by Nell Grey
Not as pissed off as he’d be when he saw his bird’s head blown off in front of him, Irish sneered. The grass.
He lined the print up next to the only grainy picture he had of Sion Edwards from before.
There was no doubt it was the same bloke.
“Gotcha.”
Cobra King was awaiting instructions. And money.
No problem his end with that.
The next part was all about timing. And he was looking forward to it. He’d never been to New Zealand.
Now his passport had come through, there were arrangements to be made.
He clicked online and checked flights.
‘Cobra King,
Thank you for the photos. Excellent work, my friend. I’ll be with you soon. I’ll pay you to pick them up and keep them for me. Alive.
Are there any abattoirs near you? There’s a debt that needs to be repaid.
Irish’
◆◆◆
As I walk through into the café’s garden terrace, Tia gets up from a crowded table and comes over to me. Holding my hand, she introduces me to her friends.
An empty champagne flute is quickly sent my way and one of her friends offers me a drink of the pink fizz they’re drinking.
“I’m driving.”
“Pfft,” Tia dismisses, “You can crash at mine.”
There’s no excuse and my arm’s easily twisted. To be honest, I’ve been aching to see Shaun so badly I can hardly bear to be at the lake this week. I’ve been about to jump into the ute and head back up north to him three times at least, and it’s only Monday. A night away will be a welcome distraction.
“Claire’s a Pom. She’s moved into Jake’s Place out at the lake.”
“No way! Look at you.”
Aroha, one of the friends, looks me up and down. I squirm as I feel her eyes on my neck.
“You’re whanau.”
Tia tuts at her.
“Jees, she’s only just got here. Don’t scare her away.”
We order food and more pink fizz, which is going down far too fast. And pretty soon we’re all laughing and joking. Tia offers me a job working in the café and I’ve had more invitations to things that are going on than I will ever remember once I’ve sobered up.
I tell them about my weekend; the waka and Shaun. And they laugh at my pronunciations and ways of describing stuff.
“You’re so Māori, girl. I mean it. Seriously.”
“D’ya think?”
My skin’s more or less the same tone as theirs. My hair’s like theirs too, thick and dark. My eyes study their features, as well as they can after a few glasses of bubbles.
“My dad’s from New Zealand.”
“How?”
“He was a rugby player. My mum said it was a one-night thing. She never talked about it. His name on the birth certificate is all I’ve got.”
“And your neck?”
I shudder when they raise it, but I’ve had too much wine at this point and I don’t care anymore. Shaun tells me I’m still beautiful.
“A guy put a knife to me and I fought him off.”
“What happened to him?”
“Prison.”
“So, you’re a regular warrior too.”
I giggle.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“You should get a moko over it.”
“A moko?’
“Yeah.”
Tia scrolls through images on her phone, showing me the traditionally dressed Māori women with black tattooed lips and thick black grooving lines curling across their chins.
My eyes widen and they howl with laughter.
“Is this like some distraction theory? Tattoo my face and they won’t notice my neck?”
When we’ve calmed down, Aroha stands and rolls up her shirt at the back to show me a huge tribal design tattooed right across it. It looks super-cool, I have to admit.
“There’s still no way I’m tattooing my chin.”
“Not your chin, ya wally. Down ya neck. It’d be cool as.”
“No way. My friend got a tattoo to cover a scar on her shoulder. You’d need to be pretty brave to have one down your neck.”
“I guess, but at least you’d wear it as art, not twitch every time someone looks your way.”
“I’m not doing that, am I?”
Tia fills my glass. Their faces are enough to confirm that there’s no way I can argue the point.
◆◆◆
“I missed you last night.”
Shaun had finally got through to Claire. She’d texted him regularly but with her going out on Monday and the farewell activities going on in the hostel, they hadn’t managed to video chat for a few days.
“Yeah, sorry about that. I ended up staying out at the beach with Tia and my phone went flat,” Claire said relaxing back flat on the bed.
“It’s been a mad forty-eight hours but I’ve met so many people.”
“Sounds as if you’ve been having fun.”
“I have. I love that big beach, it’s so wild out there.”
“And it goes on for miles. I did some kite fishing on it with Frank.”
“Catch anything?”
Claire sniggered.
“Hey! My fishing’s got a lot better since then.”
“Tia introduced me to her family and friends, and she says we’re whanau. D’you think I look Māori?”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Cool. She’s going to help me find my dad. Every time I said his name she was rolling over in stitches, so I promised to text it to her. Oh, and she thinks I should get a moko.”
“A what?”
“A traditional tattoo. Women get tattooed on their chin. She thinks I should get one like that down my neck.”
He touched his arm subconsciously. The large Welsh plumes of his regiment emblem across his bicep covered over previous inked-in scratchings, battle wounds from his time as a teenager in residential care.
“Is that what you want?”
“What d’you think?”
“I think getting a tattoo on your neck’s a bit like having a kid.”
