“I wasn’t going to but I’m getting far too attached to him, far too quickly. I will have to look for a new place to live when I go back to Wellington but ...,” I paused to shrug my shoulders, “I needed a complete change, so maybe Jackson will be just the catalyst I need to make it happen.”
Later, after I had heated myself a tasteless but instant meal, Gail and I walked our dogs down to the lake, both firmly controlled on their leads as I was afraid Jackson would run away because I hadn’t worked out yet how obedient he was and Gail was afraid Kali would dive into the water and drag out the rest of the body. The police tape still flapped from the edge of the jetty but all other signs of the previous night’s activity had disappeared, a few tyre tracks the only proof anything had happened. As we walked, we talked about the arm and who it could belong to, with Gail saying that the popular opinion was on Gunna as he hadn’t been seen for over a week.
“Is that unusual?” I asked.
“Yeah. He might go a few days without anyone seeing him, but he didn’t turn up at the pub last Friday and that’s way out of character. He likes his beers, does Gunna. He’s always there on Friday nights.”
The dogs were pulling on their leads, so we mutually decided to leave the jetty and our speculations. Gail let Kali drag her back towards her house and Jackson high-stepped beside me as I turned towards my cabin.
Jackson beat me to bed, worming his way under the blanket down to the bottom, but then he didn’t have pyjamas to get into or a phone to check and put on charge. There was a text from Simon headed Open this. So I did. I read it out loud, imitating his pompous, demanding tone, including his ridiculous pronunciation of my name.
“On-dray-a.” God forbid that he should ever shorten it to Andy. Far too common. “I expect you to be back here for Mother’s birthday dinner tomorrow evening. Wear the blue calf-length dress with the silver belt. Silver shoes.”
“Well, let me think,” I answered aloud as I deleted the message. “Um, no. One, I hate you. Two, I hate your mother. Three, I am busy here and four, the dress is somewhere in an op-shop by now. Tough luck.” Jackson wriggled his head out of bed to see who I was talking to, so I gave him a pat. “You would save me from Simon Bastard, wouldn’t you? Let me into bed. You’re a much nicer bed-mate than he ever was.” I snuggled in beside him, enjoying his warmth as he curled into my arms while we drifted off to sleep.
The gunshots woke us up.
Jackson reacted first, leaping out of bed, dragging the blanket with him.
“It’s okay,” I soothed, hauling the blanket back onto the bed and patting it to entice Jackson back. “Come on, boy.”
Then, another three shots in quick succession. Jackson’s ears pricked forwards, towards the lake. I shot out of bed, automatically reaching for Jackson and crouching down on the floor. I could see that he wanted to investigate but there was no way I was going outside. I stayed kneeling at his level, stroking him as he fretted with the same soft, worried whine he had given me at the dog pound. We were both shivering.
“It’s probably those rat shooters again,” I told Jackson in an effort to convince myself. “At the dump. It sounded a lot closer than that though, didn’t it. You thought so too. Whatever it was, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s go back to bed.”
I must have sounded more confident than I felt because Jackson stopped shivering and jumped back into bed. With no real options, I followed, straightening the blanket as best as I could but, although Jackson went out like a light, I found real sleep impossible. I tossed and turned with intermittent patches of weird dreams involving Simon in a dress and carrying a shotgun, chasing me through a large, abandoned house. I would get to a part where I entered a lavishly furnished room full of brocade-covered furniture, then just before his mother, who was sitting in a large wing-backed chair, turned to face me, I would wake up, toss, turn and repeat the whole thing again. At five thirty when the darkness of the night began to lighten into daybreak, I gave up trying to sleep and got up. I pulled on my jacket over my pyjamas, grabbed Jackson’s lead and yanked the blanket back to get his attention.
“Come on, lazy bones. Let’s go for a walk.”
We sauntered slowly down to the lake front, past the jetty with its flapping crime scene tape, stopping at every bush for Jackson to mark his territory. We had gone a reasonable distance when I realised that there was a vehicle parked near the boat ramp. The man beside it was picking things off the ground and throwing them onto its deck. I turned Jackson around and went the other way. It was too early in the morning to get into polite conversation with the rubbish collector and after Gail’s warning, I didn’t want to have to explain the presence of my dog. I had a vague feeling that something about the man looked familiar but he was too far away to see properly, so I shrugged it off. Who cared anyway?
