It blows up
It is Sunday. After lunch, Mikaere, inspired by Hemi’s example, decides to set off to see his own father, Piri, a carver of pounamu who lives nearby. I settle in to write up a few notes based on the feedback from my seminar at Waikato. There is a firm knock on the front door. I am not expecting anyone. I open the door and Zoltan and a thuggish looking guy push their way in. This time there is no mock politeness. They tie me to a chair but do not proceed immediately to their interrogation.
Zoltan finds a bottle of white wine in the fridge and also locates three wine glasses. They attempt to force wine down my throat, an attempt I respond to by gulping it thirstily. My throat is dry and I’d like to be a bit drunk for what is to happen.
“Why are you in Auckland, Inka?”
“To take up the role of Professor of Gender Studies at the University of South Auckland.”
Slap across the face. “Who are you working for?”
“You mean, ‘For whom are you working?’ As I say, for the University of South Auckland.”
Another slap. “Don’t get cute with me, little Inka.”
“Really, I’m just an academic, plain and simple.”
“You are neither plain nor simple, little Inka. I think both of us may have some fun with you. Do you remember the fun you and I used to have?”
“You mean when you raped me.”
Yet another slap. “Oh we can do better than that.” The thug rips open my jacket and then my shirt and runs a knife gently down my neck.
“You’re helping the police, aren’t you? What have you told them?”
I need to give them something, but I don’t have much to give. “Nothing they didn’t already know. They knew we were connected even before you killed Sammy. I was an immediate suspect. But I had a good alibi. I was out of town.”
The interrogation proceeds in circles. They get frustrated. The thug tries to loosen my tongue by placing the tip of his knife at the top of my left cheek and, ever so slowly, drawing it down making a long shallow cut. It doesn’t hurt quite as much as I would have thought. I feel the blood dripping from my chin. The purpose is probably disfigurement. “Stoy,” Zoltan says.
“If there is anything else I could tell you, I would. Really.”
Zoltan is angry, but maybe mostly with himself. I think he is beginning to believe me. At this point there is a loud rap on the front door. They ignore it. The hammering continues. Then a voice I don’t recognise says, “Inka, is my son in there?”
“Just a minute,” I shout out.
The thug slaps me so hard that I fall over, chair and all.
“What the hell is going on?” the voice asks.
Zoltan draws a gun and opens the door. A large middle aged Māori guy walks in. Zoltan points the gun at him and says, “Don’t say a word!”
The guy does not look intimidated in the slightest and says, “Put that thing away, you stupid fucker.”
“Your idiot son isn’t here,” is the best that Zoltan can come up with.
Then a voice from behind me says, “Yes, I am.” It sounds like Hemi, which is confirmed as he walks quietly forward into my field of vision. As attention is drawn to Hemi and to the guy who is clearly his father, Rāwiri, I feel someone cutting the ropes binding me. It is Mikaere. Zoltan notices what he is doing and Rāwiri takes that opportunity to try to grab Zoltan’s gun. But it goes off, shooting Rāwiri in the shoulder. The thug tells Zoltan, in Russian, that they should leave and they do.
Hemi phones for an ambulance. Mikaere helps me up and finds a clean tea towel for me to press against my face to stop the bleeding. I ask him to get my Hope Wilson phone from my bedside table. When I ring, she answers immediately and, before I have a chance to say anything, she says they are on their way. That is the literal truth for, in a minute or so, she is there in the living room with three armed officers. She is on her phone immediately, seeing if they can pick up Zoltan and the other thug. She is clearly angry that they have missed them. She also checks on how soon the ambulance will arrive. At this point Derek, Carolyn’s husband, arrives with a female plainclothes officer, Joanne, and Hope asks them to take me to Middlemore hospital. Mikaere asks if he can come with me but Hope says she wants him to stay.
Derek drives and Joanne sits in the back seat with me, checking on me while gently asking what happened. She reassures me that Middlemore hospital is not far and indeed we are soon there. Joanne comes in with me while Derek parks the car. Accident and Emergency is not too busy at that time. Joanne helps me with registration and I think is able to fast track me through the system, so I am soon seen by a surgeon who turns out to be Sri Lankan. There is some debate as to whether I should be admitted overnight but it turns out that an operating theatre is free and also an anaesthetist and theatre nurse are available. He thinks he can sew me up and discharge me a bit later. Before I am prepped, Derek and Joanne tell me that they are going to leave me but they will arrange for someone to come to look after me later. I am given a sedative and a local anesthetic and, in fact, go to sleep, with nervous exhaustion I suppose.
Later, in the recovery area, Aroha and Mikaere arrive and admire my bandage and comment on the bruises coming up on both sides of my face. Aroha must have driven up from Tuakau. More time has passed than I realize. Mikaere is visibly upset but Aroha is calm and reassuring. I need to wait to be seen by the surgeon before being discharged. Aroha sends Mikaere to the Subway outlet in the Hospital for sandwiches for all of us. I can’t eat mine just at the moment but it will be saved for later. The surgeon drops in for a minute, asks how I am feeling and tells me the kind of bandage I have stays on for seven to ten days and I will need to return to outpatients to have it removed and have the wound inspected. He says he has used internal stitches that will dissolve. He is optimistic that, while I will have a scar, it need not be disfiguring and further treatment is available to improve its appearance. Afterwards I get dressed, using a shirt that Aroha brought for me, and then they take me home. At home, Aroha stays for a while to see if I am comfortable. I slowly eat some of my sandwich in a one sided way, after Aroha carefully cut it up for me. A bit later, she goes to her sister’s place and leaves me in Mikaere’s kind hands.
As Derek and Joanne took Inka to the hospital, Hope Wilson found out how Rāwiri, Hemi and Mikaere came to be there. When Mikaere reached his father’s place, he found that, uncharacteristically, he was not at home. On returning, Mikaere could see through the kitchen window Inka being tied to a chair. He called Hemi, whom he knew was not far away in Mangere. Immediately, Rāwiri and Hemi jumped on Rāwiri’s Harley and, before very long, they pulled up in front of Inka’s house. Mikaere was waiting outside for them. They decided that Rāwiri would make a lot of noise at the front, allowing Hemi and Mikaere to slip in quietly through the back door.
“Why didn’t you call 111?” Hope Wilson asked Mikaere.
“I don’t know. I suppose I just felt I could say to Hemi, ‘Get over here!’ without much explanation.”
Hope also heard from all of them what happened after they arrived. Before long, the sound of the sirens indicated that the ambulance had arrived. Hope took the opportunity to show the identikit picture of Zoltan to Rāwiri. He seemed to confirm that that was the person who shot him but, in spite of his injury, he managed to get his phone out and take a photo of the picture to look at again. Hemi said he would go with Rāwiri in the ambulance. Hope said she would probably need to speak to all of them again another time. Hope and the other officers stayed for a while with Mikaere, though he was so stressed he went to lie down on his bed. Hope phoned Derek and found out what was happening with Inka. He was able to call back with news a bit later. Hope talked to Mikaere to see who could pick up Inka, so he called Aroha and briefly told her what had been happening. She said she would set off immediately from Tuakau, pick him up and go to Middlemore. Hope arranged for Derek to come over and be with Mikaere until Aroha arrived.
© 2020 David Lumsden