"Insects, sun, scratches," said Alex, so they slipped into their nearly dry clothing. Alex hoped their bodies wouldn't be chafed by the stiff clothing as they set off towards where they thought the house should be.
The landscape was hilly, green slopes that rolled away as they approached. There were rock outcrops and jagged tears in the earth. There was some scrub, small groupings of manuka, especially in the bottom of small gullies, and here and there the odd tree.
The land reflected the heat of the sun upwards. Before long they were all sweating and tired. They walked without thinking about what they had been through. Time enough for that when a decent time had passed.
PART FIVE: THE FARM
20.
It did not take long to reach the house. They followed the river until they came to a large pond. They walked across the field below the house. Goats came running towards them, delighting Jo with their inquisitive noses and tongues. There was a metal framed gate to open and close before they came to a driveway paved with compressed shingle or metal, as Kiwis called gravel. They walked along the driveway, which obviously was well-used.
"Something's wrong," said Alex. "There are no dogs. Dogs should be barking."
"Perhaps they are with the farmer, checking the farm after the 'quake?" suggested Richard. "The damage to the land is quite severe up here. It seems to be worse than down in the valley."
Jo had been walking in the front. Richard pulled on her arm and pulled her behind him, so that she was between him and Alex.
The house seemed to be deserted. There were two windows separated by a door at the front of the house, underneath a long verandah. Three easy chairs sat on the verandah. The front door was open.
"Vroom... Vroom."
"There's a kid in there," said Richard. "Jo, you go. He might be frightened of us."
Jo entered the house. Books and crockery littered the floor. Picture had fallen from the walls. "Anyone here?' she called. "Can you hear me?"
Jo walked past two bedrooms, one on each side of the hallway. In front of hr at the end of the passage was a bathroom. She turned into the room on her left. It was a lounge room. A young boy sat on the floor pushing a toy bulldozer backwards and forwards. A dog lay on the floor beside him.
"Hi there," said Jo. "Can I speak to your Mum and Dad?" he dog stood, hackles raised. The boy ignored her. Jo realised that he must be deaf. She moved so that the boy could see her.
The dog barked viciously. The boy screamed. Jo backed off slowly. The dog stayed beside the boy. "Sorry," she said, and went to get her mother and father.
Alex was already running down the hallway after hearing the barking and the scream. Richard was close behind.
"You all right?" she asked.
"The kid. He screamed at me. His dog was going to attack me."
"Probably scared him," said Alex.
"No," said Jo. "He's either deaf or handicapped in some way."
Alex was surprised Jo had said 'handicapped'. It was not a popular term. She pushed past into the room and saw the boy. He had stopped screaming. "Vroom... Vrooom," he said.
The German Shepherd moved between the boy and Alex. It snarled, warning Alex to come no closer.
"Vroom, vroom," said Richard.
"Vroom...Vroom," corrected the boy.
"Jo, find his bedroom and get his name," said Richard. Jo slipped away from the doorway. Richard squatted down near the child.
"He's relating to you," said Alex. "I'll go with Jo, and look around the house."
Richard quietly squatted, watching the young boy push the toy forward and back. He was a sturdy boy, probably about nine or ten. He had brown hair that needed a cut. His face had the remains of food around the mouth. The boy's hands were dirty, as if he had been playing in ashes. His eyes were rolled back and unfocussed. Richard had seen the look before. This boy was autistic. He needed a channel to talk though, if he spoke at all. Richard was cramping from squatting too long. He eased himself to his feet.
Jo and Alex came back.
"Lance." said Alex. "His name is Lance Somerville."
The boy turned his head and focussed his eyes.
"Mr Tricksy says who are you?" said the boy in a voice that was high but not squeaky.
Richard looked around. Who was Mr Tricksy? An invisible playmate?
"Hello Mr Tricksy," said Richard. The dog came forward with its tail wagging. "We are friends. Who is your friend?"
"Hello Mr Tricksy. Please tell Lance that I am Richard." The dog stretched forward to sniff Richard's fingers. Satisfied, it retreated back to sit beside the boy.
