Deep in the Shallows

by J. L. O'Rourke

  I avoided the head-on collision.

  A mud-encrusted Land Rover rushed towards me, using more than its share of the road, forcing me to take evasive action. In a split second I whipped the wheel to the left, slammed on the brakes and hung on as the car spun in a giddy circle before coming to an abrupt halt in the roadside ditch, back wheels in a hole, front facing back the way I had come. The dead pig on the Land Rover’s tray bounced as it disappeared around the bend.

  “Bastard! Arsehole!” There was no point yelling, neither the driver nor the pig could hear me, but it released the tension and was a better alternative than bursting into tears, which were threatening as I realised I might be stuck in the ditch. Breathe! I turned the key, sent up an amorphous prayer to the roadside fairies, and tried the accelerator. The fairies were kind. With a shuddering lurch the car pulled itself out of the ditch, although in my surprise I almost forgot to stop accelerating and nearly ended up in the matching ditch on the opposite bank. With my imagination conjuring images of more vehicles ploughing into the side of me while I was broadside across the road, I spun the wheel to straighten the car, faced it in the right direction, threw a few more choice expletives back in the direction of the vanished Land Rover, then continued my journey up the hill, hugging the left hand side of the road and vowing never to accept jobs up country roads again.

  I had only travelled a few hundred metres, and my heart rate hadn’t yet returned to normal, before the GPS told me I had reached my destination. The name on the open five-bar gate confirmed it. I pulled the car onto the unkempt grass driveway, following its track down the side of the house to a dirt parking bay in front of a raised wrap-around deck.

  “Wow!” I really should stop talking to myself. Not “wow” spectacular, amazing, fabulous. More “wow” unique, crazy, am-I-really-seeing-this. From the front the house looked like a picture-book farmhouse with large, white-painted French doors opening onto the deck from several rooms, all with panoramic views over the paddocks down to the lake, but the view as I had driven in had already shown the house’s odd secret – it was two houses joined together on a crazy angle, an ungainly marriage of a villa and a cottage. A work in progress, incomplete.

  I left the car, locked it automatically as you do when you live in the city, then walked back down the drive. Before I let myself into the house I had to see it from all sides. I wasn’t disappointed. Every side was different. It was soon obvious that the cottage had been in poorer condition than the villa when they were moved there and stuck together. The back of the house, the cottage part, showed sheets of plywood tacked over rotting weatherboards, disintegrating window frames and a large tarpaulin nailed over what must have once been a back door. Then, as I made it all the way around to the villa, the house was a different creature with aluminium windows, a reasonably recent paint job and a surprisingly healthy garden of succulents and cacti thriving under the stairs to the deck.

  I checked my watch. It was tempting to go inside and look around but I could wait until tomorrow. My objective had been to find the place and I had done that. Now I was hungry, so a better plan was to drive back to Waihola to find somewhere that served my idea of fine dining – fish and chips. The Bastard would not have approved.

  The drive back to the camp was delightfully uneventful – no hurtling dead pigs chauffeured by idiots – but I was relieved to pull into the carpark beside my little cabin. Still in city mode, I locked the car, leaving the map but grabbing my jacket. The wind was picking up as the temperature dropped, creating choppy waves with tiny white tops across the blue expanse of the lake. I heard two swans shrieking complaints against the rising tide. Above the water dark clouds threatened another downfall of rain. If I was going to get food I needed to do it soon, while I was still warm and dry. I pulled on my jacket, zipping it all the way to the neck as I walked, head down against the rising southerly wind, back towards the main road where I knew there were the essentials of every small town – a dairy, a pub, a garage, and a fish and chip shop.

  My first stop was the dairy. I would need something for breakfast tomorrow, and something to take with me up to the house as I expected to be there all day and didn’t fancy driving back for lunch. Then, clutching my purchases of coffee, bread, milk, jam, margarine and a packet of the chocolate biscuits that I loved but Simon disapproved of, I carried on past the pub to complete my mission. That’s where I saw the Land Rover, pig still lolling on the tray, parked in the pub carpark. I wasn’t surprised. It seemed perfectly logical that any man who killed pigs and drove like a maniac would end his hard-working day at the local pub. I was tempted to go in and tell him what I thought of him and his driving, then I realised I was tempted and was startled at my burst of courage. Where had that come from? A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have dared have a determined thought like that. I shook my head in disbelief at my own energy, then giggled to myself as I realised how silly I would look, confronting the whole bar when I had no idea who the man was.

