by Else, Chris
'Who the hell is that?' Monty's voice sounded thick and heavy.
'Ken,' I said. 'I need help.'
'Ken?'
A light went on above me. Sound of the lock, door opening. Sam standing there, wagging his tail, and Monty behind him, staring at me, his face screwed up like he couldn't see that well. I stepped forward.
'Whoa,' he said. 'Jesus, mate! What happened to you?'
I was relieved to see him, big time.
'I got kidnapped,' I told him.
'Kidnapped?'
'That fucking new neighbour of yours, Peter Kocher, and his mad mate Wyett. Jesus, they had fucking guns and all.'
'What?' Monty seemed like he couldn't figure it out. He stepped back, one hand still gripping the edge of the door. 'Well, come in, come in, for Christ's sake.'
He was wearing a dressing gown, hanging open to show a grey singlet and boxer shorts underneath. Nothing on his feet.
'You in bed?' I asked. 'Sorry about that.'
'No, no,' he said. 'Just . . . shit, I don't know. Watching movies. Drowning my sorrows.' Then he looked at me. 'You bleeding? What the hell happened?'
'Wyett cut me.'
'What did he do that for?'
'It's a long story. I wouldn't know where the hell to start. And Gith's out there too. He's fucking chasing her now. Jesus!' A sudden wave of panic. 'We need to call the cops.'
'Who? Who's out there?'
'Kocher. And that prick Wyett. They're after Gith.'
'Peter Kocher?'
'Yes.'
He looked at me, at the blood on my shoulder, leaning forward. 'Christ, that's bad. We better get that sorted out. Come on.'
The front door was still open and I almost wanted to go for it, to get back out there for Gith's sake. I needed help though. I couldn't do it on my own.
Monty was heading down the hall. Sam gave a whine and followed him.
'The cops,' I called after him. 'We've got to call them. And a gun. You got a gun?'
'Hang on a minute,' he said, waving for me to follow.
I walked after him into the kitchen, not really knowing what I was doing.
'Wait there,' he said and he was gone somewhere. I wasn't thinking straight, I truly wasn't. I started walking the floor, looking round for a phone or something. I wasn't sure what I was looking for.
The house was open plan. The kitchen blended into the dining room and the dining into the living room. I could see a leather chair in front of a big TV set. On a little table beside the chair was a glass and a jug of water, plus a big bottle of something — whisky, by the look of it. It was half empty. I took a couple of steps forward.
Monty was back but he didn't come from the kitchen. He was there ahead of me through a door near the TV. He had a box of Band-Aids in his hand, big ones.
'Here,' he said. 'Get your shirt off.'
I did what he said, looked at the hole in my shoulder. It was still bleeding. He came up close. I could smell the whisky, strong on his breath. He pulled the backing off a Band-Aid and pressed it over the hole.
'Where's your gun?' I said.
'Gun?'
'Yeah — you've got a gun. Where is it?'
'In a cupboard in the back room.'
'Get it. For Christ's sake.'
Before he could answer, his mobile rang.
'Shit!' he said, turning away, looking for it. It was on the floor by the chair. He picked it up. Weird, I thought. Somebody calling this late.
Monty checked the ID and then answered the call.
'Yeah?' He listened for a while with a frown on his face. Then he looked at me and rubbed the side of his head with his free hand like he was trying to clear it. 'What? Oh, come on, mate.' He turned and walked slowly away out of the room. Sam followed him.
'Don't be bloody stupid.' Monty's voice, getting softer as he moved away.
I stood there, kind of dazed. Like I said, I wasn't thinking straight. Part of me was in a complete panic but another part felt calm, like I was looking down from a long way off. I knew there was something weird going on with Monty but I couldn't make any connections to figure out what it was.
I took another Band-Aid out of the box and pulled the backing off, tried to get the thing over the cut on my hand. I made a mess of it — it got stuck to itself and wouldn't come undone. I stood staring at it.
Monty was back, carrying a shotgun. Thank Christ for that!
