Eye for an Eye

EYE FOR AN EYE

Bev Robitai

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Bev Robitai on Smashwords

Copyright Bev Robitaille March 2011

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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DEDICATION – to Eric and Jackie in Canada, the best in-laws ever. Love you!

PROLOGUE

Like a fizzing fuse heading for a bomb, a young blonde woman ran at full speed along the pontoon dock, her pounding feet sending waves surging between the gleaming launches moored on each side. She tossed sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes and kept on running, muttering a stream of curses punctuated by the thumps of her feet on the dock.

‘I’ll get you, you miserable bastard.’ Thud thud. ‘This is where you pay...’ Thud thud. ‘I’m going to pull your scrotum over your head...’ Thud thud. ‘And use your bloody testicles for boxing practice!’

She sped down the line of cruisers glancing left and right as she went, searching for the boat she knew she’d recognise, looking for some little detail that would prove she was on the right track. But nothing caught her eye as she ran on and on until the end of the dock brought her to an abrupt halt. She stared around wildly, as if her quarry might suddenly materialise beside her.

‘Where the hell are you? I’m going to rip your sodding dick off when I find you!’

The anonymous boats tugged gently at their mooring lines, mocking her with a chorus of squeaks and groans as rope chafed against rubber. There was nobody in sight.

She cursed colourfully, returned to shore and tackled the next dock, hurrying past the rows of expensive boats until she faced the open lake again at the far end. Still nothing.

She pulled a crumpled photo from her pocket and held it up to the horizon, trying to match the scene in front of her to the picture she held. It showed rows of boats with Angel Lady, the one she was looking for, in front of a stretch of Toronto city skyline, with the slender spire of the CN Tower off to the right of the marina. She squinted to line up the buildings, judging that she was too far to the left and the picture must have been taken from further along the lake shore. Not far though, just a couple of minutes’ walk. She strode along with renewed purpose.

At the end of the next dock, the boats and the city almost matched the picture, with the CN tower lined up against a low building in the foreground, and just a slightly different angle of view.

‘Right, you slimy bastard,’ she muttered. ‘Just a little further and I’ll finally have you. Say good-bye to your balls and hello to life as a soprano.’

She hurried along to the next dock, breaking into a run as she finally caught sight of the boat she was looking for.

The fuse sparked and crackled as it got closer to the bomb.

Her running shoes thudded along the wooden slats, sending echoes booming among the pontoons below. Closer now, she could see the shape of a man standing at the wheel, and a puff of pale blue smoke jetting from the engine exhaust. The Angel Lady was getting ready to leave.

‘Not yet, you lying prick! Wait!’

She put on a spurt to catch the launch before it left its berth, running pell-mell along the dock as the boat’s mooring lines slipped into the water.

‘Wait, dammit! I’ve got to talk to you!’

She hurtled towards the slowly moving boat, legs pumping and arms flailing in her efforts to reach it. The figure at the helm seemed oblivious of her approach.

Suddenly a pile of rags at the side of the dock seemed to catch her feet and she tripped at full speed. In a welter of windmilling limbs she splashed into the oil-filmed waters of Lake Ontario, falling headlong into the ever-widening space behind the sleek white stern of the Angel Lady.

CHAPTER 1

Robyn surfaced from beneath warm scented bath-water and heard her phone ringing insistently in the next room. She briefly considered leaping out to answer it, but relaxed back into the bubbles as she heard the answering machine pick up the call. A muffled male voice left a message and the machine beeped as they hung up.

She added more hot water, letting it soothe away the many stresses of her day. One of her new customers had been particularly demanding, asking for extended photo coverage of an upcoming wedding but with no increase in cost. And as for her noisy next-door neighbour – well, hanging was too good for him. She’d have to sort him out before he drove her insane with the ‘doof-doof’ music that he’d been playing all hours of the night.

Finally, mindful of her electricity bill if not her carbon footprint, she stopped adding hot water, hauled herself out of the tub and towelled off. After smoothing on some kiwi-fruit and aloe moisturiser, she padded into the study and peered at the answer-phone. Two messages? Someone must have called while she was out during the afternoon as well. She pressed the play button and reached for a notepad.

‘Gidday Sis, it’s Pete here. Look, you haven’t heard from Dad, have you? He went into town this morning and hasn’t come back yet, and you know how he likes to be here for afternoon milking. Did he tell you he had any plans for today? Give us a call, OK? Bye.’

Robyn shrugged. The machine beeped, then continued with the second message.