"Mr Tricksy says do the hens."
"Please ask Mr Tricksy to show us what to do."
The boy gave a great sigh, as if being interrupted from some terribly intricate task and walked off. Richard followed him through the house. There was no upstairs, just a long passage with the lounge on the left at the front, then a separate dining room that was separated from the kitchen by a bench with cupboards above. There were signs of the earthquake: broken windows, books fallen to the floor, a Christmas tree on the floor, a smashed aquarium in a damp patch with three dead goldfish. Why hadn't the boy saved them? Richard followed the boy, who seemed to be about ten, through the kitchen and out of the back door to a laundry area. There he stood stock still. Richard looked about him.
There was a bag of mash on a bench. Richard reached for it. The boy yelled, "No." Richard opened a cupboard. Inside was a bag of chicken pellets. Richard picked up the whole bag. The boy pushed Richard's arms down. Wrong again. Richard spied a bowl. He scooped pellets into the bowl and showed the boy, who tipped some out of the dish until he was satisfied that the chickens would be neither over nor under fed.
Richard followed the dog and the boy outside to the chicken run. He scattered some of the pellets. While the chickens ran about helter-skelter Richard tipped the remainder of the pellets into the feeding trough. The boy pulled on his arm to guide Richard to the nesting boxes where the boy gathered up the eggs for the day.
"At least we won't starve," thought Richard. But what was going on here? Something very strange. They made their way back to the house.
22.
Back at the house, they found Alex serving up food while Lance pushed his toy bulldozer backwards and forwards.
"I wonder where everyone is?" asked Alex.
Richard and Jo entered the room. They had been exploring the house and its contents, seeking information while Alex prepared some food.
"So what have we got here?" asked Richard.
They had not eaten since seven o'clock in the morning. They had driven a long way, been caught in an earthquake and a mudslide, climbed to safety through an overflow drain, and ended up with a sinister mystery.
"Mutton, peas, potatoes and carrots, all from the farm," said Alex. "I am sure the owners won't mind us helping ourselves from the freezer and the cupboards."
"Great. I'm famished," said Richard.
"Me too," said Jo.
As Richard and Jo explored the house they had tidied up the items that had fallen during the earthquake. The fish from the aquarium were long gone. With stomachs full, they began to share their news.
"Lance. His name's Lance," said Jo. "There's a picture of him in the main bedroom, of him and a man and a woman. He was quite small when the photo was taken. There's also a newspaper article in a drawer beside the bed, with Lance on top of a monument. Their name is Somerville and he is Gregory."
"Jo! Tell me you didn't go through the bedroom drawers!" Alex was shocked. There were certain things decent people did not do.
Richard intervened, as he did more often between his wife and his daughter these days. "We have to find out about the family here," he said. "They could be trapped like we were. They could be injured. Something happened last night, something evil. I found a foot print with 'Z' on the tread. I found recent traces of a woman and two men."
"Footprints?" asked Alex.
"Yes," Richard replied. "But al
so a man's woollen top, thrown down as if he got too hot but was too busy to put the pullover on something; just threw it on the ground. Two prints of different boots, large and smaller. I took a photo of the 'Z' boot. Here's the bad bit. One woman's sneaker still laced up."
"Still no cell phone reception," said Jo. Now we have electricity I can charge my phone."
"You didn't bring a charger, did you?" asked Richard.
"No, Dad. There's a charger in the dining room. It fits my phone."
"We're running the farm generator at the moment," said Richard. "Lance showed me how to make it work. I think I can turn it off, but don't forget to disconnect your phone first."
Jo's phone meant almost everything to her. "Okay. I'll do it in a minute."
"I'll check on the boy," said Alex. "Then we need to get to bed. I am exhausted."
"No wonder," said Richard. "At one stage I thought it was curtains for us." He hesitated, not being a man to show his feelings too clearly. "I was glad that if I was dying I'd be with you."
"Thanks for that," said Alex. She knew what he meant but was irritated by Richard's lack of tact in front of Jo.
