The Soldier who Said No (38 page)

He was still suffering from jet lag and in a foul mood, but on the walk to the ferry station the familiar sights and smells of central Auckland had a calming effect on him. He fell asleep on the ferry even before the ferrymen had loosened the moorings. They had to wake him at Half Moon Bay to disembark. When De Villiers opened his eyes and heard the wind whistling through the masts of the yachts at their moorings, he was startled to find that he was not in Pretoria. He drove home slowly, reminding himself that right-turning traffic had right of way at intersections.

Emma met him at the car and opened the door. He showed her the letter and followed her inside.

De Villiers was out of sorts and felt imprisoned by the walls of his house and the blustery weather. He realised that his career was in the balance and that he hadn’t done any proper planning for his return to New Zealand. He looked again at the letter.

‘What are we going to do?’ Emma asked, adding to his disquiet.

‘Fight it,’ he said. ‘What else can I do?’

There were five charges. De Villiers couldn’t see a defence to at least three of them.

Emma held him from behind and kissed his neck. The
New Zealand Herald
lay on the breakfast table. It was open at the travel section. Outside a municipal employee on a green tractor-mower was buzzing up and down the Macleans Reserve, giving the park its weekly number-three cut. The blades shaped a ridge of wet grass to one side behind the tractor.

‘Perhaps you should speak to Henderson,’ Emma suggested.

De Villiers turned to face her. He realised for the second time in less than an hour that he didn’t know what to say to his superior. He played for time. ‘Let’s go back to the Hotel du Vin instead,’ he said. ‘I can always talk to him when we get back.’

I need time to think, he said to himself when Emma had gone upstairs to pack Zoë’s things. He also needed to complete his investigation.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he shouted up the stairs.

‘We’re packing,’ Zoë screamed.

‘Be patient,’ Emma said. ‘And come up. I’m not going to pack for you.’

De Villiers decided to make a call first. He rang the number and a boy De Villiers judged to be of primary school age answered in Afrikaans. De Villiers asked to speak to Tjaart Erasmus.

‘Hy is by die werk, Oom.’
He’s at work, Uncle.

The boy was old enough to give a work number and even the name of the business. De Villiers recognised the area code. The business was in the next suburb, a short drive away. With a slight deviation they could take that route to the Hotel du Vin.

He rang the number and held his breath. When the voice on the line asked who was speaking the third time, he put the phone down.

Revenge is best served cold, De Villiers remembered, and slowly walked upstairs to pack.

Halfway to the Hotel du Vin, on a steep decline after the Bombay Hills, fatigue overcame De Villiers and he stopped for Emma to take over the driving.

The archery range was deserted. The stream was flowing strongly with cold, tea-coloured water. They checked in and were allocated the same chalet they had occupied six months earlier. This time there was no sun and they had to move indoors immediately to escape the sheets of rain being driven almost horizontally by the wind. Emma left for a massage and beauty treatment. There was no one in the gym and De Villiers and Zoë had the indoor swimming pool and spa bath to themselves. Time passed quickly, De Villiers’s subconscious doing its work under the distraction of Zoë’s constant chattering. When they returned to the chalet, Zoë insisted on watching
Transformers
on the movie channel. De Villiers watched with one eye, intent on stopping the film if it got too violent. When Emma returned, she promptly changed the channel and turned a deaf ear to their objections. They had dinner sent to the chalet and not even the strongest coffee could keep De Villiers awake. He drifted off to sleep before the six o’clock news had reached the sports section. Zoë’s words followed him into his dreams.

‘Mum, is there something wrong with Dad?’

There was. Sleep provided no escape. In his nightmare De Villiers ran and ran, pursued by monsters that changed their shapes and tactics, but never quite caught up with him. They started as animals, hyenas, lion and crocodiles, but turned into people, soldiers, doctors and nurses, who could change into helicopters and troop carriers. But deep down in the recesses of his mind a pattern emerged, at first as a faint and distant call, but in the end as a persistent knocking on the doors of reason.

