by Lee Murray
“I see. Well, I guess you can only do your best. But let’s just say that if I don’t get what I want for Christmas, then the press can expect a rather juicy present.”
“You bitch.”
“Super talking with you, Kenneth.”
“You’re with the multinational, aren’t you?” Ken said quickly.
A peel of laughter. “Wrong again.”
Ken slipped his phone into his jacket. He was going to have to hoof it back to the office if he was to make his afternoon meeting. He snorted derisively. Well, if he was going to be a spineless hypocrite, at least he wouldn’t be overweight.
* * *
As it turned out, there were no bushmen, pigs, or fairies en route and Taine was pleased with their timing, reaching the site where the stream intersected with the track by mid-afternoon. Taine was about to set up his own tent when he passed de Haas deep in conversation with the two women.
“Dr Asher is quite capable of setting up the tent on her own. She has a PhD,” the geologist said.
Taine slowed.
“Oh, I agree she’s quite capable, but I should really be—” Louise said.
“Leave that tent pole there,” de Haas said, snatching the pole from Louise. He handed it off to Jules, who glanced at Taine over the billowing tent fabric, and rolled her eyes.
“I’ve already checked out the site,” de Haas said impatiently. “It’s over this way. I think we should start straight in on some baseline sampling, and not waste time while the light’s still good…” His hand at the small of Louise’s back, de Haas guided his assistant away, leaving Jules looking bemused. Shrugging, she smiled at Taine, then got back to the task of erecting the tent on her own.
Taine detected a quiet movement to his left.
“McKenna, would you mind stepping over here a moment, mate?” Coolie said. “Eriksen’s found something interesting.” The corporal used standard patrol hand signals to indicate the location of the ‘something interesting’, essentially, north-east, referencing a young kauri protruding from the canopy.
Taine hoped he wasn’t about to be shown Lefty’s head on a stick, although, to be fair, since his warning, the two men had been giving each other a wide berth. With a final glance at the campsite – more out of reflex than anything else – Taine followed Coolie towards the base of the kauri tree.
Eriksen and Read were there waiting, the bush about them, dense and oppressive.
“What have you got?”
“There.” With a flattened hand, Coolie indicated the subject of interest. Draped over the fronds of a scraggly flax was a crumpled yellow CanTeen bandana. The grimy fabric was soaked with blood.
“It might be just a coincidence,” Eriksen said. “But I thought the hunter we met on the trail earlier today – the guy with the pig – was wearing a bandana just like it.”
“That’s definitely his!” Read said excitedly. “I saw it. He was wearing it around his neck when I handed him the tea.”
Taine nodded. Eriksen and Read weren’t the only ones who’d observed the splash of yellow at Ira’s collar. The children’s cancer awareness bandanas weren’t uncommon. For a while, there was quite a craze for them. But yellow wasn’t everyone’s favourite colour. And two in the same day? Unlikely.
“Did you find anything else? Tracks?”
“Read and I had a pretty thorough look-see. Went approximately twenty metres in every direction. Didn’t see anything. We were gonna extend the search, but we thought we better report it in first.”
“Good call,” Coolie assured Eriksen.
“I still reckon it’s that hunter’s,” Read said. “He left a few minutes before we did. He could have come this way. Maybe he just dropped it?”
“An eighty kilogram pig on his back and he gets here before us?” Eriksen said, shaking his head. “Sure, a tramper can make better time travelling on his own, he can keep to his own rhythm and only stop when it suits him. But even so, that pig hunter would have to be The Flash to get here that fucking fast.”
“Maybe he dropped the pig off somewhere first,” said Read.
The other men considered this.
“Ira said he was going to head home tomorrow,” Taine said. “I guess it depends where his vehicle is, but if his campsite was a distance from the road, it’s possible he stowed the pig, intending to come back after packing up his gear. Why lug the animal all over the forest if you don’t have to?”
“Well, how do we explain the blood?” Coolie said quietly.
“It was already on there?”
“This much blood?”
