The Maskeys, page 7
Jay parked, and they got into the back of the van to rest. It was the end of their very first day on the road, and as they struggled to make themselves comfortable, Jay lay on his back, wondering whether the much-planned trip had been such a good idea. Leanne had bugged him a bit throughout the drive. Her need of frequent stops, all her giggling and chatter. On a positive note – she liked packing the cones.
While she was hoping, as she drifted off to sleep, that the fruitpicking adventure that lay before them, in this fresh, green, part of the world, would free her fiancé of some of the gloom that tended to descend like a cloud on him before setting like cement for days at a time.
On the verge of sleep in their cosy vehicle, the young pair were unaware that close to where they were parked, a raucous housewarming celebration had only recently wound up. There was just the gentle crackle of the van’s engine as it cooled, and the occasional pained lament of a nearby cow, lost to her vealer, and disturbing the peace with her moans of distress.
Jay thought he saw a creeping orange glow flaring close by. He lifted his head. Flames peeped through the trees.
‘What is it?’ Leanne grumbled, when he disturbed her.
‘Fire.’
‘Go to sleep, it’s nothing,’ she said.
‘No. I think it’s a house. We should help.’ He was already fumbling for his boardies.
They followed the flames a short distance to Eric’s gate, and Jay leapt from the campervan to see what he could do. Leanne, with more trepidation, remained in the passenger seat long enough to observe a silhouetted figure – smoking on the verandah of a neighbouring farmhouse.
At once the place with its porch light glowing amber, and the motionless male figure, struck her as creepy. She climbed from the van to Jay’s panicked urges, but the house was engulfed; the three figures stood and watched as the flames completed their mission. As did Billy Maskey, still watching from Longwhile.
The two-bedroom timber cottage didn’t take so long to burn. It could have at least struggled to incinerate, Eric thought sadly – just as some small mark of respect for the hours of work put into it. Still drunk and high, he was very moved by the sight of its destruction. He knew every bit of wood that had gone into the place. Every hinge and nail. Every screw, every window – and even the pink batts that had been left un-scattered in the ceiling cavity, still wrapped in their plastic.
Putting on a brave face, he ran down to his studio to find some jeans and then rejoined his two new friends at the keg, where he managed to find each of them a beer. They toasted his short-lived cottage, and when the local volunteer fire brigade arrived, the young couple drove on to Naples. Where at Civic Park, they stopped for sleep beneath a tall tree with a No Camping sign nailed to it.
2
At the close of the negotiations in Gayle’s kitchen, the unlikely crop thieves proceeded downstairs to her mechanic’s workshop where the Livestock Association president’s large Ford truck was hitched up to her horse float. Forgetting to take their balaclavas, the threesome boarded the truck, and while Gayle waved them on from the pumps, conscious not to look as apprehensive as she felt, they drove into the night.
Inside the truck the mood was sombre. ‘You drive a hard bargain, sister,’ Eric said to Leanne with a chuckle, in an attempt to break the ice.
‘You lied to us,’ she said, as he steered the truck and horse float out onto Judith Street. ‘But, she’s on the level – I trust her,’ she added, waving at Gayle. ‘I feel really good about this!’
Jay rolled his eyes, wishing he were dead.
Soon enough, they reached the letterbox that belonged to no-obvious-house. Eric killed the lights and turned off the Naples Road. The fire-trail was bumpy, and it took some care to keep the tall horse float upright. Arriving at the house on jacks, he drove the truck around the back. They unhitched the float, struggled to turn it 180 degrees, then Eric reparked the truck to allow for re-hitching and speedy escape once the plants were loaded.
He rolled the 44-gallon drum into place. ‘I’ll pass the plants out the window.’
‘Whose place is this?’ Leanne asked.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Eric said.
‘Did you get the balaclavas, Jay?’ Leanne asked. Not seeing them in the truck.
‘I thought you did.’
‘There’s no surveillance here. I checked.’ Eric said, sure of himself. ‘Don’t worry.’
