Cry of the Taniwha (5 page)

It wasn’t until after dinner that Matt remembered the gold locket. With all that had happened since, it had gone clear out of his head. He sat cross-legged on the bed with his small collection of tools spread out in front of him. He’d brought them thinking that he might need to make some repairs to the metal detector, never thinking that they’d be used to open a valuable ancient heirloom. And he was certain it was valuable. The weight suggested lots of solid gold, and, while some of the pitted corrosion was deep, none had gone all the way through.

He started by picking the last bits of black tarnish out of the surface, until it was all golden. Next, he scraped around the join of the two halves, spending a lot of time on the hinge. Only then did he press the catch. It pushed in OK, but nothing opened.

Again he went around the join, this time levering it apart, bit by bit. Soon it was open enough to use his fingers, and a moment later he could see inside.

Matt had expected to find some corrosion inside. There wasn’t. In fact it probably looked as shiny as it had the last time its rightful owner had put it on. One side contained a yellowed photograph of a middle-aged woman. The other side was a golden mirror with an engraved inscription:

To my lovely Mary In memory of your mother Edward

Matt was disappointed. He’d been hoping for something that might help in identifying the body. But Mary? Mary who? The world must have millions of Marys, and many millions more if you went back in time. There would probably be an equal number of Edwards. He wanted more information. He looked at the locket again and wondered if there might be something behind the photo. People often wrote details on the back of photos.

It took only a moment to lever it out and find that his hunch was right. Written in fine black ink were the words:

Louise Miller August 1874

That was just what he wanted: a name and a date. Now he had something to work with. He brought out his camera and started taking photos. Matt had no doubts that there was a mystery behind all of this. If the body was the owner of the locket, then why was she wearing handcuffs? And if it was a man, how come he had the locket? Maybe the mystery might never be solved, but he was certainly going to have a darn good try.

The computer that Matt had used the night before was taken. A girl about his age was playing an arcade game. He sat at the other computer, only to find that it was dedicated to tourist information. As there were no other machines, he would just have to wait.

To fill in time, he browsed through all the tourist things
you could do in Rotorua. There seemed to be hundreds of them. The helicopter trips looked interesting, especially those that went to the top of Mount Tarawera. However, one look at the price and he knew Hone wouldn’t be shouting him and Jackson one of those.

He continued browsing, hoping that the girl would finish soon. Every few seconds she would groan when she got destroyed yet again. Maybe she’d finish the thing quicker if he helped her. He moved so that he could see the screen. It only took a moment to see that she had no idea what she was doing.

‘Move right!’ he suggested. She did. ‘More! Yeah! That’s it! Now push the space bar. And again! And again!’

A pleasant chime came from the computer, indicating success.

The girl turned to him. ‘You know how to play this?’

Matt nodded. The way she said ‘this’ indicated an Australian heritage.

‘It’s stupid!’ she said.

‘Yeah, most web games are.’

‘I’m only playing because I’m bored.’ A pause. ‘Do you want to use the computer?’

‘Yes, please.’

She shifted out of the way. Matt moved in and googled ‘Louise Miller’. There were thousands of hits.

‘Put double speech marks around it,’ suggested the girl.

He did, and the number of hits dropped to hundreds. Still far too many to check them all.

‘What are you trying to find out?’

Matt told her. This led to further questions, and before long he was telling her everything. She listened intently; asked sensible questions; made ‘yuk’ noises at the skeleton;
smiled at the taniwha bits.

When he’d finished, she said, ‘I could research that for you. I’m good at that sort of thing.’

‘Do you have the time?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Do
I
have the time? I’m stuck in this dumb hotel for the next two weeks.’ Then the whole of her story spilled out. She lived south of Perth, in a place called Margaret River. Her parents were involved in the tourist industry and were over here setting up a joint-marketing scheme. Her name was Eve Hastings, and she was an only child.

As she spoke, Matt took the opportunity to check her over: fair complexion with a hint of freckles, on a face topped with stylishly cut, short blonde hair; physically developed to a stage which Matt found interesting; wearing clothes with prominent labels. Matt figured that if they were staying in the hotel for two weeks then they can’t have been poor, but nothing she’d done or said so far suggested she was a spoilt brat. She actually seemed a little lonely.

