by Lee Hayton
Response: Council site inspection ordered
Status: Non-urgent – expected date 6 weeks
Coroner’s case file number 46782
Council Complaints Report 16th December 2004
Type of Service: Property
Body of Complaint: Caller identified as Mr Wilbur Burton called to complain of unlawful activities taking place in a subdivision site, lot 47, land parcel 6674. Further to previous complaints he has once again noticed youths in the area using the house as a base for parties and people sleeping rough. He suspects there is drinking and/or drug use at the property. Caller revealed that his son had been involved in a party at the property in which he was hurt falling through the manhole cover. He would like the property secured. The caller said that if no action was taken on his request he would take matters into his own hands. Recommended to the caller that police be called if an urgent response is required.
Response: Council Site Inspection Ordered
Status: Non-urgent – expected date 6 weeks
Chapter Eleven
Daina 1994
They stood hand in hand staring out at the lake. Daina could see what the thing was: the distinctive shape of a wing, the curve of a tail. It was a plane which flew in the sky. Or it had been. As she watched it settle lower into the water, Daina didn’t think it would fly again.
There was a gurgle from behind them, and Daina was pushed behind her mother as they turned to look at the man. With the blood and the bat, and the way his body had collapsed on the ground she thought he must be dead, but he groaned. After a moment, his eyes popped open.
They were no longer staring in different directions. They were both focused straight ahead. They were both focused on her.
‘Get to the car,’ her mother whispered. She stood with her feet planted apart, wider than her hips, steady like she wanted to stand strong for a fight.
Daina looked over to the car. It was so far away. The man was right there.
‘Get to the car,’ her mother said again. Loud this time. She gave her arm and shake and pulled her forward. ‘Daina, go to the car now!’
That was her mother’s last voice. The last voice before the next thing. And the next thing wouldn’t be the soft-option time-out or the quick hurt-but-then-it’s-over spank. No. This was the last voice before the bad punishment.
Daina started to run. Her feet forgot how to, and she tripped over them and fell. Her face landed a foot away from the man. His eyes were still fixed on her. They glared. They burned. He reached out his hand – straight to her – and Daina forgot how to breathe.
Where was the gun? He’d had a gun?
The hand reaching out was empty. Daina sprang to her feet and jumped back a step. Her eyes flicked from side to side. Looking. Searching.
There it was!
On the other side of his body. It had fallen wide of where he’d landed. A metre away. Half a metre away. Daina looked him in the face so he couldn’t tell she’d seen it. He was trying to get up on his elbows. Trying to move so he’d be able to reach for her again.
There were six steps between her and the gun. She had to run around the top of his head. Far enough away that he couldn’t seize her. Close enough that she didn’t waste time.
Six steps.
At one, he got to his elbows. At three he stretched his arm and brushed her ankle. At five he was on his knees, his body turned to keep track of her. At six she stretched out her hands and grabbed hold of the gun. Its body was greasy. Her hands were slippery with sweat. Her body was off-balance. Daina fell.
She fell and she rolled, and she held onto the gun. It squeezed and it squirmed, but she used both hands and it stayed close to her.
She rolled again. Away from him. Then she dug in her elbows, levered herself to her knees, stepped to her feet, and ran to the car.
There was the crack of the bat. Once. Twice.
When Daina reached the car, she looked back. The man was grunting. His arms were at strange angles. Her mother held the bat, but it was useless. The splinter had fallen. The tape was flapping loose. The handle was more substantial than what was left of the bat.
Her mother knelt down, and Daina felt her heart beat too loud. Her throat pulsed. She clutched the gun to her chest with both hands and pressed her back against the door of the car. What was her mother doing?
She said something to him. Daina couldn’t hear. She was too far away. Her mother was whispering something that only the man was meant to hear.
He shook his head. He was saying something back. The sounds carried on the wind, but the words were distorted, lost.
Her mother thrust the handle of the bat into the dirt next to the man’s face. Daina gasped. The man did too. For a moment, she’d thought it was going to go straight into him.
She leant in close; too close.
Daina knew how that felt. When her mother had something to say and she wanted to say it so it wasn’t misunderstood, she would place herself so her nose was almost touching Daina’s and then say it through gritted teeth. Daina could see the bunching at the side of her mum’s jaw which meant her teeth were clenched.
She’d feel sorry for the man if he hadn’t deserved it.
Daina turned and opened up the passenger door of the car. She put the gun on the seat, and then used both hands on the glove compartment. She had to press her thumbs really hard into the metal button, otherwise it wouldn’t open. Her mother could do it with one hand, leaning across from the driver’s side, but Daina couldn’t.
The latch clicked and Daina could pull it open. She held it with one hand and picked up the gun with the other. It was enormous in her hand.
On the television, they always talked about a safety catch. It would be on when they wanted to fire and it would stop them. Or, it would be off when it shouldn’t be, and the gun would fire accidentally.
Daina couldn’t see anything like a catch. There was the smooth curved length of the barrel, and the pebbly grip of the handle. There was a quarter-circle metal curve with a button that Daina knew would fire the gun. There was another trigger on the top corner of the handle that was pulled back.
