Crystal Ice

by Warren Miner-Williams

  “That sir, is a note with a phone number on it.” hissed Rupene sarcastically. “I can’t see it from here but it looks like a mate’s number. It wasn’t stuffed anywhere, it was placed very carefully in that little pocket in the lid, so when you’re finished with it pop it back would you please.”

  “Certainly, sir but you will have to re-pack your case. And, when you’re done, you and Ms Henare can go.”

  “Thank you, officer err… what is your name?”

  “I don’t have a name Mr Rupene, I have a number, M274. Nice to have met you again sir.”

  “You poor bugger, couldn’t your old mum think of a name? See you again then, M274.”

  “I’m sure I will Mr Rupene. I’m often here around this time, do pop in anytime.”

  Both Rupene and Grant Richards could see the funny side, and Rupene was laughing for both of them.

  Jennifer re-joined him, outside the Red Area. “What the fuck are you laughing at Brian? I can’t see the funny side of having my dirty underwear paraded in front of the entire world.”

  “You, have a loud, dirty and disrespectful voice, did you know that?” hissed Brian as the couple emerged into the public area of the arrival terminal. Jennifer realised too late that she had overstepped the mark. She would pay for that remark when they got home to Anderson Street, Glendowie.

  As soon as Rupene left the search area, Grant Richards started typing up the activity report on the Customs database. AKP053645 was just another routine report of a negative search, routine except for the telephone number found on the yellow post-it notepaper that Grant had memorised and included in the narrative of his report.

  ***

  Daniel Tua, co-leader of the Skorpions believed that he was Teflon coated. That nothing would stick to him, and in these later years, nothing ever did. His appearances in court for assault and drug charges were history. Whenever he went out with his bodyguard, Vince Eremia, he was clean, – no drugs, and his Harley conformed to the letter of the law. Though he had a de facto wife, Ngaire Rakena, the mother of his six children, he also had a girlfriend. Sarah Heta was only 22 years old but looked 32. She lived with her brother Julian, a non-patched Skorpion member, and his family in Otara. A reformed drug addict, Sarah had been saved from an inevitable death by her brother and Daniel Tua. It was while she was an addict that Daniel Tua first saw her. His lust for her didn’t include drug addiction, so he ‘rescued’ her, took her back to Otara and dumped her in her brother's home. As soon as she was clean Daniel reeled her in, and although Julian objected, he was in no position to enforce his dissatisfaction. So twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, Daniel would call for Sarah and take her to the drug house in Tui Glen Road, Papakura. Sometimes they would spend the night there, sometimes just a few hours, whatever it took to satiate Daniel’s lust for the girl. Sarah was never going to replace Ngaire, to him she was just a sex object. However, Daniel’s sexual appetite was not conventional, he was depraved and often cruel. At first, in some weird way, Sarah thought that Daniel loved her and that by enduring his sexual cruelty she would eventually win him away from Ngaire. Sarah though was living in a fantasy world, because she soon knew that when Daniel became tired of her he would cast her aside as he would any other piece of garbage.

  From the outside number 43 Tui Glen Road, looked no different from any other house in the same road. It was a conventional Kiwi bungalow, nearly eighty years old. Its white weatherboards were freshly painted and the framing around the windows and doors was canary yellow. Most of the wood from which it was made was kauri, making the scrap value of the house almost as much as its market value as a dwelling. However, the clean, well-maintained façade did not extend to the interior of the house. Inside the rimu flooring was covered with a dirty brown carpet, almost as old as the house itself. The interior matchstick furnishings, what little there were, were almost as old as the carpet. The rarely drawn brown curtains were dirty and torn and the whole place reeked of the tomcat that periodically marked his territory inside the kitchen. Number 43 was a drug distribution house. Its sole occupier was Andrew Kuri, who when he was not high on cannabis, played almost constantly on his PlayStation 2, so cleaning and decorating were not his idea of time and money well spent. The one room that was an exception was the so-called master bedroom. Daniel had got one of the gang women to clean and furnish it. The smell of cat pee did not extend to this room, as it was equipped with a handful of air fresheners. Unlike any of the other rooms the 100-watt bulb had a light shade, a cream paper globe that softened and romanticised the lighting. The walls, painted in cream with a hint of pink, matched the bed and the bed linen that had cost a small fortune and Kuri was under pain of death never to sleep on it. Except for the 55-inch OLED TV in the corner it was a bedroom that would not look out of place in any Auckland suburb.

  At eight o-clock on a Tuesday, Daniel, Vince and Sarah arrived as usual and sent Kuri out of the house. As always, he walked down to the Papakura Tavern and joined his mates drinking and betting on the TAB (Totalisator Agency Board), while Daniel and Sarah retired to the master bedroom.

  ***

  Hidden in the shadows behind 43 Tui Glen Road, the two Croatian assassins watched the lights come on in the bedroom at the rear of the house. This was no coincidence, no stroke of luck on their part, they knew their target would be there, they even knew at what time he would be there.

