The prison guards watch me from the entrance. They seem worried I’m going to try and break back in. I feel like a character in a movie; that lost guy who wakes up in a different time and has to grab somebody by the shoulders to ask them for the date, including the year, only to be looked at like they’re a fool. Of course I know the date. I’ve been waiting for this day ever since I got thrown inside. My clothes are a little bigger because I’m a little smaller. Prison nutrition is malnutrition.
The nine o’clock sun is beating down and forming a long shadow behind me. In most directions it looks like there is water resting on the surface of the ground, a thin pool shimmering in the heat. The blacktop grabs at the soles of my shoes as I walk across it. I have to hold my hand up to my face to shield my eyes. I’ve been out of jail for twenty-five seconds and I don’t remember a day as hot as this before going in. I haven’t seen much sun over the last four months and already my pale skin is starting to burn. The longer I was trapped behind those walls behind me, the further away this particular Wednesday seemed. Prison has a way of fooling with time. There are a few cars around belonging to visitors, and one has a guy leaning against it staring at me. He’s wearing tan pants and there are dark rings in the armpits of his white shirt and he’s lost a bit of weight since the last time I saw him, but the buzz-cut hair is still the same, and so is his expression, of which, lately, he seems to have only the one. I can smell smoke from something big burning far off in the distance. I close my eyes against the sun and let it warm my skin, and then burn, and when I open them again, Schroder is no longer leaning against the car. He’s covered half the distance between us.
“Good to see you, Tate,” Schroder says, and I take his hand when he reaches me. It’s hot and sweaty and it’s the first hand I’ve shaken in a long time, but I can remember how it goes. The prison food didn’t rot all of my brain away. “How was it?”
“How do you think it was?” I ask, letting go.
“Yeah. Well. I guess,” Schroder says, summing things up. He’s just looking for words and not finding them, and Schroder won’t be the last. A couple of exhausted-looking birds fly low past us, looking for somewhere cooler. “I thought you could do with a lift home.”
There’s a white minivan waiting near the entrance, the bottom half of it covered in dirt, the top half only marginally better. There’re a couple of other guys released today sitting onboard, both have shaved heads and tattoo raindrops streaming from their eyes, they’re on opposite sides of the van staring out opposite windows wanting nothing to do with each other. Another guy, a short, powerfully built man with all the fingers on his right hand missing, turning his fist into a club, is swaggering out from the prison, his arms puffed out to the side to encompass his large chest and even larger ego. He stares at me before climbing into the back of the van. I give it a week tops before they’re all back in here.
Four of us are getting released today and I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of spending twenty minutes in a vehicle with any of them. I’m not exactly thrilled about spending time with Schroder either.
“I appreciate it,” I tell him.
We head over to his dark gray unmarked police car that’s covered in dust from the drive out here, making all the letters on the side of the tires stand out. I climb in and it’s hotter inside. I play around with the air-conditioning and get some of the vents pointing in my direction. I watch Christchurch Prison get smaller in the side mirror before disappearing behind a large belt of trees. We hit the highway and turn right, toward the city. We drive past long paddocks with dry grass and barbed-wire fences. There are guys in those fields driving tractors and whipping up clouds of dirt and wiping the early-morning sweat from their faces. Away from all the construction and the air is clear.
“Any thoughts to what you’re gonna do now?” Schroder asks.
“Why? You want to offer me my old job back?”
“Yeah, that’d go down well.”
“Then I’ll become a farmer. Looks like a pretty nice lifestyle.”
“I don’t know any farmers, Tate, but I’m pretty sure you’d make the worst kind.”
“Yeah? What kind is that?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s thinking I’d make the kind of farmer who’d shoot any cattle being mean to the other cattle. I try to imagine myself driving one of those tractors seven days a week and moving cows from one field to another, but no matter how hard I try I can’t get any of those images to stick. Traffic gets thicker the closer we get to town.
“Look, Tate, I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’m starting to see things a little different now.”
“What kind of different?”
“This city. Society, I don’t know. What is it you say about Christ-church?”
“It’s broken,” I answer, and it’s true.
“Yeah. It’s seems like it’s been breaking down for a while. But things . . . things are, I don’t know. It’s like things just aren’t getting better. You’re out of the loop since leaving the force three years ago, but we’re outnumbered. People are disappearing. Men and women leave for work or home and just never show up.”
“My guess is they’ve had enough and are escaping,” I suggest.
“It’s not that.”
“This is your idea of small talk?”
“You’d rather tell me about your last four months?”
We pass a field where two farmers are burning off rubbish, most of it bush that’s been cut back, thick black smoke spiraling straight up into the sky where it hangs like a rain cloud without any breeze to help it on its way. The farmers are standing next to tractors, their hands on their hips as they watch, the air around them hazy with the heat. The smell comes through the air vents and Schroder shuts them down and the car gets warmer. Then we’re heading past a gray brick wall about two meters high with Christchurch written across it, no welcome to in front of the name. In fact, somebody has spray-painted a line through church and written help us. Cars are speeding in each direction, everybody in a hurry to be somewhere. Schroder switches the air-conditioning back on. We reach the first big intersection since leaving jail and sit at a red light opposite a service station where a four-wheel drive has backed into one of the pumps and forced all the staff to stand around in a circle with no idea what to do next. The board out front tells me petrol has gone up by ten percent since I’ve been gone. I figure the temperature is up about forty percent and the crime rate up by fifty. Christchurch is all about statistics; ninety percent of them bad. One entire side of the petrol station has been covered in graffiti.
The light turns green and nobody moves for about ten seconds because the guy up front is arguing on his cell phone. I keep waiting for the car tires to melt. We both get lost in our own thoughts until Schroder breaks the silence. “Point is, Tate, this city is changing. We catch one bad guy and two more take his place. It’s escalating, Tate, spiraling out of control.”
“It’s been spiraling for a while, Carl. Way before I ever left the force.”
“Well, these days it seems worse.”
“Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” I ask.
“About what?”
“About why you came to pick me up. You want something, Carl, so just spit it out.”
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel and gazes straight ahead, his eyes locked on the traffic. White light bounces off every smooth surface and it’s becoming harder to see a damn thing. I’m worried by the time I make it home my eyeballs will have liquefied. “In the backseat,” he says. “There’s a file you need to take a look at.”
“I don’t need to do anything except put on some sunglasses. Got some spares?”
“No. Just take a look.”