The Crocodile Nest

by Des Hunt

‘I don’t want you to keep on giving him things. He has to earn them. He’s to work for you for the rest of the year without payment. Is that clear, Luke?’

  Luke nodded eagerly.

  She turned to Beth. ‘You can pay his airfares and accommodation until you get to this Cape Tribulation place, but then his father has to take over. He has to pay for everything to do with Luke until you come back home.’

  ‘That’s reasonable,’ said Beth. ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’

  ‘And Luke, when you’re with your father, you’re to have nothing to do with guns. He’s sure to have some, and he’ll probably want to teach you how to use them, but I won’t have that. I’m not going to have a repeat of what happened tonight. I don’t want guns in your life at all. You’re going to have to promise me that you won’t touch them while you’re over there.’ She glared at him, waiting for his response.

  Luke gave his promise. Meeting his father now meant everything to him, and right at that moment he didn’t care if he never touched a gun again. Anyway, the promise wouldn’t stop him going pig hunting, because Ham hunted with dogs and a knife.

  Friday morning, Luke went into Whitianga with Alice. He was determined to get a full day’s work done so that Alice had no reason to change her mind about the Australian trip.

  He spent the first part of the morning digging in the back yard where Beth wanted to grow a few vegetables. Just before nine, the others left for the doctor’s to get Lora checked for concussion. After that, they were going to the travel agents to make the Australian bookings.

  Two hours later, Luke was ready for a rest and a drink. It was a timely move, for as he walked inside the phone rang. Brian from the bank had the latest news on the hunt for the scammers. The police had now established that the same person had visited all eighteen of the money transfer offices. The ID presented in every case was the fake Romanian passport used to open the bank account. One office had even photocopied the passport so that they now had a photo of the mule.

  Another line they were following was the destination of the money, as this could lead to the mastermind behind the scam.

  ‘This seems more hopeful,’ said Brian. ‘All the money was sent to offices in Australia, somewhere in Queensland.’

  Suddenly, Luke’s gut tightened.

  ‘Do you know where?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice normal.

  ‘Is that important?’ Brian responded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Luke, ‘but Mrs Anderson might want to know.’

  ‘OK, hang on a bit. I’ve got a fax here somewhere.’ There was a noisy shuffling of paper before he returned with, ‘Yeah! Here it is. Um, looks like they’re all either in Cairns or in surrounding towns.’

  Luke’s gut got tighter.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Brian, ‘the Australian police have established that all the money was collected within a couple of hours of being sent. The ID used was an Australian driver’s licence, but that seems to have been a fake. The police there are continuing their enquiries. We might hear something more or we might not.’

  After they’d hung up, Luke sat for several minutes, processing the information. Was it coincidence that Hamish lived near Cairns, and so too did the scammer? It had to be: there was nothing to link the two together. Anyway, Cape Tribulation was more than a hundred kilometres away from Cairns. Still, it was strange that the money was taken in the same week that Hamish…

  That’s when Luke’s gut really started playing up. Something that had been gnawing away in the back of his mind came to the surface. Lora’s P2P program was not the only one to be installed when the firewall was down. There was another one: Hamish’s photo-viewing program—CapeTribView.exe. Either could have installed the Ratspyz trojan. So which one was it?

  He turned on the computer and waited impatiently for it to boot. Then he sat there, not sure if he wanted to continue. In the end, he decided to test the P2P program first. After turning off the virus-checker and firewall, he located the installation file and ran it. Within a minute the P2P program was up and running just the way Lora had used it. Next he ran the virus-checker. This took longer, but he knew before it had finished that it wasn’t going to find the Ratspyz trojan.

  Should he go on? Did he really want to know for sure?

  Yes, he did. He went into his emails and found Hamish’s attachment. He checked just that file for viruses. Nothing. If the virus was in there, then it was masked in a way that made it invisible to virus-checkers.