I left Jackson in the cabin, tucked under the blanket again, while I had a shower then made myself some breakfast toast and coffee. It’s a funny thing about memory, strange little things trigger it. It was the toast. As soon as I took a bite, I remembered yesterday’s embarrassing breakfast encounter and I knew exactly who I had seen at the boat ramp. Bruno. What had he been picking up that early in the morning? Again I shrugged off the thought. Really, it was no business of mine. Maybe picking up rubbish was part of his job. I never did find out what he did with his time. I took another bite of toast and decided to check my phone. Yes, there was another text from Simon.
I have booked you on the 10.25 a.m. flight.
Damn! Now I would have to ring the airport and tell them not to expect me, otherwise they would be holding up the flight and yelling my name incoherently over the loudspeakers, because there was no way I was going to be on it. I found and dialled the airport’s number, then held while they connected me to the airline counter. I was honest, explaining that I had got away from an abusive ex and that, no matter how much he spent, I wasn’t flying back to him to go to his mother’s birthday party. The girl on the phone laughed, cancelled my ticket then regretfully informed me that Simon wouldn’t get a refund, which made me laugh in return.
Harbouring pleasantly revengeful thoughts of how pissed off Simon would be when I didn’t alight from the plane, I hurried back to my cabin to pack Jackson and my bag into the car for an early start at the Netherby house. A quick check of the fuel gauge suggested a brief stop at the garage for petrol. As I pulled in beside the petrol pumps, I noticed a vehicle partially hidden around the side of the building. I recognised it instantly. Bruno. I couldn’t see him inside so I moved quickly, hoping to get my petrol before he appeared. Then he did, walking to the back of his Land Rover and reaching into the deck. As he pulled out two dead swans I gasped in horror. That was what he had been loading at the boat ramp. And that explained the gunshots. Bruno had been shooting swans in the dead of night, then retrieving them when it got light enough to find them in the reeds. I was revolted. He had seemed so nice when he helped me with the freezer, but he really was the disgusting animal killer I had first thought he was. Dead pigs now dead swans. I wanted nothing more to do with Bruno McTavish.
He disappeared again around the back of the building so I quickly finished my transaction, grateful that the pay-at-the-pump option meant I didn’t have to go inside, heaving a sigh of relief as I drove away. Jackson slept on the back seat, oblivious to the dramas playing out in my head. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t nasty men look nasty, instead of, let’s be honest, damned tasty. Sometimes life sucked.
At the Netherby house I made myself a hazelnut–flavoured coffee, helped myself to some biscuits that hadn’t passed their use-by date, shared one with Jackson, then psyched myself up to tackle the shed. With an effort I managed to drag the heavy garage door open to reveal the gleaming vintage car. I thought of some of the magnificent hats I had seen in Maggie Netherby’s wardrobe and it wasn’t hard to imagine her driving the spectacular machine, looking like someone from an old movie. I was so tied up in my imagination, I jumped when I heard a car pull up outside. I ran out of t
he shed to see Senior Sergeant Carlton, in full police uniform but with the navy blue regulation trousers tucked securely into gumboots, coming towards me. He nodded towards the vintage car.
“Beauty, isn’t she? It’s probably worth more than the house.”
‘Yes it is a beauty. I certainly didn’t expect to find anything so spectacular tucked in this old shed. Maggie Netherby had good taste.”
“In some things. Never could see what she saw in old Gunna though”
“Maybe he has hidden talents,” I laughed. “Still, it’s a pity Gunna isn’t here to tell me more about it. From what I am hearing he knew Maggie quite well. But I guess if he doesn’t turn up, I’ll just organise a tow-truck to take it to a sale yard.”
“There’s his caravan too,” Carlton said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to go down and search it to see if there’s any sign of Gunna down there.”
“Oh okay. Where’s his caravan?” I asked.
Carlton pointed over the paddock to the shape I had assumed was an old shed.
