Marlborough Man

by Alan Carter

  So why the deliberate declaration of intent? No attempt to hide the fact they’d been here. Part of the mind games? Let him know you’ve been, I can imagine Marty saying. Wind the bastard up. Turn the screws. The dogs growl again. The scent of a boar? They don’t stop. One of them changes to a short bark of warning. The second follows suit. The cabin door opens and Steve is there with his hunting rifle, Gary close behind with the axe.

  ‘What’s up?’ he says.

  ‘Dunno.’

  Gary shushes the hounds and we all strain to see and hear whatever or whoever might be out there. Seconds go by, a minute. Nothing. Then I become aware of a dancing red light at the corner of my vision. I yell out a warning but it’s too late and a crack rings out. We’ve all hit the deck. Laser sights, probably night-vision too, we’re utterly exposed. I’m bracing, holding my breath, waiting for a bullet to tear into me.

  ‘Gary, Gary, you okay? Steve?’ A grunt and a curse; it’s Steve. But where’s Gary? ‘Gary, you okay?’

  ‘Fucken bastards, why’d they have to do that?’

  He’s standing on full display by the ute tray, and he doesn’t care. I see now – or rather, I hear. Only one dog is barking. Gary pulls open the cage and flicks on a torch. Sonny Boy’s brains are all over the place.

  14

  None of us slept for the rest of the night but we weren’t shot at anymore. He’d made his point. Night-vision, laser sights, cool as fuck. And no sounds of a departing vehicle. He must have tramped through the bush into his position. As the sun rose, Gary and Steve took turns digging a hole in the back paddock and they laid Sonny Boy in it. Now we’re having breakfast on the balcony looking out over the river.

  ‘Nice view,’ says Steve, putting down his cereal bowl.

  Gary hasn’t said a word. It’s a reversal of roles and Steve seems comfortable stepping up. He’s right, it’s a glorious morning and the river is green and so clear you can see the bottom from here.

  ‘It’s not too late to move on,’ I say. ‘These people mean business. It’s not your fight.’

  ‘It is now,’ says Gary.

  I throw up my hands. ‘It’s hopeless. He can just sit in the bush at night and pick us off one by one. That’s what he’s telling us. That’s what he’s telling you. He’s giving you a chance to get out while you can.’

  ‘What would you do?’ Steve takes a spoonful of corn flakes.

  That safe house in Nelson HQ is looking better by the minute. I’m realising the futility of my High Noon stance. But he’s not asking what will I do, he’s asking what would I do, if I were him. Not the practicalities or the realities, but the principle. It’s a good question. I hardly know these blokes. Would I put myself in the firing line for them? They hardly know me, and they did exactly that.

  ‘Well?’ says Gary.

  ‘I’d bugger off on the next plane to South America and leave you guys high and dry.’

  ‘That’s not very nice,’ says Gary, grinning for the first time since his dog died.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Steve. ‘Hurtful. Disappointing.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Good job we’re doing this for your wife and kid and not you.’ Gary lifts his coffee mug. ‘Pour us some more.’

  By now it’s lukewarm sludge but he doesn’t seem to mind. ‘The fact remains. He or they are still out there, ready and willing to do us damage.’

  ‘I think that’s the problem.’ Gary drains his cup and chucks the dregs over the rail. ‘We’re hanging about letting the enemy control everything. If people give me the shits, I usually go looking for them.’

  Steve and Gary have packed up the ute as if they have taken the hint and are shipping out. Ostensibly they’ve gone, along with the surviving dog. It’s me on my lonesome. Just the way Marty and Sammy would like it. I head off down the valley for a day at the office.

  Patrick Smith is waiting for me with his gun-licence form and his money.

  Latifa shakes her head. ‘I advised the gentleman that I could deal with the matter but he insists on talking to you.’

  I nod and go through to the other side of the partition. ‘Patrick.’

  ‘No offence to your colleague, it’s just …’ He looks rattled, there are bags under his eyes.

  ‘Where are you sleeping these days?’

  ‘On the jetty. But somebody’s doused that in petrol too. Probably be gone by the time I get back.’

