What was the moral of the story? Marcus said, ‘Don’t get caught.’
Tracy said, ‘Don’t do what a police officer tells you to do.’
They took some satisfaction in the irony that only person in the whole drama who went to prison was Jonathan Blair. He was sentenced to eight months for a range of petty offences, including a burglary he had committed the night before he was due to give evidence against Tracy, Marcus and Kieran. He’d been caught in a derelict building intending to steal copper wire. After being granted bail, he had popped into another courtroom down the corridor, and taken the witness stand to tell his story of the night he was set on by vigilantes.
Tracy said, ‘The paper made it like these big strong adults beat the living shit out of this poor little kid.’
I said, ‘Wasn’t that the case?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I wish it was.’
‘What about threatening to kill him?’
‘Nah, fuck off. We wanted to run him out of town, definitely. We said, “You’ve got to leave town. Just stay away.” Definitely we said that.’
She described Blair as a big kid with peroxide hair and FUCK THE POLICE tattooed on his knuckles. He had come to live with his aunt and uncle in Tangimoana and suddenly there was a spate of crimes. ‘Lawnmowers getting taken, a couple of houses broken into. I heard a story that Ross down the road caught him taking whitebait out of an old guy’s whitebaiting bucket.’
Then, she said, her shop was broken into and burgled. What got taken? ‘Cigarettes and lollies.’ She suspected Blair. She went to see him at his aunt and uncle’s house. ‘The only smokes they ever bought from me were Longbeach 40s because they’re the cheapest, but the uncle, the aunt and Jonathan were all smoking different kinds. One was John Brandon, one was Winfield Red. I forget what the other one was.’ I was impressed she remembered two of the brands. In any case, the family denied any wrongdoing. Tracy called the police, who came out to the shop several days after the burglary, said there wasn’t anything they could do, and left.
Around that time the shop was graffitied with the words BITCH, SLUT and WHORE. Then Tracy came across Blair and a teenage girl loitering outside the shop at one-thirty in the morning. Blair was carrying an iron bar. He took off. She called the police, who came out that night with a warrant for his arrest. They left empty-handed. Blair had moved out of his uncle’s house. People heard that the uncle had got drunk, given his nephew a thrashing, and thrown him out. No one knew where he was staying. He’d gone to ground in a river-mouth town with a population of 290.
Then, she said, ‘It all went out of control, really.’
So, Sunday night in Tangimoana, September 2, 2007: the crash of the Tasman Sea, mosquitoes breeding in the backwash of water behind the camping ground, creepy eavesdroppings at the American spy base hidden behind trees. Tracy, Marcus and their son drove to Palmerston North to watch The Simpsons Movie. It was Father’s Day. They drove home, and got to bed at eight-thirty.
‘So then,’ said Tracy, ‘we got woken up by Kieran. He’s in the volunteer fire brigade and they’d got put on standby because Jonathan Blair had threatened to burn down the shop and a house. He’d beaten up someone that day, a young guy at university, and been driving around town all day like a lunatic in a silver Honda, and he was still hiding from the police, and we got word he was hiding out at this girl’s place.’
Tracy spoke to a policewoman in nearby Feilding. ‘I says, “Are we just supposed to sit around and wait for him to burn something down before you’ll come out and do anything?”
‘She says, “Have you got an idea where he is?”
‘I says, “Yes.”
‘She says, “Well, if you can get a group of people together and detain him, and then give us a call, we’ll come straight out.”
‘I says, “How are we supposed to detain him?”
‘And she says, “You can use reasonable force.”
‘I says, “Well, what’s reasonable force?”
‘She says, “You’re not allowed to beat him up. If you beat him up, we’ll know.”
‘I says, “All right, expect a phone call soon then.”
‘So we went around there. I said, “You guys go around the edge and I’ll go to the door.” I thought me being smaller, being female, I might be able to keep him calm. Ha! Good intentions.
‘I went to the door and knocked. It was a sliding door. I stepped back and the guy who owned the house pulled back the curtain. I told them we’d come to restrain Jonathan until the cops arrived, and he says, “Jonathan, it’s for you.”
‘He comes to the door and grunts, “Yeah?” I tell him we’ve come to restrain him for the cops. He looks around sideways and sees the guys.
‘I says, “You’re not getting away this time.” He steps back and I grab him, put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his arm. I put my head down and I’m holding on for dear life. I didn’t know what else to do so I just held on to him. I get dragged inside the house and yell out to Marcus for help. Marcus comes in and grabs him, puts his arm behind his back, picks him up in a bear hug, carries him outside and throws him off the deck on to the grass.’
Marcus entered the narrative. ‘Yeah, nah, we fell off the end of the deck. I couldn’t see. It was dark.’
Tracy continued, ‘The other guys came around and held him down too. I was still inside the house and they says, “Why are you doing this?” I says, “He’s threatened to burn down the shop. We just want the police to