  I carried on to the fish and chip shop to buy my order which I ate, like a naughty child, ripping a hole in the end of the newspaper wrapping as I wandered back to my cabin. Kali the black pug, named after the fearful Hindu goddess to whom she bore no resemblance at all, apart from the permanently protruding tongue, met me halfway, her fat body making ridiculous attempts at jumping that her short legs couldn’t sustain, her tongue and ears flapping out of time with her leaps. I fell for the routine and handed her a chip that barely touched the sides as she snorted it down. I was going to give her another one when Gail’s voice stopped me.

  “Don’t let her con you into feeding her – she’s supposed to be on a diet.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She’s naughty,” Gail caught up with me and gave Kali a pat on the top of her head. “The vet has told us that she has to lose weight, but she’s pretty good at doing that pathetic starving look, even though she’s the size of a bus. And if she can’t scavenge food off us, she knows the campers will feed her.” She turned to the dog. “You’re a very bad dog!”

  Kali, rightfully, took the pleasant tone of voice as praise rather than reprimand and panted her enjoyment at the attention. I laughed and gave her a pat.

  “Next time, pooch, when no-one’s looking.”

  “Are you settled in okay?” Gail asked.

  “Yes, no problems,” I replied. “I’ve found the place I have to value and I will get started tomorrow. Hopefully it won’t take too long.”

  “That’s Maggie Netherby’s place, isn’t it? Have they figured out what to do with it now?”

  “Yes and no. Yes it is Margaret Netherby’s house that I am here to value, but no, there are still some complications with the will and the inheritance before it can go to probate and be settled.”

  “Let me guess, there could still be some relatives somewhere waiting to pop out of the woodwork and claim the farm?”

  “Something like that,” I laughed. “But that’s not my department. I just have to make an inventory of her stuff. Boring paper work, that’s my specialty.”

  “Well, if you’re sorting her stuff you are going to be busy.” She smiled at my confused expression. “Maggie was a hoarder. You might need to organise a rubbish skip.”

  “Oh, great.”

  With those inspiring words of comfort, Gail rounded up Kali and left me to continue to my cabin, munching thoughtfully on a tender piece of cod, or shark. A hoarder. Someone could have warned me. Oh well. As long as she didn’t hoard dead pigs.

  I dumped my meagre groceries onto my bed, plonked myself on the other end and spread my fish and chip wrapping out beside me so I could finish my meal, while trying not to think about how much extra work this job might now entail. I needed coffee. I fished my favourite travel mug from my luggage and ventured out into the now chilly air to find the communal kitchen and some hot water.

  The camp’s kitchen was a large, well-appointed hive of activity. To reach it I had passed a cluster of tiny one-man tents beside a dusty mini-van,
so I wasn’t too surprised to find the kitchen full of fit young German tourists, all talking at the top of their voices. One of the girls gave me a hard stare as I slid past them to the other end of the bench where I could see a lone electric jug. I filled it rapidly without looking at my fellow campers. It wasn’t that their presence irritated me, I just couldn’t be bothered making small talk, let alone translating it, so I avoided eye contact while the jug boiled then filled my travel mug and hurried back out into the fading light. As I didn’t feel like sitting in the tiny cabin, or chatting with the Germans, I figured my best option was to walk aimlessly around the camp, sipping coffee as I ambled.

  I didn’t consciously head towards the lights, it just seemed like the natural thing to do. Without any logical thought or plan, I found myself wandering along the edge of the railway line that separated the campground from the shops on the main road. Through the trees I could hear, although I couldn’t see, the business machinations normally hidden from the customers. Behind the fish and chip shop I heard a growled, “Get out of it, you manky shit,” followed by something being thrown and a cat screech in complaint as the object found its target. From further along I could hear the dairy owner stacking crates, grunting as each one thumped into its allotted place. The interesting stuff was between the two. A man’s voice, with a real Kiwi “Southern Man” accent, just like the old guy on the beer advertisements, carried easily on the wind.

