Matt knew just the sort of tool they needed to cut the roots: a long-handled lopper. A pair of those could cut through a branch as big as his wrist. Unfortunately Hone didn’t have one, and Jackson’s mum had no tools at all. It looked like they would have to abandon the idea. Then Jackson said he had a cuzzie who worked in a hardware store, and they’d be able to get a big discount. So they headed off to town.
As soon as they were on the main road, Jackson took off his hoodie and handed it to Matt. ‘Here, hold this while I get us a ride.’ He pulled his trousers up, until they weren’t hanging off his bum, and said, ‘You don’t want to look like one of the boyz or they don’t stop.’ He moved to the side of the road and held out his arm.
The first five cars ignored him, but then a van pulled over. It already had four people in it, but somehow the two of them managed to squeeze in, and within five minutes they were outside the hardware store.
Matt went to hand him back his hoodie, but Jackson shook his head. ‘You hold it. I’ll go in by myself.’
‘What about money?’ asked Matt.
‘This is on me.’
Before Matt could object, Jackson was walking into the store. The security guard looked him up and down, but said nothing.
Matt stood watching the shoppers come and go. Then Jackson reappeared. With his hands in his pockets, he sauntered past the security guard and off around the corner.
‘Don’t they have them?’ asked Matt when he caught him up.
‘Yeah!’
‘Are they too expensive?’
‘Nah! I got one.’
‘Where?’
Jackson lifted the top of his T-shirt to reveal the cutting part. The thing was stuck down his trousers, one handle down each leg. He was holding onto them inside his pockets.
‘You stole it!’
‘Yeah. I said I could get a big discount.’ He smiled. ‘I got the five-finger discount.’
Matt just stared at him.
‘It’s OK,’ said Jackson. ‘Nobody saw me.’
Still Matt stared. After a while he said, ‘We’ve got to take it back.’
‘No way!’
‘All right! I’m going to tell the security guard.’
‘Jeeze, man. Don’t be so stupid.’
‘We’re taking it back,’ said Matt firmly.
‘If we take it back, they’ll call the feds.’
Matt thought for a while. ‘All right. We keep it hidden until we get in, and then you give it to me and I’ll pay for it. If we do it right, they’ll never know anything about it.’
Jackson still wasn’t happy, but after a few more threats he agreed.
The security guard looked at them more suspiciously when they reappeared at the entrance way. They walked past trying to look relaxed, and keeping their eyes firmly fixed to the front.
As soon as they were in, they ducked down an aisle with
high shelving on either side. Jackson was about to take out the loppers when the security guard turned in behind them. They froze as he walked slowly towards them.
‘Do you want some help?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you,’ replied Matt.
‘What’re you after?’
‘Long-handled loppers.’
‘Well you won’t find them along here. They’re over in the other corner, along with all the other garden tools.’
‘Thank you,’ said Matt, moving off in the direction the guard was pointing. Jackson followed.
At the end of the aisle, Matt turned and saw that the guard was still watching them. When they were out of view, Matt pushed Jackson against the shelving. ‘Get them out now,’ he ordered.
Jackson recognized the urgency and quickly had the loppers out of his trousers.
‘Right! You head for the door while I pay for them.’ He then marched off, holding the loppers tightly against his body, hoping they were hidden from the guard, who was just turning the corner behind them.
Matt tried to look relaxed as he walked over to the garden section. Yet he could feel the guard’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Any moment he expected a yell or a tap on the back.
It didn’t come, and with some relief he reached the tools aisle and could start breathing easily again. He waited a while before walking out the other end and heading for the checkout counter, carrying the loppers for all to see.
They ended up being on special and were much cheaper than Matt had anticipated. He paid with the cash card his
dad had given him, and then headed for the door.
The guard was waiting for him.
‘Can I see your docket please?’ asked the guard.
Matt handed it over.
After studying it for a while, the guard handed it back. He looked Matt in the eyes and said, ‘You did the right thing there, son.’ He nodded out the door in Jackson’s direction. ‘Let’s hope he’s learnt something from it, too. Enjoy the rest of your day.’
