Uncover The Wreck by Riley James

Start reading from The Wreck by Riley James.

The phone had rung just as she was climbing into bed.

‘Hello?’ she said, her heart pounding. She hated late-night calls. They were either heavy news or heavy breathing. (For some reason, perverts just fucking loved the Buttery number in the White Pages.)

‘Hannah?’ It was the croaky voice of her godfather, Flinty McDonald.

‘Flinty? Why are you calling so late? Who’s died?’

‘No one.’ He hesitated. ‘Not recently anyway.’ He gave a loud cough. ‘I’m calling because I’ve got a job for you.’

‘A job?’

‘How do you feel about helping out an old fella on the Water Witch this weekend?’ Flinty’s fishing boat was a faded green rust-bucket laden with cane baskets and tangled ropes and misshapen buoys. Hannah’s mother called it the Water Death, and these days the vessel seldom left the harbour surrounding Currie Wharf on King Island.

‘Depends on what that means.’ She scrunched up her nose as she recalled the boat’s stench of rotting fish.

Her only experience ‘helping’ Flinty was as a five-year-old when she’d gone out with him to check his craypots. He’d hauled up the day’s catch, and she’d recoiled at the spiky legs and bristly antennae. When Flinty caught her trying to push the pot overboard, it was the first time little Hannah Joy Buttery had heard the word ‘fuck’. A good Catholic girl, her mother’s idea of swearing was ‘gosh’, ‘bloody hell’ and ‘my giddy, giddy aunt’.

‘I want you to come with me to Disappointment Island,’ he said.

‘Where the hell is that?’ I think I might be living there already.

‘In the nor’west, in a remote part of Bass Strait between King Island and the mainland.’

‘Oh, really?’ She was puzzled and intrigued. Most islands in that area were nature reserves or scraggly collections of rocks and bird nests. No one visited them because the Tasmanian government had restricted access to ensure minimal disruption of the flora and fauna. Some reserves contained the last-known colonies of Australian pelicans, who were known to be nervous breeders, easily put off by humans. Still single herself, Hannah knew how they felt. ‘Why’ve I never heard of it?’

‘Well, like most islands in that part of the Strait, it’s difficult to land there when the seas are rough. It also has some pretty steep cliffs, and it’s surrounded by reefs, which means there’s only one place to access it, from a small harbour—just a cove, really—in the south-east. But when the currents and the tides and the winds are just right, you can get there just fine.’

‘Why are we going there?’

‘Because someone has offered us a truckload of cash, ma dear.’

Hannah thought for a second. ‘Is it a small pick-up truck or a large semitrailer?’

‘Uh, a smallish semitrailer.’

Hm. ‘And why have they asked you, in particular?’

In his sixties, with a bald pate and greying bushranger’s beard, Flinty was still solid and robust despite years of heavy smoking. But he was difficult to get out of bed in the morning, and there were plenty of younger fishermen in the sea, with far more seaworthy vessels. ‘They’ve asked me,’ he said, ‘because I’m the only person who’s been there lately.’

Hannah took a quick breath. ‘So let me get this straight: it’s in the middle of nowhere in treacherous seas, surrounded by sharp rocks, and there’s only one place to land by boat, which is accessible only on a perfect summer’s day. Do I have that right?’

‘Yup.’ He gave a raspy laugh, which turned into a coughing fit.

‘Come on, Flinty. If you want to kill me, there are plenty of easier ways.’

‘I don’t want to kill you, sweetheart.’

‘There are also plenty more stupid people you could ask. Why don’t you get that dickhead from Grassy to be your first mate? What’s his name . . . Garry? He’s gone out with you before, and at least he’s had some experience.’

‘Come on, Hannah, you haven’t asked me the most impor­tant question. Think, my girl—why am I asking you to come along?’

Hannah paused, staring at the X-Files poster on her bedroom wall, a blurry image of a UFO with ‘I want to believe’ in white letters. Her first thought was that Flinty missed her. She hadn’t been back to King Island for more than two years; he must be getting sick of having nothing but sou’westerlies to keep him company. But then she thought about how long Flinty had known her. He’d been a fixture in her life from the moment she was born. He’d even boarded with them during her school years, when her mother needed extra cash for rent. He knew enough of Hannah’s background, her personality and her interests, to be an astute judge of her motivations.

Her heart beat faster. ‘Flinty, what’s on that island?’

‘Now you’re asking the right question.’

‘What is it?’ Her eyes widened.

‘Ah, okay, here’s the short story. A few weeks ago, the Currie pub owner got talking to an old Aboriginal fella who’d been out on a muttonbird boat a few years back. Their haul hadn’t been too great that year, so they’d decided to explore the rook­eries further north. They never got to dry land, the man said, cos the seas were too rough—hit a pretty fierce storm. But on this island’s south-west, the clifftop had become exposed, and through the bushes they could see the remains of a small yellow plane.’

Hannah took a sharp breath.

‘More specifically, I should say, a light aircraft with “two layers of wings”.’ Flinty paused for dramatic effect.

‘A Tiger Moth,’ she breathed out.

‘A Tiger Moth. Possibly. Won’t know for sure till we get there.’

She sat bolt upright in bed, pushing the covers off and nudging a copy of The Australian UFO Bulletin onto the floor. ‘Right, I’m in. When are we leaving?’ She gripped the phone handset. ‘And who’s paying us?’

‘Well, that’s the catch, I suppose.’

She didn’t like the sound of that. She pulled the covers back over her freezing legs.

Flinty sniffed, and she could picture him pinching the skin on his bald head. ‘They’re namby-pamby wankers from a university.’

‘Oh, really? Are they, what, professors?’

‘Yeah, something like that. Historians, maritime scholars, folks interested in Bass Strait. They’ve never been on a fishing boat in their lives. But the pub guy rang them cos he’d seen one of them on TV, and they needed a boat.’

‘Oh, okay. What’s the catch then?’

‘I’ve pulled a swifty and told them I need a deckhand. Asked them to pay you too. That way, they won’t ask questions about why you’re there, and we’ll get more money. If you’re okay with that, you’re gonna have to look the part and do exactly as I say. Hunky dory?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘What do you need me to do?’

Extracted from The Wreck by Riley James, available now.

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The Wreck

by Riley James

A gripping survivalist thriller from the author of The Chilling about researchers marooned on a remote island in the Bass Strait while searching for the wreckage of a plane that disappeared under mysterious circumstances twenty years earlier.

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