Telegram Home

by Kirsten McKenzie

  By the time Jowl reached the top of the staircase, the heat seared the hairs from his arms and face. He took a hesitant step into the hallway where flame leaked from the door frames, the wood bulging. Jimmy must have come to look for the girl. As soon as he’d heard Colin say her name, he knew at once who she was, and seeing her face at the window of his own hotel had almost sent him careering into the building himself. He’d hesitated, not realising until too late that Jimmy had seen her too. Stupid. His stupid brother. He took one more step and tripped over a body on the ground.

  Although it wasn’t Jimmy, it was someone else he knew, the woman travelling with the kauri gum carver, the boy he’d sent to Neumegen.

  A door exploded open ahead of him, showering them both with wooden fragments. Access to the hall completely engulfed in flames now. If Jimmy was still there, there was nothing he could do. He grabbed the unconscious body of the woman on the floor, hauling her downstairs.

  Fire overran the hotel, leaving only the kitchen exit available. Jowl bashed through the connecting door, stumbling into a kitchen clogging with smoke, still carrying Annabel like a sack of potatoes. Grabbing a coat from a hook, he smothered his own smouldering jacket as he broke through the kitchen door into the night air.

  A fireman saw him exit the building and loosed his hose over the pair, as Jowl stumbled from the now unstable building. A soldier ran up to him, relieving him of his burden.

  ‘Is she okay?’ Jowl coughed, smoke in his lungs.

  ‘We’ll get her straight to the hospital,’ the soldier replied, not answering Jowl. There’d been too many bodies, what was one more?

  Relieved of Annabel, Jowl focussed once again on whereabouts of his brother. He was certain he’d have known if Jimmy had died in the flames. There was a connection between them; peas in a pod. But there was no way anyone could have survived the fire on that side of the building, no one. Even the foolish woman he’d rescued from the fire hadn’t made it to the end of the hall. No, he’d know if Jimmy was dead. He was somewhere, and Joe felt that wherever Jimmy was, he wasn’t in a good way. He had to find him fast.

  ‘You saved that woman!’ someone gushed. ‘You’re a hero.’

  Jowl sniffed. He wasn’t a hero; he didn’t want anyone dying in his premises, especially since he’d ordered the windows nailed shut. Too many miscreants had tried climbing out the windows to avoid paying their bills.

  ‘Excuse me, I have to find my brother,’ he replied, pushing past the jubilant man. He had an idea where he would find Jimmy, he only hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

  Joe Jowl cursed whoever started the fire now consuming the city. He’d lost more than just the hotel, with another three of his buildings damaged beyond repair, and two more were perilously close to the fire. If the wind picked up, there was nothing anybody could do to save them. He could stay to pass buckets along the chain, or stamp out hot spots with a sodden blanket, but that was for the workers, not him. There would be many conversations with the insurers in the coming days, and they would pay to replace the old buildings, at little cost to him, delivering gleaming new buildings far more attractive to a well heeled traveller or digger, a lucky silver lining.

  People streamed past him into the city environs, ghoulish sightseers chattering, worried about their jobs or their businesses. A team of horses flew past, the carriage behind them engulfed in flames, the whites of their eyes as bright as the fire they were fleeing from. Jowl jumped back, and a woman screamed as the carriage clipped her going round the corner. Her cries drowned out by the groaning of the Morrin & Co. Building collapsing in on itself with a thunderous sigh. The town was an inferno. They’d be lucky if there was anything left by daybreak. By the time the sun rose in the morning, the magnitude of the disaster would be obvious — one entire block of the city destroyed including the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Greyhound Hotel, Mears’ Store and the old theatre. Brunswick Hall was only spared complete annihilation by fortune of being one of the few brick buildings in the vicinity.

  Jowl had no time to spare to help the woman, or anyone else trying to save their stock, and their families. He had his own family to find.

