Gith (13 page)

There were maybe a dozen tables of different sizes.
Everything was wood, with a shine to it. Not the dark finish
like in the lounge at the Arms though. The walls and furniture
here were a light yellowy colour. There were little salt and
pepper things in blue and white china on the tables, and a
couple of big travel posters on the walls. The counter was
opposite the door. It had a big bowl of flowers on it. I think
they were paper, except for three or four bits of toetoe. On
one side behind the counter was a way through to the back. It
was lighter out there than it was in the café. I could see a wall
of cupboards with a bench under it. The air smelt of food but
it was a nice smell — like baking only spicier.

After a couple of seconds Brenda came out.

'Hi there,' she said, giving me a big smile.

Suddenly I felt awkward. Here I was, in this trendy kind
of place, still in my overalls and with grease on my hands, still
sweaty from the day's work.

'Good to see you,' she went on, coming towards me.

'Yeah, um, I was just passing and . . . well, I wanted to say
thank you again.' This sounded pretty lame but I guess it was
why I was there.

'No problem.'

'I'm . . . er . . .' I showed her my hands. 'I'm pretty filthy.'

'Don't worry about it. Come out the back. I was just about
to shut up shop anyway.' She moved to the front door and,
reaching up, flipped the sign around so that Open was on the
inside. Then she snibbed the top of the two locks.

The back room was a kitchen with a bench in the centre
and a couple of stoves and sinks down one wall. In one corner
were two refrigerators and a big pantry.

'Do you want a beer?' she asked. 'Or a wine?'

I wasn't sure I should have anything. I needed to get back
to Gith.

'Have a wine,' she said. 'Go on. Live dangerously.'

I laughed.

She fetched a bottle from the fridge and some glasses from
a shelf. We sat down on two high stools at the bench.

'Trying to civilise me,' I said while she poured.

'Is there any chance of that?' She gave me a sideways kind
of look.

'Not much.'

'I'm not that fond of civilised, actually. I just like things
nice.' She gave me a glass. 'Cheers.'

We clinked and drank. It tasted all right as wine goes.

'What's new?' she asked.

I wasn't sure what she meant.

'You mean developments?'

She shrugged. 'Well . . .'

'A couple of things.' I told her about the dog and the white
wagon and how Ray Tackett was off the suspect list.

'So that leaves who, then?'

'Rick Parline, Colin George and Wayne Wyett. Does Colin
own a black dog?'

'Don't know,' she said. 'But half the population owns a dog,
as far as I can see.'

'It's the hunting. Dogs and guns — the place is full of
them.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I remember one thing about Colin, though.
A while back we had a conversation about that other girl who
went missing. He said he thought that girls who went hitchhiking
on their own were asking for it. It seemed a really
strange thing for him to say. I mean, he's not usually at all
like that.'

'Hmm.'

'Is that something I should tell the police, do you
suppose?'

'If they were looking for a van driver I'd say yes, but they're
not so I don't think they'd care.'

'You don't have much faith in them, do you?'

'I just think they've got it completely bloody wrong.'

'So you do your own investigating? Private detective?'

I thought about Billy Cleat and what I'd asked him to do.
He wouldn't bother though, would he?

'Private idiot, more like,' I said.

'You know what they call detectives in the States?'

'No.'

'Dicks.'

'Yeah, well.'

'Oh,' she said. 'Sorry.' She pulled a little face and reached
out and put her hand on my sleeve. 'I'm teasing you.'

'That's okay.' Had she got her fingers dirty?

'I guess you don't get teased much,' she said. Her hand
went back.

'I get teased all the time. Only not in words.'

'It must be hard. For you as well as for her.'

'Well . . .'

'I mean never really having a normal conversation.'

It's not like that, I wanted to say, but in a way she was
right.

'I've forgotten how to have conversations,' I said.

'Oh, I think you do okay.'

'Thanks.' I could have said that it was easy talking to her.

I almost did.

'How long have you been back in Te Kohuna?' she asked.

'This time around? Three and a half years. My folks have a
farm up Tacketts Valley.'

'Yes, I know.'

'How about you?' I asked. 'Where're you from?'

'Originally? From Christchurch, but before I came here I
was in Wellington.'

'You always been in the café business?'

'For ten years or so. I started up a little place in Cuba Street.
With my partner. Husband.' She changed the word. 'We split
up. We sold the business.'

'And you came here?'

'Yes.'

'Why Te Kohuna?'

She laughed. 'Why not? Actually I just wanted to get
out of Wellington. The divorce was pretty nasty and I felt I
needed some air. One day I jumped in the car and took off.
Came through here and liked the look of it. Stupid thing to
do, really. I had no idea whether a café would work here.'

'Seems like it's done all right.'