Matt walked out into the sunshine, feeling like he’d just been released from prison. That had been the closest he’d ever come to committing a crime, and he hoped he never got any closer.
When they returned to the pine tree, the heron was down on the ground feeding. It eyed them suspiciously for a bit, before taking off and flying to the other side of the mud pool to resume its meal.
Using the loppers was not as easy as it looked. The idea was simple: grip the root with the beak-like cutters and close the handles. However, the force required was much more than one of them could provide. They pushed, wriggled and huffed for some minutes before the first cut was completed. After that they found that twisting the handles back and forth made a much quicker cut. They were then able to pull the root out from inside the metal ring.
A moment’s digging alongside the chain uncovered the top of the other metal ring. Now there was no doubting that they were handcuffs. Yet they were still locked in place by roots.
This time, they decided to clear as many roots as they could before they went any further. Matt was convinced that there was a lot more metal down there than just the handcuffs. The detector had screamed more than when he’d found the time capsule, and that was way bigger than a pair of old handcuffs.
With all except the biggest roots out of the way, they had another go at getting the things out. Simply pulling on the end didn’t work, so it was back to digging. Jackson fitted into the hole better than Matt, so he did the work while Matt supervised. ‘Go down a bit more this side,’ he said.
‘I’m trying to, but there’s something in the way.’
‘Feel down with your hand.’
Jackson dropped the trowel and started forcing his hand down. ‘Got something!’ he cried.
‘See if you can pull it out.’
‘Yeah, I am. It’s coming a bit,’ he grunted. ‘Yeah, now I’ve got it.’
Before Matt had a chance to see what it was, Jackson cried out ‘Shit!’ and began to clamber out of the hole.
‘What is it?’
‘A freakin’ bone.’ He frantically wiped his hands on the grass. ‘There’s a freakin’ body down there.’
Matt looked down and saw a yellow-brown bone. It looked just like something that a dog had buried. ‘One bone doesn’t mean a body,’ he said. ‘And if there is, it doesn’t have to be human. It could be a sheep, or pig, or goat. It could be any sort of animal.’ He knew he was trying to convince himself as much as Jackson.
‘I tell you, it’s a body. The bone was through the handcuff.’
‘Then we should be able to pull the handcuffs out now.’
‘I’m not going back down there.’
Matt gave him a look that said he was a wimp, before leaning over the hole and giving the handcuff a tug. It pulled up easily bringing another smaller bone with it. He laid the cuffs out on the grass to inspect them.
Jackson leaned in to have a look. ‘They’re pretty old,’ he said. ‘Not like the ones I’ve seen.’
‘I suppose you’ve worn some,’ said Matt, with a grin.
Jackson grinned back. ‘Nah!’ Then after a pause, ‘Not yet.’
‘Hey, look at this!’ said Matt. ‘There’s something jammed in the lock.’
‘Must be a key. Maybe he was trying to unlock it when he died.’
‘I’m going to check to see if there’s more metal down there,’ said Matt, standing up.
‘If there is, it can stay there,’ said Jackson. ‘I don’t think we should dig any deeper.’
Matt ignored him and began scanning the hole. The detector whined almost as loudly as before. Somewhere down that hole there was a lot of metal.
‘I’m digging further.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said Jackson, moodily. He stood and started walking away as if he was leaving. But instead he sat beside the mud pool and started picking up bits of sticks and throwing them at the mud. The heron objected to this by giving a croak and flying into the tree.
Matt would have liked to have dug straight down to where the detector had indicated the most metal. But it would mean cutting more roots and they were too thick to do it without
help. So he found a place where it looked like there were fewer roots and started working away with the trowel.
The first things he uncovered were more roots, but they were small enough for him to cut. It was easier going then, and after a couple of minutes the trowel hit something solid. Matt leaned down and started scooping around with his hands. Yes! There was something there—something smooth and round. He brought in his other hand so that he could grip it from both sides. It came free with a pile of dirt sitting on top. He gave it a shake and the earth fell away. Then he could see what it was.