“Down there. That roof. It’s on Netherby land so I need to get your permission to search it. Are you okay with that?”
‘Yeah. Fine by me. Can I come with you? I may as well see what’s down there.”
Carlton nodded and led the way over the paddock. I soon realised why he was wearing the stout gumboots. As my socks started to get wet inside my budget sneakers, I wished I had some too. Carlton must have read my thoughts as he put out a hand to stop me as we approached the lake edge.
“Be careful. It’s pretty swampy around here.”
I extricated a soggy sneaker from what had looked like solid ground and nodded.
“Yep, I noticed.”
I tip-toed and Carlton stomped through the edges of the swamp towards a patch of solid ground on which stood a dilapidated caravan that had once been yellow and white but was now rusty with a light coating of pale green slime. Surely nobody lived in it? Carlton pulled on the door handle but nothing happened.
“Is it locked?” I asked.
“I doubt it. Just old.” Carlton yanked again and the door yielded. He grabbed the edge with both hands and pulled harder, the action making his shoulder muscles ripple under his police jacket. I stood back and admired the action until, with an ominous creak, the door opened enough to get through. I let Carlton do the honours, I had no desire to go inside. He didn’t stay long either. I guess there weren’t too many places to search as, almost immediately, he exited, shoving the door back into its slot.
“Well Gunna’s certainly not in there, dead or alive,” he said. “It’s hard to tell when he was last here though. There’s no leftover food, no dirty dishes, and even though this van looks like a dump outside, it’s tidy inside.”
“No handy diary with mysterious names in it?” I asked.
“No. A couple of dates circled on a generic calendar of duck pictures, but no secret messages,” Carlton laughed. “Let’s get back to dry ground.”
As we made our way back up the paddock I pointed to an old woolshed tucked under some pine trees at what I assumed was the property’s boundary.
“What about in there?” I asked. “Is it worth checking it out.”
“I’ve already done that,” Carlton answered. “I check that place regularly.”
“Why?” I couldn’t think of any reason why the local police would keep a check on a dilapidated woolshed.
“Because it’s mine.” The hard lines of Carlton’s face softened in a smile as he enjoyed my surprise.
“Yours? Isn’t it on Maggie Netherby’s land? Aren’t those pine trees the boundary?”
“No. The boundary is the fence line in front of it.”
“And that property is yours? Your Maggie Netherby’s neighbour?”
“Yep. Sort of. I don’t live there. It’s just open paddocks, no house. Just that shed and I’m not planning on living in that, although I do keep a few bits and pieces in it, which is why I check up on it. Stealing stuff from a cop always gets the local roughs a few extra bonus points. I bought the land as an investment and I rent out the grazing to a friend of mine who runs a few racehorses. Anyway, I’d better keep going. I’ve got a few other places to check this morning. We’re pretty sure that Gunna must be dead, but in case he is lying somewhere injured, we have to look everywhere. Here,” he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a business card which he handed to me. “If you see anybody hanging around, give me a call, any time.”
I agreed, then just as we reached his car, I threw him a question out of left field.
“What’s up with you and Bruno McTavish? You both bad-mouth each other. What’s your story?”
“Huh!” Carlton spat. “McTavish! He’s nothing but trouble. Oh sure, he comes over all innocent and Mister Nice Guy but I’ve known him since primary school and I’m not fooled by all his Southern Man Hero shit. He needs to mind his own business and stop thinking that he’s the Big Man. I’m watching him and the day he makes a mistake, I will be there to nail him.”
The force of his anger surprised me so much I just nodded an “okay” as he threw himself into the police car, slammed his seatbelt on and revved the engine. As he drove away I realised I had missed the perfect opportunity to mention the gunshots in the night and the dead swans in Bruno’s Land Rover. He had given me an opening and I hadn’t taken it. Why was that?
I was still wondering that, and mentally comparing the good and bad attributes of the Southern Man and the Rugby Player, as I forced myself back into my work. I wrote myself a note to get the car moved into safe storage, then braced myself to go back into the shed and see what was in the back part.
