The Last Time We Spoke (14 page)

Nothing but trouble! That is true. I slip between your thoughts and find little to redeem you, boy, though I continue to search for a glimmer of light to lessen my load. You do not heed the call for
utu,
for a way to make right your wrong. It is not revenge or retribution your victim calls for, but more a measure of acknowledgement and reciprocation. An act, which could send ripples far further than you.

But you are not alone in your waywardness. Each day the wind brings news of another and another and another. I see an entire orphanage of the dispossessed, the youth who have lost their way. How did it come to this?

Again I come back to the story I was telling. Do you remember I spoke about
Te Tiriti o Waitangi?
The pact between two peoples. As a consequence of this important document, the English expected sovereignty in the purchase and governance of land. The Māori’s expectation was of consultation and co-management instead.

Language can be a beautiful thing, Benjamin. Words carry the weight of meaning, directness of intention, the peculiarity of culture. Words define reality, and therein lies their power. But also their weakness! A poor translation is about loss – loss of meaning and intent. The poor translation of The Treaty of Waitangi heralded the loss of a whole people, in fact.

Differing expectations begat cycles of hostility, war, defeat, and confiscation; hostility, war, defeat, and confiscation. Of course, the musket was master, and so your ancestors soon found themselves stripped of most of their territories.

Do you know that when the British advanced on the peaceful Parihaka community situated in Mt Taranaki’s embrace, children ran out to greet the soldiers with song and dance and gifts of food. Yet still the people were driven from their homes, their prophets imprisoned and their cultural kite squashed and trampled on.

The word Waitangi means ‘the waters of lamentation’.
3
The irony of what lay ahead was perhaps not lost on nature.

Carla had arranged to meet Lorraine from Victim Support in the Visitors’ car park at Mount Eden jail. Though they were both coming from the North Shore, Carla wanted to drive herself; it obviated thirty minutes of courteous conversation.

Lorraine was very caring, her big bosom and deep voice comforting, her common sense sobering, but Carla had had enough kindness and sympathy to last a lifetime. She’d had her fill of being monitored and supported, observed and assisted. Her suicide bid hadn’t helped either, the incident now escorting her wherever she went as if written in bold across her forehead:
I am a risk to myself. Watch me.

In truth, she was feeling a lot better since the antidepressants had kicked in. They’d shaved off the rough edges of her days and diluted her indifference. Her sleep had improved too. So she was feeling strong when she turned into Normanby Road.

She knew this part of town well; her once favourite delicatessen was just a few blocks away. In her ‘before’ life, she’d not infrequently made the forty-minute journey across the bridge to stock up on pasta, salami, unpasteurised cheeses, and chocolate. A young Jack had enjoyed these culinary expeditions too, indulging in every free
sample on offer and eagerly lapping up his Italian heritage. The cheerio-sausage-and-chicken-nugget meals fed to him at friends’ houses paled when compared to the plates of finely sliced Parma ham, black figs, plump green olives, and creamy gorgonzola his mother served.

From Normanby Road, Carla swung into Lauder. Ahead of her, the stone towers of Mount Eden jail rose up like some Dickensian monolith. Her newfound steel bowed. She gripped the steering wheel. ‘If this is what you need to begin to heal, then we will arrange it.’ Nikola Jovovich’s words played over in her mind. ‘Confront the evil, acknowledge your anger, then set the debris free.’

It had been an extraordinary meeting when he had returned to her ward. They’d talked long into the night, standing side by side in the visitors’ lounge, looking out over the silvered waters of Lake Pupuke. Nikola’s awareness of the human condition was profound. Most importantly, though, he showed no pity in his dealings with her, just empathy. She felt as if she had always known him – the dark hair, sleepy brown eyes, his marked lip. How he reminded her of Jack.

When they finally parted, the night was melting into a charcoal dawn and Carla knew she could carry on living.

The lawyer shook Ben’s hand, making him feel important. Lawyers always did. The guy smelt clean. Lawyers always did.

‘Remember, Ben, you are not obliged to answer any questions if you do not wish to. Anytime you want to terminate the interview, just let me know.’ He turned to Mr Ngata. ‘I’ll be within earshot, will I?’

Ngata nodded.

