Greg Scowen: The Spanish Helmet

He had watched Warren Rennie from a safe distance today. Oh, he had watched Matthew Cameron too, but it was what he saw Rennie doing that intrigued him. Hemi had realised early in the trip north that Rennie must be taking Dr. Cameron to the dig site. Confident that he wouldn’t be recognised by anybody in his borrowed car, Hemi happily overtook the duo on the motorway and got a head start on them. Rennie hadn’t requested Hemi to observe today, probably because he could do it himself. But Hemi decided to watch anyway and he was glad he did. He arrived at the site with ten minutes’ lead and used the opportunity to find a spot in some scrub slightly above the site, about seven hundred metres away. Happy that he was out of sight, Hemi set up his spotting-scope and made himself comfortable. With his right eye to the lens, Hemi counted nine workers clad in DCI field-uniforms. An amused smile cracked his normally composed visage.

When Rennie and Dr. Cameron arrived and left so quickly, Hemi thought it had been a waste of time. But he didn’t immediately get up and leave because he was captivated by the DCI activity on site. Much to his surprise, Rennie and Cameron appeared again about an equal distance away on his right. They got out of the Hilux and hurried to a cluster of Macrocarpa trees. Hemi turned and looked at the DCI agents, then back at Warren. He realised that the two groups could not see each other. He continued to watch Warren Rennie to see what surprises were in store. What he saw certainly fitted into that category.

From where he was lying, it appeared that Rennie was being a little less than truthful with the DCI about his dig site. Through his scope, Hemi watched as Rennie crouched on the ground and pulled another object from underneath a shallow layer of soil. That hadn’t been chance, Hemi had realised immediately. He must have planted it there. He took his little Lumix camera with the powerful zoom and snapped up an image of the object. Now he wanted to look at it on the big screen. You couldn’t see anything on those bloody tiny preview screens the cameras have. Hemi removed his laptop from his backpack and transferred the camera contents to it. The last photo he took soon sprang to life in his favourite photo viewer. Hemi studied the bronze object, a dinner plate perhaps, and could make out some sort of pattern on it.

That looks like much more than a coin or something, Mr. Rennie. I see I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you.

The little piece of paper sat in front of Matt on the dining table. It was great that Aimee had given him a phone number instead of an e-mail address. Ever since he had discovered the Internet, Matt had slowly lost contact with most of his good friends. It seemed that everyone wanted to e-mail to keep in touch. But over time the e-mails became less frequent and the emotional context was lost, through the lack of vocal expression. More recently, the invention of social applications had made it all the worse. Now your friends were people you had never met, that you sent a one line text to, in public, saying you had seen a good movie. All the tangible benefits of relationships were disappearing and Matt hated it. But now, looking at the phone number, he wished it was an e-mail address instead. Then he could simply forget to e-mail, or at least not have to talk… you know, out loud.

Why did a string of seven simple digits make him so nervous? It wasn’t like Matt hadn’t talked to girls before. He had even been on dates and had what some might refer to as a girlfriend. But this was different. She was interesting and she was good-looking. At least Matt thought so. Likely a thousand other guys did too, and he would never stand a chance. Good, he decided. He doesn’t stand a chance, so it can stay strictly professional. That made it easier. He dialled the number.

‘Hello?’ The ringing tone was replaced by a sweet but unsure sounding voice. An equally unsure voice squeaked out of Matt’s mouth. He didn’t even recognise it.

‘Ah, hi, is this Aimee?’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh, hey, British accent. Is that Matthew?’

She remembered him!

‘Yes, yes it is.’ Matthew was relieved not to have to explain who he was. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good, thanks. Even better now. I didn’t think you’d call.’

‘Well, I had to. I want to make sure you spent the last few days immersed in pseudo-history websites.’

‘A promise is a promise. You wouldn’t believe how diverting this stuff is!’

Matt couldn’t believe it. Not only had he managed to pull off a witty line with a beautiful woman but she had actually been interested enough in their previous conversation to follow through. This was incredible.

‘Seriously? What have you found? A long lost tribe of Celts?’

Aimee laughed. ‘No. I’ve been much more interested in the Spanish stuff. It goes deeper than the helmet, you know?

‘Go on.’

‘Well, right now I’m looking at a Pohutukawa tree, that’s a New Zealand native. Lovely big green trees with red blossoms, they grow on the coast.’

‘Ok.’

‘I’ve got a picture on my screen of a real beauty, it’s about 500 years old.’

‘Uhuh.’ Matt wasn’t sure where this was going.

‘That would all be good… if it was in New Zealand.’

‘Ah, OK. Where is it?’

There was a pause. Was she pausing for effect? It was working. Matt hung on every word she said. All right, maybe that wasn’t because of what she was saying, but rather because she said it to him.

‘In the gardens of the police station in La Coruna, the capital city of Galicia.’

‘I’ve not been there,’ Matt said, although he had no idea why he said it. ‘Been to the Costa del Sol a few times though.’ What a klutz Matt. Leave it out.

‘You’ve got one up on me, we don’t get to Europe all that much from here.’

Matt felt like a moron. It was one thing for hordes of Brits and Germans to flock to Spain every year, but New Zealanders? Where do they go?

‘The million dollar question,’ Aimee continued, ‘is how it got there. I found out that La Coruna was a popular port in the 16th century because it was cheap and the pirates didn’t cause much grief. The Spanish Helmet is a 16th century close helmet. So I figure, maybe someone took a Pohutukawa seedling and dropped their helmet in the harbour all at the same time.’

‘Sounds like an eventful trip. Wouldn’t there be records of something like that?’

‘Maybe the tree is the only surviving record?’

‘I guess it’s possible.’

‘Well, I also read a bit about Kumara and Hangis.’

‘You’ll have to translate that for me,’ Matt laughed.

‘Kumara, c’mon, we talked about it on the plane. The South American sweet potato. And a Hangi is a Maori earth oven. Well, in South America they use ovens that are almost identical. And you know what else…?’ Aimee’s voice rose with excitement, ‘the Kumara store-houses, traditional Maori ones, are built above the ground and look just like South American store houses.’

‘That’s pretty damned interesting.’

‘Then there was the so-called Crosshouse.’

‘Crosshouse?’ Matt was flabbergasted by the amount of research that Aimee must have done over the past days. This really was some girl.

‘A Maori meeting house or school that was burned down in the Eighties. Its design was strongly influenced by sun, star and moon movements. Like the Celts did. Where did the Maori get these ideas from, did they develop them alone, or were they taught?’

‘I don’t know,’ Matt said.

They continued to discuss the questions that Aimee’s research had raised for a few more minutes and made small talk about catching up again while Matt was in town. He promised that if he had questions, he would get in touch. Surprising himself, he made the light-hearted suggestion they maybe meet for a meal before he left the country. He just about squealed when she agreed. Hanging up the phone, Matt promised himself to find an excuse to get in touch with her again before the week was over.