Two strange men had visited the estate and had spoken to its owners, George and Patricia Moughan. Then they questioned Robert about the five drums of lavender oil that went to America. He had shown them all the correct paperwork, the consecutive serial numbers of the five true customs seals. They had asked in-depth questions about the security of the estate oil store, who had access, and who had the code numbers of the alarm that protected the store. They asked if he had seen anyone suspicious. He had answered the questions easily and with confidence, sure that they never suspected his involvement in the plot. The men, who he believed were from the American secret service, seemed satisfied with his answers and had left soon after. That would be it, surely? They had nothing on him at all, did they? And that is what he told the stranger, the man who was his contact in the plot, the man with the strange voice on the end of the telephone line the one who called his cell phone late at night. He too seemed satisfied that he had done a good job, diverting the American investigators from the truth.
Now it was all over and life could get back to normal. It was late on Friday night when Robert locked the door of his office and prepared to leave the Tasman Estate Lavender Farm. It was the weekend and it was time to celebrate. He had organised for one of his wife’s girlfriends to baby sit the children so that he and Ireana could have the weekend together, a weekend he would devote to the happiness of his wife. Loyal and hardworking Ireana never complained about the stresses of her life with him. Though their elder son, James, drove her to distraction she never complained. The eldest son was the one who was privileged above the other children, for when Robert died, he would be the head of the family. The trouble was, he was acting like that even though his father was still alive. Robert rarely admonished his son for this; he was just flexing his authority a little too early. He was growing up; it was to be expected.
As Robert punched the code number into the alarm pad, he thought he heard someone behind him. Turning quickly, he searched among the shadows for anything out of the ordinary. There was no one there, it was just his imagination. Patting his pockets to locate his car keys, Robert felt the outline of a fountain pen. The old man he had met in the surf club all those months ago had had a similar pen, a death ray, the man had joked. He wished he had a death ray now. Robert was a nervous man, one who regularly spooked himself hearing funny noises or seeing strange shapes amongst the shadows. A death ray would give him the confidence to face the ghosts and the ghouls that lurked in the darkness, intent on snatching his life away. If he were back in Bosnia he would have a gun, a big one and then no one would mess with him. If he had a big gun, he could take on the world, he could be a more active participant in the jihad. People would pay him respect; they would nod their heads when he passed them. Though he had access to firearms on the estate, a shotgun and a 22 rifle for killing vermin, they didn’t count. What he needed was a 10mm Glock Automatic, or a SIG Sauer P220, the most accurate of any .45. Then people would give him respect.
After setting the alarm Robert slipped his hand inside his bomber jacket, and after removing his imaginary SIG he crouched in the classic, two-handed FBI firing position, sweeping the yard in his imaginary field of fire. But there was no one to shoot. Rising once more, he placed his pen, his pretend gun, back inside his jacket. He would often play these games when he was alone, recreating the handgun shooting techniques demonstrated on the “Shooting for Keeps” video he had bought off e-Bay. Ireana had never said anything when the video arrived by courier post, but she always found an excuse to remove herself from the lounge whenever he was watching it. Her only demand was that he was not to allow the children to see it. “It’s not pornography” he shouted to her the first time she left the room. Women, they didn’t understand these things.
The Volvo estate was always left unlocked when he was at work. After all, no one would steal a beige Volvo estate, would they? It was a car that Ireana had chosen to transport the children to and from school. When they bought the Isuzu Bighorn, which had seven seats, the Volvo was passed down to Robert. He hated the car.
“James Bond wouldn’t be seen dead in such a car,” he told Ireana, when she handed him the keys on the first morning, he had driven it to work.
“Darling,” she had said in her most patronising tone, “James Bond doesn’t have four children to take to school either. When he does, you can have the Porsche.”
He had wanted to slap her across the face for that humiliating little speech, but didn’t. He had only hit his wife once and he remembered clearly what happened after that.
“You hit me again Robert, and I will pack my bags and leave. You will never see me or your children again” she had hissed. It was over six weeks before they had made love again. Ireana had changed after that incident. She might still love him, but she didn’t respect him. She had become hardened and often spoke to him as if he were a child in that same patronising manner. He feared that one day he would arrive home to find that she had left. This repetitive nightmare always started with his arrival at home, to find the front yard empty, no children playing happily on the swings, none of them running to greet him. Then once he had rushed indoors, the stark reality of his abandonment would strike him like a knife stabbing him in the heart. He would frantically search every room, but the result was always the same. The note on the kitchen bench was always the same: “Sorry Daddy but we have to leave, Mummy says you can visit once we have settled in Australia,” and every time he read it his heart broke. Each time he had read and reread Gemma’s note, hot bitter tears would course down his face. He could taste their saltiness, even now. Often when he awoke at night he would have to get up and convince himself that the children were still in their beds. Losing them, he thought, would be like losing his limbs.
