Marked (18 page)

It was an alloy runabout with a low dodger screen at the bow and pontoon tubes along each side. The prow rested on the sand with the stern facing seawards, and a light rope stretched from the fairlead to an anchor that someone had sunk into the sand. The only thing that stopped us from shoving it off the beach and doing a runner at full throttle was the man sitting on the foredeck. He was smoking, his feet dangling over the side. The tide was going out and, as we watched, he slid off his perch and pushed the boat a couple of metres into deeper water. Didn’t want to be stranded by the falling tide.

We were watching from beneath an ancient pohutukawa, not far from the old boatshed. The roots of the tree reached out onto the sand like the legs of a massive spider and, for the moment, they sheltered us from the man’s view. Behind us, in the bush, a tui was singing. How could anything sound so happy on a day like this?

“We ought to head for the boatshed,” whispered Kat. “We need to check Jed’s boat anyway.”

“We won’t get anywhere near the door without him seeing us.”

“We can sneak round the other side. Get in there.”

“Dunno, wouldn’t want to be trapped inside. What if he decides to have a look around?” I wasn’t keen on the idea.

“Should be able to get out again – we’d see him coming.”

That was true. The boatshed had plenty of gaps in the walls. It looked about as old as the pyramids, built mostly of stone, like the hut we’d hidden in earlier. Same builder, I guessed – the old codger who’d lived out here with his whisky still and a boat. In the good old days, before they’d spoiled his fun by putting in a road. But its life as a boatshed was nearly over. The upper walls along each side had been timbered, and most of the boards were rotting. Some had fallen off completely, and I didn’t think we’d have any trouble finding a hole big enough to squeeze through.

I was wrong though. Kat slipped inside effortlessly, thudding softly to the floor and then scrambled back to her feet. I didn’t think I was much bigger than she was, especially around the chest, but I had a hell of a job getting in. And once I was halfway through the gap I couldn’t back out, so I had to carry on, Kat heaving and pulling. That was the worst bit because the racket we were making would’ve woken the dead, and while she was helping me she couldn’t watch the man on the boat. I half-expected him to burst in the door, like the noise-control police at a party.

Kat left me to recover, peering through a crack in the wall to check on the man outside. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “He hasn’t moved.”

“Good.” I was sucking deep, struggling to sort myself out. The last few hours had been tough. I’d been pummelled in the ring, smashed against the fridge by Leatherman and nearly killed in a motorbike crash. I’d literally stumbled over the body of a really good mate and I could still smell his blood on my hands. Sprawled on the boatshed floor, with my head and shoulders against the stone wall, I’d just about had enough. Scrambling and clawing my way through that gap in the wall had goaded every tiny pain back into life. My knee throbbed, my upper arms ached and every breath sent shards of glass spearing into my chest. The tender swelling on the back of my head felt about the same size as the fridge handle that had caused it.

The man lounging on the bow of his boat barely a hundred metres along the beach wasn’t helping either. A thug with murderous mates and, probably, a gun.

If he gets in the way, take him out…
.

“Come on.” Kat took her eye from the crack. “You look like you’ve been through Burger’s shit shredder. But wallowing down there in misery isn’t going to help.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Burger’s shit shredder? Where’d you hear about that?”

She grinned. A flash of teeth in the gloom, and it must’ve taken a bit of effort. “He threatens everyone with it. It’s the kind of guy he is – friendly.” She paused. “You gonna check out the boat? See if it’s okay to use if we get a chance?”

“Yeah.” I struggled to my feet and made my way along the side of Jed’s dinghy towards the stern. The cover was off the outboard. It was resting upside down on the back seat, and that wasn’t a good sign. “I think it’s been got at.” The light was fading fast, and I was finding it difficult to see. I thought they might’ve cut the fuel pipe, but when I squeezed the rubber bulb to prime the motor, everything seemed to be working and petrol dripped from the carburettor when I pressed the plunger.

That cheered me up. “It might be okay.” Then I saw something else. “
Damn
!” The white enamel of the spark plugs showed up clearly in the dimness. There were two of them, one above the other. But no leads. Someone had torn them both out and without them, we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. Not in this boat.

“Plan B,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Plan B. They’ve buggered the motor.”

“We don’t
have
a plan B.”

“No.”

