The Last Guests

by JP Pomare

  The woman pantomimes shivering, and the husband drags his lips to one side, shakes his head. He speaks now: ‘I guess it is possible. Someone might have footage of us, in the shower, or on the toilet.’

  ‘It’s a scary thought.’

  The interviewer nods; an open, interested expression on her face. ‘And Cain and Lina Phillips, did you have any dealings with them?’

  ‘This is unfair,’ I say to Cain now. ‘The show didn’t contact us.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he snaps, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  The man turns to his wife. ‘They just let us know how to check in and sent us a nice welcome message. Oh –’ he pauses now, turning to his wife, a half smile plays at his lips. ‘Remember the LinkedIn thing?’

  My heart drops. I see and hear it all in some hyper-slow reality where every millisecond drags for a minute.

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman intones. When she speaks again there’s more energy in her voice. ‘We had an odd thing happen on LinkedIn.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Well, Lina had visited both of our LinkedIn profiles. You can see who has viewed them and she came up.’

  ‘She viewed them,’ the presenter says, annunciating viewed with a cock of her head. ‘That must have creeped you out a little?’

  The skin at the base of my throat becomes tight.

  ‘Yeah, it did creep us out a bit,’ the woman says. ‘Makes you wonder what else they looked up of ours. We had lots of really positive reviews from previous stays so they shouldn’t need to snoop into our personal lives.’

  ‘Looking back on it now, that probably should have been a bit of a warning.’ The man laughs.

  I want to scream at the TV. You are not the victims. ‘This passes as journalism? She doesn’t even point out that nothing happened to these people, their involvement is incidental.’

  Cain turns to me, hisses, ‘Shhh.’

  ‘More after the break,’ the interviewer says.

  Ads come on and Cain mutes the TV. ‘I agree with you. It’s gutter journalism to make a story out of nothing. The sooner they figure out who has the footage, the better. We just need to hunker down until that happens or wait for everyone to just –’ he flings his hand, ‘get over it and bugger off. It’s probably just sickos in another country trying to keep the story going.’ He goes to the kitchen and makes a protein shake. His bicep tenses as he rocks the shaker in his hand. ‘We could squash this, we could clear our names and show them all we are normal people.’

  ‘They know the truth,’ I say, frustrated. ‘They’ve all seen the footage of me chained up, you in a stupor. That man coming in. He looks straight at the camera, you can see him looking up at it, he knew it was there. He installed them. Anyone who can’t see that needs their eyes checked.’

  ‘I know, I fully understand that, but most people, regular people, probably don’t. We can get a PR person to help us,’ Cain says.

  We’ve missed part of the interview, Cain unmutes the TV and their voices come back.

  ‘And you have other news?’

  The couple, grinning now, share a look. ‘We got engaged last week in Queenstown which made it better.’

  The woman holds her ring out.

  The presenter gushes, squinting so her crow’s feet fan out, but her forehead is rigor mortis. ‘I’m pleased to hear things took a turn for the better later in your trip.’

  I blurt. ‘They didn’t even know anything about the cameras when they stayed! They gave us a good review.’

  ‘So has this whole experience changed your opinion about New Zealand?’

  ‘Well,’ the woman begins. ‘You think it’s this nice, friendly place where nothing bad happens. But then bad things do happen here. There are bad people everywhere, even in the most beautiful places. But we would come back.’

  ‘Definitely,’ the man adds.

  ‘I’m glad to hear.’

  The show switches to the next story

  ‘Now that should piss off a bunch of Kiwis.’ Cain scoffs. ‘Tap into that jingoism, make them think this will hurt our global image or cost tourism dollars. We’ve got to fight back, Lina. Set the record straight.’

  He turns away from the TV, and ambles from the room.

  I can hear my phone chime upstairs. I assume it’s a concerned friend wanting to check in. Watching the program about us, discreetly mining gossip. After Skelton’s death the NZSAS were all painted as brutes by the media – a boys’ club killing indiscriminately in Afghanistan. So why does Cain trust them now?

