Broken Shore - 01 - The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Author:Peter Temple
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780307355713
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2004-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

CASHIN ROSE early, unease in him like a stomach ache, took the dogs on the long route. They crossed the creek high up and walked back on the path below the shining new fence, on Cashin land, now demarcated.

After they had all breakfasted, he loaded the dogs and set off for his mother’s house. Near the coast, he took the road that ran between the two volcanic hills, their caldera lakes home to swans, ducks, swamp hens, wicked-eyed bickering gulls by the hundreds. The lakes were never known to dry up. Cashin thought about the swims in them when he was living with the Doogues. They rode out on bicycles, five or six boys. They waded out in the black water, cold mud oozing through their toes, shivering on the hottest days. They walked around the dead tree trunks, avoided the branches that lay almost submerged like big snakes, green with moss and slime, streaked with birdshit.

At a shout, they would all throw themselves in and swim. In the middle, they crowded together, treading water, feeling the black and sucking deep beneath them. The idea was to dive and come up with a handful of grey mud. But no one wanted to be the first. Eventually, the boldest duck-dived. They would wait for him to come up before anyone else went down. Once Bern dived and swam away under water, rose silently behind a dead tree.

They waited for him to appear. They looked at one another. Then they panicked. Cashin remembered that, no signal given, they all made for the shore, swam for their lives, abandoned Bern.

When they were standing in the shallows, Bern shouted: ‘Cowardly bastards. How’d you know I wasn’t stuck down there?’

The news came on.

Four people, including a policewoman, are in hospital after what Cromarty police claim was an attack on a patrol car in the Daunt Settlement outside the city last night. Police said a car on routine patrol was stoned shortly after 10 pm. Two other cars went to the scene. They found the first car on fire and a hostile crowd blocking the street.

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