She was still watching the beach, standing behind me with her eyes pressed to the wall. “We weren’t going to get away in it anyway,” she said. “Not while
he’s
out there. We’ll have to wait. Maybe when it’s really dark we can sneak along the beach. Hell of a long way to go to get any help though.”

“There’s no one living round here.” I wiped my palm across my forehead. At least the smell of blood had gone. Now my hands stank of petrol.

Kat took her eye from the peephole. “Got a better idea?”

“No, but if we could get that bastard out there to bugger off and leave the boat …”

“Sure. That would be good. Wish I hadn’t lost the gun.”

I stared at her. “Jeez, Kat! What would you do with it? Just walk up to him and shoot him?”

“After what they did to Jed?” she asked viciously. “Yes, I bloody would! Give me half a chance!”

I shuddered.

She wasn’t going to let it rest either. “There’s got to be a weapon of some sort in here.”

“Bloody hell, Kat.” I took my eye from the crack I’d been peering through and stared at her. “That arsehole out there – he’ll have a gun. What are you going to do? Wander over and smack him in the nuts with a boathook?”

“Don’t be such a prick! We’ve got to do
something
. Anyway, he looks bored as hell. What if he decides to have another look in here? You’re not going to get through that hole again in a hurry. Let’s see what we can find before it gets too dark. Even a fishing knife.”

I shuddered once more, imagining it. Fronting up to a person – a real person – with a fishing knife. I knew I couldn’t do it. But Kat wouldn’t give the idea up, and I began poking quietly around the boatshed.

Most of Jed’s snorkelling gear was stacked in the bow of the dinghy, and I rummaged through it. Nothing. Feeling around under the seat was a bit more fruitful – I pulled out a wooden pole with a steel hook on one end and held it up.

“What is it?” whispered Kat.

I handed it to her. “It’s a gaff … for lifting fish into the boat when you’ve caught them.”

She hefted it like a club. “Better than nothing. Anything else?” She leaned it against the wall beside her and took a quick peek through the crack, checking on our friend outside.

“There’s this.” I picked one of Jed’s diving spears out of the bilge. It was a steel rod, nearly a metre long with a fluked arrowhead screwed to one end. A length of cord was attached to it, hanging from a sliding metal ring. “It’s for his spear gun. I reckon you’d be better off with the gaff though. But, hell – not if you’re fronting someone with a gun.”

“What about the rest of it? The bit that fires the spear?”

I felt under the seat again. Didn’t like the way things were heading. Kat seemed set on starting a war, and it wasn’t one we were likely to win. I pulled the spear gun out, cringing as it scraped against the alloy hull.

“Jeez, keep it down!” She was watching through the crack. “I think he heard that. He’s looking … looking this way.”

I froze at the panic in her voice. Just stood there helplessly, clutching the spear gun. Needed to act, needed to move, but I couldn’t.

“I think it’s okay,” she whispered. A long pause and then she turned her head briefly towards me. “He’s lighting another fag. God, I thought we’d had it then.”

“Me too.” I turned back to the spear gun. I’d been crushing it in a death grip and my fingers were aching. Forced myself to relax, but my heart was still pumping like a jack hammer. “Sorry, that was bloody silly.”

“Wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve done today.”

I placed the spear gun carefully on the floor and found the crack I’d been peering through earlier. It was darker now, but the man out there was still easy to see. An eerie red lit his face as he sucked on his fag. He was gazing up the hill towards Jed’s shack.

“How long d’you think till it’s properly dark?” I whispered.

“Don’t know. Maybe half an hour.”

“We’re probably safer in here while it’s still light. But if we hear the Pajero coming back, we’d better try and get out. Make a run for it along the beach. Don’t want to be trapped inside. Not if they decide to make another search.”

“No. What about that spear gun? Can you get it to work?”

I picked it up again. I remembered Jed showing me how it worked. It was the day we’d been out in the dinghy together, fishing. He’d promised to take me to the offshore islands for a dive sometime – but that wasn’t going to happen now.

“It’s not too hard,” I said. “You just slide the spear down here until it clicks into place. Like this.” I fed the spear into the groove on the top of the shaft and heard it lock against the trigger pin. “Then you pull the rubber back and hook it into the slot on the spear. But Jeez. You’re not going to use it, are you?”

She didn’t answer that. “What about all this string?”

“That’s so you don’t lose the spear. And so you can pull the fish in.”

“We won’t need that – it’d just get in the way. Can you untie it?”

“Yeah. But Kat, you can’t
use
it.” The thought was sickening. “Not on a
person
.”

