The smell and the heat got to him, and eventually he vomited into the slop bucket. When he was done, he took off his greatcoat and laid it in a corner. Now he could see the true extent of his prison, the dirt floor, the walls reinforced with crossed slabs of wood. He thought of the sawmills back in Palmerston, busy cutting such planks on their sharp blades.
The sawmills reminded him of Mette. He could see her once more as she was the first time he saw her, barely three months ago, standing in the forest clearing with her sister, laughing, her blond hair gleaming in the sunlight. She was beautiful, although she didn’t believe it herself, because her beauty was in her animation and came from within. She was the perfect woman, like Patmore’s Angel in the House, the goddess of the family – their family of course, the one they would create, not the family she already had. After that first time, when she’d run from the Maori warrior Anahera in the bush and into his path … all he wanted after that was to protect her, to keep her safe. It was an odd feeling. Women didn’t usually have that effect on him. Perhaps it was because she was younger than the women he’d previously been involved with, more dependent on him.
And what about Anahera? The rebel Maori warrior had descended on Palmerston a few months ago, determined to revenge himself for the deaths of his two small nephews and the kidnapping of his sister. They’d caught him and he’d been sent up the Wanganui River to the secret Armed Constabulary gaol, known to be impossible to escape. He was probably still there. Could he have organized Frank’s kidnapping from his prison cell?
Surely it would be impossible for Anahera to organize a kidnapping from his gaol. He’d be separated from other prisoners, and without enough of the English language at his command to recruit a corrupt guard. Besides which, the man was terrifying. He was not someone who would charm a guard into helping him. Terrorize a guard, perhaps, but that didn’t work when you were in solitary confinement, and guarded closely by experienced men. However, others in the gaol could be in contact with the tribes in the King Country, up the far reaches of the Wanganui River, where the Maori King Movement had drawn a line beyond which Europeans could not go if they wanted to stay alive. Maybe the Movement had developed some kind of forward base closer to Wanganui and were holding him there? Could they be using him to facilitate a prisoner exchange? He hoped not. No one would consider him worth swapping for Anahera.
The day dragged by, and as the sun went down, the ritual with the basket and the slop bucket was repeated: more potatoes and water, and a chunk of mutton that was mostly fat. Two meals a day — enough to keep him alive.
As his cell darkened he heard the skittering sounds of wetas once more, and used one of his precious matches to find the tunnel. Half way up the wall nearest to the trapdoor, the flickering light from his match lit up a small colony of females and juveniles, and one male who hissed at him angrily. He used the last of the flame to locate a rock, and shoved it deep into the tunnel. That would keep them in there while they dug around it, and make sure they didn’t crawl over him as he slept. They weren’t dangerous, but they could bite, and he needed his sleep.
He dozed off thinking about his stay in Wellington. He’d had a brief and somewhat curious encounter at the South Sea Hotel, with a colonel belonging to one of the British regiments in India. He seemed to recognize Frank, although Frank had no memory of ever meeting him. Why would someone from India have anything to do with this? He hadn’t been in India for almost twenty years, when he was a raw recruit. Surely nothing from that long ago could be coming back to cause trouble for him now?
He stretched out on the ground, which was as hard and uncomfortable as a metalled road. It was not the soft bed he was used to these days, but he knew from his years of campaigning that rest was vital, and would help keep him ready for opportunities. He lay back on the hard, uneven ground, his head on his rolled-up greatcoat and dropped instantly into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
The sun rose and the distant, familiar sounds of a military camp drifted down to him. His first thought was that he was still at war in Taranaki, but then reality hit. Still in his underground prison. He got up and stretched, then threw his coat in the corner opposite the slop bucket. The click of a key pushed into a lock and turned signalled that food had arrived, and he was instantly alert. He had to find who had him before he could understand why he’d been taken.
