The Peco Incident Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  I watched the plane touch down on the tarmac with mixed feelings. Yes, it would be good to have some company for the summer holidays, but I wished it was not Nicholas Clarke. Any other cousin would have been better. There were plenty to choose from on both sides of the family, so why did it have to be Nick — the one cousin who was always in trouble?

  As the plane taxied along the runway, I chuckled to myself, thinking that maybe I should have put a public notice in the Otago Daily Times:

  Citizens of Dunedin — BEWARE!

  Nicholas Clarke of Hastings will be staying with the Masters family at Harwood, Otago Peninsula, from mid-December until the end of January. During this time, any accidents or disasters caused by the said Nicholas Clarke should not be blamed on his cousin, Daniel Masters. Nor should Daniel Masters be expected to prevent or pay for any damage to property or medical emergencies caused by Nicholas Clarke. All care will be taken, but no responsibility.

  ‘What’s so funny, Danny?’ Mum asked, watching the plane dock at the terminal.

  ‘I was just thinking of Nick and all the trouble he gets into.’

  ‘Yvonne says he’s not so bad now. Not since he went on Ritalin. Anyway, he’s a lot older than when you last saw him. He will have changed, and should be more sensible.’

  I said nothing. Sure, Nick would be thirteen now, just a few months older than me, but would that make him any more sensible? I was yet to be convinced.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mum, ‘we’d better move to the reception area.’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘If we’re not there, you never know what might happen.’

  Nick certainly had changed. Well, in looks he had — the behaviour was yet to be tested. It was three years since I’d last seen him, and in that time he’d gone from a cheeky kid to a gangly teenager — compared to me, he was now huge. Yet you didn’t have to look too closely to know he was still the same person: untidy clothes, darting eyes, and urgent movements. Watching Nick was like watching a human version of the battery bunny — he never seemed to stop moving.

  ‘Hi, Aunty Chloe,’ he said with a big grin. ‘I got here.’

  Mum put an arm around his shoulders in a half-hug, which Nick didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘No in-flight emergency?’ I asked, partly to avoid any similar contact.

  ‘No, cuz!’ replied Nick. Then he grinned. ‘Except I did get locked in the toilet and they had to get a special key to get me out.’

  I smiled to myself. That was definitely the old Nick.

  We were interrupted by the blast of a horn from the luggage carousel. A moment later it started rolling, carrying its load of bags and boxes.

  Without warning, Nick took off. He raced around the carousel, bumping people aside as he looked for his bag. Then he spotted it, but a man had, too. They both went for the same black bag. By the time Mum and I arrived alongside, a tug-of-war had developed between Nick and the man.

  ‘Look at the label!’ shouted the man. ‘That’s my name. It is my bag.’

  But Nick wasn’t listening, and continued to wrestle for the bag. While Mum stepped in to sort it out, I went looking for a similar bag. There wasn’t one. So I began looking at the labels of all of the bags.

  The job got easier as people removed their gear, and soon there were only a few objects left. Nick’s bag ended up being quite different in shape and colour to the one he’d been fighting over.

  Mum had calmed Nick down by the time I returned. The man still wasn’t happy, but his desire to get away was stronger than his need to continue the argument, and he walked off towards the exit, muttering to himself.

  ‘This is yours,’ I said, dumping the bag at Nick’s feet.

  ‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘that’s it!’ Then, after a pause: ‘I thought I’d brought the other one.’

  As we left the terminal, Mum turned to Nick and asked, ‘Did you take your Ritalin this morning?’

  ‘Don’t have to,’ he said, happily. ‘The doctor said I could have a drug holiday until I get back to school.’

  Mum looked at him sharply. ‘You did bring your pills with you, though, didn’t you?’

  Nick shook his head. ‘I forgot, I guess.’

  Mum took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I looked at her, seeing the first signs of anger. She’d agreed to look after Nick while his parents went overseas only because her sister — my Aunty Yvonne — had convinced her that Ritalin had changed Nick’s behaviour. Now it seemed there was no Ritalin, and Nicholas Clarke hadn’t changed at all.

  We travelled in silence; Mum and I in the front, with Nick fidgeting in the back. By the time we reached the motorway into Dunedin, the silence had become embarrassing. I turned towards the back seat, and asked, ‘Is a drug holiday like a surfing holiday? You do as much of it as you can?’

  Nick burst out laughing. ‘Yeah, Danny! That’s an idea.’

  ‘Not when I’m in charge,’ said Mum sternly. But I could see that she was relieved that the tension had been broken.

  From then on, the atmosphere returned to a more comfortable level. Nick hadn’t been to Dunedin before, and Mum took a tiki-tour around some of the sights, including The Octagon, the university, and finally St Kilda beach, which, even though it was meant to be summer, was deserted because a cold southerly was blasting in.

  After that, we headed on to the Otago Peninsula where we live. This was formed from the remains of volcanoes that erupted millions of years ago. It’s about thirty kilometres long, with the Otago Harbour on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. I think it’s one of the coolest places on the planet.