'Is it loaded?' I asked.
'Sure.'
I held out my hand. 'Give it here.'
'No, mate. No way.' He shook his head.
'I need it, Monty. Gith's out there and . . .' Something about him — the look on his face — stopped me. He didn't believe me. Here I was coming to his house with blood all over me and he didn't believe what I was saying. And he wasn't going to give me the gun. He wasn't going to help at all.
'We'll sort it out,' he said. 'Just hang on in there.'
And then I saw — I knew what it was all about. My skin went cold.
'Kocher. That was him on the phone. Right?'
'Sit down, mate,' he said. 'Stay cool. It's just a mistake. A misunderstanding. We can sort it out.'
'What the fuck's going on? Is he a mate of yours?'
'He's my sister's boy.'
'Sister?' Christ, the blind woman in Katawai. 'I never knew you had a sister.'
'Not something I talk about much. She ran away when she was eighteen. I was just a kid. Never saw her for years. Then Pete turned up. They were in Katawai for a while until he decided to move up here.'
'And?' I still didn't get it. None of it made sense.
'And nothing. He's family. We've done a bit of hunting, that's all.'
Sam, I thought. Sam and Blackie. That day. There were three dogs there. There was Sam in the back of Monty's ute and that other dog in the grey Camry and then Kocher's dog, Blackie, in the van. Blackie didn't bark though, did he? And Sam didn't bark at Blackie. Only at the dog in the Camry. Because Sam and Blackie knew each other. They'd been hunting together.
'The day Anneke went missing. You knew he was there getting gas, didn't you?'
He looked at me, then away. 'Yeah. I knew. We'd been up at the lake checking out the old hide.'
'You saw her get into his van.'
'Nah.' He shook his head again. 'There's no way he did it. He's not that sort. He's a good bloke. You know, a bit wild but. I was just trying to keep him out of trouble.'
'So you made up some crap about her getting into a white wagon.'
'It was Mavis gave me that idea.'
'Jesus, Monty!'
'Sorry, mate.'
Sam whined then. He stood up and gave a little bark and moved towards the door.
'Pete?' Monty said. 'We're in here.' He moved aside to let Kocher in. Except that it wasn't Kocher. It was Gith.
We stared at each other and in that second I saw Monty tense like he was going to do something with the gun. I just went for him. I had to. I got my hands round the shotgun and twisted it in his grip. I was bigger than him and stronger and it wasn't hard to get it off him. I'd forgotten about Sam, though. He went straight for me, hitting me like a sack of spuds, sinking his teeth into the top of my leg. I fell. I still had the shotgun but he was in too close for me to do anything with it. I tried to hit him on the head with the butt. I couldn't get the angle right.
'Call him off! Call him off!' I yelled, but Monty just stood there doing nothing. The pain in my leg was unbelievable.
Suddenly Gith was there on the other side of me, her hands on the gun. It was waving about. Monty made a move like he was trying to get it too. I let go. Gith swung the weapon up and around. She pumped a shell into the breech and then she pressed the muzzle against Sam's side and pulled the trigger. There was a wet thud and the dog exploded. Blood and hair and God knows what went everywhere.
'Jesus!' Monty screamed.
I heard the pump of the gun again. The spent shell dropped on the floor beside me.
'Gith! Don't!' I yelled.
/>
Monty was covered in blood. We both were. Most of it was Sam's. The dog was pretty much cut in half. Most of its ribcage and belly were gone, its back legs connected only by the blown-out bones of its spine. Its head and shoulders were twitching though, and each twitch seemed to drive its teeth further into my leg. I grabbed its jaws and started to pull them apart.
'Christ, girl.' Monty's hands were shaking. He had them out towards Gith, trying to calm her. She was breathing hard. She had the gun trained on his chest.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' he said. 'It's me. Your old mate, Monty.'
I got Sam's jaws open, threw what was left of him aside. It was then that Peter Kocher stepped into the doorway. The shot would have warned him but the sight of all that blood must have freaked him for a second. He steadied himself against the doorjamb.
I could see it all in slow motion. The barrel of his gun coming up and around, levelling on Gith. His eyes wide and crazy. I could feel the yell of warning in my throat but it was coming out too slow.
She must have felt him there because suddenly she spun round on him and fired in the same second. He took most of the blast in his hands and forearms. His scream was drowned by the roar of her shotgun, and then his own went off. His left foot took the worst of that. He crumpled over it, hugging his forearms to him. His right hand was a pulpy mess.
Gith pumped the gun. Another shell dropped, a wisp of smoke trailing from it, and she was round again, covering Monty. He was looking shit scared now.
'What have you done, girl? Jesus.'
'He's a fucking killer, Monty,' I said. 'Believe it, for Christ's sake.'
I pulled off my belt and strapped it round my thigh in a tourniquet.
'Where's Wyett?' I said to Gith. 'Is he still out there?'
'Gith.'
Kocher started to scream with the pain. He was curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth. I crawled over to where he lay and put my foot against his side, pushed him over, away from his weapon. With the gun in my hands, I eased myself back into the room.
Monty was still just standing there.
'Get on the phone,' I said. 'Call 111.'
He stared at me for a second and then he started to move, pulling his mobile from the pocket of his dressing gown.
'Fucking bitch!' Kocher moaned. 'Fucking, fucking bitch! Look what she did to me. Oh Jesus!'
'Emergency, emergency,' Monty was saying. 'There's somebody shot here. He might be dying. And . . .'
'Yee-ha!' Wayne Wyett leapt into the doorway, rifle at the ready. He didn't stand a chance. She took him off at the knees.
12
I FINISHED UP in hospital in Palmy. There was an operation to try and fix the mess Sam had made of my leg, and after that they kept me in because there was a big risk of infection from all the bits of dog that had been flying around. Gith stayed with me the whole time. It felt weird waking up from the anaesthetic and seeing her there, the opposite of the old days. Kerry Ryan came in to talk to us and I told him everything: not just about Stock Road and the package but about how Gith had been attacked at the show and what I thought about Anneke Hesse. He listened but he didn't say much. It wasn't until Hemi came down a couple of days later that I found out what had happened.
The cops took Wyett's van to look it over and they were into his house and Kocher's place too. Wyett and Kocher were both alive and in the same hospital I was. They were in a lot worse state than me though. Wyett had lost half his leg and Kocher a bunch of fingers and toes. They were under arrest on drugs charges. So was Rick Parline. Close to a million dollars worth of P had been in that package. Parline had gone to Pakenga Valley and picked it up from Kocher. He still had it when the cops came calling.
'What about Monty?' I asked.
'Completely changed his tune, bro. Now he's telling everybody the van was there that day and that Kocher was driving.'
'Bastard. I thought he was a mate.'
Hemi shrugged. 'Misguided sense of family loyalty. It happens. I guess he got focused when he found out about the jail term.'
'Jail?'
'Making a false statement — maximum three years. Conspiring to defeat justice — seven years.'
'Jesus, will they charge him?'
'Don't know, bro. It's up to the boss. He seems pretty ropeable, though.'
'Ryan?'
'Yeah. Another thing he's talking about is charging Gith.'
'What?' I couldn't believe it. 'What with?'
'Attempted murder. Or grievous bodily harm.'
Jesus!
'They don't like citizens taking the law into their own hands,' Hemi said. 'They don't want to encourage vigilantes.'
'What about self-defence?'
'It's got to be reasonable force.'
'Christ, what was she meant to do? Look at her. She doesn't weigh fifty kilos.'
'I know, I know. I just wanted to warn you, eh.'
***
I WAS BACK home after four days. I wasn't sure whether we were going to be welcome in Te Kohuna or not. It turned out pretty well. The Old Man changed his mind about us. For one thing, he could brag about Gith instead of feeling ashamed of her, and I think, in a way, the fact that she had proved herself far from weak and defenceless made everybody start to see her in a new light. Did anyone stop thinking our relationship was a sick thing? Maybe they did. The family, at least, rallied round. We went out to the farm for lunch.
'Did you really shoot those guys?' Leece asked.
'Gith.'
'Boy, you're something,' Bill said.
She gave him a big grin.
'And it wasn't Moss Vield that killed that girl?' Ma asked.
'No, but they've got to prove it yet,' I said.
'Christ,' the Old Man chipped in. 'I knew as soon as they found that body that it wasn't him. No decent sheep farmer's going to leave an unburied corpse lying around. The blowflies would have a bloody field day.'
'Why's that?' Rachel asked.
'Because they lay eggs on the body and the maggots hatch and eat it, sweetheart. And then there gets to be more and more blowflies and then they go and lay eggs on the live sheep and the maggots eat them too. Flystrike, that's called.'
'Dad,' Joanne said, 'not while we're eating.'
'Don't be so bloody sensitive,' he told her. 'This is education.'
'Would the maggots eat me?' Rachel asked.
'If you didn't wash them off they would.'
'Yuk!'
It felt good to be there, with everyone round us. I wasn't entirely sure that I'd ever walk without a limp but that seemed a small price to pay for getting away from what we'd been through.
After we had eaten we went up to Bill and Leece's place to see the puppies. Gith wanted to hold them all.
'Would you like one?' Bill asked her.
She didn't say anything, just looked at him with her eyes shining. The puppy she had in her arms was licking her.
'That one?' Bill asked.
'Gith.'
'It's weaned near enough, so why don't you take it?'
***
IN THE END they arrested Wyett and Kocher for murder. They found a couple of Anneke's fingerprints in Wyett's van and more in Kocher's house. Then the two of them both cracked and started ratting on each other. It seemed Kocher had picked Anneke up and taken her back to his place, where he'd called Wyett. Then they'd driven her up into the bush at the top end of the valley. God knows what they did to her up there. It was Kocher's idea to set up Moss Vield. He'd planted the hair in his wagon and borrowed Monty's ute to take the body up to the back of the Vield farm. I guess Monty really saw the kind of nephew he had when he found out about that one. To add to his problems, the cops charged him with making a false statement, and he got a twelve-month suspended sentence. There was no more talk about charging Gith. Hemi came over one evening and told us they were dropping that idea. The three of us sat out on the verandah and watched the sun go down. Gith had the puppy asleep in her lap.
'I guess they figure they
'd have a major PR disaster on their hands,' I said.
'Could be, bro. But maybe just, like you said, reasonable force.'
'Wouldn't look too good arresting somebody who's basically caught the crims in a major murder case.'
'Right.'
'How about Moss?' I asked.
'Still that thing with his old man, eh.'
'And Billy Cleat?'
'Don't know. He's done a runner. Skipped parole. Kocher reckons they dumped him on Katawai Road, alive if not particularly well. Seems they had him out at that old house down that way. They knocked him round and he came up with some bullshit story about how you'd asked him to follow Parline. That's what made them think you were the guy that had paid a visit to Stock Road. And so . . .' He looked at me. He was trying to figure out how much of a bullshit story it really was.
'What about Mattie Barnes?' I asked, changing the subject.
'Well, that one's still a mystery. Kocher and Wyett both swear they never touched her.'
'I reckon I know where she is.'
'Where?'
'Up at the lake. In one of the gullies along Maungaiti Road.'
'How d'you figure this?' He was frowning at me.
'Just a feeling.'
'Ah, well.' He gave a kind of grin. 'A lot of feelings up that way.'
'You go there much?'
'Not if I can help it, bro. I don't like that taniwha, eh.'
The puppy gave a little squeal and Hemi turned.
'Cute little fella,' he said.
'Gith.'
'Has he got a name?'
'Gith.' A pause.
'Tell him what it is,' I said.
'Ken.' She laughed.