At midnight De Villiers was wide awake, his body clock still tuned to a foreign time zone. Zoë was snoring on Emma’s side of the bed. He lay staring at the ceiling until he could hear the first birdcalls. He gently lifted Emma’s arm off his chest and slipped out of bed.

It was wet outside, but not too cold. The wind had abated but not before it had driven the mist away. He jogged slowly to the start of the fitness course. This time he would complete the course without stopping and he would do every exercise twice. When he arrived back at the chalet, slightly out of breath but feeling strong, he closed his eyes and said a little prayer of thanks for Liesl Weber. Emma and Zoë were still sleeping and he quietly collected his writing materials and sat down at the small table.

He began to prepare a dossier for the Commissioner.

The covert Ureweras programme had turned sour two weeks earlier on a Saturday night when two of the recruits ran out of cigarettes and money at the same time. The mists lay thick in the valleys and on the lakes and the whole of New Zealand was glued to their television sets to watch a rugby match. The Crusaders needed to win to stay in the battle for the top spot in the Super 14 rugby competition, one they had won more than any other team in its twelve-year history.

The turbaned Nepalese shopkeeper, Mr Chandra Mukherjee, stood with folded arms behind the counter of his Opotiki supermarket. He wasn’t watching the rugby match being shown live on Sky on his in-store television set. After selecting an array of foodstuffs, two hooded customers approached the till and asked for two cartons of Marlboros from the shelf behind him. When Mr Mukherjee turned back towards them, he faced the barrel of a pistol.

‘The money in the till,’ the gunman demanded.

Mr Mukherjee slowly placed the two cartons of cigarettes on the counter, never taking his eyes off the gun. A glance at the second customer betrayed his unarmed state.

‘Hurry up or I’ll shoot!’ the gunman shouted when Mr Mukherjee made no move to open the till. The gunman kept glancing at the door.

‘Take it easy, the till only has small change in it. I have more money under the counter,’ the middle-aged shopkeeper said.

‘Then stop fucking about and give me the money,’ the gunman demanded, waving the gun in an arc that covered the length of the counter.

Mr Mukherjee’s eyes followed the gun from side to side.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it slowly.’

The gunman leaned forward over the counter as Mr Mukherjee stooped low behind it. When Mr Mukherjee came upright again, there was none of his prior slowness. He rose from behind the counter with his teeth bared and a heavy kukri knife in a hard scabbard in his hands. The gunman pulled the trigger but there was no gunshot. He pulled the trigger a second time, but with the same result. He was looking down at the gun in his hand when Mr Mukherjee struck him a solid blow with the kukri to the side of the head. The gunman fell down, unconscious. The second robber had just enough time to raise his arms in defence when the blow aimed at his head broke both bones in his right forearm. He ran for the door but found it locked. Behind the counter, Mr Mukherjee had put his foot on the button activating the electronic locking devices on all the doors and windows of the supermarket.

The in-store security video subsequently taken by the police as evidence showed Mr Mukherjee giving the second robber a very severe hiding, breaking his collar bone and striking him so hard on the knee that the ligaments were severed.

After the police had surveyed the damage, they concluded that Mr Mukherjee had exceeded the bounds of self-defence and arrested him. They took the forty-centimetre-long kukri and a 9 mm pistol as exhibits. The robbers were taken to hospital in an ambulance and the handcuffed Mr Mukherjee was taken to the cells in the back of a police car.

Bail was refused at Mr Mukherjee’s first appearance in the District Court. He has a foreign passport, the prosecutor argued, and the charges may escalate to include a charge of murder if the victim were to die. The victim was still in intensive care and had a broken skull and brain injuries. In the face of these facts, the duty solicitor appointed for Mr Mukherjee had to capitulate. He asked his client if he wanted to make an application for name suppression.

‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Mr Mukherjee answered.

