I had always fancied Patsy Bradley but I kept my lascivious fantasies to myself and would never have tried to make a move on her, out of respect for Trevor and, to be to honest, I mean, realistically, I would have had little chance of success. I would have been a fool to ruin a good friendship and a fool for presuming. So I contented myself with admiring her secretly from afar, so to speak. Not literally that far, as the Bradleys were my nearest neighbours. Our farms bordered each other’s but from one house to the other was a 15-minute walk by road; slightly less over the paddocks.
Trevor and I hunted and fished together and shared a beer or three after an outing. We visited each other quite often for venison or wild pork barbecues or just to shoot the breeze. I was a dab hand with venison steaks on my barbie. Outdoor cooking is traditionally a man’s domain but in my case there was no other option anyway. At the Bradleys, however, it was Patsy who operated the barbecue and she cooked up gourmet meals. “Not just a pretty face, your Patsy,” I remarked as Trev and I sat back with our beers.
Trev often came over to mine on his own and, on occasion, with Patsy, but never Patsy on her own. So imagine my surprise when Patsy showed up at my back door by herself late at night. I was dumbfounded but she looked oddly dumbstruck, like a deer in the headlights, or in the porch light in this case. She was breathless and distraught.
“Hey Patsy,” I said, “what’s up? Are you all right?”
She caught her breath and said, “Trevor’s been shot.”
I’d heard a gunshot and thought Trev was probably shooting possums in their orchard. “Oh no,” I said. “What happened? Is he all right?”
“No, I don’t know. I think he’s dead,” she said, in a dull monotone. She must have been in shock. “A man broke into the house and just shot him, point blank.”
“Oh my God, Patsy. Come in. Sit down. Here, I’ll call 111 and get the police out.” After I got through to the police, I got my .308 Savage with the scope out of the locker and loaded the magazine. The shooter could be heading this way and it would take a while for the police to get here. I am the protector, maybe the avenger.
Patsy sat at the dining table and started shivering. “What can I get you?” I said, as though it was a social visit and I was offering drinks. I got her a blanket and draped it over her shoulders and stroked her back. I was finding her emotional state in her distress and her vulnerability strangely arousing. I was distractedly thinking, in spite of myself, what possibilities could arise if it were a social call. Her husband’s dead. She’s a widow. She’s all alone …
Snap out of it, man. Deal with the situation.
“Where’s the shooter, Patsy? Is he still in the house?”
“I don’t know. He went out the front door. There was another man in a car but he drove off without the shooter. Then he came back in and I panicked and ran out the back door and ran over here.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“He was wearing a balaclava.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, nothing. He just shot him.”
I made a pot of tea and did my best to comfort Patsy, and all the while keeping an eye on the road, from the window. The police eventually arrived: two officers. No canine.
Sergeant Roger said they couldn’t get a dog out here till tomorrow. “There’s an ambulance on the way here but it won’t go to the house till we secure the scene.”
“We can use my pig dog,” I said. “He’s a good tracker.”
“Bruce and I will handle this,” Roger said. “We don’t need any vigilantes. You can stay here with Patsy.”
“No. Bruce can stay and guard the house and take Patsy’s statement,” I said. “You need my dog but he won’t work for you. You need me and the dog. Besides, I’m a hunter and I know this area like the back of my hand.”
“Have you got a permit for this?” Roger asked, examining my rifle and feeling the barrel. “When did you last use it?”
I could see him thinking maybe I was the shooter and maybe this was some kind of love triangle conspiracy. The police look for suspects close to home, don’t they. Or maybe there really was a shooter at large and I had hired him, or Patsy had taken out a contract on her husband. And maybe now I wanted to kill the assassin.
“Come on, Roger,” I said. “The shooter’s still in the vicinity. You know this is the way to go. I’ll get the dog and go across the farm. You take the road and I’ll meet you at the house.”
“He could have got away down the road by now,” Roger said.
“No, my fox terrier on the verandah would’ve barked up a storm like a guard dog at any stranger walking down the road. He barked at you when you arrived. Anyway, you didn’t see anyone on the road driving up here, did you?”
Roger still hesitated for a moment and looked at Bruce. They both nodded. Roger was going to trust that I was legit. I grabbed my day pack and put on my tramping boots. Sammy gave me a quizzical look as I fetched him from his kennel, like ‘What’s up Boss?’ I don’t usually work at night.
