Show Me a Huia!

by Chris Barfoot

  “Thanks. I got a ride back on the tray of a truck. They didn’t ask any questions, but then they hadn’t heard the news.”

  She drew back his sleeve and started dabbing at the wound. “The coffee will be ready in a moment. Or would you like something stronger?”

  “Ouch! No thanks. I went back to my flat at Grafton. It had been raided. Somebody had been right through all my clothes and papers. Then I heard a police car coming, and I got out down the fire escape.”

  “But they’re looking for you. Aren’t you going to tell them you’re alive?”

  “If they know I’m alive, they’ll want to arrest me.”

  “Arrest you! Why?”

  “I broke into Dr Hawthorne’s place at Pataratara.”

  “God, I’m so sorry! I should never have talked to you like that on Monday.”

  “It wasn’t just what you said. There were other things.”

  “So what happened?”

  She listened to his account. It was unbelievable. Not only the events but the changed way he spoke. No longer was he the pompous professor.

  “I managed to undo my seatbelt before the car went off the road. I was thrown out and I landed on some vines growing on the treetops just below the road. I was knocked out for a while, but when I came to, I realised that nothing was broken. The vines softened my fall.”

  “It was a miracle you survived.”

  “Particularly when I wasn’t meant to.”

  She nearly knocked over the bowl of warm water.

  “I should have examined the car first, but I was tired and in too much of a hurry. Now, because of the state of the car, there’s no evidence. It was just a piece of twisted metal on the rocks when I climbed down to it. All the same I knew the brake lines had been cut.”

  She shuddered as she dried his arm. “They tried to kill you?”

  “Everything else could be explained as normal security precautions, even the twig sensors.”

  “So it’s serious.”

  He swept his fair hair back over his forehead with his other arm. “Attempted murder is a bit of a shock. Everyone’s always been so nice to me before. They wrecked my flat too. If it had been the police, they would have needed a search warrant. Now it’s too dangerous to go back.” He turned to her with that boyish face and innocent blue eyes but this time she knew he was not concealing anything. “The trouble is that no one will believe my story.” He stood up suddenly, went to the window, stood behind the curtain and looked out over the lawn, then he went to the window that overlooked the right-of-way. “Those cars? Both friends or neighbours, I suppose?”

  “Come back here. You need this bandage.” He returned, sat down and held out his arm. “We know one another’s friends here. It’s quite a community.” She noticed that his head was nodding. “When did you sleep last?”

  “The night before last.”

  “And where are you going to sleep tonight?”

  “I’m going to stay incognito at a backpackers’ hostel. It’s safer for me to be dead.”

  “What! Do you think your family and friends will be happy about that?”

  He looked at her strangely. “My mother is dead. I have no brothers or sisters. My father will have already disowned me – and I don’t have any real friends.”

  “Surely your father would at least be glad to know you’re alive before he disowns you.”

  “You can tell him if you like. He’s in Parnell. St Stephens Avenue. But please ask him to keep it to himself.” His head was nodding again. “Do you mind if I have a little zizz on your settee?”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Wake me up so I can go to the backpackers, won’t you?”

  ***

  After John Corbishley’s wife had died of cancer two years before, he had missed her greatly. He knew that he could be at times aggressive and abrasive and that she with her gentler, more sensitive nature had soothed tempers which he had ruffled. The times he had most enjoyed were the holidays together with her and David when David was young, especially camping down the East Coast. Since her death David, always the only and much prized child, became even more important to him.

  The news of the accident and the probable death of his son had hit him very hard. He maintained with difficulty the well-modulated, resonant telephone voice which gave the image of a successful real estate agent.

  “John Corbishley here, how may I help you?”

  “You won’t know me, Mr Corbishley, but I have news of your son.”

  The memory came back to him of that fearful cliff road that he used to know so well and the crumpled car at the bottom. He felt his control going. “David – oh no!”

  “I’ve just been talking to him.”

  “Thank God!”

  “He asked me to phone you.”

  “He hasn’t rung himself. Is he all right?”

  “He’s safe, but he thought you would believe what the papers said and wouldn’t want to speak to him.”

  He felt his voice going again. “He’s my only child. I didn’t think about what the papers said. All I thought was that he was dead. Where is he? Can I see him? Can I speak to him?’

  “In the meantime for certain reasons he feels it’s better that people think he’s dead.”

  “I’ll do as he wants. Are you a friend of his?”

  “No, but we had met before – briefly.”

  ***

  She turned on the radio, keeping the volume down.

  “This is the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, 1YA, with the six o’clock news on Friday 21st January.

  Police have identified the owner of the car which was found at the bottom of a cliff on the Opotiki–Te Araroa Road this morning. He is Dr David Corbishley, a senior lecturer at the Geology Department of the Auckland University. Prior to the accident Dr Corbishley had been the subject of police enquiries in connection with an incident on a local property. The Geology Department have confirmed that Dr Corbishley was not on departmental business. Police are mounting an extensive search of the coastline around the crash area.”

