16.

 

 

  To John Valentine, the authorities were always after him, for one reason or another. He’d just simply gotten used to a life on the run. He didn’t believe, or even understand how his whisky could have killed anyone of its own accord, but he knew that it would be another convenient excuse for the constabulary to hunt him down.

  He knew that he was in a lot of trouble, but he was not  yet privy to the information, that his illegal moonshine, combined with body rot, was almost solely responsible for the unexplained deaths of the preceding day.

  From the bits and pieces of intel that he was able to gather, everywhere he or Bill Diamond (or Chas Suisted) had been the day before to drop off his latest batch (the finest he’d ever produced, in his own opinion), the imbibers had all expired. 

  And that included Diamond himself. 

  Valentine didn’t drink, he’d had whisky up to the eye balls. This was more often than not misconstrued as an assumption, always made by folk that he naturally would. Charles Suisted was secretive about everything, but he was still alive.

  The ‘Hone’ version of himself had been at the Pa, when Ko Hemi Tuwhare and Ngatata’s bodies had been discovered. He was on hand soon after ‘Piccolo’ had keeled over. John just assumed he’d had a heart attack. Surely none of this was co-incidence?

  Comprehensively, he was at a loss. His business had always been based on building a solid rapport with his special clientele. Building confidence with purchasers was one thing, but when death rare’s its ugly hand, goodwill counts for nothing. 

  One thing that Valentine was fully aware of, was that people from all over the city would be looking for him and the sooner he left town the better.

  He had arranged to have all but four flagons from the Colonial Time Service Observatory retrieved and delivered, in secrecy, to a ship currently docked in Wellington Harbour and very soon to leave for Australia. 

  And surprisingly enough, he did feel considerable pangs of guilt over this, as he and Miss Frost were doing all of his remaining friends and allies out of a decent sum of money each. All except one.

  God! The money! As per normal, Valentine only had a vague plan mapped out in his head. First he must tend to the loot he was owed for the whisky, which was aboard the HMS Himalaya. 

  But he was running a great risk in going anywhere near the docks. Surely this would be one of the primary spots that the police would be looking for him.

  He also knew that Sarah wouldn’t believe Constance, no matter how convincing she was in delivering her instruction. He suspected that Sarah would reason that he’d probably head for the train and the Hawkes Bay. She knew that he had family there. And if she relayed that to the law - as he thought she probably would - the train stations would be under constant surveillance too.

  Truth was though, he planned to head south across Cook Strait and make for isolated Golden Bay, in the top North-Western sector of the South Island. He had a good friend, a watercolour artist and potter, who resided there. Being incognito was very easy in the region, the province being 90% native bush.      

  Valentine had been wheeler dealing with the ships well-seasoned Captain, Charles Grant, for many a year. Grant was an honest seafarer, but always happy to deal or trade dishonestly, not bothered by specifics that he didn’t need to know about. Cash was King and questions were usually not asked.

  Charles Alexander Eugene Grant heralded from Wick, a small town and fishing port in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. The herring swam in huge shoals and ‘Maritime’ single malt was heavily consumed. They were inseparable siblings, the latter the prevailing vice and an ugly one.

  At the age of 10, escaping this fishy, drunken chaos as a daily backdrop to life, he ran away from home (while the herring boom was in full swing) and started work on a drifter as a ‘scummer’, collecting fish which had fallen from the nets. 

  Soon thereafter, he was constantly roaming the seas, eventually acquiring his certificate as a master. 

  By 1850, he was captaining immigrant and supply ships to both Australia and New Zealand. He decided that he quite liked the growing city of Nelson and purchased land, with a view to run some sheep in pasture.

  He intended to give up life at sea and attempt something more congenial to his own idiosyncrasies, as his briny old bones started to weigh heavy. 

  In 1853, he obtained a licence to sell spiritous liquors and sold rum (a hangover from his days at sea) out of bottles and jars, around Nelson and the fledgling province of Marlborough.