Robert had only just reached the Volvo when he heard a faint rustling of leaves behind him. Perhaps a goanna, moving through the undergrowth, he thought. They would often bask on the black tarmac outside his office, soaking up the warmth of the sun. They were the most amazing climbers; they had to be when the estate dogs challenged them. They would often climb high into the gum trees that surrounded the maintenance yard, their claws like razor sharp crampons, digging into the soft bark. Robert spun around again, reaching for his imaginary gun.
He never saw the knife that flashed in the floodlights that illuminated the yard. All he saw was the silhouette of his attacker above him as he collapsed to the ground. Then the spectre disappeared into the shadows with the speed and stealth of a leopard. Robert tried to get up, but he was already too weak. Something hot was running down the front of his shirt. Slumped against the Volvo, he ran his hand through the hot stream before holding his hand to the light, shocked at its bright crimson colour. So much was pouring from his throat he could hear it gurgling, like the flow of a mountain stream. He lay down on the ground and watched his life pooling in front of his face, red on black in the bright lights. He thought of Ireana and the children. He was leaving them; would they miss him? As he lost focus on his diminishing reality, he a felt calmness spread over him. He was completely relaxed and as his final seconds passed, he embraced the inevitability of his own death like a friend being greeted after a long journey. In those last moments, as the bright lights receded, he apologised to Ireana. Even though he could not speak, his mouth formed the words – I love you.
***
“Oh my God it’s started!” exclaimed Nadine when she saw the item on the television news, about a possible pandemic. “Tony, come and look at this at this, quick.”
“What’s the urgency? Has the bloody queen died?”
Nadine was a royalist but Tony wanted rid of them. ‘Bloody parasites,’ he would often say, just to wind his wife up. Britain would never become a republic but New Zealand might. Who, he would often wonder, would be President? Back in the day it might have been Winston Peters?
But when Tony heard what the newscaster was reporting, his blood ran cold. Then the foreign correspondent in New York started her report.
<
br /> “It is believed that the outbreak of influenza in the North Eastern states of America is the result of a terrorist biological weapon. Virologists from USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases have confirmed that the strain of influenza virus used in the attack have been bio-engineered. It is understood that the terrorists would have obtained samples of the virus from a legitimate virology laboratory and then used simple replication techniques using embryonated chicken eggs. With sufficient quantities of the virus, it is thought that they managed to contaminate lavender oil destined for the C & W Cooper aerosol plant in Silver Ridge, Wisconsin. It is understood that tens of thousands of Meadowsweet lavender air fresheners were thus contaminated with the virus that so far has killed over four hundred people. The batch numbers affected by this contamination are 611374 to 622576, these numbers are visible next to the bar code on the aerosol cans. Only lavender air fresheners appear to have been contaminated although C & W Cooper is recalling every can of this spray regardless of the batch numbers. Widespread panic has caused severe disruption of normal services here in the States, as people avoid public transport, cinemas, theatres and other activities where crowds gather...”
Tony’s mind closed off completely from the report, he failed to hear the reference to New Zealand and the transhipment of the essential oil originating from the Tasman Estate Lavender Farm in Tasmania. The colour had already started to fade from his cheeks and he almost lost consciousness when Nadine told him about the New Zealand connection to the attack.
“God Tony, are you feeling alright? You look absolutely terrible. Darling, whatever’s the matter?”
There was a loud buzzing in his ears, which completely blocked out what his wife was saying. Nadine quickly moved to her husband’s side. With one arm around him and the other feeling his forehead, she gently manoeuvred him into a chair.
“Naomi,” she shouted to her youngest daughter, “wet a flannel with cold water and bring it here quickly, your father’s ill.”
“What flannel, where…?”
“Upstairs you twit. Hurry up girl, your dad may be having a heart attack!”
At the first mention of a heart attack, Naomi burst into tears and stumbled up the stairs to their bathroom. Only last year her grandfather had died of a heart attack, and to the teenager that meant her father was dying. Upstairs, Nadine could hear Naomi shouting to her sister that Dad was ill. It was Carol who eventually brought the flannel, as Naomi sat bawling her eyes out at the foot of the stairs. She was in such a panic that she could hardly breathe.
“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God don’t let him die. Oh God, don’t let him die,” she repeated over and over again, in a mechanistic mantra.
Carol had also lost colour, watching her mother cope with the semiconscious body of her father.
“Call an ambulance, Carol. Now! Ring 111.”
“Yes Mum.” Carol opened her cell phone.
Nadine kept one eye on Tony and another on Carol. When Carol kept repeating herself, she quickly took the phone away from her and gave the necessary details to the emergency operator. Nadine prayed that the call would be answered quickly. Remaining calm, she repeated the information to the St John’s operator. It took just ten minutes for the ambulance to arrive.
