Hounds of the Underworld (The Path of Ra Book 1)

by Dan Rabarts

  “What?” Penny insists.

  Matiu shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What was in your Breadmaker?”

  “I’m not sure. A sample from the crime scene. Beaker set it up, so I’d have to check with him.”

  Penny could swear she sees Matiu’s body sag. He looks like an overloaded coat rail, only barely holding up under the weight.

  “Matiu, if you know something—”

  Matiu exhales through puffed cheeks. “It’s probably nothing. Just a hunch.” He tips his coffee in the sink and pulls the lead from his back pocket. At the sound of the chink, Cerberus clambers out from under the table, vaults Penny’s satchel and hovers at Matiu’s feet, his tail wagging. “We should go,” Matiu says. He secures the lead. “C’mon, boy.”

  Stopping first to put the cups in the dishwasher and switch off the cafetière, Penny gathers up her satchel and hurries after them. Another fail. How does he do that? Twist her words around so she’s the one being grilled. Penny wishes she had that skill. Matiu probably picked it up going through the court system, she thinks, as she closes the door.

  Then again, who is she kidding? He only had to watch Mum and Dad.

  Downstairs in the car, Matiu is on the air to despatch. “So you see, Carlie, I’m tied up all day, driving Pandora about for her police investigation. Yes, you could say Mum and Dad authorised it.” Matiu’s eyes meet Penny’s and their discord from earlier drops away as understanding flashes between them.

  Mum and Dad? Authorised? Ordered, more like.

  They exchange knowing smiles, and Matiu returns to the conversation.

  “And I’m turning off the GPS,” he goes on. “Yes, all day. I know, it’s against company regulations, but we can’t have the details of our movements noted on civilian records.” There’s a pause. Matiu purses his lips and taps his fingers on the steering wheel. Penny imagines Carlie’s rebuttal. No doubt along the lines of Mr and Mrs Yee expecting to be informed of their whereabouts at all times. Matiu inhales slowly. “But this is a murder investigation. Pandora has to follow up leads, interview witnesses, that sort of thing,” he says, his voice deliberate. “Yes, Carlie, if that information got out, she could definitely be at risk. You’d do that? Because Pandora and I don’t want to get you in trouble: they can be pretty scary.” He laughs, overloud in the vehicle. “You’re a doll. I knew you’d understand.” He rings off, and starts the car.

  Penny shakes her head theatrically. “All that crap you give me about Beaker,” she teases.

  “It got her off our back, didn’t it?”

  “For now. They’ll find out, you know.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “They’ll be pissed.”

  Matiu pulls out into the street. “Yeah, well, that’s OK, sis, because I plan on blaming you.”

  Penny snorts. He will, too. She’ll have to make up some nonsense about police procedure. Or failing that, marry Craig Tong.

  “Anyway, I thought this morning—what’s left of it—we should make a visit to Fletcher’s Dish-It offices. Staff there might be able to fill us in on his movements over the past few days, maybe give us some clues about his state of mind—”

  Penny is interrupted when, between them, Matiu’s tablet buzzes.

  Penny picks up the device and reads off the caller’s name. “Erica.”

  “Fuck.” Matiu slaps his temple. “Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck,” he raps, marking each expletive with a fist-thump to his thigh.

  “Who is she?”

  “My probation officer.”

  “Ah. Given your reaction, I thought maybe you’d got her pregnant.”

  “Very funny.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Matiu grimaces. “Just leave it.”

  More buzzing. “You sure? She’s pretty insistent.”

  “Yeah, leave it. It’ll just be about an appointment.”

  Appointment…appointment! That reminds her about the name they saw in Fletcher’s online diary. She rejects the call and tells Matiu everything she remembers about Buchanan: his research, the case she’d worked with Cordell, even gives him a summary of the post mortem findings on the guy who committed suicide. Then she tells him her suspicions about Fletcher, and the evidence leading her to think he might have cancer—a likely motive if he did kill himself.

