Behind Mt. Baldy (5 page)

Peter pointed at it. “I’ll bet
you wouldn’t have been so keen to swim out and fish a body out if you saw it in
there Roger,” he called.

Roger looked at the murky
backwater and went cold. The sunshine seemed to darken as though a filter had
been placed over it. He did not reply.

“Shut up about bodies!” Stephen
shouted. Peter looked back at him in astonishment. Stephen yelled again, “Shut
up about it! I don’t want to hear anymore. Just forget it can’t you?”

“Sorry,” Peter replied. He
shrugged, then turned and kept on walking. Roger got a glimpse of Stephen’s
face. He looked very pale.

They walked in silence up into
another area of rainforest. It was like a gloomy tunnel with the trees meeting
overhead. More cars went past in both directions, distracting them.

After a few more minutes of
marching they came to a clearing on their right. Beyond it was a hill covered
with pine trees. A gravel road branched off to the right and vanished up among
the pines.

“Here’s the turn-off to Platypus
Lookout,” Graham called.

“Can we stop?” Roger called. He
was now ten metres behind Stephen.

“Stop on top. It’s only a couple
of hundred metres. We will just waste time if we keep on stopping,” Graham
replied.

Roger grumbled but said nothing.
As soon as he reached the bottom of the hill he slowed down. The track seemed
to go up at a very steep angle. After less than fifty paces he stopped, his
heart pounding from the effort. The others had slowed down but they did not
stop.

Roger swore quietly and began to
plod up on loose gravel. After another fifty paces he stopped again. He looked
up and wiped sweat from his brow. Graham and Peter were vanishing around the
next bend already. After resting for a minute Roger pushed himself on up.
Fifty paces.
Stop. ‘Heart - slow down,’ he told himself.
Another fifty paces. The gradient began to level out and curve to the right. He
paused again,
then
plodded on. The next section of
road was level and he managed to keep going, though puffing badly. There was a
gravel pit on the left. Beyond it a road turned off to the left and went down a
steep slope. The road to the lookout went straight ahead up another steep
pinch.

By the time Roger reached the top
the others had dumped their gear and were having a drink. He plodded across a
gravel car park to join them, feeling light-headed and with slightly blurred
vision. On reaching the others he unclipped his pack and let it fall with a
thump.

“Ah! That’s better,” he sighed.
He rubbed his shoulders and flexed his muscles. His webbing was also discarded.
“I feel I want to float away,” he said.

Stephen curled his lip. “You’ll
need to lose another fifty kilograms before that’ll happen,” he replied.

Roger said nothing, but the jibe
stung.  He bent to take out a water bottle.

“Let’s find this clue,” Graham said.
He set off at a run, followed by Peter. The hilltop was crowned by a massive
granite boulder the size of a house. Smaller boulders lay studded around it and
a track with steps led up to a lookout on top. The clearing was ringed by pine
trees. The two boys raced up the path, followed by Stephen.

Roger had a long drink and felt a
bit better. He put his water bottle back and walked up the track. It was only a
short distance but he was puffing by the time he reached the top. A safety rail
surrounded the flat top of the huge rock. The other three were standing looking
out to the south.

“Find it?” Roger asked as he
joined them.

Peter shook his head.
“Nothing up here.
Must be hidden somewhere else,” he
replied.

Graham was busy orientating his
map. “Not much of a lookout,” he grumbled, indicating the tall pine trees which
almost blocked the view. Roger looked. He could see glimpses of Lake Tinaroo,
also the small conical volcanic hills called the Seven Sisters, and a few other
landmarks he recognized. The view to the north and east was grander but closer;
the jungle covered ridges of the Lamb Range.
Just looking up
at them made him shudder.
Memories of that terrifying ride over those
mountains in Willy Williams’ home-made airship the previous year flooded into his
mind. He shook his head and looked away.

Graham looked at his watch.
“Nearly four o’clock. We’d better find this clue.”

