by Des Hunt
He nudged me and pointed down to the section. Bee was coming out of the house, carrying a hunk of dog roll.
‘OK, I’m off,’ he said.
Bee glanced around as she walked to the dog cage. She looked straight in my direction, but obviously didn’t see me for her eyes continued scanning.
The dog, Jaylo, started jumping up and down, yapping excitedly. It was hard to believe this was the same animal that had sounded so fierce when Matt had driven past the front of the section.
The plan had been that I’d wait until the dog was eating and then rush down to help Dean over the fence. However, it was obvious Bee was feeding it straight away, so I left the lookout and took the back route down to where Dean was waiting.
‘Is the dog feeding?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. It will be by now.’
‘Then let’s go!’
We moved over the bridge and along the fence line until we got to the corner. I held the bleach and bent over so Dean could climb onto my back. Gradually, he raised himself to full height and looked over the fence. He seemed to stay there for ages, before I felt extra pressure and then the weight disappeared.
I looked up to see him crouching at the top of the fence. He signalled for me to hand up the bleach. I did so, and an instant later he was gone.
I rushed back to the lookout. The dog was on its haunches finishing the roll; Bee was no longer visible; and Dean was crouched beside the buggy. He looked up at my hideout. I pushed my hand out of the bush and gave the thumbs-up. He nodded and stood to climb up by the motor.
For the first time, I began to feel nervous. If anyone other than Bee came out now we were in real trouble.
Dean unscrewed the oil cap, then the top of the bleach and began pouring. Even from my distance I could hear the glugging as the bleach emptied into the engine.
‘Don’t make so much noise,’ I said to myself. ‘They’ll hear.’
The back door opened.
Dean saw it open and ducked down. But it was only Bee. She glared in the direction of the buggy and put her finger to her lips before going back inside.
He got the message. When he resumed pouring, he managed to do so without the glugging.
We’d argued over how much bleach would be needed to stop an engine. Afi had even asked his dad. But Matt knew no more than we did. In the end we agreed that half a bottle should do it. But now, I could tell that Dean was adding much more than that. I began willing him to stop. He didn’t. Not until the bottle was empty.
Once that was done, I expected him to get out of the place as quickly as possible. Instead, he crawled over the buggy until he was alongside the wooden coffin at the rear of the cab. I thought he was going to open one of the lids, but he went to the petrol tank alongside. He unscrewed the cap and peered into the tank.
‘What the hell are you doing,’ I groaned. ‘Get out of there.’
Whatever he saw in the tank made him happy, because he wore a big smile as he replaced the cap. Next he looked around the section as if he was going to check out some other things. A big wheelie bin sitting alongside the garage caught his attention and he climbed from the buggy.
‘C’mon, c’mon,’ I breathed.
That’s when the barking started. It was Jaylo’s imitation of a fierce dog that we’d heard the first day. It certainly impressed Dean. He sprinted to the fence and disappeared from my view.
The door opened again.
‘Jaylo!’ called Bee. ‘Shut up!’
The dog gave one final growl to make her point before moving into her kennel.
Bee frowned and waved her hand at Dean, urging him to get a move on. A moment later he reappeared at the top of the fence, ready to jump down. As soon as he hit the ground, he thrust both hands out to me with thumbs in the air waving them in victory.
But something was wrong: his hands should not have been empty.
I rushed down to him.
‘Yes!’ he said, greeting me with a big grin. ‘I did it!’
‘Where’s the bleach bottle?’ I demanded.
The grin changed to panic. ‘I left it behind!’
We looked at each other, weighing up the damage.
‘Bee might find it and hide it,’ said Dean, without conviction.
‘Too risky,’ I said. ‘They see that bottle, they’ll know something is up. You’ve got to go back and get it.’
He nodded slowly.
Once again I was bending down with Dean climbing on my back. Then he was over.
I stayed where I was, more tensed-up than ever. The only good thing I could think of was that the evening light was fading fast, which might make him less visible. But that wouldn’t hide him from Jaylo. Another bout of barking and the males inside were sure to become suspicious.
Then I was hit on the head. I cried out.
‘Shut up!’ Dean hissed from the other side of the fence.
Lying at my feet was the bleach bottle.
Then Dean was standing there beside the bottle. He picked it up. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
On the way back I asked him why he’d used all the bleach.
He shrugged. ‘I forgot that we were only going to put in half. It shouldn’t make any difference.’
‘I hope it doesn’t blow it up too soon,’ I said, ‘or they won’t even get the boat out.’
‘It’ll be right,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’
I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that. And I still had more questions.
‘Why did you look in the petrol tank?’
‘To see if it was diesel or petrol.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘Petrol is easier to set alight than diesel.’
I grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. Then I eyeballed him. ‘Are you planning to set fire to it?’
‘No!’
‘Then why did you need to know?’
He took a deep breath as if he was dealing with an idiot. Except it didn’t quite work — I knew he was stalling.
‘Because,’ he said slowly, ‘that tank is not far from the exhaust. If that engine gets as hot as we think it will, then there could be sparks coming out of the exhaust pipe, and we don’t want a fire, do we?’