  “We’ll see what Scour turns up,” Matiu says when she finally peters out. “I’ve got him checking out the names we found on Fletcher’s computer.”

  “Maybe Fletcher’s colleagues will be able to help with that, too,” Penny says cheerily. The Buchanan discussion concluded, Penny takes a proper look out the window as Matiu slows the vehicle, and turns hard right at a wooden sheep run, weathered grey from years in the sun. Penny’s heart sinks. This isn’t the city green belt. On either side of the road, a couple of straggly beech trees, shying from the prevailing sou-westerly nod their assent.

  “What the heck, Matiu. Where are we? This isn’t the Dish-It office, this is the Back of Beyond.”

  “Well spotted, sis. I found something else on that computer that we should check out.”

  They continue on in silence. The road narrows as it dips into the valley.

  CHAPTER 10

  - Matiu -

  The landscape spreads out around them, kilometre after rolling kilometre of overstretched farmland encircled by rusting fence lines of razor wire topped with solar-powered LED security lights. A few vehicles patrol the dead zones between plantations, biodiesel LEVs and electric ATVs. The buggies might be jokes compared to the Holden as it chews up the horizon, but the grim-faced security staff with their equally grim submachine-guns are nothing to laugh about. “No stun setting on those puppies,” Matiu chuckles as one such security patrol does a U-turn to match their approach, then attempts to keep pace with them along the dirt track between the looming fence and the crumbling road.

  Penny says nothing. She’s shrinking a little further into herself with every curve of the road that stretches between Auckland and wherever the hell it is Matiu is taking them. She has her tablet out, maybe reviewing her lab findings, maybe just staring into the safe borders of her screen so she doesn’t have to see the brutal lines of fences beyond the windshield.

  “We’re only ever five good meals away from revolution, you know that?” Matiu says. He’s not trying to wind her up again, honestly. Not even trying to upset her. But he has a hard time hiding from truth, and it feels to him like this is a truth that matters, now more than ever. “If it all turns to custard at lunchtime today, there could be war in the streets by dinner-time tomorrow.”

  “Shush,” Penny says, and Matiu can tell from the slight quaver in her voice that it’s taking her a lot of effort to sound relaxed. Beneath the calm exterior she’s taut, like a violin string wound too tight. Ready to snap. “People are too civilised for that.”

  “Yip,” Matiu says, nodding. “That’s why the government farms are guarded by armed patrols. It keeps the masses civilised.”

  “You’re the one driving us out here. You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

  “That must be pretty infuriating,” Matiu agrees, and they drive on, leaving the suspicious stares of the hired guns behind. Ahead, as they crest a rise, sunlight glints on water.

  “We’re miles from anywhere,” Penny finally says, her frustration bubbling to the surface.

  “Not really. That’s Kawau Parua Inlet up there, and we must be less than a mile from it, surely.”

  Penny holds up her tablet. A green and blue map is spread out in stiff, stilted blocks. “Miles. From. Anywhere. Not even enough signal to get a proper map up. How can this possibly have anything to do with my case? For crying out loud, Matiu, I’ve got work to do. You’ve had your little joke—and it’s not
even funny, just so you know—now explain yourself or turn this car around and take us back to Auckland. Right. Now.”

  Matiu sighs, theatrically deep, then slows the car to a stop. The wheels crunch in the gravel on the roadside. In the back seat, Cerberus raises his head, hopeful. Matiu nudges the central locking button on the door, and the locks pop open. “Feel free to try your luck hitch-hiking home, sister.” It’s cruel, he knows, but also a little bit hilarious, to watch the colour drain from her cheeks.

  “Cut it out.”

  There’s a real edge of fear in her voice, and Matiu deflates. For once he feels a thread of shame tighten around his chest. He locks the doors again. “In the old days, the spirits would travel north, across these lands, to reach Rēinga. It was their last journey, to the place where the sea swallows up the land forever, and there they’d throw themselves into the setting sun. To be free.”