  I reach the top of the stairs and go to my phone. I see the number on the screen and recognise it instantly. I’ve not seen it in weeks. Not since I received those long-deleted text messages. It’s Daniel’s number. My heart is racing as I open the message. It takes a moment to load. A photo. It’s of us. The still from that night in Auckland. My face pressed to his. A second message comes. Just nine words. Bile is rushing up my throat. This can’t be happening. I read the words once more.

  This is a warning: forget about the second man.

  Peephole transmission

  Given the recent scrutiny from authorities, members will no longer be able to access archival footage. In the unlikely event police breach our servers, this measure will help to protect the planters involved. Past footage will be stored offline for the foreseeable future. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

  Enjoy the show.

  THIRTY-ONE

  RATA ANSWERS AFTER a few rings.

  ‘Hi, it’s Lina Phillips.’

  ‘Yes, Lina. How can I help?’

  I’m breathing too quickly. I shouldn’t have called, this is exactly what the message warned me against. Forget about the second man. I have everything I wanted out of the situation, a baby and our financial problems are manageable. I need to just forget about it. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I begin. ‘The second man…’ I can’t think of how to put it so I just say the words. ‘I made a mistake, I know there wasn’t another person there that night. It was just Daniel Moore.’

  ‘Right and you just decided out of the blue –’

  ‘I remember everything much more clearly now.’

  ‘Sure. I wasn’t part of that original investigation but there doesn’t seem to be evidence either way of a second man.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say, with relief. ‘Has there been any other progress?’

  I hear him draw a deep breath, as if preparing a long speech, but all he says is, ‘I don’t have any major updates at this stage I’m afraid. Just theories, lots of theories which are useless until we have something concrete.’ Another pause. In the near silence I feel like I can hear him thinking, considering what he is about to say. ‘We only ever catch the tip of the iceberg with this sort of thing. Peephole and cybercrime in general. You’ve got to get lucky because of how decentralised it is, and the lengths people go to conceal their ID when they’re breaking the law online.’

  ‘But who would use this Peephole?’

  ‘I only have theories, nothing concrete. I’d guess the users are mostly your garden variety voyeurs, but also others.’ He inhales. ‘I spent three years on a task force in New Zealand, working with teams in other countries to monitor suspected paedophiles. We had a few arrests, every so often a ring was busted, that was the high-profile stuff. It won’t work like that in this case here.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask, my heart still racing. I see the picture again in my mind. I must delete it the moment I hang up the phone.

  ‘We would never get enough resources to be effective. No one sees this as a threat anymore. As far as anyone is concerned the case at Tarawera is closed, it’s interesting but there’s zero risk of the criminal reoffending.’

  ‘Especially given he acted alone,’ I say now, reinforcing the idea.

  ‘Possibly. The police combed the property. We know it was Daniel there that night. But was he the one who installed the cameras? It’s very likely but we can’t be certain. Someone has access to the footage
and has shared it. How Daniel’s phone disappeared without a trace is a mystery to me.’

  It doesn’t make sense. The phone pinged towers suggesting Daniel was travelling to the house, then it disappeared. Until today.

  He continues talking. ‘I assume the phone is probably in the lake, or dropped somewhere in the bush.’

  ‘And Scotty? You checked in with him?’

  ‘I knocked on his door myself. Hardly the most accommodating man.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘He was fine for years but he’s been different lately.’

  ‘He was with his partner and her kids at home the night you were attacked. I checked his search history via his ISP, and interestingly we found the term Peephole.’

  I frown. Could he have sent the message?

  ‘There were other phrases and lots of news sites about the home invasion. It’s clumsy and, if he was involved, I doubt he would be simply searching these things on Google. This has been all over the media and lots of people are probably searching similar things online just for news, but I’ll keep an eye on him.’

  •

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ Cain says, entering the room after the call has ended.

