Deep in the Shallows

by J. L. O'Rourke

  I heard him say something, then I felt my own phone vibrate. I refused the call as quickly as I could, feeling absurdly grateful to Simon that his annoying persistence had forced me to keep my phone on silent mode. Later Carlton might work out that it was me who called, but by then I could pretend I had been at the Netherby house, not crouching in his pigsty. Even if I hadn’t found Jackson, it was time to leave.

  As I tensed my muscles to stand up, somewhere in front of me, in the dark, the pigs grunted. Above me another grunt seemed to reply, then the roof creaked and a chink of light shone through a gap. More grunting and creaking turned the gap into a trapdoor through which a man’s head appeared, his face shadowed into anonymity. Near me the pigs squealed.

  “They okay?” I recognised the voice as Carlton.

  “Yep,” the face in the trapdoor replied.

  “Okay, chuck it in,” Carlton ordered as the man pulled back from the hole.

  I stepped back as far as I could as a torrent of vegetable scraps poured through the trapdoor. Then the man was back in the hole, sweeping a strong torch beam across the pigs. I was happy that it showed strong wire mesh gates between the pigs and my hiding place. At least they couldn’t reach me.

  “What about the dog?” I heard the man ask.

  “Yeah,” Carlton replied. “Chuck it in too.”

  I almost screamed. Jackson? They had Jackson and they were going to throw him to the pigs? Then, before I could move, a carcass dropped through the roof. I held my breath, trying not to vomit as it plunged downward, then stifled my tears of relief as I realised it was too big to be Jackson. Some poor hunting dog. I turned away, blocking my ears from the sound of the pigs tearing the dead dog apart, fighting to stop the rising panic. I needed to keep calm and get out. Fast.

  Moving as silently as I could, I crept back through the tiny door and around the side of the building, then I hunkered down in the shadows to think. What if they saw me going back across the paddock? I made a plan. If I walked around to the front of the shed and approached boldly, they would think I had just arrived and I could tell them I was looking for Jackson, ask if they had seen him, rattle off some inane pleasantries and leave. It wasn’t the greatest plan but it was the only one I could think of. Then two things happened at once.

  I was still sitting in the shadows when Jackson appeared, racing across the paddock back towards his home. At the same time, the man who wasn’t Carlton walked around the side of the building, lifting a rifle to his shoulder.

  “Look,” he called to Carlton. “There he is. I’ll get the bastard this time.”

  “Leave it alone,” Carlton called back. “Don’t waste your ammo, it’s only a bloody whippet. It’s not a threat. It can’t talk.”

  “Don’t care. I hate that bloody dog.”

  I willed Jackson to keep running, a few more metres and he would be through the fence and safely on Maggie’s porch, but he stopped at just the wrong moment. As Jackson’s head turned back towards me, the man sighted down the barrel and pulled the trigger. Jackson’s scream told me the shot was accurate. Behind me I heard Carlton pull the other man away, then their car engine revved and they sped off down the road. I didn’t care if they looked back and saw me. I ran as fast as I could, stumbling over rabbit holes, sobbing with grief, towards the limp figure who had nearly made it to the safety of our boundary fence.

  He was still alive. The bullet had pierced his thigh but he was conscious, whimpering as I approached. I had no idea what to do, but I had done a human first aid course once so I figured the principles were the same. I pulled off Maggie’s damp socks, used one of them as padding for the wound, then tied it on with the other sock. Carefully, scared that I would hurt him more but desperate to get him somewhere safe, I wrapped Jackson in my jacket, picked him up and carried him, struggling over the rough ground. He was heavier than I expected. In the dark the few metres to the fence seemed to take forever but then I was there, sliding him underneath the fence before climbing over to carry him to my car.

  I needed to find a vet urgently. Gail would know. I started to phone her then remembered a sign I had seen near the pound in Mosgiel. There was a vet clinic there that said 24 hours. Spraying gravel from the tyres, I drove fast, urging Jackson to stay alive as I threw the car around the twisting country roads, and sped down the highway through the darkness of the Taieri Plains. When I reached the township, I struggled to remember directions that had been easy to find in the daylight, but after a couple of wrong turns, I found the pound, then the vet clinic a few doors away. The sign said 24 hours, but it was dark and closed.