  It became cheaper and easier for him to return to sea however, once he’d met a moonshine maker from Newtown in Wellington, called Jimmy Valentine. Direct from the source, Grant could run big volumes across the Tasman for him, pocketing a good return for himself. 

  When John Valentine took over his father’s business, he continued the relationship with Charles Grant and although the two had a semi-strained alliance, it was one which was financially too sound for either to tamper with.

  Valentine boarded the Himalaya, quickly scanning the vicinity for any sign of strangers that maybe lurking around. Surprisingly, the docks were bare, all appeared quiet. He’d failed to notice one shadowy figure, lurking behind a warehouse, adjacent to the ship.

  He slipped down the galley and found Grant in his cabin, enjoying his dinner.

  Valentine double-checked with Charlie Grant that their trade arrangement was still hunky dory and that their stories were aligned, in case of any trouble. 

  “You should fetch a pretty price for whisky of this calibre in Australia,” Valentine told Grant. “And here’s a special flask of the brew for yourself. Grand it is to do business with you again Captain.”

  “Why, thank you Jack,” Grant replied. “I hope you’re right, they’re a boozy, uncultured lot, the immigrants of Sydney.”

  “Yes,” said Valentine, tongue-in-cheek, “as opposed to those who settled Aotearoa!”

  “Yes,” the Captain came back, in raucous laughter. “Between the two colonies, there’s little else to do on those cold winter nights, ‘cept drink oneself to oblivion.”

  “What time do you sail?” Valentine enquired. 

  “On the high tide, a little after 2am,” the Captain replied, handing an envelope to the Irish immigrant. 

  “By which time this pestilent nor-wester should have blown through. She’s a grand ship in a rough sea though.”

  “Well, goodbye Captain,” said Valentine, extending his hand, which was instantly engulfed by a larger, scarred and weathered one. “Obviously I wasn’t here and we never had this conversation.”

  It was a little after 7pm, when Jacky Valentine snuck off the Himalaya and quietly disappeared amongst the hidden contours, in and around the docks of Wellington’s waterfront.

  He decided to lie low until for another 40 minutes or so, until it was properly dark, and then cautiously make his way to the Thorndon Railway Station.

  As he made his way along Queens Wharf, he decided to follow the path of recent land reclamations, designed predominantly to enhance a city which saw itself as ambitious, as opposed to ‘colonial’.

  As it was also a work site, therefore not out in the open, it was the perfect foil for a fugitive trying not to draw attention to himself. He was only a few of minutes into his trek, when he felt sure he could hear footsteps nearby and seconds later, heavy breathing. 

  Before he was able to piece it all together, he was grabbed by the upper torso and shoved into the side of a fisherman’s shed.

  “Hone the rat,” came a voice from the semi-darkness.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Valentine yelped, much startled. “Get your hands off me!” 

  “Not likely my friend,” the voice came back. “Your appearance at the Marae is requested. You will meet with the justice that you deserve.”

  With that, he received a punch to the ribs which left him totally breathless and immobilised.

  “Wait...can’t we…can’t we talk about this…”

  “What’s to talk about Pakeha?” 

  Valentine could now see the attacker was Tia Kiwai, son of Ngatata and grandson of Ko Hemi Tuwhare. “Te Atiawa will deal with you. You may have wished the law had caught you first. And you are lucky I don’t kill you, right here, right now.”

  “Let’s not be too hasty here my friend,” Valentine stammered, slowly recovering from the blow. “I have had a great relationship with local Maori. Ko Hemi Tuwhare was my friend. I’ll happily come back with you and prove my innocence to all Te Atiawa.”

  “That’s right, you certainly will,” erupted Tia Kiwai, pulling Valentine forward and then shoving him back into the wall. 

  “And I shall, but my friend,” replied Valentine, attempting to talk his way out of a beating. “I have business to attend to first and then I intend to meet with your elders.” 

  “I think my elders would rather that you came now and were dealt with on their terms,” Tia Kiwai insisted. 