The boys filed back down the
stairs. A dirt foot track went left around the rock.

Graham pointed along it. “You go
that way Roger. Stephen, you look around the front of the rock. Pete, you and I
will search amongst these trees.” He indicated the nearest pine trees. 
Smaller boulders studded the ground which had a thick tangle of lantana and
other undergrowth on the edge of the forest. Several distinct foot tracks led
into the trees.

Roger began looking around each
boulder and each tree. He even peered up into the branches. There were a few
pieces of litter discarded by tourists; film packets and chocolate wrappers,
but nothing that looked like a clue.

Stephen yelled from the front of
the rock, “Here it is. I’ve found it!”

Roger hurried around to the edge
of the clearing. Stephen had scrambled up a steep little mound overgrown with bushes
to look behind a large broken slab of rock half way up the side of the big
boulder. As Roger arrived Stephen slithered down, holding the clue in his hand.

It was an oblong of bright yellow
cardboard in a plastic bag. On it were printed, in black felt pen, the words:

MOUNT BALDY

THE CHIMNEYS

Graham and Peter came running to
join them. They all looked at the clue.

“What does it mean?” Graham
asked.

Stephen shrugged. “We go to those
places I suppose,” he replied.

“But which
one?”
Peter
asked.

“The closest one first, then the
other,” Roger suggested.

Graham agreed. “Yes, but where
are they? Let’s look on the maps.” He pulled out two maps and spread them on
the grass; the ATHERTON 1:50 000 and BARTLE FRERE 1:100 000.

“Look at this one Roger,” Graham
said, passing him the TINAROO 1:50 000 he had been using.

The boys knelt over the maps and
began to pore over them. “Be systematic,” Graham ordered. “Go up and down the
columns of grid lines.”

Roger began to do this, starting
on the left of the map. As his finger tip ran up and down his eyes skimmed the
names. He found it wasn’t as hard as he’d expected.  Much of the map was
dark green for jungle with hardly any words printed on it. The Tinaroo Dam took
up a large area as well. When he found Platypus Lookout he changed his pattern.
He began to follow the main Danbulla Forestry Road eastwards. The words slid
past his eyes: Kauri Creek, Pine, Tower, Robsons Creek, numerous small tracks,
Coi Creek, Lake Euramo,
The
Chimneys.

“Here it is.
The
Chimneys!”
Roger cried. He pointed to show the others.

“Over in the Danbulla State
Forest near Lake Euramo,” Graham noted.  “That’s a fair way. Let’s see.
It’s...hmm
..”
He roughly measured the distance. “Seven
grid squares in a straight line. Be more than twice that along the road. We
won’t make that tonight.”

“What about Mt Baldy?” Peter
asked.

“Don’t know. It’s not between
here and there so it must be further out,” Graham said.

Roger looked up. “There’s
a
Mt Baldy near Atherton. My aunt’s house is near the bottom
of it.”

“Atherton Map,” Graham called,
snatching it from Peter.

“Yes, there it is, right near
Atherton,” Stephen jabbed his finger down.

Graham fitted the two 1:50 000
maps together. “Gosh! That’s a long way.”

“So we obviously go to The
Chimneys first,” Roger said. “Otherwise the shortest way to Mt Baldy is to
backtrack through Tinaroo.”

“Hope you are right,” Peter said.
“It’s a long way round the lake.”

Graham snorted. “Not that far.
We’ve done it before, on that Senior Exercise with the Navy Cadets last year.”

Roger had been on that 8 day
exercise and had found it equally enjoyable but painful. During it the army
cadets had done a night route march from near Lake Euramo to Camp Barrabadeen-
16 kilometres in darkness so black they had trouble staying on the road. The others
exchanged stories about it and Graham’s enthusiasm annoyed Roger.

Stephen chuckled, “That was when
you had your sights on that female navy cadet, Tina,” he said to Graham.

