Behind Mt. Baldy (10 page)

Back on the road they stood
uncertainly for a moment. Stephen took the initiative. “Come on. We are
supposed to be on a hike. They probably weren’t doing anything. Let’s go.”

They made their way back to their
packs. Roger had a big drink, draining his second water bottle. He felt oddly
frustrated but knew he could not explain quite why.

Graham looked at his watch.
“Twenty to eleven!
Come on. Packs on! Let’s march!”

“Packs on!
Let’s march!” echoed Roger in a
resigned voice. Reluctantly he hoisted on his webbing and pack. On the way out
to the road his foot caught in a vine, nearly tripping him. Then his pack
caught in another, pulling him sideways. He swore and wrenched himself free and
stumbled out into the open.

Graham set off as fast as he
could go.

“Bloody hell!”
Roger swore and lurched after
him.

The road curved around to the left,
up over a low hill then down over another narrow concrete bridge before winding
up over a steeper ridge. Thick jungle with lots of secondary growth hemmed them
in. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun blazed down on them.

“This is supposed to be winter,”
grumbled Roger, wiping drops of sweat clear of his eyes.

“Could be
worse.
It
could be cold,” Peter reminded.

Somehow Roger managed to keep up
as they slogged along. He found himself counting paces. Then he called The Step
to himself, “Left, Right, Left, Right, Left!”

The road wound down across
another narrow bridge. They passed a cattle yard full of beef cattle and
several overgrown side roads. At the next bend to the left a side road went off
on the right into a clearing among more pine trees.

Peter gestured towards it and
said, “That’s where we had the pretend fort in last year’s Senior Exercise.”

Graham pointed along an overgrown
road which led into the jungle on their left. “That is where we rescued the
girls from a camp.”

“That’s when you fell in love
with Tina, the navy cadet,” Peter teased.

“Oh I did not! She’s Andrew’s
girlfriend,” Graham replied hotly. They fell to discussing how Tina had gone
missing, kidnapped by the bird smugglers. Andrew Collins had saved her in quite
dramatic circumstances. As they talked Roger could only listen enviously. He
had not been allowed to take part as he had only been a ‘First Year’ cadet at
the time. Being those few months younger could be really annoying!

The road went down across another
bridge and then began to climb up a long slope with pine forest on both sides.
Roger slowed down and fell behind. A car came from behind and left dust hanging
in the still air.

At the crest of the rise a
well-graded road led off on the right. The sign indicated it led to School
Point Campground. The others waited there for Roger to catch up.  As soon
as he did Graham set off again.

“What about a blow?” Roger asked.

“No!” Graham was adamant. “We
should have reached ‘The Chimneys’ yesterday. We will stop there for lunch. It’s
only another two kilometres.”

Half a kilometre further on
another good road led off on the right. This one led to Fongon Bay Campground.
The main road went steadily uphill. One the left was rainforest and on their
right a forest of mature pine trees which were clear of undergrowth. Buildings
came into view ahead on their right. These turned out to be an old Forest
Ranger Station. Graham just kept walking.

A few hundred metres further on a
gap opened up in the jungle on their left.  Graham led the way across the
road and stopped. Below them lay a small lake, half-covered with reeds and
lilies.

“Lake Euramo.
It’s a volcanic crater lake,” he
said.

“I know. I’ve been here on
picnics,” Roger said grumpily.
“In a car.”

They had all been there before
with parents on sightseeing trips showing relations the Tablelands so they
didn’t linger. Roger was feeling quite down by this time. His shoulders ached,
his feet hurt, his chafing was starting to bother him again, his muscles seemed
hot and he had a headache. He was in quite a bad mood.

A few hundred metres along
another large clearing opened up on the right.  A couple of large trees
stood in lawn and two brick chimneys stood beside a side track.

“Two Chimneys,” Graham called
back to cheer him up.

“I can count,” Roger snapped. He
was fast losing interest. All he wanted to do was stop and lie down.

They walked to the shade of a
large tree on the lawn between the derelict chimneys and the main road. Packs
were dropped and Roger lowered himself with much sighing and groaning. He
pillowed his head on his pack and closed his eyes.

“Eleven forty-five. That’s not
too bad,” said Graham. “We can have lunch. Till twelve thirty. Then we must
push on. Let’s see if there’s a clue here.”

He walked off towards the old
brick and concrete chimneys, obviously all that remained of some house,
followed by Peter and Stephen. Roger just lay there feeling sore and sorry for
himself.

Stephen found the clue almost at
once, stuck up the rear flue of the left-hand chimney. The three walked back to
Roger with their find.

“We found it Roger,” Stephen
called.

“Good,” replied Roger without
looking round.

“Oh cheer up mate. It’s not that
bad,” Graham said, sitting down beside him.

Roger felt a bit churlish but didn’t
reply. Peter sat on the other side. “Have some lunch Roger. You’ll feel
better.”

“And you’ll have less to carry,”
Stephen added.

Graham made a point of reading
the new clue aloud. “Four words again. High School, Curtain Fig.”

In spite of his mood Roger
couldn’t help being interested. He opened his eyes and reached out. Graham
passed him the clue. As before it was printed by hand in black felt pen on
bright yellow paper and placed in a plastic bag.

Roger looked at it and asked,
“High School? Which High School? Where’s the nearest High School?” He tried to
sort out the small towns which dotted the Tablelands. He had been driven across
the Tablelands often enough but the layout and road network was just a maze to
him.

“There’s certainly one in
Atherton,” Peter said.

“And Malanda.
Remember playing against them at
the Sports Carnival?” Stephen reminded.

“All you noticed were the legs of
their girl’s basketball team,” Graham said with a grin.