  ‘It was Rata, the detective. He checked in on Scotty.’

  ‘Right,’ Cain says, frowning. ‘And?’

  ‘There’s nothing too incriminating but they’re monitoring him.’ I exhale. Still holding my phone tight, thinking about the message. ‘I was also thinking, maybe we should do the interview. Take the money and run.’

  He smiles now. ‘You want to do it?’

  ‘We’ll need to book a PR person first, to talk us through it, but I think you’re right about setting the record straight.’ An appearance on national television would be the perfect platform to make it clear there was only one man: Daniel Moore.

  ‘Good idea,’ he says. ‘I’ll call Axel. He has a PR contact. We’ll be swimming in money by the time the baby arrives.’

  I hear him rushing downstairs to his phone. I unlock my own phone. Read that message once more before responding.

  Okay. Done. Please stop this now. I’ll forget all about the second man. Just don’t share the photo. I’m begging you.

  A moment passes. I squeeze everything inside hoping this is the end of it.

  Good girl.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I HAVE MUCH more foundation on than I would ever otherwise wear. They just kept smearing it on, the make-up artist chatting as she went. Even Cain has a little powder on, despite his protestations.

  ‘It’s because of the lights, no one will be able to tell at home,’ she’d said to him in the seat. ‘All men on TV have to wear just a little.’

  Cain sat there with a slight grimace, judging himself in the mirror.

  My hair is a fire hazard, but I’m aware of what bright lights and a camera can do to your complexion and hair so I trust them. I trust I won’t look like this woman I see in the mirror by the time I reach the screens in living rooms around the country. Think about the money. It’s twenty thousand dollars just to sit there and talk for an hour. They’ve already started advertising it. Think about the fact this will clear your name, Cain’s name. It will remove any doubt about the cameras. Cain is right, this is for the best. Think about that text message. This is a warning: forget about the second man. Someone is still out there and they want to disappear.

  The PR consultant Axel referred us to had organised the interview. The terms, she assured us, were fair and although we would never get ‘copy approval’ she said she had a good working relationship with the producer and had her word that they would show us in a favourable light.

  ‘Lisa will be gentle on you. Trust me, this will be a breeze.’

  She told us this despite the reputation of the host, the formidable Lisa Stoke. I’m reminded of the fierce interview she did a few years ago with Bill Bennett, the Australian Rugby player who famously tore his microphone off and stormed from the interview when he disagreed with her line of questioning. Her status in the New Zealand media landscape is legendary. She’s broken politicians, turned international best-selling authors like Oliver McDuffy into bumbling fools, and grilled half-a-dozen prime ministers in her thirty-year career but, as we’ve been told over and again, if you’re honest with her, if she senses you are telling the truth, she won’t push any harder. She only wants the truth. Which is bad news for me, because I can’t give her the truth.

  The producer primes us with a series of questions, marking them all on a clipboard to be passed on to the interviewer. The questions are all softball, things we’d already covered with the PR woman. Then a bearded man comes over with mics. ‘Alright, guys, just going to need you to feed this down your top. He hands me a receiver, and I lower it down my blouse, the microphone staying in his hand close to my face so I can smell the cigarette smoke on his knuckles. He clips the tiny microphone in near my mouth and I hook the receiver on to the waist of my jeans. He checks our levels, radioing the producer, ‘Check these levels for me, Bev.’ Then to us, ‘Alright, tell me about your day.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Well, I had a smoothie this morning for breakfast then we went for a wal –’

  ‘Stop there,’ he says, then into the mic, ‘All good? Great.’

  ‘Now you, what did you do today?’

  ‘Same as her really. A quiet day, went for a walk and when we got home we –’

  ‘Excellent, sounding perfect,’ he says. Then he’s gone. The room is too hot.

  ‘I get the feeling he didn’t give a shit about our mornings,’ Cain says, and I give a laugh that breaks up the small clots of tension inside me.

  Soon the producer comes back through to the green room, grinding her palms together as she approaches.