The trapdoor creaked slowly open. He stood underneath, ready to receive the basket of food, and ready to discover who had him. The food came towards him slowly; he braced himself. Slowly, slowly. Then his hands were around the basket. He gave it a sharp pull, sending it tumbling across the dirt floor, and then leapt upwards, grabbing at whoever was there.
His hands connected to an arm. Gripping it, he pulled down hard, putting his weight behind it. A brown arm, small, and soft, a woman’s arm. The surprise almost caused him to let go, but he held on and pulled the woman down further. Her whole upper body was through the trapdoor, her hair tumbling over his face.
“Who are you? Why are you keeping me here?”
She began to wail. “Te tauturi, te tauturi.”
Boots thumped towards them in the dirt, followed by the ominous sound of carbines being engaged.
“Let her go,” said a voice. “Or you’re a dead man.”
He continued holding the arm for a few seconds, then grudgingly let it slip from his grasp and stepped back. The woman was pulled up by unseen hands, still wailing loudly.
“That’s better.” An Irish voice. He recognized the accent. “Now sit down and be a good boy now.”
He lowered himself against the wall and sat on the earthen floor. They could see him, but to him they were just vague shadows. Above him the carbines were disengaged, followed by muffled words. He heard them leave, but the shadow of one man remained, like a ghostly presence, leaning over the grate.
“Got me eye on you, mate,” said the Irishman. “Don’t try anything like that again or I’ll shoot youse in the leg, hobble you for good.”
He picked up the kumaras and potatoes and brushed the dirt away. He knew that voice. Who the hell was it?
4
A Private Investigation
Wiremu—Will—Karira, lately a Maori constable, and Frank had opened a small private enquiry office in the new building next to the Royal Hotel: Die Hard Enquiries, Inc. They were building up a steady list of regular clients to keep them in business – tracking down stolen horses, delivering legal papers, patrolling hotels at night and such. Mette arrived at the agency out of breath, and ran up the steps, down the hallway and through the swinging half door to the office. Karira was at his desk, buffing his boots with dubbin, the Manawatu Times beside him, open at the cricket scores. He dropped the cloth and jumped to his feet.
“Mette, what’s…Frank just left. He’s gone to Wellington to fetch your brother-in-law’s sister. He didn’t have time to say goodbye – he had to rush for the tram. But he told me to tell you he’d be back in three or four days. I’m sorry, I…”
Mette sat down at Frank’s desk, which faced Karira’s, dropped her head into her hands and started sobbing.
“He’ll only be gone a few days.” Karira moved uncomfortably in his chair. “He’ll be back before you know it.”
Mette brushed the tears away with her fingertips, sniffing. “I’m sorry, Will,” she said. “I saw Frank leaving, and I so much wanted to talk to him, about…something terrible has happened. You remember Gottlieb Karlsen? The Scandi man who went missing in October?”
Karira nodded. “The road worker?” He looked at Mette, his soft brown eyes guileless.
Mette nodded, avoiding his gaze. Had Frank told Karira about what happened? The expression on his face suggested he knew something.
“His brother’s here,” she said. “Gottlieb Karlsen’s brother. His name is Frederic Karlsen and he’s come all the way from Australia. He wants to hire an investigator to find what happened to Gottlieb. I’m supposed to find someone who can help him and let him know tomorrow. He does
n’t speak English and needs someone to translate. He thinks I’ll be that person.”
“Hmm,” said Karira. “That’s awkward.”
Mette looked at him warily.
“Frank told me what happened,” he said. “I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I won’t.”
“Everything?” said Mette, her voice shaking. There were some things she wanted no one to know about. She didn’t even want to know about them herself, but had no choice. She’d struggled hard to forget the terrible attack in the night, and the attempted rape, and the only time she felt completely safe now was when she was with Frank.
Karira shrugged. “He attacked the pair of you in the Gorge, and Frank killed him with Anahera’s tomahawk. It was clearly self-defence, but I have no intention of making Frank—or you—go through a trial to prove that it was.”