  Kate looked at the suspected criminal sleeping on her settee.

  “Heavens!” she thought, “What am I letting myself in for if I harbour this man?”

  Then with a shock she remembered why she had tried to ring him at University.

  CHAPTER 26

  David awoke, rubbed his eyes, and looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock. I’d better be off to the backpackers.”

  “There’s no hurry. It’s seven o’clock on Saturday morning.”

  “In the morning!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you wake me? I’ve slept for fourteen hours.”

  “You needed it. And after breakfast I want to ask your advice.”

  He listened to her account of the Alpine Sports Club meeting as he nursed his third cup of coffee.

  “But I can’t understand why you sailed into the chap who discovered the huia.”

  “I just got mad about people being excited about birds and not caring about people.”

  He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “But I thought you were a greenie – Kate.”

  She was intrigued that at last she was not just ‘er’.

  “And that’s not all,” she said. “I started thinking about this bloke. Why would he want to lie about the Keulemans painting? And why was he so dry and lifeless about it all, except when I got him onto the subject of race relations. Then I got thinking that there’s a lot of people like him around. Then it struck me there’s something odd about the highway assaults. I mean no one has ever even looked like being charged. So I researched the back numbers of the Herald.”

  “Oh, yes.” His voice was not as enthusiastic as she had hoped.

  She took away the newspaper which covered her research on the table. “Take a look at this. I’ve underlined all the hate-building stuff – all the half-truths and insinuations. This is not just reporting. It looks like an orchestrated campaign.”

  He scrutinised the phot
ocopied news items and articles. “Do you really think people believe all they read in the paper?”

  “And in the talkbacks and on the TV. I’m certain of it.” She described the incident at the City Library involving the Maori woman and her children.

  “So you believe it’s a conspiracy?”

  “Yes, and not by the Maori. Somebody or some group is preparing the scene for a particularly nasty counter-terrorist action like a coup.”

  “It’s not exactly evidence,” he said slowly.

  She was not surprised that he was slow. Males in general lacked imagination. “I have something a bit more definite about the highway assaults.”

  “Good,” he said in a patronising tone.

  “The interesting thing is that no one has ever seen the assailants except the victims. On the night of the McAndrew assault south of Te Kuiti no one except the victims saw a collection of noisy, beat up cars with smoking exhausts driven by a group of tattooed Maori, not even the highway patrols.”

  “You mean the traffic police?”

  “No, the voluntary patrols – some people call them ‘community vigilantes’. In the McAndrew case they were standing at the gates of the Te Kuiti marae when the police arrived. You’d think they’d be chasing over the country looking for suspects, especially as Susan McAndrew called the police immediately after the assault. But they went straight to the marae, almost as if they wanted to point them out as the perpetrators.”

  “So the cars and the assailants have vanished into thin air.”

  “Or melted into the countryside.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes you can’t see something extraordinary because it turns into something quite ordinary? A lot of farmers have old cars on their properties.”

  “I thought you said you had something more definite.”

  She controlled herself with difficulty. “I have also seen Susan McAndrew.”

  He looked at her with new interest. “The hold-up victim?”

  “Just to find out if she’d noticed anything unusual about the Maori assailants.”

  “And had she?”

  “No, not really. But I did when she described what happened.”

  “What did you notice?”

  “She’s a gutsy lady and she’d scratched some paint off her assailant’s arm with her fingernails. Well, it was brown paint. And when she was being interviewed by the two CIB officers, one Pakeha and the other Maori, it was the Pakeha who said it was war paint, and the Maori one didn’t question it. And they’re both wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Maori didn’t use war paint before going into battle. They used karakia, you know – prayers.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I checked with the ethnologist at the Auckland Museum when I got back. Then I made an appointment to talk to Sergeant Piriaka, the Maori officer who interviewed Susan. I got the impression that he wasn’t up with his Maoritanga.”

  “Did he admit to a mistake?”

  “No, not in so many words. But he didn’t seem to want to follow it up.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a dodgy issue, but I reckon there must be at least some racial tensions within the police force. I guess he wouldn’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest, which is understandable.”

  “I still don’t see where all this leads.”

  “I wonder if the assailants were only disguised as Maori.”

  David shook his head. “You’d make a great detective, Kate, but your deductions are well ahead of your evidence. You can’t build a case on a fingernail of brown paint.” He seemed preoccupied and nervous and went to the window again where he stood hiding behind the curtain as before. “Does that bush run all the way down to the railway?”

  “Eventually.” She did not understand the drift of his question because she was trying to cope with his verdict. She had got what she wanted – someone to rebut her conclusions, but instead of being relieved she was about to explode. No wonder he fell out with Tane. How could someone be so conservative and cautious, so unthinking, unimaginative and insensitive all at once? She felt like blurting something out, but instead threw her papers together using more energy than was necessary.

