by Finn Bell
“But not the Chens?” Tobe asks.
“My grandfather used to say that if the Chens were cursed by the need to find gold then they were equally blessed by also having the rather uncanny ability to always find it,” Enid replies.
“You grew up around these parts?” Tobe asks.
“Indeed, I’ve lived here my whole life. I went to school with James’ father. And James himself was a student in my maths class just down the road. Such a clever boy. Why, I’d say I know almost everyone in town and most of their parents and even grandparents too come to that,” Enid says with a proud smile.
“It really is a rather terrible thing to have happen to good people, especially after losing young William like that. Makes you wonder what the world is coming to,” Enid concludes.
“This was James and Andrea’s son?” I ask, curious now despite myself.
“Indeed,” Enid says with a frown. “Their eldest. I didn’t get to teach him myself but I’m told he was just like his father, a very smart boy. Even looked just like him. The apple of his father’s eye. James and Andrea doted on him something terrible, although you couldn’t blame them after all they went through getting him those operations and such. A bright future ahead of him too. They say he was killed instantly when that truck hit him. Wouldn’t have felt a thing, but still, to see something like that happen to your son right in front of you. James and Andrea were never the same after that. Why, I can’t even begin to imagine losing a child so suddenly, and then all this drama with strange men in the night on top of it. It beggars belief. If I wasn’t a staunch atheist already this kind of carry on would definitely make me consider it. You must tell me, are the Chens alright? We all saw the ambulances come and go and—”
“Listen up folks,” the man behind the counter interrupts loudly as he turns up the volume on a small TV perched on a fridge behind him. As conversation drops we hear “—bring you this breaking news. A hostage situation in the small town of Lawrence was ended by police only hours ago with witness reports of several shots fired at the scene. There is believed to be multiple fatalities. Although the police have not yet released an official statement they have just issued an urgent appeal for any sightings or information pertaining to the whereabouts of James Chen, shown in this picture, who they believe is possibly being held against his will and—.”
“Time to go,” Tobe says as we both head for the door, hoping to make our exit before the news bulletin ends and the questions start.
“We left the coffee,” I say bleakly as I start the car.
“You’ll survive,” Tobe says with the complete lack of sympathy only a true non-caffeine-addicted man can muster.
“I’ve had a thought,” Tobe says as we head out of town. “What would be worse than threatening a gangster with a fake child sex crime?”
“Tell me,” I prompt.
“Threatening a gangster with a fake child sex crime when he’s already in prison,” Tobe says.
“Ooh that’s evil Tobe, even for us. If they call our bluff are we really going to risk lives over this? That kind of thing gets out in a prison and a lot of almost innocent people could die. Things in there can get kind of stabby,” I say.
“Them knowing that is why this is going to work,” Tobe says.
“Our problem is simple. We have five dead gangsters who are connected to our one surviving suspect. We know it’s got to be a very short list of possibles. Martin’s right – if he’s as high up as the rest we probably already know him. So we need two things: to find out who he is, and to get his friends to tell him to let James Chen go alive. And time is not on our side. Do you have a better plan?”
“You’ve got me there. We do this the right way and James is gone for sure,” I say.
Getting what you want fast must be the biggest single reason for intentionally doing things the wrong way. Because playing by the rules will almost never get you what you want right now. That’s why evil triumphs over good so often. Better marketing.
As I methodically work through the questions in my head I only succeed in increasing my uncertainty. None of this makes sense. Why were all those gang leaders there of all places? Why stay so long? Why then shoot Andrea Chen? But each question only opens up more questions so finally I retreat back to the here and now.
“I know you and Martin don’t agree, but what’s to say James isn’t dead already? If it was me and I took him he’d be dead as soon as we were out of police earshot,” I say.
“James Chen is alive Nick. You’re not thinking clearly. It’s only been hours. Imagine you’re our bad guy. You’re a gangster, a high up. Experienced. Not your first time running from the cops. So you break out. And yes, of course you’re going to kill the witness, but you’re a professional. You’re going to wait until you can make a clean getaway. That’s the whole point of killing him. But you’re on foot, in Glendhu Forest, way too close to that house.
“Between the searches and the police cordons that you know will be going up you can’t do it there. If they find you or the body, odds are forensics will be able to implicate you. So you’ve got only two options. Either make it to your friends so you can do the killing elsewhere and get rid of the body far away, which means heading down to the roads and risking you or your friends getting caught. Or keep going and try to make it deep enough into the mountains, hoping that we’ll lose your trail. If he knows the area he’ll know how good the odds for that option actually are. If he can get far enough into the wild there’s plenty of valleys and gorges where people have never even gone. We won’t ever find the body. But it doesn’t matter which option he chooses, James Chen has to be kept alive for either of them to work. So I reckon we’ve got hours, maybe a day or so depending on the weather, when it’s still in our gangster’s best interest to keep James alive. But no more,” Tobe states.
A beep from the dash computer distracts me and I flip the screen down to see the latest progress reports, which I read out loud to Tobe.