‘Craarrk! Craarrk! Craarrk!’
cried the heron from above.
‘What is it?’ called Jackson.
‘You were right,’ replied Matt, quietly. ‘It is a body. And it’s human.’
Sitting on the dark earth and staring up at him was a skull. Fortunately, the lower jaw was still below the ground, so Matt didn’t have to cope with the thing grinning at him. The empty eye sockets were scary enough.
‘Craarrk!’
cried the heron again, more loudly than before. Matt looked up and saw that the bird was now on a lower branch, peering down on him and the skull—accusing him.
‘Yes, Tani,’ he whispered. ‘You were right: I should’ve left things alone.’
It took a fair bit of coaxing before Jackson moved over to look at the skull. Even then, he sat side-on and only looked at it out of the corners of his eyes. ‘We’ve got to put it back,’ he mumbled.
Matt continued taking his photos. ‘No!’ he said firmly. Then after a while: ‘We tell the police.’
Jackson looked up at him sharply. ‘No feds, man. I want nuttin to do with the feds.’
‘We’ve got to. It’s a body. You can’t dig up a body and just bury it again.’
‘Might be a Maori burial ground. An urupa. You can’t dig those up.’
‘Who would bury a body with handcuffs on?’
Jackson played with the grass, saying nothing.
‘Look! What’s so wrong with going to the police? We’ve done nothing wrong.’
Jackson looked up. ‘That won’t make no difference. You’ll be all right. But they’ll find sumtin to blame on me.’
This time, Matt remained silent.
‘Anyway,’ continued Jackson. ‘If I’m seen with the feds, everyone’ll think I’m a snitch.’
‘OK,’ said Matt. ‘I’ll tell the cops, and I won’t even mention you were with me. How does that sound?’
Reluctantly Jackson agreed, and a short time later they were heading back home with their gear.
No sooner had they left the path to walk along the street
than a group of people turned the corner and started walking along the opposite side of the road.
Jackson swore and tried to duck behind Matt.
‘Isn’t that your gang?’ asked Matt.
Jackson made a strangled noise that could have been a yes.
The guy in the front spotted Jackson and stopped. It was the one with the tattooed skull; the one Jackson had called Skulla. He tilted his head and the others stopped, too. A second tilt was aimed across the road.
Jackson swore again, before dropping the gear and moving towards them. Matt could almost smell the fear coming off the boy, or maybe it was from his own body: any moment he expected that another tilt of the head would ‘invite’ him over as well.
When Jackson got to them, the group encircled him. Matt could hear voices, but could make nothing from them, although it seemed friendly enough. Then there was laughter and they all turned to look at Matt. Somebody said something about bogans, and there was more laughing. Not the laughter of people enjoying a good joke, but the sneering cackle of ridicule.
Next, Skulla went through a strange performance which ended with him and Jackson shaking hands. Jackson repeated the performance with a couple of others before swaggering back over the road as if he’d just been made their leader.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Matt.
‘Gang stuff,’ replied Jackson, grinning at Matt. He turned to the others and mouthed something. The gang members almost fell over laughing.
Matt was now beginning to get angry. ‘Why are they laughing at me?’
Jackson was still smirking. ‘Nuttin.’
But to Matt it certainly wasn’t ‘nuttin’, it was ‘sumtin’. He’d been ridiculed and Jackson had started it. He’d spent the morning trying to help the kid and this was the thanks he got. Well, as far as he was concerned, Jackson Peters, or Juzza, or whatever other stupid name he wanted to call himself could get lost. He wanted nothing more to do with him.
The police arrived half an hour after Matt made the telephone call. He’d discussed the whole thing with Nan, and she’d agreed that he had to call them. She also agreed that it was best to leave Jackson out of it, if that’s what he wanted.