Then the guard unlocked the door and Ben was led into the
visiting hall. The space was the same familiar space, except that it was now empty of people. The huge mural on the wall opposite dominated the room. A six-foot blue dolphin rising out of the sea. Neptune, half-naked with his golden crown and trident, standing beneath it. It must have been painted by the same prisoner who’d painted the spinifex picture in Mr Ngata’s office. Parts of the mural were scarred where the paint had flaked off or someone had etched their name into the myth, exposing raw stone.

The repeating pattern of chairs – two blue chairs, one orange, two blue, one orange – was more obvious now that there were no kids scrambling over the seats, no orange overalls, giggling girlfriends, or weeping wives.

Ben bobbed to the rap in his head and scraped out the dirt from under his fingernails. A trapped pigeon in the room kept flying into the high windows.
Flap, flap, crash. Flap, flap, crash.

At the front of the room, a circle of chairs had been positioned around a table. Ngata broke the ring, pulling out a chair for Ben. A guard looped a chain through Ben’s cuffs and around a table leg.

‘They gonna keep me lunch? ’Cos I’m gonna miss lunch,’ Ben said, flicking his thumb to stop it shaking. But before anyone could answer, the door at the far end opened.

Ben stared down at his jandals.

‘Thank you. That’s fine.’ The voice, a woman’s, stung Ben like a wasp. He bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Just a bit of distance. Some measure of privacy would be good, thank you.’

‘We do need to adhere to strict procedure, Mrs Reid. Your security is paramount.’

‘I understand. Thank you.’

Ben didn’t look up. He knew the voice as if it had been branded onto his brain. She’d hollered enough that night. He shot a glimpse toward the door. Two women. Neither recognisable.

The lawyer walked up and patted Ben on the shoulder. Ben wasn’t sure if this meant, ‘You’re cool’, or ‘Watch your step’.

The women sat down opposite, followed by the same psychiatrist who’d put Ben in a stitch gown on his first night in the boob – a bony chap with transparent skin and a limp grey ponytail.

Ben knew one of them had to be the Reid woman. The voice he’d heard belonged to her. What confused him was the hair. He remembered long dark hair; it was forever tangling up his nightmares. He looked up under a tilted brow and his eyes met the same eyes that stared into his dreams most nights. His breathing picked up. Suddenly he was drowning in the ocean on the wall and there was no land in sight. He pushed his hands together, his palms wet with sweat. This had been a stupid idea.

‘We will open with a
karakia
,’ Mr Ngata began.

Māori words. Ben didn’t understand them, but at least his hands stopped shaking.

The psychiatrist’s whispery voice intruded. ‘Ben, Mrs Reid is here today to get some resolution and express what impact your crime has had on her and her loved ones.’ The guy kept dipping his head as if to avoid random missiles. ‘This is to help her get closure. It is also to help you along your path to redemption. An important step for you both. We are grateful for your agreement.’

Ben could smell the psychiatrist’s breath from where he was sitting – a skipped breakfast breath. Ben spread his legs and leant forward over the table. His hands were shaking again and he had to hold them away from each other to stop the cuffs from rattling against the metal table leg. Ngata said something to the woman that Ben couldn’t make out. She nodded, pulling her shoulders back.

Suddenly she was talking, her words pushing their way through the emptiness of the hall.

‘Ben. May I call you that?’ She’d already claimed some sort of
ownership of him by using his name. He stretched his lips tightly against his teeth. ‘I needed to meet with you today …’

At first her voice was slow and deliberate, the words solid, but they quickly began to crack and splinter.

She began again. ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’

Ngata sneezed. The lawyer said, ‘Bless you.’ The trapped pigeon swooped across the room.
Flap, flap, crash.

‘I have come here today to ask you a question. Just one question.’

The pigeon finally gave up and landed on a ledge, its plump chest heaving.

‘Why?’

White pigeon poo trickled down the far wall.

‘Why did you hurt my family when you could have just taken our things and gone? Can you answer me that?’ Her words were now coming out faster. ‘Why did you rob me of my son? My husband? Why us? Why did you have to hurt us?’

The ‘whys’ were hitting Ben like bullets from an assault rifle. Why, Ben? Why? Why? So much for just one question!

