Fat Man, The

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘He’s a burglar.’

  ‘Colin!’

  ‘So I looked in at the gate and then I saw him. It was a big house, two-storeyed, and he was upstairs. I knew it was him by his shadow. He must have been using a torch and he’d put it down somewhere and it shone on him a minute and made this shadow on the wall. His hat. His gut. I knew straight away what he was doing. God, how could I be so dumb?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I got out the gate. I took off. At first I was going to take the car, but then I just ran. I ran and walked all the way home. Too late for the buses. It took me four hours, Maise. A couple of cars passed me, but I thought it might be Herbie so I hid.’

  ‘You should have gone straight to the police.’

  ‘I will. Tomorrow. But I had to get back here. I thought he might come here. Maise, while I was walking I worked it all out. He was trying to turn me into a crook.’

  ‘You’d be his accomplice,’ Colin said. ‘He’d have got you then.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘And when you went to prison he’d come and get Mum.’

  ‘Colin,’ Maisie said, ‘tell your father what you told me.’

  Colin told it again, from the time he had met Herbert Muskie at the creek right up to him cutting Verna’s hair – and everything was plain to see in the story now, except that, just like Maisie, Laurie could not believe Herbert Muskie had drowned his mother.

  ‘He’s been after everyone,’ Colin said. ‘His brother and his sisters. But mainly you and Mum.’

  ‘But his mother. He loved her.’

  ‘She couldn’t save him though. When he was a boy.’

  He saw Herbert Muskie’s madness clearer than the others. He saw how it could swing from murder, and open cruelty, like Verna’s hair, to the cleverness of sucking Laurie in and waiting for Maisie.

  ‘You should have told us about the sovereigns, Colin. Then none of this might have happened.’

  ‘Laurie, you mustn’t blame him.’

  ‘I was his accomplice,’ Colin said. ‘He got me caught.’

  ‘He nearly got me,’ Laurie said. ‘As soon as it’s light I’m going to see Bill Dreaver.’

  But the darkness seemed to go on and on.

  ‘What if Herbert Muskie comes here?’ Colin said.

  Laurie went to the wash-house and got his hammer. He laid it on the table. ‘I’ll be ready,’ he said.

  ‘What about Verna, though? What about her?’

  ‘She’ll be all right, son. And Bette. They haven’t hurt him,’ Maisie said.

  ‘We should go round and tell them. So they can get away.’

  ‘No,’ Laurie said. ‘Leave it to the police. They can handle it. I’ll tell them about that shed in Morningside.’

  Meanwhile the fat man – or Herbert Muskie as we must call him now – had worked out that Laurie would do that. When he came out of the Remuera house and found him gone, he drove around searching in the streets. He even drove halfway to Loomis and would have gone all the way and waited close to Laurie’s house, but the danger of Laurie going straight to the police was too great. He had to shift the goods in the shed, make them safe. Then he could do something about Laurie Potter. He could not take the slow revenge he had wanted. He would have to make him vanish, kill him quick.

  He woke the man called Ron and they worked fast. They shifted the goods from the Morningside shed to a garage in Kingsland, close by. Even so it took longer. Ron was not as fit and strong as Laurie. Herbert Muskie left him at the garage and went for the last load by himself. But their luck had run out. All this shifting and driving before dawn had alerted a woman who lived close to the garage in Kingsland – she suffered from varicose veins she said, they kept her awake at night with their aching – and she sent her husband out the back door and over the garden fence to fetch the police.

  As Herbert Muskie was driving back, he saw a police car turn into the street where the garage was. He made a U-turn and drove away. He headed for Loomis. They would catch Ron and Ron would talk; he would try to save his skin by putting as much blame as he could on his partner. Herbert Muskie drove recklessly, and raged inside. He had to get away, tonight; he had to find a place to hide. Laurie and Maisie Potter – that must be put off. But when he was ready he would come back.

  Halfway up the Waikumete hill he stopped and dumped most of the goods in the cemetery pine forest. He kept a bottle of whisky and some cigarettes. Dawn was breaking as he pulled up outside his house in Loomis. All he wanted here were his emergency money and a suitcase of spare clothes.

  But where would he go? How would he hide? His size, his scar, made it almost impossible.

