by Alan Carter
I close her down and sit by the side of the road staring out over the dark waters of Nelson Bay as rain drenches the windscreen and a freighter passes on the horizon. Within a minute there’s another call. DC Ford.
‘Mate, you’re not helping anybody, least of all yourself.’
‘That right?’
‘We’re pulling out all the stops, we’ve got people out everywhere looking for Paulie, we’re exploring all angles. But we’re trying to stay methodical and professional. Focused. That’s where the results come from. You’re firing off like a Catherine Wheel that’s lost its nail. Go home and be with Vanessa.’
Rain pelts the windscreen, it’s one of those deluges you get here, it can turn solid earth to swamp in no time at all. ‘That’s what everybody’s saying but she doesn’t want me there.’
‘She does,’ he says gently. ‘Believe me, she does.’
I’m on my way home. The rain is easing. Sebastian Ryan. Why haven’t I seen it earlier? I’ve thought he was a prick since day one and that’s usually enough for me to place a guilty tag on a man. But his boss was a bigger prick so my focus was on McCormack. If I’d seen it earlier would I still have Paulie now? Yes. Ryan was onto me long before I was onto him. He’s had my family in his sights for some time now. Following us, no doubt – me to my job, Vanessa to hers, Paulie to school. He sent that text to my son, he even knew to call him Paulie because that’s what I told him at school assembly. A charming and concerned inquiry to a teacher about the after-school care arrangements for the delightful special-needs boy would elicit all Ryan needed to know. I can imagine the exchange.
‘Normally his mother collects him but today it’s his dad. The chap you met at morning tea. The policeman, that’s right.’
Was that him in the helicopter? Was that him staring at Vanessa through binoculars from the plantation? Was that him rummaging through our property back when I’d only been thinking about Sammy Pritchard? That’s how he could have found all the mobile numbers he needed: there’s a list on the fridge, written up there for Paulie’s benefit, it’s visible through the glass door. Ryan, ahead of me all the way.
Suppose I make everything add up and find the connection between Ryan and McCormack from five years ago; simple enough, they were buddies long before they were colleagues. Where’s he been the last five years? He’s Latifa’s tutor, she mentioned he’d been to PNG. No doubt he’s left a trail of tears in the Highlands which nobody has cared to follow. He fits the loose description: tall and skinny and pasty with short, blondish-greyish hair, even if he has let it grow a little since. It will be his photo on the missing mobile. But there are no traces at the crime scene, and any on Serenity II can be explained by his association with McCormack. Any incriminating traces perhaps on Serenity I will be at the bottom of Marlborough Sounds. Say he insinuated his way into these lives by giving out prizes at school sports day or whatever. I can see it: we can join the dots and they’ll lead us nowhere. This man will walk free.
Why is he prepared to kill over a photo of his boss with some Maori kids? Or a blurry pic on a teenager’s mobile? Because the people who had those things knew who he was, wanted to blackmail him, and could draw attention to him. But none of it would work in court, the photos alone count for nothing without the accompanying testimony of Rogers and Fernandez who knew the story behind them. But now they’re dead and anything they knew died with them. This man will walk free.
His is a world of assumed privilege; he knows all the right people, all the best lawyers. Tangaroa, endless wealth personified. And all we can assemble are blurry pictures on CCTV and fuzzy memories from the damaged and deranged that nobody wants to listen to. Except now he’s gone feral and taken my son. He must know he could have walked away if push came to shove, but he’s taken this action. Why?
And then it comes to me. He’s no longer concerned about loose ends. He doesn’t care anymore. I’ve spoilt his party. He’s not used to that. This is revenge, pure and simple.
53
Back at the house all the lights are out. Well, it’s nearly two a.m., so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. But something doesn’t feel right. Latifa’s and Vanessa’s cars are there. Still no sign of Gary. The gravel on the driveway is stirred up like somebody has arrived or left in a hurry. That could have been me leaving or Latifa arriving. But the lights should be on, Vanessa should be there at the window, watching, brooding, crying. Latifa should be checking who’s just arrived or fussing around making yet another cup of tea, or on the landline for an update. I retreat to the shed to find my torch. When I flick the light switch, it’s not just the lights in the house that are out, all the power is off.