  Frustrated, almost crying, I got out of the car to check, only to find a bell and a large notice telling me to push the bell for emergencies. I pushed. When no lights came on I pushed again, for longer. Surely someone was there. As I was about to try a third time, the porch lit up and the door opened. I gasped in amazement. Standing in striped pyjama pants, pulling a white coat over the rippling muscles of his bare chest, running his hands through his sleep-tousled hair, was Bruno McTavish.

  “You’re the vet?” I gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, ignoring my question.

  “It’s Jackson. He’s been shot.”

  Bruno rushed past me, lifting Jackson gently from the car to carry him inside. I followed him through to an examination room where he lay Jackson on the stainless steel bench and removed my jacket and temporary sock dressing.

  “Good work on the first aid,” he said as he probed the wound. “What happened? Here, keep Jackson still while you’re talking, I need to get him anaesthetised so I can take out the bullet.”

  I followed Bruno’s orders, trying to be helpful as he removed the bullet that was still embedded in Jackson’s thigh muscle, and while he worked, I told him everything, about the shooting and about the pigs.

  “It wasn’t Carlton who shot Jackson,” I finished. “It was the other guy, but I don’t know who he was.”

  “I’ve got a pretty fair idea,” Bruno growled as he closed the cleaned wound with a neat row of stitches. “I’ll get the bastard. He’s not getting away with this. Now, let’s put Jackson in a warm cage to sleep this off and we’ll get a coffee. Looks like you need one as much as I do.”

  Bruno escorted me to his living quarters at the back of the clinic where he discarded his coat into a laundry hamper, forcing me to stare at his tight abs as he made us coffee, which he served with a packet of chocolate biscuits.

  “For strength in emergencies,” he explained as he pushed the packet towards me.

  I took two, munching them as I settled into his oversized leather couch, trying hard to distract myself from the nearness of his semi-naked body. He seemed completely unaware of my distress.

  “Run the whole thing by me again,” he said. “I didn’t take it all in before, my mind was on Jackson.”

  When I had finished, Bruno sat forward, letting out his breath in a long whistle while he pummelled the fist of one hand into the palm of the other.

  “Wow! You must have been terrified.” He looked at me and smiled. “But you might have just given me the nail to finally close Carlton’s coffin. I knew it was him. I’ve been so sure of that for ages, but I’ve never been able to prove it. Now, thanks to you, I think I can. If I act fast.”

  “Prove what? Apart from shooting Jackson, which was the other guy, Carlton hasn’t done anything, has he? It’s not illegal to have smelly pigs, is it? Is it even illegal to feed them dead dogs?”

  “No, you’re right, that might be gross but I don’t think it’s illegal either, unless he stole the dog. No, keeping the pigs isn’t the illegal bit. It’s where he got them from and what they are doing with them that’s going to get him in trouble. But,” Bruno stood up, reached out his hand to take mine and drew me up from the couch, “enough for now. It’s a long story and it’s late. Way too late for you to be driving home. So, my bedroom’s through that door. Take my bed and get some sleep while I go and check on Jackson. We can talk more in
the morning.”

  “I can’t take your bed,” I protested. “Just give me a blanket and I will be quite comfy here on the couch.”

  “I insist.”

  “And you lose.” I pulled my hand away from his and sat back on the couch. “Stop fussing. I am just glad Jackson is going to be okay. So get me a blanket then go and do your vet thing. And thank you. I have never been so scared. All the way here I thought Jackson was going to die. I’ve only had him for a couple of days and already I don’t know how what I would do if anything happened to him.”

  “Okay, you win. Come with me. Let’s go and see how he’s doing.”

