“Because I didn’t want anyone to know I had it?” I replied, playing his game.
“And why would you not want people to know you had something?”
“Because I shouldn’t have had it in the first place.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, is this what you meant when you said that where he got them from was the illegal bit? Is your friendly local policeman a thief in his spare time?”
“Not quite. It’s a bit more complicated than that. But let’s look around and see what else my old buddy Ian has got stashed away down here. What smells so bad?”
“Isn’t it just the pigs?”
“I don’t think so. Sure, they smell pretty bad and I doubt that pen has ever been cleaned out, but there’s something more. Can you smell it?”
“I’m trying not to, but I agree. I noticed it last night. There’s something rotten down here.”
“What’s that over there?” Bruno passed the edge of the pig pen and headed into the gap between the fence and the sloping wall. I followed, catching up with him just as he reached forwards to lift the edge of a large, black tarpaulin that covered a waist-high mound of indeterminate shape. I didn’t have time to see anything except a flash of white before Bruno dropped the tarpaulin and rushed past me, hand to his mouth. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that whatever was under the tarp was nasty and, by the smell, very dead.
Back outside, I found Bruno leaning against the sheep ramp, looking green around the gills.
“Bloody hell,” he pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I’m a vet. You’d think I’d be used to stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what? I saw something white that looked like feathers. Oh my god, surely not? Is that a pile of dead swans?”
“I don’t know. Might be. Sorry, it threw me. Give me a few minutes to breathe some fresh air and I’ll have another look. I’ll be prepared for the worst this time.”
Bruno paced for a few moments, obviously steeling himself for what he might find, then he blew out a long breath, flexed his shoulders and beckoned me to follow.
“You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to,” he said as we reached the covered pile.
“Thanks. I’m not sure if I want to see it or not,” I admitted. “I’ll just stand back here a bit for now. You’re welcome to the yukky stuff.”
“Gee, thanks. Right.” He took hold of the edge of the tarp. “Here goes nothing. Three, two one.”
We stared in silence.
“You utter bastard!” Bruno swore. “You utter, utter, absolute, scum-of-the-earth, piece-of-shit bastard!”
I didn’t say anything. I was too transfixed by the sight of the pile to find any words. The white feathers I thought I had seen were mixed with black ones, thousands of them, but it was the eyes that held me speechless. Swan heads staring at us through sightless eyes, their graceful long necks elegant even in decay, piled at random, separated from their bodies which lay where they had been thrown.
“Look at that,” Bruno said, pointing to a carcass. “Just the breast meat taken. What a bloody waste. I am so going to take him down now. Have you got your phone?”
“Yes. Why? Who am I calling?”
“Nobody. Just start taking pictures.” He pulled out his own phone, thumbed the camera icon and started clicking madly. “You photograph the pigs and I’ll do this lot.”
I had taken about ten shots of the pigs and their enclosure when Bruno swore, stepped into the mess of decaying swans and started pulling the pile apart.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he chanted as he tore into the birds. “Please, no.”
He stopped suddenly and pointed his phone to click off more pictures, reaching forwards between each shot to expose more of the object of his horror. I stepped forwards to see what it was, but Bruno held out his hand to stop me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s not a what,” Bruno replied. “It’s a who. Or at least, another part of the who.”
He held out his phone to me and I looked at the last picture he had taken. It was past individual recognition but it was still easily identifiable as a skull, and it was obviously not from a swan or a pig.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bruno suggested.
In full agreement, I was ready to run as soon as we got out of the woolshed but Bruno reached out his hand to hold me back, forcing me to calm down and walk sedately across the paddock. When we reached the fence, he climbed over first, then held the wire down with one hand, offering me the other to steady myself as I climbed over. I swear my stumble that made me fall into his arms wasn’t intentional but, for a split second, I forgot the horrors in the woolshed. As he steadied me, I felt the strength of his body through the comforting warmth of the woollen Swanndri mirrored by the depth of his sparkling blue eyes that flashed with amusement as I looked up to apologise.
