‘Go ahead,’ I prompted, feeling my cheeks burn. ‘I’m listening.’
He tilted his hat lower over his eyes. ‘I’ve heard things.’
‘Heard things?’
‘You’ve been losing things.’
I was bemused. ‘Well, we were burgled and—’ ‘I’m not talking about the burglary.’
This wasn’t at all the conversation I’d expected. ‘We’re chaotic. We’ve still got stuff in cardboard boxes. I expect it’ll all turn up.’
‘An antique painting? You really think it’s lying around somewhere?’
‘Well, no.’
‘How’s that lovely daughter?’ he asked, in what seemed an abrupt change of subject.
‘Sacha? She’s . . . well, she’s fine.’
‘Fine?’
‘She’s a teenager—all tantrums and tiaras at the moment.’
Then he seemed to change the subject yet again. ‘My sister used to live in Torutaniwha. Her husband was a top bloke. Samoan guy. He worked in the forestry. Got crushed by a log and killed. She had two little kids, and they gave her a payout.’
‘Ira and . . .?’
‘Jonah was the older one. Anyway, she started sleeping with some idiot and he talked her into running off to Auckland with the boys. I didn’t like it but it was her life, not mine. The new boyfriend spent all her money then ditched her but she wouldn’t come home, she stayed in Auckland and brought up those kids pretty well on her own. Ira was top student at teacher college.’
‘He’s a credit to her,’ I said, with feeling. ‘What about the other son?’
‘Jonah’s an electrician. He had a girlfriend, flash car, widescreen TV. All the things people seem to think they need. Even managed to buy a house. He’s no angel; always pushed the boundaries, partied hard.’
‘But he’s doing okay?’
‘He tried a few drugs. Weed, ketamine, all kinds of shit he put into his body. He could still hold down his job, never took a day off sick no matter how rough the night had been. But in the end he began to dance with the devil itself.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means he went too far. It’s called P over here. You know what that is?’ ‘Of course. Well, sort of. Not really.’
‘Ice, or whiz—lots of names. Crystal meth. Pure methamphetamine.’
‘Amphetamine. That’s speed?’
‘It’s nothing like the speed people used when I was young. They call it P because it’s pure. It can be almost a hundred per cent pure. If you read in the paper about some really nasty murder, chances are this stuff was involved. Sometimes it’s gang wars, because this is a multi-million-dollar business. Sometimes it’s some poor punter who hasn’t paid his dealer. Sometimes it’s just plain evil.’
The penny was dropping. ‘Oh . . . like Jean and Pamela’s son.’
‘Daniel.’ Tama looked bleak. ‘Lovely kid. He was in Jonah’s class at Torutaniwha. They were mates.’
‘We’re surrounded by ocean. Can’t we stop this stuff at the border?’
‘It still gets smuggled in. Anyway, you can make it in your kitchen! If you look on the internet you’ve got a choice of recipes. So it’s being cooked up all over the place—in kitchens and cupboards and cars, what the papers call clan labs. You know how resourceful we New Zealanders are. Kiwi ingenuity, Martha! We have a can-do attitude. We can fix anything with number-eight wire, so you bet we can cook our own fries.’
‘Fries?’
‘Jonah called it that. I asked him why, he said because it fries your brain.’ I felt something very nasty in the pit of my stomach, a squeezing hand so cold that it ached. ‘So . . . what happened to Jonah?’
‘He’s safe, for now.’
‘That’s good.’
‘No. Not good.’
‘Is he—’
‘In prison.’
I looked at the shadowed profile. Did this uncle—this self-possessed, profoundly dignified man—queue up at the prison gates on visiting days? Did he stand quietly with arms and legs akimbo while guards searched his pockets and sniffer dogs circled?
‘People using this stuff need money,’ he continued unhurriedly. ‘They need a truckload of money. If they’re a lawyer or dentist or something, they can afford it. Plenty of users are professional people. It’s everywhere, I’m telling you. Everywhere. I couldn’t believe the things Jonah told me. Your accountant, your lawyer, your doctor could easily be using it. But if they’ve got no income they have to find other ways of paying.’
