The Amber Trail (20 page)

Rap Rap
Rap!

They jumped. The sound seemed to
come from all around them. Dig put a finger to his lips.

They waited.

The door handle turned and the
lock caught. Dig swallowed and held tightly to the desk beside him
as the train jostled along the tracks. Jules hugged her knees on
the floor.

Rap Rap
Rap!

And silence. The stench of the
smoke was acrid and more pronounced now, filling the
room
.
Dig could taste it at the back of
his throat.

“
Hello?” It was a
deep voice, muffled through the door. “Anyone in there?”

It was Shiv.

“
Jules?”

Jules dropped her head to her
chest and closed her eyes; she was shaking. Dig surveyed the room
for some sort of weapon. A wrench, or even a broom would do. But
the room was empty. There was nothing.

“
You need to open the
door Jules. We know you’re in there. The guard said he saw you in
this carriage.”

Jules laced her fingers around
the back of her head.

“
We have your
brother. He’s hurt, so we sent him back to Hampi to...take care of
him. If you want to see him...then you need to come with us now.
Otherwise, in a couple of days he’ll be chopped up and fed to the
crocodiles.” Jules turned to look at the closed door. Her forehead
furrowed and a tear welled in the corner of her eye.

There was a pause. “We know you
took the money from the house. If you give it back now, we can try
to figure things out.”

Jules pursed her lips.

“
And as for your
friend Dig, he needs to come too. If he doesn’t, in a couple of
days’ time I’m taking a return trip to Australia to see which one
of his mother’s ears she wants to keep.” Dig clenched his fist and
tapped it against his lips.

“
So open the
door...
now
. And come with us. We just need to
talk.”

Jules glanced at Dig, and he
shook his head. She stared forlornly at the door, then pushed
herself to her feet
.
She
brought a shaking hand to her lip, then reached
for the handle. Dig grabbed her wrist, his eyes wide.

The speaker above their head gave
a whine of feedback and then crackled into life; a warbled voice
then echoed across the line.
“Fire! Fire! In carriage seven!
Stop the train...stop the train!”

A loud squeal of metal-on-metal
drilled into Dig’s ears and they were thrown forward. Dig’s head
cracked hard against a metal bulkhead. Jules fell to her rear. The
clackety-clack slowed its tempo beneath them and the smell of
burning brake pads filled the air. With a final whine, the train
ground to a shuddering stop, and they both slid across the floor,
crashing into the rear table. A drawer popped out and fell to the
ground, spilling out a handful of timetables and a magazine with a
cover of a busty, dark haired woman wearing nothing but a
suggestive pout.

It was eerily quiet, save for the
hissing of gas escaping from somewhere below them. Behind the
closed door, Dig could hear Shiv and his offsiders swearing and
complaining.

“
Let’s go,” Dig
whispered and crawled along the floor to the exterior ladder. He
unhooked the chain link and began lowering himself backwards out
the door when he glanced back at Jules. She lay back on one elbow
with a vacant stare. Dig reached up and tugged her ankle. “Come
on!”  

She nodded, and followed him out
the door.

Dig stepped down the ladder and
lowered himself to the
earth
. His foot
landed on something slippery and slid out from under him, dropping
him to his knees. His hand
went to the ground,
and
groped something slimy and wet. A foul stench
was in
the air—the stench of human waste.
Dig held his breath and looked around him.

Further up the tracks, an elderly
man wearing dirty pants and a grimy collared shirt was squatting,
relieving himself. He glanced at Dig with a passive nonchalance as
he deposited the contents of his bowels beside the track. Dig
stared at his own hand, and realised it was covered in excrement.
In fact, the ground around him was dotted with brown
patches.

Rudimentary shacks ran parallel
with the now stationary train, each constructed of corrugated iron
panels, blue plastic sheeting, and cardboard. A grubby boy emerged
from the passageways between the shacks, unzipped his pants and
relieved himself further up the track.

“
What the...” Dig
said.

“
Slum toilet.” Jules
climbed down the ladder beside him. “Come on.” She ran away toward
the shacks. Dig wiped his hand against a rail and followed
her.

“
Hey!” The voice came
from the train. Shiv leaned out of the doorway to the main
carriage. “Jules!”

Jules skipped across the track
ballast before disappearing into a dark alleyway between the
buildings. Dig covered the distance in long strides and followed
her into the passage.

Shadowy dwellings of corrugated
iron lined up on both sides of the corridor, with small children
sitting in the doorways. Dig skipped between muddy puddles on the
ground; the stink of urine filled the air.

Jules dodged left into a shadowy
passageway, barely shoulder width, that ran away between two high
mudbrick walls. As Dig followed her around the corner, he glanced
back to see Shiv and the thugs pushing into the corridor. They were
catching up.

They ran through the passage,
ducking below a clothesline while their shoes slapped against the
muddy ground. A mangy dog appeared from a doorway and snapped at
Dig’s heels.

The passage rose up a set of
stairs, then opened out into an enclosed courtyard surrounded by
tall, mudbrick buildings with darkened doorways. A boy knelt in the
centre of the courtyard, pumping water from a well. Jules stopped,
her chest heaving, and turned to Dig with wide eyes. “We’re
trapped.”

Footsteps echoed behind them, and
Dig’s stomach clenched. “Come on,” he said, and ran past the boy
into the nearest door.

The room was small and dark, and
smelt like smoke and mud. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
A table stood in the centre of the room, supporting a stack of
plates. Against the back wall, a ladder led up through the ceiling.
Dig ran to it and climbed. Voices shouted from the doorway behind
them.

