by Alan Carter
‘Where have SIS taken Cunningham?’
‘Into one of their safe houses. Awaiting instructions from Bryant probably.’
‘I’m still intrigued as to why Cunningham and his troops are based in the valley while the real reason they’re all here is that place out on the Sounds.’
‘Maybe that’s exactly it,’ says Keegan. ‘The Lodge in your valley is a barracks for Cunningham’s hillbilly headkickers. On call for when needed. But really, if you’re a man of class and refinement with snobby rich friends dropping in, would you really want such riff-raff hanging around at the bottom of your manicured garden?’
Can’t fault the logic of class war. Ever.
Vanessa is snoozing under the weight of another batch of heavy-duty painkillers and I’ve changed the dressings on her burns. Paulie is trouncing me at Crash Bandicoot and I keep coming a cropper in these crazy Mayan temples. Winter has arrived a week early. It’s another rainy day in Nelson and there’s a warning out that the Maitai and other rivers in the region could reach flood levels by tonight. The Wakamarina too no doubt, with all that water and mud sluicing off those logged hills in the Richmond ranges. It’s foul weather to be out in and I picture Georges LeBlanc, wet and shivering in some abandoned gold workings, plotting his next move.
Those experiments at Stanford University in the US way back in the early seventies suggested that we’re all capable of torture under the right circumstances – such as wanting to fit in and aiming to please. We like to think that precious few of us would take actual pleasure in it. Really? Maybe I’m one of them. It’s not so long ago that I shoved a gun in a man’s face and threatened to kill him if he didn’t tell us where a missing kid was. And there was that time with the Russians and the eel. Maybe Georges is just an extension of all of us, occupying his place on society’s sicko spectrum. Another brick in the wall of the padded cell.
‘Dad! You have to jump the pillars of fire!’ Paulie looks at me like I’m not of this world. ‘Not run off the edge like a, like a …’
‘Useless donkey?’
‘Yeah. Donkey.’ He shows me how to leap a burning pillar of fire properly. Apt, I suppose, given recent events. ‘When are we going home?’
‘No time soon, mate.’
‘We going to build another house?’
‘Hadn’t thought about it. Thought we might move into town instead.’
‘Havelock?’
‘Yeah, maybe. Or Nelson?’
‘Too many people.’
‘You never said that about Sunderland.’
He jerks on the console and avoids disaster. ‘Didn’t know better.’
‘Prefer the country then?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘S’pose so.’
‘Can Mim visit me here?’
‘Doubt it, mate. This is police property.’
He nods. ‘Mum gunna get better?’
‘Sure. Just needs a bit of time. Like your ankle.’
‘And your leg after you were shot.’
‘Took a while didn’t it? And look at me now. Right as rain.’
‘Suck at Crash Bandicoot.’
‘Don’t mock the afflicted.’
Another console jerk. ‘Michael got shot too.’
‘Mim’s grandad? Did he? Where?’
‘The war.’
‘I meant where on his body.’
Paulie shrugs. ‘He lived. Blessing, eh?’
Blessing? Kids, huh?
Thomas Hemi made his move that night as the rivers overflowed, the hills and roads slipped, and the police and emergency services were stretched thin. He got his big brother Morgan to call me from the landline at the abandoned Lodge and invite me up to see real justice in action.
‘Come alone,’ Morgan said.
With Vanessa zonked out on meds, David Ford has once more stepped into the breach to watch over her and Paulie. He’s happy to do so but questions my priorities.
‘Think it’s wise to be gallivanting off at a time like this?’ He nods down the hallway to the bedroom where Vanessa sleeps. ‘Your place is here, Nick.’
My mobile buzzes. Somebody sent me a photo. Georges LeBlanc bound and gagged lying on the parapet of what looks like Deep Creek Bridge. Below him, I know, is a drop of around a hundred and fifty metres to rocks and rushing river. I show the pic to Ford.
He shrugs. ‘No great loss, I’m guessing.’
‘But now it’s on my phone it’d be remiss of me to ignore it.’
‘Remiss? Call it in. Let Keegan deal with it. Or Maxwell.’
‘They’ve specified they want me and me alone.’
‘Let them specify away. Fuck ’em.’
‘David? Language.’ It’s a sleepy Paulie, en route to the toilet. ‘Why you here?’