  ‘Alright, Lisa is ready for you now. It’s going to be fine, just relax and pretend no one else is in the room. Alright? Follow me.’

  She leads us down a short corridor and through a soundproof door into a dark studio. Keep breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Lisa is smaller than I was expecting. On TV she seems to have this immense stature, as if her power and control in this domain translates to physical size. It’s in the way she smiles, a slight tweaking of her lips, her eyes fixed on the fresh meat before her.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you both,’ she says, offering her hand. The cameras are already rolling, I know this part of the show. It will show us greeting her as the intro music plays, before anyone can hear our mics, before the coverage cuts and dives right into the interview.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, taking her hand.

  ‘Please, have a seat.’

  We sit in the two seats opposite her. Stiff backed, not nearly as soft and comfortable as the chairs in the green room. Cain naturally sits erect, core active and head high. His shirt is still crisp but it stretches around his shoulders and chest. Impossibly, he’s both focused and relaxed. It gives me some confidence knowing he’s by my side.

  ‘Thank you both so much for agreeing to come on the show to speak with me, I’m sure it’s been a rocky couple of weeks for you.’ There was no warning that the interview had started but when she pauses and raises those neatly manicured eyebrows, I realise this is the first question.

  My racing mind searches for a way to describe what we have been through but defers to the cliché. ‘It’s been a rollercoaster.’ Did I mumble? Annunciate, Lina. The lights are a little too bright, too hot. My heart is already thrashing in my chest.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve been through a lot,’ Cain adds, ‘but we’re just glad to make it out the other side relatively unscathed.’ He is much more eloquent. High pressure makes a diamond of him and coal of me.

  ‘You say relatively but of course it’s impossible not to look at you and see that scar healing above your left eye.’ She turns her head slightly to encourage Cain to show where a knock had split open his brow. He does exactly what she wants, showing it, touching it with his foref
inger.

  ‘I’m a big boy,’ he says with a smile. ‘It’ll heal just fine. But it was a very scary night for us.’

  ‘What was it like, Lina, that night? Knowing Cain was incapacitated? Tell us what went through your head.’

  I swallow, count to four before I answer. ‘It was terrifying. I was certain at times I was going to die and I thought Cain was already dead.’ I can feel tears starting, but I sniff them back. ‘Cain has always been there, he’s my rock and I knew I needed to do everything in my power to help him, to help us.’

  ‘You must have felt pure relief when you discovered Cain was okay?’

  I find myself nodding. ‘Relief, yes. And just an overwhelming sense of love. But it didn’t last very long.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Don’t mention the fear of a second man, I tell myself. ‘I knew for certain that there was only one intruder in the house that night, but until the police arrived I still felt like he had one last trick to torment us with. I wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible and away from the cameras,’ I say. ‘Then when the police arrived and the paramedics said Cain was going to be okay, that was when I let myself feel relieved.’

  She turns back to Cain. ‘And you’ve been through…’ she pauses, skews her head searching for the right word, ‘… trauma before, haven’t you?’

  Cain nods before answering. The nest of snakes in my stomach quivers, threatening to wake.

  ‘Yeah, I mean Afghanistan was scary for different reasons, but nothing prepared me for the helplessness and the…’ he’s thinking now for the word.

  ‘Impotence?’ she says. He stares at her, I feel the intensity of it, radiating more heat than the lights. Of course she means ineffective but it’s enough to throw him for a moment.

  ‘Ah yeah, I suppose that’s one way of putting it,’ he says, his composure coming back. ‘In my time with the military, I felt I had agency, I felt like my fate was in my hands and I was never taken prisoner. I never feared dying, not even when I was hurt. I always had faith in those people around me and my own abilities. I’d not really thought I was going to die until I woke in that house with my hands bound. And the scariest part is I couldn’t do anything to help Lina. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a good husband, to start a family and keep my loved ones safe. I failed.’ He exhales, his eyes finding his palms in his lap.