‘Burglary, you mean?’ I was wondering whether this jailbird nephew could somehow have burgled our house. Perhaps that was what Tama was trying to tell me. I was ready to be nice about it.
‘They start by selling everything they have. They’ll sell the shirt off their back if they have to, the food from their shelves, they’ll sell their bodies. Nothing matters except getting the next hit. It’s all they think about. They’ll steal from their families.’
‘Is that what Jonah did?’
‘Martha! Listen to what I’m saying, will you?’
‘I am listening.’ But I wasn’t, not really. I didn’t want to. We rode on, while the ice fingers twisted my gut.
‘Is Sacha still playing her flute?’ asked Tama.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Is she?’
I leaned forward to lay my cheek on Kakama’s neck, breathing in the warm horse smell and taking comfort from her strength. I felt chilled all over now.
‘Jonah became a different human being,’ continued Tama. ‘It began small, the thing. The terrible devil thing. Just a cute little demon. But he made a pet of it, and it grew. He began to miss days at work—one time he was so wired, he phoned his boss at two in the morning to tell him he wouldn’t be coming the next day! So he was out on his ear. A qualified electrician, but nobody would employ him. He’d lost control—talking big, acting wild. He’d be up for a week and then he’d sleep for days.’
You know how it can be when someone is trying to point out a curiosity to you? A rare hawk, say. They point excitedly and they shriek, ‘Look there, beyond the tree . . . between the pylon and the windsock . . . there, see it?’ And you strain your eyes but you still can’t see the bloody thing. And then they whisper patiently, ‘No, look again. It’s next to the red chimneypot. Got the red chimney? Right, well just to the left of that . . . hovering . . . see?’
Tama was still talking. ‘He lost interest in everything, even in life. He lost his home. Car got repossessed, so did the TV but he’d already sold that. He sold everything. He stole stuff from his girlfriend and her parents. So she dumped him, and he didn’t even care. He thieved from his mother and aunties and nana.’
I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted to go home.
‘He got scared, reckoned people were out to kill him,’ said Tama. ‘Well, perhaps they were. It’s a dark world he’d got into. The trade’s big business— big business. It’s mostly controlled by gangs, and life is cheap to those people. You don’t want to piss them off.’
I remembered the motorbike gang on the road, and shuddered.
‘Maybe he owed someone money,’ said Tama. ‘By this time he was on the streets. I went and got him and brought him home, thinking maybe I could straighten him out. The poor kid . . . you know, he tried to get clean. He said it was like crawling in the desert, dying of thirst, but there’s cool water gushing from a spring. You have to have it, nothing else matters. And then . . . well, we lost him. Things began to disappear. You know what I’m saying? Little things, at first. Cash. Then other things.’
And suddenly there it is, that bird. It balances and wheels and dominates the landscape. You can’t miss it. You wonder how you could have been so blind.
My hands began to shake. I could barely hold the reins. ‘I don’t . . . Look, Tama, I understand what you’re suggesting, and I know you’re only trying to help. But you’re just plain wrong. You don’t know me very well, and clearly you don’t know Sacha at
all.’
‘You’ve taken offence. Can’t blame you.’
‘I haven’t taken offence, but this is a laughable idea.’
‘Is it?’ He looked into my face. ‘I don’t see you laughing.’
‘For a start, I know for a fact that Sacha had nothing to do with our burglary. I drove her to school myself that day.’
‘I’m sure she didn’t burgle your house herself.’
‘Well, then!’
Tama sighed. ‘One of Jonah’s user mates was a younger guy, an accountant’s son. The kid could get his hands on cash . . . Dealers target people like Sacha. Do you understand, Martha? It’s their method. They need punters whose families have some money. When they couldn’t siphon any more from the dad’s bank account, Jonah and his mate got desperate. So they borrowed the family car—a flash convertible. Parked it up in town, then phoned their dealer to come and get it. Told the parents it’d been stolen.’
‘Look . . . we just aren’t that kind of family.’
‘A family like mine, you mean?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. Sacha wouldn’t steal from us. She’d never experiment with hard drugs, either.’
