The Last Time We Spoke (4 page)

The wind finds me, its sun-baked notes carrying dune dust from the Hokianga, salted spray from Cook Strait, and pungent bursts of crushed wild thyme from some southern slope. So many treasures carried on the wind’s caressing breath. It brings me Rotorua’s sulphured steam rising from the bubble and burst of a molten earth; a lone tui’s captivating call; the rattle and clink of pipi shells tossed into a sack. It brings skeins of vibrant colour from Hahei’s teal-green waters, and the damp, dark coolness of forest and fern – redwood and kauri, kiokio and mamaku. I sense the stolid patience of four fishermen on Tolaga Bay wharf, and taste the sweetness of some forager’s honeyed harvest. Such riches! Yet I cannot enjoy them. Not today. For this breeze has brought me more
…

‘You have lost another son,’ it cries on a gust. ‘Aotearoa, New Zealand, you have lost another son.’

I am giddy with the news. It sucks up all the air and light, as if reversing the creation, rejoining Ranginui, Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, Earth Mother, and squeezing out all that is life.

Another son of Kupe has fallen from my basket, the woven flax now limp and loose. Where will it end, this unravelling? Where will it end?

Carla heard the voices and went rigid. They’d come back! The thugs had come back. She held her breath.

‘Curtains are still drawn.’ A man’s voice. ‘That’s odd; the dogs are still in their cages. They don’t look like they’ve been fed yet.’

‘Rangi, something’s not right.’

Carla breathed out. It was Rangi and Rebecca, the share milkers! She lifted her head and tried to call out, but her voice was hoarse and would not climb over a whisper.

‘They probably spent the night with Jack in town. Or maybe Kev’s alarm clock finally packed up.’ A hearty Rangi chuckle.

Carla tried to call out again, but only a thin murmur spilt from her mouth.

‘C’mon, chook, let’s get on with the milking. Kev deserves a day off.’

‘Hey look. Jack’s Beetle.’ Rebecca’s voice. ‘He must still be here.’

‘See, told you we shouldn’t be bugging them. They probably all had a late night. Wasn’t it Kev and Carla’s anniversary yesterday? I’m sure Kevin said so.’

The voices started to fade.

‘He---e---lp!’ Carla’s voice scraped and clawed at her throat.

‘You hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Someone calling.’

The footsteps came closer, then there was knocking at the front door. ‘Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?’

Carla looked about frantically. There was a kitchen stool off to her right, just within reach of her foot. She lifted her leg and swung it at the stool. A wild pain exploded in her ankle as she connected with the wood. The stool teetered, rocked in space, then settled.

‘Carla? Kevin?’

Carla tried again, this time dropping the stool. It landed with a thud on Kevin’s crumpled frame. He gurgled.

‘You hear that, Rangi? There
is
someone inside. I got a bad feeling about this. Let’s call the police.’

‘Slow down, chook. I’ll see if I can get in. The bathroom window’s open.’

‘But Rangi.’

‘What?’

‘The front door. It’s not locked.’

Carla fixed her eyes on the door. The handle was slowly depressed.

Rangi and Rebecca’s voices shrunk to a whisper. ‘You stay here. I’ll—’

Suddenly a crack of golden light fanned out across the room. Carla squinted. In the doorway was Rangi’s solid silhouette.

‘Jesus, Becks! Call one-one-one.’

Carla was shaking uncontrollably, despite the blanket Rebecca had wrapped around her.

‘A pillow! Kevin needs a pillow,’ Carla spluttered. ‘And another blanket. He’s so cold, Beckie. Where’s the ambulance? My Jack? It’s taking so long.’

‘Soon, love. Soon,’ Rebecca said, stroking her arm.

‘Kev! Kevin, can you hear me?’ Carla barked in a hoarse whisper. ‘Can he hear me? Is he breathing? He’s still breathing isn’t he?’

‘I think so,’ Rebecca said, looking at Kevin’s motionless frame.

Rangi put down the phone receiver and knelt down beside Kevin, putting his ear to Kevin’s chest. His frizz of brown hair obscured Kevin’s grey face. After what felt like forever, he nodded.

Carla’s body loosened. She tugged at Kevin’s shirt with a bruised and trembling hand. ‘Kevin Reid, you stick with me.’

Then she remembered. ‘Becks, what is a one-eight-seven?’

‘A what?’