'Oh yes,' she said. 'I think it's working out. But, you know
. . . a small town's a small town.'

'Not much to do in the evening.'

'Not many people to do it with.' She sipped her wine,
looked at me over the rim of the glass. For a second I got the
feeling she wanted me to touch her. I knew I couldn't do that.
I turned my palm over and showed it to her.

'Pretty filthy,' I said. It had left greasy marks on the wine
glass.

'Yes.' She didn't seem to mind.

'I'd better go,' I said.

'Okay.' She eased back on her stool. 'How was the wine?'

'Good.' I knocked back the last of it and stood up.

'We'll educate you yet.' She showed me to the door. 'Stop
by anytime.'

'Thanks.'

'And say hello to Gith for me.'

'I will.'

She stopped. 'She's your niece, right?'

'Er, yes.'

'She's a lucky girl.'

I walked up the road to the Arms but then, instead of going
into the bottlestore, I cut across the car park into Basingstoke Road. Brenda
had said that Colin George lived about three down from the pub. The third
house was a wooden thirties-style place with a tree in the middle of the front
lawn and an open porch. A drive went down the left-hand side. No sign of a
white van. Maybe it was round the back. I took a few steps, got about three
metres onto the section, before a dog started to bark inside. I turned and
walked quickly away, feeling dumb. But a dog, though, eh.

I bought a dozen Tui and headed back the length of the
main road to our place. It was a warm night with a clear sky.
By the time I got as far as Len and Kath's gate I was feeling
more relaxed and not worrying too much about white vans
and murders.

Gith was sitting in the kitchen with her hands folded on
the table in front of her. She looked like somebody had told
her not to move.

'You okay?' I asked.

She nodded, nothing else.

'Sorry I took so long,' I said. 'I bumped into Brenda. Had a
chat to her for a bit.' I didn't think I had to say anything about
being stupid at Colin George's. As I walked past her I leant
over her and kissed her on the head. She didn't move.

I took a bottle of Tui from the cardboard pack and bent down
to put the rest in the fridge. I didn't hear her get up, didn't feel her there
behind me. The first thing I knew was a thump on my back between my shoulder
blades. It was only her fist but the force of it just about knocked my glasses
off.

'Jesus!' I said, dragging myself upright.

She was gone. I just caught a last look of her, a flash of pale
down the hallway. Her bedroom door slammed.

SHE SEEMED TO have forgotten about it the next morning
and I didn't bring it up. I guess I felt bad because I'd left her
on her own longer than I'd said. She sometimes got upset
when I did that and there was no other reason, was there? It's
not like anything happened between Brenda and me or was
ever going to. Anyway, I figured it had all blown over because
when I talked to her about Moss Vield's quad bike she was
fine about me going up there. I called Pita. He was always
on for a bit of spare cash, as long as we didn't bother him too
often.

'No problem,' he said. 'Be right over.'

***

I'D NEVER BEEN to the Vields' place before but I'd driven
past it enough times. Gith and I liked a trip up into the hills
now and again, just to get away from the flat and feel a bit
of the wild country. Pakenga Valley wasn't our favourite drive
but we sometimes did it for a change. You could get up to the
lake that way, although the top end of the road was narrow
and a lot twistier than Maungaiti.

There are five or six houses in the first stretch of the road,
after you turn off the main highway: fairly ordinary places
most of them, weatherboard with iron roofs and sections
that are nothing but dirt or grass. After that, once you get
beyond the slope of Bobrown Hill, the valley opens up into
pasture. Monty's place is on your left and the Vields' on the
right. Both farms are long and thin — a couple of k wide and
sloping back up from the road and the stream to the hills on
either side. Pretty rugged hills for the most part and dark
green that day, with a faint misty feel to their tops.

The way into Monty's place was first: a gap in the fourstrand
fence, a tarsealed driveway with a cattlestop. Next
came his stockyards — wooden fences here and a turning
area at the roadside for the trucks. Then on the right was the
Vields' stockyard, pretty much the same except the opposite
way round, and after that the Vields' driveway.

No cattlestop here. Instead, there was a chain-link gate. I
had to pull up, get out, open the gate, drive through, stop and
get out again and shut the gate behind me. A dirt road but it
was in good repair. I drove up in a steepish, looping curve that
seemed to take me halfway to the back of the farm before it
levelled out into a concrete yard. Ahead and to my left were
sheds. The house was on the right, clean white weatherboards
with a red iron roof.

I stopped and got out. The sun was right up above but the
air was a bit cool. To the north the hills were crowding close.
It would be a cold place in winter, I figured, with the midday
warmth cut off. When I turned around, though, I found
a good view up the valley, of the slope down to the road
and the top end of Monty's pasture on the other side. The
western hills seemed lighter from here, and beyond them, in
the whitish air, was Mt Maungaiti at the back of the lake. I
remembered the day Gith and I had gone up there and the
weird feeling I'd had — the sound of that silent screaming.
Just for a second I thought I heard it again but then a magpie
called from the pine trees up behind me and the moment
passed.

