by Bowes, K T
“Geez,” Logan sighed. “How the hell did he think you managed that in Europe with me less than a metre away from you for four months? Stupid old man!”
“He thought I had an affair with Bobby,” Hana whispered, alarmed to see the cop appear next to the stretcher. “But I didn’t, I promise.” Her eyes darted back to Logan, wide and afraid.
Logan shook his head. “I’ve been a dick lately and I wouldn’t have been able to blame you if you had. But I know you didn’t, it’s fine. He looks like one of us, just...orange.”
“Stop saying that!” Hana hissed, her offence rising.
Logan smirked. “What you gonna do, woman? Shoot more of the house to sh...” Hana put her free hand over her husband’s mouth.
“It was an accident.”
“Er, Ma’am, you need to wait until I’ve taken your statement before you start explaining things to your husband.”
“Sod off,” Logan said bridling. “I’m talking to my wife.” His face set hard and his jaw ground furiously under his bristly cheek.
“Sir!” the policeman exercised his authority and Logan’s eyes flicked to Hana’s face. She rolled her eyes and looked exhausted. Logan kissed her on the lips just to make his point and then sat back on his seat, giving the cop sideways looks of pure malice. The paramedic pushed his body into the small space and shielded Hana from further testosterone laden muscle flexing and by the time they reached the emergency department, Logan felt sorely ashamed of himself.
The police officer stood outside the curtain while an obstetrician examined Hana and Logan stayed with her. They were transferred quickly to the maternity ward and the cop accompanied them. “This is embarrassing,” Hana groaned to the uniformed man as everyone stared at the little group entering the ward. “Don’t you have some mufti clothes to change into and then at least I can pretend you’re my brother or something?” Her eyes widened as she stared at her husband in horror. “Oh, no! My brother. Please could you ring Mark? And the children, what about Bo and Izzie?”
“Hana,” Logan’s irritation was almost at surface level. “I will deal with it. Please just let them check you out properly and when I know that you’re ok and my son is ok, I will tell the whole bloody world!”
“What about Phoe?”
“Phoe doesn’t know anything. She’s having a great time with Leslie and Wiri at the hotel. She wants a sister, Hana. She won’t care.”
“No, I mean, is she ok?”
“She’s fine, babe. She’d rather you gave birth to a puppy, but she’ll be fine. Let’s just stop worrying about things we can’t change.”
Hana looked at her husband through narrowed eyes. He wasn’t talking about her worrying at all, but about himself. She settled down and allowed the midwife to peel the sleeping baby off her chest and take him away to be measured, weighed and properly looked at. When Hana could no longer see the fluffy red topknot she panicked. “Logan go with him, please. Don’t leave him.”
Logan felt torn. He hovered next to the bed, unsure which direction to go in and then left the room, jogging quickly after the midwife. They were back within a few minutes and Logan held a cleaner version of his son in his arms, wrapped in a hospital blanket. A tiny nappy with blue edging peeked out of the fold, wrinkling one fat little thigh. Hana relaxed when she saw her baby again and mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” at her husband. He winked at her and that reassured her further.
The female obstetrician finished poking Hana’s stomach and pulled her dress down over her exposed thighs. She stood up and washed her hands at the sink next to the bed. “Well, that’s not bad at all,” she smiled back at Hana. “A little tearing but everything seems to be going back to where it should. I’d rather not stitch anything that will heal by itself. There’s no way of knowing if the placenta is complete, obviously what the paramedics collected wasn’t all of it.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Hana pulled a face and shoved her feet underneath the blanket, feeling the cold. She had noticed a strange tremor happening underneath the bed. It was irritating. “I think the afterbirth is pretty much spread across the bedroom rug and there’s quite a bit in the bathroom.” She looked at Logan. “I’m so sorry, you built me a beautiful house and I’ve shot it up and spread stuff everywhere.” Hana shivered. “Are we having an earthquake, I can’t keep still.”
