by Alan Carter
Maybe seven or eight pique my interest and even though my research strategy is far from comprehensive (having left out everybody else in New Zealand and the rest of the world) I make them my immediate priority. If nothing else, I might be able to exclude them from my further enquiries. Criminal convictions or associations are a helpful marker. In New Zealand anyway, if not in Iraq, the majority of people who find themselves being shot in the back of the head while kneeling have probably kept very bad company and might have even had it coming. Sure there will be exceptions but they’ll be rare. Five on the list fit the bad company bill but I can immediately exclude two gang members with violent histories because it is clear from their photos that barely an inch of them remains uninked. Bardawi found no traces of tattooing in his examination of the parchment shreds remaining on the skeleton. Of the other three, one is an accountant who helped gangsters cook their books, one a lawyer who helped them stay out on the streets and in business. The last one didn’t seem like a bad person but he had looked to defend his values and his patch of ground and had come up against types who would eat him alive and barely raise a belch.
My semi-mummified half-corpse could be any of these men or none of them.
The weekend was delightfully uneventful: chickens, goats, chores, a walk along the river. Charlie Evans came around for dinner on Saturday. He’s lost without Beattie and his mind is turning towards a house in suburbia where he can forget about farm work and curl up and die.
‘Sooner the better,’ he murmured over his glass of red.
To be honest we couldn’t wait to shuffle him out the door. After a while you tire of other people’s grief. Is that callous? Maybe, but we find ourselves rationing our compassion these days. Change the subject. ‘How’s Denzel? See much of him?’
‘Pops round now and then. Think he might have a beau.’
‘Great. Happy then?’
‘S’pose somebody has to be.’
So much for changing the subject. ‘The new fella working out well?’ Charlie has hired a bloke from Vanuatu to help out around the farm. There’s a bunch of islanders sharing a house down behind the pub near the Von Crapps. These guys subsist on seasonal farm and vineyard labouring. They work hard and keep themselves to themselves, not that that stops the odd neighbour from just not liking the colour of their skin.
‘Israel? Yeah, he’s good, reliable. Pretty handy. Not much of a conversationalist though.’
Two of a kind then.
‘Know anything about fences, Nick?’ Charlie said in a moment of outgoing lucidity.
‘In what regard?’
‘Their legal status. I assumed it was all cut and dried. Fences mark boundaries of ownership. Right?’
‘I would have thought so.’
‘Those Americans bulldozed a section of mine. Moved it back thirty metres onto my land. Left it to me to put it back up again.’
‘When?’
‘This morning. First thing. Now there’s a big mound of earth curving around. It’s their new firing range.’
‘Firing range?’
‘Are machine guns allowed in New Zealand? They were blasting away with them all afternoon.’
First thing Monday, I organise a doctor’s appointment for the end of the afternoon and arrange for a police inspection of the Lodge and their gun collection. Latifa comes through the door looking exhausted again.
‘More bumps in the night?’
She nods. ‘And the phone again. Both nights, all weekend.’
Should have told her to leave it off. Insisted. ‘I’ll take the on-call shifts for the next few nights.’ I wave away her protests. ‘The camera? Is that happening?’
‘The guy’s coming round this morning to set it up.’
‘Did you run a trace on the mystery caller?’
‘No, I was waiting until Monday. Thought it all might just fade away.’
‘Get the techs onto it. This is harassment.’
She yawns. ‘Okay. The camera guy will probably call in here first. Give him the spare key if he needs access inside. I’m off.’
‘Where?’
‘Got a mountain to climb. The mysterious case of the leaking water tanks.’
‘It can wait if you’re too stuffed.’
‘Fresh air will do me good.’
‘Got your personal alarm?’
The Wakamarina, like many parts of New Zealand, has blind and deaf spots where mobiles and police radios won’t get a signal. The best you can hope for is that the personal emergency beacon will work. She pats the tab on her vest. ‘It’s a walk up and down a hill and a five-minute look around, Sarge. A complete waste of time as ordered by my superior officer who lacks sound judgement in most matters but whom it is my solemn duty to obey.’
‘Whom? Still studying the law books then.’
‘If I’m not back by lunchtime, release the hounds.’
Back to my Mummy candidates. Accountant David Archer, a forty-six-year-old married man with two kids, was reported missing by his wife three and a half years ago. He had failed to return to their bayside Atawhai home just outside of Nelson. The file shows a concrete and glass cube sitting halfway up the hill with no doubt a stunning view of the water and the distant hills of the Abel Tasman National Park. The cube was worth a cool two million dollars, which wasn’t bad for a bloke who had no connection to the major accounting firms or any clients from big multinational corporations. But, according to the police Financial Intelligence Unit based in Wellington, he was helping to launder money for a company fronting for a local chapter of an outlaw bikie gang, which in turn was channelling funds for the national organisation. The details are there on the database but I was never good at maths at school and I’m happy to be convinced that it was both complex and lucrative. Until a police task force decided to take an interest in Archer and apply pressure to him about his private life. He was on the verge of spilling the evidential beans on his clients’ money trail. Then one day soon after, he never came home, and Mrs Archer found she could no longer afford to pay the mortgage on the Atawhai house because the insurers were unprepared to pay out on a bloke yet to be proven dead. A mysterious crossbow attack on the family dog also helped nudge her and the kids out of town. The property was sold for a song to another company linked to Archer’s shadowy clients. Cash, of course.