‘Be off with you,’ he says to me gruffly. ‘And when you get back, do some thinking about what’s important around here.’
With the rain pounding my windscreen all the way over the Whangamoa Saddle, I try feebly to justify myself to myself. The best I come up with is that if I manage to get Georges LeBlanc back off Thomas Hemi then I can try and prove some point about the rule of law. Who am I kidding? There’s something going on and I can’t bear to not be at the centre of it.
Deep Creek, just north from my dearly departed home, used to be a thriving community back in the gold rush days. There was a hotel here, a school, a cluster of houses, and down where the creek meets the Wakamarina they attempted to dam and change the course of the river in order to suck up all the gold they thought was there. Another folly worthy of Fitzcarraldo. The Deep Creek cemetery, where my mate Steve is now buried after feeling the wrath of a knife meant for me, is also home to several dozen other graves, many unmarked, of those who struggled to make a life here over the years. It’s also the last resting place for the victims of those historic Doom Creek bandits. Imagine: weeks and months hacking away at bedrock for a few ounces of the yellow stuff, and some gunslinging lazy wanker is waiting for you behind a bush. Bang, easy money. The cemetery offers free burial for locals, which is a comforting thought in hard times. The journey up here was atrocious. Recent logging and torrential rains turned a bitumenised road into a muddy river. It took all my concentration to keep the ute from being washed into the nearest paddock. Morgan Hopu waves me down with a torch. Thomas is in the background, leaning over a seated Georges LeBlanc who is no doubt relieved to be no longer perched on the bridge parapet. It’s pissing down and I’m drenched within seconds of being out of the car. Morgan and Thomas seem oblivious to it. Georges too, by the look of him. He’s had a severe going-over.
Thomas stands. ‘He’s confessed to murdering my son. He says it was for snitching on that kid, Melvyn Cody. He’s feeling a bit remorseful now. Wishes he hadn’t done it.’ He wipes rain from his face and flicks it onto the prisoner. ‘Want to ask him about that Gelder fella?’
‘I can take it from here, Thomas. Get him back to the station. Get us all home and dry, eh?’
‘Home and dry.’ He wipes more rain from his eyes. ‘That’d be nice.’ He nudges LeBlanc with his foot. ‘What do you think, Georgie?’
‘Fuck you and your dumbass kid. He died crying for his mummy. As for you, Chester. Suck my dick.’
‘There’s your answer, Nick. Remorseful when it suits him, but the asshole always shines through.’ Thomas picks LeBlanc up and throws him over the bridge. There’s a sickening snap and a squeal of agony.
Far out. Did he really just do that?
A yell from below.
Thomas leans over the parapet. ‘What’s that, Georges? Want to go again?’ It’s then that he shows me the rope attached to the bridge rail. ‘Bungee,’ he explains to me. ‘Not elasticated, I’m afraid. Might have popped a joint or two there.’
I lean over the rail and look down into the darkness. Water rushes below, luminescent white dashing over the rocks. ‘Is he still alive?’
A groan, barely audible over the rain and rushing water.
‘Guess so.
Maybe you could try asking him about Gelder now.’ Hemi takes out a knife and starts sawing at the rope.
‘Can we hold off for a sec?’
‘Make it thirty if you like. Then I’m finished here. And so’s he.’
‘Thomas, this isn’t the way.’
‘Twenty-seven, twenty-six.’
‘Don’t make me take you in, Thomas.’
‘Twenty-three, twenty-two.’
‘LeBlanc, why did you kill Gelder?’ I’ve never had to shout a police interrogation to a reluctant bungee-jumper in a flooded canyon at midnight in a storm before. It focuses the mind. Especially when his rope is about to be cut. ‘LeBlanc?’
‘Fuck you, snowflake cuck.’
‘Pull him back up.’ The voice comes from behind a blinding floodlight perched on the hill leading up to the cemetery. It’s Brandon Cunningham.
‘What if I don’t want to?’ Hemi keeps sawing.
‘Do it.’
‘Do as he says, bro.’ Morgan eases the knife out of Hemi’s hand. ‘I’ve got an important business meeting tomorrow. Worth a few bob.’ Together they start hauling on the rope and in no time LeBlanc is back on the parapet. His left hip looks dislocated. Hemi backs over the bridge to the south side, his side, cradling LeBlanc in his huge arms like an infant. Morgan tags along, a pistol at LeBlanc’s head for insurance. ‘We’ll back up here, you need to turn those lights off ’cause they’re hurting my eyes. Wouldn’t want to trip.’