  “Nice one, mate. She’s a big bitch all right. You’ll get a few pork pies out of that one, Bill.”

  “Yep,” a second voice agreed. “Reckon I will.”

  “Bring her down to the shed, mate, and we’ll get her hung up. I’ll cut her up tomorrow.”

  A third, younger voice, joined in. “Okay. Tom, you go and open up and I’ll follow you down. Hey Bill, you’d better save me some of those pies.”

  Tom. With a speedy deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes, I realised that one of those voices had to belong to Gail’s husband. She’d said his name was Tom. So Bill had to be someone who made pies and the other voice must have been the driver of the Land Rover, as my super deductive powers worked out that the dead pig must be the potential pie source. All of a sudden I was angry again at his bad driving and I wanted to know why he hadn’t stopped to see if I was hurt. Swallowing the last of my coffee, I aimed for the office and manager’s house, where I figured the pig butchers were heading.

  I came around the side of the house just as the Land Rover pulled in, turning to back into a huge shed almost as big as the house. The man I assumed was Tom was standing beside the opened roller door, waving directions to the driver as he reversed. I waited until he had turned off the ignition and stepped out of the vehicle before I marched up and gave him both barrels.

  “Hey, you!” I stepped in front of him so he had to know I was aiming my anger at him. “Yes, you! Do you always drive like a dick?”

  He looked confused. He also, as I drew back a pace to draw breath, looked gorgeous, but I was too angry to let a little thing like light-brown hair with blond streaks flopping over blue eyes set in a tanned and perfectly angled face, put me off my stride. He continued to mime confusion, spreading his hands, palms up, and making noiseless movements with his mouth.

  “A couple of hours ago,” I reminded him. “Country road, south of the lake, blind corner, some idiot, who I may or may not be talking to right now but drove a Land Rover with a dead pig on the back, cut me off and forced me into a ditch, then sped off into the dust. I could be still stuck there, in that bloody ditch, for all you knew or cared. I could be bloody dead in the bloody ditch!” I stopped before my voice reached screeching pitch. I was shaking again.

  Mr Too-Gorgeous-To-Be-True raised a hand to cover his open mouth in a gesture I had to admit looked genuinely like shock.

  “You’re right. I drive like a dick. It’s a bad excuse but I am so used to having that road to myself.”

  “Yeah, it’s a bloody awful excuse. And it doesn’t explain why you didn’t stop to make sure I was all right!”

  “I knew you were all right. It’s not that big a ditch. And I was in a hurry, it was an emergency.”

  “An emergency? Yeah, I could tell that by the fact that you were parked at the pub by the time I got back. Can’t let a cold beer get in the way of road safety, can we?”

  Before he could answer I turned on my heel and stormed off. By the time I had reached my cabin I had run out of colourful swear words and my anger had diffused enough to let in other thoughts. Like how much I needed another coffee. This time the communal kitchen was empty, a small fact for which I was grateful as I boiled the jug and refilled my travel mug. All of a sudden my cabin seemed like a nice place to be.

  Until the gun shots woke me up.

  Chapter 2

  After the coffee and the rant at the good-looking idiot, it took me a while to calm down. I forced myself to stop thinking about how his eyes sparkled and concentrated on reading through the paperwork on the Netherby estate, which was a good tactic as there is nothing more soporific than comfy pyjamas, a warm bed and a boring legal document. Eventually I drifted off to sleep to the gentle lullaby of birdlife and lapping water. I was riding a pig up a country road somewhere in dreamland when the pig was shot out from underneath me. One minute I was on the pig, moving fast, then I was on the ground, flat on my back, watching the pig roll away. It waved its trotters in the air, snorted, then turned into a Land Rover, out of which stepped a handsome man, no, a handsome pig with blond-streaked hair. He stretched out a trotter to help me up but his arm became a gun. Bang! He shot me and I woke up.

