by Tina Clough
We stop on a gravel road as far as you can go by car into the north-eastern corner of the ranges. As the crow flies it’s not far from the Scum Pond.
Charlie lets me out first. I shut the door behind me before we walk around to Will’s side. He stands like a monolith beside the car; his eyes are covered; he has no idea what is in front of him. He has said nothing, not a single word, since we got into the car. You have to give him full credit for being cool.
‘I’ve got you covered. Just stay as you are,’ says Charlie pleasantly and I search him. He has a wallet, a phone, his car keys and a handkerchief, nicely ironed; no messy collection of random junk in his pockets to ruin the lines of his suit. I chuck his possessions on the back seat.
‘OK, Will. We’re going to leave you here. You might be able to walk to the nearest house before it gets dark, if you walk really fast. We won’t tell you which direction is closest to civilisation. This way it will be more of an adventure for you. We’ll take your shoes and leave them with your car – somewhere. What I want you to think about is this. You took a blameless girl and scared her so much that she jumped from your car and I will never forgive you – so I am punishing you. The police have the drug barrel now and you will never contact me again. If you do, I will kill you. I hope you understand that I mean this?’
He nods his mummy head and says a muffled ‘yes’.
‘Now stand absolutely still until you can no longer hear the car.’
Charlie bends, undoes his shoelaces and taps his ankle. ‘Lift your foot.’
He steps out of his shoes. She puts her plastic water bottle beside him. ‘We’re leaving you a water bottle that is more than half full as an act of kindness. You’ll find a stream or a ditch somewhere to fill it up as you walk.’
While she makes a five-point turn on the narrow road I get out my phone and take a photo of Will standing there with his head covered in bandages, shoeless and helpless in the wilderness. I pick up the shoes and get in beside Charlie and we drive away.
I send the photo of Will to Dao as soon as we are in cell-phone range, then hold the phone up so Charlie can see the picture. She laughs so hard she has to stop the car and wipe her eyes.
‘God, Hunter, isn’t this the greatest? If someone had asked me to come up with the most awesome revenge I could think of, I’d never have thought of this. He’ll never get to those houses down on the flat before it gets dark. It’s a hell of a long way.’
‘Oh no, not a chance. It’s miles away and he’s got no shoes. And if he starts out in the wrong direction he’ll get nowhere, because the road ends a bit further on, which I didn’t tell him.’
Dao reacts with total enthusiasm; her text reply is full of exclamation marks.
Dusk is falling as we make our way back to the North Shore. The physio clinic is empty and dark. Charlie waits while I unlock the SUV and we drive in convoy to Castor Bay, where we leave Will’s car at the beach with his wallet, shoes and handkerchief inside. I take the tracking device out of the seat pocket, lock the car and put the keys on the ground below the driver’s door. Before we drive away, I take a photo of the car showing the number plate, which is nicely lit by the headlights on Charlie’s car.
‘Why did you take his phone?’ asks Charlie as we head back to the hospital carpark. ‘Are you going to keep it?’
‘I might give it to Benson if I can figure out a way of doing it anonymously. His mate in Organised Crime might be interested in what’s on it. Or I might chuck it out the window on the way home. I don’t know yet.’
Visiting time is over, but I wangle my way in and manage to see Dao for five minutes. She loves the description of Will standing on the road not knowing which way to start his long, shoeless walk. Which is exactly why I did it this way. It gives her a nice feeling of having been avenged, and it makes Will seem ridiculous and less dangerous.
Matt answers the phone and says not to worry about Scruff, he is fine and the twins love having him there, so I go home. The house feels empty without Dao and Scruff. I turn lights on and check my laptop for emails, turn the TV on. Nothing engages my interest. I don’t feel like making a meal; I am at a loss.
When the phone buzzes I pick it up without checking who is calling. Unfortunately, it is my mother. If I had checked who the caller was, I wouldn’t have answered. I try to be nice, but when she starts in on Dao again, with veiled suggestions that she is freeloading to avoid having to work, I lose it.
‘Listen carefully, Mum. I am very serious. This might be the last time you and I speak, much less meet. It’s up to you. And I mean that. I have put up with your nasty comments and innuendoes for nearly two years now and I’ve had enough. Either you accept that Dao is my partner and that nothing you say or do will turn me against her, or you and I have no further contact. Willow and Matt and Plum all love and admire Dao. Dad thinks she is marvellous. So learn to accept her or I will never pick up a call from you again. You can send me an email if you feel like telling me, sometime in the future, that you will treat her as part of the family.’
I press the off button so hard my finger nearly goes right through the phone. Somehow or other this burst of anger is exactly what I needed. I have been snapped out of my strange mood. I turn the sound up on the TV to have some company and make myself a late meal. Halfway through making a toasted cheese sandwich I have an idea.
While I eat, I research police stations and their addresses. In my head I replay the conversation I had with Benson about his colleague who helped with the drug-barrel media statement, try to recall his name. I have his number on my phone, but no name attached. It comes to me as I’m getting ice cream out of the freezer – his name is Chilton.
