by Finn Bell
“It started with the cake tin. You remember, the one I collected at the police station? I found it hidden in the cottage, it belonged to Alice Cotter. You remember that little bottle of gold pieces? First, I thought they were just ingots panned from a riverbed. I knew there was a gold rush out here. So Alice found some. It’s only when I looked at them again that morning that I realised they weren’t ingots at all. They were fillings. Gold fillings pulled from people’s teeth. They would have come from more than one person—probably a lot more.
“And then there was that herd of pigs that ate James. It’s possible that the Zoyls knew how easily pigs can become cannibalistic. It’s even possible that they knew it would probably work well for a human body as well. But it’s a stretch too far for coincidence that they happened to have an appropriately starved herd ready and waiting on the day when James shows up. And pigs are intelligent, too; they’re scared of people. How would the Zoyls know that they’d eat that body, right there, immediately? No. That herd was starved and ready on purpose, but not for James specifically. They didn’t know when or where he’d show up. And then they were so quick with a neat plan to dispose of the bones. No. They had that herd ready and hungry, and they knew they’d still have to get rid of the bones because those pigs weren’t being starved for James specifically. Because this wasn’t the first time they had done this.
“Pruitt showed me some old pictures of the inside of the Zoyl house from the police files a week ago and I noticed that they had four fridge freezers lined up in their laundry. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later I put it together with that smell in their shed. I knew it was familiar, I just couldn’t place it then.
“And I knew they had to do something. Every time they used those pigs to eat a body, they’d still be left with the bones. And they wouldn’t have try pots to hide them in every time. And like we said before, bones can be a problem. You could bury them or burn them or crush them or even try dumping them in the ocean, but every time there’d be a risk of discovery. Maybe not so much if you only did it once. But the Zoyls had to have a solution that worked if you did it often. If you had a lot of bones to get rid of.
“And lye or some industrial acid would be too obvious. That would be hard to explain away in the amounts they would need out there. No, they needed something they could hide in plain sight. Something you could buy in large quantities without raising any suspicion. And when you get right down to it, vinegar is just diluted acid. You just needed to concentrate it. And that’s not hard. I remember we learned about it in school. All you need is a lot of freezer space. Or four fridges in your laundry. Because the acid in vinegar will freeze at a different temperature than the water does. You just needed to scoop out the crystals and repeat the process. And before you know it, you’ve got a big pool of strong acid. And acids just love calcium. Those bones would dissolve away in hours. And the soup that’s left, you dump out in the deep ocean.
“And that was easy for them as well. They wouldn’t even need to take anything damning off the farm or risk transporting it through town to their boat. People forget how Riverton started. This town was founded because of the whaling industry. I learned all about it reading through all of Albie’s notes. And back then, they still rendered the whale blubber on shore. And that’s what the Zoyls did too, right there. Before it was a farm it was a whaling station. I know it doesn’t look like it, but the Zoyls chose that place because you could get a big boat all the way to the land without beaching it or running onto rocks. My guess would be that there’s a mooring somewhere below that long, rusty shed halfway between my cottage and the Zoyl’s house. They would have sited it far away from their own house because back then, when they were still whalers, that’s where they rendered the whale oil. Too much smoke and fumes to have it close to the house.
“My guess is that the mooring wasn’t just used to take the evidence of the dead away, but also to bring the living in. That’s why the Zoyls had a crayfish boat but never really caught any crayfish. It’s because they mostly weren’t going out to catch anything at all. That’s why we saw them buying all that crayfish at the Food Festival. I bet you if you asked around and did some figuring, you’d find out that they buy more crayfish than they catch. But they needed the pretence, see? They’d also be buying more food than they could eat. Because it’s cold down south here. Especially this time of year, when the Antarctic winds hit the shore at night. That big, rusty old shed, made of wood and sheet iron, full of holes. They’d need to heat it. And they’d want to do that with food and heaters, not clothing and blankets. That would leave too much evidence, as would spending thousands insulating what was supposed to look like nothing more than a dilapidated old shed.
“See, I kept losing power at night, ever since I moved out here. Every few nights. It was annoying because it usually coincided with the especially cold mornings. And Tui told me it was because the Zoyls used too much power at night, and how he couldn’t understand what kind of farming needs that much power at night. The only thing he could think of was if you had battery chickens and you needed the heating on at night. And the Zoyls did need that heating, but not for chickens.
“But even so, just like with farming, you always lose a few. Some die. The weakest in the flock,” I say.
John and Lucas nod, looking unsurprised, and I see that they’ve already connected the dots themselves.
“Thus far your descriptions of what we have found are remarkable, Mr Bell. And as you’ve said. Most of what we have found has been out by that mooring and inside that old shed. But even with the things you noticed, it is still a remarkable leap of assumption to make. How did you go from two missing persons to even thinking of this?” John asks.
Before I can answer, we are interrupted by the flustered arrival of Brumhilda, hiding behind a large bunch of flowers. After the welcoming and putting at ease of Brumhilda, along with the assurances that I look much worse than I actually am, I say, “I guessed this is what the Zoyls were doing because I think this is what they have always done. Generations of them.”
