Gith (4 page)

'Fair enough,' I said, but I couldn't help thinking of the
woman with a face full of stitches.

Her thoughts seemed to be on the same track but with a
different ending. 'That slut!' She spat the words out like they
were used sump oil. Then she suddenly changed her tone,
looked at me, almost smiled. 'Anyway,' she said. 'Billy's all
right, if you really want to know. He'd be a bloody sight better
if the cops'd leave him alone and somebody would give him a
job. Bloody probation officer was supposed to do something
about that but. No use complaining, though, eh. No bugger
listens.' She turned and walked away.

I locked the till and followed her out. The Honda started
with a cough and took off in a cloud of blue smoke. Not long
for this world, I thought.

***

DESPITE BEING AS mad as buggery, the Old Man was
pretty impressed by the fact that I'd got the Austin started.
He treated me different after that. He let me have more free
time and he stopped giving me the belt anywhere near as
often. The thing I liked best was that he said I could have the
Austin if I could fix it. For a little while I was the happiest kid
I knew. All my mates were jealous as hell.

It didn't last long though. The next year I was off to
boarding school. It was the same place Bill had gone to. He
had been a prefect and in the first fifteen, plus he was in the
top stream. Given what I was — a dumb, fat boy with glasses
and not much cheek or sense of humour — I was done from
the start. It wasn't getting beaten up that bothered me — that
was hardly worse than what I got at home — it was the mind
games. Their favourite trick, which they never seemed to get
sick of, was stealing my glasses. It took a bunch of them to
hold me down, but there was always plenty volunteering for
the job. The glasses would be gone for days at a time, except
when somebody waved them in my face just to remind me.
Then suddenly they'd be there again, on my table or my desk,
like I'd left them there by mistake. I think they got given back
so other kids could have the fun of taking them off me again.
I could hardly read or write without them, so I often missed
out on prep and I was lost in class.

None of the teachers seemed to care that much. Maybe
they took the Old Man's view that a little hardship was good
for you and that I ought to learn to stick up for myself. Maybe
they just didn't like me. Whatever the reason, I finished up
miserable, with next to no friends or confidence in myself.
I was useless at the schoolwork and on the sports field. The
only thing that kept me going was the long weekends and the
holidays, when I could go home and work on the Austin. I
got the engine running real sweet in the end but I never fixed
the transmission.

At seventeen, after just managing to scrape through
School Cert, I gave up on school and went off to polytech
in Palmerston North to do a Certificate in Automotive
Engineering. The Old Man liked the idea and helped me out
with money, at least to start off with. He figured it was the
one chance of me doing something with myself. By that stage
we were getting on pretty well. He'd given up on the belt a
year or so before and started to talk to me like an adult. I
remember the time when I knew he wasn't going to hit me
any more. I'd done something to piss him off, which wasn't
hard, and he'd lost his cool like he usually did. I could see his
feelings building to have a go at me. Suddenly he stopped
and stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Then
he yelled a bit more and that was it. It felt real weird, like I'd
grown up in just that second.

***

MONTY DROPPED BY with his ute on Thursday.

'Thought we'd see you before now,' I said.

'Yeah, well. Something came up.'

He opened the bonnet and the three of us stood and
listened to the motor.

'It's turned gutless on me,' he said.

'The diesels on these were always gutless,' I told him.
'Seriously, you should let me look out for you. A Hilux or
something.'

'Seriously, I can't afford it. The bank's got me by the short
and curlies. Go talk to Frank. Which is what I gotta do right
now.' Frank MacKey was the local accountant.

'How long will you be?'

'Dunno. Sounds a bit bloody dire though. An hour
maybe?'

'We'll see what we can do.'

'Good on you, mate.'

I had a thought. 'You want to leave Sam here?'

'Is that okay?' He looked pleased.

'Sure. No problem.'

Gith went round to the back of the ute. Sam gave a whine
when he saw her and stuck his head over the side. She pulled
on his ears and put her face close to his. He licked her. She
wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist.

'True love,' Monty said, and laughed. Gith joined in.

I hopped into the ute and ran it into the workshop. Monty
waved and walked away. We left Sam tied in the back.