  “Steady there friend,” Valentine squeezed out. “And I have been just that to your tribe for many years, a friend. I have some business that I must finish this very hour, then I shall come by myself to face your people and defend myself or accept the consequences of my alleged actions.”

  Tia Kiwai was clearly beyond agitated. There was something of the young Maori warrior about him now.

  “Don’t play me for the fool Hone,” he urged. 

  “Look...here is the sum of one thousand pounds in cash, take it,” Valentine was now truly scared for his life. “Take it back to your people as a show of good faith. Take the money and give me a break. Give me the honour your elders would have. I’ll be at the Marae before midnight, you have my word.” 

  “Your word, hah!” Tia Kiwai had gone up another level in aggression. He spat on the ground and punched JV straight in the face. “Empty your pockets Hone. I’ll take it all you scum. You have till midnight and if you don’t come in by yourself, you’d better have left town, because I’ll be back with brothers and we’ll hunt you down and kill you. There’ll be nowhere to hide…Hone!”

  “I’ll be there,” John stammered. “Thank you Tia Kiwai. I shall reward you further.” 

  “I don’t want anything from you pakeha,” screamed the young Maori, disgusted that the rat was trying to buy his way out of facing his responsibilities. “If you don’t show, all tribes will get word to look out for you. You’ll be always on the run until we find you. And we will find you!”

  At around 9:00pm, Constable Linfoot rushed into the Alexandra Police Barracks, hoping to find his boss still in the building. To his surprise, Frank Aitchison was engaged on some apparatus called a telephone. Worse still, he was jovial, which usually meant that he was feeling sanctimonious about something.

  As he placed the ear piece back on the receiver, to end the call, Linfoot attempted to quickly part with his most valuable piece of information, which he knew would excite Frank no end. But the senior copper was first to draw.

  “You know Thaddeus…oh, good evening Dick. You know, I was sceptical about the use of telephony and had real concerns regarding this here contraption. But I’ve just had a call from a gentleman from local iwi, who wished to remain nameless…who broke into the Telephone Exchange building in Stout Street…which is a seperate matter…of course, he wasn’t to know that police have an emergency key on site…to reliably inform me…so he says…that one John Valentine was just seen down at the docks, boarding the HMS Himalaya no less.”

  This news gutted poor Dick Linfoot, who had been accosted by a Maori man on the waterfront with the same piece of intelligence and told to relay this to Frank Aitchison via the fastest means possible. 

  The constable, the newest member of the local constabulary, had been officially released from duty at 307 Willis Street, by a man wearing a derby bowler hat, who arrived unannounced, showed credentials and redeployed him to the waterfront.

  Down at the docks, having surveyed the options, he’d decided that his feet would be the fastest carrier pigeon and he’d literally sprint the distance.

  “I was sceptical,” continued Frank, “because I had to go and reprimand a chap last week, who was telephoning folk and relaying nursery rhymes over it. It would appear that - as a social tool - the telephone has more appeal than the telegraph.”

  Thaddeus Coffee found this all very interesting, but he was more concerned with some swift action that would possibly reign in the notorious Mr. Valentine. To his mind, the sooner he was behind bars the better. Both police underlings went to speak, to be again shut down by Aitchison.

  “Times must be tough in the shipping trade for Charlie Grant to be carrying contraband liquor for cash. Which is what I presume is going on.”  

  “It’s a good job that you decided to have the ships and trains remain under surveillance then,” Coffee noted.

  “The paying of dividends such as that, Thaddeus Coffee,” a smug Frank Aitchison retorted, “is nothing more than the fine art of policing. Asking for assistance from the Pa was also quite cunning…if I do say so myself. For the first time I feel one step ahead of that scum and this time, I’m going to nail his arse to the dockside.”

  Frank had finally become aware that Richard Linfoot had something important to tell him and at last, paid him some attention. Linfoot muttered that it didn’t really matter, as what he was to impart had been relayed to Aitchison already.