There wasn’t anything about it that looked safe.
Daina placed it carefully into the compartment. She had to turn it a few times until she was sure it would fit. When it was positioned correctly, she pushed the door closed until she heard the latch click into place. Only then did she take a deep breath in and feel safe.
She turned around to look back at her mum. She was walking back to the car. She opened the door and Daina scrambled up onto the passenger seat. She pulled her own door closed just as her mother inserted the key and turned it to start the engine.
The man was lying on his back. He was awkwardly cradling his arms together. They looked askew. They looked painful.
Daina smiled. You don’t mess with me, she thought. You don’t mess with me or my mum’ll get you!
When they were home and it was dark outside and Daina was being tucked into bed, the bedclothes pulled all the way up to her chin just the way she liked it, she asked her mother what the man had said.
At first she didn’t answer, and Daina started to think she wouldn’t. Often she asked her mother things and the only response she got was ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older.’
No matter how old she got!
But after a few minutes her mother smoothed the top of the blankets and bent to kiss Daina on the forehead. ‘He said that as long as we keep today a secret, we don’t need to worry about a thing.’
Daina smiled at her mother. She wasn’t worried. She hadn’t been worried since her mother drove her away from the park. What an exciting day out it had been. She hoped the next one would be uneventful.
‘And what if we don’t keep it a secret?’
Her mother looked her straight in the eye. She wasn’t smiling. ‘If you don’t keep it a secret, then one day that man will come back. He’ll come back when you least expect it. He’ll come back,’ she poked her fing
er at the tip of Daina’s nose so she screwed it up. ‘He’ll come back and he’ll make you sorry.’
Daina 2004
When I woke the next day the phone was ringing downstairs, and the sun was high in the sky.
It took a few minutes for me to click, and when I did, I sat immediately upright in bed. Scared that I would fall asleep again and sleep in even later.
I scrambled on the side table for my clock and looked at it with disbelief. The alarm had gone off. The alarm that was set to ring at 7.30am and would continue for ten solid minutes so there was no chance you could sleep through it. That alarm. It had gone off five hours ago.
The ring of the phone ceased. Not through being answered. The caller had just given up.
The uniform I’d laid out the night before so I wouldn’t have any excuse to run late mocked me as I walked past it to get out my jeans and sweatshirt. There was no use turning up at school now. Better to just forge a letter and turn up tomorrow looking pale and giving an occasional cough.
The phone started ringing again. This time, there was the clear sound of motion from downstairs, and I ran down the stairs quickly to listen at the door. Was it the school? Is that why they kept trying?
Either that, or the world’s most persistent telephone marketer.
Mum’s sweet lilt was rendered into a croak by the booze and H. She used to be so good at hiding it, her lack of sobriety. It showed how many rungs down the ladder she’d slipped recently. Only someone with a complete lack of imagination could possibly believe she was in a fit state now.
There was an outburst of swearing, and then the phone was slammed down. And slammed again. And again. Seemed there’d been upsetting news on the other end.
‘Daina!’ my mother yelled. There was the sound of a stumble, some more swearing, and then the yell again. ‘Daina!’
I slipped out the back door. There was no need to add to Mum’s misery by confirming her suspicions. If I was going to be called out for wagging, it could at least score me more than a morning’s sleep in.
There was brilliant sunshine outdoors. Within a few minutes, the top of my head was warmed through, the hairs hot as fire, and I felt good for the first time in a long time.
I pushed the sleeves of my top up so my arms could feel the heat of the sun. They immediately plumped into goose pimples, but I waited them out, and after a minute they relaxed back into place. It was funny, but my arm hair seemed longer and in better supply than ever before. I stroked it gently with my finger. It felt like the belly of my old teddy bear.
Even with the sunshine and the walking my body didn’t seem to heat completely through. I gave the school a wide berth, but otherwise retraced the same steps I’d taken last night. In the back of my head was the thought that this was nothing if not dangerous, but it seemed such a silly proposition in the middle of the day.
Was that why the Grey Man had chosen to arrive at night? It made it so much easier to sell fear when you couldn’t even make out the everyday objects around you.
The journey didn’t seem to take half the time it had before. Part of that was daylight, part of it the good sleep I’d finally managed, part of it familiarity.
Once again the housing gave way to sections which gave way to fields. As I approached the section of the half-completed house with its tarpaulin top hat, I wondered why someone would have got so far with a structure and then abandoned it. There were always tales on the news of property developers, a phrase that seemed to be spat out rather than said, going bankrupt and taking everyone’s fortune with them.
Who would buy a half-complete structure anyway? Would it cost the same as half a house, or the same as a section, or priced at a discount as you’d probably need to clear it away before you built your own dream home?
I walked past the property to see what was on the other side. The empty section was starting to overgrow, although someone must have cut the grass back recently. It was no more than two inches high. The daisy faces were struggling for sunlight amid the long grass-stems, but the dandelions had no such worries. Not the most exotic of wildflowers, but they were pretty in their own way.