‘So, that’s it!’ she said, finishing her story. ‘I sit here in the hotel reading or watching TV. It’s dead boring.’ She gave him a big smile. ‘I’d love to be your research assistant.’

Matt certainly had no problems with that idea, and so it was arranged: Matt would be the detective, and Eve would be his research team. Soon she had a few details of the case recorded in a hotel notepad, and each had a copy of the other’s email address and telephone number. After that, Matt walked home with a spring in his step, happy with the way that things were working out. He’d enjoyed talking with Eve, and he suspected that working with her was going to be a lot more satisfying than spending his days babysitting Jackson.

The police scene examination continued into the next day. Matt woke to the roar of a chainsaw coming from that direction, but when he went to take a look, the area was closed off with police tape.

Jackson didn’t turn up, which suited Matt just fine. However, as the morning dragged on, he realized that his intense boredom was partly because the day before had been so full of action. Jackson might be trouble, but life around him was certainly not dull.

Relief arrived as Matt was finishing lunch. It came in the form of a return visit by the two police officers, Burty and Lew. They’d come to give feedback, but for a while it looked like Burty had come to feed his face again—this time it was Nan’s cake tins that suffered while Lew gave his report.

‘The deceased was male, Caucasian, aged thirty-five or thirty-six,’ he read from his notebook. ‘The time of death was on, or about, four-thirty a.m. on the morning of the tenth of June 1886. The cause of death was a broken neck.’

Nan laughed. ‘Oh yes? And what colour underpants was he wearing?’

Lew continued in the same serious tone. ‘At the time of discovery, the deceased was not fully clothed. But we have ruled out the possibility of any sexual attack.’

Matt sniggered. ‘Not fully clothed! He didn’t even have any flesh.’

‘That’s true,’ Lew continued. ‘The absence of soft tissue and organs presented some problems to the investigating
team. However, we were able to ascertain some information from the position of the body.’

Burty swallowed before adding, ‘Forensics reckon he was thrown into the air by a hydrothermal explosion, and broke his neck when he landed.’

‘
What
sort of explosion?’ asked Nan.

‘Hydrothermal. Steam builds up pressure under the ground and then blasts out a big hole.
Whoosh!
’ Burty acted out the event with his hands. Some food dribbled out of his mouth, which he wiped away before adding, ‘That’s how the mud pool was formed.’

‘There was Tarawera ash under the body,’ explained Lew. ‘Immediately above it was about half a metre of stuff blown out of the hole and then some more ash. The hydrothermal eruption must have occurred while ash was still falling. Perhaps earthquakes weakened the ground or there was a burst of intense activity. The ash from Tarawera fell between three and seven in the morning. Hence we know he died at about four-thirty a.m.’

Nan chuckled. ‘You boys have been very clever.’

Burty gave a little bow. Lew said, ‘Not us. You can thank Dr Ian McMillan of Vulcan Aotearoa for all that. He’s an expert on the geology of the area.’

‘What about the metal that was down there?’ asked Matt.

‘Oh, that stuff,’ said Burty taking another mouthful of food. ‘That was just gold.’

‘Gold!’ shouted Nan and Matt together.

For the first time, Lew smiled. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. ‘Gold coins to be precise. Sovereigns and half-sovereigns. This one’s a sovereign.’ He handed the bag to Nan.

As she examined it, Burty continued: ‘We figure he must’ve been a thief and these things were either in a bag or in his pockets. They must’ve fallen out when he got blasted into the air. They were all over the place. The only mystery is how he came to be wearing cuffs. I doubt that we’ll ever solve that one.’

Nan passed the bag to Matt. He saw that the sovereign was about the same size as a twenty-cent coin, yet it felt a whole lot heavier. It had a shield on one side and the head of a woman on the other.

‘How much is it worth?’ asked Matt.

‘The gold’s worth about two-fifty dollars each.’

‘How many were there?’ asked Nan.

‘Forty-one.’

‘That’s ten thousand dollars!’

‘Yeah,’ replied Burty. ‘Give or take a few bucks.’

Nan turned to Matt. ‘You’re going to be rich.’

‘Ah, not exactly,’ said Lew. ‘The discovery has been deemed an archaeological find and the coins are now owned by the government. The Protected Objects Act of 1975 states that if the items are more than fifty years old they become the property of the Crown.’

‘Doesn’t he get anything?’

