The Last Enemy

By Clive Millanta

Eddy Brownlea loses his government job and his wife, who has been ill for some time dies.
He has a son and a daughter. His son loves him but his daughter hates his guts.
He receives a telephone call from a mysterious woman named Margo who tells him she thinks they may be related.
On the way to meet her on his motorcycle a car deliberately runs him off the road. he awakes in hospital, not badly injured, to be told by a policeman that Margos car has been found in the river but no body.When he is released from hospital Margo turns up at his house, then strangers break and attack them. there is a shoot out but they escape and must go on the run helped by some of Eddies dodgy mates. In the course of the pursuit, which involves a 600km journey by road, Eddy learns of the theft many years before of an object that the pursuers will stop at nothing to regain.This object, a relic, that was stolen from a bank strong room in Belgium decades before by a relative who had deserted from the British army during the first world war.
Eddy and Margo must travel to another New Zealand city, Auckland, to meet people who will reveal the secrets of his family to him. During the journey Margo tells him lies and changes her story so many times that Eddy doesn't know who to trust. To further complicate matters they are also tailed by some police who only seem to sit and watch what happens. Corrupt government and police officials further complicate matters, Eddy and his friends have several lethal encounters with their mysterious pursuers until their arrival at an unexpected destination and meeting with family members he didn't know existed. There is further murder and bloodshed until a final revelation that challenges Eddies ability to cope with reality. Friends in high places though, offer Eddy a way out if he will give them the relic. So who can he trust?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Feb 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493192786

Book preview

1

I lay in a corner of the bed with my legs drawn up into my chest. I felt cold and dead. Cold and dead like Helen. It seemed as if it would be so easy to take all the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed and just float away.

The shrilling of the telephone made me start.

‘Is that you Dad?’

‘Hello son,’ I said, ‘where are you? Is something wrong?

‘No everything is fine,’ his voice sounded relieved as if he thought I might do something to myself, ‘no just thought I’d give you a ring before I went to work. See if you were okay.’

‘Yes mate, no problems.’

He paused then said. ‘Has May phoned you?’

I didn’t want to talk about May, the younger of my two children and the most difficult. She’d come to the funeral looking like an explosion in a goth warehouse, defiant little bitch, but then she never could do as she was told. At least she hadn’t brought what’s-his-face.

‘You still there, Dad?’

‘Yeah, sorry son, I drifted away there for a moment. What were you saying?’

‘I said has May called you? Listen I could come home next weekend if you like, keep you company.’

‘No Tony, everything’s fine you’ve got too much on your plate as it is, thanks for the offer though.

‘Okay then, keep safe and I’ll give you a ring in a couple of days.’

He rang off.

I was angry because I knew the boy was worrying. He was the brains of the family, doing a degree at Otago. He was so much like his mother, cared about the whole world. May, on the other hand, was too much like me, stubborn, argumentative and selfish. I wasn’t sure where the latter trait had come from, the guy she’d married probably, I had decided. I hadn’t liked Andy on sight. Tall, muscular and bronzed with the sort of arrogant self-assurance I’d always found irritating. He talked over you as if anything you had to say wasn’t as important as what he said and thought. He had the sort of face I wanted to punch and kick till there was nothing left. I also didn’t like that he brought out violent urges in me I’d thought long suppressed. The other thing was that I thought he and May was a strange pairing.

I got off the bed and went out to the kitchen, to make tea. Every room reminded me of Helen, she was everywhere, from the fiddly curtains on the windows to the fridge magnets crowding each other off the door of the refrigerator. All of a sudden I felt scared.

Helen was gone. Her illness had been sudden then she was gone. Not long after I’d lost my job, that was not unexpected, redundancy had been in the air for a while. I felt as if I was disintegrating a layer at a time. Everything that defined me had vanished.

I stood looking through the kitchen window as the kettle hissed on the stove. I watched the morning sun creep up the sides of the steep green hills in the distance. Here and there it caught a window in one of the houses perched on the slopes and turned it into a golden searchlight. Sunrise used to be my favourite time of day. There was always something optimistic about first light, a new day with new possibilities. Now it just marked the passage of time.

The phone shrilled again. I picked it up. ‘What did you forget?’ I said, thinking it was Tony again.

‘May I speak to Edward Brownlea please.’ It was a woman’s voice husky with a trace of an accent.’

‘This is Eddy Brownlea. Who’s speaking?’

‘My name is Margo Wagner, sorry to ring out of the blue like this but I think we might be related.’

‘Really,’ I said. ‘I can’t recall any Wagners in the family. You sure you’re talking to the right…’

‘Yes, pretty sure,’ she cut in a small note of urgency in her voice. ‘May I call you Eddy? I’d be really grateful if we could meet, you know, just to sort out if our families are connected.’

‘Now’s not a good time for me,’ I said, I’m really not up to talking to anyone at the moment, maybe another time.’