  Penny’s brow furrows. “We’re going to throw ourselves into the sea? What the fuck, Matiu…?”

  Matiu shakes his head, holding up a hand. “Not us. The point is, this is the ends of the earth, right? We’re driving towards the end of the world. Every click further we get from Auckland, the further we are from what you like to think of as civilised, if that’s what you want to use as your benchmark, for want of a better word.”

  “So…?”

  “So if I was the sort of person who was in the business of…doing things that were a bit uncivilised, I’d want to be as far from the eyes of civilisation as possible, right?”

  “I trust you’re going to get to the point eventually.”

  “Not yet. Because if I told you, you wouldn’t hesitate to get out of the car if I unlocked it again. You’d rather risk the road than where we’re going.”

  Penny laughs a little laugh, a brittle sound of broken glass in a drainpipe, a sound that wants to be cheerful but which can only rattle with fear. “Now you’re just trying to freak me out.”

  Matiu puts the car in gear and pulls out. “No, I want you to know that where we’re going will be dangerous. You won’t like what you see. It’ll make you sick, it’ll haunt you for years to come. But you need to see this.”

  “What? Why?”

  Matiu doesn’t take his eyes from the road ahead, but he knows she’s looking at the door again, at the lock, at the road rushing by. Weighing her chances. “Because this is your fight as much as it is mine. You need to know what we’re fighting for.”

  “I’m not fighting anyone. Enough with the cryptic bullshit. Are you back on the wacky backy?”

  Matiu’s jaw tightens. Proud as he is of the fact that it’s been years now since he’s touched the smoke, he can’t really blame her for thinking he’s gone off the rails. But she has to see, has to understand how serious it is. “You love dogs, right?”

  Penny glares at him. Her lip is trembling.

  “Fletcher bought a dog to sacrifice, instead of Cerberus. He bought it from a guy named Hanson, who keeps dogs in captivity and raises them to fight each other in pit battles for money.”

  Penny freezes in the act of tapping out a message, presumably to Dad.

  “We’re going to Hanson’s farm.”

  “So we can…question him?”

  “Yes,” Matiu says, his face as grim as the men on the fences, as bleak as their machine-guns. “To question him.”

  He tries to ignore the way she stares at him, her face a mask of outrage and terror. If that’s how she reacts to the idea of what lies in store, he hopes she really will be able to handle herself when they reach Hanson’s. Because she has a job to do, and if she can’t do it, then they really are driving to the end of the world, to throw themselves into the setting sun.

  “Hang on,” Penny says, the air suddenly even cooler in the car, “what did you mean? Sacrifice?”

  “That’s why we’re going to question him, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, sister. But it has to be done.”

  - Pandora -

  Penny doesn’t need to look him up. Hanson. Fraud, theft, trafficking, inciting to violence, grievous bodily harm, manslaughter, murder. The guy’s a regular peach.

  Hey, Hanson, we were just in the neighbourhood, thought we’d pop in for a cuppa.

  She gnaws at the skin inside her cheek. Matiu was right to lock the doors, because right now she is seriously freaked out. Clammy palms, a racing heart, and a sudden urge to pee: Penny recognises the standard physiological responses to fear reported in Walter Bradford Canon’s hallmark paper published in 1932. In the back seat, affected by the emotional contagion, or perhaps by Penny’s own fear pheromone, Cerberus whines softly.

  “Matiu, come on. It’s not funny anymore. Turn around.”

  “Like I said, you can get out if you like. Hitch back. I won’t stop you.”

  “Dad will cut your nose off.”

  Matiu curls his lip. “Really, Pandora? Chop my nose off? That’s the best you can do?”

  It was pretty lame. Instead, she imagines sliding bamboo shoots under his finger nails where the nerve endings are exquisitely sensitive and ramming them in hard. But Penny needn’t worry: if they ever come back from this, and their father sees the gas bill, he will add tortures Six through Ten to the list of Five Punishments.

