I had never seen a leech in my life, being an inner-city Sydney type of boy. Even my Boy Scout clubhouse was a disused factory shed on an oily concrete apron in Alexandria. No grass or forests there, unless you counted the weeds in the concrete cracks. (Which, in fact, I think I did, to earn my Bushcraft badge.)
No, leeches and I were strangers to each other, until that afternoon when I was pulled out of the rainforest adjoining the Ertrinken Estate winery in the Gold Coast hinterland, in pursuit of the killer of my old friend Westchester Zim. I must have hit my head on the edge of the rock pool, because when I awoke I was reclining on a long settee in a walnut-walled office at the winery, with the creepy man with a vineyard planted on his head poring over me with a pair of tweezers. He had beside him an open glass containing eleven leeches he had extracted from my person. He had another twelve to go. At least. I didn’t want to think where else these ghoulies had burrowed beneath my clothing.
‘They like you,’ he said, pulling another from my arm, inadvertently poking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth with the concentration. ‘They think you taste good, hmm?’
I couldn’t stop looking at his broken, yellowed teeth. The transplanted tufts were a pleasing Monet landscape compared to the canines. I glanced at the glass. The leeches were squirming about in there, wet and gleaming with my blood.
‘Wouldn’t have a drink on you, would you?’ I asked, thinking this a passable gag in a winery, and under the circumstances, but my creepy friend continued with his grisly work.
‘What happened, Sherlock?’ I said.
‘I am Hans,’ he said.
‘Many Hans make light work.’
‘Please, stop talking. You banged your head. You talking funny.’
‘What happened?’
‘You fell in the pool. We get you out. You covered in leeches. We get them off.’
‘You’re a one-stop shop, Hans.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘For a surgeon, you got steady Hans.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Forget it.’
He dropped several more leeches into the glass before I noticed a man sitting quietly by the window. He was dressed in an immaculate navy suit, polished shoes, a crisp white shirt and burgundy tie. I couldn’t see his face because the light diffusing through the fine curtains, but his slicked-back hair seemed to glow in a way that only heavily gelled naturally blond hair can. Perhaps I had mistaken him for a reading lamp. What was it with people’s hair in this place? Still, I had seen this pate before.
‘And who are you?’ I boomed across the room. ‘Nurse Ratched?’
He remained silent and motionless. I hate that. I hate all that ‘silence is power’ malarky. As you might have guessed, I prefer a verbal exchange. The more I stared at him, the more his glowing dome seemed like Nurse Ratched’s immaculate white cap in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Come to think of it, if I’d watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — another in my top ten films of all time — with Zim instead of that blasted Field of Dreams, I might not be covered in leeches, Zim could still be alive, and the Kombi dream could have been postponed for another year or two.
‘Sorry?’ I said to the dark stranger by the window. ‘I didn’t catch that. Perhaps you’re Chief Bromden. Deaf and dumb.’
‘You got a wise mouth, mate,’ the suit finally said. He too pronounced it marrrrrt, flat as a pancake, just like Joe the janitor. How come nobody could say ‘mate’ properly any more?
‘It speaks!’
‘Is the bump on the head, Herr Fleek, I’m sure,’ said my leech hunter.
‘Hair Fleek?’ I said, incredulous. And when I’m incredulous, my voice cracks and goes up like a teenage boy in maturational transition with a solo whisker on his chin.
‘Flick,’ the suit said. ‘Johann Flick. Friends call me Joe. You can call me Johann.’ Another Joe. Perhaps I’d been wrong all along. I was actually an extra in Groundhog Day.
‘And you can call me Nancy,’ I said. ‘Hey, hey, Dr Zhivago, that one hurt.’
‘Sorry,’ said the hair transplant.
‘So, Fleek,’ I said. ‘I came in here for a bottle of plonk, fell into a rock pool and got lathered with man-eating beasties. Why are you here, overseeing my recovery?’
‘I own this winery.’
‘Ohhhh, I see. You’re worried about an insurance claim from me.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I happened to be in the restaurant today for lunch when I heard some yobbo had let off a gun at the pools and nearly fractured his skull. This winery has an impeccable reputation worldwide. I’m not about to see it soiled by some demented grub disconnected with my enterprise.’
‘I’ve been called a lot of things, Fleek ...’
‘What’s your business here?’
‘Wine, Fleek. The VW vintage. I’m a Kombi nut.’
‘How long have you been a Kombi nut, as you call it?’
I checked my watch. ‘About three hours.’
Still I could not see his face, though he lit a cigarette and the smoke eased about his upper torso. The light through the window captured its paisley swirls.
‘The VW wine, as you call it. It was discontinued. It is no more. So sorry.’
‘Oh, what a shame. Maybe I could nab a bottle on eBay.’
‘It was promotional. A handful of cases. May I ask how you came to learn of it? You’re a wine expert too, are you?’
‘A dead friend of mine gave it a favourable review. Man called Zim. First-rate palate. He recommended it. Admired the body, so to speak.’
‘Then he was a man of impeccable taste.’
‘You never heard of him? He passed away, right here, down amongst your impeccable vines.’
‘Can’t say I have heard of him, no.’
‘A man drops dead in your vineyard and you didn’t hear about it? Tsk tsk, Herr Fleek.’
‘I’m a busy man. What was it — a heart attack? People die every day. Do you hear about every one of them?’
‘Busy doing what?’
‘I’m sorry — you illegally discharge a firearm on my property, cause a major disturbance to my business and, worst of all, you interrupt my lunch. Are you in any position to ask me questions?’ His voice had changed. I had heard this type of voice before. It had the timbre of a man with a very substantial temper, as deep as a rainforest rock pool.
‘One more to go,’ said my doctor with the hideous teeth, as he triumphantly dropped the final leech into the glass. They looked as though they were attacking each other, those leeches, fighting for the pint of blood, or so it seemed, they had sucked from me.