‘One of them said … I think he said he’d done a one-eight-seven.’

Rebecca shot Rangi a bemused glance. He was still on the phone to the emergency services, one ear to the receiver, one tuned in to the conversation between his wife and Carla.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said, again interrupting the operator. ‘She’s saying one of the intruders said something about a one-eight-seven. That’s right. Yeah.’

Rangi’s skin blanched and motley circles of cream rose through his toffee-coloured complexion. He lowered the receiver, his eyes wide. But Carla’s unanchored thoughts had already floated on to new territory.

‘Thank God he was in the garage,’ she mumbled. ‘Thank God. I mean, just for a beer. We shouldn’t tell him about Kevin. Not yet.’

‘Who?’

‘Jack!’ Carla said impatiently. ‘He raised the alarm. Didn’t he?’ Then she tilted her head, her eyes darting skittishly over jumbled thoughts. ‘No … He couldn’t have, because you—’

Rebecca opened her mouth and closed it again. Carla looked from Rebecca to Rangi, then back to Rebecca. ‘You … I heard you
out there. You thought we’d slept in. And you said Jack’s car was still here. So where is he? Where’s Jack?’ Her words were tripping over each other as they tried to keep pace with her thoughts.

Carla heaved herself off the ground.

‘Carla, wait!’ But she was already staggering down the corridor, her blood pressure struggling to catch up. She shambled past Jack’s room – his mattress upturned on the floor, the cupboards gaping. She passed the toilet – a potent pool of yellow stagnating beneath the shiny white bowl. And her bedroom, where disembowelled drawers had been flung across the carpet, their contents strewn in frenzied disarray. Books stood on their heads, jackets buckled and spines ripped. Carla’s jewellery box lay open, the lid unhinged, the baize compartments empty save for a lone brooch clinging on by a bent clasp.

Then she was in the passageway to the garage. The door seemed so far away, as if she were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.

The walls began to close in and the floor felt as if it was shifting under her. Carla lurched forward, her movements clumsy and uncoordinated.

In front of the panelled door she paused, swaying unsteadily, then slowly she lowered the cold brass handle.

The door sighed open and a hot, meaty cocktail of pesticide, lawnmower fuel, and old blood winded her.

The refrigerator door stood ajar. For a moment, this irritated her. In the ordinariness of life, it should have been shut. Then she saw the dented beer can lying unopened on the ground, and the bloodied shovel.

Her eyes crept warily along the concrete and stopped.

Carla stared blankly at first, caught in that brief hiatus like when sliced skin has just been parted. Then, as a new wound colours red
and the nerve receptors resound, so comprehension dawned.

Rebecca caught up with her. ‘Oh God, no!’ she cried out, bringing a trembling hand to her face.

Alien noises bubbled out of Carla’s mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut, but in vain. The snapshot had already been taken and would be the screen saver of her life from this moment on.

Carla crumpled in a heap beside her child, sucking in air with whooping gasps. Then she lifted Jack’s head onto her lap and with the corner of her skirt, began to wipe clean his face with meticulous maternal detail – his neck, his ears, his forehead. ‘It’s all right, my boy. I’m here. It’s alright.’

Rebecca turned and ran from the room, the sound of her retching mingling with the wail of approaching sirens.

‘Jack needs me,’ Carla screamed, fighting to free herself from the ambulance officer’s grip. ‘I won’t leave him. Don’t!’

‘Mrs Reid, we need to get you and your husband to hospital. I understand how you feel,’ the young man tried.

‘No, you don’t. Can’t … possibly.’

A siren severed the fracas, whirring in the background as an ambulance with Kevin on board retreated down the driveway.

‘Carla, love, come now,’ Rebecca said, taking Carla’s hand and caressing it. ‘We need to get you medical attention as soon as possible. Here, the blanket is sliding off you. You’re shaking. Lie back.’

‘But Jack. What about Jack?’

‘I know.’ Rebecca’s voice shuddered. ‘But they’ve sealed the scene. None of us can go back in. I’m so sorry.’

Carla sank back on the gurney and the paramedic secured a broad leather strap across her legs.

Another thought swam into her consciousness. She sat up. ‘The cows. Who’s going to milk the—?’

‘Rangi will sort everything. Now just you lie down. Come on, love.’

Carla gave over to Rebecca stroking her hair. The ambulance officer shot Rebecca a grateful glance.