The obstetrician and Hana’s husband exchanged a concerned look. “Er...no,” Logan began but the doctor smiled in complete control and studied the monitors attached to Hana’s body. Pulse, temperature and blood pressure listed in front of her at the push of a button.
“Your body temperature is low, possibly from shock.” She smiled again, a white-toothed woman in her late twenties, “And you’re not wearing very much.”
Hana looked down at her shabby maternity dress and bare knees. She bit her lip, feeling embarrassed. “What do I do?” she asked.
“Well, you can try not worrying for a start,” the doctor patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s get you mobile and then you need to go for a nice hot shower, get cleaned up and we’ll find you a gown.”
“I don’t want my clothes anymore,” Hana told her husband. “I never want to see them again.”
The policeman’s face appeared through a chink in the curtains. “I’ll be taking those thanks.”
Logan gritted his teeth and his grey eyes flashed. The cop’s head disappeared and the gap closed.
“Why does he want my clothes?” Hana panicked. “Is it because I fired the gun? I don’t have a licence to fire the big ones. What’s going to happen?”
Logan gritted his teeth and the doctor disappeared outside. Hana heard hushed voices arguing outside the cubicle.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I? What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing, Hana! Nothing’s going to happen to you, babe. Just ignore that dick, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jack wanted to hurt you so they need your clothes as evidence. That’s all.”
Hana watched as Logan became momentarily distracted by the tiny boy in his arms. All she saw was white blanket and fat, waving arms. She saw her husband smile and look entranced. His son. She calmed down. It would be ok.
The hot shower was glorious and Hana washed herself several times. The midwives allowed Logan to sit in with her, balancing his backside on the rounded toilet seat still cradling his son. She washed her hair twice, silently pondering the mess in her bathroom at home. “I’m never going to get it clean,” she sighed, her breath fogging up the wall tiles as she watched the soapy water disappear through the drain hole under her feet.
“You’ll be fine, babe. You must be clean now,” Logan answered.
“Yeah, I think I am,” Hana said, turning off the water. “I meant the house. I don’t think I’ll ever get it clean.”
“Least of our problems at the moment,” Logan gave his wife a wooden smile. Hana’s brow furrowed as she slid the curtain aside and reached for the towel on a heated rail nearby.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, I’m just worried about you right now. I don’t care about the house.”
“About Flick,” Hana started, seeing how Logan’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I need to talk to you about him.”
“Why?” Logan’s answer was sharp.
“Jack beat him up and threatened to kill him...because of how he felt about me...”
Logan stood up. “You said there was nothing between you.”
“There wasn’t on my side, but Bobby did love me. He hung around because he saw Jack watching the house. The cigarette ends were Jack’s. Bobby went after Jack because he said he wouldn’t let it drop. Logan, I heard a gunshot from the bathroom. I need to know where they both are.” Hana struggled with the hospital’s paper underwear and the enormous sanitary towel. She sighed with relief. It felt good to achieve some level of normality. Her green eyes fixed on her husband’s face.
He took a deep breath and answered her, “Jack’s dead and Flick’s gone.”
/> Chapter 58
Logan looked at his wife with suspicion as she clutched at the sink unit. “What do you mean, Flick’s gone?”
“Well, not dead gone,” he said crassly and his eyes narrowed at her. “I don’t want you to be concerned about him, Hana. He’s not your business.”
“He saved my life, Logan. And that baby in your arms and don’t you forget it!”
Logan looked down at his sleeping son and exhaled in a snort of irritation, shaking his head in annoyance.
“Did he kill Jack?” Hana asked. “Where did it happen?”
“Jack’s body was...mashed, Hana. Totally mashed. He had a bullet wound in his leg to incapacitate him, but the pistol was clean and thrown just out of his reach. Whoever shot him wanted the cops to find him, but they can’t work out what happened after that. Toby reckons it’s a blood bath. The body’s in the bush away down the mountain. The cops were looking at him when we left. Alfred’s sorting it all out.”