I take my gun out, grab the torch and head for the junction box. The main switch is off, I turn it back on. Immediately several lights go on in the house but there’s still no sign of life. I slide the door open and edge my way through.
‘Anybody home?’ There’s a trail of blood along the kitchen floor. ‘Hello?’
Around the edge of the partition wall into the lounge room I can see feet. Vanessa’s. I approach, wrapped in dread.
She’s alive, breathing, but only just. She’s on her side, hands cable tied behind her and a roll of electrical tape over her mouth. I cut the ties and tape and try to wake her but she won’t come to. Examining her eyes it’s obvious: she’s been drugged. There’s no other sign of injuries. The blood trail isn’t hers. I put her in the recovery position and call an ambulance. Then, with trembling hands, I put the phone down. ‘Latifa?’
I try the other downstairs rooms, upstairs, outside to Gary’s hut. She’s not there.
Ryan means to hurt and take away all those I care about. But why did he leave Vanessa? Maybe he thought he’d done enough to kill her. Or maybe he’s worked out that I’ve already lost her.
The ambulance folk arrive and start checking Vanessa, readying her for the fifty-odd kilometre trip to the hospital in Blenheim. What the hell are we doing in this stupid, remote, savage place? There’s a water bottle on the table nearby. The paramedic sniffs it.
Rohypnol.
‘Is she going to be alright?’
‘Hopefully. Good job you found her early. An overdose of this and after a while you just give up on breathing. Was that the idea?’
‘Who knows?’ Ryan certainly didn’t give a fuck either way.
The paramedic holds open the ambulance door. ‘Are you coming?’
‘No.’ I need to find my son.
They leave and I phone Ford and bring him up to date. ‘We need to know from McCormack, or any of his other colleagues, the places Ryan might take Paulie and Latifa.’
‘Latifa?’
‘He’s got her too. And she’s injured, her blood’s on my kitchen floor.’
‘Jesus. We’ll get a crime-scene team there.’
‘Whatever. I’ll be in and out of touch.’
‘Nick …’
But I’ve finished speaking with him. Back in the Toyota and down the valley road again. It was obvious really. We should have had a checkpoint at the bottom of the valley: one road in, same road out. He wouldn’t have been able to get at Vanessa and Latifa. Twenty-twenty hindsight. Then again we don’t have the manpower to cover all the eventualities for Sebastian Ryan and what he might think of next. I phone Keegan.
‘Nick, I’m sorry, I’ve just heard.’
‘I need maps of all McCormack’s plantations and any buildings or sheds on them, starting with the one over the river from me on Tapps Road. I need them on my phone before I go out of range again. I’ll sit outside the Trout for half an hour, after that I’ll be gone.’
‘On it. We’ll have AOS and a chopper do a flyover on all of them with the thermal camera looking for signs of activity.’
‘And it’s a bit late now, but I need a block on Wakamarina Road in case he thinks of heading back this way.’
‘Yep.’
I park up by the Trout Hotel and wait. It’s after four and the eastern sky is getting lighter behind
the silhouette of another of McCormack’s shaved hills. Perhaps if I hadn’t been blinkered by my disapproval of McCormack’s loggers spoiling my precious view I might have seen things more clearly. And yet, my grudge against him helped turn the whole investigation in the right direction. A ute turns off SH6 to head up the Wakamarina. I recognise it and flag him down.
‘Nick?’ Gary looks drowsy and confused. I bring him up to speed. ‘Christ.’ On the back tray Richie gives a grumpy woof at being woken.
My phone beeps with the incoming maps. A thought occurs to me. ‘The spare phone you used when you were on the run. Do you have it?’
A frown. ‘Yeah. Why?’
‘You got it from Johnny Fernandez’s place, right?’
‘Right. How do you know?’
‘Lucky guess.’ He hands it over and I scroll through the photos. Sure enough. I show it to Gary. ‘This is the man who has Paulie and Latifa. We need to find him.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘You hunt around here, know any huts or buildings on or near that plantation over the river from us?’
