by Tina Clough
‘How … Oh, I know.’ I smile in Benson’s direction. ‘She said she was going to get Scruff out of the car, but she really wanted the get the knife. Very smart!’
‘No, I really went to put that third tracker on his car. You know, the one we got for free. But I couldn’t find it in the garage. I was going to get Scruff too, of course. But then I remembered how you made him drop the knife and I looked – and there it was, in the middle of the street, so I took it. I thought he might pick it up when he left.’
‘Where did you put it?’
‘On the floor downstairs, just by the connecting door to the garage. I only touched the very tip of the blade, in case of fingerprints.’
‘You’re a star, Dao, no doubt about it.’
Benson gives me a sharp look, alerted by the mention of three trackers. ‘May I ask why you bought trackers? Is there something I should know?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘There is nothing you should know. Nothing that’s relevant to this. Just let it go for now.’
He stares at me for a few moments and maybe he can read my face. If he starts pushing the issue, I could stall on giving him information; or that’s what he thinks. I tell him why I let John go and made sure he would come back. Benson nods that he understands why I did it, but I can see he would rather I had just called 111 straight away.
‘I need to get the drug guys involved. I told them earlier about someone hanging around your house and following you, and they know who we think it was. They’ve got the video from your CCTV system. They’ll be delighted to have it confirmed. It’s up to them how they proceed, but I guess they’ll go all out to locate him. They’ve been waiting for this for nearly two years.’
‘Maybe they can locate his boat? If he sailed it back from Tonga or wherever he went, he must have moored it somewhere.’
‘Yeah, but it’s one thirty-foot boat among hundreds up and down the coast. He’s probably repainted it to make it look different. It could be in some little bay way up in Northland. They’ve been doing regular checks on his old girlfriend’s place and his mum’s, but they’ll step it up now.’
Dao plays the recording of our conversation with John and the ten- second video.
‘Nice!’ says Benson. ‘He’s digging a fine hole for himself. Could you send me those recordings please?’
She promises to email them and tells him to drink his coffee, before it gets cold.
We set the alarms for the ground floor and go upstairs to bed as soon as Benson leaves. Inwardly I sigh. Another trial coming up with Dao as the only eyewitness; another period of media fame and endless repeats of her story. Maybe more fans trying to get to know her. On the plus side there is a solid bonus: Dao will finally feel safe. Once John is convicted, she will be out of danger; the threat she posed will be defunct. I will be able to relax my vigilance; I might even give the Glock back to Charlie.
Dao is on a high for some reason and jumps into bed as if it isn’t half-past three in the morning. She ought to be exhausted.
‘Aren’t you tired? Where did this sudden burst of energy come from? You make me feel old.’
‘Don’t know,’ she says and burrows under the blanket to get closer. ‘I feel good.’
She rearranges my arm, so she can tuck up the way she likes to. ‘You know what?’
I close my eyes. ‘No, I have no idea.’
‘I’m not scared of him now. I just hate him. In a quiet sort of way, you know? He’s just a nasty man and when you hit him he got a bruise and he was scared when I pointed the gun at him. And he really thought you might let me shoot him. That was great. Do you see what I mean?’
And I do. She has feared him ever since she escaped from the island. Bramville threatened to sell her to John and she believed him. And she knew without a doubt that he would sexually abuse her and kill her when he longer wanted her. She confidently expects them to get John. I hope she is right.
I tighten my arm around her and fall asleep.
Chapter twenty-one
We wake up exhausted on Sunday morning, when Scruff asks to be let out. The first thing we do is pack another picnic lunch.
‘We have to do it before we have breakfast,’ says Dao with her head in the fridge. ‘Before he takes off. Imagine spending the whole day walking around in the bush with nothing to eat!’
Her phone signals an incoming message and she dances around the kitchen. ‘They got him! They got him! It’s from Benson. The drug squad went to his mum’s house and there he was. Yay!’