They formed a chain to load the horse float and, when that was full, the tray of the truck. That night – with the moon a crescent on the wane – it was quite dark. There was no one about, and Jay and Leanne felt that should someone appear out of the grim blackness, it could only be a terrible thing. So as silent as they could be, they were. Just soft footsteps in the grass, and the rustle of droopy branches laden with bulbous buds of sticky resin, as they carefully passed them from each to each.
Eric wasn’t saying much, and the young couple knew that likewise they should be silent. Leanne was the type of personality to laugh, without warning, at almost anything – even creepy houses located in settings that seemed suitable for any number of horrors – so, as best she could, she dulled her attractive nature to suit the seriousness of the task at hand.
Drugs, after all, are a serious business. Much can be at stake for anyone involved in the supply chain – not least, those involved in the interrupting of it. Great fortunes can be made and dismal fates met. Not that Jay and Leanne could have imagined half of it. Neither could Eric, for that matter. Only someone who sees everything could possibly know the contents of the 44-gallon drum that Eric was so casually employing to gain entry into the house.
In the warm evening air, the marijuana had a dreamlike aroma for the stoners Jay and Leanne. Who loved weed more than money, friends and close relatives. And as plant after plant passed between their hands, toward the float and then the truck, the height of the stack increasing with every bush, the excitement of their reward took precedence over any initial apprehensions they may have experienced in the hard light of Gayle’s kitchen.
Leanne was beneath the open window, collecting plants hurled out of it by Eric and then passing them over to Jay, sometimes two by two. Only fumbling occasionally as she tried to match Eric’s pace. Every now and then she attempted smiling eye contact with him, but he was unresponsive. With her wide brown eyes grown well accustomed to the darkness, when she saw that Jay had filled the horse float and begun to load the tray of the truck, she welcomed the imminent completion of the job. Not least because her hands had become green and sticky with the pollen oozing from the buds.
She gestured with her sticky hands at Jay and licked her fingers jokingly. He smiled. His mood had improved. And maybe, just like the resin, Leanne hoped, some of her optimism had rubbed off on him. They were on-their-way with this opportunity. She knew it. These plants were like nothing she had ever seen grown in the suburbs. The heads on them were giants. Long and thick. And nothing at all like the feeble rabbit paws she was accustomed to seeing. These beauties were the full bunny.
Leanne repeated her sticky hand gesture for Eric, and he managed to smile that all was tickety-boo! But the thing was, he was lost in his own thoughts. This theft was dangerous. And as he moved about the darkened dwelling by the light of his miner’s lamp, he was trying to trick himself into believing his motivations for risking such danger were noble. But when had this ever been the case? Though, he reminded himself, not all of his motivations for this particular stunt were mercenary ones.
Ignoring further attempts on Leanne’s behalf at friendliness, he paused at the window to see that Jay was struggling to replace the tonneau cover on the tray of the truck, which was now fully loaded. Jay gave Eric a capable thumbs up.
Eric went for a few last plants that he felt sure could be squeezed into the horse float, as the voice in his head that hated every decision he’d ever made began to rant. It was his father’s voice. It was his mother’s voice. Maybe even the voice of his dead daughter. Had she survived she’d have come to know him for the loser he was; nothing much completed. Nothing amounted to anything. His youth, his looks, family, friendships, career, love – all leading to this: in the middle of the night, two years off forty, here he was, raiding the marijuana crop of a man he secretly had it in for.
The night silence became broken by a raucous peal of kookaburras, impatient to mock and unable to wait till daybreak. Other birds opened their lungs. Loud ones. Screeching raspy hee-haws, they were.
Eric stopped dead when he thought he heard a truck approaching. He turned off his miner’s lamp.
‘Shoosh, Leanne, what’s that?’ Jay said, of the vehicle he could also hear.
She was wiping her hands on her jeans and stopped to listen. ‘Just a car on the road.’