  Jowl broke into a run. They kept a block of stables on the outskirts of town. He liked horses, they were the one thing which never disappointed him. And he’d spent a great deal of money ensuring he had the best horses. Which was why the stables were out of town, to avoid drunken louts scaring his horses, or any tomfoolery endangering his investment. His deepest desire was to race them. For an indefinable reason, he hadn’t shared that vision with his brother. He shared everything with his twin, but not his intense love for the beasts. Perhaps because he knew that if Jimmy felt anything threatening their relationship, including the horses, it would end badly. What Jimmy did to the women he found didn’t concern Joe. Everyone needed an outlet for their proclivities, and besides, the women were usually whores, no loss to society. But his horses were a whole different matter.

  As Jowl approached the stables, he could hear the nervous shuffling of the horses, the confused snorts and the bubbling snickers of panic. Even here, the smoke hung heavy in the air, twisting its tendrils around everything in its path as the increasing wind wafted it southwards.

  The door was open. He never left it open — open doors invite trouble. He’d told Jimmy that a thousand times. And not for the first time, Joe cursed his brother under his breath. He assumed his twin was inside, but it paid to be cautious. Cautious in business and in private, that’s what kept him alive.

  Grabbing a long-handled shovel hanging outside the door, Jowl entered the darkened stables, memory guiding his way. Most of the stalls were full, but the last three were empty, waiting for a delivery of fine stallions he’d ordered from Australia. He’d once found one of Jimmy’s girls there, in pieces, but still alive. He’d put her out of her misery before burying her at the back of the stables, moving a mountain of horse manure to cover her grave. Joe didn’t care about Jimmy’s activities, as long as no one else knew. But, he wanted to deal to Sarah himself.

  The horses whinnied a greeting, his presence spreading a blanket of calm through the building. Although the stables were of wooden construction, they were far enough away from the fire to be unaffected, keeping his horses safe.

  ‘Jimmy, you in here?’

  The horses moved nervously in their stalls, their stomping feet masking whatever answer he heard.

  Jowl moved along the row of stalls, checking each one as he went. He’d left the door open behind him to see. He didn’t want to risk lighting a lantern with so many people on the streets. The moonlight and the light from a city on fire was enough to see what he needed to see.

  ‘Jimmy?’ he tried again.

  “Down here,” a voice replied, competing with the sounds of nervous horses.

  Jowl lowered his spade, and strode towards the end stall, muttering calming words to the beasts he passed. He was sure they’d picked up on his mood and were becoming even more agitated. One of them kicked at the wall of their stall, cracking the wood. Jowl whispered to the wild-eyed horse, but didn’t notice the thickening smoke drifting into the stables, his mind focussed on far more important things.

  ‘Calm down, beautiful one. Shh, it’s okay,’ he murmured in the horse’s velvet ear. The horse stilled as Joe held its bridle, the supple leather smooth under his fingers. He stroked its neck, the strong muscles under his hand as familiar as his own. Giving the horse a final pat, he returned to the task.

  ‘Jimmy, that girl better still be alive,’ he said, steel in his voice.

  A thunderous crash came from the outside, as another building succumbed to the flames. Jowl spun round, the flames visible through the open door. The fire much closer than he’d expected.

  ‘Jimmy, you bring that girl out here, right now. Stop mucking around,’ Jowl directed. He didn’t have time for Jimmy’s games. They’d need to move the horses and then they’d deal with the girl, at home, away from any prying eyes, or ears. He didn’t
want her anywhere near his stables.

  A muffled thump came from the end stall.

  ‘Jimmy, I swear, you get off that girl right now. We’ve got to get the horses out,’ Jowl said, rounding the corner of the final stall, mindful that the only exit was at the front of the stables. He’d need to work fast now the wind had picked up. ‘Jimmy?’

  The light was almost negligible, but there was enough for Joe to see his brother slumped on the ground, his arms embracing himself amidst the prickly hay. There was a second body, a smaller one, curled up unmoving in the far corner. In the light it was impossible to see whether it was the girl from the window — Sarah, the girl who’d vanished with the native. The girl they’d spent fruitless weeks searching for, before business drew them home.

  ‘Jimmy, you okay?’ Jowl asked, abandoning the shovel and bending over his twin.