Stuart moves just as we are starting breakfast. Abandoning porridge bowls and cups of coffee we grab the lunch bag and leave.
Just like yesterday he drives south on the motorway and turns off at the Papakura exit. The frustration of yesterday’s failed mission is still with me. This time we must do better.
‘If only we could follow him a bit closer this time, see which track he takes at that first fork.’
Dao shakes her head. ‘It wouldn’t work. We would have to be right behind him and he’d hear us.’
I know she is right, but yesterday’s wasted effort rankles.
We park the car in the same spot, a couple of hundred metres along the road from Stuart’s truck. I take the Glock from under the front seat, feel around for the holster and thread my belt though it while we walk down the road.
By late morning we have been up and down several tracks and found nothing. The rain stopped before we woke up this morning and it’s a nice day for a walk in the bush. The tracks are muddy in places, but nothing like as bad as I expected. I thought we might find footprints in some muddy spot, but there are enough dry portions to walk on. We see nothing to tell us if Stuart has walked up the track since the rainfall of last night. We find another convenient, but damp, log to sit on and have an early picnic lunch. If Stuart comes past and sees us, I hope he will assume we are harmless citizens minding our own business.
‘Is there any more juice?’ I ask, and Dao is reaching for the carton when we hear Scruff barking from a distance. I call to him and he barks twice, then nothing. Neither of us has realised that he is no longer messing around among the trees. A few minutes later I call again, but he just barks and stays where he is.
‘Something’s up. Let’s go and look.’
I don’t mention that this is exactly what he did when he found Dao. He barked twice in response every time I called him, but he stayed beside her, refused to move until I got there. We pack up our lunch and return to the track. When I call Scruff again, we get a bearing and continue, calling him at intervals. Suddenly his bark is very close. A nearly overgrown path branches off to the side, practically unnoticeable in the dense bush.
A couple of hundred metres in is an open space surrounded by manuka, with taller trees further back. There is a circle of ashes in the centre and on the far side of the open space sits Scruff in his guard position, straight up and watchful with his front paws together. Beside him lies a body. We walk slowly across the open space. Scruff stays where he is and watches us approach.
Hope lies on her back, dressed only in a dark blue T-shirt. One arm is flung out to the side, the other rests across her middle. Her knees are bent and folded to one side and her eyes are closed. I saw enough dead bodies in Afghanistan to know that she has probably been dead for forty-eight hours. Small leaves and dark seeds from the manuka trees are scattered over her grey skin; the T-shirt is wet.
Someone has scored lines on her body with something scalpel-sharp. Straight lines, like a drawing of a stick man. They start on her hands and feet, run along her limbs, disappear under the T-shirt. Two lines appear at the neckline and run up the sides of her neck and disappear into her hair. Another line around her face, close to the hairline and under the jaw.
I crouch beside her and peer into her half-curled left hand without touching her. There are cuts, deep cuts, on the inside of her fingers and one across her palm. At some stage she fought him and tried to grab the knife or scalpel or
whatever he used. Then I notice the narrow bracelet indentations around her wrists and ankles. The cut-lines start on the back of her hands, stop at the indentation on her wrists and then continue. He tied her to something with cord or cable ties, I think. I stand up and contemplate her position. He must have kept her somewhere not too far away. Did he put her body here, or did she escape and then collapse?
The sight is disturbing. What has been done to her amounts to torture of a sickening kind. There is no doubt he cut these lines while she was alive. Some are older than others; it has been done in stages, perhaps one limb at a time. I see smears where he wiped away the blood from the most recent cut down her right shin. Dao stands silent and pale beside me, unable to take her eyes off Hope’s body. I reach out and take her hand.
Her fingers tighten around mine and her voice is very quiet. ‘We must get someone here.’
I get my phone out; no signal. ‘Let’s go back to the big track. We’ll call the police as soon as we get reception.’
‘I don’t want her to be alone,’ says Dao. ‘We can’t leave her alone, Hunter. We can’t!’
