Gith (14 page)

'She needs me.'

'That's the problem. That's what's sick about it.'

'I don't get you,' I said.

'You need her to need you. You're obsessed with her.'

'And you're obsessed with your business.'

'That's different. That's normal.' She shook her head. 'I don't
know — I'm not sure I can put up with much more of this.'

'More of what?'

'Watching you with her. It makes my skin crawl.'

'You don't have to be here,' I said. The words just came out
and I found I didn't want to take them back. I felt terrible
about it but I didn't.

'No,' she said, staring at me. 'I don't, do I?'

She didn't leave, though, not right then. I'm not sure why.
Maybe she'd talked to a lawyer and found out that I might get
a half share of her business if we split up. Maybe she still had
an eye on Gith's trust fund. Maybe there was still the ghost
of the old feelings there. Whatever the case, Michelle kept
on living at the Epuni house and she and I kept on sharing
the same bed, even though all we did in it was sleep. It took
another four months before she finally told us she had got
herself an apartment in Wellington so she didn't have to come
out to the Hutt every night. Bit by bit, over about a year, she
spent less and less time with us and more and more in her
new life. In the end we hardly saw her at all. She'd just turn up
now and again when she needed something. Gith and I didn't
mind. We were sweet.

***

I WAS REAL popular for the next day or so. Everybody
wanted to know about Moss and Dagmar, even though I
wasn't that keen to talk about it. Dolly McKenzie was first.
She came by the service station and bought five dollars' worth
of gas — and then she baled me up behind the shop counter
and asked me a lot of questions.

'Well,' she said when I was done. 'Dagmar's not the nicest
person I ever met, but really. You wouldn't wish that on
anybody, would you? You wouldn't wish that on a dog. I mean,
Moss wouldn't treat his dog like that.'
No, I thought. He'd shoot it.

'Hard to comprehend, isn't it?' she went on. 'Why did he
do it?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But he just seemed like he couldn't
cope with it. Maybe he felt he had no other way to go. I mean,
he's so used to living without any help from anybody that he
didn't know what to do.'

'Hard to believe. And the thing is, nobody noticed, did
they? I mean, the police have been up there before. They
interviewed Moss and took his car — did you know that? If
they were going to speak to him, you'd think they'd want to
talk to Dagmar as well, wouldn't you? Dearie, dearie me.' She
shook her head as if it was all too hard to figure. 'It goes to
show. Even in a place like this people can just disappear.'

'I guess.'

'Like that poor girl. They haven't found her yet.'

'No,' I said.

'I expect there's a connection. Don't you think so?'

'No, I don't, to be honest.'

'People in those situations. The horrible things that happen
to them. Sadists and murderers. I expect he tortured her. I
expect he kept her alive for hours doing disgusting things.
And that girl of yours. Someone told me she got attacked on
Sunday. At the show.'

'That's right.'

'Poor wee innocent! Was it a mugger?'

'No.'

'Not something nasty? Surely not.'

'Just a bit of bullying, I guess.'

'It's not right, is it?' Dolly said.

'No. That's for sure.'

***

SIMON INGREST WAS next in line. Simon is not like his
wife. In fact, except for their age and their matching haircuts,
he is just about the opposite: kind of moody and serious and
seeming to think the worst of everybody. He didn't like my
ideas about why Moss had done it. He had a different story.
Tim Dixon, who had retired to a little house in Anzac Street
beside the church, had done a bit of work for the Vields in
the old days. Tim said Dagmar used to rule Moss with a rod
of iron. He had seen Dagmar lay into Moss one day, knocking
him out cold, for doing nothing much.

'What goes around comes around,' Simon said, brown eyes
staring at me. He had the same sort of look as one of those
droopy dogs.

'Justice?'

'Psychology. Somewhere in there . . .' he tapped his forehead,
'Moss wants his revenge. The opportunity comes, and,
well . . .'

'Makes sense,' I said.

'Of course it does. There's no telling how nasty people can
be to each other. He would probably have let the old man
starve to death.'

'I don't know about that,' I said.

'Well, this sure strengthens the case against him.'

'What case?'

'Anneke Hesse. They impounded his station wagon. He's obviously
on their list of suspects. Just like he was the last time. For that other
girl.'