Burty laughed. ‘He might get a letter of thanks.’

Matt shrugged. It wasn’t worth getting upset over. Yet he would have liked to have had something as a memento of his find—something more than a letter. ‘Can I go back there now?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Lew. ‘We’ve finished with the scene and the tapu’s been lifted. However, you might find the place a bit different. We had to rearrange a few things to make sure we got everything.’

‘And if you find anything else,’ added Burty, ‘just give us a call.’

With that, he grabbed another chunk of cake and he and Lew departed.

Jackson came over as soon as the police left, wanting to know what had happened. Matt gave him a quick version. When he got to the part about the gold coins, Jackson gave a jeering laugh. ‘Yeah, trust them to steal the things,’ he said, as if the two policemen were personally responsible. However, he didn’t seem too upset about it. His main interest was whether the body was Maori or not. After he found it was European, he relaxed visibly, and suggested that they go and visit the scene.

When they got to the track heading into the clearing, they found that it had been widened by a vehicle with caterpillar tracks. That should’ve prepared them for what they might find, yet when they stepped into the clearing, all they could do was stop and stare. Lew had said things would be ‘a bit different’. This was more than different; this was a disaster scene. The pine tree had been cut down and now flattened the surrounding scrub. The stump and roots had been hauled out of the ground and dragged some distance away. There was a large, trampled hole left where the tree had once stood. Around it were smaller spade holes, which Matt assumed was where they had dug up pieces of gold. He sighed. If he’d started scanning the other side of the tree, he would have found the gold before the body and might’ve been able to keep one or two.

‘Old Tani won’t like this,’ said Jackson. ‘Those feds have gone and messed things up good.’

Matt walked into the scrub, searching the tree for the
nest. It still lay on a branch, just short of the top. One of the pale-blue eggs remained in the twigs. The other two were on the ground—one was cracked. He picked it up and pulled chunks off the shell. The chick was well developed and must’ve been near to hatching. Already it was starting to stink.

He looked around for the adults and found them in a pine tree further around the side of the pool. Old Tani was near the top with his mate a few branches below. She was fiddling with a few sticks, already working on a replacement nest. The male was staring at Matt, twisting his head to check what he was doing. ‘No,’ Matt said to himself, ‘Old Tani is not at all pleased’

‘What’re we gunna do now?’ asked Jackson.

Matt gazed around the area, wondering whether it was worth doing anything. The place was wrecked. Clearly the police had used a metal detector to find all the coins. More than likely there was nothing else to find.

‘I dunno. What do you think?’

Jackson looked at the pit and the hole where the tree had been. ‘If he was sitting on there when it blew, then it must’ve been a big explosion. Maybe it threw stuff sideways.’

That made sense to Matt. The mud pit, the locket and the body formed a line. Perhaps they should follow another line like that. ‘How about we try at another angle to the pit? He could’ve put something on the ground and it got blasted sideways.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

They went back to the pit and began scanning at an angle to the earlier line. For a while all they found was rubbish. Then after crossing a small stream, their path took
them under the new heron tree, where the detector started screaming again.

‘Oh no!’ complained Jackson with a smile. ‘Not under another tree.’

Matt looked up at Old Tani, who was stretching forward to keep them in view. He turned to Jackson. ‘What do you think? Dig or let it be?’

‘We dig,’ he said, forcefully. ‘I’m not scared of any taniwha.’

It was easy digging, because this time the object was not covered by roots. A few minutes later the trowel scraped against something solid, and from the sound Matt knew that it was bigger than anything else they’d found. A bit more scraping and the top was uncovered. It was a large metal box, rather like a mechanics toolbox, but made of a much thicker metal. When he went to lift it, he found it far heavier than expected—he had to struggle to get it out of the hole.

They sat beside it, brushing off the dirt. The thing was in remarkably good condition, suggesting that the metal had been partially resistant to corrosion. The hinged top sealed perfectly with the bottom, and was held it in place by a lock covered by a metal flap. After twisting for a while, Matt got the cover to turn so that the hole was exposed. Inside, it looked clean enough to still work. All he would need was a key, or something else that could open locks. No doubt the police could open it. However, Matt had no intention of letting them try—at least not until he’d had a go. This time he was going to be the one to make the great discovery. Then he’d hand it over to them—or at least he’d think about it.