“Maybe he stopped to butcher the pig,” Read suggested.
Eriksen snorted. “He stopped off somewhere to slaughter the pig and still made better time than us? Yeah right.”
Taine rubbed his chin. “There’s every chance we’re overreacting. Ira might’ve made better time than us if he’d dumped the pig. It’s possible he simply dropped his bandana. But this amount of blood could also mean he’s hurt himself—”
“I reckon something’s happened to him,” interrupted Read.
“—so we can’t rule out foul play,” Taine continued. “Coolie, round up Miller and Lefty, will you? Tell them, they’re to join Read and Eriksen and look for signs of the pig hunter. Cover as much area as you can while the light holds. And check down low under the bushes. He could be injured. I’ll give Singh the heads up to expect a possible casualty, and post Winters and Trigger to monitor the campsite.”
Read turned to go.
“Wait,” Taine said. He picked up the bandana and stuffed it in his pocket. “Until we know more, let’s keep this to ourselves. There’s no point upsetting the civilians.”
* * *
De Haas laid his geologist’s pick on the ground. “Sample bag,” he said. Louise held out a white calico bag. “Wider, for heaven’s sake. How am I supposed to get it in there?”
She opened the bag wider and he dropped the rock into it. Then she labelled it, and slipped it into the bag with the others. “I should probably run over and check that Ben has enough sample bags,” she said.
De Haas snorted. “He’s got legs, hasn’t he? If he needs more, he can come and get them.” The engineer was working higher up and further along the streambed, not far from where Jules Asher had set up a transect line for her ecological study.
De Haas took up his pick. Ben Fogarty was like every mining engineer de Haas had ever met: over confident, overpaid, and with an over-inflated sense of entitlement. The kid had brought a hand-held mineral identifier with him, for goodness sake. Typical. Relying on gadgets rather than knowledge and hard work. Still, it’d be important to have an independent consultant to support, if not corroborate his findings. Ben’s credentials with Australian Minerals wouldn’t hurt that.
“De Haas!”
The idiot was running across the dry streambed, waving one hand in the air and his silly machine in the other. De Haas stood; it was a wonder the engineer didn’t break his ankle.
“What is it?”
“Look!”
Fogarty thrust out his palm revealing a rock the size of a small walnut. “Gold.”
Another nugget? The potential of this area! De Haas felt a rush of excitement. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to salt the samples after all – a good thing too, given the industry’s caginess since the Bre-X scandal.
“Let me see.” He handed his pick off to Louise and took the nugget from Fogarty, leaning over to examine it under his magnifying glass. He scratched at the surface with his fingernail. “It certainly has the look of gold,” he said.
“The whole area’s volcanic. There’s plenty of porphyritic rock about,” Ben said. He lifted his gadget. “I’m picking up all the right indicators.”
De Haas screwed up his mouth. “Either way, the lab assays will confirm it.”
Jules Asher came over. “What’s up?” she said, slipping a blue-grey feather into a plastic specimen bag.
“Ben thinks he’s found some gold,” Loui
se gushed.
Jules ran her fingers along the top of the bag to seal it. “Wow, that was quick,” she said.
“I know, right?” said Ben, beaming. “Just a couple of hours work and already we’ve uncovered what could be a gold deposit. Streets paved with gold – the potential of this area could be incredible!”
De Haas frowned; did Fogarty plant the nugget? He shrugged. So what if he did? De Haas had it now, as well as control of the entire exploration programme.
“That’s great news, Ben,” Jules said, patting Ben’s forearm. “Just try not to get too carried away yet. There are the ecological impacts to consider,” she said, before going back to her transect. Watching her slip the bag in with her other samples, de Haas snorted.
As if a few insects could hold back a gold rush.
“Nice work,” he told Ben. He could afford to be magnanimous. “Sample bag.”
Louise passed him a bag and de Haas dropped the nugget inside then put the bag in his coat pocket. Ben’s eyes widened.
“Um, Dr de Haas…” Louise started.