'Yes,' I said, 'but I never could figure that one out.'

'A witness saw Mattie getting into a white wagon. A Ford
Laser or a Corolla, they said. Moss has a Corolla. Plus, he was
in Katawai that day organising fertiliser. Plus, he's obviously
the type.'

'Is there a type?'

'They have profiles, don't they?'

'He wasn't here the day Anneke went missing,' I said. 'You
don't have Moss around without noticing him.'

'Hmm.' Simon thought about this. 'Well, I have to say he's
close to the top of my list. Along with that Cleat fellow.'

'I don't think it's either of them,' I said.

'Oh?' He stared at me. 'What's your theory then?'

'I don't have one.' Except that whoever it was, was driving
a white Mitsubishi van. I almost said that but I stopped
myself.

'Hmm. All I know is we don't need people like that in this
community. Riff-raff and ratbags and rapists. We have women
and children here. The last thing we need is the government
dumping Cleat and that kind of person on us.'

'I guess he lives here,' I said. 'Or his mother does.' She's
been here a lot longer than you, I might have said.

'Ah, well. She's another one, isn't she? A viper, if ever I saw
one.'

'Maybe she just needs to be treated decently.'

'Decent people need to be treated decently. That's my
point.'

***

DOWN AT THE pub they were just as keen to hear the
details. They were standing three deep round our table by the
time I got to the end of the story.

'They arrested Moss?' Pat Harrigan asked.

'I don't know,' I said.

'Yeah, they arrested him,' Monty answered.

'Just an excuse,' Mark said. 'The real idea is for them to get
up there and pull that place to pieces, go through it with a
fine-tooth comb.'

'What for?' Tom raised his eyebrows.

'Anneke Hesse. He's still in the frame for that, eh.'

'Too right,' Monty said. 'It's crawling with cops up there.

You can see them from my place.'

'That's what they do,' Mark went on. 'They arrest you for
something minor — illegally possessing a firearm or spitting
on the floor or something — and then they grill you about
the thing they're really interested in.'

'What happened to Dagmar wasn't minor,' I said.

'Same principle, though, eh?'

'You reckon that girl's buried up there?' Trevor Bittington
asked.

'Has to be,' Mark said. 'And the other one, too, is my bet.'

No, I almost said, she's up at the lake.

'Where, though?' Trevor asked.

'Anywhere. I mean, there's all that bush on the edge of
Moss's place up towards Gatter Hill. Nobody's been in there
for fifty years. What do you reckon, Monty?'

'Well.' Monty cleared his throat, took a pull at his beer.

'Where would you bury 'em?' Tom turned to Mark.

'Don't know. In a paddock, maybe. In a low-lying bit. You
dig a big hole and stick them in and then you let a few head
of stock wander over them.'

'That's smart,' Tom said.

Monty wasn't so sure. 'They have detectors for that sort of
situation.'

'You going to run a detector over three-fifty hectares?'

'Do you believe Moss did it?' I asked Monty.

'Don't know,' he said. 'It makes sense.'

'No it doesn't. He wasn't there that day, when Anneke went
missing, was he?'

'I didn't see him. But, you know, he might have picked her
up round the corner.'

'But the whole bloody point is that you and Mavis saw
a white wagon. If he picked her up round the corner you
didn't see him, and if you didn't see him who's to say it was a
white wagon that picked her up?' It didn't come out the way I
wanted. I wasn't even sure it made sense.

'Not more white wagons,' Mark said. 'I got them coming
out my bloody ears.'

I was riled by now. 'It wasn't a white wagon. It was a white
van, with a black dog.'

Mark pulled a face. 'Jesus. Let go of your bloody van, won't
you? I'm sick of hearing about it. They'll charge Moss Vield
with those murders. I'll put ten bucks on it.'

There was a silence.

'Go on,' Mark said, pointing at me. 'Put your money where
your mouth is.'

Blue Cormer saved me the trouble of answering. 'I don't
reckon it's Moss,' he said. 'My money's still on that little shit
Cleat.'

'Yeah, yeah.' A few of the others thought so too.

'The way he creeps around. He's an absolute fuckin'
slimeball. I want to wring his fuckin' neck.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'He's been hanging round our place. He was
eyeing Gith up.'