Candidate number two. Stephen Jones, aged fifty-three, lawyer, father of two adult sons, but divorced and living with his long-time companion at the time of his disappearance four years ago. His lover, Bryce, didn’t report him missing until six days after the event because he was known to often go off for days after a row, of which there were many in their tempestuous relationship. There was nothing particularly complex or suspiciously lucrative about Jones’ relationship with his clients. He was a good criminal lawyer, a fox with twelve chickens he was fond of saying. Jones was able to get a well-known Nelson identity off a wounding charge even when the incident was caught on two CCTV cameras and half a dozen smartphones. He was master of the slicing quip, devastating put-down, and forensic dismantling of the prosecution case. The media loved his flamboyance and his witty sound bites. With Jones advocating on your behalf you developed Teflon-coatability. He’d have made enemies all over the place: cops failing to secure a hard-worked-for and sure-fire conviction, rape victims trashed in the witness box, you name it. But he could just as easily have put a client offside. He knew all their secrets and had recently signed a publishing deal for his memoir – A Fox with Twelve Chickens. Would he have been indiscreet? Maybe somebody feared so.
Lastly, and saddest of all, Karel Havelka. At sixty-two he was at the outer range of the professor’s age estimate on the victim but, according to the file, Karel was fit and active and might have physically passed for a younger man. Karel, an emigrant from the former Czechoslovakia, was living in semi-retirement in Springlands, a suburb of Blenheim, when he went missing about five years ago. He was a keen tramper and swimmer and volunteered with an environmental group, a homeless
charity, and a disability transport service. He balanced that with part-time work from a home office as a telecommunications consultant, coming up with solutions to broadband dead zones in the Marlborough Sounds. But he was a meddler. He was often complaining to the council about instances he observed out in the Sounds or among his neighbours in Springlands where somebody was breaching the rules. Maybe it was his upbringing in then Communist Czechoslovakia where informing on your neighbour was a viable career path. Reading the file, it’s obvious he’s a bit like me: can’t stand to see people getting away with not doing the right thing: resource consents, noisy parties, boy racers, barking dogs. The list goes on and I feel your pain, Karel. But at some point it’s all got out of hand. An argument and altercation in the street late one night; a boy racer doing skiddies. Some pushing and shoving. The kid pulls a knife and Karel – a champion boxer in the Czech army, his wife would later tell the police – gets his punch in first. The kid falls, hits his head on the kerb and goes into a coma. Six weeks later life support is switched off and Karel’s assault charge is upgraded to manslaughter, although he is still allowed out on bail as he is not regarded as a flight risk. He never gets to stand trial, disappearing within a week of the charge being laid. He’d punched the wrong kid: the teenage son of a local gang leader.
Three candidates for my half-body. And where is the other half? Butchers Flat is now blocked off as a crime scene with the assistance of conservation department rangers. Whether anything useful will be found after three to five years we don’t know but the other half of the corpse would be a good start. Or a bullet casing. Some ID on the victim and the perpetrator. Professor Bardawi is extracting whatever DNA he can and running it through the system. Maybe it will match with one of my three candidates. Or maybe my skeleton isn’t even reported missing from its closet.
My stomach gurgles and, checking the clock, I see it’s heading for lunchtime. Latifa should be back soon. Flick the sign on the door and go in search of a sandwich. Outside the bakery a ute pulls up. Thomas Hemi. He’s been in the wars.
‘What happened to you?’
He fingers a nasty cut over his eye, eases himself gingerly out from behind the wheel. ‘Nothing I can’t deal with.’
‘Don’t want any feuds around here. Too much on my plate already.’
‘Buy me a cuppa tea?’
‘Sure. Anything to eat?’
He scans the display cabinet. ‘Cheese scone?’
I put the orders in and join him at my favourite window table. ‘Something tells me this isn’t a chance encounter. Am I right?’
He tries a grin but his bottom lip is split. ‘Saw Latifa this morning heading up the hill. She told me to talk to you.’
The order arrives. I pour and we settle in. ‘Fire away.’
‘Those blokes at the Lodge are up to something.’
‘Are they the ones who did this to you?’
‘Like I said, nothing I can’t deal with. I don’t go telling tales.’
‘All the same, Thomas, here we are sitting and talking.’
‘A punch-up is nothing. But they’re planning something bigger.’
‘Like what?’
‘Ever read the scriptures, Nick?’
‘Nah, can’t say I’m a believer.’
‘Neither am I, used to be but not anymore. I’ve read them.’
‘And?’
‘Those guys in the Lodge believe all that shit. The Rapture, Armageddon, Apocalypse, Second Coming, all that.’
‘They wouldn’t be alone. New Zealand has its fair share of religious freaks. There’s some up and down either side of the valley. Even rumours about you. Each to their own, I say.’
‘But they’re not are they?’
‘What?’