“Thank you Will,” said Mette, her eyes filling with tears. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, sniffing. “Then what should I tell him? Do you know anyone else who can help him search for his brother’s killer, without letting him know the truth?”
Karira picked up a delicately carved greenstone paper knife from his desk and twirled it between his fingers, looking thoughtful. “I’ll take the case,” he said finally, stabbing the end of the paper knife into the wooden desktop. “I’ll take him on a nice little tour of all the places his brother spied on women, and have him talk to my Uncle Hakopa, who heard the complaints, and we’ll talk to the men who worked under poor Sergeant Jackson before he was murdered by Anahera. They watched Karlsen go down to the river bank to spy on the women from the Pa. When I’m done with him he’ll think—no, he’ll know—that his brother was the worst sort of man to be found in New Zealand.”
* * *
She was in the bookstore the next day when Frederic Karlsen arrived, followed shortly by Karira. Karlsen looked Karira up and down, frowning and said, “I thought you would bring that sergeant…Sergeant Hardy, is it? Mr. Snelson at the general store told me about him. He would seem more suitable…”
“He’s away,” said Mette, glad that Karira didn’t speak German. “Constable Karira is his partner. He can help you just as well. In fact, he probably knows the district better than Sergeant Hardy.”
“Aah,” said Karlsen, giving her a knowing look. “Then this Hardy, you wouldn’t recommend him so much then? You think this Maori fellow will be able to talk to the local rascals better?”
Mette bit her lip and smiled, itching to give Karlsen a good slap.
The two men talked at one another, using Mette as an intermediary, and then sealed the deal with a handshake and a five-pound note for Karira, which was to be the advance. As he handed over the note, Karlsen asked, “He isn’t related to that Maori who killed people, is he?”
“Nein,” said Mette. Then, in English to Karira, “Mr. Karlsen wonders if you are connected to the Maori who killed several people a few weeks ago.”
Karlsen watched Karira with narrowed eyes, waiting for his answer. Karira shook his head firmly.
“Sergeant Hardy and I did our best to catch him,” he said slowly, exaggerating the words, as if Karlsen was a bit slow, while Mette translated. “He almost killed us, up behind the sawmill. But we caught him and he’s been sent away now. He may even have been the man who killed…made your brother disappear.”
Karlsen frowned. “That’s what Constable Price said, but it isn’t true.”
“How do you know?” asked Mette nervously in English. “I mean, woher weist du das?”
He leaned forward confidently. “Because the boy who works behind the counter in the general store told me. He said no one in town believes the Maori killed Gottlieb.”
“Who do they think did kill him then?” said Mette, forgetting that she was trying to pretend Gottlieb might still be alive.
Karlsen looked carefully in either direction, leaned forward, and said in a dramatic whisper, “The Armed Constabulary.”
It was so far from what Mette expected that she almost burst into laughter.
“Why would they do that?”
“Because he had discovered they were secretly selling alcohol to the natives and they wanted to shut him up.”
“Not a bad theory,” said Karira, after she’d translated for him. “Better than the one where he was killed by an enraged Royal Mail coachman with a tomahawk, at least. Shall we run with that one? An Armed Constabulary conspiracy?”
Karlsen saw that Karira had accepted his idea and he nodded and smiled. “Gut, gut.”
Mette crossed her fingers behind her back and said, “Mr. Karira thinks that’s a possibility.”
“As good as any other possibility that isn’t the actual truth,” said Karira, smiling at Karlsen, who smiled back again.
He shook hands once more with Karira and left.
For the next week, Mette continued working at Robinson’s Fine Papers and Books, longing for Frank to return, and receiving frequent updates from Karira on his investigation. She was unable to leave the shop and go with Karira and Karlsen as a translator, so they did the best they could, talking at each other slowly and loudly, neither listening to the other. Karira would drop by with his update at midday, and later in the day Karlsen (she could not think of him as Frederic as he was still a little bit Gottlieb in her mind) would come in and be given the translation she and Karira had decided on between them. A visit to Karira’s Uncle Hakopa, who talked angrily about how Gottlieb had spied on the young women from the Pa, was translated as Gottlieb watching the river to see the alcohol being sold to the natives.