'Aw, Jesus!' Trevor said. 'That's disgusting!'

'He'd fuck anything with a hole in it, that bugger,' somebody
said.

'Your poor bloody handicapped kid that don't know which
way is up.'

I wasn't sure who that was and I was about to turn round
and say something when Blue put his hand on my shoulder.

'Listen, mate,' he said, 'you have any trouble with that little
cunt, just let us know, eh. It'd give me the greatest pleasure to
sort the fucker out.'

'Yeah, right on.'

'It's a bloody travesty of this justice system that pricks like
that are still walking the streets,' Trevor said.

'Lock 'em up and throw away the key, I say.' That was
Mark, I reckon.

***

I'M NOT SURE why I said what I did about Billy Cleat. It wasn't strictly true.
Any hanging round that Billy had done was as much about getting money out
of me as about Gith. So far, since I had given him the second ten bucks, he
seemed to be sticking to the deal. I had seen him in the distance now and
again but the only times he had come near me were when I was well away from
the service station. He did it that night when I was on my way home, sneaking
out of the shadows in the pub car park.

'Mr McUrran. Sir.'

I stopped. Maybe I felt a bit bad about dissing him to Blue
Cormer.

'Something to report, sir,' he said, coming up to me with
his sideways walk.

'What?'

'Colin George,' he said. 'It's a Nissan van and a brown
dog.'

'Thanks.'

He looked at me, blinked. Then his eyes shifted to my left
shoulder. I felt like I had something crawling on it.

'Is that what you wanted, sir?'

I knew what he meant.

'No more money till you get me something on the other
bloke, Rick Parline. Right?'

'Very good, sir.'

I turned and walked away. I had to stop myself from
looking back.

***

GITH WAS FLICKING through a magazine when I got
home, one of those things with pictures of movie stars looking
glamorous or not. I had often wanted to dress her up and
make her look like a movie star. I'd even talked about it a few
times but all she did was laugh.

She put the magazine down when she saw me and I went
and sat next to her on the sofa, put my arm around her. She
leant into me, with her head on my shoulder. We sat there for
a while in the silence as we often did, but for once I started to
feel just how much silence there was. I remembered talking
to Brenda and how easy that had been. Not like the pub,
where everybody was trying to one-up everybody else. I liked
Brenda, but nothing was ever going to happen there, was it?

'We're all right, eh?' I asked.

Gith nodded.

'We need to stick together.'

'Gith.'

'I mean, do you like living here? We don't have to.'

She didn't answer.

'We could sell up and go somewhere else.'

'Narg.'

'Only, you know, it might be kind of dangerous here. For
us. For you.'

I felt her tense. I had to go on now. I had to tell her.

'Everybody seems to think either Billy Cleat or Moss
Vield took that girl. Everybody except us. And the person
who really took her.'

'Gith.' I was surprised at how calm she seemed to be.

'You figured this out already? For yourself?'

'Gith.'

'And you're not scared?'

She shrugged and then with her left hand she started to
undo the buttons on my shirt, starting with the lowest one. I
put my hand over hers to stop her. I had more to say.

'I'm not a real bright guy,' I said. 'And I do dumb things. We
should be keeping our heads down. We should be ignoring
everything and everybody and minding our own business, but
somehow, you know, I want to
know
.'

'Gith.'

'I'm just scared I'm going to get us into more trouble.'

'Narg,' she said.

Later that night, while Gith was watching TV, I took the
chance to check on the rifle and the shells. They were still
there where I'd left them.

***

A COUPLE OF mornings a week Pita used to come over and
look after the pumps while I went down to Katawai to do the
banking and whatever other bits and pieces couldn't be done
on a Saturday morning. If there was a lot of work booked in,
Gith stayed behind. It was around a twenty-minute drive if
you didn't push it too hard; first over the long bridge across
the Mangatiki River and then a series of easy curves through
rolling country on the other bank. That day, driving down, I
kept a special lookout for the house Julian had talked about,
the one that used to belong to the Parlines. It was an old villa,
tucked away behind a big overgrown hedge so that all you
could see was the red rusted roof and a gable with the paint
worn down to the bare wood. Did the Parlines still own it?
And, supposing they did, did they ever go there?