‘Hi Rob, Pete again - look it’s after six and Dad still hasn’t turned up. We were going to check out a couple of ewes in the home paddock this evening but he hasn’t called to say why he’s not here. Have you heard anything? Give us a call soon as, will you? Ta.’

Robyn felt a twinge of unease at the worry in her brother’s voice. Just as she reached for the phone to call him back it suddenly rang beneath her hand, making her jump. She answered cautiously.

‘Hello, Robyn Taylor here.’

‘Ah Rob, you’re home, good. Did you get my messages?’ Pete’s voice was unusually tense. Robyn blinked.

‘Whoa, bro - what happened to Hi, how are you?’

‘This isn’t the time, Rob, sorry. I need to know if you’ve seen Dad today.’

‘No mate, I haven’t. So what’s all the drama?’

‘Have you heard from him at all?’ Pete insisted. ‘A text or a phone-call?’

‘No, I haven’t. But he’s probably just down at the pub having a few beers, isn’t he? Why are you so stressed out, anyway? The old fella’s over 18, what’s the big deal? Do you think he’s up to no good, or what?’

‘Don’t make jokes Sis, I’m trying to tell you something. It’s just a feeling, but Dad hasn’t been acting quite normal for the last couple of weeks, and it’s got me worried. Now he hasn’t turned up when I was expecting him, and I reckon something’s wrong. He’d have rung me if he was going to be late or hang round at the pub. Suppose he’s had a heart attack or something on the way home and driven off the road? It’s the middle of winter and he’d freeze to death even if he survived the heart attack and the accident. I’m going to head into town and see if I can find him. Stay by the phone in case he rings you, will you?’

‘Jeez Pete, look on the bright side, why don’t you! Yeah, all right, I’ll man the phone here if that’s what you want. But hang on a sec, what exactly do you mean by not normal? Has he been grumpy, worried, depressed, what? Chest pains? Headaches? You’ve got to have more to go on than not normal.’

‘I dunno, he’s been sort of preoccupied, vague - it’s hard to put my finger on. Just not right, you know what I mean? Anyway, I’m going to head into town and look for the station wagon... aw, hang on, there’s a call waiting, I’ll get back to you.’

Robyn frowned at the receiver. She started to doodle on the pad. She waited for what seemed like an age before Pete came back on the line.

‘Yeah, Rob, hi - sorry about that. Some joker wanting Dad about insurance, I just had to put him off. Anyway, I’m going to go look for him -’

‘Pete!’ she cut in, ‘I’m sure he’s fine, you’re worrying about nothing.’

‘Hey, don’t just dismiss the whole thing from where you are, you didn’t see his face at breakfast this morning did you? I did, and he looked pretty grim.’

‘OK Pete, maybe I am being dismissive, but I’m sure you’re over-reacting.’ She rolled her eyes at her big brother’s seriousness. ‘Look, give me half an hour to take care of something I have to do here, I’ll call you back then, and I bet you a dozen beers that Dad’ll be home. If he isn’t, I’ll join the hunt. Deal? We’ll sort this out, Pete, don’t worry.’

‘Yeah, all right, but after half an hour I’m going looking for him whether you phone or not.’

‘Sure bro. See ya later, bye.’

Robyn hung up the phone, shaking her head at her brother’s stubbornness. He’d always been the serious one. Of course Dad was all right – he’d probably had a couple of beers at the pub and just needed to stay there for a feed so he could drive home safely.

Right now, it was time to sort out some minor domestic matters a little closer to home. A grin spread across her face as she contemplated the ‘thing’ she was about to take care of. Some stern natural justice was required to teach her inconsiderate noisy neighbour a lesson. Her polite requests to turn down his loud music had been ignored, and even the local council officers had been unable to force him to comply with residential noise regulations, despite complaints from several other people in the street. She was going to have to organise her own retribution.

Dressed in black sweatshirt and dark jeans, she crept through the hedge into her next-door neighbour’s garden.

‘This’ll fix you for keeping me awake with your bloody stereo,’ she said softly. ‘You made me suffer six hours of thumping music last night - I sentence you to blocked pipes and several phone calls to a plumber, ha! Perhaps you should move house, eh?’

She crouched by the wall below her neighbour’s kitchen window and pulled a spray can of expanding foam from her pocket. She inserted the nozzle into the kitchen drain outlet and squeezed the trigger. With a satisfying hiss, yellow foam gushed into the pipe and immediately started to harden, oozing gently out of the end. Robyn removed the overflow with a stick so that the cause of the blockage wouldn’t be too obvious, then gave the same treatment to the bathroom drains. Her neighbour’s morning shower would probably become quite unpleasant as his drainpipes backed up.

