Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  Eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the bay, she thought about what Morgan had told her. Maria D’Arcy was found dead under ambiguous circumstances. She was relatively young; inevitably her death would be considered ambiguous. It was a relief for Miranda to think about murder in a context she knew.

  By the time she began sipping a postprandial Chilean chardonnay, her thoughts had swung back to her immediate circumstances and the bewildering disappearance of Thomas Edward Ross. It was like he had never been there, like he never existed. She caught her own reflection in the picture window, spectral against the dazzling ocean, and shuddered at the perverse reassurance she felt to see she hadn’t disappeared, as well.

  She stood up abruptly and her chair fell over, rattling against the floor. Her nerves jumped, making her gasp for air. A man appeared out of the shadows, silhouetted and featureless against the brilliant sunlight filling the windows. She paid too much and hurried out. The harbour was alive again. A dog and a chicken rooted in the dust near the lone moai, a couple of divers came out of their shop and loaded a small boat with gear, two boys and a girl began kicking a ball around the field, and a couple of older boys on horseback, with T-shirts wrapped decorously around their heads, cantered past, nodding solemnly to her as they went by. A covey of girls in school uniforms strolled down a side street, preceded by giggles, and when they came abreast of Miranda they lapsed into silence and smiled shyly, but squealed with delight after they were distant enough they would not seem rude.

  Good God, she thought. I’m paranoid. For one moment, the area was empty, that doesn’t signify evil, it doesn’t portend a catastrophe, invite the apocalypse, it was just an eerie coincidence. Everything is as it should be in paradise, she thought, and absently rubbed the bruise on her cheek.

  Miranda ruminated as she walked toward her hotel. Mr. Ross will turn up or he won’t. It was not her concern. Being insufferably handsome with an elusive identity and surrounded by intrigue, possibly malevolence, made him interesting, but dangerous. Whoever said evil was banal? But that was nonsense, of course. Evil was seductively interesting and highly contagious.

  By the time she had walked up the sloping drive to the Hotel Victoria she had overcome any fears she might have had for herself and was wholly enthralled with the fortunes of the missing man. Was he alive? Whose side was he on? She didn’t even know who the combatants were or what was at stake. The fear had gone, but she felt uneasy, so far out of her own jurisdiction, so removed from the social parameters within which she normally lived. She thought of the Robert Heinlein novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. She had never read the book but the title described her situation perfectly.

  She nodded to the concierge as she passed him on the lawn of the house next to the hotel, but he ignored her. Walking down the corridor into a tunnel of light streaming in from the west, she did not notice that all the room doors were ajar. When she got to her own door and found it open she was taken aback. She was further disconcerted by the tidiness of the room, by its emptiness. Then she realized her things were gone. Even the Heyerdahl book was missing. She stepped out into the corridor and looked at the room number. This was her room. She strode into the bathroom, hoping her belongings were there. Nothing. She must have been moved to another room. She hurried from room to room, peering through the open doors. They were all empty. The hotel was deserted.

  Kafka, she thought. She was dreaming in real time. Her passport, her laptop, clothes, books, money, credit cards, police ID, proof of who she was, proof she was here, all gone. Good God, what was happening? She gazed into the hall; someone was coming, the concierge, he must have circled around from the back. No, it was a bigger man, a man with a weapon, a pistol, walking into his own shadow, walking toward her. There was nowhere to flee. She stood transfixed, waiting to see what he would do. Her fear was swallowed by anger — if only she could see over the walls of the labyrinth.

  The man inhaled deeply on a nearly dead cigarette hanging from his lips and for a moment his familiar features glistened in a fiery light. He was close enough for her to breathe the rank smell of tobacco. Suddenly she kicked out at his head, twisting when she kicked so that as he reeled backward from the blow she landed on all fours. Damn it, she thought, I’m too old for this. She smoothed her dress down over her legs at the same time as she grasped for the fallen man’s gun. He squirmed around, but she was faster. Holding the gun at his head she motioned him to stand up.

