The Peco Incident

by Des Hunt

  Nick mumbled something behind the gas mask.

  ‘What?’ demanded the man.

  Nick lowered the mask. ‘I said, we’re doing a rubbish survey for a school assignment.’

  The man relaxed a little. ‘During the school holidays?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Nick. ‘I’ve got to have it finished before we go back.’

  ‘Is this the local school?’

  Nick shook his head. ‘No, it’s my school back in Hastings.’

  ‘Then why don’t you do it back in Hastings instead of here? This is private property and look at the mess you’re making.’

  ‘We’ll clean it all up,’ I said. ‘We didn’t know it was your property.’

  He smiled at that. ‘It’s not my property. I’m just killing some of the rabbits. But I did ask permission first, and that’s what you should do. Otherwise you’ll get into trouble. I could have shot at a rabbit and got one of you instead.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes, well you’d better clean up that mess and leave, or I’ll get blamed for it.’

  We said we would, and he walked away, just as silently as he’d approached.

  When he was out of hearing range, Nick asked, ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Finish the job,’ I said. ‘There are only a few bags left. It won’t take long. Anyway, he won’t come back here. He’ll look for rabbits somewhere else.’

  So we continued.

  We struck gold on the second-to-last batch of bags. I suppose if we’d thought about it, we should have started with the oldest bags: the ones that were dumped when Brio and Roost were still around.

  At first it wasn’t obvious that we’d found anything special. There were eggshells and they were white, but we’d found the same thing in lots of other bags. The difference with this bag was that there were also a whole lot of chewing-gum wrappers.

  Nick fished one out and held it up. ‘Brio’s?’ he asked.

  ‘Could be,’ I replied, trying to contain my excitement.

  He peered at the paper. ‘Made in the United Kingdom,’ he read. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘That’s where Scotland is,’ I said.

  He gave a big grin. ‘Then let’s go to work.’

  We emptied the whole of the bag on the ground so that nothing would be missed. As it turned out, the evidence we were after would have been pretty hard to miss: a large part of the rubbish was several squashed little boxes.

  When I unfolded one I discovered it had once contained a toy dinosaur egg. The instructions on the back showed that if you put the egg into water a dinosaur would hatch within two days. It seemed like an interesting idea. I looked around for a complete egg, but there were none — nine empty boxes without a single egg.

  However, there were the clear blister packs that had protected the dinosaur eggs, and it was one of these that told me we’d found what we were looking for. An egg had smashed, leaving bits of shell and yolk stuck to the inside of the pack. I felt certain that the toy dinosaur eggs had never contained any yolk — that had to come from a real egg. If that’s what this packet had contained, then probably all the others had as well.

  Then we found absolute proof that this was Brio and Roost’s rubbish. I fished out a larger carton that had once contained twelve of the dinosaur boxes. With it were the remains of a postal package that had been sent from Scotland to a Ms Talia Cottingham, care of Penelope’s Backpackers in Dunedin. Talia Cottingham: Brio’s real name.

  When I showed the package to Nick, we danced around with excitement. We finally had concrete evidence. Now people would believe us.

  After a while we calmed down and studied the packing in detail. A green customs slip was stuck to the outside. Alongside the contents bit was written Children’s toys. Probably it was Brio’s handwriting — she’d sent the eggs to herself. It was then that I began to get angry. She’d sent her poison to New Zealand labelled as children’s toys.

  Toys!

  Her ‘toys’ had killed tens of thousands of birds, and were now threatening some very special penguins. It upset me that anybody would even think of doing such a thing, let alone act upon it.

  We returned to the searching with greater determination than ever. A few minutes later we had more proof: a newsletter from a group called SCARO — the Scottish Animal Rights Organization. Although stained with food scraps, it was mostly readable. I half expected it to contain something written by Brio, but there was nothing, not even her name. Still it was good evidence, coming in the same rubbish bag as a package addressed with her name.

  When we were satisfied that we had everything of importance from that bag, we continued our search through the remaining bags. It did not take long, and we found nothing more, which was disturbing, because, although we searched through that rubbish over and over, we never found the other three dinosaur egg boxes. Three eggs were still missing, and that had to be three more opportunities for Brio to add to the disaster she’d already caused.

  CHAPTER 22

  As soon as we got home, we rang Cathy Andrews who said she’d come over straight away. While waiting, we covered the barbecue table with some plastic and laid the evidence on top.

  I sat at the table thinking how good it was to have something definite to show Cathy. Maybe now she’d be able to convince Colin Saxton and we’d get some action over the penguins. Brio and Roost might have escaped, but at least we wouldn’t be wrongly accused again. Then Nick shattered my illusions.

  ‘This could be another set-up,’ he said.

  ‘What? All this?’ I said, waving my hand over the rubbish. ‘Nah — this stuff is real.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s too obvious?’ he continued. ‘A package with Brio’s name on it, alongside an animal-rights newsletter? This could be another way of making us look stupid.’

  I shook my head. ‘How would she know that we’d go and search the rubbish?’