Hana dropped the towel and put her arms through the pale blue hospital gown. She reached behind her and struggled to do up the tie behind her neck. “This is going to be fun to breastfeed in,” she commented. Logan’s eyes never moved from his wife’s face and his jaw worked slowly over a piece of chewing gum. “Stop staring at me like that,” she told him.
“Can look if I want to,” he said insolently. “Got a marriage licence says I can.”
“Not if I poke your eyes out,” Hana replied and Logan snorted.
“I’ll poke...”
Hana held her hand up, “Don’t be vulgar in front of the children. And for the record, I can’t sit down, let alone think about anything else.”
Logan observed his wife in his unsettling way while she wrestled with a tie above the waistband of the knickers. “I just told you a man got smashed to bits on our property and you’re surprisingly calm,” Logan said, his eyes flashing their smoke grey warning. “Don’t you care that your mate Flick might have executed him on your behalf?”
Hana turned to face her husband. “I should care, shouldn’t I? It’s not very Christian to feel relieved that Jack’s dead. But I am. He won’t be coming after me or our son and that awful eerie feeling I’ve had for months now, is gone. I can go back to leaving the curtains open at night and not sense that I’m being watched.” She shrugged. “God forgive me but I’m relieved. I’m sorry for you because he was family.” Hana studied Logan with a practiced eye. “But then you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Logan twitched his lips, offering Hana his tell-tale confession without saying anything. Hana held onto the sink and watched her silent husband. “Who told you?” she asked softly.
“He did. When Kane and Barry split me open with the machete when I was eleven. He told me in the barn when nobody had time to take me back to the hospital to get the stitches out. He took them out for me and helped me get rid of the infection with plants from the bush. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone else, not even Alfred or Mum; it was between us. After that, he taught me everything he knew about horses and cattle and to some extent, people.”
“But I don’t understand. You thought Alfred was your father up until the day after the fire. Otherwise why did you get so upset when you found out Reuben was?”
Logan sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Jack told me he was my grandfather. I just assumed it meant Alfred was his. It never occurred to me Reuben was actually his son and he never elaborated. He either didn’t want to spell it out or he figured I’d work it out. We never discussed it again, not even after Reuben died and the truth came out. But Reuben’s death definitely affected him real deep. Now we know why.”
“Did you know his real name?” Hana asked and Logan nodded. “Did you know he killed Caroline’s birth father?” Logan’s face dropped and he shook his head.
“No, I didn’t know that. Why?”
“Her father was the blonde drover who had an affair with Reuben’s wife. Antoinette went up north to have the baby and left her there. But she couldn’t cope and sent for her when she was almost two. Reuben knew, but allowed Antoinette to keep her daughter. You would never have been allowed to marry Caroline, Logan. You were both played by your family. Phoenix wrote in her diary that Caroline could never bear the Du Rose name and I’m certain that Jack would have fulfilled her wishes somehow. Maybe he scared her off on the day, or got Reuben to do it. We’ll never know and I’m not going to ask her.”
Logan tipped his son upright, his large hand behind the sleeping baby’s head and laid him against his shoulder. “It’s all academic now,” he said with a wistful smile. “Because she’s married Kane anyway, so she’s a Du Rose...” his lips dropped open and his face looked aghast. “Oh that’s sick.”
Hana nodded. “But you know what? Antoinette was already a Du Rose, which makes Caroline half family anyway. She was just like Tama; she could have changed her name at any point. Instead, she grew up not really understanding who her parents were and striving to belong to something she already had a right to be part of. I think her father is buried on the property somewhere, possibly near Nev’s new house. I think that’s why Jack lured Sylvia there before killing her. It was like a repeat of the first time.”
Logan sighed and kissed the baby’s downy crown. He swore softly and stared at a mark on the mirror with a faraway look in his eyes. “What a bloody mess.”