‘We have to. Nobody knows where we are and I’m not leaving you here or letting you go alone.’
We walk away, and Scruff follows when we call him. Behind us Hope’s body lies in the shade of the trees, her skin grey and cold.
Back on the bigger track I tie my handkerchief around a branch. The little path is nearly invisible and might be hard to spot again. Quarter of an hour later we are in cell-phone range. Dao checks the tracking app and confirms that Stuart’s truck is still parked where we last saw it. I dial 111 and Dao taps my arm. ‘I’ll just go and have a pee.’
I am distracted by the need to listen to instructions about which emergency service I need and I don’t even notice on which side of the track she and Scruff go off.
The operator wants to know my name and address and phone number. She asks for directions to the place where we found Hope’s body. I say it will be easier to show the emergency services how to find it when they arrive, or perhaps they can get the GPS location from my phone. The operator insists on following protocol, so I enter into a detailed description of the tracks and the various branch points. Finally, she has enough information. She reads back what I have told her and asks us to wait on the road by the truck. I tell her the truck belongs to someone else, but I don’t mention Stuart’s name or that we know who it belongs to. I tell her that my car is parked further along.
I end the call and my focus swings back to where I am standing. Dao has not returned.
At first I don’t feel particularly concerned. I wait another couple of minutes and call her name, then I call Scruff; nothing. Now I am worried. I check my phone and see that I was talking to the emergency operator for eight minutes and I have stood here calling and listening for a few more. Something has happened. She could have got lost and gone off in the wrong direction; the alternative option fills me with dread. Whichever direction I take I might head away from, instead of towards her. Making a random choice is actually harder than trying to make a reasoned one. But I must start somewhere; I go downhill, back towards the road, calling out every now and then.
Nearly an hour later, after going back and forth on branching tracks, I get a call from the police. ‘We’ve found the truck and your car parked a bit further on. Where are you?’
I explain about a girl and a dog having wandered off and describe how to get to where my handkerchief marks the little path to the clearing where Hope lies.
‘Can we go through that again, please?’ says the cop. ‘Head up the track in front of the truck to where it forks, take the right-hand track? And then?’
We go through it again. I can do it now without thinking – it’s engraved on my brain.
‘My partner’s taking notes as I repeat things,’ he says at the end. ‘Now don’t you go and get lost too. Can you call us as soon as you find the girl and the dog? You’ll have my number in your call log.’
I think through my options. The cops will be on the other track, so whichever one Dao comes along either they or I should meet her or hear her. I will continue on the track heading away from the road, on an angle of forty-five degrees from the track where she went into the bush. I hope she is somewhere in the V-shaped area between.
The wind has come up and occasional clouds move past the sun, the smell of damp earth ever-present in the shade. I am about to stop and call her name again, when I notice the trees thinning in front of me. I am at one end of an oblong clearing, about twice the size of the one where Hope’s body lies. The track goes lengthwise through the open area. At the far side is a fence, an incongruous wooden fence running alongside ten metres of track in the middle of the wilderness.
Why would somebody build a fence along one side of a small expanse of mud? Into my mind springs the image of old men playing boules on hard-packed bare ground under chestnut trees in France. I shake my head and jog on, occasionally whistling for Scruff, hoping he will hear me and bark in response.
And then I hear her, a distant scream far behind me. I run back along the path; my mind constructs terrifying images of violence and danger. This was not a call to locate me, it was a scream of pain or fear. I pause a couple of times, hold my breath, listen intently. But there is nothing more, no sound apart from the wind ruffling the tree canopy above me and the pounding of my pulse in my ears. I pull the Glock out of the holster and run on with it in my hand, ready for a confrontation.
I emerge into the open area with the wooden fence and come to an abrupt halt. Stuart stands just where the fence starts at my end of the clearing with Dao beside him. Her hands are tied behind her and a black hood covers her head. He stares at me. His mouth opens, but he says nothing, just stands there. His face is red, and he is panting so hard it sounds like grunting. One of his hands is behind her back and he has a small black bag hitched over his shoulder.
