Get Charlie Noah

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Roxley Burrows had little by the way of personal possessions to carry with him. His dark suit and black tie were crumpled but that didn't matter. He had washed the white shirt but by the time he had walked along the road and up into the jungle on his way to Ruby Cottage, it was streaked with sweat. The blow pipe and poisoned darts were in his canvas bag. He had also packed some biscuits and a few tins of baked beans. Roxley didn't expect to be in the area for much longer. It would be in and out as quickly as possible. Confirm that Charlie Noah was nowhere to be seen and then move on. He would create a distraction which at the very least would flush Ben Hood into the open...that is if Ben Hood had remained at Ruby Cottage. If Charlie Noah was dead, Hood would have no reason to stay and the place would be empty. He half hoped that Ben Hood was still hanging around because he really wanted the opportunity to take him down with a poison dart as a payback for what he had done to his partner Stanley May.

'You're actually wearing clothes for a change,' said Ben.

'I wear clothes,' said Charlie as she sat beside him and picked up her coffee cup. 'I wear less on hot days like this but I didn't think you would object.'

'I'm observing, not objecting,' said Ben. 'You make nice toast.'

'Anyone can make toast,' said Charlie. 'I prefer my toast really thick.'

Ben sipped his coffee in silence.

'Do you think she was really sent here to kill me?' asked Charlie.

'Yes,' said Ben.

'Why did you let her go?'

'Why did you make up her bed on the first night in a downstairs bedroom?' asked Ben.

'I'm not sure,' said Charlie. 'Perhaps I thought it would give us more privacy upstairs.'

'The timber walls of this house are as thick as bricks,' said Ben. 'The downstairs bedroom is tiny compared to the one we eventually put her in.'

'At least she had a wide window sill to sit on down there which in hindsight wasn't the best idea in the world,' said Charlie.

'All the window sills are wide,' said Ben.

'The one in that room is twice as wide as any of the others,' said Charlie.

'Like thick toast,' said Ben.

'Pardon?'

'Some toast is thin and some is thick. It's all in the measurement.'

'What are you talking about?'

Ben jumped to his feet. 'Let's have a look at that bedroom.'

Roxley Burrows stared through the thick jungle in disbelief. There she was, large as life. He had shot her from close range. He saw her fall backwards from the open window. He took the blow gun from his bag and assembled it, dipping a dart into the poison and inserting it into the metal barrel. He dipped a second dart into the poison and attached it to his tie with a silver tie clip. This time he would make sure that no one was left alive in Ruby Cottage. When they were dead he would burn the damn thing to the ground.

Roxley pulled a rolled up newspaper from his bag and separated the pages. He stuffed them underneath the branches of a dead tree and lit the edge of one of the sheets. Then he grabbed his duffel bag and moved well away from the area as the fire quickly took hold and smoke began to billow out through the jungle canopy.

The window sill in the small downstairs bedroom was not quite 40 cm (1'3" inches) wide. Ben speculated that the house was built in the days when standard timber wall frames were 2"x 4" and that would result, bearing in mind the thickness of the internal and external cladding, in the width of the window sills being not a great deal more than 5 or 6 inches. 'He put them inside this wall,' said Ben softly.