The next morning the
New Zealand Herald
carried the story on its front page under a photograph of Mr Mukherjee being escorted from the courtroom. The
Herald
asked the question:
Do we need to make a special effort to inculcate New Zealand values in our immigrants?
However, contrary to the
Herald’s
expectations, the tide of public opinion supported Mr Mukherjee and the bulk of correspondents wrote to say that it was perhaps time for New Zealand to learn from its immigrants.
We are sick of the way the police and the courts mollycoddle criminals.

In the glare of the media spotlight, the police were forced to turn their attention to the robbers. The man in the hospital refused to speak after being cautioned and later claimed amnesia. His co-conspirator, on the other hand, was quick to talk, his lawyer having advised him that it would be in his best interest if he were to cooperate fully with the police. He could always make a claim to the Accident Compensation Commissioner for his injuries.

The spilt beans led the police to a weapons cache in the Ureweras. The Anti-Terror Unit was called in a second time. They found a round dozen
AK
47s. The police moved into the Ureweras with a show of force that equalled that of the expeditionary force a hundred and fifty years earlier. This time no blood was spilt.

All training operations ceased and the pig-hunters and archers took a break from their activities. The Tuhoe recruits of the new intake were sent home, their training interrupted in mid-course.

The charges against Mr Mukherjee were withdrawn and the kukri returned to its rightful owner.

This time the police used subtlety rather than storm-trooper tactics. They watched and waited.

There was chaos in the streets of Auckland. Truckers from all over the North Island had converged on the city to protest against the imposition of additional road taxes. The government had taken the matter sufficiently seriously to broadcast a warning on national television that all Aucklanders should stay at home or use public transport. De Villiers took the ferry and walked the last few blocks to the venue. Queen Street was devoid of small car traffic and a procession of truckers slowly made their way through the intersections. For practical purposes, the city had come to a standstill, and when De Villiers took a shortcut through the foodhall of The Atrium, there were no customers at the food-stalls.

He found the conference room where the enquiry was to be held behind the breakfast room of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

The chairman called the meeting to order. ‘I declare this enquiry open. My name is Laurence Mason
QC
, and I have been appointed by the Commissioner of Police to chair this disciplinary hearing. The terms of reference of the enquiry have been circulated and are available for inspection. I believe a copy has been provided to Mr de Villiers, together with a list of the matters to be inquired into.’

Pierre de Villiers had a table to himself. The five members of the panel sat at their own with a stack of documents in front of each of them.

Mason read from a prepared script. ‘I have to give you formal notice that the Immigration Service is interested in the matter and that the outcome of this enquiry may affect your residency status and that of your wife and child.’

The threat to their residency status came as a surprise to De Villiers but he tried not to show it. He had been given only the standard police letter stating that he was to attend a disciplinary hearing and that he would be required to answer the complaints listed in the annexure to the letter. He didn’t have to open the envelope in his pocket to remember the complaints.

Racist abuse of a Maori colleague, calling him a cannibal

Failure to deal with a brace of taggers in accordance with standard police procedure

Insubordination, refusing to obey a valid order from DI Henderson

Leaving the country without permission after being confined to his house

Interference in the investigation of the attempt on the
PM
’s life

The chairman interrupted his thoughts. ‘Since allegations of racial misconduct have been made, the Commissioner has assembled a panel which is more or less representative of the demographics of the region. Next to me on my left is Mr Smith. He’s an Australian.’

Smith was a smallish, pepper-haired man in his late forties, De Villiers estimated.

‘Next to Mr Smith is Mrs Tan. She’s an Asian …’

Mindful of Johann Weber’s advice to run an aggressive defence, De Villiers interrupted with a question, ‘Is Ms Tan Chinese or Korean?’

‘What difference does it make?’ Mason demanded.

‘Well,’ De Villiers said, ‘since Mr Smith’s race is apparently not relevant, then Ms Tan’s shouldn’t be either.’

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Mrs Tan looked down at her hands, her eyes obscured by the fall of her hair over her brow, but De Villiers could see the faint upturn at the corners of her mouth. She was a tiny woman, immaculately turned out in a business suit and a gold-coloured scarf.

The chairman held a whispered conversation with Mrs Tan. Once she shook her head, and once she nodded.