I need to understand more before I act. Is there a weapon in the hand I cannot see? His total focus is on the Glock; he has not moved since I erupted out of the bush. Across the couple of metres between us I see panic in his eyes.
A taut line of fear down the back of my throat; I know this sensation well. It sharpens your senses, makes it possible to see every detail, to instantly assess a situation. That intense focus can be the difference between life and death. Nothing must go wrong now.
‘I’m here, Dao. Don’t do anything.’
From inside the black hood, which looks like a jacket or a jersey, she says, ‘Hunter!’ with huge relief in her voice, but I know nothing is certain. The look of exhausted desperation on Stuart’s face tells me there is no point in second-guessing what he might do. When there is no way out, cornered men do destructive and useless things.
‘OK, mate, let her go now,’ I say, trying to sound calm. ‘Just let her walk towards me and nothing will happen to you.’
Dao stands completely still. Stuart is having a real problem with his breathing; sweat runs freely down his face and neck. I wonder if he is going to have a heart attack.
Just to one side and behind him a small movement catches my eye. Bubbles break the surface of the expanse of clay. My first thought is that I am mistaken, it can’t have happened. I focus on it for a second and see slow ripples spreading. This is not an area of bare, hard ground; it is a weird pond of some kind with a thick layer of brown scum completely covering its surface. I have never seen anything like it.
Dao says, ‘He has a knife.’
It is just the kind of composed and clever thing I have come to expect from her. The knife must be in the hand I cannot see.
Stuart drags her sideways and backs up a couple of steps. They are now on the other side of the fence, the side where the pond is. I can’t see how he holds her. He could be holding on to whatever binds her hands together or he might have tied her to himself. And where is the knife? Is he holding it at her back, ready to stab her or is it in his pocket, or in the bag? Despit
e the scum layer being level with the ground, I think I can make out the edges of the pond. It is slightly ovoid, about the same size as an average bedroom. If he takes another couple of steps sideways, they will go into the water. If her hands are tied and I can’t get to her fast enough she will drown. Does he know there is water there, concealed by the scum on top? Is he planning some desperate action if I threaten him? His eyes are still fixed on me. He knows he is trapped and whatever he does, this will end badly. I must act fast. To distract him I throw the Glock to one side; it slides along the track. His eyes swivel to follow it – and that’s my chance.
I close the gap between us in a couple of long strides. He reacts by dragging Dao towards the edge of the pond. She is resisting and acting as a brake; his hand stays behind her back. She has no idea of the danger just beside them; any second now she might make a move and imperil them both. He takes another step to the side and I know his right foot is going to go into the pond. There is no way of guessing if it is shallow or deep. His foot goes through the layer of scum and he tilts, unbalanced by the unexpected absence of firm ground. I leap forward and grab Dao’s upper arm. ‘I’ve got you Dao.’
Stuart’s centre of gravity has shifted too far – the only thing that keeps him from falling in is his hold on Dao’s hands behind her and the fact that I have grabbed her from the other side. I push Dao, use her as a battering ram and push once, sudden and hard, without letting go. He tilts further out. I lift her up by her arm and it takes him by surprise; he loses his grip and falls in. I step back and pull Dao away from the edge and rip the black covering from her head.
What happens next is the stuff of nightmares. Stuart’s arms flail, his mouth is wide open, big slow bubbles rise to the surface around him and the stench from hell comes at us in a big wave. The scum washes over his head, into his mouth and eyes. Without making a sound he disappears.
We are choking and coughing, our eyes are watering. We stumble away, half bent over, coughing and gagging with the taste of the stench etching our throats. I have never smelled anything like it: rotting flesh and methane. I wipe tears from my eyes and turn around. The bubbles have stopped and the thick layer of scum slides slowly across and fills the gap caused by the disturbance. The ground around the edges of the pond is damp now, darker, but it will dry and there will be nothing to show that anything happened.