Jay wasn’t so sure. A panic rose in him. Impatient for them to get out of there, he snapped the last corner of the tonneau in place, and the truck’s electrics malfunctioned, causing the quiet darkness to become a circus of flashing hazard lights and an ear-splitting car horn. The young couple held their ears and buzzed about the vehicle, wondering how to stop the noise.
Eric dropped a plant and leapt out of the window. The kids raised their hands, with no idea what to do about it. He ran to the truck’s cabin, where under the steering wheel he fumbled at wires here and there. Nothing seemed to work. Until finally. But too late. There was quiet.
Recovering their breath, the threesome exchanged worried glances, while in the trees surrounding, birds continued to mock. Eric started the engine. Leanne got in beside him, as Jay took an urgent piss on a clump of nearby bamboo. While Eric and Leanne urged him to hurry, Rodney appeared at the driver-side window and pushed his rifle hard into Eric’s neck.
Eric froze.
Leanne screamed.
But before Rodney could speak, Jay brought a jemmy down on his head. The weasel fell. Jay dropped the jemmy.
Flying out of the cabin, Leanne looked down on the small figure lying motionless in the grass.
Jay whimpered, ‘Fuck no, fuck no, fuck no …’
Eric paced about trying to find signal for his phone.
‘Who is he?’ Leanne asked Eric.
Jay continued to blubber.
‘Shut it, Jay,’ she snapped. ‘Is it some kid?’
Jay freaked. ‘Fuck no, I’ve killed a kid! Oh, fuck no – I knew this would happen.’
‘Stop it, he’s not a kid,’ Eric said. ‘It’s only Rodney. He’s nothing.’ Eric found reception and called Gayle, while Leanne checked Rodney for a pulse.
‘There’s been a hiccup,’ Eric whispered into the phone, when Gayle answered.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Rodney.’
‘What?’
‘Out cold beside the truck,’ Eric spluttered. ‘What should we do?’
Gayle thought. ‘Is he tied up?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then tie him.’
‘Then what?’ Eric asked.
‘Bring him.’ She hung up.
Eric found some straps and set about securing Rodney’s hands and feet.
‘Can’t we just leave him here?’ Jay said.
‘He knows who I am. Help me,’ Eric said. They lifted their prisoner and laid him out behind the bench seat, then boarded the truck.
‘Is it his crop?’ Leanne asked, turning for a look at him.
‘No,’ Eric said.
‘Oh, this is bad, really bad,’ Jay said. ‘I was nearly bashed to death for screwing another guy’s girl – what do you think happens when you get mixed up in shit like this?’
‘Not now, Jay,’ Leanne said. ‘Cool it.’
‘Cool it? Are you kidding me?’
She put her hand over Jay’s mouth.
‘Who’s Rodney?’ she asked Eric.
‘No one. Don’t worry.’
‘Whose weed is this, anyway?’ Jay said.
‘Jay, don’t ask. We don’t need to get too involved. Remember!’ Leanne squeezed his knee.
‘Are you insane? This is kidnap!’
‘And assault,’ Rodney said, clearing his throat and startling the crop thieves.
Negotiating the bumpy track, Eric tried to focus on keeping the horse float upright. He turned onto the Naples Road.
‘This is Maskey property – ain’t it, white-teeth?’ Rodney said.
Leanne had another look at their captive.
‘The spooks that live in that old house?’ Jay said.
‘Shut up, everyone,’ Eric said. ‘Just shut up.’
Silence prevailed only briefly, while each tried to come to terms with the situation.
‘Where are we gonna take him?’ Leanne asked.
‘Gayle’s,’ Eric said.
Rodney spoke up. ‘Gayle Reynolds’?’
Eric told him to shut it.
‘Why the fuck are ya takin me to her?’ Rodney said. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jesus, take me anywhere but there.’
‘Come on, Leanne,’ Jay said. ‘I don’t want any part of this.’
Eric shouted over them all. They briefly calmed once more. Leanne turned around for another look at Rodney. Their eyes locked, but with a bang the truck hit a deep pothole on the edge of the road, triggering the alarm system once again.
Leanne screamed.
