The Spanish Helmet (3 page)

Hemi was preoccupied with changing some room prices on a local hotel website when the little red mobile phone that never rang, did. He picked it up with nervous anticipation.

‘Hemi Davis,’ he said, clearing his throat. It wasn’t his real name, of course, but the alias the agency had created for him.

‘Good morning, Hemi, do you know who this is?’ Hemi recognised the voice immediately. ‘We have some work for you.’

‘Yeah... I know who you are, I’m available.’ Hemi smiled. His wait might be over.

 Hemi couldn’t believe his luck. He had hoped he might get to work with this particular man ever since he realised who he was during his early work with the agency. As soon as Hemi saw him it was clear a destiny was being fulfilled: fate had placed the man responsible for his father’s death directly in his sights. That fate worked its wonders again when Hemi was assigned an undercover mission to penetrate the Clan of Truth, the very organisation that this creep was involved with. The Clan of Truth had an agenda; they were considered racist activists, out to prove that the Maori were not the rightful natives of New Zealand. Hemi had infiltrated the group and involved himself with Website work for them. He had made it clear he would go to any length to help their cause. Finally, after all the waiting and hinting, he was being called into action, by the top man himself. It was perfect in every way. Maybe the opportunity would arise to get a little justice, the legal way. His nerves intensified. Hemi loved a challenge. He wouldn’t have signed up for work like this if he didn’t.

‘What’s the job?’ Hemi asked.

‘A British academic is coming to New Zealand to do a little foraging in history. We need you to keep an eye on him. Don’t worry about hiding yourself too
much,
we want him to know he’s being watched. Make yourself look like the GSCB or some government agency. Use whatever techniques necessary to keep him on the path we have predetermined for him. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Yes, I know which path you mean.’ Hemi smiled at the thought of pretending to work for his own agency.

‘Good. Dr. Cameron will arrive on Sunday on the 2pm flight from Singapore. Be at the airport to welcome him. Have you got a car that fits the appropriate profile?’

‘Yes, a black Corolla.’

‘A pleasure working with you, Hemi, we’ll be in touch.’

Hemi listened for the click and watched as the phone returned to its former standby state. The polite final comment rang in Hemi’s ears. Lip service, he mused. Hemi knew better than to think this bastard actually gave a damn about him. Hemi was just there to do some dirty work.

He saved the page he was working on, uploaded it to the server, and closed Dreamweaver. That was work for the next few weeks, he thought, his customers would have to wait. Hemi grabbed a Coke from the fridge and pulled up a fresh browser session. The Internet was his friend, he spent hours online every week and was a self-professed web-guru. He punched ‘Dr. Cameron’ and ‘United Kingdom’ into the Google toolbar and sifted through the results, quickly identifying his target.

You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Mr. Matthew Cameron
. By contacting Hemi, the Clan of Truth had revealed themselves as people not to mess around with. But then, they didn’t know what kind of man they were dealing with either.

Hemi smiled and spoke to himself. ‘Let the games begin.’

Matt opened and closed every kitchen drawer. He checked the bedside cabinets and the shelf in the little lounge. As he went over the same routine three times and still came up empty, his muttering got louder. In a modest little place like his, Matt knew that he should be able to keep on top of things with ease, but he tended to get somewhat disorganised. Matters were worsened by Rose, his loving landlady, who regularly let herself in and cleaned up Matt’s place for him. She thrived on it.

‘Well Meridian,’ Matt said to the ball of fluff at his feet, ‘I guess Aunty Rose is the only living entity that knows where the camera is.’

He squatted down and gave Meridian an affectionate pat on the head. Some years earlier, when Matt was finishing up his doctorate, he lived in a beautiful home with ocean views that he had been lucky to rent when the owner needed tenants at short notice. He would stare out the living-room window and get inspired by the deep blue canvas and the lines left in the wake of passing boats. From the little outcrop of land where the house sat, Matt’s view was a perfect, sunny, due south.

One cold and windy November afternoon, Matt almost fell off his chair when an adorable short-haired tortoiseshell cat appeared at the window and frantically scratched at it, threatening to wear the glass away. Matt jumped up and hurried to let it in, expecting it was a neighbour’s cat. For three weeks, Matt pinned up notices on power-poles and the board in the local supermarket, but no one had come to claim the now familiar little cat. Despite all of his sensibilities telling him not to, Matt couldn’t ignore his affection for the little man, and so he kept him. He had called him Meridian, in honour of where he appeared, directly on a Meridian line. The direct result of keeping the cat was eviction. Matt packed up Meridian and together, they found Rose.

Matt dragged himself away from Meridian’s warm, fluffy chest, which had been enjoying a tickle, and pulled on his jacket. Leaving his apartment and bracing himself against the chilly dry air, he walked the little path between his and Rose’s front doors. Although Matt’s apartment was a part of the main house, there was no internal access between the two. Some people might like to call his apartment a granny-flat, but that wouldn’t make sense, since Matt was no granny!

Rose opened the door and ushered Matt inside before he could even ring the bell. ‘Get out of the cold you foolish boy,’ she said, ‘You’ll catch the death!’ Matt loved the way Rose spoke, with authority but with love. ‘What brings you here on a day like this then?’ She continued.

‘I’m off on a little trip. OK, I’m off on a big trip, an adventure.’ Matt smiled despite himself and decided to tell Rose all about his call with Warren. ‘I leave on Saturday morning. I have to give my semester-end lecture tomorrow, but after that I’m a free man.
At least for two months anyway.’