  A third shot. I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes after midnight. What sort of a place was this? I hugged my knees, wrapping the blanket tight around me, waiting for the sound of police sirens which I was sure would quickly follow the sound of gunfire. Nothing happened. No sirens, just the occasional rumble of a truck along the road. An overwhelming need for air made me realise I had been holding my breath. I gulped, breathed and loosened the tight hold on my knees and the blanket, easing the muscles that had begun to shake with the tension of holding myself together. Still expecting police sirens, I crept out of bed, wrapped my blanket around my shoulders for comfort more than for its warmth, and peered out the cabin’s tiny window. Nothing. The camp ground was quiet. Gradually I convinced myself that I had been mistaken. It could have been any kind of country noise. It might not have been a gun. I wriggled back into my bed and drifted back to sleep.

  One of the benefits of being an island away from him was not being on “Simon time”, so I didn’t feel at all guilty when I finally woke up a good hour and a half after the usual Wellington morning panic. I didn’t feel pressured to rush up to the Netherby house, so I took my time. Once again the communal kitchen was full of excited Germans, but this time I joined in, listening to, if barely understanding, their plans for the day and correcting their pronunciation of the local place names. Then I took my toast and coffee and wandered down to the lake to watch the swans. There were a lot more of them than I remembered. Between my childhood holiday visits and my return, the swampy wetlands at the northern end of the lake had become a protected reserve, so wildlife of all kinds had flourished. I wandered along the lakeshore, fascinated by the little scaups, even reverting to the silly game I used to play when I would watch a scaup dive then try and hold my breath till it popped up again. I have never succeeded. Further out from the shore several pairs of black swans floated with serene elegance in complete contrast to the effervescent bobbing scaups.

  As I sauntered past a dilapidated jetty, a scaup shot out of the water at high speed, its sudden appearance making me spill my coffee. I peered at the water to see what had frightened the bird, then laughed out loud as the culprit surfaced. With only a nose bobbing out of the water to snatch breaths, her body fully submerged, Kali the fat pug swam out from under the jetty. I called her name, then laughed again as she struggled out of the water, determinedly dragging a tree branch, complete with sodden lea
ves.

  “You silly dog,” I praised her, patting her head while avoiding her attempts to shake herself dry. “Does your mother know you’re trying to drown yourself?”

  “She does it all the time,” a voice behind me answered. I turned to find Tom striding across the grass. “She don’t look like much of a water dog but we can’t keep her out of it.”

  “She looked so funny swimming – I could only see her nose poking out.”

  “Yeah, beats me why she doesn’t sink like a stone. Anyway, lass, I saw you down here and thought I should check up and see if everything’s okay. You sounded real pissed off with Brownie yesterday, so I thought I should ask.”

  “Brownie? Is that his name? The guy with the dead pig?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. He’s a good guy, really.”

  “Okay – he’s a good guy who drives like he owns the road.”

  Tom laughed. “You get used to that around here. Country roads, bugger-all traffic. I guess we should all be a bit more careful.”

  “Yes! Yes you should. He should, anyway.”

  Tom looked suitably abashed as he turned to leave, patting his thigh for Kali to follow. I put my hand out, touching his jacket to regain his attention.

  “Tom?” He turned back to face me. “Tom, did you hear those gunshots last night?”

  “Gunshots?”

  “Yes, three of them, I think. About midnight.”

  Tom shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and flapped his hands at the same time in a movement that showed complete bafflement.

  “Nah, sorry, didn’t hear a thing. I suppose it could’ve been rat shooters, up at the dump.”

  “Rat shooters?”

  “Yeah, there’s a big problem with rats at the dump. They breed in the rubbish. Shooting them’s a popular sport with the young folk. Not much else to do and it keeps their eye in for pig shooting. It was probably just some young blokes. The dump’s just up the hill there,” he waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the road, “so the sound probably travelled if the wind was right. We wouldn’t notice, we’re used to it. If we don’t notice the train any more, we sure as hell won’t notice a rifle shot or two. Did it scare you?”