  The main town on our part of the peninsula is Portobello, which has a pub, a couple of shops, a school — the one I’d just left — a garage, and several tourist places. We stopped at one of these for lunch, as Mum claimed she deserved a decent coffee.

  We sat on a sunny deck, sheltered from the wind. Nick and I scoffed ourselves on chips and mini-hotdogs, while Mum nibbled away on a wrap, sipping her latte. It was only when we’d finished and Mum had gone inside to pay that Nick got into trouble again.

  He pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and aimed it at some dopey-looking sparrows that had been hanging around ever since our food had arrived. I figured that the phone must also be a camera, although I didn’t really know much about mobile phones. The only person in our family to own one was Mum, and that was a budget model that she carried in case of emergency.

  Nick’s phone was not budget. It had a big screen with a full keyboard. And yet it obviously didn’t have a zoom camera lens, for the sparrows’ image on the screen was tiny. That’s when he picked up a few scrappy chips from his bowl and threw them at his feet to bring the birds closer.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ a voice snapped.


  We turned to see a grim-faced waitress storming towards us. She pointed towards a sign nailed to a post: ‘Don’t they teach you to read at school nowadays?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Nick, walking over to the notice. ‘Do not feed the birds!’ he read in an official-sounding voice. Then he turned to the waitress. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they spread disease,’ she answered in a calmer voice.

  ‘Salmonella,’ I said.

  ‘And Campylobacter,’ she added. ‘They’re filthy animals.’

  Nick nodded, walking towards the sparrows which had hardly touched the food he’d given them. ‘Yeah, they look pretty sick to me,’ he said.

  They did, too. Then, as if to prove the point, one keeled over in front of him. He moved to pick it up.

  ‘Don’t!’ cried the waitress. Then, more quietly: ‘I’ll get a brush and sweep it up.’

  ‘Have you been poisoning them?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ she said, quickly. ‘Not us. Looks like somebody has, though.’

  I nodded. It happened at times when people got fed up with the sparrows going into cafés or houses. No one ever admitted doing it, but we’d see them dying around the school grounds. Of course this upset lots of kids who wanted to save them; if you got them early enough, they could be revived by placing them in a warm, dark place, which is what some of the classes did. But mostly the sparrows were left to die, and only the more interesting birds were saved.

  By then Mum had rejoined us. She saw the dead sparrow and raised her eyebrows. ‘Somebody had the poison out again, have they?’ she said, without concern. She had no great love of sparrows, as they often attacked things she’d planted in the garden. ‘Come on, we’d better get home.’

  Out in the car park there were more sick and dead birds. Nick was fascinated by all the death and dying. He wanted to stay and watch. Even when we were on our way home, he wouldn’t let it go.

  ‘Maybe they weren’t poisoned on purpose,’ he suggested. ‘It could be the food they serve in that place.’ He grabbed his neck and made retching noises. ‘Help! Help! I think those hotdogs are poisoning me.’

  ‘Leave it, Nick,’ said Mum.

  ‘But it could be something else,’ he continued. ‘It could be some killer disease from outer space that’s going to wipe out all the birds in the world. Maybe it’ll even mutate and start attacking humans … Oh my God! We need to do something, or everybody’s going to die.’

  ‘I said leave it!’ yelled Mum.

  Nick was shocked into silence, which lasted the few minutes it took to get home. Then in the excitement of arriving at a new place, he forgot about the dead sparrows to concentrate on making sure that my bedroom — now with an extra bed — was organized his way, not mine. And it was during this battle to retain some personal identity that I, too, let the matter slip to the back of my mind.

  CHAPTER 2

  Harwood, the part of the peninsula where we live, seems remote even though it’s just twenty kilometres from The Octagon in the city. Most of the houses were built as holiday homes, and many are still used that way. A few of them are big, flashy places. The only decent-sized rooms in ours are the two bedrooms and the lounge.

  While the house might be tiny, the section is big. Just as well, because Mum likes gardening and Dad likes fixing things. That’s what he does for a living. He works at the council landfill repairing items which are then sold to cover costs. Bikes, lawnmowers, tools, appliances — if anybody can get them to work again, Dad can. The bigger, long-term jobs are brought home so that he can work on them in his spare time. Hence our section has lots of stuff that people might call junk. Not that you would see that from the road, because it’s all stacked around the back of the house or in Dad’s workshop, which is almost bigger than the house.

  Having a father who can repair things is great in many ways, but a drag in others. I don’t remember ever getting anything new, other than clothes, and sometimes even they’re recycled. Oh, I have lots of belongings — it’s just that all of them have been pre-owned by someone else.

  On the upside, there’s no shortage of vehicles around our place. Apart from Dad’s ute and Mum’s car, there’s a trail bike, a tractor, and at least seven different pedal-powered bikes. Although the motorized vehicles were locked away while Nick was with us, there were still plenty of ways for us to explore the peninsula, and that’s what we did the morning after Nick’s arrival. It was still cool for summer, but the wind from the day before had dropped to give a lovely sunny day. Mum made us some scones and little mince pies, telling us to disappear for the day.