‘Who would have known when you’d all be out, both the day of the burglary and the day the painting was taken?’
I couldn’t stand any more. ‘Can we turn back now, please?’
At some silent signal from Tama, both horses immediately wheeled around, making ripples and eddies as they splashed along the tideline.
‘What happened to Jonah?’ I asked.
‘He disappeared. A year later, he turned up in court in Auckland. Burgling, shoplifting, mugging. Thousands of dollars. I went to support my sister. That kid wasn’t Jonah any more. He didn’t talk like Jonah, didn’t think like Jonah, didn’t even look like him. He’d rotted away.’
‘He admitted everything?’
‘The police drove him around and he pointed out all the places he’d burgled. He was a wreck by then. Never saw anyone change so much in a couple of years. He’d been a fit, handsome guy. Big fella, like Ira. Truckloads of confidence. He ended up looking like an orc from Lord of the Rings, you know? Even his teeth went rotten. He thought there were bugs living under his skin.’
‘Bugs? D’you mean insects?’
‘Running around under his skin. They drove him crazy. He scratched and scraped until he was bleeding, then right into his flesh. I heard the probation officer call it “meth mites”. It’s the P flooding their system. The poisons get forced out of their pores.’
Dog’s got fleas. Frigging chickens have lice.
‘How’s your poor sister coping?’
Tama shrugged. ‘She says this thing will kill him in the end.’ He twisted sideways in the saddle and looked me in the eye. ‘Look, I hope I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just a fussy old coot. But I’ve seen Sacha change since you arrived here, and it’s bothered me. Then yesterday Ira paid me a visit. He was pretty upset, wanted to tell me what’s been going on at your place. It seemed like the last piece of the jigsaw.’
‘All right. I’ll ask her.’
‘She’ll lie,’ Tama said sadly, running his hand down Ruru’s twitching ears. ‘They always lie. They get bloody good at it.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘Search her room. Search all possible hiding places.’
‘And if you’re right?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Pick her up and run for her life. Take her away, just as fast and as far as you can. Before it’s too late.’
Twenty-eight
I never even went into the house. If Sacha was hiding something, I knew where it would be.
The smoko hut crouched in its thicket of foliage, perhaps four minutes’ walk from the kitchen door. It was Sacha’s place. Her den. Her lair. If she was hiding something, it would be here. I hesitated with my hand on the door. Then I pushed it open.
There was no unusual smell; nothing but dust and warm plastic. The room was very dark though, and I soon saw why. Someone had not only drawn the curtains but also pinned fertiliser sacks across the windows. I fumbled to press the light switch. Nothing happened, because there was no bulb. Irritated now, I walked to the nearest window, grabbed hold of a sack and ripped it down. Then I did the same with the other and pulled back the curtains.
I faced the little room. School books lay scattered on the sofa. Photographs smiled from the walls: Ivan, Lydia, Dad, Lou and my all-time favourite poster of Captain Jack Sparrow, his gold tooth glinting. On the chimney breast leaned a saccharine poem entitled ‘Best Friends’; I remembered Lydia giving it to Sacha when they were ten.
The coffee table was actually a pile of suitcases. I opened each one. CDs, make-up, farewell cards. A teenager’s detritus. By the sofa were two candle stubs in wine bottles and several lighters. I forced my hand down behind the cushions but found only a ten-cent coin and a lot of fluff. In the sink was a half-empty mug, with—I sniffed it—mouldy Milo. There were jam jars with coffee, Milo powder and sugar. Salt too, for some reason. The kettle was half filled and I lifted the lid. Water.
With increasing relief I began to tug at the drawers in the shabby table. They kept getting stuck. Teaspoons. Candle ends. A pair of scissors. Biros, most of which looked broken. A roll of electrical tape. Pliers. None of these were a surprise to me; things like pliers and electrical tape might have been there for years.