Ten minutes later Faye Ingrest turned up wanting a
warrant for her Honda. Faye and Simon ran the local pub,
the Te Kohuna Arms. Faye is a friendly, bubbly sort of person
who likes to think well of everybody. She is in her fifties, with
perky blue eyes and a cap of silver-grey hair. She got straight
into talking about Anneke Hesse. I walked her away from
the workshop doorway so Gith wouldn't hear, and told her
what I knew.

'That makes sense,' she said. 'They're looking at vehicles
from Katawai to Tapanahu. Basingstoke, too.'

'Vans?' I asked.

'Don't know. Stationwagons, for sure. They're interviewing
owners and drivers. The man in charge told me. Inspector
Ryan. Really nice guy. Really good advertisement for the
police, you know?'

'When did you talk to him?'

'This morning. They were here again about eight o'clock.
Must get up awfully early. Four cars and a van thing, like an
ambulance.'

'A van?' I asked. 'They arresting somebody?'

'Simon says it's forensics. But if it is, that means they've got
a suspect, wouldn't you say?'

'Don't know. Could be.'

'Somebody said that guy Cleat was top of their list. You
know anything about that?'

'No,' I said, 'but it'd be logical, wouldn't it?'

'You know him?'

'Not really.'

'He comes into the bar occasionally but Simon usually lets
him know he's not welcome. Weird. He gives me the creeps,
actually. I mean, he's such a
wet
-looking character.'

'Wasn't he on drugs or something?' I said.

'That's right.' She looked at me and then she gave a shrug.
'Ah, well. You know, it's a terrible thing to say but it's not all
bad. They're going to be around here for a while. They're talking
about setting up an operations centre in the community hall.
I mean, it has to be good for business. We're already doing
lunches.'

'Well, I guess that's right.'

'It's an ill wind and so on. Although I feel really bad saying
that. I keep thinking about that poor girl. And her poor
parents all the way over there in Europe. I mean, Alison's
sometimes said she'll hitch-hike up here from Massey for the
weekend.' She gave a shudder. 'And you've got your girl, too.
You must worry.'

'Yes,' I said. She was saying that it was extra risky for Gith,
which was true, I guess. As Faye said, it was terrible to think
about.

I took Faye's car through the warrant and it passed fine. I
have to say my mind wasn't on the job though. I kept thinking
about the cops and how they only seemed to be looking for
wagons and that maybe Gith was wrong. Was I dumb to
believe her when nobody else seemed to? If I didn't know
Gith at all and I had to choose between her story and Mavis
Blake's, who would I believe? The problem was, I did know
Gith. I knew her better than anyone, and if I couldn't stick up
for her, what the hell was she going to do?

I started making a mental list of the white vans I knew.
Bill Piata, the local plumber had one, and so did the sparky,
Trevor Bittington. Trevor's was a Mitsubishi, too. Then there
was Julian and Susie Smeele, who ran Bank Antiques. And
the local rugby club, except that one had seats in it — more of
a bus than a van. I could think of one or two farmers as well,
although, as the Old Man had said, it would be a useless type
of vehicle on most farms.

I parked Faye's Honda in the yard. It had some mud
splashes down the side so I washed it down. Then I went
into the shop to call her and tell it was ready. Gith was still
working on Monty's ute.

The names of van owners kept going round in my head.
I grabbed a pen and a pad and sat down in the back room
to make a list. There were ten names on it when I finished. I
stared at it for a while. What the hell was I going to do with
it? There was no real reason to think that any of these blokes
had got Anneke. Also, there would be vans in the district that
I didn't know about. Like if you worked in Katawai, the next
town south, you wouldn't bother much with our place either
for your gas or your repairs. And Gith hadn't really known the
driver so maybe he wasn't a local anyway. How many white
vans were there in Katawai or Basingstoke or Tapanahu? I felt
a bit dumb and hopeless. What was I going to do? Start my
own bloody investigation?

I screwed the paper into a ball and went to throw it into
the rubbish bin. Something stopped me. Instead, I smoothed
it out again and pinned it on the corkboard near the back
room door.