“They’ve started interviews on friends and family of the Chens. Nothing useful yet. Well liked family. Good kids and so on,” I say as I scan through the text. “Nothing so far on the search or cordon. Looks like Martin’s been able to bring in more staff and another two choppers though. Maud’s report says the house is clean too. No drug residue, no guns apart from the ones used by the gangsters, nothing. If there was an actual reason Manga Kahu wanted to be in that specific house last night then we haven’t found it,” I conclude, but this only triggers the looming pile of questions in my mind again.
Thinking back to our conversation with Enid at The Wild Walnut I add, “It’s probably not going to be Enid’s chest of gold but why were they there? Why that family? That house? If it was just bad luck or random choice then what were they searching for? And why sit around and wait for hours? And, when you think of it, why didn’t all of them try and get out through that tunnel?” I ask.
“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Tobe says. “There’s a lot here that doesn’t make any sense. The gangs can be violent but there is usually an economy to it. A calculated purpose to the brutality that seems missing here. I still can’t see any valid reason they were all there. And in any case, it’s not our job now. We don’t have the time, we need to work the ‘who’ of this,” Tobe says. “So let it go. Martin will already have people working the ‘why’.”
“Ok, time for show and tell then. Of the gang leaders still alive and not in prison this fine morning, who’s your pick for man most likely to have jumped into the hole in the kitchen floor?” I ask.
Tobe takes a minute to think before nodding to himself and saying, “It’s going to be Remu Black.”
“Why him?” I ask.
“Because two of those dead gangsters back there were the older Black brothers, but Mother Black has three sons,” Tobe answers.
* * *
THE TWO MEN IN THE DARK
The pines are dark and quiet, their smell moist and heavy. The thick mat of damp needles softens
our steps. I can sometimes see things under the corners of the blindfold but it’s not enough to tell me where we are. There’s no one here but us. The aching cold sits tight on my skin, shivering into my joints. I feel it deeper with every step, every hour. I’m not angry anymore, the tiredness burnt it away. I just want to see my family again. The hope of it flares, rippling in my chest when I hear other noises in the trees. But no one’s there. I thought I could hear a helicopter earlier but maybe it’s just in my mind. And we’re so far away now. But they must be looking. Must be.
He keeps talking to me, his voice calm, loud, like he has no fear of discovery. I answer because maybe someone is looking for us and will overhear our conversation, and also because while he talks he slows down his pace, sometimes stops. And even though I don’t know where we’re going, I do know I don’t want to get there. I’ve already seen what he can do.
“Jung said that to heal from insanity is to move from fantasy to reality,” he says with a small laugh.
“Jung?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.
“Swiss psychiatrist, died in the 1960s. He was right. To heal from insanity is to move from fantasy to reality. That’s why good parents have to be good liars. Because children can’t go from being babies straight to being adults. They need that time in between to move from the make-believe world to the real world. That’s what growing up is. All the stories and toys. They need a childhood to go from fantasy to reality. Good parents know how much truth to mix into the lies over time,” he finishes.
“Do you understand this?” he asks. It takes me a frantic moment to gather my numbed thoughts before I carefully say, “You’re saying being a good parent depends on how well you can lie to your child?”
“Good lying and good timing. Not too fast. Not too slow,” he replies in a pensive tone.
“Lies are sweet, the truth is bitter. You have to get the mix right, slowly concentrating it over time or the child will taste it. Too much harsh truth too soon and the child can’t take it. Too fast and it all goes wrong. In one of his books Jung said, ‘Like a thrown stone skipping off water, the mind retreats back from reality to fantasy’. That’s good, I like that. But you can’t go too slow either. You only have a few years to prepare them for the real world. Go too slow and the child won’t be ready to face all the wrongness of the world when it shows up of its own accord. Throw too slowly and the stone never even reaches the water.
“When you think about it carefully you see that it makes sense. Look at children. Look at babies. Babies are perfectly selfish. They only care about themselves and their own needs. Nothing else matters to them. They are the centre of their world. No empathy. No right or wrong. Driven only by what they want. When adults act like that we call them crazy, we call them psychopaths. What is good and right for a baby is not good and right for an adult. To become a grown up means to become the opposite of a child, but that’s not the interesting thing,” he says, finally stopping. I can sense that his back is still turned to me so I take a moment to test the strength of the rope around my wrists but the knot is still too tight.
“The interesting thing is about a man named Lydéric Bocquet, a French scientist. Because of that expression Jung used, ‘Like a thrown stone skipping off water’ and because there are no coincidences,” he says as if that clarifies things.
“Lydéric Bocquet built a machine to throw stones at water so he could study the physics of when they sink and when they skip. One day his machine broke and it kept throwing stones harder and faster. Do you know what happens when you throw a stone at water hard enough?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“If you keep going harder and faster then you’ll reach a point where it doesn’t skip and doesn’t sink. It breaks.”
* * *
THE STORM
In late March, just before Easter, the South Pole has no autumn, no spring. There’s only the long dark getting longer. Winter is so strong now that even the days themselves retreat to only a few hours of faint sun, which itself never leaves the horizon, shrinking by the day. Its weak light still briefly exposes the hardening ice but can no longer stop it. By mid-year Earth will reach aphelion, the point at which the planet’s orbit takes it the furthest away from the sun it will get, making this the coldest place on Earth. Then comes the long night of full winter where the sun will not rise again for several weeks. The average temperature falls to minus 50 degrees Celsius. Cold enough to freeze an unprotected human being solid in less than a minute.