  “So,” Frank surmised, “you ran all the way here from the waterfront to tell me that?”

  “I did,” replied Richard Linfoot.

  “Why ever did you not just use the telephone?”

  Around the same time as the out-of-breath Linfoot arrived at Police HQ, a collection of Wellington’s finest scoundrels, unprincipled wretches, bad eggs and rapscallions, were beginning to gather at the ‘closed for business’ Princess Hotel. 

  The word about the meeting had moved swiftly though the grapevine and independent of each other, they had all arrived a full hour early in the hope that Charles Suisted was going to put on some free alcohol and maybe a sausage or two.

  The proprietor was already in conversation with the first to show, namely the good Doctor Maurice Kebbel. He’d had arrived early himself, born out of necessity. Tom Roundtree and Murphy the rat catcher, loomed out of the penumbra and entered the main bar.

  “I haven’t seen John for a couple of days,” Charles Suisted said, lowering his voice. “Not for a couple of days, at least.”

  “Well, he’s due to meet Sarah here at 10pm,” Kebbel replied, “but I’m particularly sceptical as to whether he’ll turn up at all.”

  Charles raised an eyebrow at this suggestion, agreeing with body language which literally scoffed at the idea that Valentine would actually show.

  “He’ll be here Guv,” Murphy reassured everyone. “He won’t ‘ave many friends left in the world by now.”

  “Little wonder there Murph,” Tommy chortled.

  “Alright! Alright!,” said Kebbel, attempting to add an air of solemnness to the light-hearted debate, in a gravely serious situation. “But we’d better get to him before the law, or we’ll all be incriminated in this sorry business. And that is more than my reputation is worth.”

  “I like my freedom,” he went on, “and if you all don’t fancy a lengthy time under lock and key, we’d better hope that if he doesn’t show, he’s long gone and that all traces of his latest batch have gone also. Right Charles?”

  “I’ve told you Maurice, there is none on this premise. Zip. If you are concerned about missing flagons, I can assure you that they are not here!” 

  “He’ll be here,” Murphy reiterated. “He may be a right rascal, but like everyone, he has his weakness.” 

  “True that Murph,” Tommy affirmed. “He’ll keep his appointment. A lady is involved.”

  Right on cue, a most familiar woman to all in attendance, entered the public bar of the Princess Hotel. On this occasion, the pub was almost empty, on account of this being a largely secret meeting. 

  Frank Aitchison and Thaddeus Coffee made straight for the Wellington docks. Frank left Richard Linfoot at the station and told him to ‘man the telephone’.

  “The Princess Hotel has one,” he’d informed Linfoot. “If anyone telephones here with more information, I’d like you to acquaint yourself with this piece of equipment and call the hotel.”

  Once on the waterfront, the two coppers made directly for the HMS Himalaya. Frank intended on boarding the vessel, which he was certain was carrying contraband whisky. This they did, to be instantly confronted by the ships captain, Charles Grant.  

  “We’ve known each other for sometime Charles,” Aitchison began, concentrating on line and length, which had served him well in the past. “It indeed grieves me to learn that you have been dealing with a wanted vagabond, namely John – formerly Jack – Valentine.”

  “Jacky Valentine?” The old sea dog burst into a deep bellied maritime guffaw at the suggestion. “Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “And of course you haven’t seen him either?” Frank was trying to reign in his natural cynicism and give Grant no width outside off stump.

  “Seen or heard of…neither.” The captain stopped and pondered a moment. “I heard a tale, late winter, he and Sarah Bainbridge had a falling out, over a woman…name escapes me…something ‘cold’ related from memory. Jacky left town.” 

  Of all things he detested, the most vile to Frank Aitchison, was being lied to, especially when he was already in the know, then the lie became bare-faced.

  “Don’t give us that bullshit Grant,” Coffee spat, incredulity turning to venom. “You and he were seen talking together aboard this very vessel, not more than an hour ago.”