“Woah,” he laughed. “Steady on. You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Not good at this country stuff.” I put the rush of blood to my face down to adrenalin, not a teenage blush. “You know, in the big city we have these amazing things called gates.”
Bruno pretended to look confused. “Gates? What are they? Never heard of them.” Then he flashed me another smile, let me go and turned towards his car, pulling the rifle from his shoulder as he walked, leaving me unsure if the moment had happened or not. For a second it had seemed like he had held me just a bit longer than was necessary, and just a bit tighter. Or had I imagined that? Was I reading far more into the situation than was there? “Get a grip,” I told myself, under my breath in case he heard me, but my heart was still racing as I made my way up the steps to the house.
Back in the safety of Maggie Netherby’s lounge, with the sun streaming through the windows and the waters of the lake glistening in the background, the gruesome pictures on our phones seemed unreal. To give us both a chance to let our brains settle and process what we had just seen, I made us a coffee, remembering that Bruno had his black like I did, and I tried not to notice how close he was as we sat side by side on the couch, staring at the small screen of his phone. One by one, Bruno scrolled through long shots of the whole pile to give reference, then close-ups of individual pieces of swans - heads, legs, bones - until he reached the last few pictures. He zoomed into a shot and I could clearly see what had started his frantic search through the pile of decay – tangled among the black and white feathers there was a flash of blue.
“What is that?” I grabbed his arm to pull the phone closer.
In reply, Bruno tugged at his clothes. “My guess is a swanny. Or a piece of one, anyway.”
“A swan? They’re all swans and swans aren’t blue.”
“Not a swan, a swanny. A Swanndri jacket, like this one,” he tugged his jacket again, “ only blue.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to answer that.
“One good thing, though, sort of.”
“What?”
“Gunna’s swanny is green.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “So if it isn’t Gunna’s jacket, then the rest of the bits might not be Gunna?
“Exactly. I don’t know who this poor bastard is, but with a bit of luck, it isn’t Gunna.”
“So where is he?”
“You know,” Bruno pulled himself off the couch and strode to the window where he stared down at the lake, “I was going to say I didn’t know, but maybe I do. If Gunna is hiding out, maybe I just might have an inkling where he could be. Do you fancy some cross-country walking? I hope you’ve got some gumboots.”
“Damn, no I don’t.” I waggled a foot in the air. “I’m still wearing my ruined sneakers from yesterday, but my shoes are never going to be the same again, so I guess it doesn’t matter if they get wet. Again. Let me guess, we’re going back down to his caravan?”
“And a bit further.” Bruno gave me an enigmatic smirk which did not fill me with any reassurance whatsoever. “Are you game for a yomp?”
“A what? That sounds disgusting.”<
br />
“A yomp. Wonderful word, isn’t it. I learnt it from Gunna. He yomps a lot.” He flashed another of those heart-stopping smiles. “Long-distance trekking. Over rough terrain. In full military kit, but we can forget that bit, except I might take my rifle. You never know, it might come in handy.”
I groaned. “Oh fabulous. That sounds just peachy. Okay, if we have to do it, let’s get it over with.” I stood up and waved an arm to acknowledge the door. “After you, yomp leader. lead the way.”
We were halfway down the paddock before I remembered that Bruno had not explained the meaning of the pigs in the woolshed, or why them being there was illegal. I asked.
“You’re right,” Bruno answered without slowing his rapid pace across the field. “But not now. Let’s see if I’m right about Gunna, then I promise to reveal all.”
“Don’t I wish,” I thought to myself, conjuring up memories of this bare chest as I watched his lean body striding ahead of me.