“I think it’s best if I keep this one on me, don’t you?” he said, patting his pocket. “Given its size. We can’t be too careful. Now, I think we should call it a day.”
Retrieving his pick from the ground, de Haas grinned. Hand-held identifier aside, on this mission there was no guessing whose pick was largest.
Chapter 10
Rotorua Township
“Come on, Pania,” Wayne groaned, dragging his eyes from his tablet. “You’re making out like it’s worse than it is.”
“Really?” Wayne’s girlfriend stood up from behind the kitchen island, snapped the dishwasher shut, and set the wash cycle to run. “That’s three weekends in a row the two of you have been up there in the bush.”
“He’s an old man. It’s important to him.”
“Yeah, well having you here on the weekends is important to me. I’ve been asking you to fix the lock on the back window for a month. It’ll be too late when some kid jimmies it and we come home to find the house cleared out.” She picked up a sponge and ran it under the tap.
Wayne shook his head. “This is about me not fixing the window?”
Pania squeezed out the cloth. “No, it’s about us spending some time together.” Leaning over the oven, she wiped bacon grease off the splash-back.
Wayne craned his neck to steal a look at her arse, her jeans stretched tight over smooth hips. It was true, he’d been neglecting her lately. But she didn’t understand how important this was. Uncle Rawiri was a matakite, and if he said something unusual was going on near his ancestral home, then it wasn’t to be sneezed at. It wasn’t her fault. Pania hadn’t grown up with Uncle the way Wayne had.
Once, when Wayne was a small boy, maybe four or five, Uncle Rawiri had come to his parents’ house. Over a cup of tea and a gingernut biscuit, Uncle warned Wayne’s parents that the fire demons Te Hoata and Te Pūpū were about, and that for his safety it was imperative Wayne be kept indoors. Wayne hated it – being stuck inside – but a couple of days later a fumarole appeared, spitting and snorting right under Wayne’s sandpit. Since the geyser came with a ready-made sandpit box surround, it got a mention in the paper. Fire demons with a sense of humour, the headline said. Except, it wasn’t funny. If Wayne had been out there making tracks in the sand with his dump truck, he’d be dead now.
Wayne flicked his eyes back to his tablet before Pania caught him staring at her butt. Probably not the best strategy when they were in the middle of an argument.
“I’ll pick up a new lock on my way home from work,” he mumbled.
What if Uncle’s on to something this time, too?
For a remote place, Maungapōhatu was attracting a lot of activity. That band of scientists they’d met on the road, for example. Wayne hadn’t liked the head guy much – an arrogant SOB in his opinion – but the army guy was good value. And another thing that was odd; since when did a scientific team need a bunch of army guys with them? Something strange was definitely going on up there. If the weather stayed good, he and Uncle Rawiri planned to go out again.
If he can get Pania onside.
Maybe if he took her to the movies tonight? He pulled up the cinema listings. Smiled. There was a girly flick on. Ryan Gosling. Pania liked Gosling. Said he was a good actor—
“Wayne, are you even listening to me?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did I just say?”
“I was listening.” Wayne looked up.
Frowning, Pania had her arms folded across her chest, the pink sponge protruding from behind her elbow.
“Okay, I wasn’t listening. But look, there’s a Ryan Gosling movie on tonight…” he said, lifting his tablet for her to see. Her arms still folded over her chest, Pania clamped her lips tight and closed her eyes.
It was no use. She wasn’t buying it.
“I’m sorry, babe. What did you say?”
“I said, it’s not just this idea your uncle’s got in his head about something bad going on in the bush. I’m worried about these nightmares he’s been having. Calling out in the night. Waking himself up and then having trouble getting back to sleep. The night before last, I woke at 2:00am thinking someone must’ve gotten in the window, but it was him, tinkering in the kitchen, making himself a cup of tea. Then, when I got up for my shift at the hospital, he was already up and dressed.”
“So he got up instead of going back to sleep.”
“It’s not good, Wayne, this big change in his sleeping patterns. I really think we need to get him checked out by the doctor.” Tossing the sponge in the sink, she joined him at the table.