  ‘Denzel?’

  He nods. ‘Sometimes he sails by and yells abuse or fires off a couple of shots in the air. Other times it’s his mates. It’s open season.’

  ‘I can’t control these people, you know that. It’d be best if you just went away.’

  He nods but the answer is no. ‘How long before I get the licence?’

  ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. We need to run the usual checks.’ Something nags at me. ‘Were you and Denzel …’ I search for the word, ‘… close, in the past?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to like you very much now.’

  ‘No.’

  Latifa is pulling faces in the background. I give her a job to do which necessitates pissing off somewhere else. Then I turn back to Paddy. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘You really want the details? Is this you being prurient or is it relevant to my gun licence?’

  ‘I don’t know. You keep asking for me every time you come in here. So indulge my curiosity.’

  He pulls up a seat. ‘Denzel was always hanging about out there on the boats with his grandad. The boy was never at school. Sometimes I’d wave as they were passing, tell him to get back to school and stop wasting his life.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’d both laugh. Tell me to eff off.’ A glance into the distance. ‘Denzel started bringing biscuits for Ginger. Sometimes the old man would drop him at the jetty and go off fishing, pick the boy up on the way back.’

  ‘That’s when you got … close?’

  ‘We got talking. Yes.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘His life. Mine. Mainly his, kids are pretty self-focused aren’t they?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s got a lot of anger in him. I think Walter is an angry man too. He’s passing it on.’

  ‘And one day?’

  ‘He was very sad, I comforted him, it led from there.’

  ‘You’re a fifty-year-old man, Patrick.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ He looks reproachful. ‘You asked me to indulge your curiosity. I just did.’ He allows himself a smile. ‘And that’s what Denzel asked me to do for him.’ He seems to be enjoying the memory.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now he’s even angrier.’

  No shit. ‘What was he sad about in the first place?’

  ‘It was an anniversary. Some family member, a young cousin I think, drowned or something like that.’

  Latifa returns and fixes Smith with a frown. ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘I’d better be going,’ he says.

  The door closes behind him. ‘It’s not going unnoticed,’ says Latifa.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Giving him the time of day. Town like this, people expect you to take sides.’ She can see I’m not in the mood. ‘Just sayin’. ’

  I phone the DC and tell him about last night.

  ‘They shot a dog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you don’t need any more persuading to get yourself in here.’

  ‘That wouldn’t change anything. They’ll be waiting when I come back out again.’

  ‘Wrong. Next time you come out you’d have a new name and a new country.’

  ‘What’s the choices? Australia: too obvious. Canada: too cold and polite. America: too gun crazy. True, they like their guns here too but not in that same weird fetishistic way. Anywhere else speak English?’

  ‘England. Oh, wait.’

  ‘So you get my point.’

  ‘The Falklands. Hong Kong. Look Nick, everywhere speaks Engli
sh these days. Just be an expat somewhere.’

  ‘And within six months another whizkid with a laptop has found me and it all starts again. The only way to stop this is to stop them.’

  ‘You’re going back to Sunderland?’

  ‘Not a bad idea, but I want to try something else first.’ I explain the half-baked scheme to him.

  ‘Waste of time. It’ll never work.’ A pause. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  I ponder the matter. ‘A heads up on any undesirables who’ve recently arrived would still be welcome.’

  ‘I’m onto it.’

  ‘By close of business?’

  An audible sigh, and the phone dies.

  Ford comes up with the goods by four thirty on Friday afternoon.

  ‘We’ve only let about sixty undesirables into New Zealand in the last two weeks or so. Not bad going, considering.’ There’s a tapping of keys as he scrolls through his list. ‘Most of them are Aussies, mind you, or returning Kiwis. But these two look like contenders.’

  A Russian couple in their early forties. He’s ex-army and now runs some import-export business. His name has been flagged on international databases for links to far-right groups, connections with Russian gangsters, and unproven accusations of war crimes in Chechnya.

  ‘He’s still allowed to fly around the world?’

  ‘Nothing proven,’ says Ford. ‘The Hague takes decades to try war crimes and most of the Russian political hierarchy has links either to far-right groups or gangsters. Come to that, so do the Aussies and the Poms.’

