Cry of the Taniwha (6 page)

Eve and Matt had agreed to meet at the hotel after dinner each day if they could. If either one couldn’t, then they would send an email; if it was anything important, they’d telephone each other. Matt was disappointed to find that Eve wasn’t there that evening. She had left an email, but Matt found that reading a screen wasn’t quite the same as sitting close to her, listening and looking.

Hi Matt

We’re heading into town for dinner, so I probably won’t see you. Here’s what I found. It’s all very exciting.

I began with Louise Miller and started searching the genealogy and family-tree sites. There have been a lot of people named Louise Miller, but only four were around in 1874 and only one of those had a daughter named Mary. In 1883, Mary Miller married an Edward Basham. I couldn’t find anything more about Mary Miller, but Edward is famous, or should I say infamous.

In 1885 he was Accountant at the Bank of Soho in London, and in that same year they were robbed. The robbers didn’t get into the money vaults, but they did get into the deposit boxes. Nobody knows
exactly how much was stolen, because the owners of the boxes were reluctant to say. There was talk about gold ingots and jewellery, particularly a pendant containing a very large diamond called the Rothery Stone. There were insurance claims for hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of diamonds and jewellery which people said had been in the boxes. It seems like it was really big news at the time, as the insurance companies didn’t want to pay up.

Then in 1886 a robber was caught doing another bank. He admitted also doing the Bank of Soho job, but said that he’d had help from an insider, who he named as Edward Basham. By then, Edward had gone on leave to look at the world with his wife. Scotland Yard searched for him, but it looks like they never found him or his wife.

I think they must’ve come to New Zealand. Maybe Edward was a bit strange and liked putting his wife in handcuffs!!!! But something went wrong, and either she died or he killed her. Then he buried her and disappeared. And no one knew anything about it until you came along and dug her up.

What do you think? Pretty good, huh? You can call me Sherlene Holmes from now on, although I don’t think I’ll take up smoking a pipe just yet. And I’m still looking. Most of what I’ve discovered came from English newspapers. Lots of them have put all their old editions on the web. But there aren’t
many New Zealand ones. The hotel desk people say that the local library probably has old papers on microfilm, so that’s where I’m going to start looking next.

Life is no longer boring. Keep on digging things up, Matt, and we’ll solve the crime of the century—well, the crime of the nineteenth century at least.

See ya!

Eve

Matt smiled to himself as he read the email. He decided he liked getting emails from this girl. Sherlene Holmes! Who did she think she was kidding?

Well, Sherlene,
he thought,
I’ve got news for you. Your research skills might be OK, but your conclusions are lousy. The body is not Mary Basham—it’s a male.

But of more interest to Matt was the robbery of the deposit boxes. Sitting on his bed at Nan’s was a metal box that, for all he knew, could be a deposit box. It was certainly a strongbox of some description, and it was more than heavy enough to contain ingots of gold; maybe even diamonds. All of a sudden, opening that strongbox had taken on a far greater importance.

The strongbox did not get opened that night, nor the following morning when he woke up at five and tried again. If ever it was going to be opened, it would need better tools than Matt’s small collection. It needed serious lock-picking
tools. He considered taking it to a locksmith, but decided against that after thinking about the questions he might be asked.

He planned his day while in the shower. First thing, he was going back to the mud pool to look for more bits of metal: somewhere near where the box was found there might be a key. They’d stopped scanning when they’d found the box. But the key would have been smaller and blasted further out. If that didn’t work, then he’d look for more jewels. They’d only tried two lines out from the blast; there were still many other angles for them to try.

Hone, however, had other plans for them. He’d got leave for the day and was going to take them to all the rides he’d promised. At first Matt was peeved that it couldn’t be some other day, but that soon changed when they climbed into the gondola and rode up Mount Ngongotaha to the luge courses. For three hours they rode down the mountain on the luge trolleys, and back up on a chair lift.

Jackson was a natural, beating Matt every time. He was prepared to take more risks and didn’t mind crashing—he appeared to be immune to pain. On the mountain, he was just a kid having fun. All the gang bravado had disappeared. It seemed as if Hone’s plan was working.