  Jimmy moaned through lips which weren’t there anymore, his face a grotesque mask of what he used to be. Jowl recoiled in horror, the darkness lending a gruesome slant to his brother’s ruined face.

  ‘What happened?’ Joe asked.

  There was no answer from Jimmy. The answer came from a man standing behind Joe. A man left for dead, but who’d left his hospital bed to help fill buckets and wet blankets, together with the able-bodied men in the ward with him. A man who’d recognised the face in the window and who’d gone to help save her, only to find out he was tracking a monster.

  Warden Price picked up the abandoned shovel and answered.

  ‘The fire caught him, but that’s not what will kill him,’ Price said, testing the weight of the long-handled shovel. ‘The burnt face and hands aren’t a problem. He’ll be as ugly as sin for the rest of his days, but he’s not likely to survive the hole in his stomach, not with his guts hanging out, amongst the hay and horse manure you’ve got lying around.’

  Jowl tugged at his brother’s arms, almost vomiting as the burnt flesh sloughed off in his hands. The man wasn’t wrong. Jimmy’s guts were spilling out of a huge gash in his belly.

  ‘How…’ Jowl started to ask, before he spied the three-pronged pitch fork near his brother. And it became clear. This man had stabbed his brother, his only brother, in the stomach. Jowl roared to his feet and lurched for the pitch fork. He didn’t need answers, he needed revenge.

  Price struck first, wincing at the pain from the old bullet wound in his shoulder. The heavy shovel collided with Jowl’s hip, sending the man into the rough wall of the stable. To Price’s surprise, Jowl launched himself off the wall as if nothing had happened, the prongs of the fork landing dangerously close to Price’s thigh before he twisted away just in time to avoid being impaled.

  The fork stuck in the stall’s wall, giving Price enough time to swing again. Movement was difficult in the confined space and the impact wasn’t as great as he’d expected, allowing the giant in front of him to wrench the fork from the stable wall and try again, like a Greek javelin thrower in the early Olympics.

  The horses in the stalls reared up in fright as the fight moved from the stall to the centre of the stables. Joe’s throw of the pitch fork missed Price when he tripped over a piece of tackle left carelessly on the floor. The fork found a target though, imbedding itself in the mare’s flank in the opposite stall.

  The horses’s anguished screams joined those of the man suddenly atop of him, and they struggled on the ground, the larger man wrapping his hands around Price’s throat, trying to strangle the life out of him.

  ‘You killed my brother,’ Joe screamed at Price, spittle flaying his face.

  Price tried prising Jowl’s fingers from his throat, but he didn’t have the strength, the weakened muscles in his shoulder no match for Jowl’s physical power. The gloom inside the stables deepened as the man’s grip intensified.

  ‘He didn’t kill your brother, I did,’ a soft voice sounded above him.

  Joe looked up.

  Standing over them both was Sarah, a small pistol in her hands, trained towards Jowl’s head. A pistol she’d secreted after finding it hidden among the arsenal inside Neumegen’s trunk. An arsenal stored by Neumegen on behalf of the Jowl’s, part of the cache of guns stolen by the army deserters, guns which Jowl planned to sell back to the army for a profit. Or to the natives. He wasn’t fussy. Whoever paid the highest price got the guns. It suited him either way.

  Jowl rolled off Price, hatred spilling from every pore.

  ‘You little bitch,’ Jowl said.

  Sarah’s face was a shadow of what it had been. Her eyes swollen, lips bleeding, and her hair singed from half her head, but mostly she was intact. Her saving grace was that Jimmy enjoyed playing with his toys, giving her an opportunity to defend herself. And defend herself she did, after finding the fork on the ground obscured by the hay. When Jimmy had paused his games to relieve himself, she’d lunged upwards with the fork, straight into the flesh of his exposed belly. Weakened by the pain from his serious burns, he’d tried retaliating, but his body gave way. The rush of adrenaline from abducting Sarah replaced with the inevitability of going into shock. And he’d fallen to the ground as Sarah twisted the long-handled fork backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, leaning all her weight behind her efforts.