  A hostage, Herbert Muskie thought. I need a hostage.

  He let himself into the house and went upstairs quietly. Quietly he opened Verna’s door.

  She was not there. Her bed was empty, not even slept in.

  Herbert Muskie ran to Bette’s room – and there Verna was, with her cropped hair, sharing the double bed with her mother. Two white faces looked over the eiderdown at him.

  ‘Get up, Vern, and get your clothes on quick. You’re coming with me.’

  ‘No,’ Bette cried. ‘You’re not taking her.’

  Verna scrambled out of bed and tried to duck past Muskie in the door. She meant to get out of the house and run somewhere – anywhere.

  Herbert Muskie caught her arm. He shook her. He cuffed her. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘And you too,’ he said to Bette in the bed.

  But Bette jumped out and tried to attack Herbert Muskie. He threw her away one-handed. ‘The cops are after me. You’ll get her back when I’m safe, not before.’ He took the key from the lock, stepped out and locked the door, dragging Verna by the arm.

  ‘Now you,’ he said, ‘get some clothes. Not too many. And stop your snivelling, it’s getting on me nerves.’

  He pushed her into her bedroom and watched while she tried to gather clothes from a drawer. He had forgotten Bette. He thought that she was useless. But now Bette was driven by her love for Verna, and perhaps her love for her dead husband too. People were starting to act against Herbert Muskie at last.

  Bette climbed out her bedroom window. Laurie had not taken down his scaffolding yet. She climbed to the ground. Then she ran out the front gate and along the road, in her nightie, bruising her feet on the metal. She ran for the only place she could think of. Maisie and Laurie and Colin, eating breakfast early, heard her feet on the path; a pattering like dead leaves in a storm.

  ‘Maisie,’ she sobbed as they opened the door, ‘he’s taking Verna with him. He’s running away.’

  Colin took off without a word. He was out the door before anyone could stop him. He knew his father would follow on his bike, and his mother would get the police. He had to reach Verna before she was gone. He had to stop Herbert Muskie taking her away. Poor Colin. A seven-stone boy, a quiet, gentle boy, cannot fight an eighteen-stone man with murder on his mind. It’s just as well he did not have to face Herbert Muskie alone. Laurie caught him outside the gate to the Muskie house. Laurie had left fast too, but getting his bike from the shed had taken time. He had forgotten his hammer.

  The Buick stood outside the gate. A tangle of Verna’s clothes lay on the back seat, with a suitcase, initialled H.J.M., four-square beside it. Herbert Muskie was a tidy man. Two brown-paper bags stained with grease filled the rest of the seat.

  ‘Stay here, Colin,’ Laurie said, but Colin disobeyed him and followed up the path. They were halfway to the front door when a bursting sound, a shattering, came from the side of the house and something heavy crashed into the hydrangeas.

  So many things were taking place it’s difficult to remember them all. We must go back a step or two and say what happened to Verna.

  Herbert Muskie never let her get more than an arm’s length away. She gathered her clothes, an armful, haphazardly, then waited while he packed his suitcase in his mother’s bedroom, where he kept his clothes in the dressing-table and the wardrobe. He to
ok her to the bathroom and locked her in with him while he washed and shaved. She watched as he lathered his face and stropped his razor. If he hadn’t had a pee in the pine trees at Waikumete, she might have had to go to the dunny and watch that too. Then they went back to his mother’s bedroom and he put on clean underclothes and a shirt and suit and tie. For a moment he was half naked in the room. Verna hid her eyes.

  They took their clothes out to the car and put them on the back seat. ‘Food,’ Herbert Muskie said. They returned to the house and he made her fill paper bags with the cakes and sandwiches left over from the party. They took them out too. (He had already got his money. The hiding place was the chamber pot in his mother’s commode.)

  ‘Get in,’ he said, and Verna climbed into the passenger seat. She was trying to be careful and do everything he said. She was so frightened of him that even if he gave her the chance to run, her legs would not have carried her far. He stood at the driver’s door and looked at the house. He must have known he would never come back to it.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘get out.’

