The Amber Trail (5 page)

His mother stared at him, open
mouthed. “You okay?”

Dig struggled to think. The
tingling dissolved away, but the throbbing in his arm remained. His
breathing dropped back to a normal level. He nodded. “I think
so.”

“
I’m calling an
ambulance anyway.” She disappeared into the kitchen. People crowded
the doorway behind him, watching. Jake stood amongst them, a
tumbler of whisky back in his grasp. As he met Dig’s gaze he
scowled and shook his head, then pushed his way back out to the
deck.

Dig let his head fall back
against the couch. The lounge room fan revolved in the ceiling
above, throwing down a welcome wall of air. He closed his
eyes.

The ambulance arrived shortly
after, and as the paramedics walked through the front door, Dig
recognised them as the same pair that had treated his father the
week before.

“
This is him?” said
the bald man with the beer gut. His mother nodded. He stopped
beside Dig and gave him a quizzical look. “We met last week,
right?”

“
Yeah.”

The paramedic moved in close and
studied his face, revealing a forest of dark hair up his nose. His
deodorant smelled like leather.

“
How’re you
feeling?”

Dig shrugged. “Better than twenty
minutes ago.”

The man lifted Dig’s shirt and
examined his arm, then placed a stethoscope on his chest. “A few
deep breaths please.” Dig did as he was told.

The man shuffled through his
medical bag and came up with a new needle. “You’ve had an
aggressive anaphylactic reaction to the wasp sting. This needle
contains an antihistamine and something that will reduce the
swelling.” He grabbed hold of Dig’s good arm and injected it into
the shoulder muscle.

“
You’re the
son?”

Dig nodded.

“
Susceptibility to
allergic reactions is hereditary,” he said. “If you had left it
much longer, well...I don’t think I need to tell you what would
have happened. But it looks like that Epinephrine needle saved your
life.”

Dig’s mother pursed her lips and
folded her arms across her chest. “Two stings,” she said. “What are
the odds.”

Quite low,
Dig thought.
If you chase the wasp down and try to kill it with your bare
hands that is.

“
Yeah, crazy odds,”
he said instead.

DIG SPENT A NIGHT IN HOSPITAL
under
observation, but when the anaphylaxis didn’t return, he was
released early the next morning. His mother drove him back to the
house.

As they arrived home, Dig stepped
out of the car into an overcast morning. A plane droned somewhere
behind the clouds. He stretched and yawned.

“
Thanks for picking
me up,” he said.

“
No problem,” said
his mother, smiling weakly. “You want some lunch?”

Dig’s eyes fixed on the brewery.
The roller door was cranked open. His brow furrowed. “Maybe later.
I might head next door for a bit.”

He walked across the drive and
stopped at the entrance to the warehouse. The air was cool inside,
and his footfalls on the concrete echoed softly in the open space.
Tall shelves flanked either side of the doorway, packed with orange
pallets of beer, ready for delivery.

The storage area opened into the
heart of the brewery, the cluster of shiny metal structures that
were used in the beer making process itself—triangular roller
mills, circular mash tuns, brew kettles, fermentation tanks, and at
the back, tallest of all, was the large cylindrical silo that held
the fermented barley. This was the area where his father had spent
most of his time—and Dig half expected him to walk around a corner
with a tub of hops balanced over his shoulder, flick a few switches
and fire the equipment up for a new batch.

But he didn’t appear, and the
equipment lay silent, taunting him—for every day it wasn’t in use
was another day the brewery would fall deeper behind in their
orders, and another step closer to bankruptcy.

Dig kept walking, past the
brewing equipment and storage silos to the rear of the warehouse,
and stopped in front of a low rectangular room set in the far
corner. This room was concrete lined, and the only access door was
sealed and locked.

A keypad was fixed on the wall
beside the doorway, and Dig reached up to type in a six digit code.
The device emitted a high pitched beep and the door popped open. A
wall of cold air rushed out at him, triggering a carpet of
goosebumps on his arms. He stepped inside.

The room was capped by a low
concrete ceiling and lit by ranks of bright fluorescent lights.
Metal shelving covered the walls, packed from floor to ceiling with
white plastic tubs.

Dig pulled out the nearest tub
from the shelf to find it empty. The tub beside it was empty too,
but the third was half full of pale orange flower buds. These were
the hops, the ingredient in beer that offer
s
antibacterial and preservative benefits, balances
out the sweetness of the malt with bitterness, and adds floral
aromas that are the major contributor to a beer’s
flavour.

Dig grabbed a handful of petals
and held
them
up to his nose. The
fragrance was bitter and yet sweetly citrus. His father’s words
came back to him.

These are the best
hops in the world, without a doubt.

“
Checking out the
magic ingredient are we?” said his brother from behind him. Dig’s
shoulders tensed, and he dropped the petals to the
ground.

Jake was still wearing
yesterday's crumpled suit. The front tail of his shirt hung over
his belt. His eyes were red and watery, and a crop of stubble
covered his face.

“
You look like shit,”
Dig said.

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Slept
in the office. It wasn’t too comfortable.”

Dig retrieved the spilt hops from
the floor. “You know where he got this stuff from?”

“
The hops? Didn’t he
get them from India somewhere?”

“
Yeah, but from
who
exactly? Like, a supplier?”

Jake shrugged. “No. You don’t
know?”

Dig shook his head. “Nope. Dad
handled all the supplies.”

“
Well we better
figure it out. I talked to Frank Lincroft last night. He says we
have to get this place cranking at full steam pretty soon or Mum
loses the house.”

“
I know.” Dig turned
his back and replaced the hops into the tub. “Well there isn’t a
lot left here in storage, so we need to get some more, soon.” He
moved down the row to
check the contents
of the remaining tubs.