I print the photo of Will standing shoeless on the road with his head wound with the elastic bandage and the one I took of his car at Castor Bay. There are no envelopes in the house, but I make one out of a brown paper bag and Sellotape it together. I wrap Will’s phone in several layers of paper towels, put the lot in my home-made envelope and tape it shut. No way is anyone going to prove I sent this unless they do it with fingerprints. I type the address to the central police station in Auckland, add ‘ATTENTION: CHILTON’, print it and tape it to the envelope.
I sleep like a log and wake when Dao sends a text at 5.58 the next morning: Are you awake. I miss you. I’m going to have a shower now so I’m ready to go home as soon as they let me.
I reply and say that I am awake, and I miss her too.
At midday I walk into Dao’s hospital room with a complete change of clothes and her hairbrush in an otherwise empty bag.
‘Is Scruff in the car?’
‘We’re picking him up on the way home – Matt’s been looking after him. We’ve been invited for lunch. It’s Sunday and Willow is home. I’m glad I brought the bag – you’ve managed to accumulate a lot of stuff while you’ve been here.’
‘Amazing,’ she says. ‘Presents from Kristen and Charlie and flowers and my ripped clothes and the red top – thank you for bringing that, it made me feel good when I woke up and saw it. That giant box of chocolates is from Tama, he called too – the chocolates have black pepper and chilies and all kinds of strange things in them. They were delivered by courier, right to my room. He arranged it specially – the nurses were so impressed!’
‘What did you tell Tama?’
‘Nothing much. He called to see how I was and to talk about having us for dinner. Remember they invited us? I told him I’d fallen and got concussed. I didn’t tell him any details, but he’s calling later, so we have to make something up. I got out of it by saying I had to stop talking because the nurse wanted me for something. God, it gets so complicated with all these secrets. We should go and live somewhere nobody knows us and have no more secrets.’
Lunch at Willow’s is a repeat performance of keeping track of what we can say and not say. We discuss what happened at the house when Will took Dao, and our experiences in the Hunua ranges. I manage to keep to the basics abo
ut how we tracked Stuart and found Hope’s body. Willow tries to ferret out more; as usual she can sense when I am hiding something. I stall her successfully, with some help from Dao, and divert her attention by asking her to let me know when a date has been set for Hope’s funeral.
‘Have you seen Noah since she was found? How is he coping?’
‘I’ve only talked to him on the phone. He’s not good. I honestly won’t be surprised if he has a breakdown. Those poor parents must be going through hell.’
On the way home, I stop at a Post Shop in Takapuna, buy stamps and mail the envelope. We get home late afternoon; Scruff is ecstatic to be home again and Dao is exhausted. She lies down on our bed to have a rest and falls asleep; I lie down beside her and watch her sleep.
The house feels right again.
Three days later, Dao has her first day with no headache and Benson calls and asks if can come by on this way home. We are sitting on the balcony with coffee and black-pepper chocolates when he arrives carrying a bunch of flowers nearly as big as Dao.
‘This is nice,’ he says and sinks into a wicker armchair. ‘I’ve never seen you use the balcony before.’
‘We couldn’t – not while one of those murdering bastards was still on the loose. We’re like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery here. Now that John’s been caught, we can relax. There’s no one left that Dao can ID.’
We talk about how Dao is feeling, and he tells her to be careful not to knock her head. She smiles and says I keep nagging at her not to run down the stairs, so there is no way she can do herself any harm. He looks like a man with a secret, but it’s hard to tell with Benson; I wait patiently. When he is leaving, he pretends to remember something. He’s a lousy actor.
‘Oh yes,’ he says casually. ‘I know what I meant to tell you. Something really weird happened today. Chilton called. You remember Chilton? Someone sent him a cell phone and a photo of a guy with his head wrapped up like a mummy standing on some deserted shingle road without any shoes. And another photo of a car parked at a beach.’
His is looking at me for a reaction. I hope I look vaguely interested, nothing more. ‘What a weird thing. What do you think it means?’
Benson shifts his focus from me to Dao, but she is doing her blank look. Her face reveals nothing.
‘We don’t know.’ The corners of his mouth twitch slightly. ‘The car belongs to a company called GBA. The sole director of the company is a William Scott. One of Chilton’s men identified the beach where the car photo was taken from a sign you can see just in front of the car – it’s Castor Bay. Chilton is visiting Scott tomorrow. He sent someone to check if the car was still at the beach and it was. They were concerned in case someone had drowned. There was a wallet and a pair of shoes on the driver’s seat and the keys were on the ground. The wallet belongs to this guy Scott. The whole thing is very strange. The car is the same model as the one you fell out of, Dao. Chilton says he’s going to dig deep into this. He thinks someone’s trying to tell us something.’
He’s having a hard time keeping a grin from breaking out.
A couple of weeks later Dao has fully recovered, the summer heat is fading, and we spend a lot of time walking on beaches with Scruff. Somehow small pleasures seem more important than ever. We try interesting ice cream flavours, start learning chess together and discuss going on holiday.
One evening we arrive for dinner at Charlie and Kristen’s place and Tama’s car is parked outside; Dao grins at my surprise.