I started to look around for Moss or his old man, Dagmar.
No sign of them out there in the paddocks. Maybe they were
round the house or yard. It was pretty quiet. My boots scraped
on the concrete. No one in the sheds — nothing much at all.
One of them looked like it had been used for vehicles, with
oil stains on the floor and a two-hundred-litre drum with
a hand pump. The other shed held a crutching cradle and a
bale of fencing wire, bundles of metal posts, and a long set of
shelves with plastic drums and bottles on them. In the back
was something under a blue tarp. The quad bike maybe.

I turned away towards the house. There were three kennels
beside the back door but no sign of the dogs. The windows
that I could see were all shut. I headed off round one side,
where a narrow gravel path led down beside a vegetable patch.
There was a row of runner beans and some late potatoes still
with their tops green. A couple of white butterflies flapped
among the cabbages.

At the far corner of the house I saw a window open a few
centimetres. It was maybe half a metre above my head so I
couldn't see in, but I could see that those curtains were closed
too. A noise, though. I wasn't sure what it was or where it
came from.

'Hello?' I said, loud enough for somebody inside to hear.

Another noise. It was a wet, strangled sort of sound and it
came from the window. An animal?

'Anybody there?' Louder this time.

'Garrrrrggggg.' Almost a shout now, angry or scared.
Somebody needing help? Somebody in deep shit by the
sound of it.

I walked back the way I'd come, climbed the step and tried
the back door. It opened into a kitchen: everything neat and
tidy, the benches clean, a toaster and a metal kettle shining
clear and bright. I crossed the floor and went into a hallway,
a narrow corridor with nothing on the walls. There was light
down there from an open door to the right. The room I wanted
was on the left, though — the last door. There was a plastic
doorknob with a key sticking out from the lock below it. I
turned the knob and pushed. The door didn't move. Locked.
The key then. Open now. It swung inwards with a creak. Dim
light inside. Just a little star of brightness from the gap at the
top of the curtains.

'Gurrrrgh.' A low, heavy sound like the breath of a monster.
My guts tightened. The door swung wider. I could see the
dim shape of the foot of a wrought-iron bedstead. Something
there on it. And then the smell came, a great woof of it, like
sewage and ammonia. I reached inside and flicked on the
light switch.

A thing there, a body, staring eyes. Mouth twisted and
sagging at the right-hand side. A lined face, smudged with
dirt, thin grey hair like frayed string.

'Dagmar?'

He was dressed in filthy pyjamas. His right arm, folded up
like a roasted chicken wing, rested on his chest. The left was
up beside his shoulder, tied by a rope to the bedhead.

'Jesus!' I said. 'What's happening here?'

His mouth opened in a lopsided hole, tongue sticking out,
yellow stumps of teeth. 'Guuurggh.'

I moved further into the room, up towards the head of
the bed, and started to undo the knots in the rope. They were
done up tight. The skin round the old man's wrist had worn
away in a dark band, like a bracelet. He looked up at me. His
right eye was half closed but the other was leaking tears. His
gaze flicked away and suddenly he went mad, growling and
yelling and thrashing his left arm around so that the rope
jumped out of my grip.

I looked up to see Moss standing right behind me. I guess
I yelled with the shock and jumped back, grabbing hold of
the head of the bed. Moss was staring, not at me but right
through me to some place far, far away.

'Get out of my fucking way!' I shouted, and pushed past
him.

Moss moved aside around the bed's foot as I headed
through the door and down the hall. My only thought was
to get out of there as fast as I could. Something stopped me
though.

I turned and looked back. Moss was just standing there in
the hallway beside the door, like he was made of wood. He
wasn't looking anywhere — not at me, not into the room.

'What's going on, Moss?' I called down the hallway. 'What
the hell are you doing? Your dad needs help. He's had a stroke
or something. You can't just tie him up, for fuck's sake!'

He moved then, his head swinging round a bit so that he
was staring at me, round eyes like pale stones. He looked like
a corpse standing up.

I went outside and got into the Surf, called Hemi on my
mobile and told him what had happened. I wasn't sure what
to do after that. I didn't want to go back inside, but I didn't
feel it was right just to drive away either. Not until somebody
got there, at any rate. I stayed where I was. Waited.