“It is but I think we can sort this out. Logan, I need two things from you now,” Hana said softly. “I need you to help me get Flick out of the country and I also need you to tell me how to smooth all of this out with the cops; without being untruthful. I don’t want to have to lie to Bodie about any of this.”
To her surprise, Logan nodded. “Ok.”
Chapter 59
“So you believe that...” Odering looked at his notebook, “this Jack person, killed Sylvia Clark? I thought he was in his nineties. How would he have managed that?”
“He worked with horses. He was strong as an ox,” Logan replied. “He wasn’t quite the doddery old man he appeared.”
Hana remained silent, nursing her son underneath the large cardigan that one of the midwives had lent her. She felt scruffy and hopelessly exhausted. Part of her silence was because she had asked Logan for help and the other dominating factor - she didn’t want any attention while she fed her baby and looked such a mess.
“So all the damage at the property recently, bricks through windows, cows let out, wire fences cut, you think that was all his doing? That a ninety year old man wandered the mountains doing damage and killing people? You expect me to believe that, do you? And how come this elderly man had no health service code, no documents, no income tax number, no driving licence, no bank account, no gun licence, nothing?”
“No idea,” Logan answered, maintaining his usual calm, calculating exterior.
“But you’re his employer,” Odering pushed. “You can’t just employ people without documentation and pay them cash their whole lives. The tax office isn’t going to be happy with you.” Odering looked particularly smug about that fact, imagining the Du Rose empire crumbling like a washout against the might of the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department. To his dismay, Logan shrugged, infuriating the detective with his practiced nonchalance.
“I never employed him. He was here when I was born. I never paid him a single day’s wages. My grandmother gifted him the house behind the bunkhouse and the land it’s on and he owned land at the front of the property up near the main road. He had nobody else and nowhere to go. His whole life was bound up in my family and his life’s work was on that mountain. He ate the hotel food and he got people to fetch him stuff from town when he needed it. He was part of the furniture. You can turn my accounts inside out and you won’t find anything to nail me or my predecessors.”
Logan stood up finally. His height and stance were imposing. “Now, my wife’s given you a statement of what happened to her, you have her clothing and presumably everything else you need is at the house. You’ve got nothing to kee
p you here, so it’s time you left.”
Odering lifted his hand in the air in defiance. “So the gun literally went off by accident?” He directed his question at Hana. She nodded, comfortable with her own honesty.
“Yes, I dropped it and it went off and damaged the room.”
“Twice, how convenient,” Odering replied, the smarminess in his voice making Logan grind his teeth. Hana neither confirmed, nor denied his statement. He shifted in his seat. “The deceased was on his knees, digging a hole in your garden. Any idea what that was about?”
Logan snorted. “If there’s buried treasure, it’s mine.”
Odering glared at him. “I’m beginning to lose patience.”
“How could he be digging?” Hana asked, fondling the tufty red hair on her son’s head. He woke up and sucked greedily again, as though he’d forgotten what he was meant to be doing. “You said he was shot dead.”
“His hands were covered in loose soil and there was a hole next to his...what remained of his head. The forensic guys found traces of fibre in the soil, some kind of hessian wrapping.”
“What was in it?” Dread snaked its fingers around Hana’s heart. “What did he find?”
“No idea,” Odering said, slamming his notebook closed in temper. “The hole was empty.”
Hana looked at her husband and shrugged, met by his confused grey eyes. It didn’t take a genius to see they had no clue.
“And the man who was with you and has now disappeared, his name was...”
“Robert Hohaia,” Logan responded confidently. “And he is on the books because he’s worked for me for ages.”
“Well I definitely need to speak to him,” Odering said, shutting his notebook with a snap.
“You’ll be lucky!” Logan snorted. “He only went to see Hana to say goodbye. He had a flight to catch.”
“Not funny, Du Rose. I’ll need to see him.”
Logan shrugged and squared his broad, muscular shoulders. “She’s given you what you’ve asked, now it’s time for you to go,” Logan took a step towards Odering and Bodie.