  He ran the file. As it had the previous week, it took a while before the first image appeared. However, this time Luke got no pleasure at seeing the crocodile attacking the pig. He was too upset to find any of the pictures interesting.

  Once again the virus-checker was run, and once again it took its time. But, as feared, it did find a virus. The Ratspyz trojan virus. It had been unmasked and was ready to work.

  Luke sat for ages, trying to think of an explanation other than the obvious. He couldn’t: he had his answer. It wasn’t a coincidence that Hamish and the scammer both lived in Tropical Queensland. It was perfectly logical, because Hamish and the scammer were the same person.

  Part Two

  Cape Tribulation Australia

  Chapter 13

  Luke was sick of watching movies. Perhaps they might have been more enjoyable if the constant drone of the plane’s engines hadn’t made listening so difficult, but he doubted it. He’d decided a couple of hours ago that international flights were boring. For all he knew, internal flights could be as well, but he’d never been in a plane before. Nor had Beth, sitting in the aisle seat beside him. Unlike Luke, she’d had a smile on her face ever since they’d left Whitianga. Not even the hassles of ticketing, emigration or security had dampened her enthusiasm. Now she sat reading a travel magazine, breaking off every so often to have conversations with the flight attendants.

  Sitting in the window seat was Lora, reading a novel. Her black hair had been cut shorter, giving her a much friendlier look. She was even wearing colourful clothes. Luke found the new Lora a lot more attractive than the one he had last seen ten weeks before. Already he was beginning to think of her in different terms.

  Those ten weeks had passed quickly for Luke. One of the more difficult things had been applying for a passport, which had meant getting a birth certificate. He got quite a shock when it arrived and he saw the entry:

  Father’s Name: unknown

  He’d sort of expected it, but seeing it printed on an official form was disturbing. And, of course, it was wrong. Nevertheless, Luke had decided to wait until after meeting Hamish before deciding whether to have him officially recognized as his father. It depended on what happened about the stolen money.

  In the emails between them, Luke had made no mention of his suspicions. All they’d covered were the arrangements for the trip. Hamish had agreed to support Luke for the time they would be in Cape Tribulation, saying that the place where he worked—The Crocodile Nest—had suitable accommodation, and money would not be a problem.

  Nor had Luke said anything to the bank about Hamish. They, like the police, had made little progress in their investigations. From what Brian at the bank said, the Cairns police had given up. Maybe the bank had, too, for they’d recently agreed to refund Beth’s money.

  However, while everyone else might consider the matter closed, Luke did not. And he wouldn’t until he knew exactly who was responsible and why. He hoped to have the answer within the next few days.

  It was late afternoon by the time they made their approach into Cairns. Luke got glimpses of the Great Barrier Reef before the plane banked to reveal a waterfront of high-rise hotels, backed by a patchwork of roads and buildings stretching deep into the surrounding hills. Fifteen minutes later, he stepped onto Australian concrete for the first time. He was now in the adopted land of his father.

  Lora took charge of guiding them through immigration and customs. She’d been overseas several times with her parents and knew what to expect.
As they left customs, a woman carrying a sign saying Anderson Party approached and took over the organization. Twenty minutes later, they were at the hotel where they would be staying for the next couple of nights.

  Once again, Lora’s previous experience proved useful as she gave Luke a guided tour of the features in his room: how to use his swipe card; how to cheat the minibar; how to use the airconditioning remote. But even she was stumped by the bidet toilet which squirted water and hot air into all sorts of private places. It took lots of messy experimentation before Luke had it sorted. By then, he’d decided that in future he would avoid selecting the ‘feminine wash’ option.

  Over dinner they used a bunch of brochures to plan the next day’s activities: Skyrail to Kuranda in the morning, and a tropical zoo in the afternoon. After that, they went to their rooms. Luke looked at his watch and saw that it was only five past ten, and yet it seemed much later than that. Then he realized his body was still working on New Zealand time, which was midnight. No wonder he was so tired. Yet he didn’t go straight to sleep: images of Lora kept coming into his head. Surprisingly pleasant images that had him imagining all sorts of things that might happen in the days ahead.