Peter nodded. “And she went
missing, kidnapped by those bird smugglers.”

“And she gave you the flick in
favour of Andrew Collins,” Stephen added.

“Bite your bum!” Graham snapped.

Roger knew that losing Tina to
his rival, another navy cadet, had hurt Graham. To change the subject he said,
“I wonder if Mt Baldy is the end of our hike?”

“Could be,” Graham replied,
biting his lip and studying the distance.

“I hope we don’t have to climb
it,” Roger added.

The others laughed. “Do you
good,” Stephen said.

“Here
comes
a car,” Peter said looking around. They all waited and a minute later a white
police car appeared, followed by another.

“It’s those cops,” Stephen said.

The boys stood up. Graham began
folding the maps. The cars were parked at the side of the clearing and five
police got out and walked towards them: Inspector Sharpe and his two Detectives
and Sergeant Grey and his constable.

Inspector Sharpe spoke first.
“Hello, kids, did you find anything?”

“Only our map reading clue,”
Graham replied, holding up the yellow cardboard in its plastic bag.

Inspector Sharpe nodded.
“Fine.
Have you got far to go?”

“About twenty
kilometres.
We won’t make it today,” Graham answered.

“Did you find anything else, any
clues which might help us?”

“No sir.”

“Would you mind helping us look?
I’ve sent for more men but they won’t get here much before dark.”

The boys looked at each other.
Stephen looked doubtful. Graham frowned. But Roger didn’t see how they could
refuse. He answered. “Yes sir, we’ll help. It doesn’t matter where we camp.
What do you want us to do?”

Stephen glared at him but Roger
ignored him. He did want to help the police solve the mystery. “Do we know who
the man is yet sir?” he asked.

“No we don’t. The body has been
taken into Atherton and the doctor will start an autopsy then. But we don’t
know who he was, or why he was killed, or who killed him. All we know is that
he was an old man; seventy or eighty at a guess, and he was shot.”

They were organized as a line
across the centre of the car park and began to slowly walk forward, searching
as they went. Ten minutes of thorough looking in every cranny and around every
rock, tree and bush uncovered nothing. By then the line had become ragged and
they were in the edge of the forest.

It was quite gloomy under the
dark pines but there was still a lot of undergrowth. Mostly this was knee high
grass or ferns but with clumps of other bushes and the odd boulder. The ground
sloped downhill. Roger began following a faint path which seemed to peter out.
He looked into the forest and shivered. ‘This place gives me the creeps!’ he
thought.

Then his eye noticed some crushed
weeds. He bent to look. No doubt about it.  Someone had trodden on them
walking into the forest. He was about to call out when something else caught
his eye in the grass. His heart suddenly beat faster and he sucked his breath
in sharply.

“Inspector!
Sir! Over here!”

They all came at the run,
crowding round. Roger held out his arms. “Keep back,” he instructed,
then
he pointed. “Someone trod on that plant sir, and
there,” he bent to part the grass, “is a cartridge case.”

The Detective Sergeant came
forward and picked up the shiny brass case using a twig and popped it into a
small plastic bag. He held this up for Inspector Sharpe to study.

“9mm Parabellum,” Inspector
Sharpe grunted. “Now we are getting somewhere. OK, line up again and look very
carefully for more clues, tracks, cartridge cases, blood stains and so on.”

The group lined up again and
began walking slowly downhill through the pine forest.  Almost at once
Roger pointed to another crushed fern.
Then another.

“Good boy! Keep going. We will
track them,” Inspector Sharpe said.

Peter called out, “Here’s a track
too. Someone’s run down through here.”

They waited while Inspector
Sharpe looked. “Either the murderer or his victim, or possibly an accomplice,”
he said.

They went slowly on. Roger felt
very excited. His heart thumped and his eyes scanned eagerly. They went
downhill for about a hundred paces before Stephen called out. He was back
behind them a few paces pointing at a tree trunk at eye height.