Dead Lemons

by Finn Bell

  While I’d like to agree with Father Ress, I’m still unmoved when I think back on my last conversation with John and Lucas, when they tried to convince me that it couldn’t have been the Zoyls burning my house down.

  “And what are your thoughts on what’s happened?” I enquire.

  “Exactly what Pruitt asked me as well. He’s taking it all rather hard, I’m afraid,” Father Ress answers with a sigh.

  “And I’ll tell you what I told him. Yes, given the circumstances, and factoring in the past, I’d say that it is highly likely that this act of arson was also your attempted murder, and that it was committed by the same perpetrator,” Father Ress says, and immediately continues when he sees the look on my face. “That being said, there is still no concrete evidence linking the Zoyl brothers to this or any of the past crimes. It’s simply not in the facts, Finn,” he says in an apologetic tone.

  “It just seems unbelievable that all these things can happen and nobody is caught. Nobody is made to pay for it. It’s just not fair,” I say, looking down at my bandages, thinking of the frayed-crazy Emily I met and how tired Pruitt sounded the last time he walked out of my cottage, and of Patricia crying last night.

  “Finn, fair has nothing to do with it. If it did, none of us would be here,” Father Ress answers.

  “So what should I do?” I ask.

  Father Ress is quiet for a long time before he answers.

  “Honestly, Finn, I think you should run away. Immediately,” Father Ress answers in a sincere tone.

  “What do you mean, run away?”

  “Exactly that. Get yourself transferred to the furthest hospital you can. Then, as soon as you’re able, get away. Go back to Africa or Europe, change your name and start over. Don’t come back. Don’t ever contact anyone from Riverton again.”

  While I don’t respond, everything inside me rebels at the thought of doing anything of the kind.

  “Let me tell you why,” he continues. “Because you’re right, it’s not fair. And it’s likely going to stay that way. Consider everything that’s happened. From Alice through to your cats and the home invasion and the arson. Decades of time, with literally hundreds of highly trained people and systems working, and we’ve got nothing. No clues, no evidence, no charges. Whoever’s done these things isn’t even really threatened; they’re playing with us, with you. The pubic bone, your cats, they didn’t even have to do these things. They’re just there to show us how incapable we are, how inferior, that we are thoroughly subjugated. And they’re right. Because the whole game is unfair.

  “They decide everything that’s happening and why. They make all the first moves; when, where, how many, and however they want while we are constrained to only reacting blindly, and that limited by the requirements of evidence and rules and regulations. It’s not fair. The game is rigged in their favour.

  “Now, for reasons unknown, you’ve become involved. At first they wanted to hurt you. First the cats, then the home invasion. And I believe it was only that at first, wanting to hurt. But now that’s changed with the arson. Now they want you dead in a game they control and we have no real power in. Given the odds, they’re going to succeed, and it’s highly likely that they’ll get away with it again, too.

  “The only thing you can do is to choose not to play the game anymore. It is my earnest advice to you that you leave, Finn. Leave, and don’t come back.”

  “I know you’re saying this for good reason, Father, but you must know that I’m not going to do that,” I say, shaking my head firmly.

  “There’s always hope that people can change,” Father Ress says with a sad smile. “I had to try at least.”

  “So knowing that I won’t be turned aside, what else would you tell me?” I ask.

  “In that case, I’d say much the same as what I told you the first time we met. Try to find out why the perpetrator is focussed on you. Is the motivation part of his sexual ritual, or is it merely practical requirement? And hope, fervently, that it’s practical requirement,” he answers.

  “Why is that? Whether he kills me because I’m his type or because it is part of his ritual or whether it’s just to keep his identity safe, dead is still dead, right? What difference does it make?” I ask.

  “Well, if you’re approaching this from the point of view of the potential victim, then it makes all the difference. You see, if the perpetrator is trying to kill you as part of his sexual ritual, a ritual we don’t know or understand, then we have no control. All you can do then is try to live your life every day and keep surviving every attempted killing, because if it’s sexual, he won’t just stop after one try. Your only hope would be that one day he’ll make a mistake. Something that he’s not done once in all these years. The odds would very definitely not be in your favour.

  “But if the perpetrator is trying to kill you as a practical requirement, if they’re trying to kill you because they have to, for their own safety, to keep doing what they want, then it means you’re a threat. You know something or have something. And while this doesn’t improve the odds greatly, it does give you an edge. They will still be trying to kill you, but it’s not all up to them in this scenario.” Father Ress finishes and gives me an expectant look.

  “Because if I can figure out what I know, I can expose them. If I can figure it out before they kill me, the game stops,” I answer.

  “For your sake, I hope that firstly it is a case of practical requirement and secondly, that you actually do know something that can expose them and thirdly, that you live long enough to figure out what it is,” Father Ress says.

  I think we’re going to need more hope.

  CHAPTER 39

  May 10, 1 MONTH AGO . . .

  “Well, that’s good news. But I’m not too sure I’m the right guy for the job,” I say, upon hearing that Tai’s already got the backing of the local district council for Albie’s Museum.

