Rocking Horse Road

by Nixon, Carl

  There were five of us there that afternoon and we dug a fair-sized hole. It was about two metres square and three metres deep, with sheer sides. It was hard work. After we had finished digging we collected long, thin bits of driftwood and placed then in a rough lattice over the top of the hole. Using the edges of the spades we then hacked down lupins and laid the branches over the top of the sticks. The lupins bled milky white and our hands became sticky as we worked.

  Roy Moynahan had thought to bring some bait. His mother had made a roast chook for dinner the night before and Roy had brought the carcass wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped it and tossed the bones down the hole. Then we covered the last gap in the top with more lupins.

  We returned the next morning before school. It had rained hard in the night and the sand had a dark crust that our footsteps broke through and shattered. We thought that the rain would have spoiled our chances of catching anything but from a distance we could see that something had collapsed the sticks and lupins covering the hole. When we knelt down and peered into the shadows we saw two things we were not expecting. The first was that the hole was half full of water. The tide was still high, and it had raised the water-table to above the bottom of our hole. Sea water had oozed up through the sand and into the hole, where it had mixed with the rain water from the night before. The second thing was that we had caught a dog, a small tan-and-white thing that Al Penny identified as a Jack Russell. The body of the dog floated side by side with the chicken carcass. The fat from the chicken had made a shiny smear over the surface of the water.

  If a larger dog had fallen into our hole, it would have been tall enough to stand on the bottom with its head above the water level. But a Jack Russell has short legs. You could see the scratch marks where it had tried to scramble up the side of the hole but the sand must've kept collapsing back on it. Eventually it would have become too tired to swim any more and drowned.

  Al raised the point, how did we even know this was the dog that had killed the birds? The truth was we had no idea. It was probably just somebody's pet. The trap now seemed like a stupid idea, dangerous and irresponsible, even childish.

  Mark Murray got down in the hole and fished out the body. His parents had always owned dogs, and he was used to them, although he said he had never lifted a dead one before and was surprised at how heavy it was. Mark laid the body on a patch of tussock so that it didn't get sand stuck to its fur. Its legs were stiff and its body hard to the touch as though it had never been a real, living thing but had been constructed from fibreglass in someone's shed. The dog had a fierce look on its face. Its gums were drawn back from its teeth and its glassy eyes were open as though it had tried to stare death down.

  Of course we covered up the hole so that no other animals — or worse, some small kid — would fall into it (why hadn't that occurred to us before?). We had no shovels this time so we used our hands and it took us a fair while. Then we buried the dog. We stood around the grave and there was an embarrassed silence. We were already late for school but sensed that something should be said or done. Eventually Roy Moynahan spoke. He talked to the dog as if it could still hear us, mostly about how we were sorry we'd killed him and how we hadn't meant to. 'I hope that there's a dog heaven,' he said. 'And that you've got everything you want there.' And then we left for school, shuffling through the dunes to where our bikes were.

  About a week later a handmade poster went up in the supermarket with a picture of the dog we'd drowned. Apparently, its name was Mac and a reward was offered for its safe return. We never did call the number. How do you explain to someone that you've trapped and drowned their dog? We all agreed that it was better Mac's owners thought it had simply wandered away. At least then they were left with the hope that their dog had been found by a nice family. The parents could pretend to their kids that Mac was living the good life somewhere with two or three pet-mad kids who slipped him food under the table every night and walked him twice a day.

  Our only consolation was that after that morning there were no more attacks on the godwits. Still, we felt bad about the whole thing.

  The other incident that should get a mention is what the papers called 'The third sex attack in the South Brighton area within three months' (The Press, p1, May 11, 1981). If we're clearing the air then we might as well put down what we know about that as well.

  For several weeks, Matt Templeton had been carrying messages between his sister, Mary-Rose, and a boy called Brent Cox. In '81 Mary-Rose was a year above us at school; in what was then the seventh form. Brent Cox was nineteen and worked at the local garage as an apprentice car mechanic. We all agreed that they were a good match. Both of them were generally acknowledged to be good-looking. Also, both Mary- Rose and Brent had the intellectual and social laziness that beautiful people can often get away with. They both drifted through life on their looks. Not that they were bad people. We all agreed that they were just a bit up themselves.