  “You will not do this, señorita, I am policeman. Carabinaros.”

  She struck him sharply across the cheek with the gun barrel.

  “Do not, señora,” he said in a firm voice, while framing his face with his hands to ward off further blows.

  Waving the pistol, she motioned for him to back into the clear light of the lounge where she could get a good look at him.

  “We’ve met,” she said.

  “Si. We have met. I did not hurt you, señora, señorita.”

  He looked grotesque. The smashed stub of his cigarette was stuck to his lower lip but her kick had smeared ashes across one cheek, while the other cheek was livid with a gash of blood running from ear to chin. She motioned for him to sit and when he hesitated, she lashed out with her open hand and pushed him down. He missed the chair and sprawled at her feet. She planted her sandalled foot across his neck and pressed. She glared into his eyes. He was looking up the skirt of her dress. She rolled her sandal across his neck and stepped back.

  He rose slowly to his feet, backed up a pace and sank into an easy chair. He was smiling.

  “You will not kill me,” he said. “I am policeman.”

  “From Santiago.”

  “Si, you remember, from your hotel, I was not alone, señorita. You should give me the gun. It is a nice gun, no? Like you have in Canada? No, this is revolver like in United States of America, yes? You should give me the gun. My friend, he will shoot you, no problem. I will not shoot you.”

  Miranda felt at an impasse. The man smiled; she could see tobacco stains on his teeth. Behind her, she could sense someone approaching along the corridor. She heard the clicking action of a semi-automatic. She set the revolver down on a table.

  “Gracias,” said the man, leaning forward to reach his gun.

  A shot like a sharp sneeze pierced the air. The man sat back abruptly, as if he had been thrown. His eyes opened wide, he tried to smile but his features collapsed, he sat bolt upright for a moment, as Miranda took several deep breaths, then he slumped sideways on the chair. She stood absolutely still.

  Slowly, a man edged by her into the light. The first thing illuminated was his nametag, Te Ave Teao; she saw this even before his face or his gun. He kept his gun trained on her, not her head but her body. He was not about to execute her, but it seemed likely he would shoot if she did not co-operate.

  “There is another,” she said.

  “No, he is dead.”

  “You shot him?” She was surprised because she had heard nothing.

  “He is dead,” said Te Ave Teao, opening the palm of his free hand and spreading his fingers in a gesture that somehow indicated he had strangled the smoking man’s accomplice.

  “Are they police?” she asked, trying to conceal the flinching inside.

  “Yes, they are very bad police. Now they are dead. Tonight, they will be buried; tomorrow, they were not ever here.”

  “What about me?” said Miranda “What do you intend?”

  “What do you intend, yourself, señora?”

  “You have the gun.”

  He leaned over and placed his semi-automatic on the table beside the dead man’s revolver, and turned his back to her, gazing out over the dazzling Pacific. She did not move. He turned to face her.

  “We will talk,” he said, spreading both hands open, which, despite the conciliatory gesture, made her shudder.

  They sat down on chairs facing each other, with the dead man slouched in the chair to the side.

  “You are here to write romance,” he said, as if h
e were explaining something to her.

  “I am a detective sergeant with the Toronto Police in Canada.”

  “But you will write a fiction, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are here because Maria sent you.”

  “Maria? Maria D’Arcy.”

  “Yes, she sent you to Rapa Nui.”

  “No, she did not. I do not know the woman.”

  “She knows you, Señora Quin.”

  “Not any longer. She’s dead,” said Miranda.

  A rage of emotion stormed over Te Ave Teao’s face and immediately disappeared behind a mask of inscrutability.

  “Oh my God, I am sorry,” she said. “She was from this island! She was, wasn’t she?”

  “She was my friend.”

  And? Miranda wondered. And? And? And?

  “You will come with me,” he said, rising to his feet. Clearly, she had no alternative.

  “My clothes?” she asked, meaning, in fact, her passport and money.

  “You will not need them.”