‘Yeah, I can think of a few.’ He smiles. ‘Need company?’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Why not?’
Instead of crossing the bridge to follow the mainly unsealed Tapps Road up the other side of the valley, Gary takes us back in the direction of home.
‘Trust me, it’s a quicker and smoother road this side. We can cross the river upstream. Anyway, I need to collect some stuff first.’
I’ve downloaded the maps so they’re readable offline. The covering email from Keegan has a warning:
We’ve run Ryan through the system. Don’t be fooled by the private school ponce act. He did a stint in the army in his 20s. Assume he can handle himself.
But that comes as no real surprise, his dispatching of Des Rogers and Johnny Fernandez was not for the faint-hearted.
Back at the farm Gary puts a GPS collar on Richie, tunes in his receiver,
and selects his best pig gun. He also takes some binocs and then straps some anti-prickle armour on to his legs and arms. I’m getting impatient.
‘Woolly mittens in case it gets chilly? Check. Nice thermos of cocoa? Check.’
Gary smiles. ‘You’ll see, tough guy.’ And he flicks his fingers at the maps I’m studying on my phone. ‘You won’t need them.’
He has his EPIRB and I have my personal police alarm clipped on, which serves a similar purpose. In the absence of mobile and radio coverage in these hills, it’s all we have and even they aren’t infallible. Alternatively you could let people know where you’re going to be for the next while. It’s like signing the hiker’s log on the way to the OK Corral and saying due back in two hours or send help. As an Occ Health and Safety issue, the union isn’t impressed but this is Marlborough and you learn to live and die with it.
The river is predictably icy but only thigh deep, thank goodness for El Niño. The track is steep on the far side. Two years here and I haven’t been this way, yet it’s less than two hundred metres from my doorstep. The pre-dawn chorus is in full swing. Richie hangs close, tail wagging and ears pricked: alert and excited for the hunt. Gary leads on, I suspect that if he had a tail and doggie ears he’d look similarly excited. Me, I just want Paulie and Latifa back safe and sound.
The clouds that held the rain earlier are breaking up and the moon shines through. Almost full, like the one Beth Haruru dreamed about but it’s dropping fast, yielding to the new day. Back in the gloom of the forest all around us are beech and other native trees and they are full of life. Weka cooee and thump in alarm at our passing. Possums scramble up the trees they’ve been eating. Moths dance in the light of Gary’s head torch. Mosquitos whine and bite. Gary was right about the prickle armour: the blackberry vines and gorse bushes tear at my legs and arms and it’s bloody painful. There’s movement in the foliage nearby, something big, and Richie has the scent of it as the wind shifts. Is Ryan waiting for us, one step ahead again? The bush breaks open to our right and a figure rushes through with a terrifying grunt.
‘It’s a fucking pig,’ laughs Gary. Richie is going ape and barking to bring the valley down. ‘Shush.’ The dog settles into a low growl and crouches, holding position while the pig makes up its mind what to do.
And so we stand there for a long minute, and another. The pig looks like it wants to charge us and stick one of those yellow tusks in deep. Gary murmurs something to it in Maori. Soothing. The pig stares us out then gives a final snort and disappears back into the bush.
‘What did you say to it?’
‘I said on your way, we’re not going to eat you tonight.’
‘You can communicate with pigs?’
‘All the time, mate.’ He throws me a grin and switches off his head torch. ‘Some listen, some don’t.’
Another twenty minutes of bush-bashing and excruciating tearing at my limbs and we reach a clearing. It’s where the pines once stood. It would have been dead enough then – they don’t support much in the way of flora and fauna – but it’s desolate now. Tendrils of mist hang in the air. New Zealand is good at this stuff, any day of the week can look like the dawn of time itself. That prehistoric awakening as the swamp bubbles and an ugly bug-eyed fish takes its first faltering steps onto land, evolving before your very eyes. We back off a few paces into the cover of the surviving trees. It’s like I’m about to be sent up from the trenches across No Man’s Land. Gary hands me his binocs. I hadn’t seen it at first because it merged in with the surroundings. About five hundred metres away on the far side of the clearing there’s an old cedar hut, boards weathered grey, a rotting windowless frame, and a flimsy door. Just visible to the right, the edge of a white car parked there.