It was worse than I imagined. I had psyched myself up to expect dust, spiders and old farm equipment that I didn’t want to touch. If it had been like that, it wouldn’t have revolted me as much. But it was clean. Incredibly clean. Scrubbed down, disinfected, scrupulously clean. Like a laboratory. Frankenstein’s laboratory. I stood soundlessly, my hands clasped over my gaping mouth, as I took in the long work table, the knives, scalpels and other strangely shaped tools laid out at one end, the jars full of unidentifiable lumps and oddly coloured liquids at the other end, then the back wall where row upon row of stuffed swans, mallards, scaups and other birds perched on homemade shelves. Maggie Netherby was a taxidermist?
Transfixed, hands still covering my mouth, I slowly approached the dead birds. Surely I wouldn’t have to touch them? Surely I could just count them, and the weird tools and jars, then shut the door and never look at them again. Dead birds gave me the creeps and stuffed birds were worse. I always hated the bird room in the museum. While my parents wandered through it, pointing and discussing, I would pull my jersey over my head and run through as fast as I could. This wasn’t any better.
Then I noticed the tags. Each bird had a label tied with string to its leg. I forced myself to get close enough to read one but it made no sense. The series of numbers, dashes and backslashes was obviously some form of code. I guessed it made sense to Maggie Netherby and was probably her way of keeping track of her taxidermy work, so I assumed that I would find some files somewhere to match the tags, but a look around the pristine workplace showed no sign of any filing system. It must be somewhere in the house. Or, I thought suddenly, maybe it wasn’t Maggie’s work. Maybe Gunna was the bird preserver; maybe the records were down in his caravan. But I wasn’t going back down there today. I needed to buy myself some gumboots first. Plus, stuffed birds were low on my priority list. I had plenty of household goods to finish cataloguing first, and I still hadn’t taken a good look at the hoard of boxes in the secret rooms. The birds could wait.
I looked at my watch but it wasn’t telling me a time that I could justify as a meal break. I looked back up at the rows of birds and sighed. Okay, I was procrastinating and putting off stuff I didn’t want to do. Really, there weren’t that many birds and I needed to pull myself together. Putting things off was my worst habit. How long had I put off leaving Simon? Far too long. Thi
s was the same thing on a much smaller scale. I needed to face the awful stuff and deal with it. If I knuckled down and started now, I could have the whole shed catalogued before lunch.
I had almost completed it and only had a few scaups left to enter onto my list when my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID and my guess was right. Simon. I ignored it, letting it go to the answer machine, as the glowing numbers that showed the time suggested the reason for his call. I pictured him standing in the airport arrival lounge, feet apart, back straight, tie perfect, his face red with anger as the last passengers disembarked from the plane and I wasn’t one of them. I knew that he wouldn’t be yelling down the phone, he would be quietly seething, telling me in cold, clipped tones how I had failed him yet again, how inferior I was and what punishment I would receive to teach me how to improve myself. I set my phone to silent and turned back to the scaups.
Chapter 5
By the time I shut the door on the fully-documented shed, I felt smugly satisfied with myself. I had not only overcome my procrastination, I had actually achieved a lot. Sure, a lot of the notations read “bottle, unidentified contents, value tba (to be ascertained)” but there were several pages of notes. I deserved a lunch break.
Jackson thought I had forgotten him. He bounded off the couch, slid past me out the door and raced to the nearest tree. Well, at least he was housetrained. I called him back and was pleasantly surprised when he obeyed me, trotting back up the stairs and in the door. I gave him a pat then filled his food bowl with the tiny dog biscuits I was discovering were his favourite food, before raiding Maggie’s pantry, settling for rather tasteless instant noodles washed down with more hazelnut coffee. To amuse myself I played back the rant Simon had left on my phone. It was exactly as I had expected, full of seething, angry, dominating threats. I nearly deleted it, then changed my mind. It was so nasty I decided to keep it to replay later to my friends and family and anyone else who thought he was wonderful and who was questioning my sanity in leaving him. They had only ever met Simon the perfectly hospitable successful businessman. This would show them the Simon I had lived with behind closed doors.
Deep in the Shallows Page 6