“Why not?” She was still whispering, but her voice was harsh. “You’d rather use a jack handle?” She stopped, and I didn’t say anything. I unclipped the string and tossed it into the dinghy. There was a long silence and then she spoke again. “Sorry. That was mean. Really mean. But I think we need to be ready. In case …”

“Fine.” I decided it might be safer to change the subject. “Tell us about Kreigler. What did you mean when you said you wouldn’t do anything he said?”

“Um … just things he didn’t want me to do. Like getting a job – he hated me working at the ice-cream shop. But mostly I did do what he wanted. Like staying out of sports and things like that. He didn’t want me to be noticed, didn’t want me to show up as being good at anything. He wasn’t too stuck on you either – didn’t want me to have boyfriends and things.”

“Is that what I am? Your boyfriend?”

She paused. “Well, pretty much,” she said, and suddenly I felt better than I had for quite a while.

“What about hiding your birthmark? Was that Kreigler’s idea?”

“No … no, that was me. He didn’t think it mattered, but I felt sort of marked by it. Like putting up a sign telling everyone who I was.” She picked up the gaff from where she’d laid it against the wall. “What about this? If we bent the hook into a point, it wouldn’t make a bad weapon.”

I took it from her, wincing at the thought of using it, of thrusting it into someone’s flesh. “Hell, Kat …” But there wasn’t much point in arguing, and it wouldn’t be hard to make a spike out of the hook. I used the metal cradle the dinghy was resting on, feeding the tip of the hook into an open end of pipe, and using the gaff handle as a lever. It straightened easily.

But as I held it up to show her, I nudged the outboard cover with my elbow. It was resting against the side, and it crashed into the dinghy. A noise like thunder.

“Shit!” Kat whirled around. In the gloom her eyes were bright with horror. “What the hell are you doing?” Then she spun back to the crack in the wall, peering out fearfully. “Jeez, he heard that. I think he’s coming over.”

I found another chink in the wall and put my eye to it, heart thumping, every muscle tensed in panic. He was walking across the sand towards us, hesitantly glancing about, but coming in our direction. He stopped, and I held my breath as his gaze headed back up the hill. His head was cocked to one side, listening. Then he looked at the boatshed again, as if struggling to make up his mind.

After a moment, he turned, and I let out a sigh of relief. He was making his way back to the boat. He seemed purposeful now, moving more quickly. Still watching him through my peephole, I felt my body relax and let my weight sag against the wall. One of my knees was trembling.

“That was close,” breathed Kat.

“Hang on,” I whispered. “What’s he doing now?” The man hadn’t returned to the bow where he’d been sitting earlier. He was standing in the shallows beside the boat, reaching under the dodger. A dark shadow against the hull, he had his back to us, supporting himself with one hand on the side.
What’s he looking for
?

A torch flashed briefly as if he was testing the batteries and then he moved away from the boat. Now I could see what he was carrying. At first I thought it was a rifle, but it was too short. A sawn-off shotgun – I’d never seen one before, except in the movies.

“Jesus, Kat … what’re we gonna do? See what he’s got?” My voice was quavering and I could hear the fear in it.

“It’s a shotgun. If he comes in here, you
know
what we’ve gotta do.” Her tone was flat and harsh. She was scared, but she wasn’t giving in. “Quick! Get that spear gun ready. You want me to take it?”

Kat had real grit – and it was just what I needed. Couldn’t let her face him by herself. “No, I’ll do it. You grab the gaff and get up by the bow. If we keep well apart, he won’t know who to go for.”

I scooped up the spear gun and pushed past her into the corner opposite the door. Now that things were happening, the panic had gone. I was scared as hell, but my mind was clear. I tried to imagine the side door bursting open – his silhouette against the fading light behind him. In the darkness I should see him before he could focus on us. With the butt braced against my chest, I was struggling to tension the spring. I’d seen Jed do it, but that was in daylight and I hadn’t realised how much effort it took. He hadn’t been in a hurry either. My arms ached, pain stabbed through my ribs – I ignored all that. Had to stretch the heavy rubber enough to lock it into the slot on the spear.
God, how much time have I got
? I was feeling for the groove with my thumb blindly. Finally, I felt it slide into place with a click. I was panting – but I was ready and my mind was still clear. I stared at the door, with Kat’s words running through my head.
You know what we’ve gotta do
.