The floodlights go off and individual torches come on.
‘You come with us, Nick,’ says Hemi, quieter. ‘You’ll be better over here.’
‘No need. I’ll leave you guys to work this one out.’ Yes, I’ve given up on the noble rule-of-law idea.
Hemi is insistent. ‘Really, Nick. That’s not the best place to be standing.’
Some ratcheting of shotguns. Cunningham and his men heading my way. ‘Choose well, Chester. Keep out of this.’
‘Nick, mate.’ Hemi is holding something in his hand. A phone? A torch? A metal tube like an EpiPen, a button. His thumb over it.
That’s when I see the fresh wires that have been laid along the edge of the bridge. Jesus, he really is going to do it.
‘Run, Nick. Now.’
26.
The explosion was precise and loud. Our ears are still ringing. Dust and debris floats from the sky. The bridge is now way down in that deep creek. No people or vehicles are going to make it beyond the nine-kilometre mark on Wakamarina Road any time soon. Thomas Hemi just took out a hundred and fifty years of civil engineering history. Those wild valley rumours about him were true, he would blow that bridge if the balloon went up. Cunningham’s commandos stand on the far side of the abyss. Wondering, no doubt, what the hell just happened.
‘The Zombie Apocalypse happened, bro.’ Hemi gives me a grin. ‘And you’re on the side of the angels.’
‘My family are on the other side,’ I point out. ‘Those people will go after them.’
‘Why would they? Wasn’t you that blew the bridge and stole their friend.’
‘I don’t think they’re that discerning.’
‘Aren’t your folks in Police HQ, Nelson? Can’t see it.’ Hemi slaps LeBlanc out of his nightmare. ‘This is the guy they want. He’s our bargaining chip.’ Looks up at me. ‘Now we’re in the big league, eh?’
‘Do you realise what you’ve done, Thomas? This is madness.’
‘No mate, this is taking the initiative. Leadership.’
‘Mana,’ says Morgan Hopu.
‘Where did you learn how to use explosives?’
Hemi winks. ‘I was in the army reserve for a couple of years.’
‘This can’t end well, mate. You know that.’
‘We all have our lines in the sand, Nick. You too, am I right?’
Of course he is. ‘So what now?’
‘Better cancel that meeting I had,’ says Morgan, heading into the undergrowth. ‘Oh, forgot. No phones in the fucken Apocalypse.’
‘Shelter would be good,’ says Hemi. An engine starts up and Morgan backs an ATV buggy out of the bushes. He nods back over the abyss. ‘It’ll take them a while to work it out, maybe even send some of them on foot down to the bottom and back up again, but eventually they’ll be here. And we need to be ready.’ He drops LeBlanc into the roadkill tray and cable ties him to a bracket. ‘Hop in.’
A shake of the head. ‘I’ll walk out.’
Morgan points his hunting rifle my way. ‘Hop in.’
‘Kidnapping a police officer, Thomas? Really?’
‘You’re our guest, mate. Duty of care.’
‘Why did you bring me in on this? You didn’t need me here.’
‘True. But I felt I owed you something. The chance to find out the truth about that miner maybe.’
Or maybe implicate me in whatever is planned. An insurance policy?
One last glance towards the gaping chasm and I hop into the mule as requested. How do you replace something like Deep Creek bridge? Having driven down the Kaikoura road since the earthquake, it’s clear to me that anything is possible, even moving a fallen mountain. Maybe some army engineers can chopper in a temporary replacement. Maybe they can bulldoze a new road over the hills from Pelorus or Wairau. Meantime the dozen or so households trapped in Thomasland are going to have to learn the value of community. And I need to find a way to bring this madness to a peaceful conclusion.
We bump along a muddy track winding up into a recently logged plantation with the rain almost horizontal and LeBlanc groaning at every lurch. I can’t resist pursuing the question. ‘Why did you kill Gelder, Georges? You may as well tell me.’ A groan. ‘Sorry, mate. Didn’t catch that.’
‘Stop those crazy bastards and I’ll tell you.’
‘Thomas and Morgan? I can’t, Georges. They’re in charge here.’