Her voice took on a different note, a little harder perhaps. ‘I really think we should meet Eddy. Do you know Becketts in Willis Street?’ Now there was real urgency in her voice.

‘Becketts?’

‘Yes, you know, the café, how about tomorrow say, one o’clock?

‘Ah… well…’

‘See you then, bye.’

‘Hang on, how will we recognise… each other.’ The phone hummed in my ear.

The kettle started to whistle so I lifted it off the ring. I decided to put off thoughts of suicide until later in the week, nothing like calls from strange women to realign your thinking.

I spent the rest of the day clearing Helen’s clothes out of the wardrobes. I thought of enlisting May to help me but the thought died almost a once. Our relationship was too…fraught. As I took the garments off the hangers and placed them in boxes, Helen was everywhere, her perfume seemed to fill the room, like one of those spooky movies from the forties the ghost of my beautiful woman and a Theremin wailing on the soundtrack. It all became too much so I went looking for some Bourbon.

I stood on the balcony watching the sun fall behind the hills. A meteor or some such thing left a brief trail of fire across the darkening sky. It seemed like a last goodbye.

2

It was a brilliant morning, my favourite kind of weather, bright clear sky and cool air. I wheeled my veteran XS650 Yamaha out of the shed onto the car pad. I still didn’t want to go and meet the mysterious Margo but it was as if something compelled me to get showered dressed and out of the house. As if Helen was telling me to get my life on track and moving forward. Thinking about her made the usual dull feelings of inertia seem somehow lighter. Ever the Yamaha started first kick. It felt like a good omen.

Traffic on the motorway was light and it was only a quarter past one when I took the Terrace off-ramp and cruised down to the traffic lights opposite the James Cook hotel. The lights were red so I stopped in the middle lane intending to turn right and take the next off-ramp that would take me down into the city. A big dark blue Nissan with black glass stopped next to me in the right lane. The lights turned green and I pulled away up hill. The Nissan kept pace and as we approached the off-ramp it swerved toward me, I had to go with it and at the last moment it swung away and took the off-ramp. I had nowhere to go and collided with a car parked at the curb. My front wheel crunched into the wheel arch of the parked car. The shock of the impact shot me over its bonnet. Time seemed to slow down and I felt as if I was cartwheeling. Then I was lying on the footpath trying to breathe feeling as if all the breath had been knocked out of me.

Faces appeared, I could hear voices, fingers fiddled with the chin strap on my crash helmet. A voice said. ‘Leave him, don’t touch him.’ The fingers went away. Someone lifted the visor on my helmet and a face appeared close up. ‘Can you hear me mate? Don’t worry an ambulance will be here in a minute.’ I could hear a siren wailing somewhere far off. Then everything went dark.

‘It’s not so bad being dead’, I thought, I was warm and comfortable and feeling no pain. Another face appeared, round and cheerful, the happy face seemed to float above a yellow shift with a name tag and nurses badge on it. ‘Hello Mr Brownlea, glad to see you back with us.’ Something plastic was inserted in my ear. The plastic thing went away. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? It asked.

My tongue seemed stuck to the roof of my mouth but I must have made a noise that sounded like yes because the face disappeared then came back ten seconds later, it seemed with a mug of tea.

‘Am I going to die?’ I asked beginning to feel pain in every part of my body.

‘Not this week.’ she steadied my shoulder with a warm dry hand as she crank me up into a sitting position. ‘There’s a policeman outside who would like to talk to you, if you feel up to it.’

The cop was dressed in plain clothes. He was tall but slightly stooped as if he was afraid of bumping his head on the door frame. He had a thin friendly face and wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches. His tie was loose and the top button of his shirt was undone. He looked like he’d been up all night.

He sat down by the bed, took a notebook from an inside pocket of his jacket, flicked it open and smiled. ‘Sergeant Riddell,’ he held out his hand, ‘feel up to answering a few questions?’

I nodded then stopped as pain lanced up my neck and into the back of my skull.

He looked down at his notebook. ‘Can you tell me your name and address?’

I croaked the information and he wrote it down. ‘Just a formality,’ he smiled again then his expression became serious. ‘Mr Brownlea, do you know a woman named Margo Wagner?

I reached for the mug of tea and held it to my lips with a shaky hand. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ I said, ‘how do you know about her?’

Riddell raised his eyebrows, in a way that said he wanted answers and not more questions.

I explained how I’d only spoken to a woman calling herself Margo Wagner on the phone, and how she’d said she thought we were related and asked for a meeting. I was on my way to meet her when I was run off the road.

Riddell sat back in his chair. ‘You sure it wasn’t just an accident?

‘I’m bloody sure it wasn’t. Did you talk to the driver?’ I asked.