"Oh, Mum, Dad's just trying to be romantic," said Jo. "Men are like that."
Alex rolled her eyes.
Lance looked at the dog, which looked back at him.
"Mr Tricksy says Mr Zinsli took Dad away," Lance replied.
The Wests were surprised, looking at each other with raised brows. Then who was the owner of the small running shoe, obviously that of a woman?
Jo left the table and came back with two framed photographs.
"Lance, would you please ask Mr Tricksy to tell me about these pictures?" she asked.
"Mum and Dad," said Lance, without referring to Mr Tricksy but with his eyes rolled back into is head.
"And this one?"
There was silence. Lance looked somewhere into space with his eyes rolled back.
"Lance would you please ask Mr Tricksy to tell me who this is?" asked Jo, pointing to a young woman standing beside Lance's father.
The boy looked into the dogs eyes. "Mr Tricksy says 'Ashleigh'. She is Mum now but Lance calls her Ashleigh."
The Wests thought about the information Lance had just given them. Alex put the pieces of the puzzle together. "Lance, would you please ask Mr Tricksy if Mum is with Mr Zenzly?"
"Mr Tricksy says 'No. She is with Mr Zinsli. Zed, eye, en, ess, ell, ie'," replied Lance.
The Wests did not respond but each concluded that Lance's mother had moved out and Ashleigh had moved in. After Lance had corrected Alex and spelled out Zinsli's name, the Wests had no doubts about Lance's intelligence.
"Lance, would you please ask Mr Tricksy if he knows where Ashleigh and Dad are?" asked Richard.
"Mr Tricksy says Ashleigh and Dad are with Mr Zinsli," Lance replied, pointing with his arm extended. A neighbour?
The Wests looked at each other and wondered why Mr Zinsli had taken away the adults but left the child on his own.
"Mr Tricksy, would you please ask Lance to take us to Mr Zinsli?" asked Alex.
"No!" shouted Lance in a wild voice. He did not use Tricksy.
Richard asked, "Mr Tricksy, why did Lance say no?"
"Mr Tricksy says he can't tell you. He's only a dog."
"Mr Tricksy, would you please ask Lance if Mr Zinsli is a friend?" asked Jo.
"Mr Tricksy says Mr Zinsli is not a friend," replied the boy.
Alex had a pen and paper in her hand. She put them on the table in front of Lance.
"Mr Tricksy, please ask Lance to draw a picture about Mr Zinsli," she said. She used her teacher's voice, the same one used by Mrs Armstrong at the school.
Lance responded immediately. Using the black marker pen, Lance quickly drew a tractor and a tank on a trailer with a man holding a hose that was squirting water on to flames. The next picture showed a woman on the ground with a man kneeling beside her while another man also leaned over to help the first man. The second man was heavily scored with black scribble. Lance scribbled the pen so hard that the paper tore. In the background at the top left corner, Lance drew four small figures, three dogs lying down with their legs in the air, and the black man pointing a rifle.
"Mr Tricksy, would you please ask Lance if he will take me to the dogs?"
"Dogs dead. No dogs," said Lance, rolling his eyes and closing down again.
"Lance, please may I keep this lovely pictures?" asked Richard. "Jo, would you please take Lance to the cottage and check out his story?"
Jo understood what Richard wanted immediately, and why she had been asked. Surprisingly, Lance stood up and went with her without being asked. Tricksy followed them out.
21.
While Richard was feeding the hens, Alex was busy organising a meal for them and Jo was snooping around.
When Richard returned to the kitchen, he gave Alex what he hoped was a reassuring hug. Jo saw that he was back, with Lance and the dog in tow.
"Dad, Dad," called Jo.
Richard walked over to where she stood by a window.
"What is it, Jo?" he asked.
"Look, there's been a fire. In the house there, behind the hedge," said Jo as she pointed to the roof of a cottage some fifty metres away. "Smell. It's fresh."