  Matt was on to a good little earner with Brent. The guy was sending one or two notes a day to Mary-Rose and they were meeting pretty regularly. Luckily Mr Templeton was distracted by the first XV's poor performance. In addition to running the history department he was now holding training twice a week and keeping the team out to all hours. The players hated it but Matt's sisters were thrilled. The long summer holidays where their father hung around the house were hell for them. Things had, of course, been worse after the attack on their sister's friend — and now there was the family friction over the upcoming Springbok tour.

  But the Templeton girls could get away with a lot more during that winter. Matt's mum was relatively easy to fool no matter what the season. With seven children, all still at home, Mrs Templeton permanently wore the dazed expression of a veteran of the trenches.

  One evening in the Turners' garage, Matt told a few of us that after dinner Mary-Rose had been secretly meeting Brent Cox at the surf club, which was only a few minutes' walk along the road from the Templetons' house. Mary-Rose would tell her parents that she was going to her room to do her homework and then slip out the window. She would only go for about half an hour. Matt or her sisters would cover for her, if necessary. But with so many people in the house, one more or less was unlikely to be noticed — not in the short term.

  A few evenings later, with nothing better to do, Grant Webb, Pete Marshall and Jase Harbidge went down to the surf club. They camped in the dunes at an elevated spot, and waited. Their motivations were mixed. We all suspected what Mary-Rose and Brent were doing at the surf club and the idea of catching a glimpse of them at it caused a tingling knot of excitement in our guts. Grant had his own reason for being there. He been pushed around by Brent Cox and a couple of Brent's mates at the start of the third form. It had been nothing too serious, just your garden-variety bullying that didn't last more than a couple of weeks, but the idea of some kind of payback was undoubtedly in Grant's mind.

  About half an hour after they got there, Mary- Rose arrived. They watched her walk beneath the two car park lights. She was looking around furtively as she hurried across the open space. As Jase said later, 'The way she was acting, even a blind man would be suspicious.'

  The surf club has two levels: below the large open hall where the life guards hang out is a storage area where the two surfboats, the surf-skis and all the rest of the equipment are stored. To get in underneath there were two doors, which swung outwards on tracks. These days there is a metal roller-door but back then the doors had wooden slats. They were split down the middle and swung outwards so that there was enough room to wheel the boats through. Normally the doors were bolted top and bottom and padlocked shut but apparently Brent Cox had a key. When Mary-Rose knocked and called his name, one door was pushed open slightly from the inside, and Mary-Rose disappeared inside.

  Grant and Pete and Jase waited a while but nothing happened. They began to get cold. Jase later admitted suggesting that they slide the bolt on the door home and then wait to see what happened. Grant said that he had a bett
er idea. The three of them crept down to the door of the storage area. Mary-Rose had pulled it shut after her and Pete had to lift the heavy door so that it didn't scrape on the concrete pad.

  It was almost totally dark. The last daylight came through the slats in the door and they could just make out the outlines of the two surf-boats. Luckily Brent and Mary-Rose had chosen to go right down the back. The three guys could faintly hear them whispering. They crouched perfectly still and waited for their eyes to adjust. After a few minutes Grant gestured for Pete and Jase to stay where they were and then he slipped away.

  Jase and Pete stood and listened to the sounds coming from the back of the big open space. Mary- Rose had stopped giggling. There was another, deeper sound now. As Pete stood and listened uncomfortably, he realised that the sound was Brent Cox grunting deep in his throat, like a pig. Pete admitted to some of us later that he started to feel bad about being there. He expected at any moment for there to be a shout and for Brent to come charging out of the darkness after Grant, pissed off as all hell. But for what seemed to him to be a very long time there was only the darkness and the animal sounds.