‘No, witnesses couldn’t give a very good description of the car and no one got the rego’ said that it kept going up the terrace or took the off ramp, depending on who you spoke to.’ Riddell closed his notebook and sat flicking his chin with his pen. Then he seemed to reach a decision. ‘We found a car in the Hutt River yesterday. There was a handbag inside with a driver’s license and credit cards in the name of Margo Wagner. There was also a diary with your name and telephone number in it and the word ‘Becketts’ under last Wednesday’s date.

‘what’s today?’ I asked, ‘how long have I been here?’

Riddell put his pen away, ‘Today’s Tuesday so you’ve been here nearly a week.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

He smiled again ‘You were in an accident, remember?

I began to feel cold. ‘What about…’

‘No, there was no-one in the car and no body has been found so far, looks like your relative, or whoever she is, has disappeared.

3

I got out of hospital after another three days, stiff, sore and a bit scratched about, but no real harm done. My bike was a right-off though, when I had talked to the insurance company they’d given me the bad news. What’s more the money they offered was a lot less than I thought it was worth.

I stood at the entrance to the main hospital building and waited for the taxi I’d ordered. I hadn’t told Tony or May about the accident. I knew May wouldn’t ring me but I thought Tony might have but I figured by saying nothing he might just think I was out and not worry. I thought I’d give him a ring in the evening.

I thought about the mysterious Margo Wagner and wracked my brains trying to recall anyone in the family who might have mentioned the name and how she or her family might be connected to mine.

I’d started having nightmares again in the hospital. They were old nightmares that were instantly recognizable and I was shocked that they were just as real as ever. The blood the knife, it was so unexpected that after twenty years, they should come back with such clarity, such immediacy. It occurred to me that Helen had been the talisman who had kept the horror of that youthful experience at bay. A reminder of what I had been capable of when driven by fear and rage.

All at once I felt paralysed and alone and had no idea what to do next. I wondered if it was safe to go home, did Margo just have an accident or did someone help put her car in the river? How would anyone know she’d phoned me? Was my phone tapped? Who would want to knock me off my bike and why? All this stuff was going round and round in my head when a white Hybrid taxi cab pulled into the curb the driver half climbed out and looked at me over the roof. ‘You call a cab, mister?

I paid the cab off down on the road and walked up the drive. It was steep and wound up through a stand of old Pahutukawas, green flax and Agapanthas. My paranoia had grown on the drive home and I wanted to arrive at the house unseen. The house was surrounded with native bush and you could only see the neighbour’s houses at night when their lights filtered through the trees.

It was windy and I could hear a door banging somewhere, it sounded like the storm door on our house but I was sure I’d secured it before I’d left the other day. The top of the driveway led into a gravel turning circle out front. Our car pad stood to the right of the house and our old Falcon was still parked where I’d left it. I wondered if the battery had gone flat.

I stood in the shadows of the big trees at the top of the drive. I could see the storm door on the front porch swinging in its frame. The noise it made as it swung and banged in the wind gave the place a peculiarly desolate air, as if no one lived there or ever had. It was a grey day, and the wind rustled in the flax along the edge of the treeline making a sound like something scuttling unseen in the gloom. Fear made me take a step as if my body had decided to flee without consulting my brain. Nothing moved within the house. No shadows on the curtains, just a dark empty place with a door banging in the wind. I decided I was being irrational, left the shadows and limped toward the house. I grabbed the door before it could slam again and stepped up onto the porch. I found my house key, put it in the lock and turned it. The door opened with a familiar faint creak ‘Welcome home.’ I thought. It was then that I noticed the condition of the lock. It was an old pattern Yale that had a little lever on the inside to lock the bolt back. It was locked back. I was sure I’d activated the lock when I’d left to meet Margo last week, like I’d done a million times before. My feelings of unease returned.

I walked quietly from room to room looking behind doors and sniffing the air. Everything seemed in its place, yet something was not quite right. There was a smell, barely detectable but there, peppermint or spearmint. I looked over my shoulder as if expecting to find some shadowy intruder standing behind me chewing gum and smiling, but all there was, was me and my overactive imagination.

I finished my search in the kitchen, nerves jangling. I was sure someone had been in the house, and not long ago. But whoever it was had gone. No locks or windows were broken. For a minute I thought it might have been Tony but there was no sign of his return. What about May? No. If she’d come home it would have been a five star production and, anyway, she’d never come without what’s-his-face and the kids.

I filled the kettle and set it on the stove. I was tired and hurt all over, the quietness in the house seemed unnatural and did nothing to allay my paranoia I had a persistent feeling that life was now divided into two parts, before my accident and after and that life was never going to be the same.

I made tea and went to the fridge to get milk. It had been there a week and turned to yogurt. The front door chimes sounded so loud that I started and dropped the carton. I left it where it fell. I froze then the chimes came again. As I moved down the hall I could see a shadow moving through the frosted glass of the front door.

The door chimed again, my hands were shaking as I slipped the latch and opened the door. A man in a courier tracksuit stood on the porch holding