m baffled. Chin up, my lovely. And don’t you wait up for me.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’ll get any sleep. Drive really carefully. I love you, Blarn.’

‘Yeah, I’ll be careful. Bye, love.’

Pike glared across the table as he closed off the phone. ‘Who would break into our home in little old Stanley and do that, Richard? Someone who wants to wreck our business?’

De Groote shrugged as Pike quickly finished his coffee. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘Plodder’s the nickname of my mate who’s the local cop in Stanley, Sergeant Sam Bond. And you’ve met Eva. She’s Alex’s married sister; two kids.

‘I want to get back to Stanley and, with Plodder I suppose, find out who robbed us. Richard, make sure you and Jerry attend to the mess in the Czech Republic. If the Czechs are abandoned, I’ll blow the whistle on the whole fiasco.’

‘I do not take threats or blackmail kindly, Blarney.’

‘Nor do I.’

Pike checked his watch. 9.30. ‘Good night, Richard.’ He bought a packet of cigarettes on the way out.

Gale-driven rain pelted the Ford even more heavily an hour north of Hobart where the two-lane Midland Highway bypassed the old sandstone village of Oatlands. The night was as dark as soot, punctuated by lightning forking from rumbling confrontations of clouds above the Central Plateau in the west.

He imagined Bondy right now ferreting around the scene of the robbery. His policeman mate was a good cop. Precious little happened in Stanley that Plodder did not know about.

He had been a major in the Australian army’s elite Special Air Service, then a tough detective in Sydney and later in Hobart. He then declined a promotion to Inspector so he could settle for Sergeant First Class in Stanley. He and his wife had fallen in love with the wondrous place while on a holiday there.

Theft was rare in the town. People there seldom bothered to lock their homes or cars. The taking of the fifty or so Argo CDs and DVDs, along with the files, intrigued him. The thieves had been instructed to take anything to do with the network, it seemed. Even with a big sack, it was more than one man could carry. He fumed. If I get hold of those damned robbers…

Jetlag tiredness crept upon him like a gathering mist as he contemplated his remaining four hours on the road. His mood was as tenebrous as the weather. This home invasion, on top of Prague, could badly hit Alex, his wild rose.

Her mother Magda had told Pike of the couple’s frustrated helplessness when, crushed with depression, eighteen-year-old Alex returned home from halfway through her second year at the university.

‘Before then, Alex had such a, such a zest for life,’ Pike remembered Magda saying as he tried to focus through the torrent on approaching headlights. At home after her collapse, Alex sometimes woke in a silent, black despair lasting a day or a week. At these times, the doctor warned of suicide.

The Dvoraks told Pike with tight smiles that this had bewildered them. They thought the doctor was warning, in his nasal Australian accent, of a cut of beef Magda sometimes bought: silverside. It never graced the Dvorak table until sister Eva explained to them the devastating truth.

The pendulum had steadied. Alex returned to university and graduated with a brilliance that caused celebration in two cultures, 20,000 kilometres apart. The belle of Stanley. The brain of Petrov.

Pike, mentally scarred alcoholic and newly divorced Sydney newspaperman, had returned from Sydney a year later.

Alex’s former condition was central to Pike’s insistence on driving home that night. He hoped her sister Eva was still with his bride.

The rust in Pike’s eyes turned to grit. Gusts of wet wind slammed at the car. He was jolted by a blast from a horn. Four foggy headlights hurtled at him. He swerved left. The oncoming truck swept by his right elbow, its horn still protesting. With a surge of adrenaline, Pike knew he had nearly fallen asleep. At ninety kph, jet lagged and exhausted, at night in a storm. Stupid!

Had he reacted half a second later, had he impulsively braked, surely skidding, he could now be dead.

Three more kilometres up the highway, he rang Alex from the Man o’ Ross Hotel in to the historic village of Ross.

‘I’ve been worried sick about you driving in this,’ she said. ‘What a pity your mobile phone battery is still flat. Dear, a storm’s belting the whole north coast.’

‘The pub’s still open,’ he stated lamely, staring up at the accusing head of a stag on the wall. ‘I’ll rest here for a while over a coffee. Let the worst of this bloody weather go and be home for breakfast.’

‘Please, please spend the night there, Blarn. Sleep in. Get a decent breakfast. I’m fine. I’ll be waiting with lunch. Stay there for me.’

Yeah, he admitted to himself, she’s right. ‘Okay. I’ll be there by midday. Any leads yet on the robbery?’

‘No. Sam Bond will be back tomorrow to talk about it with us.’

‘Good. Is Eva there?’

‘G’day, mate!’ his sister-in-law said on an extension line.

Pike took a comfortable room upstairs and drank a flask of rum from the quiet bar where he had drunk a black coffee. The rum would hasten sleep, he rationalised.

In Irishtown the phones ran hot that night with the juiciest scandal of the decade. No one was going to miss the showdown with young Blarney back from Prague at Sean and Mary’s farm.