“I didn’t intend him to take that from our conversation with my uncle,” Karira said apologetically, after Mette had told him about a discussion she’d had with Karlsen. “I want him to understand how depraved his brother was, but he drew the wrong conclusion. He understood the words ‘Armed Constabulary’ when my uncle mention them —Uncle Hakopa suggested Karlsen should go to them I believe. That, with your suggestion of Gottlieb spying on someone at the river allowed him to conclude there was a plot against Gottlieb.” He picked up a book from the book shop table and waved it at Mette. “It sounds like something out of Tom Brown’s Days at Rugby, or Masterman Ready, Gottlieb crouching on the river bank listening to the plotters, determined to unmask them to the world.”
For a disloyal minute, Mette wished that Frank knew as much about books as Karira, but she pushed the idea from her mind. Karira would always be around, and she could talk about books with him. In many ways he had become like a brother to her. Frank had other things she loved about him.
“What other evidence has he seen that shows his brother was killed by the Armed Constabulary to stop him revealing their plot to sell alcohol to the nati…to the Maori,” asked Mette.
“Remember that raid by the Armed Constabulary back in August?” said Karira. “When they found a large cache of liquor? Karlsen heard about that from his source behind the counter at Snelson’s General Store. He thinks that the Constabulary kept some of the bottles and sold them off to my people.” He picked up one of Mette’s recipe pamphlets and flipped through the pages. “We don’t even drink alcohol, most of us. It’s insulting, actually.”
“Perhaps you should tell him…” She stopped. Hop Li, the cook from the Royal Hotel, and an old friend of Frank’s, had come rushing into the shop, looking upset. Mette had never seen him even slightly troubled about anything, and her heart dropped like a stone in her chest.
“Something has happened to Frank,” she said.
Even as she said the words, she did not believe them herself. It was just like when she thought the news about Pieter and Maren’s inheritance was going to be that her mother had died. A minute of intense worry and then an explanation that was terribly important of course, but did not involve the death of someone she loved.
“Mrs. Madsen just arrive from Wellington, with her children,” said Hop Li.
“And Frank?” said Mette and Karira in unison.
“Gone,” he said. “He disappear
ed from the boat. He didn’t come down the gangplank.”
He was too distraught to tell them much more, so Karira and Mette ran towards the tram station leaving Hop Li in charge of the store with instructions to tell anyone who came in that Mette was away for five minutes. Mr. Robinson would not be happy if he found out, but that was the least of her worries.
They found Agnete Madsen supervising a sullen tram conductor as he tried to hoist her steamer trunk on Pieter’s dray, with assistance and conflicting instructions from Pieter. At any other time, Mette would have been amused at the scene, but not now. She strode up to Agnete and demanded, “Where’s Frank?”
Agnete gave her a long, cold look, then shrugged.
“He left me to come from Foxton on my own,” she said. “With my two small children and all my luggage.”
“What do you mean he left you alone?”
“I explained all this to the Chinaman,” said Agnete. “Didn’t he tell you?”
Mette shook her head. Had Frank gone somewhere? What had happened?
Agnete sighed. Clearly, Mette was testing her patience.
“We were supposed to meet him at the top of the gangplank when we arrived in Foxton,” she said. “We were on the SS Stormbird in cabins at opposite ends of the saloon deck. But I waited and waited and he didn’t come. In the end, they – the crew – made me disembark. I found my own way to the tram, with the help of a very nice Scotsman, and here I am. I must say I’m not at all happy that he abandoned…”
“He would never do that,” said Pieter sharply. “That is why I asked him to come and fetch you. I trust him completely.”
Recalled to Life Page 3