  And then Grant suddenly appeared next to them like a genie out of a bottle. They could see that he was grinning in the darkness, his teeth white. He had a bundle in his arms. Grant held one finger to his lips and gestured. The three of them slipped out the door and returned to their observation post in the dunes where Grant showed the other two what he had got. Of course, it was Brent Cox's clothes, his jeans, inside which nestled a pair of white jockeys, and his sweat shirt. There was no sign of his shoes or socks. Grant also had Mary-Rose's dress. Grant admitted that he had been hoping to get a pair of trousers at best but Mary-Rose had folded all the clothes up and put them on the edge of a surf-boat, a short distance from where she and Brent were lying on a pile of life-jackets. All Grant had to do was reach out and take them.

  'Did you see anything?' Jase wanted to know.

  'Just Cox's white arse going up and down.'

  They waited, shivering in the cold. Pete said that he could smell the scent of Mary-Rose on the dress, as though the printed flowers that covered it were giving off a perfume. When Mary-Rose's half hour was almost up they heard whispers coming from the shed and the sound of things being moved around. Brent Cox was clearly heard to say, 'Well, you better bloody find them!' A few more minutes passed during which the whispers became louder and more panicked.

  Apparently Mary-Rose feared being discovered missing by her father more than any embarrassment. She finally appeared at the door in nothing but her bra, knickers, shoes and socks. After a hurried look around, she set off at a trot in the direction of her house. Brent Cox could be heard hissing after her, telling her to bring him back some clothes. But apparently he had no faith that Mary-Rose would return with something for him to wear. He also appeared at the door and set off after her. Apart from his shoes and socks he was naked and must have been freezing. His only covering was a child-sized life-jacket, which he clutched to his groin with both hands. Brent's parents' house was in the same direction as the Templetons' but at least a couple of k's further down the road. Maybe he figured he could steal some pants from a clothesline on the way or that Mary- Rose would pass him something from her window.

  Needless to say this was better than even Grant Webb had imagined. The three guys were killing themselves up in the dunes as Brent took off after Mary-Rose, clutching his orange life-jacket to his groin, and running with the bent-over lope of someone lower down the evolutionary scale.

  That was the picture that the community patrol saw as they pulled into the car-park: A girl, stripped to her underwear, being chased by a naked guy, clutching something to his groin. To a group of guys cruising the neighbourhood looking for a sexual predator, you have to admit Brent Cox more than fitted the description.

  The car was being driven by Mr Erickson, a retired stevedore. Old Erickson didn't hesitate. He gunned the motor and drove right at Brent. Pete later swore to us that he was sure Erickson was intending to run the guy down. But Brent heard the surge of the engine and saw the danger in time. He swerved away from the middle of the car park towards the retaining wall on the beach side. As he came to it he dropped the life-jacket. He vaulted the low wall and hit the sand running. Apart from his shoes and socks he was now completely naked.

  It sounds funny to tell it, like a scene out of The Benny Hill Show, but Pete and Jase and Grant realised the seriousness of the situation straight away. The guys in Erickson's car thought they were after a child molester and possibly a murderer. They weren't pissing about. They were already spilling out even before the car had come to a complete stop. One of them, turned out to be Jim Turner's dad. He immediately gave chase along the beach. The other two ran to the back of the car where they hauled up the boot and snatched up torches and a couple of softball bats, and then they ran after Brent as well.

  As Grant said later that evening, 'Cox is a bit of a prick, but I didn't want him to be beaten to death.' And he wasn't exaggerating the danger for once. After Lucy's murder, and then the attack on the two young girls, people down on the Spit were edgy. Men were quicker to shout. Neighbours had begun arguing about small things; autumn bonfires and barking dogs. Our dads were drinking more beer in the evenings and at the weekends. A few of our fathers had been in fights lately, mostly about the Springbok tour. The atmosphere was brittle. People were itching to take action but they didn't know what to do. Erickson and the other men in the car had probably been drinking and if they caught Brent you could guarantee they'd be using their fists and the bats, long before they asked any questions. Looking back it's clear that the community patrol was as much about the hope of delivering Old Testament vengeance as it was about keeping the streets safe.

