The news of the accident and the probable death of his son had hit him very hard. He maintained with difficulty the well-modulated, resonant telephone voice which gave the image of a successful real estate agent.
“John Corbishley here, how may I help you?”
“You won’t know me, Mr Corbishley, but I have news of your son.”
The memory came back to him of that fearful cliff road that he used to know so well and the crumpled car at the bottom. He felt his control going. “David – oh no!”
“I’ve just been talking to him.”
“Thank God!”
“He asked me to phone you.”
“He hasn’t rung himself. Is he all right?”
“He’s safe, but he thought you would believe what the papers said and wouldn’t want to speak to him.”
He felt his voice going again. “He’s my only child. I didn’t think about what the papers said. All I thought was that he was dead. Where is he? Can I see him? Can I speak to him?’
“In the meantime for certain reasons he feels it’s better that people think he’s dead.”
“I’ll do as he wants. Are you a friend of his?”
“No, but we had met before – briefly.”
She turned on the radio, keeping the volume down.
“This is the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, 1YA, with the six o’clock news on Friday 21st January.
Police have identified the owner of the car which was found at the bottom of a cliff on the Opotiki–Te Araroa Road this morning. He is Dr David Corbishley, a senior lecturer at the Geology Department of the Auckland University. Prior to the accident Dr Corbishley had been the subject of police enquiries in connection with an incident on a local property. The Geology Department have confirmed that Dr Corbishley was not on departmental business. Police are mounting an extensive search of the coastline around the crash area.”
Kate looked at the suspected criminal sleeping on her settee.
“Heavens!” she thought, “What am I letting myself in for if I harbour this man?”
Then with a shock she remembered why she had tried to ring him at University.
CHAPTER 26
David awoke, rubbed his eyes, and looked at his watch. “Seven o’clock. I’d better be off to the backpackers.”
“There’s no hurry. It’s seven o’clock on Saturday morning.”
“In the morning!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you wake me? I’ve slept for fourteen hours.”
“You needed it. And after breakfast I want to ask your advice.”
He listened to her account of the Alpine Sports Club meeting as he nursed his third cup of coffee.
“But I can’t understand why you sailed into the chap who discovered the huia.”
“I just got mad about people being excited about birds and not caring about people.”
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “But I thought you were a greenie – Kate.”
She was intrigued that at last she was not just ‘er’.
“And that’s not all,” she said. “I started thinking about this bloke. Why would he want to lie about the Keulemans painting? And why was he so dry and lifeless about it all, except when I got him onto the subject of race relations. Then I got thinking that there’s a lot of people like him around. Then it struck me there’s something odd about the highway assaults. I mean no one has ever even looked like being charged. So I researched the back numbers of the Herald.”
“Oh, yes.” His voice was not as enthusiastic as she had hoped.
She took away the newspaper which covered her research on the table. “Take a look at this. I’ve underlined all the hate-building stuff – all the half-truths and insinuations. This is not just reporting. It looks like an orchestrated campaign.”
He scrutinised the photocopied news items and articles. “Do you really think people believe all they read in the paper?”
“And in the talkbacks and on the TV. I’m certain of it.” She described the incident at the City Library involving the Maori woman and her children.
“So you believe it’s a conspiracy?”
“Yes, and not by the Maori. Somebody or some group is preparing the scene for a particularly nasty counter-terrorist action like a coup.”
“It’s not exactly evidence,” he said slowly.
She was not surprised that he was slow. Males in general lacked imagination. “I have something a bit more definite about the highway assaults.”
“Good,” he said in a patronising tone.
“The interesting thing is that no one has ever seen the assailants except the victims. On the night of the McAndrew assault south of Te Kuiti no one except the victims saw a collection of noisy, beat up cars with smoking exhausts driven by a group of tattooed Maori, not even the highway patrols.”
“You mean the traffic police?”
“No, the voluntary patrols – some people call them ‘community vigilantes’. In the McAndrew case they were standing at the gates of the Te Kuiti marae when the police arrived. You’d think they’d be chasing over the country looking for suspects, especially as Susan McAndrew called the police immediately after the assault. But they went straight to the marae, almost as if they wanted to point them out as the perpetrators.”
“So the cars and the assailants have vanished into thin air.”
“Or melted into the countryside.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes you can’t see something extraordinary because it turns into something quite ordinary? A lot of farmers have old cars on their properties.”
“I thought you said you had something more definite.”
She controlled herself with difficulty. “I have also seen Susan McAndrew.”
He looked at her with new interest. “The hold-up victim?”
“Just to find out if she’d noticed anything unusual about the Maori assailants.”
“And had she?”
“No, not really. But I did when she described what happened.”
“What did you notice?”
“She’s a gutsy lady and she’d scratched some paint off her assailant’s arm with her fingernails. Well, it was brown paint. And when she was being interviewed by the two CIB officers, one Pakeha and the other Maori, it was the Pakeha who said it was war paint, and the Maori one didn’t question it. And they’re both wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because the Maori didn’t use war paint before going into battle. They used karakia, you know – prayers.”
“How do you know that?”
“I checked with the ethnologist at the Auckland Museum when I got back. Then I made an appointment to talk to Sergeant Piriaka, the Maori officer who interviewed Susan. I got the impression that he wasn’t up with his Maoritanga.”
“Did he admit to a mistake?”
“No, not in so many words. But he didn’t seem to want to follow it up.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a dodgy issue, but I reckon there must be at least some racial tensions within the police force. I guess he wouldn’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest, which is understandable.”
“I still don’t see where all this leads.”
“I wonder if the assailants were only disguised as Maori.”
David shook his head. “You’d make a great detective, Kate, but your deductions are well ahead of your evidence. You can’t build a case on a fingernail of brown paint.” He seemed preoccupied and nervous and went to the window again where he stood hiding behind the curtain as before. “Does that bush run all the way down to the railway?”