He was even more quizzical at the Bradley house when I opened the door and told him to go in. He’d never been inside a house in his life. I followed Sammy into the dark interior with Roger behind me, carrying his police-issue flashlight backhanded at head height. There was no life in the house; only a lifeless body on the floor. Sammy whimpered, scenting blood – human blood. Roger shone his flashlight on the corpse and felt for a pulse: “He’s dead all right.”
A quick look around the house turned up a black balaclava on the floor in the kitchen. I picked it up and held in Sammy’s face so he could get a good whiff.
“Hunt Sammy,” I commanded, and he went out through the open back door. “No torch light,” I said, as we followed Sammy, following his nose, out through the orchard and onto the bush track.
I waited while Roger called Bruce to let him know what was happening and then we moved stealthily along the track, by the light of a gibbous moon, behind scudding clouds, stopping from time to time, holding the dog back, to listen into the darkness of the bush.
There were only the usual night sounds: stridulating, chirping crickets, the call of a morepork, the shrill whistle of a kiwi. I always keep my senses on high alert when I’m hunting but this was different from deer stalking. Deer don’t shoot back.We were stalking our prey in the dark, human prey, armed prey. He could be lying in wait. I’m at the front. I’ll be the one shot. Could I actually shoot a man if it came to it?
In a standoff, with the man who shot my mate in cold blood, if it was him or me, damn straight I would.
My pulse was racing. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. I’m usually asleep at this hour but I’d never been as wide awake as I was now. I’d never been in the army but it must be like this, in combat. It was terrifying and exhilarating to be so focused, so awake, so keyed up.
There was a sudden rustling in the undergrowth ahead. I clicked the safety off my rifle and dropped to one knee, ready to fire. Roger shouldered his rifle in a free-standing position. The rustling grew louder, closer. A bush pig appeared on the track, and veered away back into the undergrowth with Sammy in hot pursuit. He quickly had the pig bailed up and pinned.
“Let go Sammy!” I hissed. “Get back! Sit!” H was really puzzled, watching the pig scamper away. He’d done his job and I hadn’t done mine. I wasn’t shouting. I wasn’t killing.
“Maybe something scared the pig,” I whispered back to Roger. I gave Sammy the balaclava again and he was immediately back on the trail. We continued at pace for about 20 minutes and then took a rest and listened.
Roger was puffing. He’s carrying quite a lot of weight.
“Where does this track lead?” he asked.
“There’s a fork not far up ahead. One track leads to a trampers’ hut and the other leads to the Old Coach Road, which joins onto the main road.”
“I can call for an officer to sit at the other end of the Old Coach Road then,” Roger said.
“Yeah, okay but I think we’re pretty close. It’s gone unnaturally quiet and Sammy’s getting very keen to go on.”
So on we went and Sammy took the right fork that led to the Old Coach Road; no hesitation. Not far along the track, Sammy sensed our quarry. The fugitive was sitting, resting at the side of the track. As Sammy bounded toward him he jumped to his feet with his rifle and fired a shot at the dog. I dropped to one knee again and had the shooter in the crosshairs but hesitated for a moment as he took aim at Roger. Roger was standing exposed in the middle of the track ready to fire and got a shot away before the other guy did. Result: one dead murderer and one dead dog.
**********
There was an enquiry as per protocol with every police shooting and I was called as a witness. We had both been in mortal danger and it was a straightforward case of self-defence. Roger had no option but to shoot the offender. I was about to take the shot too, I said. The case wasn’t entirely closed though. There was still the matter of the accomplice who drove away.
“Why do you suppose he did that?” Roger asked me.
“I don’t know. Maybe he lost his nerve,” I said.
“Or maybe he double-crossed the shooter,” Roger speculated. “Maybe it was a set-up, to eliminate the shooter.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” I said, “unless you find the mystery man.”
I think Roger still had some suspicions about me, but he didn’t say anything along those lines. All he said, in the end, was “Sorry about your dog.”
“Yeah, Sammy was the best dog I ever had. He was a bloody genius compared to some of the other dumb mutts I’ve had.”
**********
As for Patsy, other family came around to help console her in her grief, but I was her main support, as I was on the spot to help look after the farm. She said she appreciated the way I took charge of the situation and justice was served when Trevor’s killer was killed.
She couldn’t face going back to live in her house on her own. It was just too traumatic. I continued to manage her farm, as well as my own, and that’s how we eventually ended up amalgamating our farms and living together in my house.
Author: John Carstensen
John Carstensen is a Danish-born Kiwi with dual New Zealand and Canadian citizenship. He is an English teacher by profession, now retired and living in Tauranga, enjoying his hobbies of writing and fishing. John has one wife, two children and four grandchildren, all living in Tauranga.