Cross-country walking obviously came naturally to Bruno but it wasn’t something I did regularly in inner-city Wellington, so I was panting and red-faced by the time I caught up with him at the swampy lake edge where I followed in his footsteps through the wet ground to the caravan. It looked exactly as I had last seen it, but I had a funny feeling that someone had been there. I could tell by the worried expression on Bruno’s face that he thought the same. There was nothing positive to show that anyone was there, but it didn’t feel empty. I let Bruno wrestle with the sticking door and enter first. Just as Jackson had, he sniffed the air.
“Someone’s been in here. I can smell food.”
“Jackson thought that yesterday,” I said.
“Told you that, did he?” Bruno laughed.
“Yes, he did, actually. In whippet talk. Seriously, he sniffed around and I had to agree with him. I thought someone had been eating food in here too.”
“Which means Gunna...”
“Must be around,” I finished his sentence.
Bruno knelt down to feel a dark patch on the stained carpet. “And I am even more sure now that I know where he is. He’s out there.” He pointed out towards the lake.
“In the water? What, he’s hiding in a boat?”
“No, not quite. Come on.”
He shepherded me out of the caravan, pulled the door shut, checked the position of his rifle on his shoulder and led the way across the marshy ground, turning back to help me every time I lost my footing and squished into the oozing mud that gradually took over from the solid patches of green grass.
“Oh yuk!” I said for the hundredth time as I sank up to my ankles. “Where are we going?”
Bruno didn’t answer. He kept walking, blithely picking the dry patches that seemed to disappear beneath me when I tried to follow. As we pushed forwards through a tall patch of reeds, a loud hissing noise stopped him in his tracks and I, head down to concentrate on the vanishing ground, crashed into him.
“Shhh,” he whispered as caught my shoulders to steady me. “Keep quiet and walk back, slowly.”
I tried to peer past Bruno to see what we were avoiding but couldn’t see anything except tall, damp vegetation and, as his tight, determined grip pushed me backwards, I had no alternative but to do as he said. I shrugged myself free from his hands, turned and felt my way back through the marsh until I found a large dry patch. When I turned back I realised Bruno was doing the same thing, only backwards, his eyes fixed firmly on the piece of swamp we had just left.
“What’s in there?” I whispered. “And why are we whispering?”
“A black swan’s nest,” Bruno replied in his normal voice, “and we don’t have to whisper any more. I think we are far enough away for him not to bother us.”
“Him? Who’s him?”
“The male swan. I didn’t see him but I heard him hiss. He will be out there not too far away and he will be very protective of his wife and her eggs. There is no way I am getting between him and them. An angry swan can be dangerous. They are a big, strong bird”
“Oh, okay.” I strained my eyes but I still couldn’t see either the nest or a swan. “So how do we get around them? I’m not swimming.”
“Don’t worry, neither am I. Let me think. We need to get...” Bruno pointed to a mound of grass a few metres away but past the edge of the last of the dry ground, “over there. I know it’s possible to walk there if you know the right places to step, but it’s been a while and, I now fully admit, that with the swan family in residence on the only track I know, I have no ideas left. A boat would be nice but I haven’t got one.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know I would need one.”
“No, not why haven’t you got a boat. Why do you want to go over there? Is that where you think Gunna is?” I peered at the mound of grass. “He can’t be there, wouldn’t we see him?”
“No, we wouldn’t, that’s the whole point. It’s a mai-mai.” He laughed at my blank stare of incomprehension. “A duck hunter’s blind. It might look like tall grass but under that camouflage is a surprisingly spacious, well-appointed hut complete with chairs and a gas cooker. I have spent many cold but enjoyable hours in there with Gunna in duck shooting season. My guess is that, if he doesn’t feel safe in his caravan, that’s where Gunna will be hiding out.”
“Or that’s where we’ll find the rest of him,” I added, thinking of the way the severed arm had flopped in the pug’s mouth.
“Don’t say that!”
“Sorry. He’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“More than that. I’ve known him for years. Carlton has too, which is why he doesn’t like him. Believe it or not, Gunna was our science teacher at high school.”