  Nick ignored the question. Instead, he asked, ‘What if that egg gets tested and it doesn’t contain the virus?’

  ‘It will!’

  ‘She’s tricked us so often—this could be another trick.’

  I kept quiet. He’d now got me doubting the evidence as well. It was possible that Brio had set up another trap. It was how she worked. She always had some way to explain things if she got caught. It was like watching a magician: you never knew what was real and what was deception.

  By the time Cathy arrived, the glorious feeling of success we’d felt after finding the rubbish had turned to despair. And if we were expecting her to cheer us up, we were soon disappointed.

  ‘This seems like great evidence,’ she said after we’d explained what we’d done. ‘But are you sure it isn’t another one of her cover-ups?’

  Neither of us spoke.

  ‘I suppose we’ll know the answer after I get the egg remains tested.’

  ‘Will you tell Saxton?’ I asked.

  ‘Hell, no!’ she said quickly. But after a moment’s thought, she added, ‘But I might if the egg tests positive.’

  ‘Why wait?’ asked Nick. ‘Don’t you believe that this is how the infected eggs got here?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore.’

  ‘There are eggs missing,’ I said.

  ‘I noticed that,’ she replied. ‘Are you suggesting there might be more attacks?’

  I shrugged. ‘Brio and Roost could have taken the eggs to Australia.’

  ‘They haven’t gone there yet,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘What?’ Nick and I said together.

  ‘They’re still in New Zealand, somewhere. We’ve got a tag on their names. If they turn up at emigration, they’ll be detained until we give the go-ahead.’ She gave a sneering laugh. ‘Dear Colin set that up to cover himself, just in case he was wrong.’

  ‘Just obeying the rules, I suppose,’ I said, sarcastically.

  She gave a thin smile. ‘That’s Colin. He always looks after number one.’

  ‘Do you know what he di
d yesterday?’ asked Nick.

  ‘About the parakeet?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Yeah. That must have been tough on you two. But you did bring it on yourselves. If you’d been honest right from the start, things might have been different.’

  Nick glared at her. ‘She’d have been killed sooner, you mean.’

  Cathy said nothing.

  ‘Are the test results back yet?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Maybe tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘She’s called Harriet,’ said Nick. ‘Harriet the Parriet.’

  ‘I know. I met her this morning: she introduced herself.’

  Nick brightened. ‘Did she ask who you were?’ ‘Yeah, and I told her.’

  He gave a little giggle. ‘I bet she said “Hi Cathy! Hi Cathy!”’ ‘Yeah, she did. She’s quite a character.’ ‘She’s the best bird in the world,’ said Nick with feeling. ‘And you’ve got to save her.’

  Cathy nodded. ‘I’ll try, but don’t get your hopes too high. If she’s a carrier, then …’

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. We both knew how it ended.

  That night I went on the Internet to research SCARO, the group that had produced the newsletter we found in Brio’s rubbish.

  I discovered they were a fairly tame group compared with some other animal-rights activists around the world. Their usual action was to protest outside supermarkets that took products from factory farms. They were also strongly opposed to the use of animals in research. Their website showed photos of banner-waving sit-ins and picket-lines, but nothing that involved any form of violence. I searched through all of their pages without finding possible links to Brio or Roost — no photos, no names.

  After that I did a name search for Talia Cottingham. There were lots of hits, all of them about her photographs. Colin Saxton was right: it did seem as though her work was well-known. Many of the sites had images, and some of them were quite stunning. They all included nature of some sort, but photographed in a way that made them more like paintings than photos.

  I went through more than twenty websites without finding anything that would suggest she was also an animal activist. So I tried a different approach, searching for ‘animal rights terrorist Scotland’. That got me hundreds of thousands of web pages — many more than I could ever search. However, when I restricted it to pages updated in the last six months I ended up with a more manageable number.

  The fifth page I looked at was a Scottish sheriff’s report into the death of a truck driver. Donald Macpherson had been driving a truck loaded with a quarter of a million eggs when it left the road and plunged down a hill into a valley. He was dead when emergency services arrived.

  At the time it was thought to be just a terrible accident. But then police investigations found that two of the tyres on the left side of the vehicle had been punctured by bullets. The resulting homicide investigation was still ongoing, but so far had failed to identify any perpetrator or even a definite reason for the killing. One suggestion was that it was an act of terrorism against that particular egg company — it was one that had often been accused of inhumane farming in the past. Below the article were links to various newspaper reports written at the time of the accident. I began clicking.

  It was the second link that yielded results. The website was a regional newspaper published in a town close to the crash.

  Along with a report were several photos taken soon after the ‘accident’. They showed that the back of the truck had burst open as it tumbled down into the valley. Eggs were strewn everywhere. The photos of the truck showed a cab almost flattened by the impact. It was not surprising that Donald Macpherson had died.

  But the photo that grabbed my attention was not of the eggs or the truck, it was one that showed a group of onlookers staring down at the mayhem. Towards the back of the group was a young woman looking straight at the camera. Her expression indicated that she was far from happy at being photographed. It was Brio.

