“Fuck me! What is happening?” one of Sgt. Anaru’s men shouted over the howling gust.
Someone started yelling, “Must be the curse. They don’t want us here!” His words were met with a chorus of approval and agreement.
“Don’t be stupid!” the sergeant thundered over their collective speculation. “This is not the time for superstition, for Christ’s sake! Carry on searching. The longer we take, the less likely Mr. Harding is to survive.”
“What if he is dead already?” another man cried, holding on to his hat. “He has been missing on this godforsaken patch of land for over a week, mate. Not likely that he is still alive anyway!”
“Too right, mate!” another young man hollered. “We are looking for a corpse and corpses have a way of disappearing into the ground.”
Nobody, including Sgt. Anaru, wanted to admit that they were all of the same mind, but this was his job and he had to execute the search to adhere to police protocol. Inside his heart, he agreed with the volunteers and other officers, but he could not voice his opinion. Most of all, Anaru knew that Mr. Harding would never be found on the grounds of the farm. In fact, he would bet a year’s salary that the farmer was somewhere inside that mountain, inside that yawning blackness.
To justify his own minor cowardice, Anaru told himself that they were combing the open fields and mild woodlands of the farm first, to be thorough. Above them, the wind had brought a few fleece clouds together that soon clumped together to form thicker clouds.
“This is fucked up, mate,” one of the volunteers told the sergeant. “Look at that. That is not normal. This kind of weather doesn’t bloody exist on this island and you know it. I’m out.”
“Me too!” another called out.
From around the west ridge a group of men emerged, spooked by the unnatural gathering clouds, only to find that a lot of the men were busy packing up to leave. No matter how the sergeant tried to change their minds, the weather antagonized him successfully. Eventually only nine people were left of all those who joined the search party, but those leaving vowed to return once the weather was less hostile. They claimed that the black dirt was very dangerous when wet and, along with the lightning, was too perilous for them.
“Now what?” Const. Ballin asked.
The other members of the search party formed a cluster around Anaru and Ballin just as the thunder clapped.
“Orders?” asked one of the men, an old Maori from Moana. “We cannot stop now. What if the man is on the brink of death? What if he is nearby and we abandon the rescue? Tomorrow, he is dead and then we are to blame for leaving him.”
Another elder Samoan man nodded. “Tāwhirimātea is angry and he only gets angry when something is wrong in nature. We must go, Sergeant. We can come back when the wind has gone to sleep, hey? No use injuring or killing people to save one.”
Heather Ballin was quietly regarding her fiancé. He knew she desperately wanted to leave, as did he, but it was a difficult decision. “There is nothing eerie about the weather. We are suffering a heatwave. We all know what happens after a very hot day with little wind. Thunderstorms are formed.”
“Call it what you will, Sergeant, but fact is that this is dangerous for us. Mud slides and lightning on terrain none of us know well,” the old Maori man argued. He had a valid point, in Anaru’s opinion, but he felt as if he was letting down someone in need.
“What will I tell this man’s sons?” he asked the small party, all cowering with every flash of lightning. “I know what Const. Ballin and I chased through that house, even if we could not see them. We know there is real danger here, and that Mr. Harding is in dire trouble, if he is still alive.”
“What did they look like?” the old man persisted.
“Who? The people we encountered in the house?” Sgt. Anaru asked. The man dipped his head affirmatively.
“We could not see them. They ran way too fast for us to catch up,” Const. Ballin explained.
The two native men laughed dryly, looking rather worried. The one man came closer to the police officers and asked, “You say they ran very fast, but did you hear any footsteps?”
24 Flush
Sam woke up with a start. He had not slept well at all since he returned to Scotland from the death defying expedition in Spain and Peru. However, that changed since he and his colleagues had unearthed so many tangible explanations to the puzzles they had been slaves to. Looking at the clock radio, Sam realized that he had slept a solid, uninterrupted seven hours. It made him smile and gave him some well-deserved zest, for once, to leap out of bed to get some work done.
He was not half as apprehensive about meeting with Miss Palumbo as Purdue was about the whole business, but he understood that he, too, had to maintain a certain wariness as to their agenda. They could very well have been staging the lawsuit, only to get Purdue out of his safe zone, but Sam hoped that this would not be the case.
By eight o’clock sharp, normally only three hours into Sam’s usual sleep routine, he pulled up in front of the Regiment Hostel where the Australians preferred to stay while in Edinburgh. Sam found it peculiar that people with such a high profile legal team, lodging a lawsuit of paramount proportions, would choose such modest lodgings.
The drizzle was evidently too much for Miss Palumbo, whom Sam could hear complaining from outside on the porch. The walkway was in the fashion of a hallway, but the external wall was omitted, much like a veranda.
“Bring me more of that Horlicks, please Ed,” Sam heard her beg, “or I will not survive this blasted cold one more hour.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Eddie Olden’s voice twanged in his lazy accent. “Nice to see a bit of rain for a change. God, I need some cooler weather. Spend too much time in the bush.”
Sam scoffed, trying to keep his childish double entendre hidden behind a professional façade. “Miss Palumbo, it’s Sam Cleave,” he called, along with two prominent knocks as if he had just arrived.
Suddenly, the conversation ceased and Sam could hear footsteps approach the door. Louisa Palumbo opened the door, looking tormented, but genuinely happy to see Sam.
“Mr. Cleave, what a pleasure to see you again,” she smiled, but Sam could see her chin quiver. He looked past her shoulder and noticed the cup of Horlicks next to a high back chair smothered in fleece blankets.
The rugged journalist stepped in closer to her, close enough to make the encounter a bit more personal. Louisa inhaled his scent — leather and musky cologne — and her eyes almost rolled back in the ecstasy of his charm. “May I offer you my coat, Miss Palumbo?” Sam asked, taking her aback. Stuttering, her eyes fluttered, but nothing coherent came from her full lips.
‘My God, she looks startlingly like Maria!’ he observed in his mind. ‘But she is so beautiful that I almost don’t hate her for it.’
He continued, to spare her the awkwardness. “It is a pure Scottish weave, made to make the wearer hot enough to resist the hostile elements of the North,” he winked.
Heaving, Miss Palumbo caught her breath in Sam’s piercing dark eyes. “Oh, I would not doubt that claim for a second,” she smiled, “that it makes the wearer hot.”
“Have you had breakfast yet, Mr. Cleave?” Eddie interrupted deliberately. “We were just about to order something from the kitchen here.”
“Yes, there is no way I am going to venture outside that door today,” Louisa affirmed while she delicately hopped back to her blankets. “I am sure you don’t mind doing the interview right here, do you, Mr. Cleave.”