That sounded reasonable.
‘So what is it?’ I asked. ‘Petrol or diesel.’
‘Petrol.’
‘And that’s bad?’
‘Yes! Are you satisfied? Can we go now?’
We did, but that didn’t mean I was satisfied. He had smiled after he’d looked in the tank — from what he’d just said, he should have looked concerned, not pleased.
‘What took so long?’ asked Afi as we climbed back into the caravan. ‘Did something go wrong?’
I explained about the bleach bottle.
Afi frowned. ‘But you still got the job done?’
‘Yes, except the whole bottle of bleach went in the engine.’
‘That shouldn’t make much difference,’ he said. ‘We didn’t really know how much to use anyway.’
‘How did you get on?’ I asked.
His face split with a smile. ‘Take a look at this.’
He picked up his camera and turned it on. After a bit of fiddling, he handed it over. The image showed a yacht floating on a dark sea.
‘Now press that button three times to zoom in.’
The yacht now filled the screen.
‘Can you see the name?’
I could see where a name had been painted, but it was too grainy to read.
‘Yeah, but that’s no use,’ I said. ‘I can’t read it.’
‘You will after I enhance it on the computer back home. I bet it’ll be easy to read.’
I handed the camera over to Dean.
‘Good one, Afi,’ he said. Then he looked at the image more closely. ‘There are people on the deck. Will you be able to enhance them as well?’
‘Yeah, I can but I don’t think it’ll be good enough to identify them.’
‘Give us another look
?’ I asked.
Dean was right. There were two people on the deck looking towards the shore. ‘Do you think they saw you?’
‘Can’t see how,’ replied Afi. ‘They were a long way out.’
‘What was the sunset like?’
Afi thought for a time. ‘Oh!’ was all he said.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Dean.
‘Reflection,’ I said. ‘The sun could easily have reflected off the lens of Afi’s camera.’
Dean nodded. ‘But I don’t see the problem: lots of people take photos down there. They can’t have known you were spying on them.’
He was right, but somehow it didn’t make me feel any more relaxed. Too many things were going wrong. I was beginning to think that our plan might be jinxed.
Chapter 25
I didn’t sleep very well that night. None of us did. Part of the reason was excitement about the day ahead, and I was also worrying about what could go wrong. It was a relief when Afi’s watch woke us at six: we planned to be on the hill before dawn so we could check what was happening at the beach.
Matt and Tiresa were surprised to see us so early.
‘We think the Redferns had a delivery last night,’ explained Afi. ‘We want to get photos.’
Matt looked puzzled. ‘Last night? They would have had a pretty rough trip, then. The wind came up about midnight.’
‘Bee said they were going out.’
‘Yeah, well maybe they did,’ said Matt. ‘But if you’re going to take photos, don’t get too close and don’t let them see you.’
‘Be careful,’ added Tiresa.
We agreed that we would be, and left.
The wind certainly was stronger than on the previous days. Thick grey clouds made the morning darker than I was expecting. If it hadn’t been for the few streetlamps, we would have had trouble finding our way.
At the Norfolk pine, the streetlamp was swaying wildly in the wind, forming weird, moving shadows. Yet there was enough light to see that sand was blowing off the beach and forming drifts as far up as the takeaway bar. Any vehicle tracks had long been blown away.
Climbing the hill was not as difficult as I’d expected. Afi had been up it so often that he could find his way in the dark. We simply followed his path.
From the top we could see lights back towards the town and beyond. There was even a faint glow on the eastern horizon. But down on the beach and out to sea there was nothing except blackness. We sat down to wait.
Time dragged as slowly as it had during the night. We couldn’t even find anything to talk about; it was just sit silently and wait for the sky to get bright enough for us to see.
The view when the light did come wasn’t any better so far as we were concerned. Apart from whitecaps from shore to horizon, there was nothing out at sea. And on the beach there was nothing that hadn’t been there the day before. Certainly, there was no broken-down beach buggy, no trailer and no boat.
‘Do you think they’ve been and gone?’ I asked.
Afi raised the camera and scanned the beach. ‘There’s no sign that anything’s been there.’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Dean.
‘Go and look at their house,’ I suggested. ‘See if anything’s happened there.’
The sky was much brighter by the time we arrived at the hideout behind the Redferns’ house, but what we saw didn’t make us feel any brighter.
The buggy was parked just where I’d seen it the evening before. The only difference was that the boat trailer had been taken off and pushed back into its corner. Jaylo was curled up in her kennel. There was no sign of other life, not even smoke from the chimney.
‘They didn’t go out,’ said Afi.
Dean swore.
‘Maybe they will tonight,’ I said.
Afi shook his head. ‘The sea won’t die down by then. Can you stay a couple of days longer?’
‘I could, but Dean flies home on Tuesday.’
‘We’ve got to do something else,’ said Dean. ‘We’ve got to make him pay.’ He was talking about Hotchkins, of course.
‘No!’ I said. ‘We’ve talked about this before. Everything else is too dangerous.’
