and cracked ribs across the safety rail of a painter's platform slung between twin gantries. From above, seven or eight feet to the open window, Hinch heard Milan's cursing. And struggling to his feet inside the platform he looked up - to see that hideous, livid face looking down on him!Then, moving like liquid lightning, Milan was up onto the window ledge, and light as a feather came leaping to the bouncing, rocking platform. His intentions were unmistakable, and as he landed Hinch went to kick him in the groin. Milan caught his foot, twisted it until the ankle broke, then reached out with a long arm to grab the other's throat. And without pause, lifting Hinch bodily into the air, he thrust him out beyond the rim of the safety rail - and let him fall.As Hinch fell - grasping at thin air and failing to catch it - he was aware that Milan was speaking to him one last time. But whether it was a physical voice he heard, a chuckling whisper in his head, or simply something imagined, he couldn't have said. And he certainly didn't have time to worry about it.
Paid in fully the crazed voice whispered. For your insults if not for your work. So be it!
And below, crashing down head first, Hinch was dead before the pain had time to register. Like an egg dropped on the floor, the contents of his skull splattered at first. But the grey was soon drowned in a thick, night-dark pool that formed around his shattered head.While up above, that terrible face continued to smile down on him... for a little while, until Aristotle Milan's features melted back into a more acceptable form, and he gave a careless shrug, and grunted again, 'So be it!'Then he returned to listening to his music, and no other's thoughts to disturb him now, in the solitude of a strange place in a strange land ...An 'unfortunate accident,' was how local newspapers would later report the matter. They also reported Milan's generous offer to pay all of the funeral expenses, and his very generous donation to Derek Hindi's widow ...
CHAPTER ONE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
See The CreechurIt was hot as hell, and flies the size of Jake Cutter's little fingernails had been committing suicide on the vehicle's windscreen for more than a hundred and fifty miles now, ever since they'd left Wiluna and 'civilization' behind.'Phew!' Jake said, sluicing sweat from his brow and out of the open window of their specially adapted Land Rover. The top was back and the windows wound down, yet the hot wind of passage that pushed their wide-brimmed Aussie hats back from their foreheads, tightened their chinstraps around their throats and ruffled their shirts still made it feel like they were driving headlong into a bonfire. And the 'road' ahead - which in fact was scarcely better than a track - wavered like a smoke-ghost in the heat haze of what appeared to be an empty, ever-expanding distance.Behind the vehicle, a mile-long plume of dust and blue-grey exhaust fumes drifted low over the scrub and the wilderness.'That's your fifth "phew",' Liz Merrick told him. 'Feeling talkative today?'
'So what am I supposed to say?' He didn't even glance at her, though most men wouldn't have been able to resist it. 'Oh dear, isn't it hot? Christ, it must be ninety! "Phew" is about all I'm up to, because if I do more than open my mouth a crack - ugh!' And he spat out yet another wet fly.
Liz squirmed and grimaced. 'What the hell do they live on, I wonder? Way out here, I mean?' She swatted and missed as something small, black and nasty went zipping by.'Things die out here/ Jake answered grimly. 'Maybe that's what they live on.' And just when she thought that was it, that he was all done for now: 'Anyway, the sun's going down over the hills there. Another half-hour or so, it'll be cooler. It won't get cold - not in this freaky weather - but at least you'll be able to breathe without frying your lungs.' Then he was done.She turned her head to look at him more fully: his angular face in profile, his hard hands on the wheel, his lean outline. But if Jake noticed her frowning, curiously intent glance, well, it scarcely registered. That was how he was: hands off. And she thought: