by Nick Spill
They heard a groan, then the door was flung open. Wiremu smiled politely, quite in contrast to the scene behind him.
“Thank god you’ve come, Henry! And your good friend Doctor Johnson.” Wiremu had been at a loss as to how to handle Hei Hei.
Hei Hei had a rugby sock stuffed with ice stuck to his forehead. Water dribbled down his face and mixed with the blood that had oozed out of his left ear. The blood formed an ugly dark stain across the sofa.
Mel knelt down to inspect the damage. She had barely noticed him at the pub last Friday. She turned to Henry, threw him the car keys and instructed him to bring in her Gladstone bag from the trunk.
When he returned, Wiremu had fetched Mel a bowl of hot water and she was cleaning his bruised face with a cloth.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” Henry asked as he saw the telephone in pieces and a motorcycle chain spread across the carpet. “Oh.” He pulled a face at the blood.
“You need to get that seen to.” Mel held a small stainless steel torch that shone in the remains of Hei Hei’s left ear. “You took some hit. How did it happen?” She broke out a small swab from her bag and started to clean the dried blood around the outer ear.
Hei Hei stopped groaning. If he kept his eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling, the room would not spin.
“These two Chinese jokers barged in and they took Moana.”
“What?” Wiremu leapt to his feet. “Moana was here? Moana Wilson? My niece?”
Mel shot a glance at Henry who appeared shocked. Hei Hei thought for a moment before he answered.
“Yeah.”
“You mean she was here? Living with you?”
Hei Hei could not tell if there was more disbelief than anger in Wiremu’s question.
“You were living with my Moana? Behind my back? I mean, right under my nose?” Again there was a plaintive silence from Hei Hei. “Shit! No wonder you never let me come over. You always picked me up. You cunning Maori bastard. Did Hone know this?”
“Yeah.” Hei Hei could not lie about the dead.
“Jesus fucking cow! Oh. Excuse my French.” Wiremu turned to Mel who was still feeling around the mushy remains of the outer ear. Hei Hei’s eyes were fixed on a spot in the ceiling. He prayed that Wiremu would not hit him.
“Who were they?” Wiremu sucked in air as he paced the room, ignoring Henry and the doctor as his eyes bored down on his friend.
“I told you, Chinese.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“They had chucks, you know, like your little nephews up north.”
“Is that what hit you?” Mel asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re lucky to be conscious. Another inch this way and you could’ve been blinded.” She stood up and surveyed the field dressing wrapped around Hei Hei’s head.
“I can’t do anymore. You’ll have to go to the ER. You can make up a story how you fell out of the bath. I’ll go with you and see what I can do. No promises.”
“Gee, thanks, Doc.” Hei Hei held the soggy rugby sock in his hands and lowered his eyes to the floor. He dared not look at Wiremu.
“Where is she? You fucking little child molester! I trusted you.”
“Steady, Wiremu. She’d only been here a couple o’ days. I was showing her the city. She’s in trouble with her parents and I thought I was doing the right thing by having her stay here. You know? I haven’t touched her. I swear. I was going to tell you, then Hone got killed. It’s not what you think.” He was finally caught in Wiremu’s glare. The room started to spin again.
“I don’t have to think,” Wiremu said between his teeth.
“They’re from that take-out place on Ponsonby. Opposite the Three Lamps. You know the place?”
“The Dirty Wok?” Henry chipped in.
“No. It’s the Mighty Wok. I know those guys. The Wongs. Vicious lot. Teach some Maoris Kung Fu and stuff.” Wiremu rubbed his chin and noticed for the first time Hei Hei’s bruised and inflamed jaw. “Ha! They kicked you in the mouth too! Serves you right, fella.”
He went into the bedroom to see if he could dig out any of Moana’s possessions. There were some of her panties in the bathroom and an old suitcase half unpacked next to Hei Hei’s unmade bed. Yes! He didn’t have to think too much with Hei Hei.
“It’s odd, isn’t it? First Plum Blossom, now Moana,” Henry mused, out loud.
“Plum Blossom?” Hei Hei tried to shake his head, but he felt as if his brain had been knocked loose.
“Plum Blossom,” Mel repeated. “What about her?” She snapped her Gladstone bag shut and stood up.
“They said something about wanting a Plum Blossom back.”
“Who?” Wiremu stood in the doorway.
“The slit eyes,” Hei Hei moaned.
“Plum Blossom. Plum Blossom,” Wiremu slowly chanted. He looked at Mel then at Henry as if they were responsible for the second abduction. “My brother is murdered, Plum Blossom is stolen away. Now my little niece is gone. Terry the Turk must be behind Plum missing, but Moana?”
“Perhaps these Chinese think you’ve got Plum, or you’re working for this Terry,” Mel offered.
“I don’t see how these Chinks would connect them up. I have to pay a visit to Terry’s house. I know where he lives.”
“Oh. We did get called in by a cop called Grimble over the fire,” Mel began. She quickly informed Wiremu of what she and Clovis had told the inspector.
“Shit. I’m still not safe. I reckon they’ll be expecting me at the tangi. I can’t even say good-bye to my brother. Give me the keys to the Morrie.” If Hei Hei had deceived him about Moana, what else had he lied about?
Wiremu lost sight of Mel’s BMW as she sped to Auckland Hospital. As his car made its slow ascent up Bassett Road, an unmarked police van came up the hill and parked opposite the driveway to his house.
• • •
Hei Hei called Terry after he slipped out of his cubicle to a phone booth on the same floor. Mel and Henry had left him in the curtained room in the Emergency Room after Mel had talked to one of the doctors in charge. Hei Hei used his good ear to listen to the cheerful message on Terry’s answering machine.
“You’ve got his brother coming over to see you this afternoon. He’s looking for Plum Blossom, and he’s looking for his niece Moana who was taken away this morning by two Chinese thugs from the Mighty Wok. He’s really angry and will stop at nothing. Watch out.”
Hei Hei hung up and hobbled back to the cubicle.
• • •
The Morris Minor backfired as he switched off the engine. The widow Wadman who lived opposite Mr. Turner peeked through her lace curtains and muttered to her poodle: “My god, Ruffles! It’s a Maori!” She watched Wiremu kick the car. Ruffles barked at the Maori.
With the car finally silent, Wiremu pressed the buzzer by the intercom in the wall. There was no reply. He tried again. Nothing. Wiremu could not climb over the iron gate, so he walked along the wall until he came to a large oak tree that overhung the property from the road. He jumped up to grab a branch with both hands. He swung his feet up to the branch and pulled himself over the wall, missing the jagged pieces of glass stuck on top. He fell onto a Norfolk pine seedling that broke in two. At least it was not a native tree, he consoled himself as he stood up and wiped the pine needles from his trousers.
Wiremu breathed in the fresh damp grass of the cut lawn. He noted that each window had thin metal security strips across them. Wiremu thought someone could have seen him go over the wall. His car hardly fit in. An old lady could be calling the police right now and giving them his description. He jogged to the back door and patio.
There was an outside chance Plum could be here. He was angry with Hei Hei for what he had done to Moana, and he was annoyed with himself for bringing Plum and Clovis into his life. If he could find Plum, then that might lead him to Moana.
He knelt at the back of the house and noticed two long narrow windows set just above the concrete. There was no sign of any detection dev
ice. He stood up and kicked them in, breaking the silence as the glass hit the basement floor.
Plum Blossom sat on her cot and rocked back and forth. Her knees were under her chin and her arms were wrapped around her legs. She jumped when she heard the very faint cracking of glass. A wild hope flashed through her mind that the Wong brothers had come to rescue her. Then there was silence. Plum could hear her own heart beat. She could not bear the tension anymore. She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Let me out! Let me out!” And gasping for breath, “I’m in here! Help! I’m here!” She ran to the door and started to pound it with her little fists as she screamed again. For a few seconds she dared to think someone would set her free. Her ears rang from her screams and she hit her forehead and her fists against the door.
Wiremu did not know if his ears were playing tricks on him, but he thought he heard a tiny muted scream, then another followed by a dull pounding. He could not see the front gate. Wiremu sensed that he had moments before the police would arrive. He sprinted across the lawn to the back wall, jumped up to grasp the top with his hands and pulled himself over, falling into a heap of rotting leaves. He checked he had no cuts, there was no glass on top of the wall. He ambled down a garden path that led to a driveway between a wooden house and an old brick garage that was covered in vines.
He could hear police shouting as they ran around Terry’s house’ and there was a dog barking. A big dog. He walked to the garage, opened a side door and spotted an old black bicycle. He checked the tires.
Wiremu turned the bicycle around, wheeled it out of the garage and down the driveway. He took a sharp right at the street to avoid any police cars. His knees buckled outward because the seat was too low, but Wiremu pedaled as if he was on his morning bike ride. He promised himself he would return this rusty bicycle to its owner. It went just as fast as the Morris Minor, downhill, only quieter.
They could have the Morris Minor. It was registered in Hei Hei’s name anyway, and that blood-caked vicious bastard deserved to be picked up after he got back from the hospital. With Hei Hei out of the way, the rendezvous would go smoothly.
Plum Blossom sat by the door next to the crushed polystyrene cup. She thought she heard muffled voices and a dog barking, but could not trust her own senses. She was too exhausted to call out for help. Her fists were bruised and her throat was sore from her screaming. She put her face in her hands and finally gave way to tears.
Wiremu stood the bicycle by a gate at the back of Mel’s house. He walked through the neighbor’s garden and banged on Mel’s back door. He assumed there would be a police car outside her front gate. He tried the door after a short interval. It was locked. As he would have to wait for them to return, he stepped into the garden and plucked a yellow grapefruit from the tree. He sat down on the steps to peel it. With the cool bitter juice on his lips, Wiremu ate for the first time in over twenty-four hours. He held the empty peel in his hands and listened to the song of a blackbird.
• • •
Hei Hei sat in a small cubicle in the emergency room. The pain in his ear was now tolerable. The bleeding had stopped, and he could hear with his right ear well enough to listen to the registrar talk to another doctor about how they should file a police report over his injury. Mel and Henry had left him to fend for himself. All he needed now were a bunch of cops to storm in and ask him awkward questions. Anything he said would go into that wretched Pakeha computer.
First he needed a beer, then he had to find Moana. He needed more than one beer, he needed many beers; that would fix his head and lubricate his creative juices for ideas on how to handle those Chinese boys. And he had to avoid Wiremu.
He put his shirt back on, peeked through the curtain and, seeing the way was clear, strode out of the hospital, his chest puffed up, his belly tucked in and a large white bandage wrapped around his head. He ignored a police car that raced up the ambulance driveway to the Emergency Room at the opposite end of the building.
• • •
Terry rushed to his house with John as soon as the police called him. A large longhaired Maori male had climbed over his wall. Although there were hundreds of Maoris that fit that description in Auckland, Terry could narrow the field down to one suspect, Wiremu Wilson.
When Terry stepped out of his car, there were three police vehicles parked in his driveway and a dog squatting in the middle of the grass. The handler, in uniform, held the leash and looked the other way. That’s all he needed, dog turds on his immaculate lawn. At the back of his house, Inspector Grimble squatted by two ground-level windows that had been smashed.
“You seem to have an intruder.” The inspector stood up. He turned to face Mr. Turner then Mr. Eustace.
“I’m sure you scared him off doing your job, Inspector.” Terry smiled back. How had the cops broken into his property? Only his electronically tuned box could open the gate from the outside. He hoped one of the cops had gone over the top then manually opened it before overriding the electrical system.
“Why would a large curly topped Maori want to break into your nice peaceful home?” Grimble kept his eyes locked on both characters.
“Probably after the family silverware.” Terry shrugged his shoulders. John maintained his sneer. The plainclothes detective next to Grimble snickered, then saw John’s cold blue eyes.
The inspector raised his eyebrows then bent down again to look through the low windows.
Terry stood there wishing the cops would disappear off his property, from the whole bleeding Island of Aotearoa. God bless ’em.
“Let’s go in and see if he’s taken anything,” Grimble suggested, like a good sport.