  Oh God, she thought, either his side in this bunfight has a wardrobe department or I am about to be murdered. She thought of Morgan, who at the oddest moments blurted out snippets of nonsense. I see England, I see France, for God’s sake, Morgan, you cannot see my underpants. As she walked down the corridor to a waiting car, she was surprised by the feelings of nostalgia for her partner that crowded out surges of panic.

  When she was shoved into the back of the police car and her head unceremoniously jammed down against the seat so she could not be seen through the windows, she felt strangely sad, as if she were feeling sympathy for someone else, not herself. It was all a case of mistaken identity and she was not who she thought she was.

  The car lurched forward and rolled along, making its way among potholes and chickens, then picked up speed. It did not seem opportune to be taken hostage in the middle of the day. The seat smelled of old vomit and urine. She twisted and looked up; all she could see through the windows was open sky. They must be outside Hanga Roa. She thought she could hear the ocean through the passenger-side window over the complaints of the engine. She twisted further. There was no passenger, only a driver. It was not Te Ave Teao. She slowly sat up, apprehensive that the driver’s arm might swing around and clout her down. When she was upright and could see his eyes in the mirror, she was surprised that he smiled, his eyes crinkling at the edges.

  “Hola!” he said.

  “Hello. Am I your prisoner?”

  He did not answer. Perhaps that was not a smile, but sun-lines around his eyes.

  “Well, of course, I’m your prisoner,” she said.

  He said nothing, but turned in half profile and she could see he really was smiling. He slapped the passenger seat with amiable vigour, indicating she should move up front, but he made no gesture to slow the car down as they careened along the coastal road, on and off stretches of pavement and gravel. To clamber over the seat, she thought, would mean a certain loss of decorum, given she was wearing a sundress. It would also make the situation seem like less of an abduction. That was obviously his intent. She climbed into the front, noticing with appreciation how extravagantly he diverted his eyes.

  “Hola!” she said as she settled into the seat.

  “Hola!” he responded. “Bella señorita, hola.”

  She thought perhaps she had received a compliment.

  She looked him over and he was good to look at. In the police office earlier, he had stayed in the background and she had hardly noticed him. Like Te Ave Teao, he appeared Polynesian, not from mainland Chile. He was her age, perhaps a year or two younger, it was difficult to tell. Gauguin was a racial imperialist.

  Miranda realized her mind was strolling, that she was inappropriately relaxed. None of this was real. She gazed out the open window and the wind blew in her face.

  Gauguin’s paintings distorted Polynesian features, erased their individuality, made them stolidly exotic, but drawing from her observation of the native people on Rapa Nui, they were lithe and quick, with radiant complexions. Like this man, they were beautiful, she thought. A sort of golden mean among races; the best of us all if we merged and became one.

  “What is your name?” she asked, turning to her abductor. “Te Ave Teao? Your name?”

  “Matteo.”

  “Well, Matteo, where are you taking me?”

  He said nothing. He apparently spoke no English. But he gestured toward fallen moai and crumbled huts of stone as they passed, as if he were giving her a silent tour of the island. They passed a small signpost reading “Rano Raraku.”

  “Matteo,” she exclaimed. “Go back, can we go there? I know about Rano Raraku, it’s the quarry. Please, go back.” What a ridiculous request! She was being abducted.

  To her surprise, he slowed the car, jockeyed it around, and proceeded back to the ragged lane leading to a parking lot at the base of Rano Raraku.

  She leaned low to look past him at the steep slopes of the volcanic quarry. The sun was still high and the moai cast brief shadows that made them shimmer in the light as if they were straining against the land, trying to move from the quarry, perhaps to the shore, where they would be given eyes and souls of the ancestors, and she felt sad for their bondage.

  They got out and walked side by side, then single file, along the narrowing paths that forked and intersected like a maze, some routes leading to moai buried deep and fallen over, with only their noses showing, others seeming to go nowhere, just providing alternate footholds in the rough terrain, while others led to splendid isolated statues, their features exaggerated by the overhead sun, solemnly gazing into the distance with blind eyes.