After that, she sprayed Dickhead in letters a foot high across his front lawn with weed-killer.

With the righteous sense of a job well done, she crept back home, washed off the last traces of the sticky foam and put away the weed-killer. Then she peeled the label off the spray can before putting it in the garbage, just in case the neighbour went looking for evidence.

It hadn’t been half an hour yet, but she picked up the phone anyway and called home.

‘So, Pete, how’s Dad then?’

‘Not here, Rob, so I couldn’t tell you.’ She raised her eyebrows at the edge in his voice. ‘But I just called Smitty at the Blenheim cop shop and he’s going to put the word round for the patrol cars to keep an eye out for him. They can’t start a proper search yet ‘cause he hasn’t been gone long enough, but he agrees that it’s out of character for him to disappear like this so he’s going to give me a hand unofficially. He said some of the fishing boys from Picton are going to come along too.’

‘Jesus, Pete - I didn’t realise it was that serious. Sorry, mate.’ She ran a hand through her blonde hair, frowned, and sat on the edge of her desk. ‘Look, shall I drive over and start looking from the town end of the road while you come in from the farm? If we meet in the middle at least we’ll know he hasn’t gone off the road somewhere.’

‘Yeah, all right, could be a plan. Call in at the cop shop on your way though in case they’ve spotted anything - could save you a long drive out here.’

‘Sure bro, see you soon, OK?’

She threw a warm jacket into the car, then went back with some misgivings to fetch her first aid box as well.

While driving across town to the police station, she wondered guiltily if she should have visited home more often over the last few weeks. In truth, she’d been enjoying the freedom from the fortnightly duty visits that she’d made during the long months of her mother’s illness, and had hoped that Pete and her Dad were getting on all right by themselves. Between working every second weekend photographing weddings, and going home to visit the family, her social life had taken a pounding the previous year and she needed time to repair it. Added to that, her quarter-of-a-century birthday was looming up in September, increasing that vague social pressure she was feeling to ‘find a nice man and settle down’.

She pushed harder on the accelerator and sped along the quiet street, but then remembered where she was headed and eased back to the legal limit.

Blenheim police station was well-lit but very quiet, with no patrol cars parked on the forecourt. Robyn buzzed for admittance, and was relieved to see a face she knew well coming to the door.

‘Gidday, Smitty, how’s it going?’

‘Good thanks Robyn, how are you doing? Come to help look for your old man, have you?’

‘Yeah, what’s the story Smitty, have you heard anything?

‘Not yet, love - come in, come in, it’s freezing out there.’

He guided her through to the inner room, sat her down, and handed her a cup of coffee which she accepted gratefully.

‘It’s not like your old man to go AWOL, is it?’ Smitty cupped his hands round his own mug and looked at her steadily.

‘No, I can’t figure it out. I thought Pete was stressing over nothing, but now I’m getting a bit worried myself.’

‘Has anything been bothering your Dad lately? I mean I know it hasn’t been all that long since your Mum died, but he seemed to be well over that, didn’t he? I mean, not that he doesn’t grieve for her or anything, just that he seemed pretty normal, eh?’ Smitty’s honest face reddened in case he’d caused offence.

‘No, you’re right, he did seem OK. Mum’s death wasn’t exactly unexpected, I mean, we all had plenty of time to get used to the idea, and I thought he handled it really well. No, I’m sure he hasn’t suddenly fallen apart over that.’

She sipped her coffee, choking slightly when the radio burst into life beside her ear with a crackle of static.

‘You there, Smitty? Over.’

He picked up the mike.

‘Yeah, go ahead Tim.’

‘You said to keep a lookout for Reg Taylor? He drives a green station wagon, doesn’t he? There’s one parked at Walter’s Bluff car park and nobody seems to be around. Can you do a vehicle check?’

At the mention of the vehicle registration number, Robyn’s face went still. She nodded to Smitty and he spoke into the mike.

‘That’s the one we’re after, Tim. Have a good look around, will you. I’ll be out there in a few minutes, and I’ve got his daughter with me.’ There was a wealth of meaning in his words. ‘I’ll let the rest of the boys know and they’ll meet us out there so we can cover more ground.’

The ten minute drive across flat pastureland to the coast at Walter’s Bluff went by in a blur of oncoming headlights and white lines on the road.

As they pulled up in the car park at the base of the cliff, Robyn caught her breath at the sight of her father’s car parked alone by the stone steps that led to the cliff-top path, bathed in the lights of the patrol car. Two policemen stood nearby, their breath steaming in the night air. Smitty told Robyn to wait in the car and went over to speak to them.