As one of the paramedics attached electrodes to Tony Graham-Collins’ chest, the other fitted an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. They were very calm and business-like and kept informing Tony and the family what they were doing. Nadine had now joined her youngest daughter at the foot of the stairs and both hung on to each other, each giving the other reassurance that all would be OK. Carol remained at her father’s side, holding his hand and telling him repeatedly that he was going to be all right.
“Tony, Tony can you hear me,” asked the senior paramedic. “The ECG tells me that your heart is good, but it’s beating very fast and very shallowly. I need you to breathe more slowly and more deeply. Can you do that, Tony?”
Tony’s eyes were wide open and his dilated pupils were like drops of black oil on white paper. He could barely hear what the paramedic was saying to him above the buzzing in his ears. He could see his lips moving but could only guess at the words.
“Tony, we are going to get you to Greenlane Hospital, to get you checked out properly by a doctor. Try to slow your breathing. Good, that’s very good. Nice and slow, and breathe more deeply.”
“Perhaps you could follow us to the hospital, Mrs Collins,” said the other paramedic. “He’ll be in the emergency department when you get there, so tell the triage nurse and she’ll let you through to the cubicle where your husband will be. Is that OK, Mrs Collins?”
Normally Nadine would have corrected the paramedic for shortening her name, but she too could barely hear what the man was saying.
“Yes, OK. Yes, we’ll get there as soon as we can.”
“Can I go with my dad?” asked Carol.
“Yes, we have room for another one. Is that alright Mrs Collins?”
“Yes, that’s fine. We’ll meet you there Carol.”
Within half an hour they were all at the hospital. There a doctor had a quick look at Tony’s ECG traces, then gave him a sedative. It was an anxiety attack, but they would keep him in overnight just in case. It was a long night for all of them, as there was no bed available for Tony on a ward. He remained in the emergency department, in the same cubicle, on the same uncomfortable trolley.
Nadine racked her brains, trying to think of why her husband had collapsed in such a way. He had never suffered from anxiety before. She wondered what could have triggered such an attack?
***
“What the fuck are you doing Janet, you clumsy bitch?”
“Sorry Ngaire, I was trying to remember which floor we needed to leave this shit hole. Are you alright?”
“No, I’m not. Let go of the fucking handles, I’ll control the wheelchair myself.
“Sorry, I’m really sorry.”
“When I get my artificial knee, I’m going to kick Sonny’s fucking head in.”
“Fucking right Ngaire, too fucking right. I’ll hold the fucker down and you can kick the shit out of him.”
This was all bravado, Ngaire had no intention of going anywhere near Sonny Rewaka, or his bitch of a ‘wife’. She had learned her lesson the hard way. Of the list of fractures, she had suffered, her left cheek, nose and jaw had hurt the most. She was reminded of her indiscretion every time she looked in the mirror. Her youngest daughter had pleaded with Janet to let her visit her mum in hospital, and, when she saw her, she was terrified. Although the swelling had diminished, the bruising was still coming out. As a result, she sported a mask of blue, purple and yellow. Her left eye socket had been broken and had not been fixed, so she saw her daughter’s fear through what seemed like a distorted window. That was what she could never forgive Sonny for, the screams and the tears of young Gillian. Ngaire’s injuries were an example to others not to step out of line, her beating was designed to maim, not to kill. She was a walking billboard advertising Sonny’s ruthless cruelty when it came to disloyalty. They would all be loyal now, every one of them. And, if they needed any other reminder, the crippled Rupene brothers were also a living testament to consequence of rebellion.
Breaking the kneecaps of the Skorpion rebels advertised the recklessness of challenging authority. It was the science of cause and effect, of action and reaction, the consequence of stupidity.
“Janet, have you got a smoke? I’m gasping. Three weeks I’ve been dying for a cigarette.”
“Sure babe, here.”
Ngaire drew deeply on the Benson and Hedges Gold, and as her lungs filled with nicotine, she felt the tension leave her body. God, it tasted great! Ngaire felt the rush as the drug reached her brain, and just for a moment the world began to spin. This was heaven. After she demolished her first cigarette in less than four minutes, the second lasted six and the third she savoured for nearly ten.
As Janet pushed Ngaire down the path at t
he side of the building, someone coming the other way stared at the cripple in the wheelchair a little too long. Ngaire felt his eyes burn her scarred face.
“What the fuck are you looking at, you dickless shithole.”
And as the guy stepped off the pavement, Ngaire hawked phlegm into her mouth and spat at him. As the green slime slid down his face, all the terrified visitor could manage was, “What a bitch,” in a slurred whisper.
Janet lunged at the guy with her boot and caught his shin with a glancing blow. He didn’t stop to rub his leg, in case the next one was aimed at his head. Limping and hopping, he scooted round the corner, swearing under his breath.
Crystal Ice Page 38