Terry did not hesitate. It was part of the game. If he denied the inspector entry and threw him off his grounds, he knew the cop bastard would come back with or without a warrant and search the place from top to bottom. After all, if Wiremu Wilson was sniffing around for something special, Grimble would love to find out about it too. And what of Plum Blossom? Had she heard the breaking of glass? What was she doing now? Terry knew the cell was virtually soundproof. He had locked John in there once.
“John, I think I left a porno magazine under the bed, could you check?” Terry locked the door on John who went berserk. John had tried to break down the door. Terry had not even heard a whimper upstairs or outside.
“Yes. You’re welcome, Inspector. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of giving you a tour. My wife collects antiques, you know.”
“She’s out, I take it.”
“Yes.” Terry smiled a little too hard. He was not going to tell him she had been sent to Sydney with her brother to negotiate the final details of shipping a container load of sinsemilla hidden in Victorian furniture.
“You really must show me the basement. I want to see if we can get any prints from inside the window.” The inspector sounded concerned.
Terry played along. He knew the inspector was desperate for any clue as to what he was up to.
“I’m considering excavating under my house. You know, increase the market value. How much did this job cost?”
“Oh, too much. You know how contractors are. They always take so much longer than they estimate and finish sticking you.” Terry smiled back. The lying shit! He already had a two-level house with room for two cars underneath for his miserable little Honda and his wife’s seven-year-old Morris. But how could he contradict the inspector? He had considered blowing it up last year.
Terry led the inspector down the thickly carpeted steps to the basement, followed by John, who always caught his head on the beam at the bottom of the stairs and muttered, “Fuck it!”
“You must have been on really bad terms with your contractor, or did you do it to cut costs?” Grimble asked as Terry led him through the basement.
“What?” Terry scrunched up his eyebrows. Then it clicked. He’s spotted it. He’s got a bleedin’ tape measure in his head.
“The basement is smaller than upstairs. Usually basements follow the outsi
de wall plan. Yours doesn’t. Curious.”
Terry stood relaxed, hands by his side, smiling back at the smart cop. The bastard contractor has cheated me, he cursed.
Plum Blossom awoke and peeled herself off the floor. Her hands were so sore they throbbed. She had dreamt of Clovis breaking through the window, coming to rescue her. In the dream she saw where she was imprisoned, an abandoned warehouse in Ellerslie, in an underground cell.
Plum tried to remember more details of the warehouse and wondered if this was an example of her being psychic, of astral traveling. Maybe she could travel out of her body, see Clovis and lead him back to where she lay. She often flew in her dreams. Perhaps if she went to sleep again she would fly out of her cell, to freedom.
She stood up and swayed as the blood rushed to her head. Stretching her arms out, she yawned loudly and burped, then looked around the cell. It was exactly the same. Plum decided she had to examine minutely every surface of the room, to search for some clue as to her whereabouts.
Plum could not beat her fists on the door, who would hear her anyway? Between the wood paneled wall and the door was a matching wood panel. She tapped the doorsill. Solid. No gap between the door and panel. No. A small gap, but padded inside. Plum bent down and found her plastic knife. She attempted to dig into the padding but nothing would come loose.
Then she noticed there was no doorknob and no keyhole. She returned to tapping around the door, listening to any change in the sound.
Terry wanted to get upstairs as quickly as possible. He had John down there with him, and that seemed a stupid idea now. What if the inspector’s sidekick was upstairs nosing around in his study? Not that Terry had anything incriminating lying around. Still, you never know what one seemingly innocent observation could lead to.
• • •
Sergeant Cadd tried to pull open a drawer. It was stuck so he gave it a tug. The drawer flew out of the bureau onto the floor with a crash. He hurriedly picked it up and slid it back into its tight slot. Turning around he listened for any movement from the basement, then Cadd gently shut the lid of the bureau and tiptoed to the door of the study. He tripped over a small book that he had not seen fly out of the drawer. He picked it up and noted it was an old textbook on acids. Cadd heard footsteps and the door of the basement swing open. He could not find a place to hide the book so he slipped it inside his jacket.