The Peco Incident (4 page)

He must have seen Nick’s reaction, because when he’d finished rolling he put the thing in his mouth and lit it.

Nick stared in disbelief.

Unfortunately, the effect was destroyed when Murph inhaled and that triggered one of his noisy coughing fits.

‘C’mon,’ I said, pushing back on my chair. ‘Let’s go over and I’ll introduce you.’

Nick’s jaw dropped. ‘You know him? You know that crazy guy?’

‘Yeah, he’s OK. Do you want to meet him or not?’

Murph had stopped coughing by the time we got to the other side of the road.

‘Gidday,’ he said to me. ‘Saw you over there. Who’s your mate?’

I introduced Nick.

‘Take a seat,’ said Murph, indicating the rusty bar stools as if they were lounge chairs in his home. ‘I’d offer you a drink, but I see you’ve just had one.’

We sat. Murph took another suck on the cigarette.

‘How long does it take to smoke that?’ asked Nick.

Murph studied the thing for a moment. ‘About half an hour.’ Then he smiled and added, ‘But I normally have them a bit shorter. He pulled a small pair of scissors from his pocket and cut the cigarette into four. He tucked three away in his tobacco pouch and put the lit one back into his mouth.

He then turned to me. ‘School holidays, is it?’

I nodded.

‘So what you been doing?’

‘Looking for dead birds,’ I replied.

Instantly, Murph’s head jerked up. He took a long drag on his cigarette, looking around to see if anyone was near. ‘Where was this?’ he whispered.

‘The chook farm.’ I then gave him the whole story.

Slowly, Murph relaxed. When I’d finished, he smoked silently for a while before asking, ‘So you reckon the chook farm’s the source?’

‘Seems like it.’

He blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘I thought it might be my birds,’ he said grimly. ‘I had a couple of sick canaries the other day. One died. And now the sparrows around home are dropping like flies.’

‘What about the rest of your birds?’ I asked.

‘No problems since the canary. They all looked pretty good this morning when I fed them.’ A pause. ‘From what you say, I think the canary’s death is unrelated. Probably she was eggbound.’

‘It’s a killer virus,’ interrupted Nick. ‘I knew it was.’

Murph looked at him sideways. ‘Oh, yeah! And how did you know that?’

‘It always is,’ said Nick, knowingly. ‘All these things are caused by viruses. They come from outer space.’

Murph chuckled. ‘Yeah, and it’s going to kill us all. Right?’

‘Probably,’ said Nick. ‘We’re on a mission to tell the authorities.’

The humour went from Murph’s face. He looked at me. ‘Are you?’

‘We’ll discuss it with Mum and Dad tonight.’

Murph nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I suppose it has to be done. You can bet that mongrel Bryce Shreeves at the chook farm won’t report it.’ He sucked on his cigarette. ‘Danny, if you do go to the authorities, can you try and keep my birds out of it? From what you say there’ll be enough dead birds around for them to collect without needing to come up to my place.’

I nodded. ‘But can we go up and have a look?’

He glanced at his watch and then up at the TAB screen
mounted in the corner. ‘I’d take you up myself, except I’ve got some money on a nag in race four. I suppose you want to see Harriet?’ I nodded.

‘Yeah, well just go on up and take a gander.’ He smiled. ‘Give Harriet a kiss. She’ll be thrilled to see you.’

Murph’s place was set in bush at the end of a narrow gully that climbed up the side of an old volcano. The road was steep and narrow — great to ride down, but tough going up. We were both puffing furiously by the time we got to the driveway.

We could hear the sound of the birds through the trees well before we saw them: the chatter of the budgies, the songs from the canaries and the cheep, cheeping of the finches. There was also another sound — the distressed call of a bird caged against its will. It sounded like a tui, and was probably one of the injured native birds that Murph looked after.

The one species of bird that was silent were the sparrows. Many of them were dead, lying around the outside of the aviaries. Others were drowsily pecking at the seeds spilled by the caged birds. It was a sorry sight.

I got quite a shock when we checked the first aviary. The place was filthy. The water container was full of green slime, droppings had piled up under the perches, and the weeds Murph threw in to supplement their diet had heaped up until there was no room for the birds to move around on the ground.
Normally, Murph kept the cages spotlessly clean. I regretted that I hadn’t been up to see him for some weeks, as it looked like he was having trouble coping on his own.

With Nick’s help I set about cleaning up the worst of the mess, moving from one aviary to the next. It was in the canary house that we first saw sick birds. Three of them were down on the ground with their feathers all puffed up and their heads tucked under a wing. These must have got sick after Murph had checked them that morning.

The last of the aviaries were down a small gully, hidden amongst some trees. These were the native-bird cages. The noisy tui had one leg in splints. However, that didn’t stop it flying from one side to the other, squealing like a pig. The way it was putting weight on the leg suggested it would soon be well enough to be released.

The next cage had five blue penguins. They looked as if nothing had ever been wrong with them, but I knew that, like dozens of others over the years, they’d been covered in oil that had leaked from or been dumped by boats leaving the harbour. Murph kept them until he was sure they could again survive in the wild. The problem was, he didn’t have a permit to keep native birds, and that was one of the reasons he didn’t want the authorities snooping around.

When we’d cleaned up the worst of the mess in the cages, we headed up to the house. It was time to introduce Nick to Harriet.

As always, the back door was unlocked. I opened it and called out: ‘Harriet!’

Nothing.

‘Hello! Is there anybody home?’

‘Hello!’ echoed a voice from deep within the house.