The psychiatrist leant across and whispered something in the Reid woman’s ear. She stopped and stared straight at Ben, her eyes no longer hiding, but driving out of their sockets.

Ben shrugged. What was he meant to say?

‘Do you know how much pain you have caused? Pain that is just so … so … It
never
goes away. Never! You stole my husband. My son. You took everything important to me and left me with nothing! For what? Some loose change. A television. Radio. The money will have been spent by now, and I’m sure the thrill of …’ She dropped her voice, hesitated, then spat out the next words: ‘The thrill of … of what you did to me, long faded.’

Ngata approached. He bent down and whispered something to the psychiatrist.

‘Have you given us any thought? What it’s like for me without them?’ She was on a roll. She wasn’t stopping any time soon. ‘Have you thought—?’

‘Mrs Reid,’ the bad-breath psychiatrist interrupted, holding his hands together in a polite plea. ‘Let’s try to keep this a little less emotional, if we can. I know it’s hard, but—’

‘Less emotional?’ she cried, spittle flying across the table. ‘Less emotional!’

She laughed. ‘How can I keep the murder of my son and the torture of my husband less emotional, you tell me, sir?’ Her face was a furious red, her eyes like those of a crazed dog. It was as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button and her words were careening around the room, and Ben’s brain. He wanted them to stop. He clenched his teeth, arranged his best bored expression, and tried to focus on the rap that had restarted in his head.

‘Just imagine,’ she butted in again, ‘that there’s this thing you want more than anything in the world. You never believe it will be yours. You want it so badly, you hurt.’

What Ben wanted right now was to be left alone to smoke some weed in the yard.

‘Then one day, suddenly, unexpectedly it comes your way. You can’t believe how that feels. You just can’t imagine.’

To score some weed
would
be his lucky day.

‘I never thought that I would be able to have a child.’ She slid a hand into her pocket. The guard behind her stiffened. ‘You’re still sixteen, aren’t you?’

Silence.

Ben could cope when she was just ranting, but not when she wanted something back.

‘Jack was sixteen when this picture was taken.’ Without warning, Ben was staring down the barrel of a photograph, a black-and-white snapshot of the guy he and Tate had wasted in the garage
that night, the kid with black hair and scarred lip, the kid with surprised eyes.

They’d cased the joint for some time. The lights in the house had been on and the curtains open, which made it easy. They’d cracked open some beers in the bushes, warming up the chemicals already spinning in their blood, and waiting till the time was right. For Ben it was his first big job. For Tate it was important too; he was prospecting for a proper gang. The idea of leaving the juvies behind and running with a real crew appealed to Ben. But it wasn’t just respect he was after; he wanted to show everyone … Ryan … that he was somebody.

When they finally made their move it was almost too easy; the garage door had been left wide open. They crept through the shadows of lawnmower and shovel, chainsaw and tractor, past the Peugeot – keys still in the ignition – past the tower of paint tins … Then, without any warning, a figure was there standing in the doorway.

The darkness kept them hidden, but their break was short-lived. A blue tide of light swept across the floor and stopped just in front of Ben’s shoes; the guy had opened a fridge door and was taking out a beer. That was when Tate reached for the shovel …

Tate did the main bit. But it turned out that it wasn’t so easy to take out the enemy. The guy just wouldn’t stop groaning. That’s when Ben had to help.

He looked away. He wouldn’t give the Reid woman the satisfaction of studying the photograph. ‘I’m out of here,’ he said, pushing his chair back. The table came with him, metal screeching along the floor.

‘My client is getting distressed,’ the lawyer said, quickly moving in.

The woman, perhaps realising her moment was soon going to be over, jumped up and started shouting. ‘How did you feel when your mother was killed? How did you feel?’

The words hit Ben in the gut, winding him.

‘Fuck you, bitch! Fuck you!’ His voice banged into the walls.

The circling sharks closed in, and through the chaos of bodies and voices, the woman was steered away.

As she reached the door, Ben shouted after her, ‘I dunno what you want from me, lady!’ Then she was gone.

Outside in the yard the sun was still shining, and after a while the cold darkness inside of Ben started to thaw. He’d missed lunch, but there were still two hours left to drift in the open before lockdown, before he was locked away with just his thoughts for company – thoughts that nailed him to a darker place.