Next stop was drift-racing on go-karts. Again, Matt was beaten. The same thing happened on the quad bikes, but he didn’t mind—never before had he had such concentrated fun.

They arrived back home too tired to do anything except eat and sleep. Before Jackson went home, Matt took him into his room and told him about Eve and what she’d found out. Jackson became excited by the suggestion that the strongbox
might contain gold and diamonds. Afterwards, they sat and stared at the thing as if willing it to open.

It didn’t, but somehow it inspired Jackson with an idea. ‘I know how we’ll open it,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘Tell you tomorrow. I’ve got to arrange sumtin first.’

Matt looked at him, sternly. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? More shoplifting?’

‘Nah, man! Stay cool. I just got to organize sumtin, that’s all. We’ll do it in the ay-em.’

Jackson came over just after ten in the morning. ‘It’s all set,’ he said. ‘Bring it over my place and we’ll open it.’

Matt was suspicious. ‘How?’

Jackson tilted his head. ‘You’ll find out. C’mon! Let’s go.’

Reluctantly, Matt picked up the box and trailed after the boy.

There was a battered vehicle parked in the driveway that Matt hadn’t seen before. If it was Mere’s car, then shouldn’t she be at work already? He began to feel nervous. Something wasn’t quite right here, but he couldn’t work out what.

He soon found out.

Sprawled on the chairs in the lounge were five members of the WXK gang. Matt would have turned around and walked out if one of them hadn’t stood and moved to lean against the doorjamb.

Sitting at the head of the table was the one with the skull tattoo: Scott Murray, also known as Skulla.

‘So this is Matt Bogan,’ he said, looking Matt up and down. The others sniggered noisily.

‘It’s Matt
Logan
,’ said Matt, staring at the man.

‘Not to me it isn’t, Matt
Bogan.
Or maybe I’ll just call you Bogan. I’m the leader round here, so I can call you what I want. But you have to call me Skulla.’ He pointed to the tattoo in the middle of his forehead. ‘That’s so’s you’ll know who I am.’

He then turned to the guy guarding the door. ‘And that one over there’s my deputy, Diz. And over there is my other deputy, Croke.’

Croke gave a little nod. Close up, he looked even scarier than Matt remembered from the sighting a couple of days before: his mohawk looked like it would cut you if you touched it, and the tattoos at the side were now identifiable as the letters WXK with a dagger cutting through them.

Diz didn’t look anywhere near as scary. There were no obvious tattoos and, apart from the shaven head, he looked much like lots of other people you’d see walking the streets. Yet he was the one who had dangled Jackson over the crater: the one Hone said was real dangerous.

‘So, Bogan. You want us to open that box?’

‘Yeah, s’pose so.’ Matt said, although he really didn’t want it opened with these guys around. If it contained anything valuable, then he knew he’d never see the stuff again. He was regretting not taking it straight to the police.

Croke took the box and placed it on the table in front of Skulla. Then he fished in his pocket, removing a huge set of keys and put them alongside. It was the biggest bunch of keys Matt had ever seen; a dozen or more key rings all linked together to form a chain. There must’ve been close to a hundred keys.

‘Gather round folks,’ said Skulla, ‘and let’s see what treasure we’ve got here.’

Jackson and Matt moved closer. Jackson nudged Matt. ‘Skulla can open any lock,’ he said proudly. ‘Can’t you, Skulla?’

Skulla ignored him.

Matt looked at Jackson, wondering if the boy knew what was going to happen when the box was opened. Had he intentionally set it up so the gang would get the gold and jewels? Or had he just wanted to show off and not thought of the consequences?

The room was silent as Skulla began. Clearly, the man liked being the centre of attention. He exercised his fingers for a while before shifting the metal cover from the lock and peering inside. Then he made a big performance of going through the keys until he found the one he wanted. This was inserted into the lock and turned. Something clicked. Skulla smiled and leant back in the chair as if expecting applause. None came, so he moved forward to lift the lid.

Nothing happened.

He strained at it for a moment, before returning to the lock and applying more pressure to the key. Again a click, but again the lid would not open. Matt’s hopes began to rise: maybe the man couldn’t open it.