54
Gary sends Richie off around one side of the clearing and the mutt is smart enough to hug the tree cover. Meanwhile we skirt the other side. The dog’s collar is transmitting and the receiver maps where he is. Gary presses a button which sends a signal through to Richie to stop.
‘Nifty,’ I say.
‘If we put these on you pakeha two hundred years ago, the world would be a different place.’
We’re within two hundred metres of the hut now. The sensible thing to do is trigger our alarms and EPIRB and call in the AOS to clear this up professionally. I voice this to Gary.
‘But then he gets arrested and spends the next few years stuffing you around in the courts. I’ve been in the system, seen the rich white boys get bail ’cause the judge is an old mate of their dad’s. Then what, he vamooses off to Vanuatu to take up where he left off? You want that?’
There’s a muffled noise, a yelp, from within the cabin.
No. I want Paulie back: safe, sound, now.
He ratchets his pig gun and I check my Glock. We aim to get as close as we can within the tree cover but the last fifty metres has to be across open clearing. Richie is our backup. If Ryan makes a move before we’re ready, then the dog will be signalled to rush in. If he tears Ryan’s throat out that’s a bonus, but if he at least distracts him it’ll help. It ain’t much of a plan but it’s all we’ve got. The sun glances off the top of the hills and I can see the red roof of our house from here through the beech trees. The river is running through a gully below us and for a moment, time stands still. It’s the same river I marvel at every day from my balcony across the way yet, here, it feels like we’ve crossed over into Hades, the anti-world of the one I believe I inhabit. The world that Ryan, and his buddy McCormack, call theirs: darkness in place of light, death instead of life, destruction over creation. Am I about to join it by resolving things their way?
Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of choosing.
It’s that last fifty metres. No Man’s Land. Gary needs to stay in the tree cover until I get to the side of the hut. He has a wider view of what’s happening and if Ryan shows himself then Gary will signal the dog. I brace myself and rush over, crouching as low as possible, reach the gable end of the hut and wait. Gary has just broken cover and i
s running the first ten metres when the cabin door opens. I see Latifa, Ryan right behind, gun in the back of her neck. It looks like her Glock. Her face is puffed and beaten.
‘Chester! Show yourself and throw your gun down. And tell your friend to drop his weapon as well.’ I do, and Gary does as he’s told too. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gary.’
‘Call your dog in, Gary. Then shoot it.’
‘Nah.’
Ryan pulls Latifa’s head back and pushes the muzzle of the Glock further into her neck. ‘I won’t ask again.’
Gary presses the button on his gizmo and Richie comes bounding in. Gary calls the dog to heel and reaches for his dropped gun. Hesitates. ‘I can’t do this.’
Ryan’s finger tightens around the trigger and he tugs tighter on Latifa’s hair. Wind drifts across the clearing.
‘It’s only a fucken dog,’ says Latifa. ‘Do as you’re fucken told!’
‘You heard her,’ says Ryan.
Gary lifts his rifle. And lowers it again. I feel for him but I see the bigger picture. I take the gun out of his hands and shoot Richie for him. The shot echoes through the misted hills, the dog yelps and collapses, blood seeping and spreading beneath the prone body.
‘Fuck, mate. What’d you do that for?’
‘I’ll buy you another.’ I give him back his rifle.
‘Put the gun back on the ground,’ says Ryan.
Gary does so.
Latifa can’t help herself, she bursts out laughing. This isn’t what Ryan expected. It unsettles him and he drops his guard. Latifa lashes her head back into his face and there’s the crunch of breaking nose. It’s not enough to stop Ryan from blindly pistol-whipping her and she slumps to the ground. He wants to kill her but he has Gary and me to deal with. Gary is bending for his gun so Ryan shoots him first. He drops like a stone. Then Ryan shoots me. In the leg. It hurts like fuck. He walks over and stands beside my head. He kicks it a couple of times.
‘Stand up.’