Snow Bond

by Ross Richdale

Renee smiled. "Perhaps a cream one. Nothing's black and white."

  AN HOUR LATER RENEE and Aza headed back to the house for a well-earned lunch. When they arrived Tyler and Ian met them.

  "Did you notice Sofia walk past the cottage?" Ian asked.

  Renee frowned and glanced at Aza who shook her head. "No. Why would she walk past and not drop in? She knew we were there."

  "She found an earlier bus on the web and has left with all her luggage," Tyler added. "If you want to catch her you'd better hurry for the bus is due past on the main highway in about ten minutes."

  Aza turned to Renee. "I can't just let her go." She sounded alarmed.

  "Come on," Renee said and restarted the quad bike.

  "Can I help?" Ian asked.

  Aza glowered at him. "I think you've done quite enough over the last few hours." She climbed on the quad bike behind Renee. "Let's go!"

  Renee glanced at Ian who appeared somewhat bewildered, gave him a tiny wave to signify she'd look after Aza and roared back up the drive. It was only a few hundred metres to the corner but the bus shelter mainly used for high school children from East Ridge Station was almost another kilometre up the road. Sofia was nowhere in sight so this must be where she headed.

  She shouted back at Aza with the information and increased speed on the road that had had a snowplough through and the surface was free of ice and snow.

  "Oh no," screamed Aza and grabbed Renee's arm. "There's the bus! It must have already picked her up."

  Coming towards them was a white West Coast Shuttle bus that connected Greymouth on the West Coast with Christchurch.

  "Okay!" Renee gasped. She flashed the quad bike's headlights as she pulled across onto the wrong side of the road so they were still facing the approaching vehicle. Aza jumped off and stood by the roadside frantically waving her arms.

  It worked for the bus slowed and the inside indicator flashed to show that it was going to stop. There was a faint hiss of brakes and the passenger door opened.

  "You just about missed me, Lady," Renee heard the driver say to Aza who stood by the opened door.

  "No," Aza replied. "Did you pick up a girl with a bandaged arm at the East Ridge Bus Stop?"

  "Yes. She's aboard. Why, did she leave something behind?"

  Renee glanced along the bus and noticed Sofia sitting about three quarters of the way back, staring at her. She stood up on the bike and waved at her as she shouted out. She guessed that Sofia wouldn't hear her so she waved again with both hands.

  Sofia shook her head but did appear to stand. Meanwhile Aza was still talking to the driver who had turned so his words couldn't be heard. That moment seemed to drag before Aza stood back, the driver came out and opened the luggage door on the side of the bus.

  Sofia appeared and stepped down onto the roadside, Aza grabbed her in a frantic embrace and Renee walked across to where the driver pulled Sofia's bag out and placed it on the road.

  "I can't give her the fare back," he muttered. "She'll need to make a claim from our office in Christchurch. There's an online form to fill in."

  "We'll do that," Renee replied. "Thank you for stopping and I apologise for interrupting your journey."

  The driver grinned. "That's okay, Lady," he said. "On this route we often have unexpected stops." He shut the luggage door, re-boarded the bus and, with a wave of his hand, drove away.

  Renee turned and found Aza still holding Sofia in a tight cuddle. The pair turned and Renee noticed Sofia's tearstained face.

  "I though..." she whispered. "I thought it would be better if I just left."

  "And I said that there was no way I was going to let her go and ruin our friendship." Aza turned to Sofia. "I love you Sofia, I really do. Nothing I did with Ian will change that. I am pretty ignorant about these things but we'll sort it out." She kissed her companion on the cheek. "We'll sort it out."

  "Come on," Renee cut in as she placed Sofia's bag on the quad bike tray. "We can all squeeze on. I hope the men will have that lunch ready for us."

  Sofia nodded and climbed aboard, Aza followed, Renee gunned the throttle and they headed home.

  AZA AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP intrigued Ian. He had originally thought of her as one of those university academics who like many he knew, lived in a world completely divorced from reality. They were paid high salaries and in most cases had little regard for the problems that ordinary families had. She was somewhat reserved at first with Sofia being the more approachable one. However, the bubble had burst and their frenzied lovemaking was more than just lust. The second time between hay bales in the shed made him think back to early university days and the overcharged hormones of both men and women in their late teens. There was even that almost clandestine approach that Aza had actually suggested. It was almost as if she wanted to keep their romance a secret from everyone.

  He had had a few short-term relationships and a couple of longer ones with the most recent ending by mutual agreement, he guessed. Paige was another lawyer but fortunately from a different firm that he was employed by so once they split up, there was not the embarrassment of having to continue to stumble over each other in the office. In fact, she did similar work to himself with the other firm and had, at times cooperated with information.

  It was a sunny afternoon but still cold with an icy breeze coming off the mountains, the snow had mainly turned to slush but ice still made the roads and paths slippery. He had helped Tyler who had set up a relay station up at the top tank to bring the mobile signal down to the village. He was a talented guy and apparently had the gear stored away but the big snowstorm had delayed its installation. It worked well and had a range of half a kilometre or more around East Ridge.