  He did not wait for her to move but opened the door and reached across and dragged her past the steering wheel. He slammed the door and they went back to the house. Verna was sure he was taking her there to kill her. Her legs stopped working. Herbert Muskie jerked her up and swore, then carried her the rest of the way under his arm. He went inside and closed the front door, and at that moment Colin ran into Millbrook Road. He missed by a whisker seeing them go in.

  Herbert Muskie went through the entrance hall into the kitchen. He swung Verna on to the table and sat her there. ‘Don’t move.’ He went to a cupboard, straight to what he wanted, his mother’s old stone rolling pin, as heavy as the axle of a car.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Verna could not move. He pulled her off the table, stood her up. ‘Walk, girl. I’m not carrying you.’ He pushed her once, twice, to the entrance hall. ‘Stand there.’

  Then Herbert Muskie lined up the stained-glass window. He swung the rolling pin in a round-arm loop to judge its weight. Verna felt the wind of it on her face. He set himself, held still for a moment, then threw it with an easy motion, overarm. It flipped twice in the air, like a thrown knife, hit the window in its centre, burst it into pieces and fell into the hydrangeas outside. That was the noise Colin and Laurie heard from the front path.

  ‘Stay here. I mean it,’ Laurie cried. He ran around the side of the house. As he went from sight the front door opened and Herbert Muskie appeared, holding Verna by the hand like a man taking his daughter to school.

  ‘So, it’s the kid,’ Herbert Muskie said. He ran at Colin, pounced at him before he could move, dragging Verna all the way. He caught him with his free hand at the nape of his neck.

  ‘Gotcha, kid.’

  Colin yelled and tried to fight, but Herbert Muskie tightened his fingers and held him still. ‘Now I got two hostages,’ he said.

  Laurie came back round the side of the house. He had found the rolling pin. He saw Herbert Muskie and started at him, but Muskie saw him too and yelled, ‘Stay back, Pottsie. I’ll wring your kid’s neck if you move.’

  His fingers bit. Laurie saw Colin’s anguished face. He stopped his advance.

  ‘Let him go, Herbie. Then I’ll let you go.’

  Herbert Muskie laughed. ‘Ah, Pottsie, don’t be a sap. I got the aces.’ He shook Colin, he shook Verna. He had switched his grip on her and had her, too, by the nape of the neck. ‘Now chuck away your waddie. Over the fence back there. Chuck it! I’ll bang their heads together, you reckon I won’t?’

  Laurie measured the distance between them and saw he had no choice. He threw the rolling pin over the fence into the bushes.

  ‘Let them go now, Herbie. They haven’t done anything to you.’

  ‘Ah Pottsie, that’s not the point. I need them ’cause the cops are after me. Now you stay where you are and I won’t hurt them. It only needs a little squeeze. Tell ’im, kid.’

  ‘Dad,’ Colin managed to say.

  ‘It’s all right, Colin. I’m not going to do anything.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it,’ Herbert Muskie said. He backed away several steps, walking Colin and Verna, then turned and pushed them ahead of him as far as the gate. ‘Open it.’

  Verna lifted the catch and pulled it open. She did not seem as tightly held as Colin. Herbert Muskie walked them to the car. ‘Back door.’ She opened it. ‘In you go.’ He pushed her in across the bags of food. Then he took Colin in two hands and threw him on top of her and slammed the door.

  Laurie saw his chance. He ran across the weedy lawn and took the picket fence like a hurdler. Herbert Muskie, halfway into the driver’s seat, heard him coming. He backed out and spun around, with his freakish quickness, and stepped towards Laurie, two steps. Laurie forgot his boxing. His run took him in close. He sprang at Herbert Muskie, who bellowed and wrapped him in two arms. His shoulders bulged, his face turned red, as he gave a squeeze. Laurie dropped broken on the ground. Muskie would have trampled on him then, or strangled him, but a car turned off the bridge into Millbrook Road.

  Colin, untangling himself from Verna in the back seat, saw it from the rear window. Herbert Muskie saw it too, and recognised it – a police car. He moved a step at Laurie, then moved away, flung a look of hatred at him – ‘I’ll be back for you, Pottsie’ – and scrambled into the car. He got it started, roared away, slamming through the gears, before Colin and Verna could climb out.