***

I MET TWO important people in my time at polytech. The
first was Steve Winston. The second was Michelle.

Steve was the son of a local garage owner and car dealer.
He was training himself up to join the family business but
what he really cared about was saloon car racing. We quickly
became good mates. I'm not sure why, except that we were
even madder about cars than most of the other jokers in the
course, and plus — surprise, surprise — I turned out to have
the makings of a good mechanic. I don't know if it was all
that fiddling about I'd done with the Austin but I pretty soon
found I was near the top of the class. For the first time in my
life.

At the end of the first year Steve and I started working
our apprenticeships for Steve's dad and hatching plans for
our big venture. We got hold of a V8 and tuned it up, took it
out to Manfeild for some practice circuits and then into a few
production model races. Steve turned out to be a bloody good
driver and he won more than he lost, despite the fact that
no way did we have the best car. Next thing was, he tackled
his old man, talked him into being our sponsor, and Team
Winston was born. We had more money now, and more time,
because we were getting paid to work on the racing machine.
Steve's dad hired a top-notch mechanic to work with us and
pretty soon we were winning some of the first-grade races.
Everybody was happy. The company was getting promotion.
Steve and I were doing what we liked best and we were
learning heaps.

It amazes me now that Michelle and I ever got together.

Right from the start it was clear that we went about things in
totally different ways. Michelle was into money and success
— wanted to own a business with some style. She was doing
a hairdressing course but the last thing she wanted was to be
a hairdresser for the rest of her life. She was going to own
a salon, a chain of salons. She was going to make a million
dollars. That's what she said anyway.

I think there were two reasons we went for one another.
The first was the easy one. She was good-looking and I, if not
a Dan Carter, was at least part of something that she thought
was exciting and glamorous. To be honest, I think she was
more keen on Steve but he had a full-time girl called Julie-
Anne so Michelle settled for me as next best. The second
reason was a bit harder to figure. Michelle and I had grown
up with the same family thing: both of us feeling on the outer
and both of us in the shadow of somebody else. In her case it
was her sister, Sophie. There was a fifteen-year gap between
them and I think Michelle always felt that she had been a
mistake, that her parents never really wanted her. On top of
that, Sophie was good at everything. She had been brilliant
at school, had got married to a professor and was now head
of English at a college in Wellington. Michelle didn't have
Sophie's brains for the academic stuff and, like me, she felt
second rate trailing behind all that success. That's where the
likeness ended though. Michelle finished up with a drive to
succeed with whatever tools she had, while I was rock bottom
on the drive front. I liked fixing things and tinkering with
them and that was about it.

For a while everything was sweet. Steve and Julie-Anne
and Michelle and I hung out together. The girls would act
like groupies, coming down to the workshop and talking and
posing while the boys pulled the car apart and reassembled
it. Race day they would be there, keeping well out of the
way unless they were needed as gophers, and cheering like
mad every time Steve made a circuit. It was a good life and it
went on for nearly four years. Steve and I were fully qualified
mechanics by then, and Michelle was working in a salon in
Broadway and building up a classy clientele, the sort she'd
always hoped for.

I have no idea why I asked her to marry me and even less
why she said yes. I guess it was one of those times when we had
been talking about how we felt as kids and it suddenly seemed
that we shared something deep and meaningful. Once we'd
made up our minds, we just went for it. In Michelle's view, it
wasn't trendy to have an old-style wedding in a church so we
did something in the park. There was no family there, just a
few friends and a celebrant who read some kind of poetry. We
were twenty-two years old. We had flowers in our hair.

It was after that things started to go wrong. Steve took an
off in a practice lap. He wasn't badly knocked around but he
was in a neck-brace for six weeks. The car was pretty much
stuffed except for the engine and gear box, and Steve was
never the same afterwards. It was like everything had lost its
gloss. Within a few months he and Julie-Anne split up. My
guess is that he didn't see them following in our footsteps
down the aisle, whereas Julie-Anne did. If Michelle had any
regrets seeing that Steve was now available she didn't show
them. She wanted to move to Wellington, where there was
more opportunity. She'd rather have a salon there than in
Palmy, she said, and I could set up my own business too. If I
wanted.