  They were now in a second of Tyler's cottages testing it out. Tyler had gone back to the main house to alter the antennae after they had found that the signal only worked when they stood on the back veranda. He was thinking again about Aza and the fact that she was the target of the two gunmen when his mobile rang. It was Tyler.

  "Where are you?" Tyler asked.

  "In the kitchen. You're coming in well."

  "That's usually the case," Tyler replied. "Either you get a signal or none at all. Can you go through to the bedroom and call me back."

  "Sure."

  Ian walked though to the room and grinned. There was a double bed that was all made up ready to receive guests. Renee had told him that there was a booking for both cottages the following week, One reason that Tyler wanted to get the mobile coverage set up was that one family asked especially if they were within mobile range. Renee assured them that they were but only with one of the three main companies.

  Ian sat on the bed and called Tyler. It worked perfectly.

  "Great," Tyler said. "Lunch will be served in half and hour so come on back and we'll try the other cottage later."

  "So I can call anywhere?"

  Tyler chuckled. "Why not? Just use your iPhone as you normally would."

  "Right," Ian said. "I have a few calls to make."

  He clicked off and called back to his office. He was assured that there was nothing-extraordinary happening so he should enjoy the remaining few days of his holiday.

  After thinking for a moment he decided to make another call.

  'Hello Ian," said the female voice. "Why are you calling?"

  "Hi Paige. How's it going?"

  "Fine," came the reply. "But you never just call to ask about the weather. What do you want?"

  "Can you follow something up for me?"

  The voice turned business like. "Go on!"

  "Have you heard of Professor Joseph Hardy from Auckland University?"

  "I have but why are you interested?"

  "I'd like a background check done on him, especially over the last five years or so..." He continued on with details about what Aza had told him about the professor.

  'This is big stuff," Paige finally said. "Why don't you do it yourself through the Crown Prosecutor's Office?"

  "We are following up
those assassination attempts but I want more about his personal life. You know the things, his marital situation, has he had any affairs with students, has anyone else complained about him using their research as his own and so forth."

  "This Doctor Aza Perry the new girlfriend, Ian?"

  "I know her, yes but..."

  Paige Cohen laughed. "Spare we the erotic details, Ian. However, for old time's sake I'll do it for you. Give me a week."

  "I owe you one. Thanks," Ian clicked off and headed back to main house.

  CHAPTER 10

  Paige's research found nothing extraordinary in either Professor Joseph Hardy's professional or personal life. He was an academic who seemingly spent his whole adult life involved in academic research and teaching, rising to his present position as a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Auckland University. At his present age of sixty-one, he had never been married and there were no records of him having any sexual relationships, heterosexual or homosexual with students or other staff members.

  Information about his life outside the universities was sparse but comments about his interpersonal relationships within the university showed that a trend of aloofness and intolerance bordering onto arrogance had become more pronounced. This had gone against him when he had applied for pro-vice chancellor positions within New Zealand and Australian universities. More recently he had turned more to research and writing academic papers and less on lecturing postgraduate students. He had little or no contact with undergraduates.

  She researched further back into his career to find that over his forty years of academic life, he had spent two periods in overseas institutions, five years at Lancaster University in England and a similar time at University of British Columbia, UBC, in Vancouver, Canada. Further investigation found one inconsistency in his career path. In the late nineties, there was a two year gap listed as extended sabbatical leave, between when he left Vancouver until he was appointed to Auckland University in 2002 where remained until up to the present date.

  "I have a feeling about this man," Paige commented to Ian when they discussed her findings after he arrived back in Auckland. "It's what is not written and also the two year gap that interests me. Would you like me to follow this up?"

  "So there's nothing about plagiarising postgraduate's research?"

  "Only a brief mention of Aza Perry's concerns."

  Ian nodded.

  "Perhaps we could try a different approach," Paige suggested. "I could go to other sources of the time rather than just sticking to official university documentation. I've found that universities, like many large organisations run a 'closed ship' to protect their own reputations."

  "Okay," Ian said. "I can allocate you some funds from the public purse to follow up any leads but don't spend too much time on it. If anything has happened he seems to be an expert in keeping it hidden."

  "That's why I'm interested," Paige said. "The thought that someone high in an hierarchy can get away with criminal activities annoys me."

  Ian glanced at her. "I enjoyed the coffee," he said. "Perhaps we could..."

  Paige frowned. "Don't go there, Ian. You know we'd be scratching each other's eyes out if we get back together. Stay with this Aza for she sounds a nice person."

  "Yeah, I guess," Ian replied. "Her, having a girlfriend doesn't help."

  Paige grinned but said no more as she sipped her coffee and pondered about how she should follow up this investigation.

  IN HER HISTORICAL RESEARCH of news media and also the UBC news in 1998 and 1999, Paige found two seemingly unrelated items that could be tied into her investigation. During those years, Hardy who was a senior lecturer at UBC and had a several papers published in scientific journals on the genetic engineering of food crops to produce better yields and resistance to disease. The resulting comments on the study were divided into two opposing camps, one supported the research by saying it could solve the world's future food needs especially in developing countries while the opposite view stated that genetically modified food could spread between species and, in a worse case scenario, be unstoppable and wipe out civilisation as we know it.