The two policemen introduced themselves as Constables Burton Smith and Lewis Morunga, but called each other Burty and Lew. To Matt, they seemed like a couple of OK guys. In between firing questions, Burty noisily filled himself up with Nan’s baking while Lew stuck to the coffee. The strain on Burty’s uniform suggested that eating was a popular pastime: his stab-resistant vest looked more like a corset than body armour. Lew Morunga was smaller, both in bulk and height. In between sips of coffee, he wrote notes in a patrol book which he’d covered with koru-patterned doodles; he let his pakeha partner do most of the talking.
Matt had just got to the bit where he’d discovered the skull when Hone arrived home.
He rushed into the kitchen. ‘What’s happened? Why are the police here?’
Nan quickly took his arm and guided him back out the
door. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, dear. If you just come out here, I’ll tell you all about it…’
Soon afterwards, a much-relieved Hone returned and all except Nan headed out to the squad car. Burty seemed to know the place where the body had been found, for he managed to twist in and out of streets until the car was parked just a hundred metres from the mud pool.
Everything was as Matt had left it, with the skull still staring up at anyone who looked into the hole.
‘Looks like he’s dead all right,’ said Burty with a laugh.
Lew and Hone didn’t respond. They stood by the hole, looking down at the skull. ‘Do you think it’s a burial ground?’ asked Hone.
‘Hard to tell,’ Lew replied, leaning over to pick up the handcuffs. ‘It’s unlikely though, if he was wearing these.’ He held them out for the others to see. ‘I can’t imagine the handcuffs being left on for a formal burial.’
‘They can date the death, though,’ said Burty. ‘They’re just like those old pillar lock ones we’ve got on display at the station. They haven’t been used since the eighteen hundreds.’
‘Is that a key sticking out of the lock?’ asked Hone.
Lew studied it closer. ‘No! It’s a lock pick. He must’ve been trying to undo it when he died.’
Burty stepped into the hole and picked up the two bones that had been through the cuff. ‘Radius and ulna,’ he said, knowingly. ‘If these were through the cuff then he definitely was wearing it.’
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Hone.
‘Craarrk!’
said the heron.
They all laughed. ‘Precisely,’ said Burty.
Hone looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I should’ve known that somehow you’d have something to do with this.’
‘Craarrk!’
Old Tani replied.
Lew walked off towards the mud pool. ‘I reckon this thing might have done it. What do you think?’ The others joined him. ‘What if he’d escaped somehow and then sat down here to take the cuffs off and this thing exploded all over him?’
‘What about all the metal that’s still under the tree?’ asked Matt.
‘Maybe it was stuff he was carrying,’ suggested Hone.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Burty. ‘And that’s to bring in forensics. They’ll soon tell whether it was an accident or not.’
‘If they can get the skeleton out from under the roots.’
‘That’s their worry, not ours.’ Burty turned to Hone and Matt. ‘We’re going to have to seal this scene off. Do you want a ride home?’
‘No, thank you,’ replied Hone. ‘We’ll walk. That way Matt can fill me in about what’s been happening all day.’ He turned to Matt. ‘I bet it was a lot more exciting than you ever thought it was going to be.’
‘Yeah,’ said Matt. ‘And some of it you’re not going to like.’
Matt was right: Hone didn’t like some of the story. But it wasn’t the shoplifting that upset him most—it was the links with the gang.
‘So,’ he said when the story was finished, ‘Scott Murray’s got his claws into Jackson, has he?’
Matt gave him a puzzled look.
‘Scott Murray is Skulla’s real name.’ A pause. ‘I suppose I should’ve guessed it. Scott and Jackson are related. It was only a matter of time before Scott would recruit the boy.’
‘You know Skulla?’
‘Oh, yes! I know Skulla. I’ve known him from when he was a kid. I coached him at league for many years.’ They walked in silence for a while as Hone collected his thoughts. ‘He was a good footy player. One of the best I’ve ever coached. Fast, determined and fearless. He’d tackle anyone, no matter how big they were. But it was his intelligence that made him an exceptional player. He could read the game and change the style of play. Not just his. He could get the whole team to change. I made him captain in his last year. We won the championship. Only time one of my teams ever did that.’