“So did you!” Stephen replied
hotly.

Peter chuckled. “I wondered when
girls would re-establish their normal supremacy in Graham’s mind,” he commented
to the nearby tree.

Graham ignored his friends ‘dig’,
being busy unfolding and smoothing the 1:100 000 scale maps. With a groan Roger
rolled over and got to his knees to join the others studying the maps.

“The Curtain Fig is near
Yungaburra,” Stephen said. “My dad took me there once.”

“We’ve all been there,” Roger
sneered, “a dozen times. Every time relations come to visit.”

They all looked at the map in the
vicinity of Yungaburra. Peter jabbed with his finger.  “There it is.”

Graham bent to look closer,
then
checked a symbol on the map legend. “Yes. That’s it.”

“How far is it? It looks a long
way,” Roger asked, his eye following the circuitous route.

Graham did some measuring.
“Fifteen kilometres in a straight line.
About
thirty five or thirty six along the road.”

“Thirty six
kilometres!
We can’t do that in one day!” Roger exclaimed.

“Yes we can. We should be able to
do about thirty,” Graham replied.

“You might be able to,” Roger
retorted.

Peter interrupted. “If we have to
we can camp along the way somewhere. We’ve come about twelve kilometres so far,
so we can do another twelve today.”

“Don’t forget we may have to go
into Yungaburra to see if there’s a High School,” Stephen said.

“No we won’t,” Roger said. “We
can ask someone along the way.”

“Good thinking,” Graham said.
“Now, let’s have some lunch.”

They dug around in their packs
and began their meal. Roger opened a tin of sliced peaches.

“Roger, I hope those peaches
aren’t like the ones you took on that hike to Kuranda?” Peter asked.

Roger snorted. It was an old
‘in-group’ joke from when they had found he was carrying a large tin of peaches
‘in heavy syrup’. He scanned the label. “No Peter. But what puzzles me, is why
the clues have two places on them. Does it mean we have to go to the other
places eventually?”

“Probably,” Graham surmised, in
between wolfing down Vienna sausages from a tin.

The sound of a car coming from ahead
drew their attention. Roger spooned peaches into his mouth,
then
looked up as the car drew closer. The car was white so the faint worry which
had surfaced subsided. Then he jumped to his feet, spluttering and dribbling
juice.

“
Sgmrsh ..
Iths ..
It’s the Inspector!” He began to wave and
yelled out as the car drew level.
“Inspector!”
(Inspector who?
His mind tried to recall. Ah yes. 
Inspector Sharpe).
The name came to mind when he saw the
face with a moustache looking at him through the car window. For a moment he
thought the police hadn’t heard him but the car began to slow and it turned off
onto the side track.

Stephen scowled.
“Oh Roger!
  Why the bloody hell did you do that?” he
asked.

“We’ve got to tell them about the
two men,” Roger replied, half oblivious of Stephen’s disapproval in his
excitement.

“They may have nothing to do with
the murder,” Stephen said stubbornly.

Graham joined in. “Roger’s right.
Even if they haven’t, the police should know.”

The police car drove back and
stopped. The three detectives climbed out. All had discarded their coats in the
heat and Roger felt a distinct thrill when he to saw they wore pistols in
shoulder holsters. Inspector Sharpe removed sunglasses as he came over to them.

“Hello lads. Lunch time eh? Nice
spot for it. How’s the hike going?”

“OK Inspector. But we saw these
two men,” Roger said. He then described the incident. The attitude of all three
policemen at once changed. They listened intently. Then Inspector Sharpe began
to ask questions.

“What time was that?
About ten thirty.
Where?”

They showed him on the map.
Graham made a quick sketch map on a page of his notebook, added the six
figure
Grid Reference, and tore the page out.

Inspector Sharpe nodded his
thanks. “Make of car? Good. Did you get its number?”

Roger pulled out his notebook and
gave it.

“Good boy!” Inspector Sharpe
said. At such praise Roger didn’t even resent being called a boy. Inspector
Sharpe turned to his companions.
“Foreigners in black with
guns wandering around the jungle eh?
I think we need to locate friend
Bruno and his mate and have a chat with them.”

He turned back to the cadets.
“Thanks for this. This could be our most useful lead yet.”

CHAPTER 7

INTO THE JUNGLE

When Roger heard that he felt a
deep glow of satisfaction. Inspector Sharpe smiled at him and said, “You lads
have been our biggest help so far and this lead may well crack the case. 
I think you deserve to know why I think that.”  He looked at each in turn,
then
he went on. “We know who the dead man was. His
name was Boris Krapinski and he was a European. The doctor in Atherton who did
the autopsy recognized him as one of his patients. Mr Krapinski migrated to
Australia about sixty years ago as a refugee after World War Two.”

Roger couldn’t help exchanging a
glance with Graham. He had just remembered the badge in his pocket and slid his
hand in to hold it while he listened.

Inspector Sharpe went on, “He was
what was called a ‘Displaced Person’ and came from Kosaria. We’ve contacted the
Kosarian Embassy in Canberra for more details but his neighbours and former
workmates have given us an outline. Apparently he served as a soldier in the
Kosarian Brigade with the British 8th Army in the North African and Italian
Campaigns.”

Inspector Sharpe paused to see if
his young audience had enough history to follow him. They all nodded so he went
on, “After the war he was one of those people who didn’t dare go home because
the Communists had taken over, probably because they would have been imprisoned
or shot, so he migrated to Australia.”

“Curiously, although he lived in
Atherton all those years he was never naturalised, that is, he didn’t become an
Australian Citizen. I say curiously because there are quite a number of
Kosarian migrants on the Tablelands and most have taken out Citizenship.”