  Together we walked back to the clinic where we found Jackson sleeping peacefully in spite of the intravenous drip silently pumping fluid into his veins. Satisfied, we returned to Bruno’s lounge, where he opened a cupboard, handed me a blanket and a pillow and smiled in defeat.

  “Good night, Andrea North. Try and get some sleep because tomorrow, we are going to take down the devil.”

  Chapter 6

  I woke to my favourite kind of pig. Bacon and abs. I wasn’t sure what was more enticing – the smell of coffee and sizzling bacon, or the sight of Bruno, still shirtless, striped pyjama pants replaced by faded blue jeans sitting snug against his hips. For a few moments, I pretended to be still asleep so I could watch him, then I felt guilty and was sure he knew what I was doing, so I made a big show of yawning and stretching and tried to sound nonchalant as I said good morning. He smiled back, held up the electric jug and raised his eyes in a question.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee please,” I said, pulling myself up from the couch, “Black, no sugar.”

  “Something else we have in common,” Bruno quipped as he poured two cups.

  “Something else? Other than what? Do we have anything in common?”

  “Of course we do. Jackson for starters. He’s looking good this morning, by the way. I checked on him earlier and he’s doing well. He was just damned lucky that the bullet got his thigh where he has a lot of muscle. It’s going to leave a permanent scar and he will be limping for a while, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to pull through this just fine. Hope you like bacon.”

  “After last night you’d think it would be the last thing I wanted to eat but that does smell really good, so, yes thanks, bacon would be awesome.”

  Bruno served the perfectly cooked bacon and eggs on surprisingly dainty plates edged in pastel blue flowers, at a table so small our knees touched each other as we sat. I wasn’t sure if I felt embarrassed or excited every time we accidentally made contact and, by the slight flush in his cheeks, I wondered if he was feeling the same way, especially when he found an excuse to walk to the bench, then purposefully sat sideways when he returned. The bacon was exquisite, so I told him so.

  “Glad you like it,” he replied with a grin. “I wasn’t sure if you were a big fan of home-kill and after I started cooking it I had a sudden fear that you might even be vegetarian.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged, shamefaced. “You know, you’re a Wellington city girl, not one of us country bumpkins, and we didn’t get off to a very good start. You didn’t seem too fond of pigs that day.”

  “That day, I didn’t have any problems at all with the pig. It was your dreadful driving, if you remember.”

  “Yeah, well, I did have a good reason for driving so fast. It was an emergency. I bet you weren’t doing 30k yourself around those bends last night.”

  ‘True,” I admitted, “but I thought Jackson was dying and that pig looked like it was already dead.”

  “And it was. But one of my clients in the village had rung me all agitated. Her little dog was having puppies and one was stuck. So I was in a rush to get there. I, too, thought a dog was dying.”

  “But by the time I got there, you were at the pub, drinking.”

  “Yes I was. Fortunately, by the time I got to my client’s house, the dog had delivered the pup naturally and the panic was over. I checked them all, gave the owner some reassurance, then stopped at the pub to organise the pig. By the way, the bacon you’re eating is from the same source. Pretty tasty, eh?”

  I was glad he said that with a laugh but I still got the distinct impression that I should shut up while I was winning. Anyway, I felt pretty stupid. I had misjudged him badly, something I was too good at doing when it came to men. I had misjudged Simon, mistaking arrogance and domination for confidence, I might have misjudged Carlton, and I had certainly misjudged Bruno. My track record was abysmal. Maybe I should stick to whippets.

  I was just about to find a conversation topic that wouldn’t get me in trouble when, at the front of the building, a door slammed and a cheery voice called out to Bruno.

  “Hi,” he called back. “Out the back.”

  His response froze my heart. Was this Amy? I had forgotten about her. The girlfriend who was going to be angry with him for not getting home on time. Damn Amy. I started to think of ways to leave politely but quickly. How would she react to seeing me here, eating breakfast with her boyfriend? Especially as he had no shirt on and I didn’t think I looked as if I was there on business. What would I say to her? Then she bounced into the room and I stared in shock. She was stunning; tall, athletic, with long, dark hair pulled back in a high pony tail on the top of her head but it was her clothes that made the impact. Over practical jeans and t-shirt she wore a white lab coat, a name tag looking official on her breast.