“I know this is going to sound strange, but just go with me on this. Everybody knew the Zoyls were strange, and not just now. That they had always been strange, years before Sean and Archie and Darrell. Tai and Albie told me how they had actually been here since before the town started. Out there on their own. And Riverton is one of the oldest towns in New Zealand; that’s hundreds of years ago. The Zoyl family, generations of them, living out there, pretty much in isolation. And we know back then they were sailors and whalers and cruel, even then. Even though they kept to themselves, they were always active traders. And self-sufficient, good at what they did. Albie told me they were clever, that they used to work metal. And I learned more from his notes as I was reading through them these past weeks. At first, long ago, when they came to this country, before the British, they didn’t speak English.
“Now I was reading Albie’s notes the past weeks, and I learned about the whaling boom and the gold rush and all those people from all over coming out here to New Zealand. And I realised that history, when you break it down, is really all about families. The further back you go, the more important they become. It’s not like now. Go back a few centuries, and the family you were born into basically determined your whole life. Your family dictated who and what you were going to be in life. Your family gave you everything. Took care of you, educated you; it decided whom you married. Your family decided what your job was going to be, even your religion. Your family kept you safe. Your family taught you everything about the world, and your place in it. Your family taught you how to live and about right and wrong. And families can be good, and sometimes families can be bad.
“I don’t know when the Zoyls began doing it, but my guess is long ago. Maybe they started it before, or maybe that was the first time, but I think it was when the gold and the whales ran out at almost the same time back in the late 1800s. All of a sudden, a lot of people out here went hungry. No real governmen
t. No help. Especially this far south. People had spent their life savings to travel all the way out here in search of their fortunes. And nobody had the money to pay to get back to America or Europe. It’s cold here in the south, and it was even colder back then. And it was a different time, there was no real law out here, no real civilization. So what do a close-knit, isolated family of traders and sailors do when it gets real hard? And there’s no more gold and no more whales? And there’s all these destitute people?”
I can see John and Lucas sharing a look. I’m not surprised that they get it first. They’re like me, after all. In Africa we understand how these things work.
“Slavery,” John says.
“That’s it,” I say, nodding in agreement. “You have to think about the time. Back then, slavery was still legal in America and most of Europe, as well as the Middle East. They had the boats and knew the trade routes. And who was going to stop them? And all these people were out here. Vulnerable, alone, without their own families to protect them. It had been happening for centuries in any case, right, Brumhilda?” I ask, because I know a PhD student in maritime history will know.
“This is so. For centuries, human trafficking was prevalent across almost all known cultures. Whether people were expressly caught and traded or simply taken as the spoils of war and conquest. The Vikings, Nubia, and Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Chinese Dynasties, and most of the Ancient Near Eastern cultures all have extensive histories relating to the slave trade. And it was not just isolated. Slave trading connected cultures. At times it even drove change across the globe.
“For most of the Middle Ages, Europe had fallen into decline. Poverty was widespread, but the royals and upper classes in what was later to become France and Germany still had appetites for spices, jewels, and art from the East. And so women and children were sent East in exchange for goods coming West through a network of trade routes that reached from Europe all the way to China. It was known as the Silk Road,” Brumhilda answers, her words tumbling into silence when she becomes aware of everyone’s attention on her and she hesitates, looking back at me.
“I’m sorry, this is all a bit of a sudden, ja?” she says.
And because I had read so much of this in Albie’s notes and had seen and guessed the rest already, I say, to help her get there: “But then something changed on the Silk Road, didn’t it?”
“This is true. On the Silk Road, East and West meet each other in the middle, in what was known as Persia and Arabia. But then the Crusades began, and the Christianity of the West fought the Islam of the East for control of Jerusalem, and the chain of the Silk Road was broken,” Brumhilda says, and again she pauses, frowning at me now, and I know she has the first inkling of what I’m getting at.
“You know, Mr Bell. But I have not told you yet. How do you already know?” she says.
“Yes, I know. I know what they would have to end up being, where they are from, but not what they were or what they were called,” I answer.
“Radhanites. They were called Radhanites, Mr Bell,” Brumhilda answers.
“With Christianity and Islam against each other, both cultures turned to Judaism. Jewish merchants became prevalent as the intermediaries between the East and the West. For centuries, these Jewish merchants were almost the only go-betweens that kept trade moving across the world. They were traders and explorers of great renown travelling by both land and sea across the globe. Intrepid, they had regularly travelled from Western Europe to the Far East centuries before Marco Polo ever claimed he had discovered the Orient. And there was a group among these Jewish merchants that was especially successful. They went to strange, far-off places and traded primarily in jewels, gold, and slaves. But little is known about them, for they were secretive and isolationist. They mainly travelled by sea. We know they were boat builders and blacksmiths. They were called Radhanites,” Brumhilda finishes.
“You are remarkably well informed on history, my dear,” John says to her.