While Eric fumbled under the dash to find the faulty wire’s fuse, they drew close to Longwhile. On nearing the gloomy homestead, Eric floored the accelerator. ‘Down everyone,’ he said. They hurtled past the turn-off, with hazards flashing and horn blaring.
Soon they reached the Welcome to Naples sign, and townsfolk began to stir in their beds at the disturbance.
‘What the fuck are yous clowns doin?’ Rodney cried out, his ears hurting.
Gayle heard the ruckus. From her upstairs window she saw the vehicle’s hazard lights when it turned into Judith Street. She ran down the stairs. Eric thumped into the driveway, nearly taking out a fuel pump with the horse float. He braked. Gayle reached in to pull the bonnet and in a flash disconnected the faulty wire.
Then, with daylight about to break, they bundled Rodney out of the truck. While Jay and Leanne bickered to an audience of several cows grazing in a neighbouring paddock, they rough-handled the weasel up the stairs. ‘In here,’ Gayle directed Eric, when they arrived outside the room with the brass bed.
Looking to his left, Rodney caught a sideways glance of Duncan Reynolds’ picture, hung large and grinning on the wall. A wave of nausea climbed up his throat like a bug, and the contents of his stomach flew out onto Gayle’s carpet.
‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘Keep it off the bloody carpet.’
‘Too late,’ Eric said, recoiling from the mess.
They dragged Rodney into the large bedroom’s ensuite, and roughly wiped his face and front. Then they threw him onto the brass bed and tied him to it.
The unloading of the plants began.
ACT II
Blue Fuss
1
The weasel was becoming increasingly concerned about the extent of his predicament. Sore and thirsty, he was trying to banish thoughts of Duncan from his mind, while his murdered friend’s mother stomped about in the attic above him.
Outside the room, the crop thieves were causing a commotion that sounded clumsy and stupid as the dope plants journeyed up the stairs, and he was angry with himself for having been so easily apprehended by the clowns. He squirmed about on the bed, trying to free himself, but it didn’t seem possible; his restraints were too tight. The vomit on his clothes and feet was upsetting to him; he called out to someone, for help.
Hearing him, Leanne blushed pink on the other side of the door. She opened it a crack and peered in. A strange sight met her eyes: a small, wild-looking man with mess down his front, restrained by his hands and feet to the beautiful four-poster brass bed she had been admiring only hours before.
‘The chuck’s burnin me throat,’ Rodney complained, his head piled high on the embroidered pillows, his filthy army-greens all wrong on the baby-pink chenille bedspread. ‘Can I have a glass a water?’
She went to close the door.
‘Don’t close the door!’
She closed the door. ‘He needs a drink of water,’ she said, to Jay.
‘Too bad,’ Jay said.
She opened the door again.
‘Please, I won’t try nuthin – the chuck’s burnin’ me throat,’ Rodney repeated, struggling.
She closed the door again.
‘He says he won’t try anything.’
‘What’s going on down there?’ Gayle boomed, from out of the attic.
‘He says he wants a drink of water,’ Leanne said. ‘He’s been sick.’
‘Well, he can’t have a drink of water yet. We’re busy. Give me those,’ Gayle ordered, regarding the marijuana bushes piling up at Leanne’s feet. ‘You’re causing a bottleneck!’
Rodney took a moment to examine his situation more closely. His feet were tied to the foot of the bed, and looking up, he saw that his hands were secured by rope to a polished brass strut. His eyes followed the antique strut to its end and found an old break at the top that had not been repaired. He pushed his tied wrists up to the break and, with some effort, bent the strut at that point. He was then able to free his hands.
That done, he set about untying his feet.
Able to stand at last, he stumbled to the ensuite bathroom. Rubbing his sore head, he ran a tap and rinsed his mouth; wincing, he dabbed some water on the lump that had formed on his skull. Then he went to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. He saw the plants being passed one by one in a chain.
‘Can we move a bit faster?’ Gayle cried out, from above. ‘I open in fifteen minutes.’