  In a perverse ritual, Daniel Tua stripped Sarah naked in front of the bedroom window, pushed her to her knees and unzipped his fly. Beyond the window, the hunters took little notice of the depravity Daniel was forcing Sarah to perform. Communicating by hand signals alone, they split up and circled around the house from opposite sides. Daniel and Sarah were not a problem, but they needed to locate the bodyguard, Vince Eremia, and eliminate him first. The tattered curtains of the lounge could not be drawn even if the occupant of the room wanted. The single naked bulb that hung from its central position in the ceiling brightly illuminated Eremia as efficiently as stage lights would. While one of the assassins watched Eremia, preoccupied with the PlayStation, the second made his way silently to the side door. Using a sophisticated comms system, similar to that used by the world’s Special Forces, the two men outside were now in constant communication with each other, and as soon as the side door was opened and Eremia was not alerted the observer joined his companion. They knew the layout of the house because they had been supplied with a scaled blueprint of the premises. Nothing had been left to chance. Again, using hand signals to co-ordinate their actions, they entered the front room together.

  “If that’s you Kuri, you fucking asshole, you’re going to regret leaving the pub so early” shouted Eremia.

  As the bodyguard turned to confirm the identity of the person entering the room, one of the assassins grabbed Eremia by the hair and pulled his head over the back of his chair. Then, in the same movement, he plunged the razor-sharp blade into the side of Eremia’s neck. His cries were stifled by the steel grip of the second assassin’s hand, covering the bodyguard’s mouth from the front. Eremia’s efforts to free himself faded quickly as the blood spurted from his severed carotid artery and within a minute, he was dead.

  Having switched off the light in the lounge so that no one in the street might see the body of Eremia, the two assassins waited outside the door of the master bedroom. Just as Sarah Heta cried out in pain from the heinous act that Tua was subjecting her to the bedroom door burst open and the two killers stormed into the room. In seconds, knives were at the throats of both Tua and Heta. While Tua cried and begged for mercy, Sarah remained silent. The larger of the two-man assault force held Tua by his hair before stabbing him in the throat, just below his chin. Then, pulling the blade downwards, he cut along the centre line of his throat, down to the notch in his sternum. With Tua spluttering for breath through the blood flowing into his trachea, Sarah still remained silent. The cut was not meant to be a fatal wound. The second intruder pushed the naked girl into the corner of the room and without sa
ying a word, made her aware that any sound from her meant that she would get the same treatment. Tua was quickly dragged towards a low coffee table in front of the TV. Still held by his hair, Tua’s hands were forced onto the table by the second assassin, who with the skill of a surgeon, amputated both hands at the wrist with four quick slashes of his knife. Tua fell backwards, away from the table as he lost consciousness. Still naked, Sarah remained silent in the corner of the room, her knees drawn up to her chin. Far from being terrified, there was a look of satisfaction on her face as her living nightmare lay motionless in a pool of his own blood.

  Tua slowly regained some of his senses when the leader of the killing team urinated on his face. Through the red mist of his agony Tua, barely conscious, knew that his ordeal was not yet over. Terrified of what was to follow he tried to shuffle towards the dark space beneath the bed, but long before he got there he was stopped as one of the assassins who kicked him viciously in the groin. More gurgling and spluttering gave testament to his additional pain. As Tua rolled onto his back the same killer plunged his hand into the wound of his victim’s neck, then with two more swift slashes of the knife he pulled the gang leader’s tongue out through the hole in his throat. A Chicago necktie. Unable to breathe, Tua slowly turned blue, suffocated and died. The two killers then dragged Tua against the bedroom wall and wrote “lying thief” in large bloody letters on the wall behind him. Just before the leading assassin left the bedroom, he pointed a forefinger at Sarah and then held it to his lips, a clear message to be quiet. Seconds later only the barking of a neighbour’s dog marked their disappearance into the night.

  When Andrew Kuri returned to the house in Tui Glen Road in the early hours of the morning, he didn’t know what to do. He found Eremia first, collapsed over the arm of the chair he had been sitting on. There was blood everywhere he looked. The PlayStation was still on and Kratos, the merciless Spartan warrior, of “God of War” was paused in mid-fight. Though Kuri was the size of a house and good with his fists as well as a knife, he had no experience of this. It took him twenty minutes to find the strength to search the rest of the house. Terrified by what he had seen in the lounge, he was just as terrified of disturbing Tua in the master bedroom. When he found Daniel Tua, in the macabre tableau arranged by his killers, Kuri fled the house altogether. Sometime later he telephoned his contact in the Skorpions who, strangely, told him to call the police. Kuri, at his wits’ end, didn’t know what to do. So, he did what any weasel would do, nothing.

  Sarah Heta had returned to her brother’s house sometime during the early morning. She told no one of Tua’s death, she was just thankful that her torture at the hands of that cruel bastard was well and truly over.

  The only thing that connected Tui Glen to the Skorpions was Tua. There had been no gang members using the house, it was just a drug distribution centre, mostly for ‘weed’ and could be written off as a necessary loss. Kuri was not a patched Skorpion member and though he had a Skorpion telephone number, it was the number of a prepaid phone and was therefore virtually untraceable.