  Luckily, in all the confusion, Mary-Rose had vanished into the darkness of the sand dunes in the direction of the road. Mr Erickson had a bad knee. He stayed with the car, keeping the engine running. He was craning his neck and peering around as though expecting more naked perverts to appear at any minute. Grant, Pete and Jase skirted the back of the surf club, keeping out of Erickson's sight. They walked along the road in the direction Brent had gone and then cut down a little-used track to the beach. They found Mr Turner standing on the beach staring up into the dunes, a torch in his hand. Shouts came from the two other men and they could be heard thrashing through the lupin. The beams of their torches darted here and there. Apparently Brent Cox had gone to ground. The three guys imagined him lying, naked, scared and as cold as hell, in a hollow among the tussock plants somewhere close by.

  Mr Turner was too worked up to question why three friends of his son were down on the beach at that hour.

  'Have you boys seen anyone, a guy running?'

  Pete looked down the beach towards the surf club.

  'We just saw a naked guy. Back down that way. He ran out of the dunes and went down the road.'

  Mr Turner swore loudly and called to the other men. They immediately returned sliding down the face of the first dune. The three of them ran back up the beach. Jase and Pete and Grant stood watching until the men disappeared from sight. Over the sound of the waves they heard Erickson's car reversing quickly and driving away.

  Jase put the bundle of clothes he was carrying, including Mary-Rose's dress, down on the sand and called out loudly, 'Hey, Cox! Your clothes are here!' There was no response. Nothing moved in the darkness. So the three of them simply walked away. It was only when they were almost at the surf club that they looked back and saw a furtive shadow come down on to the beach, snatch up the clothes and then dart away back to the relative safety of the dunes.

  The community patrol drove up and down Marine Parade as far as the shopping centre but saw nothing. They eventually got around to calling the police. Jase Harbidge's dad got the full story from his mates on the force and we heard the police side of the story from Jase. Two tracking dogs were brought in. The dogs got really excited about a pile of life-jackets in the storage area un
der the surf club, which had apparently been broken into.

  The dogs tracked the scent up the beach and into the dunes where the police discovered the suspect had hidden himself under a hastily made covering of lupin branches. From there the dogs tracked him back to the surf club but lost the scent. He appeared to have left in some type of vehicle (Pete remembered seeing Brent's bicycle chained up next to the outdoor shower).

  From the police's point of view, the real mystery was the identity of the third victim. Mr Turner and the other members of the community patrol hadn't been able to identify the girl seen fleeing in her underwear. After a couple of beers at the Empire Mr Erickson would describe her as having 'the type of arse you only dream about'. But luckily for Mary-Rose his description was no more specific than that.

  The front-page headline in the nest day's Press read NEW BRIGHTON ATTACKS CONTINUE. The accompanying article explained that,

  Experts claim it isn't unusual for victims of rape and sexual violence not to come forward immediately. Victims are often embarrassed and ashamed of what has happened to them. Some victims blame themselves for the attack.

  Police, however, are calling for the young woman to contact them as soon as possible. A police spokesman said: 'The sooner we talk to this young woman, the more likely it is we will catch her attacker.'

  (Exhibit F78, The Press, May 12)

  The spokesman also praised the bravery of the four men, who he described as 'driving the attacker away from his intended victim. In all likelihood these men prevented a much more serious crime.' In that day's editorial The Press went even further: 'If not for the men's brave intervention, New Brighton could have seen another young girl dead at the hands of the Christmas Killer.'

  The week after Brent Cox's streak down the beach, we heard that an arrest had been made in the abduction case. The police in Nelson had questioned a man seen acting suspiciously outside a primary school. According to Bill Harbidge's contact up in Nelson, the interviewing officers had been surprised when, with hardly any prompting, the guy had confessed to the attack on Tracy Templeton and Jenny Jones months before.