  “Joan, this is Andy North,” Bruno introduced her. “Andy, Joan Mexted, the other vet who works here. She keeps this place running while I’m driving pigs around country roads.”

  “Hi, Joan.” I extended my hand, hoping I didn’t look as foolish as I felt. Why had I automatically thought she was his girlfriend and so, somehow, my rival. Rival for what?

  “Come and see Jackson,” Bruno continued. “Andy brought him in last night. Some bastard shot him.”

  “What?” Joan’s reaction was genuine anger. “Jackson the whippet? Really? Who would do that? Is he going to be all right?”

  I followed them back to the clinic where Bruno handed Joan some paperwork and spoke to her in medical jargon. I knelt down in front of Jackson’s cage so I could reach through the bars to pat him. He lifted his head in response, slowly wagging his tail at my touch.

  “The answer to who would do that is our good friend Carlton, or at least one of his mates,” Bruno said. “And, finally, I might have something I can pin on him. So I’m leaving Jackson in your tender care and I’m heading back up to the Netherby place with Andy. Text me if I’m needed anywhere urgently, but otherwise, the clinic’s all yours. I’ll be back but I can’t guarantee when.” He turned to me. “Okay, Andy, let’s get a move on. I’ll take my car and follow you.”

  “Um, you’ve forgotten something,” Joan said tactfully, rolling her eyes as if it wasn’t a new experience.

  “What?” Bruno asked then laughed as Joan simply pointed to his bare chest. “Oh, yeah, sorry.” I was more sorry when he came back, another plaid, woollen Swanndri covering his delectable abs.

  I wanted to find out more about what he expected to find at the woolshed but, as we were driving in convoy, all I could do was concentrate on the road. Answers would have to wait until we got to the Netherby house so, instead, I created all sorts of scenarios in my head about getting there and finding Carlton waiting for me. In some scenarios he was friendly, happily accepting my excuse about the phone call, and in others he was shoulder to shoulder with his mate with the gun, demanding Jackson’s body for his pigs. A country song came on the radio so I turned it up and sang along to drown out my own thoughts.

  The Netherby house was just as I had left it. There were no police cars in the driveway and no men with guns. Just Bruno’s Land Rover pulling in behind me. My eyes widened as he pulled a rifle from behind the seat but I didn’t question him, just followed meekly as he led the way across the fence to the woolshed. I caught
up to him as we approached, tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention and pointed out the door under the ramp. Bruno hoisted his rifle onto his shoulder by its leather strap, beckoning me to follow him though the doorway where I got my first decent look at the monster pigs.

  With sunlight streaking through the many holes in the rotting shell of the woolshed, the full horror of the pigsty was revealed.

  “What the hell?” Bruno gasped.

  The ground floor of the woolshed was about half the size of the main floor above it. We could stand easily once we had ducked through the tiny doorway, but the hill it was built on was steep, so standing room rapidly disappeared as the ground rose to meet the ceiling. About two metres in front of us the heavy-duty mesh fence separated us from the pigs who, in daylight, proved to be even bigger than they had seemed in the dark. They were massive. In my head pigs were smooth, pink and kind of cute, but these guys were anything but cuddly. Their black, mottled skin was covered in rough hair which, in turn, was covered in brown, slimy, smelly mud.

  “This is disgusting.” Bruno whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose.

  “Oh, yes.” I agreed, doing the same. I stepped closer to the fence to get a better look at the huge animals who had moved away from us to the back of their pen. “Why are they here? I mean, okay, I get that Carlton can keep pigs in his own shed, but why are they down here in the dark instead of, I don’t know, outside in a pen?”

  “I’m going to let you answer your own question,” Bruno said. I noticed that he didn’t walk forwards to join me but stood well back. He obviously knew more about pigs than I did. “Why would you stash something away in a secret place?”