  It seems there’s a lot of momentum for the idea. Not only has he had to delay the next two consignments of artefacts from the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, but he’s also had to start turning away several locals who’ve shown up with various oddments they reckon should be saved for posterity.

  It’s gotten quite big, pretty fast.

  “Sure you could. It’s just lists and stuff and talking to people. Easy. And you got nothing else to do anyway, bro,” Tai says.

  He’s got me there, I think.

  My time in hospital has become one long, dragging crucible of boredom with more to come.

  I’ve had all the surgery I’m going to get for now but they still won’t let me leave, as I have to get medications and tests and things basically every day. While my right hand is still healing, I can’t really work the wheelchair, and even if I could, where exactly am I going to go?

  I couldn’t inflict myself on anyone I cared about in my current condition.

  “But I don’t know anything about museums or history or any of that!” I try again.

  “Bro, I told you, we’ve got all of Uncle Albie’s old notes and things about the history, and we’re gonna get one of those university people to come lend a hand. And a lot of the stuff is already marked out. We just need someone to help figure out some kind of order to everything. You know, whaling stuff here, sealing stuff there, gold panning stuff over that way. That kind of thing. And I’m too busy helping with the renovations. You can do this. You don’t even need to get out of bed,” Tai says with the kind of certainty I in no way share.

  “Besides, you’ve seen it, bro. It’s not like you could make it any worse,” Tai says with a laugh. Again I have to agree with him as I think back to the chaotic piles and stacks covering most of Albie’s house, shed, and yard the last time I saw it.

  While I’m trying to survive the Zoyls, I may as well do something useful with my time, I decide.

  “Okay, yeah, fine, I’ll do my best. But if people don’t like the results, I told you,” I say to Tai as he nods happily.

  “When do you want me to start?�
� I ask.

  “Today, bro. Becks is bringing up a laptop and the first bunch of papers for you to work through from the car now,” Tai says as we dive back into the detail. Out of everyone who’s visited me, Tai has been the most surprising in that he hasn’t said a thing about the fire or the Zoyls to me. He offered me a place to stay at theirs when I get released, but that was the extent of it. And I’m surprised; I was expecting anger or sympathy or at least some kind of reaction, but nothing. Tai’s just his happy self.

  I don’t get that.

  At first I thought he was just hiding his concerns for my sake, so I decided to finally ask him, “Tai, with the fire and this Zoyls business and all, do you want to say something to me?”

  “Nah, bro. At first I thought this is no good and I didn’t want you to do this, but now I get that you have to. It’s like with Uncle Albie; you can’t change what people need to do to be themselves, bro, we’re good,” Tai said, and just got on with things.

  Like acceptance is that easy of a thing.

  And I realise again that maybe there’s more to Tai than I thought.

  So after Tai and Becks make their goodbyes, I dive into the planning work for Albie’s Museum, starting with the list of phone numbers Becks gave me. After about four hours of phone calls and talking to an array of curators, historians, and tourism directors from all over the South, I have the beginnings of a plan for how to organise Albie’s Museum into something that at least has some kind of order.

  The last phone call I make is to the University of Otago, which is conveniently just up the road from the hospital here in Dunedin. I get to speak to a very enthusiastic-sounding woman named Brumhilda who is, by the sound of the accent, very German.

  And I learn Brumhilda is doing her doctorate in maritime history as an exchange student, still fresh from Berlin, and that being involved in setting up the museum is just the best opportunity for her.

  “Ja, I’ve travelled down to Mr Rangi’s property and have begun to catalogue the artefacts. You want I should send you the digital files?” Brumhilda asks.

  “Digital files?” I ask.

  “The photographs, Mr Bell. I’ve taken many of each artefact, to build the catalogue and for the records. I can e-mail them to you to aid in deciding the exhibition layout, ja?” she answers.

  “Ja, yes, thank you, that would be good,” I answer.

  “And you want me for dating also?” Brumhilda asks.

  “Erm—” I say, hesitating, until Brumhilda explains further.

  “The dating of the artefacts. It would be helpful for my academic credits.”

  “Yes, that too, yes,” I say, thinking that I’ll have to try and get a blueprint of Albie’s house and shed, as well as the additions Tai and his family are adding, and then get the dimensions of all the artefacts and see how it can all be made to fit.

  Then I remember that there’s still more to come from Te Papa Museum as well, and I think I’ll have to get the sizes of everything from there too. It’ll be a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle without knowing how many pieces there are, or how big the table is you’re doing it on.

  Soon hours pass, then days, and I’m caught up in the full, surprising, intrepid, and often bloody past of the South. Through Albie’s neat, tiny handwriting in various notebooks and lengthy explanations on labels attached to many strange things, aided by helpful phone calls to people who actually knew what they were doing, a picture emerges. It seems like at some point in the past 300 years, absolutely everybody made it out here to New Zealand and from there, down to the South. There were successive booms in whaling, and sealing, and the gold rush, and a silver rush, and the discovery of strange new animals and plants, and whole islands, and even entirely new cultures that really made the South Pacific the final wild frontier, the last untamed, promise of the unknown the world had left.