  How did the police car get there? It was just as Herbert Muskie had supposed. Ron tried to put the blame on his partner. He told the police all about Herbert Muskie and that he lived in Loomis, although Ron didn’t know where. The Auckland detectives telephoned Constable Dreaver, who was waiting for them when they arrived at his station. He got into the car and they drove to Millbrook Road and were just in time to save Laurie’s life. They might have caught Herbert Muskie if they hadn’t stopped to see if the man lying at the side of the road was all right. Dreaver stayed with him – Laurie had two cracked ribs – and the detectives took off again after Muskie’s car, but by that time he was more than a mile ahead. The dust had died down. They came to a fork in the road and took the wrong turning.

  So Herbert Muskie got away with his two hostages. By nine o’clock that morning every policeman in Auckland was keeping an eye out for a green Buick sedan, driven by a fat man with a scar on his cheek, and two children, a boy and a girl, riding with him. But the car was clear by that time. Herbert Muskie had circled back to Auckland and driven through the southern suburbs of the city. He took back roads through farming country and reached the sea on the Hauraki Gulf. He drove along the coast road at an even pace and even whistled once – whistled ‘Alabamy Bound’.

  Colin and Verna sat huddled on the back seat. They had made a place for themselves among Verna’s clothes. Several times, on corners where the car had to slow down, they wondered if there would be a chance to open the door and jump out. They did not try to get the attention of the few people they passed. Herbert Muskie had said, while in the suburbs, ‘If you wave or squeal, you two back there, you’re goners. Understand?’ They understood. Colin tried to think of plans; Verna too. He thought he might lean over Herbert Muskie’s shoulder and grab the wheel and steer the car into a ditch. She thought she might get a handful of mashed-up cake from the paper bag and smear it in Herbert Muskie’s eyes. That would give them a chance …

  Neither of them did anything. They didn’t talk, even in whispers. They held hands. Colin looked at her from time to time to see if she was still all right. Her hair was jaggedly cut all over her head. A speck of dried blood showed where the razor had nicked her. Apart from that she looked the way she had on her first morning at Loomis school. She even wore the same dress.

  Once she whispered to him, ‘Is your neck all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, although nodding hurt. Herbert Muskie’s fingers had dug deep.

  At ten o’clock Muskie stopped the car in a side road by a
muddy beach.

  ‘Hand me some of that chocolate sponge.’

  Verna found a piece in the bag and passed it to him.

  ‘You squash this on purpose, Vern?’

  ‘No.’

  Herbert Muskie ate. ‘You, kid. There’s a bottle of whisky there, beside me case.’

  Colin passed it over and Muskie swigged a mouthful. ‘You two can eat. Go on.’

  ‘No thank you,’ Verna said.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Colin said.

  ‘Suit yourselves. Did you see what I did to your old man, kid?’

  ‘He’s all right. The police were helping him sit up.’

  ‘Too bad.’ He opened the glove box and took out a ball of twine. ‘Get out of the car.’ He was out himself, with his usual quickness, by the time they opened the door.

  ‘Are you going to tie us up?’ Verna said.

  ‘I want you in the front with me. I don’t like people behind. The kid here’s dumb enough to try something on. You thought you might hit me with me whisky, eh kid?’

  ‘No,’ Colin said.

  ‘Sure you did. I don’t mind. I like a kid with guts. And when you get in front, eh, you might try grabbing the wheel. So …’ He took out his pocket knife and cut a length of twine.

  ‘I need to go to the lavatory,’ Verna said.

  ‘He’ll close his eyes,’ Herbert Muskie joked, but he let her go alone into the bushes. ‘I don’t reckon you’re gonna run while I still got the kid.’

  When she came back, Colin went. Then Herbert Muskie tied them together, Verna’s right wrist to Colin’s right, so Colin, sitting beside him, would have his arm across his waist. He took a can of petrol from the boot and poured it into the tank. Before leaving, he peed too, at the back of the car. Then they drove on, through Ngatea and across the top of the Hauraki Plains – although Colin and Verna did not know these names and Herbert Muskie wasn’t too familiar with them. He was just putting distance between himself and Loomis.

  As they drove he lost his good humour. They climbed hills and wound through gorges. ‘Bloody roads, they should make ’em straight.’