  ‘You reckon he’s the assassin type?’

  ‘Doesn’t say so here but he certainly loves his hunting. Lots of photos of him on Facebook next to big dead animals.’

  Sammy and Marty and the business chain back to trafficked Russian girls. It adds up. ‘And they’re in the area?’

  ‘Flew into Auckland last week, shuttled to Wellington beginning of this, took the Interislander ferry the day before last. Hired a vehicle at Picton. I’ll send you details and pictures.’

  ‘Russian assassins?’ says Gary.

  ‘Awesome,’ says Steve. ‘That is just so fucken awesome.’

  We’re grabbing a beer in the Havelock Hotel and finalising strategy. I show them my laptop. ‘They’re staying at the Beachcomber Inn, Picton.’

  ‘Nice,’ says Steve.

  ‘Armed, we assume. And dangerous?’ Gary is sticking with L&P. He wants to be sober to avenge Sonny Boy.

  ‘They have all the permits and all the gear, apparently.’

  ‘Plan, maestro?’

  ‘The Picton cops tell me they’re still in situ in the hotel. She’s having an aperitif and sunning herself on the balcony.’

  ‘And your cop mates over there don’t mind about our plans?’

  ‘They don’t know about them. But they’ll be called away on a job by my boss in good time.’

  ‘Sweet,’ says Steve.

  As the gateway to the Marlborough Sounds, the Queen Charlotte Drive has to be one of the most magnificent road journeys in the world. It snakes forty kilometres between Havelock and Picton, and around every hairpin bend there’s another stunning vista of blue waters and green hills. Think Norway, think Vancouver Island, no – think Marlborough bloody Sounds. With the sun falling and shadows growing, the landscape seems all the more dramatic. Picton nestles near the mouth of Queen Charlotte Sound where the ferries come in from the North Island. With its docksides stacked with pine logs and its marinas clogged with gin palaces, I once again remember to appreciate humble little Havelock. I’ve never been a great fan of ostentatious wealth – it comes from growing up in Sunderland maybe – and Picton feels like a rich boaties’ town. The guys seem to like it though.

  ‘Pretty,’ says Steve. ‘Wouldn’t mind living here myself, if I could afford it.’

  ‘Yeah, nice,’ says Gary, ratcheting his shotgun. ‘For some.’

  We park down the street from the Beachcomber. According to their credit card records, Andrei and Svetlana have taken a shine to the seafood place just round the corner from where we are parked. Going off the receipt timings, they tend to finish eating around ten-ish. Even cosmopolitan Picton will be quiet by then, and dark. We’ve borrowed a Kombi van from a mate of Steve and Gary; the one further down the valley who had room for their dogs and guns but not them. At just after eight, Andrei and Svetlana head to dinner, walking past the Kombi with arms around each other’s waists and not a care in the world. They’re fine and fit-looking specimens if you’re into 1990s style and glamour, well-muscled beneath their tight-fitting couture.

  ‘Fuck me,’ says Steve, admiring Svetlana. ‘Will you look at that.’

  ‘Are they packing?’ wonders Gary.

  ‘Svetlana isn’t,’ says Steve.

  I confirm that it doesn’t appear so, with either of them.

  ‘Crap assassins,’ says Gary.

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘We’re going to need all the luck we can get.’

  At ten fifteen they come back and we jump out, push guns in their faces, and bundle them into the van. Nobody has heard or seen a thing. So far so good.

  Deep in New Zealand’s lakes and along its meandering rivers, lives a monster. The New Zealand longfin eel is the largest freshwater eel on earth. They grow to two metres in length and weigh up to forty kilos. They have leathery skin, embedded with hundreds of tiny scales and covered with a thick layer of slime. They are extremely efficient hunters, relying on a hypersensitive sense of smell rather than sight to locate their prey. Their olfactory ability is several times better than the great white shark. Scientists have calculated that if just one teaspoon of blood was tipped into a lake fifty times the volume of Lake Taupo a longfin eel would be able to detect it. Eels, like their reptilian counterpart the crocodile, are classic ambush predators, concealing themselves and lunging at victims as they pass. To dismember a large animal, a longfin will first clamp onto a carcass with rows of small extremely sharp teeth, using the force of its jaws to achieve a vice-like grip. It then spins its body, twisting and rolling until a mouth-sized lump of flesh is torn away. Its stomach is highly extendable, and eels will feed until gorged.