  For about a century, anyone who was seeking fame or adventure or riches, or just really wanted to go where nobody had ever been, had to consider the freezing waters at the bottom of the south island of New Zealand, which wasn’t even New Zealand yet then. From everywhere they came; Americans, Africans, Europeans, and Asians. While the majority left again chasing the next promise of adventure, some stayed. Regardless, it appears that while they were here, they all had sex.

  A lot.

  So that now you had some striking-looking Māori, themselves maritime explorers and conquerors who could trace some of their lineage back to Spanish conquistadors who came here just as their fathers and grandfathers had gone to the Incas in South America. There are families of Fijian-Ukrainians who started when the two cultures met out here. There’s even some early South African-Chinese families, which, knowing the background of my own, still-young country back then, would likely have really made them a Dutch-French-English-Chinese family. The world’s a funny old place.

  All this explains a lot to me about modern kiwi culture, because as an outsider, I can honestly say that they do have a delightfully odd way of looking at the world. This again makes me wonder about the Zoyls, and I wonder how they look at the world. Were the Zoyls always the Zoyls? Where did they come from and why? Do they still have roots elsewhere? Are there other places and people they are from?

  I’m in another of my bouts of museum planning and figuring when I’m interrupted by Pruitt, who also arrives with a stack of papers, but these are from my other new job.

  “Hi, Pruitt, thanks for making the trip yourself, I appreciate it. Is that everything?” I ask.

  “Indeed, literally everything I have, including all my old notes and police contact lists during the investigation; pictures, all of it,” he says.

  After speaking to Father Ress, I’ve decided that the only thing to do is hope that I actually do know something that can hurt the Zoyls, and do whatever I can to figure out what it could be. I’m not just going to sit here while they try and take my life away—figuratively speaking, of course.

  So I called Pruitt last night and asked him to give me everything he has on the Zoyl case. My plan is to go over everything again to see if anything falls out of it.

  It’s not the best plan, but I can’t think of anything better.

  And, even with helping out with the museum set-up, I still have loads of time just stewing in my anger alone here in a hospital bed.

  “I had a visit with Bobby this morning and he filled me in on your conversation. And I have to say, Finn, Bobby’s right. I think you should seriously consider leaving,” Pruitt says as he eases his bulk down in the chair next to the bed.

  “You know I’m not going to, Pruitt. This has all gone too far. These people tried to kill me. Am I supposed to just run away?”

  “Finn, it’s noble as a grape you wanting to make a stand and fight the good fight and all that, but Bobby’s right, they have us at a disadvantage here. You have to succeed every single time just to stay alive. They only need to succeed once and it’s over,” Pruitt says.

  I can’t argue with his thinking.

  “And have you considered everybody else? If something happens to you, what do you think that will do to the rest of us? Do you think Tai and Patricia and Betty, and even Tui and the Murderball guys will be fine? You think we’ll just be able to get on with things without a backward glance? What if they get involved in this too? We—and that includes you—are just normal people. We’re not like the Zoyls. We’ve got wives and kids and families; we’ve got things to lose. We care about people and that makes us vulnerable. We’re just not built to do this stuff,” Pruitt says, and I know what he says is true.

  “What if someone else’s kid goes missing, Finn?” Pruitt continues relentlessly.

  “You don’t think I’ve considered that?” I reply, trying and failing to control my emotions. “But where does it end, Pruitt? Where do we draw the line? People like the Zoyls, they push and we give way, and then they push more and we give way more. And the police . . . nobody else can help us. And you’re right. What if someone else’s kid goes missing because
we didn’t do anything?”

  “We don’t know—” Pruitt interrupts, but I interrupt him right back.

  “And what do we tell ourselves? What do we tell our kids if we do nothing but run? That we’re still good people? No. There has so be a line, Pruitt. They’re wrong, and that’s that. And we’ve got to stop them!” I say, closer to shouting than I wanted to be.

  “So we deserve it, for doing nothing?” Pruitt says in a quiet voice, and I can tell that I’ve upset him.

  “Do you think I haven’t thought like that over the years? I lost half of my family, Finn. On the night James went missing, I actually went out there with my gun. I sat on the hill amongst the bushes overlooking the Zoyl’s house that whole night and well into the morning. Waiting for the police to leave so I could go down there and kill every last one of them. Do you know what stopped me?” Pruitt asks, his voice trembling.

  I shake my head, quiet now, not knowing if I want Pruitt to say more.

  “I realised that if I went down there and did the right thing—and believe me, I knew killing them all would be the right thing, it still is—then Emily would be alone. She’d have to live with that too. And it’s the same now, Finn. You talk about right and wrong and it all sounds so simple, but what about love? What about the people who need us? Even you; you think nobody can see what’s happened between you and Patricia? That girl loves you, Finn. It’s the people who care about us that have to live with the consequences of what we do. You think it is cowardice doing nothing. Try it for a few years and see if it feels like the easy way out.”

  “I’m sorry, Pruitt, I shouldn’t have said that,” I say, thinking that to just do nothing and quietly bear it, year in and year out, takes a kind of strength and patience I don’t think I have. And of course it’s cost him. I don’t know if I could do it. Maybe that’s why he eats and drinks and smokes the way he does.