The people here know this. They can feel it coming. And when the dark comes people make light.
For more than 120 years men have come here. And they have always brought fire.
Here, in the coldest winter, this is the greatest threat. Everything here is bone dry. Humidity is near perfect zero. Water cannot exist in liquid form.
When a fire gets out of control – as it has done many times in the past century – there is nothing to do but run.
Like the others before it, this fire spreads quickly, rapidly dancing across dry fabric, snaking hungrily under doors. Soon the roaring blaze vibrates the air as it swallows buildings whole.
When it finally reaches the diesel fuel tanks it leaps wildly into the air, dark, heavy flames bellowing thick black smoke into the sky.
* * *
TOBE AND NICK
Apparently, “Just fuck me up” is not an appropriate coffee order at Milton Prison’s staff cafeteria, I think ruefully. And if you only allow yourself one cup of coffee a day it can be a truly depressing moment when it turns out to be this horrible. Unfortunately, now having tried most options over the years, I must conclude that it’s the only kind they serve. Which seems right somehow, I think as I stare down at the dregs in my cup while finishing my phone call.
“Ok, so that makes three possible candidates. Vester Maihi, Bill Kepu and Remu Black are all currently out of prison. I’d say we can discount Bill Kepu as I know the drug squad guys are tailing him, which means that Bill likely also knows the drug squad guys are tailing him. I don’t see him leading them to Lawrence. I’ve left a message for them to send me the movement report for last night. We’ll know soon,” I say to Tobe.
“Agreed. I can’t see him going there knowing he was being followed. Plus, if he was actually there he wouldn’t have left his only son behind. He loves that boy. What about Vester Maihi, he’s one of yours isn’t he?” Tobe asks.
“Yeah, we’ve had some special times, Vester and me. Difficult to say. He’s unpredictable and he’s done more hard drugs than one brain should. Last year he started having these episodes where he sees things sometimes, gets all terrified. But when he’s sober he does really like to kill people too. Last I heard he was running guns across the Tasman from the west coast, so no way could he make it out to Lawrence across the Southern Alps that fast. I’ve got some Uniforms who are going to call me back about anyone seeing him there last night or early this morning. How about Remu Black?” I ask.
“Remu is hard to pin down. Moves around. Spends a lot of time hunting in the mountains. We don’t have any open cases on him currently, so no one’s working him. I’ve got hold of Maud to find people to confirm his whereabouts both now and last night. We’ll see what they come up with but by my estimation, even if he’s not involved, locating him will still take more time than we have,” Tobe replies.
“Which means our most likely bad man is still Remu,” I say.
“Told you it was going to be. That works out well for us too because we’ve got just the right guy to lean on who’s serving time right here,” Tobe says.
“Worst enemy?” I ask, finally giving up on my coffee and throwing the last of it in the trash.
“Better; closest family friend, Albus Maihi,” Tobe answers.
“Wait, Albus, as in the-guy-who-drove-over-your-leg-twice Albus?” I ask, while thinking, isn’t it a horribly small world after all.
“The same. It will be good to see him again,” Tobe says. “Be careful about what yo
u say around Albus. He’s a lot smarter than he looks. We got lucky catching him. If he wasn’t in here I think he would have beat Bill Kepu for leadership.”
People tend to think of gangsters as violent, uneducated and unstable, with many of them being drawn to a life of crime to help them support a drug habit or more fully enjoy their various severe mental illnesses. For the most part that’s true. The average career gangster is an unpredictable mess of drugs, craziness and trauma, with a decent helping of stupid mixed in, who tends to not just like violence but actually needs it to get through the average working week. As jobs go it’s an ideal fit really.
What most people don’t realise is that it takes a unique man who can manage to subdue, unite and then lead a whole group of these very special people. Keep in mind that while they are doing the above they are also competing not only with the cops but also with several other groups just like them. What’s even rarer is then finding men who have survived in that world, at the very top, for decades. Albus Maihi is one them.
“I’ve had Records send over a cold case file for one Ellie Marsden, aged eight. It’ll do. We’ve caught a break having Albus here too. He and Remu are close. Go back a long way. We won’t need to force things much,” Tobe says as he shuffles print outs loosely into a folder and heads for the door.
“We’re not using an interrogation room?” I ask.
“No, we need this to be seen by the wrong people,” Tobe answers. “We’ll do it in the cell block, in the glass room.”
“Dramatic,” I respond. The glass room is where prisoners are brought for short interviews when the prison doesn’t want to go to the trouble of moving them out of their unit. As the name suggests, it’s basically a glass-fronted room which, for safety reasons, is placed in such a way that everyone in the unit can see what’s happening inside.
Once we’re seated, Tobe takes the print outs from the Ellie Marsden case file. They include several copies of black and white crime scene photos and diagrams of female genitalia with red ink marks to indicate areas of bruising. It’s not easy viewing. He takes his time spreading them out, facing the glass wall.