  When they reached the brink of the volcano, they stared down into the centre. It seemed to Miranda a magical place. The lake at the bottom was lined with reeds and glistened in the sunlight. Moai in various stages of completion hovered along the slopes all around, some resting on the grassy surface, some lying awkwardly prone, some partially embedded in rocky cliffs with their features cut only roughly into the stone.

  She and her companion moved down among shadows into the lee of an overhanging wall that bore evidence of work by a thousand hands over innumerable generations, when the island was a world unto itself. A few tourists in the distance carefully walked the western rim.

  It did not occur to her to signal for help. She and Matteo sat down close together in the shade of a moai they were examining, one of the minority with big ears draped close against the side of the head. They sat silently, observing the birds flying over the reeds and the bright water in the heart of the crater below them. After a long and comfortable silence, Miranda rose and ambled into the privacy of lengthening shadows cast by another moai close by. When she finished and was walking back, it occurred to her she could try to escape.

  But from what, and to what? You cannot resolve the complexity of a labyrinth in haste. You’ll run smack up against walls or into the jaws of the minotaur.

  Matteo seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. She stood over him, against the sun. He looked up to her, then boldly let his gaze run down the length of her body and she realized he could see her in clear silhouette through the thin cloth of her dress. She stood perfectly still, like a statue, and watched his eyes, knowing he could not see hers against the sun. She smiled, and he could not see her smile, but he could see her perfect body, and this made her smile run deep inside.

  There was for a brief time no past and no future, no inexplicable violence, no spiriting her off to God knows what. There was only the moment. If Matteo had made any gesture inviting her, she would have slipped down onto him as openly as if they were in love. The fact that he did nothing made him more endearing. But when he moved, only slightly, time began again and she no longer felt safe. They had already left two dead men in their wake, admittedly bad men, but very dead.

  Where would he take her? Not back to Hanga Roa. She had seen a few small farmhouses set back from the road as they were driving along; maybe one of th
ose, where she would be kept prisoner. Tortured? Ravaged? Executed? Entertained? She had no idea; there was nothing in her situation she could decipher. It was like staring at a panel of Rongorongo, the characters inscribed with deliberate precision, knowing they must mean something, a sequence of sounds in another language, a message in pictures, perhaps a complex grammar, a profound philosophical treatise, or perhaps little more than a listing of properties, ancestors, attributes, perhaps only an aid in the recitation of prayers. The problem was, no one alive could read Rongorongo.

  That was how it all seemed to Miranda. Like Rongorongo. She said the word aloud. Matteo rose to his feet, rising into the sun, and strangely, his features looked hard, even menacing, as if she had said something terrible.

  He took her roughly by the hand and they scrambled up a sequence of paths and over the rim of the volcano and then he released her hand and strode ahead down to the car, and she walked at a purposeful distance, making it clear she was in no way following meekly behind.

  Surprisingly, he greeted her with a canteen of lemonade extended as a peace offering. She took it, but defiantly repeated the rhythmic syllables, rongo-rongo.

  “Si,” he said, shrugging affably. “Rongorongo.” He wiggled his fingers, as if he were tracing invisible hieroglyphs in the air, and nodded his head in the affirmative. She had no idea what he was affirming. Was he being coy, playing the fool? Or was he genuinely conciliatory, forgiving her for some unknown violation? Was he covering for revelations of pain or sorrow even he couldn’t explain?

  They drove to Anakena, the only real beach on Rapa Nui. The sun was setting on the other side of the island, casting brilliant skeins of fire across the sky. The two little refreshment kiosks had been abandoned for the night; only a line of moai raised on a terraced ahu beyond the grove of towering palms were witnesses.

  He helped her over the low stone wall where they had parked, and, instead of releasing her hand this time, he turned and let it slide along his arm so they were facing the same direction, and he guided her quite formally down the slope to the edge of the trees. They sat on a grassy clump, watching the light dance over the water until darkness spread through the air and glistened as the full moon slid from behind thin clouds above the moai, casting the surf in a filigree of silver.