We walked through into the kitchen.

I gave a shrill whistle.

Immediately there was a fluttering of wings, and within seconds a bird flew through the door and screeched to a halt on my shoulder. I turned my head sideways and she brought her beak forward and touched it on my lips.

‘Hi Danny! Hi Danny!’ she said.

‘Wow!’ said Nick. ‘So that’s Harriet.’

Harriet turned to him. ‘Hello! I’m Harriet the Parriet,’ she said.

I burst out laughing at the look on Nick’s face. ‘She’s meant to say “Harriet the Parakeet”, but she never gets it right.’

‘How many words can she say?’

‘Heaps. Murph keeps teaching her new ones. You never know what she’ll say next. Ask her how old she is.’

‘How old are you, Harriet?’

‘Sixty-four!’

‘Is she really?’ asked Nick.

‘No! She gives a different number each time. She’s about twenty. Murph found her as an injured chick and looked after her until she was an adult. Then, when he went to release her, she decided to stay.’ I paused, wondering how much I should tell Nick. ‘She’s a New Zealand red-crowned parakeet. A native kakariki, which means Murph shouldn’t really have her. She’s the main reason why he doesn’t want us to tell anybody about
the dead birds up here. He could get into lots of trouble.’

Nick nodded. I put my hand up to Harriet and she climbed on. We studied her in silence, while she studied us back. Her mostly green body was capped with a crown of red, which extended past the eye to give her a real cheeky look. Her wings had bright blue edges and tips of grey. While not as spectacular as tropical parrots, I thought she looked fantastic.

‘Does she live inside all the time?’ asked Nick.

‘No, she goes out with Murph when he’s working in the aviaries. And sometimes she goes out by herself for a fly around.’

‘Then she could leave if she wanted to?’

I nodded. ‘Except she doesn’t want to.’

In the silence that followed, I leaned forward and let her climb on Nick’s shoulder. He turned his head and got a kiss. His face split into a big, beaming smile. Then he stood absolutely still while she explored his ear. This went on for quite some time. Never before had I seen Nick stay still for so long. It seemed that Harriet could do what dozens of teachers, doctors and medicines couldn’t — give Nicholas Clarke a feeling of peace with the world.

A
fter dinner that night, we had a family conference. First up, I told Mum and Dad what we’d discovered about the dead birds, including what we’d seen at Murph’s place. I also gave details about Brio and Roost, but not my suspicions. After all, what did I know about Scottish people? They probably reacted to things in a different way to us Kiwis.

Mum’s response was to search the telephone book for which government department we should contact. It looked like it was BIRT, the Biosecurity Incident Response Team; they had an exotic pest and disease hotline.

We didn’t call it, though. Dad stopped us. He reckoned we didn’t have enough evidence to start accusing Peco of having bird flu at their farm.

‘You don’t go accusing somebody like Bryce Shreeves
without being very sure of your facts,’ he argued. ‘If we do this wrong, I could lose my job.’

‘How?’ asked Nick, indignantly.

Dad turned to him. ‘Bryce Shreeves is on the council. What’s more, he’s the chair of the committee that controls recycling and rubbish disposal. If he wants to fire me — believe me, he can.’

‘That’s not fair,’ moaned Nick.

‘Fair or not, it’s the way of life, Nick,’ said Dad.

‘What if we got more evidence?’

‘How? The only way would be to go into the farm, and there’s no way we can do that.’ He paused. ‘Look, lots of other people must have seen the dead birds. Let them call BIRT. It’ll be much better that way.’

Nick didn’t argue. Instead he slumped in his chair, fidgeting silently. The rest of us discussed it for a while longer without making any progress. In the end, the only decision we came to was about Cecil, the canary Murph had given us several Christmases ago. Ever since then, Cecil’s cage had been put out on the porch each morning, where he’d sing to the sparrows and other birds that enjoyed our garden. In the evening, we’d take him back into the house. However now, with the threat of disease around, we all agreed that he should stay inside, well away from his wild friends. Until this matter was over, he’d have to sing to himself.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke sensing that something was wrong. The room was too quiet. The night before, Nick had been as restless in his sleep as he was when awake, but now I couldn’t hear a thing from him.

It was too dark to see anything clearly, so I turned on my bedside lamp. Nick’s bed was empty. My first thought was that he was at the toilet or had gone for a drink. When he didn’t return after a couple of minutes, I sighed deeply before climbing out of bed.

He wasn’t in the toilet, nor the kitchen or the lounge. The only other places were outside or in Mum and Dad’s room. I went to the back door. It was unlocked. Mum would never have left it like that. And when I went to get the torch from its usual place on the bench, I found that it, too, was missing.

With a sinking feeling in my gut, I got the spare torch from a drawer and went out to the shed. My bike was missing.

I knew exactly where he had gone. It would be the chook farm. He’d gone to get more evidence. As he would put it, he was on a mission.

For half a minute or so, I considered going after him. Then I realized that doing so would get me into trouble as well. A better thing to do was tell Dad, and let him sort it out.

Dad’s first thought was to leave it, thinking that Nick would never be able to climb the fence. But after I told him about the gap in the netting, he decided we needed to try to stop him before he got there.

I figured that Nick didn’t know the roads to take any shortcuts, so I directed Dad along the route through Portobello. He
sat hunched over the wheel with his eyes fixed on the road. I had a fair idea what he was thinking about: if this went wrong, then he could say goodbye to his job, and probably the chance of getting another one somewhere else — Bryce Shreeves was a very influential man.