  In the morning, Luke’s body still hadn’t adjusted to the different time zone, waking him at five-thirty. He decided it was a good time to do some exploring.

  The air outside was crisp to the point of being cold. Much cooler than the tropical heat he had expected. By the time he’d walked to the waterfront, the sky was brightening over the Pacific Ocean. Birds of all sorts were beginning to squawk in the trees that lined an esplanade along the shore. Others were already out on the mudflats searching for breakfast.

  He strolled along the esplanade, enjoying the feel of being in a different country. The sun rose out of the ocean, giving the sense that it had just been created by the sea. As sunlight hit the trees, hundreds of multicoloured parrots stopped their squabbling and took to the air, wheeling for a moment before heading off towards the suburbs. A kookaburra laughed loudly to celebrate their departure.

  Then people began arriving: cyclists, joggers, walkers, many of them accompanied by a dog. The sounds of the city changed from natural to mechanical as delivery trucks began their morning rounds. Cairns was now awake, which probably meant it was time to head back to the hotel. Yet he continued along the path attracted by a yellow warning sign by the water’s edge.

  WARNING

  ACHTUNG

  The rest of the message was too small to read until he got closer. But when he did, his face split into a smile.

  Crocodiles inhabit this area—attacks may cause injury or death

  Keep away from the water’s edge and do not enter the water

  Take extreme care when launching and retrieving boats

  Do not clean fish or leave fish waste near the water’s edge

  Camp well away from the water

  And for those who couldn’t read English, there was a warning rectangle showing a swimmer crossed by a red line. Alongside was a triangle showing a crocodile with an open mouth filled with sharp teeth.

  Luke now looked out to the mudflats with greater interest. While the number of birds had increased, none of them seemed worried that they might be attacked at any moment. He watched for a time, but no crocodile leapt from the water; nor did he see any log-like shapes drifting by. If there were crocodiles out there, then they must have had their fill of food sometime during the night.

  The Skyrail cableway gave Luke his first experience with a tropical rainforest, both from above in the gondola, and from ground level at the midway station. However, he found Kuranda disappointing. They scarcely had time to visit a few tourist shops before it was time to get on the Skyrail again.

  The tropical zoo was better. There were snakes, lizards, koalas, cassowaries, kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, dingoes…And there were crocodiles. Lots and lots of them. The big ones were there because they’d got into trouble with humans: Zac terrorized fishermen; Cooper ate dogs; Zont enjoyed bigger meals, such as cattle. None had been imprisoned for eating wild pigs, possibly because that was considered a public service.

  Luke remained in the crocodile area while the women went to hear a talk about koalas. He much preferred cold, prickly creatures over warm fuzzies any day. He marvelled at the scaly plates of their skin; their dinosaur-like tails; their teeth, which, while not needle-sharp, were embedded in powerful jaws.

  By the time he was pulled away to catch the bus back to the hotel, he’d rearranged his must-do list for the holiday in Cape Tribulation. When he’d left home, top of the list had been pig hunting. Now it was crocodiles: he wanted to see them in the wild. Seeing them in pits behind bars had been exciting, but he knew that meeting them where there was nothing between you and those jaws would be something else. That had to be number one on his list.

  Chapter 14

  The Crocodile Nest was a short distance up a side road not far from Cape Tribulation beach. The tourist shuttle from Cairns had dropped passengers off along the way until there were just the three of them left. Beth and Lora had then got off at an expensive-looking resort about half a kilometre back, leaving only Luke.

  The driver unloaded Luke’s bag, wished him an enjoyable holiday, and sped off back down the road. Luke looked around, more to postpone meeting his father than to see what sort of place he’d landed at. The general impression was that everything was green. The bigger trees of the rainforest had been left in place, with only the undergrowth removed to make space for the buildings. Even the car park had several big trees growing through the gravel so that little of the midday sun filtered through to the ground.