  Hearing the commotion he glanced back to her. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

  She was considering carefully how she should answer his question when her phone rang in the hallway. David jumped up and looked around as if he needed a place to hide. “Don’t tell them,” he said as she answered the call.

  “Hallo, Eleanor,” she said. She listened intently. “I’ll make some enquiries and phone you back.” She hung up.

  “Eleanor’s just had a call from Harry Mountjoy, the vicar at the church you went to the other day. She rang me because I told her about meeting you on One Tree Hill. I haven’t told her you’re here, but the vicar wants to see you urgently. He hasn’t heard about the accident. Doesn’t listen to the radio.”

  “I don’t know that I need his kind of help,” he said. “Anyhow why does he want to see me?”

  “I don’t know, but do you mind if I come?”

  CHAPTER 27

  The vicar looked at him with a horrified expression. “But you’re hurt?”

  “Just a little accident with my car. It’s been on the radio.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t listen to the radio very often. Surely you should go to the casualty department?” David shook his head vigorously. “You don’t think so? Miss Fairweather, I’m sorry. I was forgetting you. Do please come in.” He ushered them into the lounge. “My wife has left us some tea. Please sit down, Miss Fairweather. I think that’s a comfortable seat. Lavinia baked these scones this morning. Would you like me to pour?”

  “I love home-made scones.” Kate smiled.

  “If you don’t mind, would you please not tell anyone you’ve seen me,” said David.

  “Dear boy, are you in trouble?”

  “My car went over a cliff yesterday morning. The police are looking for my body.”

  He went to the window and stood behind the curtain looking out. The sunlit lawn flowed out towards a large copper beech. Below the beech was a deckchair and a figure hidden under a large sun hat. At the side of the chair was a basket with some gardening tools. Obviously the scone-maker.

  He came back into the room conscious of the impression he was making. “And the police are not the only people who are after me.” He proceeded to give an account of his visit to Pataratara and his suspicions of what was happening there.

  “.…so it’s better for me to stay dead,” he ended.

  “A remarkable story,” said the vicar but he seemed not to be listening.

  “The next thing to consider is what sort of future action I take. I have several different options.” He remained standing, pointing the finger of one hand to the palm of the other as if he were lecturing at the university. “As I see it, these are: firstly…”

  He heard Kate clear her throat and saw her motioning towards the vicar. Harry Mountjoy was looking out through the French doors with an abstracted expression on his face.

  “Don’t you think he asked you to come because he has something to say to you?”

  Slowly Harry Mountjoy turned towards him. But the expected flow of words did not come. Instead he said hesitantly, “I don’t suppose you have a photo of Tane?”

  Before setting out to Waitehaia he had dug out an old photo of Tane taken on a geology department trip. Mystified, he pulled the picture from his wallet.

  The vicar looked at it for a long time and seemed to be immersed in thought.

  “Why did you want it?”

  Harry Mountjoy did not reply, but looked again out the window where the figure in the sun hat was now kneeling by a garden border. “You must have been concerned about Tane’s state of mind. You would have wondered what might have happened to him. Am I right in saying also that you even felt some responsibility yourself?”

  “Of course I di
d.”

  The vicar took off his glasses, polished them, put them back on, looked out the window again, then he leaned closer to David and put his hand on his arm. “You will be pleased to hear he is safe.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know?” The vicar gave a half smile, hesitated again, glanced up to the ceiling, out the window, at the floor, then he looked at David almost appealingly. “Because I’ve seen him.”

  “You – have – seen – Tane?” he said numbly. “There must be some mistake.”

  “There is confidentiality involved so would you be good enough not to disclose this to anyone else?” the vicar continued anxiously, and appreciated Kate’s nod. “It was quite by accident during my visiting…. He did not see me. There were characteristics I recognised from your description, David, when you came here last. Still, I was not positive of his identity, so I went to the University Geology Department the next day. They showed me a photo which was similar to the one you have given me. I noticed some changes, but it was the same man.”

  “You realise this is a little hard for us to believe, Vicar,” said Kate. “Where did you see him?”

  “As I mentioned, my pastoral work is confidential.”

  “Really? How is Tane?”

  “He is well – physically.”

  “Does this mean that he is in a psychiatric institution?”

  “He is in good hands.”

  “In whose hands?”

  “I’m sorry; I cannot answer that question.”

  “Confidentiality again?”

  He nodded.

  David burst out, “But I’m his colleague, his best friend!” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a lie.

  “Unfortunately, sometimes even families cannot get this information.”

  “Vicar, I understand about confidentiality,” Kate said, “but may we know the name of his psychiatrist so that David at least can make enquiries? He could of course refuse to give information, but you would be passing on the responsibility to him, and David would not disclose his source.”