There was the scuff of footsteps. For a moment I couldn’t work out where they were coming from, the street was empty, then I saw the movement near the wall.
Someone was in the house. Two someones. Now that I was alert for the sound I could also hear the low hum of conversation. Two different voices. And they were standing right by the wall. One more step and they’d be outside.
I looked around but there was nothing but field. No cars. No trees. No fences.
There was a rumble of laughter. I saw the tip of a shoe. The flash of a sleeve.
I ran across the road. The grass on this side was longer. The mower must only do one side each month. I lay down flat. My arms outstretched. My chin on the ground.
When the men emerged, I tried to flatten myself out even more. I pressed my body into the earth and tipped my head to one side so the top of my hair wouldn’t be so obvious. If they walked on this side of the road it would be patently obvious there was a tall teenage girl lying on the ground. But if they stayed where they were…
There was another burst of laughter. I could barely see from the angle I was in, but I didn’t dare to raise my head. Even if my hair didn’t make me more visible, the motion surely would.
Up to now I’d thought that the Grey Man was overstating the problem. I thought he was making stuff up. Maybe for kicks. Maybe for control.
But instead he was right. There was no way these guys were out here on a house inspection. You don’t dress in a dark suit so you can trek around a half-finished building site that’s been left empty for months, if not years.
No. You only come out here dressed like that if you’ve got a tip-off. If you’re in a hurry. If it’s something that’s more important than your tailored suit. If it’s something you’re desperate to shut down.
And you didn’t do that because a teenage girl stole a file. You only did that if the file was something that a lot of people a lot more important than you wanted.
What the hell was it that he’d set me up for? What was it that I’d stolen?
I could hear the voices more clearly. If I concentrated harder, I could even make out individual words. Payment. Clean-up. Fa'amoe. Dead.
No, no, no, no, no. You’re making it up, I thought to myself. This is just a dream and you’re making this shit up.
The voices continued. The sun warmed one cheek while the other one pressed into the scratchy grass. I didn’t wake up. This wasn’t a dream.
Footsteps sounded, but I couldn’t tell if they were coming closer or moving away. I closed my eyes. Maybe I could pretend that I’d fallen asleep here. If they caught me, I could pretend I’d walked twenty minutes away from the city so I could fall asleep in a field on my stomach.
It was worth a try.
I tried to calculate how quickly I could get to my feet if I needed to. I hadn’t seen a car nearby so they must be on foot. Could I outrun two men who were caught by surprise and dressed in suits?
Probably not. But that was worth a try.
I tensed up my calf muscles. I pressed the palms of my hands into the ground, ready to leverage.
And the footsteps grew fainter. And fainter.
Aware that they would have a view for a good long while, I stayed where I was while I counted to one hundred over and over. I waited until the shade from the blades of grass nearest my face grew longer. I waited until I was sure.
By the time I moved, my body had locked into position and my muscles groaned with the change. I slowly got to my knees and scanned the street. There was no one in sight. There was nothing.
I looked over at the half-finished house. I’d come all this way in order to retrieve those files and read through the information I’d soiled my morals to get. But I no longer felt like looking through them. In fact, I was quite happy to let them rot in there.
Whatever they contained was important to someo
ne. More important to them than I would be. If those men came back, or a new set arrived, there was no way my luck would hold out again. Better to be on my way.
I chose to walk further away before crossing over the back line of a field and doubling back on a parallel road. The last thing I wanted to do know was meet up with those men.
Mr Fa'amoe. Whether I’d really heard the other words I thought I had, I had definitely heard his name.
The Grey Man was scared. Two men had patrolled a site that they should’ve known nothing about. They were talking about Vila’s Dad.
When the Grey Man told me that Vila’s Dad was old enough to look out for himself, I’d accepted it. But that had been when I’d only half-believed there was any sort of trouble. That was before I’d heard his name in the mouths of men who scared the shit out of me.
What if he didn’t even know about the trouble he was in? What if he was just going about his daily work and his daily life and his daily grind and he didn’t realise that full-blown trouble was on its way?
What if he met with trouble and he relied on the documents that I’d stolen to get him out of it?
What if I was the reason that trouble would find him?
I started to jog along the road. When I reached the Main North Road, I started to run. The fear and the confusion spilt into endorphins that fuelled me until I had to stop, gasping for breath, dripping with sweat. But calmer. Certain.
I would go to Mr Fa'amoe and tell him of my fears for his safety.
And once I’d told him he could be old enough to take care of himself. And maybe at the heart of the impulse I thought, And maybe he’ll take care of me.
#
I didn’t think that he’d be home that early. When I arrived at Vila’s house, there was a flood of students on the roads. School had let out so it must only just be after three.
I expected to walk past her house and carry on to Nunweek Park. I could find a bench and sit in the shade, or the sun. I could try to reason myself out of my panic. Try to think of what I needed to say to make myself understood. There was no use in me talking to him if I sounded like a bumbling paranoid fool.
