It may be encroaching dementia, but shadows loom large as you get older, and for comfort I patted the Beretta on the passenger’s seat of the Kombi as I puttered over the crunching gravel.
I locked the vehicle, straightened my Hawaiian shirt and made for the open cellar door. If only Zim could have seen me now. (Was he watching me, halfway through some fifty-course degustation up in heaven? Smirking? Possibly coughing on a shaving of truffle with the comedy of it all?) I was acting on pure instinct. It had always served me well. I still had a hunch that my friend had not suffered a fateful heart attack that day in these very vineyards, but that his demise had been brought on, and swiftly, by persons as yet unknown. And by a method yet to be determined.
Why kill Zim? Surely a bad restaurant review couldn’t lead to the sanction of a professional hit. Or could it? I had seen people murdered for less. But it was hard to imagine a human life being taken for criticism of a roasted tomato or an undercooked lamb shank. Then again, Zim could be cutting, much like his beloved A. A. Gill. ‘The calamari,’ Zim once memorably wrote, ‘would have brought smiles of recognition to legions of Malayan rubber plantation workers, or factory hands at the headquarters of Dunlop Volley tennis shoes. It had the same texture, and age, of something that might have shod the feet of Ken Rosewall during his Wimbledon singles disappointments.’
Perhaps Zim had stumbled across something, as a journalist, and not just a food critic, that someone didn’t want known to the general public. He was acquainted with an enormous number of people in high places, and a lot of them told him things at the end of a good meal that they would never have uttered otherwise. Some combinations of wine and food can open fissures in the human heart, let alone the brain. These people trusted Zim. But what if something found its way onto one of those little pocket index cards of his? And what if someone wanted to destroy that card, and Zim along with it?
‘Can I help you?’
A man had appeared at the cellar door, startling me. He had extraordinary hair. If you could call it hair. He was short, so I had a brilliant view of his cranium. He had follicles that sprouted in tufts aligned in perfect equidistance from his forehead to his crown. A hair transplant, but a fantastically bad one. It was almost as though a miniature vineyard had been planted upon his scalp. A vineyard in the dead of a permanent winter.
His teeth were yellowed and crooked, as if all his savings had been absorbed by the vineyard, and he had nothing left for his dental work. I did not want to get near him, just as one might keep a safe distance from a poisonous plant.
‘Wine,’ I said stupidly.
‘You’ve come to the right place.’ He spotted the Kombi on the drive. The grin broadened. ‘Wo kommen sie? Deutchland?’
‘Could you repeat that?’
‘You come from Germany?’
‘I come from Erskineville.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know Erskineville.’
‘No need to apologise. I’m looking for your Kombi wine. Heard great things about it.’
‘Kombi wine?’
‘Yes. Your white wine with the red Kombi on the label. Little VW symbol on the top.’
His grin disappeared. So this was not to be one of Dr Muskett’s smiling vineyards.
‘I am lost. So sorry. The little ...’
‘A friend of mine put me on to it. Name of Zim. Westchester Zim.’
‘Zim?’
‘Little red Kombi. On a ridge. On the label. Nein?’
‘No,’ he said firmly now. ‘You must have the wrong place.’
‘This is the Ertrinken Estate?’
‘Ertrinken. Correct.’
‘Tell me, what does it mean, Ertrinken?’
‘Ertrinken. It means the drowning. To drown, you know?’
‘Happy stuff.’
‘How do you say? To drown one’s sorrows.’
‘Very amusing.’
He seemed annoyed by this banter, the man with the vineyard on his head. The skin between the tufts had turned pale pink.
‘Why don’t you take a seat inside, and I’ll ask the cellar-man about this Kombi wine, hmm? Please. Wait here.’
He disappeared into the gloom of the cellar and I began to feel agitated. When my host did not return after ten minutes, I ambled about the grounds. The air was moist and fresh, the soil a rich red, the vineyard restaurant perched on the edge of a ridge. It commanded a magnificent view of the Gold Coast, the high-rises needle-like and chalky from this distance. To the right of the winery buildings was a wall of rainforest and at its base a small entranceway. Again, it was something out of a sinister fairytale, but aren’t we irresistibly lured to such doorways, to the portal that separates civilisation from terror? From what we know and what we don’t? Don’t we love to have the stuffing scared out of us? It’s only a story, right?
I cautiously crept closer to the entranceway and there found a tiny hand-painted sign. To the Pools.
I looked back and saw no sign of life at the cellar door, so in I walked, into the gloom. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, and I blindly bumbled along the track. I heard things scurrying in the ground foliage, and a distant whipbird.
The track gradually descended for a hundred metres then lifted and fell again. The forest seemed to darken. My heart pounded. I heard a crash behind me and pulled out the Beretta, swinging it around wildly. It was the type of darkness you might see figures in. Or might imagine you’ve seen. The fear was still the same. Fear always is.
‘Idiot,’ I said to myself, and walked on. I kept the Beretta out.
Five minutes later I began to hear running water, then, unexpectedly, the track led into a huge open amphitheatre, and at its base was a series of deep pools cut into stone. It was eerie. Almost unnatural. A perfect narrow waterfall flushed into the pools. The water was loud here, close to deafening, as it bounced back off the tall stands of rainforest. I half expected to see a semi-naked woman washing her hair with a new brand of apple-scented shampoo under the cascades.
I went to the edge of one of the smaller pools and looked down. It was a very dark. It was deep. It appeared infinite. Foam flecked the surface. I could see my frothy wobbling reflection.
That’s when I heard a gunshot. I swung around, let off two bullets myself and fell backwards into the pool as crazed and startled birds exploded from the trees.
~ * ~
7
The leech is a fascinating creature. Did you know the gnatbobdellida variety has three jaws, and may have more than one set of eyes? It possesses very handy suckers and its multi-toothed jaws chomp away like miniature chainsaws, before sucking your blood and greasing the meal with an anticoagulant. The fact that it’s also a hermaphrodite makes it the perfect solo unit. It’s got it all.