“I only learned this all a few days ago. After the first consignment from the Te Papa Museum arrived. There were all these artefacts that I did not know. I could not date them at all. At first I thought maybe the museum made a mistake, but then I asked my professor here and then we spoke to the historians at my university in Berlin, and finally we sent the pictures to France and they referred us to Israel, to the museum in Jerusalem. And they told us that some of these were Radhanite artefacts. Many of them centuries younger than any they had seen before. We did not know how they came to be down here in New Zealand, but it is for certain a major historical discovery. I was going to tell Mr. Bell all about it that morning, but then Mr Pruitt collapsed and everything happened.”
“How did you know this, Mr Bell?” Lucas asks me.
“I didn’t. Not all of it, not like that. But I knew enough, and I guessed parts of it. Like I already said. Aside from all the other things I knew, the Zoyls have been here for a long time. I knew they were originally sailors and traders. And that they kept to themselves out there, kept to their own ways. And I guessed they were Jewish. Pruitt showed me his files, and I spotted several menorah in old pictures of their house taken back in 1989 as part of the investigation when James disappeared. And when Archie died, Sean sang to him. And I didn’t make it all out or put it together at the time, but one of the words he kept singing was Abba. And I know that means ‘father’ in Hebrew,” I answer.
I turned to Brumhilda.
“What happened to the Radhanites of old, Brumhilda?” I ask.
“We don’t know for certain, Mr Bell. They were only one smaller family or clan. The Jewish merchants of that time were a large group, and they continued to be active well into the 1900s. Many of those families are still involved in the diamond trade even today. Their success helped spread Judaism across the globe. Today there are Jewish communities scattered all across the world. Many of them have their roots in the ambitious travels of the Jewish merchants of long ago,” Brumhilda answers.
“And maybe one family settled down here at the bottom of New Zealand,” Lucas says.
“So parts of all this I knew and parts of it I guessed. Because slavery is too involved. Too big. You couldn’t hide that down there. The whole family would have to know. But how could a whole family, all of them, be okay doing something like that? How could you convince people of that today? Unless they started doing it long ago, when nobody thought anything was wrong with it. Then that family actually worked for you. The Zoyls already kept to themselves. Taught every member, every next generation, that this is okay. This is what we do. And because they had been doing it for a long time, they got to be good at it. My mind just went there. I knew the Zoyls were bad. And when I found all those things, it just all seemed to point to this. And you have to remember that I’m not from here. I grew up in South Africa—and not the shiny new one we have now. Way back in the dark ages they called it slavery. When I was a kid they called it Apartheid. There’s always someone out there ready to treat other people like they are things,” I finish.
“Well, these days they call it human trafficking, Mr Bell. And unfortunately, even though it became illegal, it never really went away. Very young children and babies still flow from Asia and Africa to the West, and young women and girls go from Russia, the Ukraine, and the Balkans to the East. UN statistics estimate that millions of people are trafficked every year around the world,” Lucas explains.
“The vast majority are young women and children. They are often kept and smuggled in very poor conditions. Illness and deaths are common. And much of what you’ve said, and much of what we’ve already found down there at the Zoyl farm, seems to fit. We will know more in time,” John concludes.
“And now I really am exhausted,” I say. “Brumhilda, thanks for coming out. And I’m sorry you had to hear all these things. And thank you for what you did for Pruitt. You saved his life,” I say to Brumhilda, who I notice is still clutching the bunch of flowers she came in with in front of her.
“Yes,
thank you for your help, my dear,” says John.
“And please, I must ask you not to tell anyone about what we have discussed here. Especially the media. Our investigations are still ongoing, and it is best if we delay word getting out until the facts have been confirmed,” Lucas says as he ushers her out.
When finally she’s also gone, I look back at the twins, stifling a yawn as I lay back and say, “And now there really is only one very last thing to do.”
CHAPTER 45
I ease into waking slowly, slipping from deep sleep into wakefulness so smoothly, so gently, that I can feel my body still at rest, my limbs still numb and asleep, my eyes heavy.
It’s the quiet, thick dark of night. Only the dim light of the hospital corridor tracing the outline of the door is visible.
I’m surprised that I slipped away so easily, given the circumstances.
I must have slept away the whole day and most of the night. For an insomniac like me, that’s quite a feat. I put it down to extensive injuries and lots of very strong drugs.
But as I lie here, my chest still breathing in the slow, deep rhythm of sleep, my eyes grasp the gloom and I see that I’m not alone in here.
There’s a shadow by the door that my eyes can’t quite turn into a man. Maybe this is another bad dream, or just my over-strained imagination, because the shadow doesn’t move at all.
Then, after what must be minutes, it does.
It’s moving, slowly and soundlessly, it’s coming towards my bed.
There’s something in its hand.
There’s only a few steps left.
This is really happening, I need to wake up.
And I breathe in the very last of my terror and say:
“Come to make the best of things, Tui?”
And immediately the lights flick on and Lucas is up between me and Tui with a speed that surprises me, gun in hand, yelling, “Don’t move! Don’t move! Police!”