‘Becks, my mouth. It’s so dry.’

‘I’ll see if—’

‘She can’t be having anything to drink,’ said an apparition in a blue boiler suit, as he glided past them. ‘Not till they’ve taken swabs.’

The driveway was jammed with unfamiliar traffic – vehicles crammed onto the front lawn, and people fluorescing in uniforms Carla had only ever seen on television. Cameras flashed, dogs barked, and emergency lights revolved. A white van was trying to reverse, the large satellite dish on its roof breaking a branch of the ash tree as it lurched backwards.

Rebecca climbed into the back of the ambulance with Carla. Someone closed one of the doors. Carla lifted her head and looked through the remaining rectangle of light. A band of red and white plastic –
Police Emergency, Police Emergency, Police Emergency
– barred her from her home. She closed her eyes. A paramedic was crouching beside her, taking her pulse. His gloved hand felt peculiar. It reminded her of the game ‘Dead Man’s Skin’ they used to play as kids, holding two forefingers together in a steeple while someone rubbed their own fingers over it.

She heard a voice rising above the noise of the idling engine and howling siren. The ambulance door banged and a shadow swept over Carla. She opened her eyes.

A large man in a blue uniform was sitting down on the stretcher opposite, his frame dwarfing Rebecca. His eyes met Carla’s – speckled grey eyes that sloped away under heavy folds of lid. His charcoal hair looked recently cropped, the blunt bristles not yet mellowed into shape, and his jaw showed the shadow of a day’s growth. Already wide across the shoulders, he was further bulked out by a bulletproof vest. His hands were big and each nail ended bluntly in a straight white line.

‘Mrs Reid, I’m Detective Inspector Steve Herbert.’ His solid
voice promised safety. He placed a hand on her bare arm. It was warm. ‘I’m very sorry.’

He would be heading the investigation, he told her. Working round the clock to catch the killers – the people who had invaded her home, her life, her body.

And so the wheel of justice creaked, groaned, and began to turn.

As they made their way through the dawn to North Shore Hospital, Carla tried to answer as best she could Detective Inspector Herbert’s careful questions. Already blank spaces censored her memory. Like a schoolchild sitting her first exam, every answer seemed so important. As if Jack’s very survival depended on her accuracy.

But Jack was dead.
Nothing
could bring him back. Dead was for ever.

Her arrival at hospital brought more people, more questions, and more people – house surgeons, registrars, nurses, forensics, victim support – a blur of uniform and process. And through it all, DI Steve Herbert was there in the background, a quiet reassuring presence.

Carla lost track of time. Windowless fluorescent light replaced the flux of day and night, sunshine and shadow. After what felt like an eternity, she was transferred from the Emergency Department to a single room, where she was left alone with Rebecca. Mercifully, Rebecca didn’t talk, but instead just stroked her head till Carla finally drifted into a murky sleep.

‘Mrs Reid?’

Carla sat up robotically. Her tongue was thick, her mind furry with sleep.

A tiny grey-haired woman with an impish haircut had slipped into the room. ‘Mrs Reid, my name is Kathryn Pepper.’ She set down a large black bag. ‘I’m a doctor with DSAC. Doctors for Sexual Abuse Care,’ she said gently.

She had very blue eyes, pinched-pink cheeks, and a Scottish accent that softened the angles of her words.

‘I understand that you endured a terrible experience last night. Nobody should have to go through what you have. I am so very sorry.’

Carla felt the sting of tears. Sparse and thin they trickled down her cheeks.

‘I’m here to gather as much evidence as I can against those who’ve done this to you. I know it must be the last thing you feel like, but it really is very important.’

Carla nodded.

‘Would you like your friend to stay?’

Carla grabbed Rebecca’s hand in affirmation.

Doctor Pepper carefully explained each step of the procedure, and then Carla submitted to the examination, her inelastic and bruised tissues once more assailed.

‘That’s everything I need,’ the doctor finally said, meticulously sealing and labelling the last of several plastic bags. ‘You have tranquillisers, antibiotics and painkillers charted. We can give you a sedative now.’

Tranquillisers? Sedatives? Carla had scarcely swallowed a tablet in her life. ‘My husband,’ she said. ‘Nobody can tell me. Is he all right? The nurse, I think she was a nurse, promised to find out ages ago.’

‘I’ll go and see,’ Rebecca proffered, quickly escaping from the room.