  ‘A real taniwha. A monster. Impressive, eh?’ Gary puts the book down and smacks a mosquito on his neck. ‘Good eating, too.’ The beam from his headtorch dances over the bowed heads of Andrei and Svetlana who are kneeling shivering in the Wakamarina River with Steve standing guard over them. Their hands are bound behind them with cable ties.

  ‘You are making a very big mistake,’ says Andrei.

  He’s been remarkably calm throughout all this. Before we left Picton, I took their hotel keycard and grabbed their guns and passports and wallets and crammed them into a couple of cases. We dropped the guns down a ravine somewhere along Queen Charlotte Drive and Gary is going through Andrei’s wallet now.

  ‘Took me best part of a year to train up Sonny Boy. Best pigger on the South Island, I reckon.’ He pulls out a wad of notes. ‘That’s going to cost you, mate.’

  ‘We are tourists. Here for hunting and to look at real estate.’

  ‘Anything take your fancy?’ asks Steve.

  ‘Take the money and let us go. We are not your enemies. We will not inform on you.’ Andrei lifts his head and looks at me as, by the light of my own headtorch, I examine their passports. He must have guessed this is more than just your average stick-up.

  ‘Who hired you?’ I say.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Svetlana says something to him in Russian, low and urgent. She’s seen Gary pull a net out of the river. ‘Oh, my god.’

  An eel. I don’t know if it’s a longfin or a shortfin but it really is a monster. Meanwhile Steve is walking round them, shottie in one hand and a pan of pig’s blood in the other. He’s pouring the blood over their heads.

  ‘You are crazy,’ growls Andrei. ‘What do you want from us?’

  ‘Who hired you?’

  ‘Nobody hired us, we are tourists. Like we said, here for hunting an
d to look at real estate.’

  ‘This thing’s a bit slippy,’ says Gary. ‘Can I let it go yet?’

  ‘I know you are hunters. You killed his dog last night and you have been sent here to kill me.’

  ‘Who killed a dog?’ says Svetlana. ‘Bastards.’

  Andrei looks at me out of an eye dripping with pig blood. He seems amused. The eel is thrashing to be free. ‘If I was here to kill you, you would already be dead. I am on holiday, my friend. You have the wrong people.’

  Svetlana mutters to him again in Russian.

  ‘What is she saying?’

  ‘She is saying she wants to go home.’

  ‘Why are you so calm, if you are not a killer? An innocent man would be tearing his hair out and pleading for mercy.’

  He smiles. ‘I was a prisoner in Chechnya for three months until they rescued me. Guns, cold rivers and threats are nothing new.’

  I’m beginning to believe him. He is a killer but he’s not my killer. Lights appear through the trees down the valley. Flashing and blue. How do they know we are here? Except, of course, it’s the river below my property and this could only be DC Ford.

  ‘GPS,’ says Andrei, lifting his bound hands behind him. ‘In my watch. If I don’t respond twice a day it alerts my friends. Kidnapping is a big problem in Russia.’ He nods at the approaching cars on the road above. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

  ‘Oh, shit. Better let the eel go, then eh?’ says Gary. ‘And here’s that money back, mate. Sorry.’

  Steve helps Svetlana up off her knees out of the river. ‘Alright there, missus?’ There’s a stream of what I take to be Russian invective and she snaps her head back and butts him in the face. Steve drops, dazed, with a bloodied nose. ‘Awesome.’

  There are cops around us, Armed Offenders Squad, and this time it is us on our knees with guns at our heads.

  The Russians are swaddled in blankets and led away.

  ‘The eel,’ says Andrei. ‘Nice touch. You would have done well in Chechnya.’

  15

  ‘He laughed all the way back to Picton, apparently. Good sort, for a Russkie.’