Chapter Fifty-six

When Jack walked out of the medical centre it was much darker than it should have been for 6 p.m. on a November evening. He looked to the sky. The sun had prematurely retired for the day behind a threatening bank of black clouds. Jack reached for his phone and, with increasing dismay, scrolled through the evening’s weather forecast. One-hundred-per-cent chance of rain. Thirty to fifty millimetres. Flood warnings. Perfect weather for ducks. And for Lars Nielsen’s anti-5G army. In Jack’s covert recording of the anti-5G meeting, Nielsen could be clearly heard saying they would unfurl protest banners from the water tower at midnight the next time they could do it under cover of rain. Jack let out a long, low groan.

He was sorely tempted to ignore Lars Nielsen’s nocturnal antics, but Jack desperately needed more stories for his first edition of The Beacon. Although the freelancers had already filed some articles for the next edition, as things stood it promised to be the slimmest ever issue and an inglorious start to his career as a newspaper editor. On the other hand, what better front cover photograph than Lars Nielsen, holistic dentist, respected member of the community, caught red-handed breaking the law.

Jack collected the Toyota from behind The Beacon and drove towards his father’s house to fill in the hours before midnight, pain stabbing at his thigh whenever he used the brake.

After changing out of his blood-stained suit, Jack joined Tony for dinner. He found him in an uncharacteristically gloomy mood. According to Tony, Don was becoming even more unbearable. It upset Jack to see Tony feeling down, he’d always been so happy here in what was effectively his home. After a long chat, they parted on a double espresso and a hug.

The drive back to town was perilous. The heavy rain had transformed the gravel road into a rapidly flowing brown torrent and the car threatened to head off into the bushes whenever he touched the brakes.

He parked a hundred metres from his destination, transferred the camera into a waterproof bag, grabbed the tripod and stepped out into the beating rain. He wanted to be in position well before the protesters arrived for their planned midnight rendezvous. It was going to be a miserable, wet wait.

Perched on the highest hill overlooking the town, and with mobile-phone masts bolted around its top, the cylindrical water tower was the perfect place for the Anti-5G Action Committee to hang their protest banners.

Jack had fond memories of the water tower. Its six-metre-high walls were completely covered in graffiti. Jack and his mates had hung around here as kids, spray painting their tags which would, in turn, be covered over in short order. His first rebellious cigarette had been smoked here, a habit long gone. A brief cask-wine era had also started eagerly and ended, badly, here. Perhaps most memorably, this was the place where he’d put his hand inside the bra of his first girlfriend.

Jack’s torch picked out the track leading up and away from the water tower to a lookout popular at sunset, where wooden benches offered views spanning the coastline. There were no such views on offer tonight. Even the powerful beam of the lighthouse was a feeble flicker in the distance every fifteen seconds, barely able to penetrate its rainy shroud. The water tower itself was scarcely visible in the infinite void of soggy blackness.

Jack set up the tripod and took a few test photographs, struggling all the while to keep the camera dry and water drops off the lens. Even though his naked eye could perceive nothing, with a ten-second exposure the camera showed a passable image of the water tower.

He sat on a bench and waited. A nearby sound made him instantly alert. He kept dead still and peered into the darkness, seeing nothing. Then a wallaby startled him by leaping out of the gloom and hopping away down the track. Jack started breathing again.

The minutes felt like hours. He’d brought an umbrella, but that was for the camera, and by the time cars began arriving at the water tower, he was soaked through to his jocks.

A flash of lightning tore through the sky and the image of people gathered at the base of the tower’s maintenance ladder was burned onto Jack’s retina. He took a photograph. The exposure took ten seconds and when the image appeared on the screen, it was perfect. A bit gothic, the figures blurry, but definitely a cover shot.

Jack hoped the lightning hadn’t given away his position to the protesters. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. As he bent to take his next photograph, there was a firm tap on his shoulder. He spun around in shock, bumped the tripod and sent the camera crashing to the ground.

A blinding light shot into his eyes, then a vice-like grip twisted his arms up behind him. Pain tore at his shoulders. Jack struggled against the powerful hands, only succeeding in making the pain worse.

The torch was lowered from his eyes and, as his retinas slowly recovered, the face of Lars Nielsen materialised, smiling calmly at him. ‘Jack Harris, well, well, well. Taking a few sunset snaps perhaps? Although, to be honest, it could be getting a little dark for that. Or perhaps you knew we were going to be here?’

Jack was being crushed between two beefy men. Someone’s hand slid into his pocket, removed his mobile phone and handed it to Nielsen.

‘Did you ever wonder why your recording at the action committee meeting became clear when we discussed our plans for this evening?’ Nielsen held up Jack’s phone. ‘This was sitting next to me on the table.’

Nielsen appeared to be enjoying himself. He dropped the phone to the ground, picked up a rock and smashed the phone to pieces. He then turned his attention to the camera, still attached to the tripod, but now semi-submerged in a stream of water. He removed the memory card, placed it on a rock, and repeated the demolition job. He smiled at Jack. ‘Wouldn’t want a journalist getting hold of these now, would we?’

The torch beam slammed back into his retinas and Jack screwed his eyes closed. His arms were yanked tighter. His toes were now barely touching the ground, and the searing pain in both shoulders was overwhelming.

Nielsen shouted over the rain, ‘I couldn’t get your predecessor, O’Shaughnessy, to listen, but I’m sure you’re a much more reasonable man. In fact, I think you and I will get along just fine, assuming, of course, we get plenty of positive anti-vax and anti-5G coverage in The Beacon from now on. Maybe we could even be friends.’

Nielsen nodded to one of the thugs, who started tormenting one of Jack’s fingers, bending it impossibly backwards until it felt as if it was about to snap.

Nielsen moved his face in close to Jack’s. ‘On the other hand, if you don’t cooperate, I might not be able to stop my over­enthusiastic friends from getting, let’s just say, a little over­enthusiastic.’

Jack was thrown sprawling, face-first into the mud. By the time he dragged himself to his feet, the torch beam was bouncing away down the track. He wriggled his aching shoulders to try to restore some circulation, then massaged his throbbing finger. As the rain started beating down again with renewed fury, he felt a sharp stinging in his thigh and remembered the doctor’s warning not to get his stitches wet.

The first part of his half-hour drive home in the early hours was filled with rage at Lars Nielsen and his two henchmen, but this gave way to fatigue as the car snaked through the forest and, exhausted, his mind wandered. He fell asleep at the wheel and the last thought he had on earth might have been of various types of revenge on Lars Nielsen if he hadn’t been jolted instantly awake a short time later when one of the car’s wheels smashed into a pothole that felt deep enough to be an open-cut mine. Suddenly, charged with adrenaline, Jack saw a massive tree trunk heading towards the windscreen and just managed to steer to safety on the slippery gravel. He slowed to a stop, his heart walloping wildly in his chest. He had no trouble staying awake for the rest of the journey, nor remembering the not-so-piss-poor advice he’d been given the day before: Beware the Ides of November.

Jack mistakenly assumed the warning referred to the events that had just happened. But things were about to get much worse.