“You know Uncle doesn’t hold much store by modern doctors,” Wayne said, swiping idly at his screen.
“He would if you encouraged him.”
“It’s just a few nightmares.” He scrolled down a couple of pages.
“They’re affecting his sleep.”
“Well, it’s not like he has to get up for work. He can nap during the day.”
Pania put her tiny hand on Wayne’s larger one, stopping his fiddling. “It’s affecting our sleep, too.”
For the first time, Wayne noticed the grey smudges under her eyes. She was right – neither of them had been getting their full night’s kip.
“Wayne,” Pania said, her voice deliberate. “The fact you cared enough to have your uncle come and live with us is one of the reasons I love you. Don’t get me wrong. I love having Uncle here, too. But we need to face up to this. It’s not healthy for anyone to be this obsessed. I think there might be a medical reason for it, maybe a chemical imbalance or something.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “We have to remember he’s an old man.”
Wayne nodded.
* * *
Outside, Temera ran a wrinkled hand through thinning hair. His niece was right. He was an old man. Too old. Perhaps his mind was going, like Pania said. Some wires shaken loose in his old brain. It happened. One of his mates from the sawmill had Alzheimer’s. Couldn’t even remember how to do up his own zipper.
Temera pulled his smokes out of his pocket. Lit up. Smiled in spite of himself as he brought the cigarette to his lips. Unlike Wayne, Pania said it was probably too late for him to give up smoking. She said, at his age, forcing Temera to give up the habit was likely to cause more stress than carrying on. But she didn’t like him smoking inside the house and he didn’t like to upset her. She was a good kid, Pania. Pretty. Head screwed on. And a good cook, too. His great-nephew had done well to get her. Perhaps he and Wayne shouldn’t go up the bush again for a bit. Maybe they could go to Hammer Hardware instead – get the bits they needed to fix that window and keep the girl happy.
Temera took a long drag on the cigarette, savouring it. He closed his eyes and listened to the still of the morning. Imagined himself back at Maungapōhatu, on the porch at the old homestead. It seemed so far away now, but thinking about it, Temera’s heart beat a little faster.
What if Pania was right? Wh
at if Temera’s old body had some sort of disease that made him see things in his sleep?
It wouldn’t hurt to see the doctor. Get checked out. Sucking in the last of his cigarette, he leaned over and dropped the butt in a bucket of browning water he’d been saving to spray the aphids.
If they suggested it, he’d go along to see their doctor. Maybe there was something wrong with him after all.
* * *
Te Urewera Forest, Second Campsite
“I’ll walk you down to the water, Ms Hemphill,” Anaru said, shifting the Steyr across his body. “Until we know what’s going on, the sergeant wants us to stick together.”
When the pig hunter’s dog had limped into the campsite just before sunset, the game was up as far as keeping the situation from the civilians. McKenna had been forced to tell them about the bloodied bandana – not that it had bothered de Haas. That git couldn’t care less about anything other than sampling for his precious gold. The guys had gone out again after that, searching the area until well after dark, ferreting around under bushes, turning up nothing. Dr Asher had fed the dog – seemed she’d known its name was Tip – and found a warm spot for it under the flysheet of her tent, tying it to a tree so it couldn’t run off again. There wasn’t much more they could do until morning. Perhaps tomorrow the dog would lead them to the big Māori.
They walked to the water’s edge, Anaru behind Louise, the torch on the picatinny rail of his rifle lighting the way. On alert, Anaru scanned the ground for signs of the hunter, distracted by Louise’s long fingers as they brushed the tops of the ferns.
At the creek, the surface of the water glittered like a silver Christmas garland in the smoky moonlight. Louise took her time to fill her water bottle. Seemingly oblivious to the cold, she let the silvery liquid run over her fingers. When the bottle was full, she made no move to return to the campsite, although it had started to drizzle. Instead, she crouched on a flat rock in the middle of the stream in a gauze of mist.