After a while Moss came out and sat down on the back
step, his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging down
between them. Slowly, his head dropped so his chin was on
his chest. Then, after a minute or so, it lifted again and he
stared off into the distance, way beyond me, up to where the
hills joined the sky. It went on like that, head dropping and
then lifting. He looked like some weird machine, like one of
those pumps on an oilfield, only in real slow motion. Spooky.
I guessed Dagmar was still tied to the bed. No worse off than
he had been before. I hoped not, anyway.

Hemi wasn't in the cop car that came up the hill. Given
that Moss was a suspect in the Anneke Hesse case, I guess he
figured he had to hand over to Kevin Ryan's team. The two
cops that turned up were another bloke-and-sheila pair. They
tried to talk to Moss but he didn't even see them so they came
over to me. I told them where Dagmar was and they went
inside. Moss didn't move and they more or less had to step
round him. One of them, the bloke, was back out again in a
couple of minutes, talking on his RT as he walked towards
me. I opened the door and got out of the Surf.

'We'll take care of things from here,' he said. 'It would be
good if you could give us a statement though.'

'No problem.'

'Could you stop by the community hall? Somebody will
see you there.'

The somebody turned out to be Kerry Ryan. We went
through what had happened and he asked me a few questions.
He seemed a decent bloke. Tall and good-looking, with dark
hair and blue eyes. He had the kind of voice that makes you
feel comfortable, and he seemed to be listening in a way that
said he wasn't just thinking about what he could get out of
you. Perhaps it was his easy way of doing things, but when he
asked me if I had anything else to say I almost started right in
about Anneke Hesse.

What stopped me? I'm not sure. Partly, I just thought he
wouldn't believe me, which would only piss me off. On the
other hand, if he did go for my story, what would he do? Send
a bunch of cops chasing after the owners of white vans. And
if they started hassling the real killer, whoever it was might
come after Gith again. No, I thought, stuff it. It was a long
way better that he didn't even start. He could do what the hell
he liked, arrest who he wanted, just as long as he left Gith
and me out of it.

He was looking at me. I could tell he thought I was hiding
something, which I was. And I still hadn't given him an
answer.

'No,' I said. 'Nothing else.' Not about Moss Vield, anyway.

***

WHEN I BECAME Gith's caregiver it was the beginning of
the end for Michelle and me. It wasn't clear right away but I
started to move into a whole different kind of life, one that
more and more left Michelle on the outer.

Gith and I couldn't work on the Riley full time. There weren't
enough spares. There were long stretches when we were surfing
the Net for them or waiting for them to come and we were
always running out of money. We got a bit of help from the
trust but it didn't seem right to dig too deep into what Gith
had, even though she wanted to. After a while I started to get
other little jobs to fill in the time, doing servicing and repairs
for friends and neighbours and people who were passed on to
me by other friends and neighbours. The driveway and back
yard usually had two or three extra vehicles in it. Gith did
most of the work on the Riley, and she helped me out with the
paying customers whenever she had time.

I had to keep an eye on her but she was a quick learner.
She had started to get the words back by then, and what with
those and pointing and other moves, she could make a fair
fist of a question if she had to. Plus, her short-term memory
was near to a hundred per cent again, so I never had to show
her anything twice. She was getting stronger, as well. She was
skinny but there was a lot of torque in her feeble-looking
wrists and she had no trouble lugging wheels or doors or
engine heads around. The better she got at the job, the more
it seemed to me that she could do it for a living. It didn't seem
likely that she would ever qualify as a mechanic, but if she was
helping me I would get through a hell of a lot more work than
I would on my own. I started to think what it would be like
for the two of us to run a repair shop together.

Michelle didn't like of any of this. She didn't like the cars
in the yard because it usually meant she couldn't get her little
Mazda into one of the garages; she didn't like all the time I
was spending with Gith; and she didn't like the fact that she
and I hardly talked any more. I guess I was pretty useless
company. Working with somebody who had so little to say
meant I lost the habit of talking in the normal way. On top
of that, Michelle's life had gone off into places I didn't know.
She had opened her second salon by then and was well on the
way to starting a third. Because of that she had stopped doing
hair. She was an employer and manager and was starting to
make good money. None of this mattered to Gith and me.
We cared about it as much as Michelle cared when the Riley's
motor fired for the first time.

When we weren't working, Gith and I did a lot of fooling
around. I told her jokes — real bad jokes — and she'd laugh
like a drain. Or else we'd be sitting on the sofa watching TV
and we'd start nudging each other and the nudges would get
harder and harder until she was bouncing off me or I was
almost knocking her over. Sometimes I'd just tickle her.
She had this fantastic laugh, big and deep and full, that just
exploded out of her, like she was giving it everything. Making
her laugh was just about the best thing I knew. Given all that
she'd gone through, it seemed like a really big deal.

Michelle didn't like this stuff either.

'It's unhealthy,' she said.

'What is?'

'You and her. You're like Siamese twins.'