‘When Charlie invited us, she asked if I’d give her Tama’s number. She said they wanted to meet him and Tyler after all we told them last time we came.’
Over dinner we tell them everything they don’t already know; how we used the trackers to find Hope, how Dao got lost and stumbled across the container, how Will abducted Dao and what Charlie and I did to punish him. We make no mention of the Scum Pond.
Dao sits silent and thoughtful while the others talk and exclaim about what we have told them. I study her face and wonder what she is thinking.
Then she looks up. ‘Isn’t it sad? If Hope hadn’t risked her life and saved that little boy maybe none of this would have happened. I keep thinking about it – that one single thing started this series of events – and she died. One single thing!’
~~~~~
Acknowledgements
My thanks to those who have been involved in the making of this book:
To my husband Brett for his understanding and endless patience.
To my editor Stephen Stratford for providing a clever outsider’s viewpoint, and to Renee Lang for proofreading.
To Tara Cooney for another stunning cover design, and to Adrienne Charlton for the book design.
To my friend Anne Powrie for patiently listening to endless progress reports
and
To my daughters Annika and Camilla for encouragement and moral support.
Special thanks to Jason Binedell of ICE Security, who provided invaluable advice on surveillance technology.
Other books by Tina Clough published by BookBaby
From Running Towards Danger
I can stay no longer, he knows where I am. Whatever is about to happen I cannot bear to think that I will die cowering on the wet ground. I push off and leap up the slope, toes digging in for better grip, arms bent and pumping, slightly hunched in instinctive concealment mode. I run toward a cluster of dark trees further down the river bank in the direction that will take me away from the road and danger. The trees are a long way off but the only thing that offers possible shelter.
I run so fast I can hear the water being sucked out of the wet ground as each foot lifts off. I reach the trees unharmed and stop, trying hard to suppress my panting breaths, lean against a tree trunk and try to blend in with its shape. Gradually my heart beat slows, my breathing becomes calmer and I move slowly away from the tree to look back to where I have come from. And as I stand there listening, searching the shades of grey and black for any sign of movement, arms grab me from behind.
A hand comes around my head and clamps hard over my mouth, the other arm clasps me tightly round the rib cage, locking my arms to my body. I freeze in the position I am in, one foot slightly raised, consider fighting, kicking back into the shins of the person holding me or biting the hand over my mouth. My heart is pounding; this is the danger dream. It is like re-living a past event. I am waiting for what must come, for the harm or the threat. We stand silently and very still for what seems like an age. His head moves closer, warm breath brushes the side of my head and a nearly soundless whisper reaches me through the sound of the wind in the trees. ‘No noise! Don’t move.’
I slowly lower my foot to the ground and nod my head against the hand over my mouth, indicating that I will obey.
~~~~~
From The Chinese Proverb
I woke with a jerk of panic, my heart was pounding, every nerve jangled. Adrenaline had flooded my system and the only way to break the spell was to get up. I lit the camping lantern and went into the main room to put more wood in the stove and make a cup of tea. Scruff opened his eyes and looked at me without raising his head.
I rarely dream about Afghanistan these days. When I first left the army I regularly woke from a nightmare where dust swirled around me and I smelt blood and burning diesel. I would wake in a panic, my hands trying to wipe splatters of blood off my helmet visor and only slowly realise where I was. This time I felt sure I had heard a high-pitched scream of pain or terror even after I opened my eyes; the dream had unnerved me more than usual. A sudden downpour drummed like hailstones on the tin roof. I sat down by the fire with my laptop and forced my mind to concentrate on the proposal I was writing and after an hour I was calm enough to go back to bed.
In the morning I woke up feeling bleary and unmotivated. It was still raining, but less violently and by lunchtime it had slowed to a drizzle. I put on a weatherproof jacket and rubber boots and set off to inspect the track. The roar of t
he stream could be heard from a kilometre away; a distant throaty rumble. The ford would be impassable for another couple of days at least. Scruff ran around, sniffing out new scents, looping in figures of eight. Then he raced ahead and disappeared around the next bend.
Abstracted and on autopilot, I walked down the muddy track through the dense New Zealand bush, thinking of the security proposal I was putting together for a client in Venezuela. Last night’s downpour had made deep ruts and the mud was slippery. At the last bend I got a clear view of the stream. The noise was deafening, and I could hear boulders rolling in the streambed. The ford was below at least a metre of water and the torrent rushed over the larger rocks in cresting waves.
Heading back uphill I whistled for Scruff a couple of times. Halfway up the track I heard him barking a long way off; that special bark that said, “you have to come and see this, I can’t leave it”. I left the track and made my way in the direction of the sound, calling back a couple of times to get a response to guide me until I saw him between the trees.
He was in his guard position, sitting erect and with his front paws together. He ran towards me and then straight back to where he had been sitting and nudged at something. I went closer and saw an arm and a shoulder and the back of a dark head. A boy’s body, nearly completely covered with brown fern fronds and leaf litter, lay in a shallow depression. I caught my breath and took an involuntary step backwards.
It was the first dead body I had seen since I left Afghanistan and here in this peaceful and remote location it shocked me. Why was he here and how had he died?