Diz stepped forward and held out a knife. ‘You want this,’ he grunted.

Skulla just stared at his deputy, who stepped back, folded the knife and put it back in his pocket.

After that, the silence in the room grew deeper. Skulla was getting angry and no one wanted to attract his attention.

He searched through the keys until he found a thin wire with a hook on the end. This was forced into the lock next to the key. A bit of fiddling resulted in yet another click. Skulla
took a deep breath, before giving the key a third turn. This time it went all the way around. He took another breath and tried the lid. This time it lifted. There was a collective sigh of relief. The gang members grunted with approval. The only sound from Matt was the gurgling of his churning stomach.

Still Skulla didn’t open the box fully. Instead he turned to Matt. ‘What you think’s in here, Bogan?’

Matt shrugged. He wasn’t going to tell this man about his dreams.

‘Gold?’ suggested Skulla. ‘Jools? More money? Juzza says you gave the feds all the money. Bad move, Bogan. You don’t give the feds a thing.’ He stared at Matt as if he might be a fed in disguise.

Then he looked around his gang, eventually letting his eyes settle on Croke. ‘Hey, Croke! You can have the pleasure,’ he said, pushing the box towards his deputy.

Croke beamed. He went through a stupid loosening-up exercise before placing his hands on the box, and slowly opening the lid. If they’d been expecting beams of golden light to fill the room, then they were disappointed. The only thing that came from the box was a stale, earthy smell.

The source of the smell was clearly a piece of polished ponga wood tucked in one end of the box. It had a fat candle stuck through the middle. The rest of the box was filled with objects wrapped in soft, suede leather.

Skulla looked at them and smiled. ‘Looks like we’ve got us some jools.’ He nodded to Croke. ‘Open it.’

Croke pulled out one of the leather-wrapped bundles. The others moved closer, anticipating a great find. One by one the corners were folded back until the contents became visible.

‘What’s this crap?’ asked Croke.

Sitting on the leather was a bottle filled with water and sealed with wax.

Without speaking, Skulla grabbed another bundle and unwrapped it, revealing yet another bottle.

The third one was different. It contained a slab of white, silica rock, smooth on one surface but jagged on all the others where it had been broken from some larger structure. The fourth item was another piece of rock—this one slightly reddish.

That was it! Two bottles of water, a couple of rocks, and a ponga candleholder.

The gang members looked at it in disgust. Diz put their thoughts into words. ‘Where’s the jools?’

Matt was smiling inside. There were no ‘jools’, at least nothing that the gang would consider valuable. Yet he had a feeling that to some people the rocks might be very valuable indeed.

Suddenly, Skulla raked the table with his arm, sweeping it all to the floor. ‘Now clean it up, Bogan,’ he snarled. ‘Bringing your crazy shit here. Making us think it was valuable.’ He leant forwards as if he was going to take a swing at him. Matt ducked down and began to pick up the bits, putting them back in the box. The rocks were a bit chipped, but fortunately the bottles were made from thick glass and were unbroken.

The others grouped around to watch him. Matt’s fear rose again as they moved in closer. What were they planning to do after he’d cleaned up?

When he’d finished, he stood with the box cradled in his arms, dwarfed by the bodies surrounding him.

‘Come here, Bogan,’ ordered Skulla, who was still seated. The others parted to let Matt through.

Matt stood in front of the leader, expecting some sort of violence. Instead, Skulla put out his hand to grab the keys that were still hanging from the lock. He sorted them into some sort of order before handing them back to Croke.

‘You’ve wasted my time, Bogan,’ he snarled. ‘But I’m gonna be good to you. I’m gonna give you the chance to make it up. You’re gonna find sumtin really valuable. I want that gold and diamonds Juzza talked about. So you better get searching with that machine of yours. Understand?’

Somehow Matt managed to give a nod.

‘Good! Now get the hell out of here and take that load of crap with you.’

Just as Matt was about to go through the door, Diz put out his arm to stop him. He stared straight into Matt’s eyes. Now Matt could see what Hone was talking about. This man might not look scary on the outside, but behind those eyes was something more terrifying than any tattoo or haircut.

Diz flexed his muscles as if getting ready to attack.