“Eh?”
“You’ve gotta be fully committed to it. Once it’s on, it’s there for life.”
“Yeah, there is that.”
She yawned.
“Sorry!”
“Tired?”
“Last night was a late one. We had a bonfire on the beach.”
He was suddenly serious.
“Would the tattoo help you be less self-conscious about your scar?”
He could see her nose screw up.
“Hey, Shaun. Don't worry. I’m not getting a tattoo down my neck.”
She looked intently at the screen.
“But you know what? I have decided something. Let them stare. I don’t care anymore about my scar. It’s part of my story. Who I am.”
Shaun laughed, a little relieved.
“When I see your scar, I see your bravery.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Makes you even more beautiful. And I think I proved last weekend what effect you have on me.”
She stared wickedly at the screen and into his eyes.
“You mean, what I felt pressed up against me?”
“My days undercover are over, so it definitely wasn’t a gun. It could have been the waka though? Hidden in my shorts.”
Claire let out a loud laugh.
“The optimism of men. You’ll make a fisherman yet.”
Shaun cleared his throat.
“Claire, when I come home on Friday, we can take this as slow as you want. Stay friends, even. It’d kill me, but I never want you to feel pressured.”
She was studying him through the video link.
“Hmm, let’s see how it goes, yeah? I mean, I’m finding it really hard not to think about it.”
He saw her suddenly flush red. He loved that nervous innocence about her, naive and sexy at the same time.
“I mean ‘you.’ Not to think about you.
I think about you, most of the day, actually.”
“You do?”
“I wish I was with you now. I’ll be dreaming about you, Claire”
“Me too.”
She gave him an impish grin.
“I’ll show you Friday what we did.”
◆◆◆
I wake up ridiculously early, my stomach filled with butterflies. My heart racing. Shaun’s coming home.
And then, a moment of cavernous dread. What on earth am I going to wear?
I look at my small selection of worn-out clothes and well-travelled underwear. It was all I could carry in my rucksack, but now after months on the road and what with the painting and manual work, it’s all gone a bit tatty.
That’s it, I decide. The girl needs to shop. And fast. It’s a two-hour drive over to the east coast, but Tia said that there are decent stores there. Whatever they have, it’s got to be an improvement on the checked farmer shirts and armpit-hugging granny knickers in town.
I get there as the shops are opening and pull up by the marina where the town’s harbour inlet is lined with expensive yachts in their moorings. Tia was right when she told me that the east coast was a world away from the agricultural backwaters and wild, forested west side of the country.
Fuelled by a quick coffee and croissant in the morning sunshine I go in search of some serious retail therapy.
By early afternoon I’m shopped out and heading back on the long drive to the lake.
My hair’s styled and I’m waxed and polished like a showroom car. I’m feeling great, but those pesky little butterflies of anticipation are still there. And their wings beat like mad when I try to decide which of the lingerie sets on the seat beside me I’m going to wear tonight.
◆◆◆
“That you ready for home?”
Ari was emptying the last remnants of the large fridge as Shaun lugged his bags through to the kitchen.
He’d spent all day with his friend, cleaning and stripping down the hostel after the boys left that morning for their summer holidays.
It was strange to think that the hostel wouldn’t be opening up again.
“I’m gonna miss this place. And the boys.”
“You did good, Shaun.”
“Thanks, bro. I’m still worried about Rawiri, though.”
He’d not been back to school or the hostel since Shaun had seen him heading off on the back of the motorbike.
Ari scratched his head.
“His mum’s related to a cousin of mine. I’ll find out what’s goin’ on with him. But from the sounds of it, he’s headed to the forest camp with his dad.”
That was what Shaun feared too. He put his hand on Ari’s shoulder.
“All the best with your teaching course. Give my love to Michelle.”
“And to Claire.”
Ari snuck him a look that cracked Shaun’s smirk into a broad cheesy smile. Ari hadn’t left him be until he’d spilled the beans about Claire.
Ari had been curious. He’d wanted to know everything about her. Who she was, how they’d met, what she’d been doing in Wales before she came out to New Zealand. Who she thought her dad was. Shaun had told him everything about her, even about the attack. He was going to miss his friend.
“See you at the lodge. Soon, yeah? There’s room for you all and plenty of trout in the lake.”
“Still will be while you’re fishing there.”
Ari squared and faced his friend, grasping his hand and leaning in, nose to nose with Shaun in the traditional hongi.
“Ka kite anō. See you soon, bro.”
Chapter 17
---------✸---------
Something was off.
He could see something was wrong as soon as he turned the bend after the public beach. The ute had been left with the driver door wide open and the place looked deserted. The lodge appeared to be locked up and there was nobody about.
Shaun slowed the BMW right down.
Then, as he rolled the car warily up towards the lodge, he clocked the full bags of groceries strewn across the passenger seat of the truck. His stomach lurched. That wasn’t right at all.