  As I studied the photo, I thought of Colin Saxton’s words about criminals often returning to the scene of a crime. Was that the case here? Was Talia Cottingham, aka Brio, the person who shot out the tyres? I suspected so, and that thought made me very scared. For if she was, it meant that we were dealing with a person far more dangerous than we had ever imagined.

  CHAPTER 23

  The next day was our big day out. We were visiting Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. Our plan included bungee jumping, jet boating, and anything else we could fit in. I was looking forward to the river journey, but the bungee bit created butterflies in my stomach.

  It was not the only thing to upset me on the three-hundred-kilometre journey. A text message came through to Nick’s phone as we were passing through Roxburgh. Nick read it and immediately felt for the pendant around his neck. I knew then that it couldn’t be good news. After a time, he passed the phone over to me. The message was from Cathy.

  Tst result bak. Harriets a carrier. So sorry. Trying my best 4 her. Will let u know.

  Nick sent a reply, telling her what we were doing and asking her to get back as soon as she had something.

  From then on, the rest of the journey was in silence.

  In Queenstown, we first called into the town centre for an early lunch. Already an hour had passed without another message. It was looking as though Cathy’s best hadn’t been good enough.

  By the time we finished lunch and had driven to the Shotover River for the bungee jump, two hours had passed and still no message. My worrying had reached extreme levels. I felt that if I did the bungee, the whole of my lunch might spill out of my mouth into the river.

  Dad went first, which gave Nick and me more time to worry.

  When Nick was called up for his jump, he chickened out.

  ‘Can I go later?’ he asked the operator. ‘I’m waiting on an important message.’

  The operator looked at her watch. ‘OK, but you’ll have to go back to the end of the line. You could have to wait an hour or more.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Nick.

  The operator looked at me.

  ‘I’ll wait, too,’ I said.

  She shrugged before moving on to the next customer.

  We had half an hour’s waiting, and still no message. As we got closer to the front, I feared that we might have to jump anyway. Dad had told us not to delay it any further.

  Then, with only one jumper in front of us, the phone chimed.

  Yippee! Harriet has reprieve. Goin to new home. Call in motel when u get back. Will tell u all.

  After that the bungee jump was a breeze, and the fish in the river below didn’t get a free feed after all.

  Although it was almost ten when we got back to Portobello, Nick and I still wanted to go and see Cathy. Fortunately, Mum and Dad decided to call in at the pub for drinks, so in the late twilight we set off up the road to the motel, keen to get the good news about Harriet.

  Except Cathy didn’t start by telling us about Harriet. She began with what she called ‘the other good news’. It was about the pieces of egg taken from the blister pack we’d found in the rubbish. There were no results yet from the virus tests, but a microscope examination of the eggshell indicated that it was very likely to be from the same variety of hen that laid the white-shelled eggs found in the Peco shed. While this was encouraging news, it didn’t yet prove anything.

  But that was not the end of the ‘good news’.

  ‘You recall the fire in the incubator room?’ she asked.

  We nodded.

  ‘Well, it’s finally been shown to have been caused by an electrical fault. It was purely coincidental that the fire started at the same time we were entering the compound.’

  Some coincidence, I thought.

  ‘However,’ continued Cathy, ‘enough bits of eggshell survived to be compared with the infected eggs found in the sheds. They didn’t match. Which means it’s extremely unlikely that Bryce Shreeves was responsible for the epidemic. Somebody e
lse placed those diseased eggs amongst the battery cages.’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘Now, I wonder who that might have been?’

  ‘Brio and Roost,’ said Nick.

  ‘Or just Brio,’ said Cathy. ‘She’s the mastermind. I think Roost is just along because he’s attracted to her.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘She’s just using him.’ I thought for a moment, before pointing to the laptop on the table. ‘Can I use that to go on the Internet?’

  She nodded.

  I slid the computer around and went to the newspaper site I’d visited the night before. Over the next few minutes I showed them the photo of Brio and the sheriff’s report about the death being murder.

  Nick was excited by the information. ‘We’ve got to do something with this,’ he said.

  Cathy studied the photo of Brio which was still showing on the screen. ‘This doesn’t prove anything,’ she said, at last.

  ‘Saxton will think it does,’ I said. ‘He called us criminals because we went back to the scene.’

  ‘I’m not going to tell him,’ said Cathy firmly.

  ‘Why not?’ said Nick, sticking out his chin.

  ‘Because he went on holiday this afternoon, leaving firm instructions that he was to be contacted only if there was a new biosecurity emergency.’

  I was becoming more and more annoyed. ‘Have you told him about the rubbish?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What we found makes the penguins a new emergency, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ replied Cathy. ‘Well, at least not this morning. I found no indications of any problems, and I would have expected to, three days after infection.’

  ‘Are you checking every morning?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Well, you can’t be doing it properly,’ said Nick.

  She gave him an angry look. ‘Then maybe you should come along in the morning and check up on me.’

  ‘We will,’ said Nick. ‘What time?’

  ‘Five should be early enough.’

  ‘Good, we’ll be there.’ He stood and moved as if he was going to leave.