In the upper level, the ceiling
was low and Dig’s knees popped as he scurried across the room. A
mattress lay in one corner, and light streamed through a solitary
window. He pushed his head through the window frame to see a
tangled sea of roofs spread out ahead of him, split by the top of a
fragmented mud wall that zigzagged between the buildings like a
broken path.

Jules appeared in the window
beside him.

“
The wall,” Dig said.
“Outside.” He helped her out through the window opening. The sleeve
of her shirt tore on the frame as she passed through.
 

Dig climbed out behind her and
lowered himself to the top of the wall. It was a couple of hand
spans wide, but the bricks were jagged and wobbly. The mortar
between the blocks was flaking away.

A voice echoed above them. Dig
glanced up, then turned to Jules. “Go,” he said. “Along the wall,
I’ll catch up.”

“
What are you
doing?”

“
Trying to stop
them.”

Jules frowned, then turned and
began to walk along the top of the wall with her hands spread wide
for balance. Each side dropped down to the roofs below.

Dig pulled his pack to his chest
and unzipped the front pocket. He fished out his house keys and
began prising at the mortar between the bricks. After a moment the
first brick split away from the top of the wall. He extracted it,
then balanced it precariously back in position. He copied this
action with the three adjacent bricks before pushing to his
feet.

Above him, Shiv’s head shot out
through the window frame. “Here!” Shiv shouted behind him, and
began to climb out through the window.

Dig turned and walked along the
wall, as fast as he dared, trying to keep his focus on his feet.
Sweat dripped down his temples. A breeze pushed at his side and
tried to send him over the edge.

Dig glanced backwards to see Shiv
drop down to the wall. His foot came down on a loose brick and it
fell away; his arms pinwheeled and he overbalanced, dropping over
the side.

Shiv
hit the roof of one of the shacks, taking the impact on his
shoulder. It imploded around him, and he dropped down through the
building. Pieces of the ceiling followed him down in a cloud of
billowing dust.

Dig turned his attention forward
again, moving along the wall as fast as he dared. Jules stood
motionless ahead of him. As he caught up he saw she was staring
down at a pile of dirty plastic rubbish heaped against a wall on a
street.

“
Jump?”

“
Yep.”

Jules dropped first, punching
into the pile of garbage to her waist. Dig landed beside her, and
they pushed out of the trash to the street edge. Motor rickshaws
moved along the street in two directions, bouncing through potholes
and spewing exhaust behind them. Streams of brown liquid ran down
the gutters.

Dig waved at a motor rickshaw and
it rumbled to a stop beside them. They jumped in the back. “Just
get us out of here! As quick as you can.”

The driver wobbled his head and
the machine moved forward.  

Dig peered behind them. The
rickshaw trundled slowly
up
the street,
but Shiv was nowhere to be seen amongst the crowds. He hunched down
in his seat and willed the driver onward.

When the rickshaw reached the end
of the dirt road it turned onto a stretch of asphalt. The driver
pulled back the throttle, and the wind blew through their hair as
fields of rice and grain appeared on both sides of the street.
Piles of rubbish burnt on the fence line. Dig watched the road
behind them for a few minutes before turning back to Jules. “I
think we lost them.
”

Jules pursed her lips and gave a
small shrug. “Along with my only chance to see my
brother.”

“
You couldn’t go with
them. They’d chop you up.”

“
I need to help
him.”

“
We will,” Dig said
with a deep breath.
“
I know where he
is.”

“
Where?”

“
Shiv said he took
Chook to Hampi. I was there yesterday...in their brewery. I can
take you there.”

“
Okay, let’s go
then.”

Dig frowned. “We can’t just turn
up, knock on the front door and ask for him back.”

“
Well what else can
we do?”

“
I don’t know.” He
scratched his head. “Maybe we should just lay low for a bit and
figure out a plan.”

Jules sighed and turned to look
out the window. The sun was dropping behind the passing fields.
“We’ll head to Badami for the night. It’s a quiet town that’s close
to Hampi. They won’t think to look there.”

“
Fine. That’ll give
me time to think. There are just...some parts of this that still
don’t make sense.”

“
Like
what?”

“
Like how the hell my
father got caught up in this in the first place, and why he let it
go on for so long when it seemed like he didn’t want to be part of
it.”

Jules leaned forward to the
driver. “Can you take us to Badami please?”

“
Badami?” The
driver’s eyes widened. “This is very long way.”

“
Yeah, I
know.”

“
Going to be an
expensive rickshaw ride,” Dig muttered.

“
Don’t worry. I just
came into a bit of cash.”

Dig raised his eyebrows. “How
much did you steal from the house?”

“
A few million rupee.
Straight out of Shiv's private safe.”

“
How much is that in
dollars?”

“
I don’t know...about
sixty grand?”

“
You’re off the
Christmas card list.”

Jules nodded and gave a weak
smile. She moved closer to Dig and rested her head back against the
seat. Dig’s stomach gave a flutter as he felt the warmth of her
skin against his forearm.

Outside, the broken asphalt ran
away below the rickshaw
. T
he motor hummed
in their ears as they bounced along the road. The sun dropped away
to a steamy night, and the scenery outside became a blur of
streetlights and lit shopfronts.

“
EXCUSE ME SIR...”
The voice crept into Dig’s dreams
;
he
became aware of a silence around him. “Hello
please.”

He opened his eyes. The driver
watched him through the rear view mirror. The dimly lit rectangle
of a doorway stood in the darkness of the roadside. He checked his
watch; it was 2 a
.
m. They had been
driving for eight hours.