  ***

  It had just started to rain when Goran Sumovich crossed Maunganui Road and walked away from the harbour. He didn’t mind the rain, certainly not in New Zealand, and certainly not this evening. He was glad to get off the ship and stretch his legs. As usual the MV Olga Tovic had made an uneventful entrance to Tauranga Harbour after the pilot had met the ship well beyond the entrance between Mount Maunganui itself and Matakana Island. The pilot was a very experienced mariner himself and made their entry to the harbour look easy. Depending on the state of the tide, very swift currents through the entrance made it one of the more difficult harbour entrances in the Southern Hemisphere. Captain Sumovich waited until his first officer had started the process of unloading the ship before he made his way out of the dock area to keep his appointment with Dino Sutic. Goran loved the smell of rain on a summer evening; its coolness on the hot pavement heated during the day seemed to lift an aroma from the ground that was unmistakable. As he turned along Marine Parade the rain increased in intensity and forced Sumovich to open his umbrella. Number 114 Marine Parade was set back from the road on the ocean side, and just before Sumovich crossed the road again he checked in either direction for any sign that his presence was being monitored. Climbing up the steep driveway made the captain’s thighs begin to burn. Life aboard an ocean-going ship meant that decent exercise was rare and his legs made their painful protest with each step up to the front door. Just as he was about to ring the doorbell the door swung open, revealing Dino Sutic’ his arms already spread in warm welcome. The two men embraced, slapping each other heartily on the back.

  “Great to see you again Goran, come on in. Go through to the lounge, the whole family is here, and the barbecue is already fired up.”

  Having closed the door Sutic slapped his friend on the back once again.

  “How was your journey? Incident free I hope, no typhoons or tropical storms? Mind your step.”

  “No problems Dino, the weather was good, and yes the voyage was almost incident free.”

  As Sumovich negotiated the silly step between the hall and the lounge Frančiška Sutic, Dino’s wife, emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron before embracing Sumovich.

  “Lovely to see you again Goran. I hope your voyage was incident free?”

  “We’ve already been through that Frankie. Just give him a hug and I’ll get him a drink.”

  “Nice to see you again Frančiška, Sara sends her love and she told me to give you this. No need to open it immediately, it’s a photograph of us all beside Lak Balaton last summer.”

  Frančiška took no notice of what Goran was telling her as she carefully removed the purple tissue paper the photograph was wrapped in. She stared at the photograph, bathed in the memories of that hot summer’s day the two families shared beside the lake. As she turned to face Sumovich again, the captain saw a small tear in the corner of her eye.

  “How is Anica? I remember she was very happy on that day,” said Frančiška smiling at her old friend.

  Goran stretched out his hand and gently wiped away the tear.

  “She’s fine Frankie, just fine. Now give me another hug.”

  Frančiška Sutic did as she was told, embracing Goran Sumovich as she would her own father. Looking at the photograph once more, she noticed the frame. It was solid silver, embellished with crocus flowers.

  “Goran the frame is beautiful, isn’t it the same as the one your mother gave you.”

  “It is the one my mother gave me. Sara and I want you to have it, we know that you loved it. So please, accept it with our love.”

  She paused for a second. “No Goran, I couldn’t. It’s a family heirloom, it should remain in your family.”

  “Oh, don’t fret about that, we have plenty of heirlooms. And in any case, Sara would shoot me if I took it back. So don’t make a fuss. Just enjoy it.” Said Goran, pleased how appreciative Frančiška was.

  “Well, if you put it like that. I will treasure it, I promise.”

  “Come on you two, stop gossiping, the man must be gasping for a drink,” said Dino, ushering his friend through the lounge.”

  When Goran stepped out on the deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean the view was just as breath-taking as the first time he had visited the house. Then suddenly he was surrounded by children, all shouting his name, all asking whether he had brought them any treats. As always, he had brought them a vast supply of Gorenjka milk chocolate.

  “I gave a little chocolate to Frančiška,” he teased “so it’s probably already in the fridge.” As if by magic the five children disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  “I was just about to come and rescue you. Welcome back Goran, it’s good to see you again. Welcome my friend, welcome.”

  It was Levorko, Dino’s younger brother. Although they were two years apart, any outsider would think the brothers were twins. Yet although they looked similar, they were light years apart i
n character. Levorko was the quiet, deep thinker, the strategic brain behind their arm of the jihad. He was the one who came up with the ideas. Dino was much more pragmatic, he was the tactician, converting theory into practice. He ran the restaurant and managed everything to do with the manufacture of the Crystal Ice. But it was Levorko who had envisioned how to utilise the vast sums of money that their enterprise generated. It was Levorko’s plan that would soon strike a decisive victory against the infidel, the plan that would strike fear into the hearts of all Americans.

  “Goran, a glass of wine,” said Dino, passing the captain a champagne flute.

  “This is nice. What is it?”

  “It’s a 2004, Thornbury, Pinot Gris,” interjected Frančiška.

  As Frančiška returned to the kitchen the conversation around the barbecue turned serious once more.

  “Goran,” began Dino, “your passengers have succeeded in their task and you should be able to pick them up as planned on your return journey north. I understand they are looking forward to fish and chips at that famous fish shop, in Mangonui I think.”