Tugga's Mob. Stephen Johnson
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A heartbeat after typing in the name, the world-wide search engine produced 6,430,000 results. At the top of the list were the Drew Harvey profiles on Facebook. Next were the Top 10 Drew Harvey profiles on LinkedIn. Then there was a personal website and a Wikipedia listing: definitely not Hackett’s man.
He could speed up the search with a couple of keywords, but Hackett always liked the numbers that Google threw at him: 6,430,000 results with a Drew Harvey connection. Big numbers like that were exciting, especially when viewed online in his bank account. With a couple of deft taps, he refined the search to news pages and topics that might be more pertinent, starting with New Zealand sites.
Tugga’s move to Australia had surprised Hackett, particularly after the big fella spent seven weeks singing the praises of the All Blacks. Tugga, along with Drew and Gerry, loathed rugby league and Australian Rules. Games for sissies. They all harped on about the Bledisloe Cup, an annual trans-Tasman battle, reports of which rarely migrated beyond Sydney and Brisbane. Hackett doubted that Drew had abandoned the All Blacks and crossed the ditch to set up residence in Australia. A few minutes later his assumption was close to confirmation, but the Google discovery was still a shock.
Hackett found a death notice for a Drew Harvey listed in an Auckland newspaper in September. The age of the deceased – 54, coincided with Hackett’s memory. The guy in the online report was a family man and the obituary listed affectionate tributes from his wife, three children and work colleagues.
The Drew Harvey in Europe had been a rough diamond and didn’t have much success with women on the trip. So much so he couldn’t resist throwing a few snide and obviously envious remarks when he saw Hackett emerge from a tent with Judy, Helen or Denise in the mornings. If this was the same Drew in the obit, he might have eventually found a good, or desperate, woman to love him.
Hackett read that Drew died in a tragic accident on 31 August. He checked the online newspaper in case it featured a story. The accident rated a mention and a picture, which confirmed it was the same Drew Harvey he knew. Thirty years since Europe and his face was still identifiable as Tugga’s first lieutenant. Drew had aged better than Tugga – laughter lines around his eyes instead of bags beneath – perhaps the benefits of a loving family. But they hadn’t saved him from being turned into fish bait – like Tugga. Hackett focused on the news report.
Fisherman swept away at Muriwai
The search continues for a fisherman swept off rocks at Muriwai on Auckland’s dangerous west coast. Police confirmed they are now treating it as a body-recovery exercise.
The fisherman, Drew Harvey, 54, a forestry worker, is believed to have been swept away at the notorious fishing spot late on Wednesday afternoon. Police believe it must have been a rogue wave as there wasn’t a big swell at the time.
Harvey was the only person on the rock shelf, which has claimed many lives in recent years. By the time Harvey’s absence was reported it was too dark to mount a search. His bait bin and other items were found wedged between rocks on Thursday morning.
Police have repeated their warnings about the dangers of fishing on wet rocks at Muriwai. They say fishers should wear life jackets, never turn their backs on the sea and that it’s safer to cut a snagged line than attempt to free it.
The Harvey family were shocked by the tragedy. A family spokesman said Harvey had fished at Muriwai for 25 years and that he was safety conscious. ‘He always wore a life jacket, even in calm conditions, and made sure his companions did as well,’ the spokesman said.
Hackett couldn’t comprehend such rotten luck: two mates dead within two months of each other. He knew that Tugga and Drew had grown up together in the North Island, and now both had died in accidents involving the ocean.
Different coastlines in different countries but freakily similar.
Given Tugga had moved to Australia nearly three decades ago, Hackett wondered how much contact he and Drew had over the closing years of their lives. Tugga seemed to have been a confirmed bachelor and Drew was a family man, so there probably weren’t too many boys’ reunion weekends. Tugga, Drew and Gerry were once a tight unit and now two of them were dead.
Hackett recalled Helen telling him one day, in Greece or Turkey or somewhere else that was humid, that she’d first met them when they moved from Palmerston North to work the forests around Rotorua. They liked the pub where she worked and they were big drinkers – at least four or five nights a week – and had been in a few scraps. However, Helen said, they always looked after her if there was any trouble. She had shagged them all at different times but by late 1983, when she took off for Sydney, they were more like brothers.
Hackett yawned as he pondered the fickle nature of life. The discovery of Tugga’s death unsettled him, yet Drew’s demise, while a surprise, didn’t quite have the same impact. Probably because he remembered that Drew seemed to tolerate Hackett as part of Tugga’s Mob, knowing it was only for the tour, not a genuine friendship.
Hackett wondered whether to start a new search for Helen Franks and Gerry Daly. He looked at the clock on the computer screen and decided at 10.29pm it might be wiser to call it a night. His first meeting in the morning was an early bird with the station manager. It was a key discussion about the state of the war chest and their strategy to snaffle a share of the AFL television rights. Those matters were best planned with few inquisitive staff around. Hackett knew, even after the staff cuts, you didn’t find too many people around the office at 7am on Monday mornings.
Hackett shut down his computer and made a mental note to allocate time for another Google search on Monday night. He stood and stretched, then laughed quietly as a macabre thought entered his head: Two of Tugga’s Mob are dead – I don’t want to find a third this weekend.
Chapter 7
Monday morning found Curly Rogers choosing public transport instead of the usual 40-minute walk to work from his home in Middle Park. The same idea occurred to other foot-sloggers in the neighbourhood and, consequently, the tram was packed. They hadn’t been able to squeeze another body aboard since Albert Street, outside the old South Melbourne football ground. Curly, wedged between three suits and a student who refused to remove his bulky daypack, could still count his blessings. They were at least moving forward while the car drivers, stalled in a Clarendon Street jam, should have turned off their engines and saved the planet.
Like most on the tram, Curly was tuned out from the awkward commuter silence. He was plugged in to his iPod instead and to the sounds of vintage Santana. It was 7.55am and he was unaware that Hackett’s first meeting of the day was winding up in a ghost station. Curly’s thoughts hadn’t made the transition from weekend mode to work yet; he was contemplating the crayfish salad he shared with Janine at Erskine Falls on Sunday afternoon. It was a rare treat.
He had gilded the lily with the Chief of Staff about his wife leaving him stranded on the Great Ocean Road on Saturday. Curly had been married to Janine for 17 years and knew she understood the irregular demands of his job. She was a pragmatic woman. Curly was returning from the rock shelf where Tugga died when Janine texted him an update. The drama on the coast road attracted so many sightseers there weren’t any car parks available before Lorne. Janine wisely drove to the accommodation that overlooked the surf beach and put the wine, beer and nibbles in the fridge. She offered to return when he finished the story. Curly read between the lines – Janine wanted him to find his own way into town. It was easy enough for a gabby journalist to scrounge a ride and Curly arrived to find Janine halfway through the first bottle of sauvignon blanc. He grabbed a chilled Crown Lager from the fridge and texted O’Malley about having to appease his ‘grumpy’ wife. Curly knew he would never get paid for the extra duties, but he was going to guilt-trip O’Malley into buying more than a couple of beers after. Curly knew he’d take the money out of petty cash anyway and hope The Hatchet didn’t find out.
Santana had finished playing by the time Curly exited the tram at Park Street, so his thoughts drifted towards work. He had four stories lined up for the week, although the first wasn’t