She watched their expressions, trying to make sense of the frowns, the gestures, and the quick glances in her direction. Finally, unable to bear the waiting, she went to join them.

‘What news then? Have you seen him?’

They wouldn’t meet her eyes.

‘No news, at least, nothing definite.’ Smitty said reassuringly. ‘There are a few scuff marks along the track, that’s all. We can’t tell until we’ve got more people here, and more light. Just hold fire until the others get here, and we’ll all go and look, OK? Go sit in the car for now.’

Robyn shot him a mutinous glance, but obeyed.

The inside of the police car was clean enough, but smelled of smoke with just a whiff of disinfectant to mask the sourness of the occasional drunk it had transported. The dashboard had extra unfamiliar buttons on it - alley lights, siren - giving Robyn the urge to push them to get a response from the three men outside. The radio was equally tempting, but she sighed and folded her arms. This was no time for fooling around.

She wondered where Pete was, somewhere on the long winding drive from the farm into town. Was he stopping at every bend to check for tyre tracks running off the edge? There were plenty of dangerous spots along the rugged hill road, where the encroachment of the sea made for sharp hairpin turns, and sudden washouts were always a possibility. She hated to think of him wasting effort there when he should be here. There was no point in trying to ring him as cellphone coverage was patchy at best in their remote part of the country.

Smitty got back in the car, bringing a wave of cold air tangy with bush and sea.

‘Soon have some back-up on site, and Neville’s at the station, he’ll get in touch with Pete to let him know what’s going on.’

‘He’ll probably see him before long, he’s heading into town looking for Dad on the way. Just don’t book him if he speeds on the way out here, OK?’

‘I think you could count these as extenuating circumstances.’

They smiled at each other, both grateful for the attempt to lighten the situation.

It was another ten minutes before the fishermen arrived, spraying gravel as they pulled up. Four young Maori guys got out and hauled backpacks from among the nets and buoys on the back of the truck, handing round torches and rescue gear with the ease of long practise. ‘We just want to be ready for anything,’ said Smitty, reading Robyn’s face. ‘It’s a long way to come back down if we need something in a hurry.’

She accepted his assurance at face value and joined the group headed towards the steps.

‘Hey Robyn, how’s it going?’ The youngest of the lads greeted her warmly.

‘Hi Matai,’ she said. ‘Good to see you – thanks for coming out on a cold night like this. I hope our old man hasn’t put you guys to a lot of trouble for nothing.’

‘Aw, no worries. Happy to look out for a mate, eh boys?’ The others chorused their agreement.

The path beyond the stonework was steep, slippery with dirt and loose stones, but she’d been there several times before and walked confidently in the circle of lamp-light from the person ahead of her. They pulled themselves up over a series of stone outcrops, moving steadily despite their burdens, each of them looking left and right for any sign of human traffic. Robyn was conscious of the sound of waves crashing on the rocks far below, and shivered in the damp breeze.

They tramped on for several more minutes, then paused to confer.

‘Seen anything?’ Smitty asked the leading officer.

‘Set of prints I’ve been following, about a size 10 boot...’ He looked towards Robyn and she nodded. It was the right size for her father.

‘A jumble of other feet heading in both directions, but nothing conclusive yet. Shall we carry on?’

Smitty nodded.

Far behind them, Robyn thought she heard a shrill whistle, and cocked her head to listen.

‘I think that’s Pete,’ she said. ‘It’s one of his signals. I’ll go back and get him.’

‘Mind how you go - here, take my torch. Make sure you bring it back, OK?’

She smiled at him. ‘Thanks, Smitty. Back in a tick.’

She hurried down the track, pausing to give a shrill two-fingered whistle in reply so Pete would know she was coming. They met at one of the rocky outcrops, and Robyn reached down to give her brother a hand up.

‘Thanks, Rob. Phew, it’s a long time since I sprinted anywhere this steep!’ He bent over, panting. ‘What news? Finding the car’s a good start, but where the hell is Dad?’

‘Damned if I know. What would he be doing way out here anyway?’

She waited while he caught his breath.

‘Well he used to come up here sometimes after visiting Mum in the hospital, said it cleared his mind to get away from it all. Maybe he wanted a bit of peace and quiet?’

‘What! Like the farm isn’t quiet! Get real, Pete.’

She stopped when she saw his wounded look.

‘Sorry, mate. I know you’re worried sick.’ She slipped an arm round his shoulder. ‘Let’s catch up with the search team and see if they’ve found anything yet. Dad must be round somewhere if he left the car here, eh?’

They hurried along the path, both careful to keep to the inward side. On the outer side the torch beam lost itself in empty blackness past