  ‘That may be, but I’m also a good shot,’ she said.

  Sarah pulled the trigger, the tiny pistol exploding in her hands as the shot flew true into the centre of Jowl’s forehead.

  A look of surprise flashed in Jowl’s eyes, before a nothingness filled it, and he slumped to the floor. As dead as his brother, his mother, his father. As dead as Jimmy’s dozens of victims, and as dead as Wiremu Kepa, and countless others who’d fallen foul of the brothers over the years. Sarah had done the community of Auckland, and New Zealand, a great favour.

  The Morning

  The sun rose over a decimated Auckland, where untidy piles of stock lay in huge mounds guarded by soot-covered owners. Newly homeless families lay huddled on corners, the stench of waste thick in the air.

  There were extensive views across the Waitemata Harbour, where only the morning before, large buildings blocked the way. The owners of buildings untouched by the fire, thanked God and their lucky stars they weren’t mourning the loss of everything they had, like so many others in town.

  Auckland’s only hospital was bulging at the seams, with the Albert Barracks taking the overflow. Most of the injuries were serious burns and broken limbs from people falling from windows through lack of adequate fire escapes.

  Sarah sat at the bedside of Annabel, her mother, her own wounds of no consequence — they looked worse than they felt, and they’d heal. Her mother unconscious, her breaths shallow and her skin pale. The doctors had all but ignored her, certain there was nothing they could do, with death imminent.

  After releasing the panicked horses from their stalls, and shepherding them from the stables, she’d watched as Price used his flint to start a small blaze among the tinder-dry hay strewn about the floor. It would be better for everyone if they believed the Jowl’s had died trying to save their horses, and each other. Sarah had even thrown dry hay onto the flames as they left the stables.

  At her mother’s bed, she couldn’t speak to Price, uncomfortable in his company. So much had happened since she’d last seen him. A lifetime had passed for her, and for him it seemed. He’d barely left her mother’s side, apologising to Sarah with pained eyes. Sarah had run the gamut of emotions. Delight at being reunited with Price and then confusion at the obvious depth of feelings Price had for her mother. Thoughts of her father clouding every other emotion she herself felt. She was at risk of being sent mad by everything washing through her body.

  ‘I’ll popping out for some fresh air,’ she announced.

  Price looked at her with guilt in his eyes.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I understand.’ Sarah left before the tears toppled over, standing outside on the steps of the hospital. The tang of burnt wood, and horse flesh, still strong in the air.

  A dark figure
loomed over her, Neumegen.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ he said.

  ‘Not badly,’ Sarah replied, forcing a smile.

  ‘And Colin?’ Neumegen asked.

  Colin was also in hospital, confined to his bed by a smitten matron, and reunited with baby Sophia, who was entertaining the nurses with her happy-go-lucky smiles and easy nature. Colin was a different story.

  ‘He’s inside, but won’t speak with anyone. Maybe he can’t? He’s in a bad way but the matron thinks he’ll recover.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ Neumegen said.

  Sarah shrugged with nothing to add, she barely knew the boy. He’d looked at her blankly when she’d gone to see him after hearing the nurses talk about the young lad with the wee babe. She’d tried talking to him, telling him about finding her mother, but at the mention of Annabel’s name, he’d turned away, refusing to engage. So she’d left, going back to Annabel’s side, and the uncomfortable silence between herself and Price.

  ‘I’ll see you when I come out. Please wait for me,’ Neumegen said, tipping his black hat and entering the busy hospital.

  That was her life. Every man in it telling her to wait, or wanting something from her. She was her own person, capable of independent thought and action. There was no use fighting it. Without Neumegen or Price, and their protection, she was as useless as a newborn lamb.

  She watched as uniformed soldiers roamed the streets together with the volunteer firefighters, pulling down still smouldering walls, training their hoses on hot spots, ensuring that the fire was out. Reporters flitted through the crowds, angling for a juicy story or some devastating tidbit for their papers. Not at all different from reporters in the modern day she mused.