‘Two months!’ Rose complained, ‘Who’s going to look after me for two months?’

‘Actually, I hoped Meridian might look after you while I’m gone.’

‘I’d love to have him Matthew, you know that.’

Matt smiled at Rose calling him Matthew, something very few people did any more. As he took in the warm vanilla aroma of the coffee that had appeared from nowhere, Matt looked around at the inviting living-room. Well-worn and well-loved furniture filled Rose’s house. From the brown fabric on the sofas to the fading terracotta carpets, the earth tones made Matt feel enveloped, safe.

‘Drink your coffee ‘fore it goes cold.’ Rose interrupted his thoughts. ‘It’ll make you strong.’

‘So it’s the coffee that does it, then?’ Matt dodged the orange cushion that flew at him. It was amazing, and embarrassing, that although she was thirty-odd years his senior - Matt had never asked - Rose was fitter than he was. While Matt preferred to sink into his bed with a good novel or the TV remote control, Rose was out walking or jogging every other night. In the winter, he knew she used an exercise bike in front of Eastenders and Coronation Street. An hour of solid pedalling every day paid off, and Rose was definitely one healthy old duck as a result of it all. She loved telling him he should keep in shape.
That,
and he should clean up his apartment and finally organise everything more efficiently. That reminded him.

‘I almost forgot. Have you seen my new camera anywhere? I need to take it with...’

‘Of course I have. It’s in the top drawer of the cupboard by the front door, with your little red music
thingee
.’

‘Oh right, thanks.’ Matt couldn’t remember when he had last seen his MP3 player. In fact, when had he last gone into that drawer? Never mind, he could finish packing now and would be all set for Saturday.

‘The airline’s going to hate you. You’ll fill the plane with all your mod-cons.’

‘Not likely, my laptop’s gone on the blink again. It needs a technician, so I’ll leave it here. But I’ll take some of my other little gadgets.’

‘Leave the laptop with me, I’ll get it looked at for you.’

‘Thanks Rose, I appreciate it.’

‘No problem, ulterior motive really.
If I have your laptop you won’t be able to forget me with all that excitement you have in store.’

‘You know that won’t happen,’ Matt said as he slipped out the door into the wintery air again, ‘I’ll be thinking of my favourite little man and my best girl and the times they’re sharing every day while I’m in New Zealand, I promise you.’ And he meant it. Matt adored Rose, she was everything his mother wasn’t any more. She was warm, positive, and caring, all traits his mother seemed to have lost. They had become distant when Matt went to University. She hooked herself up with a new boyfriend and before long she was married. The distance between them grew wider than the strip of water and few thousand miles that separated them when he completed his doctorate in Switzerland.

As he walked the familiar path home, Matt thought about how Rose and Meridian were his closest family now. Sure, he visited his mother and Jack at least once a year and they still shared the close bond that had developed when it was just them for so long, but the daily contact he had with Rose and the unconditional love, OK the conditional-on-continual-feeding love, he got from Meridian meant more to him now than anything else in the world. Matt didn’t see that changing in a hurry.

The Wallis Memorial Theatre was an imposing building from both the outside and from behind the podium on the inside. In fact, Matt considered it much more imposing from the latter. He fiddled with the computer mouse as he watched students, who probably had no idea who Samuel Wallis even was, meandering in and finding seats. As usual there was a degree of chaos as the students typically chose to take seats on the aisle, leaving the small collection of curious public visitors and academic staff without anything better on their schedules than to squeeze past student knees and trip over student satchels. The air smelled of a blend of carpet, air-freshener, cigarette-breath, and the awful odour that attaches itself to winter jackets that haven’t aired out for a few weeks. Matt felt sick. But he would have to get past his nerves.

The problem wasn’t public speaking. Matt felt like he was unimportant, unknown.
An anti-hero.
His dream job would be Head of the History Department, but that belonged to Professor Pick, a man who hated Matt with every ounce of his squat body. He accused Matt of being lazy, young and having had everything handed to him on a silver platter.
All this, merely because Matt was a private school boy.
Professor Pick had apparently had it hard.
Tough comprehensive school and all.
Matt hoped his trip to New Zealand could give him the opportunity to prove himself to
Pick
.

  As the last straggler came in, Matt flicked the projector on and checked the green light. A girl up in the back row wore an ugly purple woollen pullover, a distracting eyesore. Promising
himself
not to look that way again, Matt cleared his throat. The resulting croak filled the room when amplified through the radio-microphone. With an
embarrassed
grimace, Matt clicked the mouse and the first slide of his presentation appeared on the monitor in front of him and the cinema-sized screen behind him. Matt’s lips moved in the same way he had seen them do in the mirror for the past week. He delivered a coherent and logical lecture. He left the stage to a spattering of polite applause.

‘Can I have a word with you Dr. Cameron?’
Came
the unmistakable two-cats-fighting-over-fish voice belonging to Matt’s head of department as he walked through the auditorium door.

Matt worked up his friendliest smile and turned to face him.

‘Yes Dr. Pick. What can I do for you?’

‘It’s about this trip of yours to New Zealand.’

Shit! How the hell does he know about New Zealand?
Matthew racked his brain but could only come up with two people he had discussed it with.
Julia and Rose.
As far as the department was concerned he was just on leave. There was no way Julia or Rose told Dwight Pick anything about the trip. Certainly Julia hated him as much as Matt did. The jokes in the department were relentless. Dwight Pick, the right prick. No one liked the short balding bastard.