  I chose Allans Beach as our destination. To get there we had to cross over to the ocean side of the peninsula, about eight kilometres away. I warned Nick that it was a decent distance and it would be best to have a bike with gears, but he wouldn’t listen and chose a small BMX that Dad had modified as a stunt bike. He looked real stupid with his long legs pedalling madly and yet hardly going anywhere. The only time he had an advantage was when we had to climb over the main ridge. But then as he went down the other side he discovered that the thing had no brakes, and ended up having to scrape his feet along the gravel to control the speed.

  At the bottom of the hill is Papanui Inlet. With the tide in, it looks just like a lake; when the tide is out, the water is replaced by birds, thousands of them feeding on the mudflats. It’s birds that make the Otago Peninsula so special. Apart from the usual birds found all over New Zealand, there are two that are truly unique: the yellow-eyed penguin and the royal albatross. The yellow-eyed is the world’s rarest penguin, and the albatrosses are special because they normally breed on small, remote islands, except here on the tip of the peninsula where they nest within sight of a city.

  Although those two are the famous peninsula birds, there are lots of other interesting natives, and it was a group of these that caused our first stop of the day. Seven dead grey teal were spread across the road.

  Nick skidded to a halt. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘See — I was right! There is a killer disease, and it has struck again.’

  I got off my bike to walk amongst the dead birds. I turned one over with my foot, unwilling to touch it, just in case Nick was right. There was blood underneath, with more blood beneath the next one.

  ‘No, Nick,’ I said, ‘there’s blood. They’ve been run over.’

  ‘Blood doesn’t mean anything,’ he replied. ‘Maybe the disease causes them to bleed.’

  I turned over a couple more. Both had squashed bodies and broken wings. ‘They must have been sleeping on the road,’ I said. ‘Guys come out from Dunedin to drift race on the gravel. Bet it was one of them.’

  ‘But why were the birds on the road?’ he asked.

  ‘Because it was warm,’ I suggested.

  ‘Nah! It’s because they were sick from the killer disease.’

  I looked at him, shaking my head slowly: nothing I could say would change his mind. So I climbed on my bike and took off.

  The road led us away from Papanui Inlet over a small rise to Hoopers Inlet. It, too, was covered with feeding birds. There were also a few maimais left over from the shooting season, a reminder that each year hundreds of swans and ducks were killed to stop them destroying the place for the other birds.

  A sign welcoming us to Allans Beach also informed us that the area was a wildlife refuge and that dogs should be under control at all times. It said nothing about humans called Nicholas, which I thought could be a major oversight.

  We hid our bikes behind the wide trunk of one of the pine trees that surrounded the car park. They wouldn’t be entirely safe, but the parked vehicles looked innocent enough: two big rental campers and a multi-coloured van covered in dust. From the rubbish bag dumped by a tree, I figured that at least one of them had camped illegally overnight.

  The track to the beach goes through the paddocks of a farm until you get to the lupins and gorse that grow along the sandy shore. In summer the lupins are tall, with heavy bunches of yellow flowers. They are hom
e to many creatures. The ones most often seen are the rabbits which leave their droppings and scrape marks on the surrounding grass. Less obvious are the penguins that roost deep in the bushes. There were several signs urging us to keep well clear of them.

  Nick read one of the signs and starting shouting, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ Then he started running towards the lupins. ‘Let’s go find them!’ he yelled. ‘C’mon, Danny — it’s Mission Penguin time!’

  ‘No!’ I screamed, but it was too late — he was off. I was beginning to realize that, somehow, his senses got modified whenever he moved into the hyperactive state: he seemed to see or hear nothing apart from his immediate target.

  I followed using one of the animal tracks that wind through the lupins. Some are made by Hooker sea lions. These are one of the most ferocious native animals found in New Zealand, and if Nick stumbled on one of them he would soon know about it. They enjoy sandy shores like Allans Beach, often getting up into the sand dunes where they can rest without being disturbed — that is until Nicholas Clarke comes to town.

  ‘Nick!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you?’ But my voice was lost against the roar from the sea. My only hope was to get up high and try to see him.

  I climbed to the top of a small sand hill which gave a view down to the sea. There were several couples walking along the beach, but nothing obvious amongst the lupins. Then some bushes about a hundred metres away began moving. I got a glimpse of Nick’s head and shoulders before he disappeared again. I yelled as loud as I could. The people on the beach looked around, but nothing from Nick.

  For a minute or so I could trace his path by the movement of the bushes. He was now close to the beach, which, unfortunately, was the most likely place to come across a sea lion. All I could do was watch and hope that he made it out the other side.

  He was right at the edge of the lupins when the attack happened. I heard a roar, followed closely by a cry from Nick. The tops of the lupins moved violently for a moment before Nick burst out onto the beach right in front of some startled tourists. Behind him was the roaring sea lion, moving faster than you would expect of a large, lumbering beast.