  Paige could not really understand the complicated theories but did notice something of interest. Whereas Hardy's first three papers published were completely theoretical and involved scientific terms that needed a scientific dictionary for her to even follow, the last one was written in precise everyday English that she could quite easily understand.

  It was as if an entirely different person wrote that last paper. She went into the acknowledgement section of the last paper but found nothing outside the usual names that accompanied the earlier papers. There was nothing to indicate that the research was made by anyone except the man himself. Also of interest was that this was the last paper on the topic just before the university stopped all research on genetic engineering, giving withdrawal of sponsorship by local and international companies as the reason.

  By that date, Hardy had gone on his sabbatical leave and never returned to UBC.

  She accessed internal UBC records and found that several postgraduate students had worked for Hardy at the time. Of the four main ones, three had continued on to gain their PhD degrees at UBC and two still held high positions in Canadian and US universities while one had died a decade later through natural causes.

  The fourth person was a local Canadian man of Chinese ancestry who had anglicised his name to Ethan Yang. Requests to Canadian authorities about Ethan and a death notice in the The Province, one of Vancouver's newspapers in late 1999 led to the second item that interested Paige.

  Ethan had been killed in a skiing accident at the Hemlock Valley Resort, a hundred and forty kilometres east of Vancouver, in December 1999. His death was after a massive fall over a ravine and officially listed as a tragic accident in a coroner's report several weeks later. Buried within this report was a reference to an investigation by the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the town of Agassiz over some discrepancies in the cause of his death. The resort company was blamed for lack of safety procedures and was one of the reasons, among others, that it became bankrupt in 2005 only to open the following year with new owners.

  Through historical records in the local newspaper Agassiz Observer, she was able to trace Sergeant Vernon Willis who was in command of the local RCMP police station in the town at that time. Sergeant Willis had filed a report querying the coroner's findings. There was nothing about what the report stated but only that his query had been rejected and the original finding of an accidental death confirmed.

  The sergeant had retired a few years later but the elderly man was still alive and lived at Westside Haven Retirement Village in Chilliwack only twenty-five kilometres from Agassiz. She found his telephone number and established a visual link through her iPhone.

  It was evening in Canada when she made contact. The elderly man had a crop of white hair and sat on a couch with a ginger cat on his knee.

  "Well, hi there young lady, you are a warm sight for old eyes and all the way from New Zealand, I do declare. Call me Vernon but how can I help you?"

  After explaining who she was and the reason for her call, Vernon grimaced when she mentioned the name of Professor Joseph Hardy.

  "So the old bastard is now a professor who is still using devious means to feather his nest?" He stared at Paige and his expression changed as he chuckled. "I thought I had him in that Ethan Yang tragedy but there was no proof that my superiors at the time would accept so he got away with murder."

  "Yes, and it seems that he is trying it again," Paige said and repeated everything Ian had told her about Aza and the shootings at East Ridge. "I am following up the present case and my historical information about the man led me to you."

  Vernon smiled. "You have done well to get this far, Page, can I call you that?"

  "Please do."

  "The case with Ethan Yang was closed after the coroner's ruling of an accidental death was upheld and all I managed to get for my efforts was a
reprimand from my bosses at the time. However, I was still concerned about a miscarriage of justice so I gathered more evidence for myself." He grinned. "Still got it filed somewhere around. That was when we were just beginning to use computers and the good old pen and paper was still in vogue in the smaller RCMP stations."

  Paige was impressed. "You have a private file on the case?"

  "Sure do. Completely unofficial, though but I also photocopied the official stuff such as fingerprints and even have a DNA sample that was of no use at the time. Modern technology may find a use for it." Vernon chuckled as if he was enjoying himself. "Nobody realised I had taken samples for this was years later and the old file was just producing cobwebs in the Agassiz Police Station cellar."

  "But why did you do this, Vernon?"

  "Oh I guess it irritated me that that Hardy got away with murder. It was one of the few cases in my career that had an unsatisfactory result ...well no result actually and now close to twenty years later he is still doing it." He sighed. "If I can help bring him down this time, just ask."

  "Thanks Vernon, you have already been a tremendous help. Thank you."

  Vernon nodded. "Can you keep me informed on anything that eventuates, even if nothing succeeds?"

  "I will but would like access to your samples, if it's possible."

  "Sure but I doubt if anything would hold up in your court for, as I said, much is just unofficial evidence. I assume your system is similar to ours, us both being British Dominions, as such." He chuckled. "I guess I am just showing my old age now, Paige."

  "Not at all," Paige replied. "Our two countries have a lot in common, including our justice systems."

  "We'll work out something to nail the bastard," Vernon concluded as he stroked his cat. "I'll get back to you. Thanks for the contact. It was appreciated."

  Paige gave him her contact email and phone numbers; both landline and mobile for her work and home before she signed off. She was impressed by Vernon but felt somewhat saddened. Even across the other side of the world he appeared to be quite lonely. A little more research about him found that his wife of many years had died only two years earlier. He did have two children, a son and daughter, one family lived locally and other in Toronto across the other side of Canada. There were also three grandchildren.