Black Tide
The second book featuring India Kane, the wilful and independent journalist protaganist of CJ’s first novel Blood Junction.
When India agrees to accompany a Greenpeace ship in pursuit of a whaling fleet, she has no idea what awaits her. Buffeted by high winds and blinded by freezing fog, by the time they spot the huge container ship bearing down on them it is too late. Eight crew members are lost, including one of India’s closest friends.
India is determined to bring the owner of the vessel to justice, in a quest that begins in the Australian outback. There she discovers a community struck by a mysterious illness – and a puzzle which will take India on a dark and terrifying journey. . .
‘The most entertaining romp I have read in a long time . . . It is good to be reminded that in the hands of a writer like C J Carver crime – even the most despicable – can be enormous fun.’
‘This is a rollercoaster of a book, great escapism . . . one shares the tension of India’s escapades right to the very last page. An exciting read.’
‘This mystery’s a Black Beauty . . . Make sure you’ve slipped on the lifejacket for this adventure on the high seas, as it moves at such a rate of knots it’ll leave you reeling’
‘An exciting and well-written tale … A good “page-turner” in an unusual setting’
‘C J Carver’s books keep getting better . . . an exciting adventure with a memorable heroine’
‘Unlike more parochial British thriller writers, Carver paints on a massive canvas, an the various locales are conjured up with great vividness… There’s no gainsaying that Black Tide is an exhilerating read’
Having lived in Australia for ten years, CJ was all too aware of Australia’s less than respectable “green” record, and when she heard about two Russian mafia “godfathers” who were heading one of the most secretive and powerful organised crime syndicates in Australia, she decided to delve deeper into Australia’s dark side.
CJ decided to pit her character India Kane against these “dons”, where India is forced to start an inquiry into personal morality, private vice and friendship in order to find the truth and ultimately protect those she loves.
Prologue
He couldn’t believe his eyes. Right in front of the building site, leaning his broad back against the JCB’s excavator, sat Albert Jimbuku. His face was smeared with clay, his bare torso covered with dots and messy swirls of yellow and white paint. He had opened up a dead rabbit and taken out the guts and was making a weird wailing sound. He seemed oblivious to the watching crowd. Men wearing hard hats, men in overalls, Maisie Wilson and her daughter, the on-site caterers. Some twenty people, all agog.
Albert threw the intestines on the ground. A breeze suddenly picked up, stirring dust around the Aborigine’s big dirty feet, and the next instant the stench of burst entrails hit Bobby’s nostrils like a blow.
‘Jesus, Albert!’ He raced across to the man and his bloody carcass. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Albert didn’t look up. He was poking at the rabbit with a forefinger and chanting in a discordant tone.
‘Don’t you know Jack’s due any minute?’
The Aborigine abruptly stopped his chant and sat there in silence. His shoulders were bowed, his woolly head slumped.
It was a freezing day in August, Australia’s winter, and although the sun was bright, the sky a vivid blue all the way to the ocean’s edge, Bobby felt as though he had an icicle laid directly against his face. His eyes were watering, his nose running, and he wished he could let it for Maisie’s van and warm up with a cup of coffee but he knew he couldn’t. Not until he’d shifted Albert first.
‘Come on, Albert,’ Bobby urged. ‘If Jack sees you here, he’ll go nuts. He’s already months behind thanks to you.’
‘This is my camp,’ Albert said. His baritone carried easily to the crowd. ‘You can’t build your bloody houses here.’
‘Yes we bloody can,’ called out Laurie Harris, Jack’s foreman. A couple of people started to laugh, but stopped when Albert got to his feet.
Despite the blubber hanging over the waistband of his jeans, he was an imposing sight. Standing at six feet four, he didn’t have the wiry frame of many Aborigines and his thighs were the size of railway sleepers, the hands hanging at his sides as large as steel couplings. The ghostly clay on his broad face took away any thoughts of a gentle giant and gave him a peculiarly menacing air.
‘This is our sacred place. The springs here are holy –‘
‘Bollocks!’ shouted Laurie. ‘You’re no more the traditional owner of this area than Kylie Minogue. This isn’t your camp, Albert, and you know it. Whole town bloody knows it.’
Dear God, Bobby thought. What possessed me to come over this morning? All I wanted was to see how the building was coming along and here I am standing between a crowd of people who want to start work so they get paid at the end of the week, and a giant, paint-splattered Aborigine with a bunch of cockatoo feathers stuck in his hair. Bobby seriously considered making a bolt for it, but if Jack heard he’d turned his back . . .