‘To their own. They’re not just moving in to the area, they’re seizing it like it’s the Promised Land.’
‘What makes you think that?’
It’s the first time I’ve seen him look vulnerable. Scared even. ‘I don’t know, but they’re fucking relentless, man. One bloke quoting from the Bible and speaking in tongues while his mates stomp the shit out of you. And all to a Bob Marley soundtrack.’
The Marley track? ‘Exodus’. Thomas goes his not so merry way with my promise and warning in his ears. No feuds. If he wants to respond to what must have been a systematic beating at the hands of Cunningham and his stooges, he needs to do it officially and make a complaint. In turn I will bring in the big guns if that’s what it takes to rein these people in. But it has to stay within the rules; rules are all we have left.
‘That’s the thing,’ says Thomas, climbing back into his ute. ‘If you believe in the End Times, like these jokers do, then the only rules are the ones you write yourself.’
It feels like that often these days. Like the rules have changed or even no longer count. By one o’clock I’m getting antsy sitting at my desk scrolling through circulars and other electronic Head Office guff and by quarter to two I’m worried. Latifa should have been back long since. I’ve tried contacting her on radio and mobile. Nothing. So it’s in the patrol car and out to the Trout Hotel in Canvastown in record time. The police helicopter and the Marlborough–Nelson rescue chopper are on alert; if Latifa has fallen or been injured in some way, we need to act quickly. The rescue helicopter is busy collecting a mountain biker off the Queen Charlotte Track, a weekly occurrence at certain times of the year. Laurie, the coffee van guy outside the Trout, tells me he saw Latifa head up the other side of the river on Tapps Road a good four hours ago.
‘And she didn’t come back out?’
‘Nah, I’d have noticed.’
Tapps Road, running parallel to Wakamarina Road, follows the river but on the far side. It’s much rougher and unsealed most of the way. After a few kilometres it’s blocked off for forestry by a padlocked barrier. Latifa had organised to collect a spare key and lock up behind her going in and coming out. Not having time for such niceties I snap the padlock, chuck the boltcutters on the passenger seat and shoot through. The track weaves through sections of logged, and yet to be logged, plantation land. Both are eerie in their own way, lifeless and alien. Along the way, there is evidence of wild pigs: mounds of earth and trampled undergrowth. And of hunters too, ATV tracks and discarded collateral kill. Latifa’s car is parked in a clearing at the corner of which is a walking track that will take her up the hill opposite Gary’s and my water tanks. The car is locked. I open it with my spare key and check the boot. She’s taken her pistol but left the shotgun.
‘Latifa?’
No answer. Collect the shottie and ratchet it. If she got lost, or stuck, or injured, why hasn’t she activated her alarm? Starting the climb up the track, it gets pretty steep pretty quick and I’m having to stop often to catch my breath. My thighs are burning and I’m sweating. From here on in, surely she should be in earshot.
‘Latifa?’
Climbing higher, the dark dead world of pines gives way to native vegetation and trees. Almost immediately there’s more bird life and noise, sun and breeze. But it’s also more overgrown outside the management of forestry. Vines snake across the track, and in the end the trail disappears and it’s a matter of wading through whatever spaces show themselves.
‘Latifa?’
Looking back down the hill through gaps in the trees and the vegetation, I can see the red roof of my house, the top of my green water tank and, over to the left, Gary’s tin roof. She has to be near, has to be in hearing distance.
‘Latifa, it’s me. Where are you? You okay?’
There’s nothing to show which direction she took. No track. No trampled or broken bushes. All I can go from is the line of sight back down the hill, that sweet spot where you can see both the bottom of my water tank and Gary’s, and take them both out from the one position. So that’s the direction I choose, checking my view down the hill, edging towards that spot. It’s becoming more and more dense, tangled, hard to move through. How the hell did Latifa do it? Or the shooter for that matter
?
Just over to the left, there seems to be more light, more space. And a noise. Stop, strain to hear it again.
A groan, strangled, gasping.
Breaking my way through to the clearing, I can’t see anything. The noise again. Then I see it. A tree with a wire, some legs, blood. Arms flailing. Latifa is curled around the base of the trunk. Face covered in blood, her eyes are bulging, she’s caught in a snare meant for a large animal; a pig or deer. The cord is strong thick aircraft wire, the type that moves parts around in the wings and elsewhere and gives you the confidence to keep buying those air tickets. It’s killing Latifa. The more she struggles, the tighter it gets. She can’t speak, the snare is too tight around her neck.
I try to calm her. My knife won’t cut through this. I need the boltcutters from the car but she’ll be dead by the time I get there and back again. Latifa’s hands are free, why didn’t she trigger her alarm? Then I see it’s been snipped cleanly from her uniform. This is no accident.
Latifa hisses in agony. Face and lips turning blue. I try to examine how the snare is working, see if there’s a way of loosening it without cutting through. A bolt and washer lock, beyond the ken of the average wild beast, and beyond Latifa’s reach, but if I can unscrew that then we’re in business. She grips my arm. Panic in her eyes.
The washer is screwed tight and my hands are sweaty. Latifa is dying while I fumble with these bits of metal.