“Really? You’re kidding. So how come he’s now a swamp-dwelling hermit who may or may not be missing an arm?”
“He retired. He finished teaching the day before his sixty-fifth birthday, packed his stuff and walked away from civilisation. I admire him for following his dreams. Carlton just thinks he’s gone senile.”
“So, before I die of hypothermia from wet feet, how do we get out to that what-ever-you-called-it to see if he’s there or not?”
“Mai-mai. It’s called a mai-mai. And I’m still thinking.” In answer to his own thoughts, Bruno unslung his rifle and hoisted it to his shoulder, adjusting the telescopic sight as he focussed on the grassy mound. “Damn,” he said as he lowered the weapon, “that didn’t help. There is a gap in the wall to shoot through but I can’t see into it from this side, even through the scope. If he’s in there, he’s well hidden.”
I didn’t reply. I was too busy concentrating on trying to restore feeling to my feet which were starting to go numb from the cold. My shoes were completely soaked through and the water had started to seep up my jeans. I stamped my feet, which only made the situation worse as the ground underneath me started to sink. I shivered noisily, which got Bruno’s attention.
“I want to go back to the house,” I said. “I’m soaked and I’m freezing. How do I get out of here?”
Under the Southern-Man Swanndri jacket there was a gentleman, or there was until he took a good look at me, stripped it off and handed it to me, then it was me under it, revelling in the musky scent of Bruno-worn wool. As I snuggled into it, Bruno gave one lingering glance back to the lake, then led the way back to solid ground.
Chapter 7
I discovered something else about Bruno. He knew how to light a fire. While I unashamedly helped myself to more of Maggie Netherby’s clothes - socks, a jersey hand-knitted in a ghastly shade of puce, and a pair of pink, flannelette pyjama pants that were so large I had to tie them on with a cord I stole from one of the bedroom curtains – and used her bathroom to have a long, hot shower, Bruno had been busy. I finally emerged, drying my short, brown hair with a towel, to find the log fire blazing and, in front of it, a rug, two cushions, and two mugs of coffee.
“Wow!” I dropped onto the rug as close to the fire as I could get. “This is nice.”
“And I will let you. I don’t think I want to traipse around the reeds in these gorgeous pyjama pants.” I held out my arms to show how baggy the jersey was. “I gather Maggie was not a small lady.”
“No she wasn’t, but she was surprisingly stylish in a unique way. Even in her duck-hunting camo gear she always managed to look as if she was posing for a fashion shoot. They made a strange pair, Maggie and Gunna; physically the complete opposites but, I think, mentally they were on the same page about a lot of things.”
“Maggie and Gunna? Were they a couple? That doesn’t make sense. If they were, I wouldn’t be here sorting her stuff. Gunna would have inherited it. Wouldn’t he?”
“No, sorry.” Bruno shook his head. “By pair I didn’t mean couple. At least, I’ve never thought of them that way. They were just two rather eccentric people who shared the same views on ecology. They were both ardent conservationists, especially when it came to the birdlife on the lake, but at the same time they both enjoyed hunting and were crack shots with a rifle. Maggie was a retired university lecturer and Gunna was a school teacher, so they enjoyed debating with each other. And she was kind enough to let him park his caravan on her land, in return for which Gunna was her home handyman – not that he ever completed anything.”
I swallowed the last of my coffee and stood up.
“Well then, you need to make it your mission to find him and, if he is still alive and just hiding out, bring him back here. At least we can keep him warm and dry. Which reminds me, I need to throw my clothes through Maggie’s washing machine – I can’t go back to the campground wearing these things.”
Bruno glanced at his watch.
“Okay. I have to get back to work anyway. I need to check on Jackson and I have the afternoon clinic today, so I had better get going. I’ll come back later and have another go at getting to the mai-mai, but I’ll bring my thigh waders and I’ll see if I can find you a pair of gumboots. I’m pretty sure Amy will have a spare pare.”
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