The following is an extract from the forthcoming novel
The Smell of Eucalyptus: Book One - Fryin' Pan
By Tim Giles
For more information contact the author at projects@sagitalmedia.com
BLURB:
PINKY GILES. Just a lad, looking for adventure. A lark. Something better than the dead end jobs of Possum Town.
Landing in Singapore, early '42, along with his brother FRANK. Just in time to get shot. Ordered into slavery as a prisoner of war.
In the hours before the Japanese arrive PINKY stumbles upon a fortune. Enough to set a fella up real sweet. Bribe a guard, score some food, buy a boat? Now if he can just remember where he buried the bloody thing? .
NOEL HIGHAM's pretty much stuffed up everything he's tried his hand at, over the last fifty years; but, this is different. Standing in a darkened army canteen, with a dripping razor blade, two petty thugs bleeding at his feet. No-one sees this coming.
Caught red handed, dead to rights; but, this ain't going to trial. NOELknows too much, and his victims are hardly innocent. Corruption right to the top. No-one wants him talking motive. To keep him silent they'll paint him crazy, send him away to a rubber room. Only his wife, JESS, is left to fight his corner, with a detailed letter he’s written her, before things went all messy. Smells like a stitch up; but, time's running out to prove it.
”Tell you stories
that'll make your hair curly,
by jingo, by golly, by crikey!”
(Frank Giles, Roku, Hako, Sitchi, Ju Itchi)
”We were off
looking for adventure.
What’d we know?”
(Tom Giles, Roku, Hako, Sitchi, Ju Ni)
PROLOGUE:
Somewhere in Singapore a treasure lies buried. Rusting. Rotting. Unclaimed. Forgotten. It’s just lying there. Waiting to be dug up by some enterprising bastard with a shovel.
Tommy “Pinky” Giles, ex-soldier, ex-con, ex-slave, thinks of this sometimes. When the bills flood the letterbox, or the wool market bottoms out, he dares to dream.
"Got a shed full of tools, maybe I'll dig the bloody thing up?"
Trouble is, he can’t be certain it's still there. Maybe it's still hidden, maybe not? Either way it's far away, where it can do no good, nor ill. A can of worms interned in holy ground. A fortune dream. Hope to cling to, as his head hits the pillow; but, a cock-teasing folly on waking.
It’s not right, to be buried that long. Like some pharaoh gold. Never missed, so never looked for, save by blokes who can now never return. Once was enough for Pinky, and that nearly got him killed. Never again.
‘Capitalise it. Underline it. Circle it with a big red marker pen. NEVER!’
Anyway, its grave is now shadowed by skyscrapers, and undermined by a tube line. Chances are it was dug up long ago. Maybe it's the tale of a shaggy dog?
Pinkydisagrees with a snort.
“If there were any dogs in them camps, we'd have et ‘em."
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