Jake scratched at his face.
“Look, about yesterday—”

“
Forget it,” said
Dig. “I get it. You think I killed Dad.”

“
I didn’t say
that.”

Dig turned and glared at
him.

“
What I said
was—”

“
You know what?”
Dig’s heart raced in his chest. “I don’t actually
care
what
you think anymore. So you may as well shut your mouth.” He slammed
a tub back into position with a rattle. “I’ll tolerate being in the
same building as you for the sake of this family, and this brewery
Dad worked so hard to build. But don’t flatter yourself if you
think your opinion matters to anyone else but your self-centred,
lazy-arsed self.” Dig stormed to the door, his shoulder thumping
against Jake as he walked through.

“
Oh sorry your
Highness!” Jake shouted. “I wouldn’t want to offend Daddy’s
favourite son! Mr I’m so
fucking boring
I may as well eat a
wasp for breakfast and top myself too! Well guess what? Daddy’s not
here anymore...so who are you going to suck up to now?”

Dig stopped and stared at his
brother. His hands balled into fists and he started breathing hard.
“You’re dead,” he said through clenched teeth, and ran at
him.

Jake eyes widened and he held
up
his palms up. “Hey.” He took two steps
backwards into the cool room, but Dig was too fast and threw a wide
hook at Jake’s head. Jake saw it coming and ducked. Dig’s fist
caught the corner of the metal shelf behind him, ripping away the
skin from his knuckle. A plastic tub tipped and fell to the ground,
spilling hop petals across the floor. Jake tripped backwards over
the tub and landed on his rear. Dig followed him down, dropping a
knee into the side of his ribs with all of his weight.

Jake grunted with the impact,
then swung an elbow upwards and caught Dig in the cheekbone. Dig’s
vision doubled and he fell sideways, but he punched downward as he
dropped, and felt his fist connect with something soft and knobbly
that he hoped was Jake’s nose.

Dig fell to his hands and knees
on the cold concrete floor. He tried to blink his vision into
normality as something hard struck him square in the stomach. He
dropped to his side, gasping for air.

Buzzz!

The reverberation of the office
doorbell echoed through the warehouse. Dig glanced up as he tried
to draw air into his lungs. Jake sat on his rear
beside him
, also breathing hard
,
his face
locked in a grimace
.
O
ne arm was wrapped across
his
torso, his hand clutching at his ribs. A trail
of crimson blood tracked from a nostril to the corner of his
chin.

Buzzzzz!
  

“
Hello?” a voice
echoed through the building.

Dig reached for a shelf and
pulled himself roughly to his feet. His brother blinked, then did
the same. They hobbled out of the room and across the warehouse to
the front entrance. Jake wiped at his bloody face with his shirt
sleeve as he moved.

Buzzzzz!
“Anyone here?”
said the voice, louder now.

They reached the roller door to
see three men standing in the opening. Dig recognised them as the
same Indian men that had visited the brewery on the morning of the
funeral. They wore the same dark suits, pale business shirts, and
ties. The man with the deep-set eyes stood in the centre of the
trio with his thuggish friends flanking him—one with a bald,
front-row-forward head, the other with a thick jaw and crooked
teeth.

The brothers stopped before the
men, still panting. The hem of Jake’s pant leg was caught in his
sock. He wiped at his nose again, adding a fresh smear of crimson
to the back of his sleeve.

Dig’s attention turned to the
visitor’s suits, then his own faded T-shirt and shorts. His cheek
throbbed and crowded the sight in one eye. A trail of blood ran
down his injured knuckle to the end of his finger.

The man looked from Dig to Jake.
His forehead creased, and he shared a raised eyebrow with the
bald-headed thug before giving the brothers a wide but unconvincing
smile. “Hello,” he said. “We’re sorry to disturb you, but we felt
we needed to visit again.”

“
Ok,” Dig said. “No
problem.”

“
Who’s in charge
here?”

Dig opened his mouth to speak,
but Jake interjected.

“
I am,” Jake said.
“I’m the older brother, and I’m taking over the running of
Buckley’s from now on.” He held out his hand, and glanced at Dig
from the corner of his eye. “How can I help?”

The man’s eyes darted from Jake
to Dig. “Okay...” he said. “My name is Shiv, and I represent the
Banyan Brewery.”  

“
Great,” said Jake,
and nodded. He pursed his lips and gave Dig another sideways
glance. There was a brief silence.

Shiv lifted an eyebrow. “We are
your hop supplier from India.”

“
Oh!” Jake said.
“Great! Yes...well...actually Dig and I were just talking about you
guys. Great hops those, best ever.” He nodded again, then after a
pause, gave a thumbs up. “Um, love your work,” he said as a fresh
trickle of blood dropped from his nostril. He wiped it away
quickly. “Sorry,” he said. “Allergies,” and gave a strained
smile.

“
Thanks,” Shiv said
with a blank look on his face. “Would you mind if we came in? I
hope we’re not...interrupting?”

“
No, of course not.
Come into the office.” Jake beckoned them toward the office meeting
room
,
winc
ing
as he clutched at his rib. They followed him inside.

Framed pictures hung on the walls
of the room, depicting Dig’s father brewing in the early years. A
small sink sat in one corner, stacked with dirty coffee cups and
greasy cutlery. A long timber table that normally dominated the
room had been pushed against the wall. A rumpled blanket and pillow
lay in the centre of the linoleum floor, and the reek of whisky
infused body odour filled the space. Jake knelt down, balled the
blanket and pillow up in his arms, and threw them to the base of
the sink.

Dig took hold of the table and
dragged it back to the centre of the room. As he moved it, he
glanced down to see a line of white powder and a rolled up note on
the table-top. He swore under his breath and glared at Jake, whose
eyes widened before he leaned down and brushed them away to the
floor with the back of his arm.