  Hugging her arms to her chest, she looks out the window, feeling almost wistful as they leave behind the last of the government farms with their Get-Lost gunmen, Fuck-You fences, and Bugger-Off barbed wire. From here it’s just gravel road, scrub and loneliness all the way to the coast. Maybe tapping her foot will dissipate some tension. No. That’s just winding her up even more.

  “At least put the GPS on,” she snaps. Even patchy reception would give the olds a general idea of their whereabouts.

  “Nuh-uh.”

  Penny could clean out his innards with a chopstick, he is that infuriating. “Why not? Someone should know we’re out here,” she says, wishing she didn’t sound so wheedling. “In case…”

  She clamps her lips shut as Matiu slows the Holden to take the turn. On the gatepost, a dilapidated sign reads Hanson’s Canine Services. Matiu stops the car.

  They’ve passed the point of no return.

  Penny slips her tablet down the side of the seat. Then, steeling herself, she throws open the door and steps into a dried pool of mud. Time to find out if they really are throwing themselves into the setting sun, as Matiu so eloquently put it.

  Because, quite honestly, meeting with Hanson isn’t the scariest thing her brother has suggested today.

  CHAPTER 11

  - Matiu -

  Matiu sits for a minute, scanning the paddock, the fence line, the trees that mark the boundary of Hanson’s property. It used to be Conservation land, back before budget cuts forced the Government to sell off large chunks of regenerating coastal forest just to keep their parliamentary lunch bill paid. He’s been here before, of course, once or twice, back when he used to work the fringes of the Auckland pit-fighting rings, usually just watching the perimeter, keeping an eye out for the five-oh. Still, that was close enough. He’d still heard what was going on inside those walls. The screams of the crowd, of the dogs. Screams that drove through him like nails, but work was work. Sometimes things have to be done.

  The farm was where Hanson brought new dogs, the ones that had to be broken, ready for fighting. Some had a killer instinct that could be honed for the ring; some had none, and needed to learn the fear and desperation of battling tooth and claw, fighting for their lives. Or at least, of putting on a good show for the punters.

  Not that different, Matiu thinks, than the outcasts who found themselves fallen so far that they were working for a creature like Hanson. Either way, he has some idea of what he’ll find on the other side of the hill. He picks out the pole with the small black camera, cu
nningly concealed beside the nikau palm near the gate. He leans forward for a better look. From memory, he should be parked far enough back from the gate that he won’t be visible, but even so, something looks not quite right about the surveillance camera. Either the wind has knocked it, or the screws have come loose, but it’s tilted almost straight down, so it won’t be monitoring the whole fence line like it should. He remembers standing in the ranger station, years ago, watching the screen for anyone driving up to the gate. It had once been his job to guard this guy and his bloody little empire. Irony’s a bitch.

  Someone must know the camera’s misaligned, and will probably be coming to fix it, and that could be a problem. But he’ll take his good luck when he can get it. It doesn’t come along often, after all. And there’s always the chance not everything is well and good over that rise, under those trees.

  He climbs from the car, throwing open the back door so Cerberus can leap out. The dog shakes itself as Matiu slides on his sunglasses, a black mask to hide behind. He reaches into the back seat and pulls out his jacket, black leather that falls halfway down his thigh, soft from years of use. The sun on the leather is scorching, but he’d rather be too hot than go anywhere without his jacket. Armour against the world. He slams the door shut, walks to the locked gate, hoists himself onto the post and jumps deftly to the dirt road beyond. Penny hurries to keep up, clambering over the fence with all the grace of a lab technician, or lack thereof. Cerberus shames them both by clearing the gate in a single bound, and then proceeds to raise his leg to the fence-post and baptise it.

  “You don’t think the locked gate might mean he’s not in the mood for visitors?” Penny asks.