A part of his brain he’d hoped he’d never have to use again, began firing up, quickly assessing the situation.
It didn’t matter which way he evaluated it. It wasn’t good.
And where was Claire?
Edgily, he turned the steering wheel, cruising closer, scanning his eyes over the property and across towards the barn. Slowly circling in the turning space before the driveway to the house, he headed back towards the public beach area. He turned there and then parked up on the grassy verge by the track to the lodge.
From there, he surveyed the lodge and the drive meticulously. At first from inside the car and then outside from the cover of the car door.
Was there someone there? There were no movements, no unexplained shadows from the buildings or inside the windows of the lodge. But he was still a little too far away to be sure.
Bursting from behind the car, his trainers slid in the dust as he power-sprinted up the track and over towards the property. He dived for cover behind a thick line of flax bushes a few metres before the barn.
No explosions of splintering wood, no popping bangs. Everywhere remained ghostly still.
Taking his chance he lunged himself forward into the open once more, bounding forward to the edge of the barn wall and then making a final dash to the barn door.
Yanking it open he scanned the space with his eyes, then slid swiftly inside and gathered his breath.
Think.
What had happened here?
Think.
He rubbed his face, trying to calm himself down.
The barn was spookily silent. Motes of dust suspended on the cool air inside. It had been swept clean. Gardening tools had been neatly propped up on one side.
He examined the space and checked the second storage area which he’d left open.
Nothing looked disturbed. Everything was tidy. There were no signs of any struggle.
He checked the top loft area, hidden from view. If he was hiding, he’d choose there. Out of view, secret and only accessible by ladder.
But it was empty. The old mattress, the tilly lamp and stove; it looked the same as before.
His heart sank.
She hadn’t been here either.
Grabbing a kindling axe that was propped up in the corner, he scooted back towards the barn door and spied back out from behind it again.
He’d developed catlike senses in the special forces, and he was certain now that he couldn’t sense anyone else around. But, what he’d give right now for a semi-automatic.
Warily, hatchet in hand and tracking the edge of the barn he ducked low as he moved. Then he broke out into the open, sprinting towards the ute.
Diving for cover behind the truck’s open door, he crouched there for a minute. And more. Waiting, in case it was a trap.
He exhaled.
Gingerly, he straightened a little and took one more cautious assessment of the area before turning his attention to the ute.
Car keys lay discarded in the dust two feet away from the driver’s side.
He picked them up.
“Claire, honey,” he whispered as much to himself as to her.
“Where are you?”
The house looked like it was locked up.
A large unopened parcel lay propped up, undisturbed against the kitchen door.
This was no home invasion.
Leaning his head inside, tentatively he began searching inside the cab.
His gut churned.
Three bags of new clothes and one of beautiful lingerie.
As he lifted out a pair of aubergine-coloured panties and felt their soft satin in his fingers, his eyes began to sting and he let out a shaky breath.
Her handbag was still lying on the passenger seat.
He lifted it and looked inside. Her purse was still in there. Cash and bank cards untouched.
Stone cold.
He examined the groceries. The chicken breasts she’d bought felt warm to touch in their cellophane and gave off an unmistakable whiff when he peeled back the wrapping.
On a hot day like this, she’d have had the air con on when she drove from Dargarei, he rationalised. It was early evening now so the shopping had to have been sitting in the sun for one, maybe two hours?
He stood up straight and surveyed the area thoroughly one more time.
More certain now that he was alone, he jogged over to the porch and tried the handle.
He was right, the place was still locked up.
Inside was tidy. No broken windows or damage to the lodge. No torn clothes. No pools of blood, thank God. He doubted she’d even made it inside.
Where was she?
“Claire!”
He called out her name loudly from the porch step, scanning carefully around, already feeling the futility of his cries.
His voice thickened.
“Claire? Are you there?”
But the only calls that answered him were the melodious songs of the tui birds in the trees and the flat-sounding squawk of Rowdy in the chicken coop.
“Claire!.... No!.... Fuck, no!”
He broke down.
They’d taken his Claire.
He willed himself to be the soldier he was. To think fast and hard. Be logical and analytical, think dispassionately about this.
Instead, he retched into the dirt in front of the house, his stomach desperately heaving up his anxiety and dread.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand and went over to kneel down at the lakeshore, cleaning his hands and splashing his face with water.
Who would have taken her?
There was a contract out on him, the officer from the British Consulate had confirmed that. And Claire had told him about the Scousers coming after her in Greece and the warning she’d been given.
His mind slammed back to a time before, when he’d been grabbed by the Scouser gang. Irish had set a trap for him in a crowded boozer, where he’d been jumped by some goons and thrown into the boot of a car. It was highly unlikely that Irish would be able to do that here. And from what he’d seen of the Scousers, they weren’t trained military men. They depended heavily on loyal gym-built meatheads.