I expected Dean to call me a wuss again, or worse. However, he just sat there and said nothing.
Instead, Afi spoke. ‘We don’t go home until next Sunday. That gives me a whole week. I can take the photos by myself.’
‘But what if they use the buggy in the meantime?’ I asked.
Afi sighed. ‘Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.’
‘We can’t take the bleach out,’ I said. ‘The first time they drive it, it’ll blow up. They might not be able to use it again for weeks.’
Silence.
Then Afi said, ‘Let’s wait until Bee comes to the bach. We’ll discuss it with her.’
‘OK,’ I said, ready to grasp at anything that would delay making a difficult decision.
Once again, Dean said nothing.
After breakfast, Afi and I left Dean in the lounge and went to the caravan to lie on our beds and wait for Bee to arrive.
We must have dozed off, because sometime later we were disturbed by Tiresa calling from the door of the caravan. ‘Bee’s here. She wants to talk to you both.’
Bee was waiting in the lounge.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
She pulled a face. ‘They cancelled at the last minute because of the weather.’
‘Is it still going to happen?’
‘Tuesday night,’ she said. ‘The weather’s meant to be all right by then.’
I looked at Afi. ‘Can you do it Wednesday morning?’
Afi nodded. ‘What about the buggy, though?’
I turned back to Bee. ‘Can you stop them using the buggy until then?’
‘No way!’ she said, shaking her head wildly. ‘They don’t listen to anything I say.’
‘We’ll just have to hope,’ said Afi.
I nodded. I wasn’t happy with it, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
Tiresa approached carrying a plate of muffins. ‘Morning-tea time,’ she said cheerfully.
It was a welcome interruption. We sat and got stuck in.
‘Where’s Dean?’ I asked, my mouth half full.
Tiresa shook her head. ‘He went off. I thought he joined you in the caravan.’
‘He’s in the park,’ said Bee. ‘I saw him as I came through.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘Sitting on the ground behind a shed,’ said Bee. ‘He had a big box beside him. He was taping some stuff together.’
Afi’s head snapped up. ‘What colour was the box?’
Bee shrugged. ‘Purple, I think.’
‘The fireworks!’ said Afi.
‘I thought the box had been thrown out,’ I said.
Afi shook his head. ‘Dad put it down in the corner when he tidied up.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘What is he likely to do with them?’ asked Tiresa.
‘Make a bomb,’ I said.
‘To blow something up?’
‘Yes. At Bee’s house.’
‘What exactly?’
‘I don’t know. A letterbox, a rubbish bin. something like that.’
‘We don’t have a letterbox,’ said Bee.
Then I remembered the way Dean had looked at the wheelie bin. ‘It’ll be the rubbish bin,’ I said, confident that I was right. ‘The one by the garage.’
‘No!’ cried Bee.
‘It’ll only damage the bin,’ I said, hopefully.
‘No!’ she cried again. ‘You don’t understand. The animal is making drugs in there.’
‘What sort of drugs?’ snapped Tiresa.
‘P!’
‘P?’ I asked. ‘What’s that?’
‘Methamphetamine,’ explained Afi.
Tiresa nodded her head. ‘It’s a terrible drug and dangerous to make. The labs keep blowing up all over the place.’
‘You’ve got to stop him,’ said Bee.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Tiresa. She turned to me. ‘You can ride a quad bike, can’t you?’
I nodded.
She turned back to Bee. ‘Who’s at home?’
‘Only Harry and the animal. Dad went into school with Mum today.’
‘Right,’ continued Tiresa. ‘You stay here with me. We’re going to phone one-one-one.’ Then to me: ‘You and Afi take the quad bike. Stop Dean if you can. But don’t go onto the property. You hear? No matter what, don’t go anywhere near that garage. If it’s full of chemicals, then the whole thing is going to blow.’
She then turned and went to the phone.
Chapter 26
In less than a minute we were on the bike and speeding towards the back entrance to the park. There was no one immediately visible as we squeezed through the small gate, but that didn’t mean Dean had gone. There were several buildings he could be hidden behind. I raced around each.
Alongside the biggest building were scraps of duct tape. I stopped so Afi could pick them up. When he bent over he saw something under the building.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘We’d better have a look at this.’
It was the fireworks box. When he opened it, all we could see were the skeletons of fireworks. The gunpowder had been removed.
I was shocked. I’d expected Dean to have dismantled one or two of them, but not the lot. He’d got enough gunpowder to make a huge bomb.
‘Put it back,’ I said, grimly. ‘We’d better get going.’
As I drove out of the park it occurred to me that Dean had been working on this almost since we’d arrived at Port Waikato. It was four days since we’d first opened the shed. I’d bet anything that Dean had seen the fireworks right then. That’s about when the duct tape went missing. He’d been planning this even before Hotchkins and Harry had attacked us with the beach buggy.
I blamed myself. If I’d taken a better look around the shed, I would have seen the box and then made sure that the place was always locked. I’d been so concerned about him taking the quad bike that I’d —