  A sign with a cartoon crocodile pointed the way to the office and restaurant. The path was spongy underfoot and had the musty smell of composting leaf litter. Signs alongside identified some of the plants, but Luke scarcely noticed them. His mind was consumed with thoughts of the meeting that would surely take place within a few minutes.

  Luke had half-expected Hamish to be waiting at the office. He wasn’t—instead there was a smiling Asian woman.

  ‘Yes?’ said the woman. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Um. Ah. Yeah, I’m—’

  ‘Luke!’ declared the woman, her face bursting into a smile. ‘You made it!’ She said it as though Luke had tramped all the way from Cairns, swimming rivers, and fighting off crocodiles along the way.

  Luke smiled, relieved by her reaction. ‘Yes, I’m Luke.’

  ‘Great! I’m Ellie. I’m the manager. Welcome to The Crocodile Nest. Everyone’s looking forward to meeting you.’

  ‘Where’s Hamish?’

  ‘Ham is in the kitchen. He gets off at two.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Just enough time for him to cook you lunch. Come, I’ll take you to the restaurant.’

  They moved into the dining area. Most of the tables were taken by a mix of older couples, family groups and backpackers. At the end of the room was a high bench separating the eating area from the kitchen, where people were busy preparing food. Luke had no trouble identifying his father, even though his sandy hair was covered with a white bandana—the twinkling grey eyes and fair complexion were more than enough identification.

  ‘I see him,’ said Luke.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Ellie, ‘that’s him.’ The way she spoke made Luke glance sideways. Her face was glowing as she gazed at Ham, suggesting something more than just friendly feelings for a workmate.

  It took some time for Ellie to catch Ham’s attention, but when she did his eyes opened wide in shock before softening to a smile. He gave Luke a wave. ‘Take a seat and order some lunch.’

  He looked at the clock. ‘I’ll join you in about half an hour’s time.’

  Ellie took Luke to the restaurant desk to be attended by a waitress. While he waited, he studied the certificates mounted on the wall. Top of the three was one from Sydney TAFE for Hamish Boyd Sloss, Master Chef. Luke was surprised at how proud he felt of his father’s achievements. For a moment, the matter
of Beth’s stolen money was forgotten.

  A waitress guided him to a table out on the deck, poured some water into a glass, and then left him to choose his lunch. There was a range of steak and seafood meals, along with a couple of vegetarian dishes. Then, under a separate heading, came the bush tucker: kangaroo steak sandwich, emu sausages, witchetty-grub stir-fry, and crocodile cannelloni. Luke ordered hamburger and chips from the kids’ menu—the witchetty grubs could wait for another day.

  His meal arrived along with his father, who was carrying a plate of food and a glass of beer. Before he sat down, he offered his hand to Luke. They shook hands silently, holding the grip longer than was usual.

  Only when he was seated did he speak. ‘Hi, Luke! This is some moment, isn’t it?’

  Luke nodded, knowing that if he said anything it would betray his deep emotions.

  Hamish picked up his knife and fork. ‘Let’s eat.’

  They did so, and with each mouthful Luke relaxed a little more. After a time, he asked, ‘Do you work every morning?’

  Hamish shook his head, finishing his mouthful. ‘No. There are three of us chefs. We each do three afternoons, then three mornings, and then have three days off. This was my last morning, so now I’ve got a break, which will give us time to do some things together.’

  They went back to the eating.

  ‘Have you been pig hunting lately?’

  ‘No. Haven’t been out for months.’ He gave little chuckle. ‘It gets a little wet around here during the rainy season. It’s only starting to dry out now. It’ll be right for the next few months.’ He looked up at Luke with a cheeky smile. ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to go pig hunting, would you?’

  Luke returned the smile. ‘I might do,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘If you were going out, I could come to keep you company.’

  Hamish nodded, before attacking his food again. Silence returned, but it was a more natural silence.