More silent walking. Matt waited a while before asking, ‘What happened?’
Hone gave a grunt. ‘The usual thing,’ he said. ‘The family broke up. His father lost his job just before Christmas when a local sawmill closed. Soon afterwards he took off to Oz, leaving the family behind. It was tough on the mother and the other kids. But Scott was affected the most. He lived on the streets for a while. Stopped going to school. When the footy season came around again, he didn’t want to know me. Told me what I could do with myself.’ Hone shook his head in memory. ‘It was such a shame. He was good enough to trial for the NRL. Now look at him. It’s such a waste.’ He stopped and turned to Matt. ‘So, you see, that’s why I’m so worried about
Jackson. He’s going exactly the same way. Just like too many of our youngsters: lost before their lives have really begun.’
When they got home, Hone guided Matt down the hall and into a spare bedroom, where all the walls were covered with photos, jerseys, trophies and other league memorabilia.
‘This is my little museum,’ he said quietly. ‘Not many people have been in here.’
Matt looked at the nearest wall. It was dedicated to the New Zealand Warriors. In amongst the usual stuff were a couple of personal items: a photo of the team alongside a bus outside Whakarewarewa, with Hone smiling at one end, and another of Hone all decked out in Warriors colours outside a huge stadium.
‘That’s when I went to the Grand Final in Sydney. 2002! What a year!’
‘And that?’ asked Matt, pointing to the other photo.
‘That! That was the most marvellous week ever. The team came down here for pre-season training, and I was their driver. It was heaven.’
The next wall had much older photos. Matt soon realized that they were from Hone’s playing days. He looked at the names under a photo in the centre of the wall: Hone Thomas (captain) was in the middle of the front row. It was Hone all right, sitting with a ball on his lap and two trophies at his feet. Even though the face was unlined and the hair totally black, the smile gave him away: no one else in the photo was quite that proud of what they had achieved.
‘Looks like you were pretty good yourself,’ said Matt.
Hone nodded. ‘Yeah. But not quite good enough. I wanted to go professional, even had a couple of trials, but in the end it didn’t work out. So the closest I ever got to a top team was driving them around in a bus.’ With a sigh of regret, Hone quickly moved on to the last wall. ‘But this is what I wanted to show you. Half of these photos have Scott in them somewhere. Look at this. That’s the team that won the championship. There’s Scott in the front row.’
Matt saw a smiling kid not much older than himself. Just like Hone in the photo before, the pride of the boy’s accomplishments shone from his face.
‘See that guy there,’ said Hone pointing to the back row. ‘He’s almost finished at university now. And that one there—he’s just got married.’
For the next couple of minutes, Hone went through the team commenting on their successes in life. It seemed as if most of them now had a bright future. However, Matt noticed that some players had been skipped. He pointed to one of them. ‘What about him?’
Hone grunted. ‘That’s Cory Collins. He joined Scott in the gangs. Croke, I think they call him.’ Another grunt. ‘Look at him there. A nice friendly kid who wouldn’t cause anyone any harm. Now he’s got a mohawk with gang tattoos all over his head. He scares the hell out of people.’
Matt nodded. He’d seen him in the group earlier in the day, and yes, he was scary.
‘Did any of the others end up in the gang?’
Hone shook his head. ‘Not from that team. But there’s one who I had a couple of years earlier. Dennis Williams. Showed a bit of talent at first. Could tackle real hard. But then he started giving them facials and stuff like that. In the
end, he lost his temper with a kid and nearly beat him to death. He was banned after that.’
Matt recalled a name that Jackson had mentioned that morning. ‘He wouldn’t be called Diz, would he?’
‘Yeah! That’s him. Have you met him?’
‘No. Jackson said that he was the one who hung him out over the boiling pool.’
Hone nodded. ‘Yes! That’ll be him. He’s turned into a very violent man. There’s something wrong with Dennis Williams. If you ever come across him, be very wary. Very wary, indeed.’