In another drawer I found a plastic pot of rat poison which I clearly remembered had been there when we arrived. Under the table sat the empty paint tin that Sacha used as a bin. Sensible girl, she’d lined it with a plastic shopping bag. Going through my daughter’s rubbish had to be a low point; I hoped never, ever to do it again. A cursory glance was enough to assure me that the contents were innocent. Crisp packets. A couple of broken light bulbs. They must have been in the hut when we arrived because they were the old-fashioned kind, not those eco-friendly corkscrews of glass that take ten minutes to light up. Squeezed-out teabags. Empty plastic drink bottles, which should have gone into the recycling. Anyway, I wasn’t going to demean myself or Sacha by ferreting any deeper. Enough was enough.
Nothing, I exulted as I slid the bin back into place. There was nothing. Not so much as an empty fag packet. I gave one last glance around the hut, nodded smugly to myself and walked out. Up yours, Tama bloody Pardoe, I thought as I slammed the door behind me. Your nephew may be off the rails. My daughter is not.
I’d almost reached the house when I stopped dead, turning my face up to the spreading branches of the walnut. A fantail swooped and dived around my feet. Seconds later I’d spun around and was running. The wooden door crashed into the wall as I threw myself on the floor. Gripping the paint tin, I scrabbled under teabags and crisp packets.
Light bulbs. Not broken, but tampered with. Their screw parts had been pulled out, leaving only the bowls. The white frosting had somehow been removed so that the glass was very clear. Too clear. And someone had wrapped duct tape around the tops, as though they’d been attached to something else.
I paced around the hut, looking now with different eyes. In the drawers— nothing. In the suitcases, in the toilet’s cistern—nothing. I turned around and around, trying to imagine where I would hide a secret treasure. I was kneeling by the stove, my hand shoved up the metal flue like a deranged midwife, when my fingers brushed something snagged on a rivet. Closing the stove behind me—ludicrous, the need we have for order— I carried my find outside into the light.
The fantail whirled around my head, spreading his tail, wittering his merry tune. I shall always be grateful to that little fellow. He was my only companion at one of the most shattering moments of my life.
Just a silly little bit of plastic; a tiny snap-lock bag perhaps an inch square. When I held it to the light, its contents ran to one corner. White crystals, like ground glass. Pretty, really.
Suddenly the world seemed almost psychedelically miscoloured. Giant pungas moved in a weird slow motion, vast spider webs against the glazed emptiness of t
he sky. Even the sunlight felt pitiless. What had been good and pure was sordid now. My beautiful daughter had another life: a foul, degenerate life. She had betrayed us.
I sank onto the ground a few steps away from the hut. Sheep grazed nearby as though the world was still intact, and my fantail flew off home. Images swirled, twisted and fell together into an unbearable whole: cameras, watch, milk jug. Money, gone from tins and wallets and beloved piggybanks. A burglary. Great-Aunt Sibella. Sacha, lifting a broken bulb to her face and inhaling the poison.
I was still sitting there as the horizon deepened to a rich seam of orange. A blackbird trilled in the trees, and I longed for Dad’s garden in the English summer rain. That was when Sacha came trudging up the track and walked straight past without seeing me.
She stopped dead at the sight of the open door, her face ghostly in the half-light. There was complete stillness for several heartbeats. Then she strode into the hut. With a sense of immense sadness I heard the stove’s door creak. I pushed myself to my feet and stood in the doorway. She was on her knees, her head inside the stove, peering in.
‘It’s not there,’ I said.
She swung round, her voice childish with fright. ‘Mum?’
‘How long did you think you could go on?’
She got up and stood facing me. Ash spangled her hair, and there was a smear of soot down one cheek. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I held up the bag. She looked at it, then at me. ‘You don’t think that’s mine, do you?’ And then I was baffled, because she laughed aloud. She picked up a lighter and lit the candles, glancing in disgust at my hand. ‘Frick’s sake. That isn’t mine! Whadya think I am? Mental?’
‘I don’t know what you are, Sacha. I wish I did.’
‘Jeez!’ She sounded genuinely indignant, and my resolve faltered. She jerked her chin towards the bag. ‘Tip that out. Be my guest. It belongs to a guy who crashed my party, a total penis head called Ed. We didn’t even invite him, he just tagged along with one of the girls. What a creep.’
After the Fall Page 25
