[Hey, I had planned a profile of an ancestor, but somehow time got away and it never happened. Still more digging and researching must be done. So, in the meantime, here’s the beginning of my attempt at Crime fiction. (I stress that the following tale is fiction, the characters are fiction, and I’m writing under the name of my alter-ego/crime-fighting name, Tessa Trudinger). I’d love to know what you think as I tackle this challenge to develop my Detective Dan series.]

Chapter 1

Part 1

The Guilt of Omission

Saturday June 27, 1981

2pm

Hiking Trail enroute to Mt. Lofty

Lillie

Fifi’s voice echoed through the steep gully, ‘Hey, what’s this? Some cow carcass!’ The blackberry bushes around her rustled in the icy breeze. ‘Come on, Lillie! Have a look! It’s gross! I nearly slid right into it.’

Lillie brushed past the liquorice plants and tottered down the slippery clay of the embankment. ‘I really don’t want to see a dead cow.’ She held out the billy while hunting for clear running water from the storm water pipe. ‘I hope the water’s not diseased.’

‘Nah, you’ll be right.’ Fifi poked her auburn curls above the bush and beckoned. ‘Looks like it’s been there for years – it’s just bones.’ Her russet crown disappeared. ‘Just wait.’

Lillie stepped forward. The clattering of the stream over stone was louder here. She stood still and drew in the sweet, scented blend of rain-soaked eucalypt, liquorice and mud. The aroma awakened a memory. I’ve been here before. She thought. The sun’s golden rays parted a curtain of thick cumulous clouds, causing the droplets on the leaves to sparkle like a million diamonds.

‘Hey, Lillie! A chain.’ Fifi held up a blackened necklace, a tear-drop pendant with a quartz stone shimmering in the light. The hand and chain vanished behind the tangle of mint-coloured leaves and thorny branches. ‘Just a minute.’

Lillie’s heart galloped, slamming against her rib cage as if in a desperate attempt to escape. She wanted to run, straight up the hill back to the campsite, back to the comfort of the fire and Jimmy Edward’s, arms. No, that wouldn’t be proper. He’s just a friend. Fifi’s brother. Her legs turned to jelly and froze. ‘What?’ She squeaked through a constricted throat. She had been here before. Summer, five years ago when she was twelve. The landscape dusted in tan and yellow. The moist green of mid-winter had lulled her into a false sense of ignorance.

A scream pierced the winter silence. ‘Oh, my God!’ Fifi ripped through the tangled bush, her freckly face flushed and green eyes wide as saucers. ‘It’s not a cow! It’s – It’s…’

‘What?’ Lillie rasped puffing out plumes of breath into the frigid air. Blood rushed through her head, roaring, while remembering the hike she preferred to forget.

January 1975: She’d only gone to the creek to fill her canteen. On a 38-degree Celsius day, hiking with her friends, the same friends plus her brother Sven, she was thirsty and needed water; they all needed water. That day Fifi had already fainted from dehydration. What was the harm in getting water from the storm water drain? What was his problem? That man?

‘Human!’ Fifi announced.

At that single word, the ball of anxiety swirling into Lillie’s chest converged in the sickening centre and dropped, thudding to the base of her stomach. ‘Oh, dear!’ she said as a blizzard of shock swept over her mind blanking out any thought.

Fifi scrambled up to Lillie and grabbed her hand ordering her to see the skull, commanding her to check out the leather coat, demanding she follow her to under the drain bridge to view the grisly find. Her best friend pulled her down to the creek, to the cavity under the bridge, her body meekly following like a frightened lamb to the slaughtered, her mind viewing the sequence of events as if from above in the clouds.

At first the sight before her resembled a side of beef at the abattoir, except the remains of him lay half sheltered at the base of the sand-stone bridge, and melted into years of silt, moss and sour-sobs. The leather hide of dry skin had sunk into the ribcage, and a disjointed hand of bones reached into the subterranean cave.

That time, when she was twelve, Lillie intended to explore up the creek in search of water. She thought she heard the water rushing. She was sure she did. The creek proved disappointing. Just a trickle. The hot northerly breeze had gypped her. She listened. A faint mewing. A kitten? A poor little kitten mewing from further up. Tracking through the dry creek bed crowded with brittle sticks of shrivelled saplings and prickle bushes laden with green unripe berries, she discovered the man-sized drainpipe. Water dribbled out into a stinky puddle surrounded by a cracked clay pan and rocks, broken tree branches and salt bushes caked in white like plaster of Paris. The kitten’s cries echoed in the black hole that penetrated deep into the hillside.

‘There you are! Ripe for the picking.’ A man’s hot breath stung the back of her neck. Cold hard metal gouged into her shoulder-blade. She turned and caught the look in his eyes, glazed, pupils dilated. He looked like a hungry wolf.

Lillie pushed him away and ran, scampering up the slope like a frightened rabbit.

‘We have to tell the police.’ Fifi stared at the coat of membrane and bones.

‘Why?’ Lillie patted her straight blonde hair. She remembered his boots thumping after her.

‘Cos it’s the right thing to do.’

[to be continued…Friday fortnight]

© Tessa Trudinger

Feature Photo: Waterfall Gully © L.M. Kling 1996

***

Sometimes characters spring from real life,

Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction.

Sometimes real life is just real life.

Check out my travel memoirs,

And escape in time and space

To Central Australia.

Click on the links:

The T-Team with Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

Trekking with the T-Team: Central Australian Safari 1981

Or for a greater escape into another world…

Check out my Sci-fi/ dystopian novel,

And click on the link:

The Lost World of the Wends