  “Call your dog off Frank,” it was Grant’s turn to add some sardonicism to the conversation.

  “Now, you know the drill Charles,” Aitchison continued. “The constabulary and the merchant seaman have always enjoyed good relations, to the mutual benefit of both parties. But you are either harbouring or doing business with a wanted criminal...or both!

  “Oh, I see,” Grant replied. “And you believe that Jack is aboard my ship, is that it? And I suppose that you want to come aboard and see for yourselves, when I tell you that he isn’t?”

  “Well, as I said, we’ve always had a working respect for each other, but unfortunately on this occasion, I may have to insist on coming aboard, as you have already denied having seen Valentine recently, which we know as a falsity.”

  Aitchison’s straight delivery had trapped Grant in front, but there may have been a hint of an inside edge.  

  “So, you are also saying that I have broken the code of ethic existing between police and seafarers?” Grant reviewed. “Well, you’d better come aboard and see for yourself then.”

  Captain Grant stepped aside and motioned to the two officers of the law, that they were free to cross the threshold of his vessel and give it the once over.

  “Now, out of courtesy Frank,” Grant continued, “I have allowed you aboard and you may inspect the galley and seaman’s quarters, the decks. You’d need to find some evidence that Jack is on board – of which you won’t – to convince me to allow you down in the cargo hold, unless, of course, you have a warrant.”

  “Well that’s obviously where he is then Frank,” Coffee stammered. “This is ridiculous…”

  “Steady there Constable Coffee,” interjected the senior cop. “So, you are saying that I would need the necessary paperwork to enter the hold. Well, I’m sorry Charles, but I suspect that there is illegal whisky aboard this vessel and it may be the same brew that killed citizens of this city yesterday. That makes it part of a manslaughter investigation.”

  “My cargo is strictly cement and hardware,” Grant swiftly replied, the review not looking great. “But, if you insist, go for your life.”

  The news of local deaths caused by whisky was the first the captain had heard of the incident. He found the suggestion barking mad, if he were honest. He found it difficult to believe that mere alcohol could cause mass expiry.

  “A blind eye has been turned on the odd occasion, so far as the trading of illegal liquor is concerned,” Frank explained, “and I’d be prepared to do that again, wave all criminal charges, say that you were unaware of what you were carrying.”

  “But John Valentine is responsible for a death concoction and he’ll be trying desperately to get rid of the surplus somewhere, somehow.”

  “Death concoction?” Grant was not the sharpest chisel and needed more clarification.

  “The current batch of whisky – as illegally moonshined by Valentine – has been responsible for death and chaos in Wellington in the past 24 hours or so, of a kind you would not believe. If you have any on board Charles, you must tell me. The stuff is absolutely lethal.”

  Although still finding it all difficult to comprehend, Charles Grant did not want to stand in the way of the police. If all these facts were true, that is. He certainly didn’t want to spend a couple of years in gaol, not at his age.

  He didn’t like Valentine much anyway and always suspected that he was too dodgy for his own good. The umpires finger was in the air. He’d take the deal.

  “I knew he was up to something,” Grant muttered. “Matter of fact, I have a number of flagons down below. Jesus, it’s little wonder he’s regarded as a right bastard, the smarmy git.”

  “Is John Valentine aboard this ship?” Coffee asked a direct question.

  “No he is not,” the Captain replied. “He helped me load the whisky yesterdee. He was here an hour or so ago and said he was heading to the Princess…to see Charles Suisted.”

  “Right!” Aitchison declared. “Thaddeus, you stay here with Captain Grant.”

  “Oh god, must he?” Grant was none to happy. “I have thirteen crew turning up within an hour or so, we sail on the high tide.”

  “No one is to board this ship, no one,” the chief of police was adamant. “The contents of the cargo hold are off limits to all but police and I’m sorry Charles, the ship is grounded pending further investigation. Allow no-one further to board this vessel Constable Coffee. I shall head directly to the Princess Hotel.”