"It's not a hedge, it's a windbreak," Richard replied. Richard could not smell anything, the result of a blow to his head at Fern Valley. He walked with Jo and the boy and the dog to where Jo was standing.
"We need to take a look at that," said Richard.
Alex stayed with Lance while Jo and Richard went outside and walked over to the cottage. The corner of the building had been set alight. A tractor with a tank of water hitched to it sat near the burned wall. The ignition was still on. The tractor had run until it had run out of fuel. The whole area smelled of burnt timber from the weatherboards, and a smell Jo recognised as weed killer, the strong kind Richard used for thistles and gorse, not the paraquat kind. There were three sets of footprints in the mud left from the hose. One had a Z printed on the heel prints. Another set was small, a woman's perhaps, while the third set was about size nine and featureless.
The house was a mess. The earthquake had shaken it so hard that the ceilings had fallen. Window glass lay on the ground and the west and south walls leaned outwards. It was dangerous to stay any longer.
"Let's go, Jo."
"Look Dad," said Jo, pointing at a small shoe that had been left behind.
"Dad, they've put the fire out with weed killer," said Jo. "You can't smell it, can you?"
"No," said Richard, although his eyes were stinging a little. "I can't. I think this fire was not intended to burn the house down but to damage it. Now why wold one do that? See, Jo? Kerosene has been splashed on the ground and on to the corner of the wall. If someone wanted to burn the house down, they would have splashed petrol or kerosene around the front door, in that little porch."
The house was a typical farm labourer's cottage. Made of wood with a corrugated iron roof, it had two bedrooms in the front of the house where they were standing. Between the bedroom windows was a door set back to provide a porch to give shelter as one entered the house. Coats hung on hooks on the outer wall. Boots and shoes lay on the floor beside the door. Richard tried the front door. The front door was jammed tightly shut. It looked by the angle of the walls as if the house had moved off its piles.
"Come on, Jo," said Richard. "It's not very safe here. Let's get back to the main house."
"Dad, why would you light a fire if you didn't want to burn the place down? For the insurance?"
Richard thought for a moment, "No insurance company would pay out on this job. It's too obviously deliberate. It could be to terrorise, or warn, or maybe just some loopy has been at work."
To Jo the term loopy was as offensive as her mother found Jo's sometimes Anglo-Saxon expressions.
"Dad, say 'mad man'," she said. "What's wrong with the boy?"
"Autistic, I think. He can't express ideas. He is lock
ed in a little private world. I think that dog is his reality."
"He goes to school," said Jo. "I looked at his books and drawings. He's quite good. His teacher is Mrs Armstrong. There is a class photo on the floor, and a school photo of him. I guess they fell from the shelf during the quake."
"Then he can communicate in some way. Let's see how your mother is getting on," said Richard.
23.
"Bloody Hell, Alex, what have we got ourselves into?" asked Richard. "We had better be very careful. It' six o'clock in the evening. There is still no phone, no cell phone, no power and probably no road access or rescuers would have come by now. I think we are here for at least another day."
"I don't want Mr Zinsli anywhere near Jo," said Alex. "In fact, we should stay right here until help comes."
"And get burned to death in the night?"
"Can Jo sleep in the cottage?"
"No. It's too dangerous. The earthquake has damaged the walls and the roof. Another shake or a strong wind will flatten it." They were still getting tremors but these were small and of little concern except that each brought a fear, and apprehension that the tremor might become a full shake.
"Jo has to go to the village we passed a few kilometres back," said Alex. "There was a school there, so help will be close to hand."
"Is that safe?"
"Safer than her staying here. Send Tricksy and Lance with her."
"Let's talk about why. Why didn't Zinsli kill them all? Why didn't he look for Lance?"
"If the drawing is Zinsli. It might be someone else. Who could tell?" Richard was speaking slowly and deliberately while he worked things out. "We need to go to Zinsli's house and see what has happened there. Lance's mother is there. Maybe she needs help."
"Gregory, Lance's mother, Lance, and Ashleigh," said Alex. "What do they have in common?"
Farm Kill Page 13
