Find Me (Trust Me, Find Me 2)

Not as pissed off as he’d be when he saw his bird’s head blown off in front of him, Irish sneered. The grass.

He lined the print up next to the only grainy picture he had of Sion Edwards from before.

There was no doubt it was the same bloke.

“Gotcha.”

Cobra King was awaiting instructions. And money.

No problem his end with that.

The next part was all about timing. And he was looking forward to it. He’d never been to New Zealand.

Now his passport had come through, there were arrangements to be made.

He clicked online and checked flights.

‘Cobra King,

Thank you for the photos. Excellent work, my friend. I’ll be with you soon. I’ll pay you to pick them up and keep them for me. Alive.

Are there any abattoirs near you? There’s a debt that needs to be repaid.

Irish’

???

As I walk through into the café’s garden terrace, Tia gets up from a crowded table and comes over to me. Holding my hand, she introduces me to her friends.

An empty champagne flute is quickly sent my way and one of her friends offers me a drink of the pink fizz they’re drinking.

“I’m driving.”

“Pfft,” Tia dismisses, “You can crash at mine.”

There’s no excuse and my arm’s easily twisted. To be honest, I’ve been aching to see Shaun so badly I can hardly bear to be at the lake this week. I’ve been about to jump into the ute and head back up north to him three times at least, and it’s only Monday. A night away will be a welcome distraction.

“Claire’s a Pom. She’s moved into Jake’s Place out at the lake.”

“No way! Look at you.”

Aroha, one of the friends, looks me up and down. I squirm as I feel her eyes on my neck.

“You’re whanau.”

Tia tuts at her.

“Jees, she’s only just got here. Don’t scare her away.”

We order food and more pink fizz, which is going down far too fast. And pretty soon we’re all laughing and joking. Tia offers me a job working in the café and I’ve had more invitations to things that are going on than I will ever remember once I’ve sobered up.

I tell them about my weekend; the waka and Shaun. And they laugh at my pronunciations and ways of describing stuff.

“You’re so Maori, girl. I mean it. Seriously.”

“D’ya think?”

My skin’s more or less the same tone as theirs. My hair’s like theirs too, thick and dark. My eyes study their features, as well as they can after a few glasses of bubbles.

“My dad’s from New Zealand.”

“How?”

“He was a rugby player. My mum said it was a one-night thing. She never talked about it. His name on the birth certificate is all I’ve got.”

“And your neck?”

I shudder when they raise it, but I’ve had too much wine at this point and I don’t care anymore. Shaun tells me I’m still beautiful.

“A guy put a knife to me and I fought him off.”

“What happened to him?”

“Prison.”

“So, you’re a regular warrior too.”

I giggle.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“You should get a moko over it.”

“A moko?’

“Yeah.”

Tia scrolls through images on her phone, showing me the traditionally dressed Maori women with black tattooed lips and thick black grooving lines curling across their chins.

My eyes widen and they howl with laughter.

“Is this like some distraction theory? Tattoo my face and they won’t notice my neck?”

When we’ve calmed down, Aroha stands and rolls up her shirt at the back to show me a huge tribal design tattooed right across it. It looks super-cool, I have to admit.

“There’s still no way I’m tattooing my chin.”

“Not your chin, ya wally. Down ya neck. It’d be cool as.”

“No way. My friend got a tattoo to cover a scar on her shoulder. You’d need to be pretty brave to have one down your neck.”

“I guess, but at least you’d wear it as art, not twitch every time someone looks your way.”

“I’m not doing that, am I?”

Tia fills my glass. Their faces are enough to confirm that there’s no way I can argue the point.

???

“I missed you last night.”

Shaun had finally got through to Claire. She’d texted him regularly but with her going out on Monday and the farewell activities going on in the hostel, they hadn’t managed to video chat for a few days.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I ended up staying out at the beach with Tia and my phone went flat,” Claire said relaxing back flat on the bed.

“It’s been a mad forty-eight hours but I’ve met so many people.”

“Sounds as if you’ve been having fun.”

“I have. I love that big beach, it’s so wild out there.”

“And it goes on for miles. I did some kite fishing on it with Frank.”

“Catch anything?”

Claire sniggered.

“Hey! My fishing’s got a lot better since then.”

“Tia introduced me to her family and friends, and she says we’re whanau. D’you think I look Maori?”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Cool. She’s going to help me find my dad. Every time I said his name she was rolling over in stitches, so I promised to text it to her. Oh, and she thinks I should get a moko.”

“A what?”

“A traditional tattoo. Women get tattooed on their chin. She thinks I should get one like that down my neck.”

He touched his arm subconsciously. The large Welsh plumes of his regiment emblem across his bicep covered over previous inked-in scratchings, battle wounds from his time as a teenager in residential care.

“Is that what you want?”

“What d’you think?”

“I think getting a tattoo on your neck’s a bit like having a kid.”

“Eh?”

“You’ve gotta be fully committed to it. Once it’s on, it’s there for life.”

“Yeah, there is that.”

She yawned.

“Sorry!”

“Tired?”

“Last night was a late one. We had a bonfire on the beach.”

He was suddenly serious.

“Would the tattoo help you be less self-conscious about your scar?”

He could see her nose screw up.

“Hey, Shaun. Don't worry. I’m not getting a tattoo down my neck.”

She looked intently at the screen.

“But you know what? I have decided something. Let them stare. I don’t care anymore about my scar. It’s part of my story. Who I am.”

Shaun laughed, a little relieved.

“When I see your scar, I see your bravery.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Makes you even more beautiful. And I think I proved last weekend what effect you have on me.”

She stared wickedly at the screen and into his eyes.

“You mean, what I felt pressed up against me?”

“My days undercover are over, so it definitely wasn’t a gun. It could have been the waka though? Hidden in my shorts.”

Claire let out a loud laugh.

“The optimism of men. You’ll make a fisherman yet.”

Shaun cleared his throat.

“Claire, when I come home on Friday, we can take this as slow as you want. Stay friends, even. It’d kill me, but I never want you to feel pressured.”

She was studying him through the video link.

“Hmm, let’s see how it goes, yeah? I mean, I’m finding it really hard not to think about it.”

He saw her suddenly flush red. He loved that nervous innocence about her, naive and sexy at the same time.

“I mean ‘you.’ Not to think about you.

I think about you, most of the day, actually.”

“You do?”