‘I meant Cunningham.’
Hemi looks back with a rain-soaked grin. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s get you comfy and dry, eh, Georgie?’
Another hour or so later we’re in a small clearing beside an abandoned fossicker’s hut.
‘Came across it out pig-shooting one time.’ We carry LeBlanc in while Thomas covers the buggy with branches. The hut has been prepared in advance: camp beds, gas lamps, a stove, food and water. ‘Sorry, mate. There’s no wi-fi.’ He points to a radio. ‘Tranny picks up Magic FM in Wellington when the weather’s nice.’
There’s even a spare set of dry clothes for everyone. ‘You thought of everything.’ I hold up a shirt to my chest. ‘The right size too.’
‘Ruth’s a good judge of a man.’
She appears from the shadows. ‘Nick. You made it then.’ As if this was a dinner invitation.
‘It’s a big sacrifice for a family to make. You’ll all go to prison for this, you realise that don’t you? Your youngest still has, what, three or four years left at school?’
‘You think having your first-born butchered by these animals isn’t a sacrifice already?’ Ruth leans over a prone LeBlanc and slaps him none too lightly on the cheek. ‘He’s the one, Tom?’
‘Yep. Had no trouble admitting it, too.’
‘Smells like he pissed hisself.’
‘Yeah, he’s been through a rough patch.’
‘There’s still time to rescue this, Thomas.’ I slip on the dry flannel shirt. ‘So far it’s destruction of public property and assault.’
‘What about kidnapping you?’
Thomas has this presence, I see it now. He should have been the star of that dumb film, not some extra. Is this what Latifa means by mana? Even big brother Morgan, gang leader and successful businessman, seems in awe of him. Ruth, less so. Maybe it’s the familiarity of a long-standing marriage. She knows him well enough, knows he’s not perfect.
‘Misunderstanding. You invited me to take custody of your citizen’s arrest. Saved me from getting blown up. We can blame the Yanks for the bridge. We can make this work, Thomas. But it needs to end here.’
By now report
s will be well and truly in on the explosion. Emergency services will be scratching their heads on the north side of Deep Creek. Cunningham and his men will have faded back into the darkness and will be fanning out on foot and quad bikes looking for us. Police and emergency helicopters will be in the air. Vanessa will be wondering where the hell I am. David too, has he taken his leave yet? Keegan, Maxwell, Latifa. All wondering what the devil I’ve got myself into now. Rain pounds the tin roof of the shack and somewhere near there’s the sound of rushing and rising water. I’m guessing we’re within spitting distance of Doom Creek where it joins the Wakamarina.
‘Thomas?’ I repeat.
‘Ask him your questions,’ he says. ‘The clock’s ticking.’ It’s no use. The man’s as solid and immovable as a Rapanui carving.
There’s tea on the go and Georges seems momentarily brightened by it. He’s changed into a dry shirt, one of Thomas’ cast-offs I’d guess, the way it hangs from him.
‘So, Georges, you were going to tell me all about Gelder. Fire away.’
‘You haven’t dealt with Cunningham yet.’
‘Take it as a given,’ says Thomas.
‘Bring me his head, then we’ll talk.’
‘What movie you in, dickbrain?’ growls Morgan.
‘I’m not sure you’re in the best position to bargain, Georges.’ Thumb over my shoulder. ‘Thomas here can turn you over to me or to Cunningham or, if he wants, chuck you off a cliff. You know that already.’
‘So I’m a dead man walking and my secret dies with me.’
‘You’re not dead if you come with me. I can protect you.’
‘Doubt it.’
‘Cunningham’s head is irrelevant if they’re that relentless.’
A sly grin. ‘A man still likes his trophies.’
‘Yanks. They’re fucked,’ says Ruth. ‘The lot of them. Let them kill and eat each other. Put a lid on their stupid country and forget them.’
‘One last time, Georges. What did Gelder know about Māhana?’
A calculating pause. ‘Read up on James Bryant. Ask yourself what it is the federal prosecutor might have had on him to make him run for the hills.’
That’s all he was going to give us for the moment. By now it must be around 3 a.m. so we turn in with Morgan and Thomas on guard duty roster. I offer to share the burden but they decline so I stretch out on a camp bed and fall asleep to the sound of drumming rain and rushing water.