Who Killed Scott Guy? by Mike White Read Free Book Online Page B

the stereotypical Kiwi male, not one to express his feelings or burden others with them. As his father, Kerry, described it to police, ‘Ewen is not the type to be effusive about frivolous chitchat, meaning that he didn’t just talk for the sake of it. None of my family are like that.’
    Even with his father, there were limits on how much they showed and shared, as is typical with rural men, for whom communication is often prosaic. ‘He was there when you needed him,’ said Kerry Macdonald. ‘We don’t have a modern movie-style relationship where he tells me his goals or anything. We would just get on and do it. He doesn’t ask me how many guns I’ve sold at the shop and I don’t ask him about how the farm went. You would ask about how the chooks were laying.’
    Ewen and Anna settled down on the farm in the cottage he’d shared with Scott and started to have a family. Their first child, Finn, was born in 2003, followed by Jack in 2005, Lucy in 2006 and Wade in 2008. Their names were gradually tattooed on Macdonald’s back in Celtic script, along with Anna’s, each using a letter of his surname, which ran down his spine. Macdonald called this his ‘backbone’, beneath which was the family’s crest with the Macdonald clan’s motto, ‘Per mare, per terras’—by sea, by land.

    In the meantime, Scott had gone overseas to work in the Queensland outback and then to Hawke’s Bay. By the time he returned in late 2003, Macdonald was pretty much managing the farm’s daily operations as Bryan Guy became more involved in dairying politics, and naturally felt he had a strong stake in the farm. Scott’s role on arriving back was to take care of the crops the farm grew as supplementary feed for its 730 cows, and rearing their calves for the two years before they joined the milking herd.
    Anna Macdonald admitted she was nervous about going into business with her brother, alongside her father and husband. ‘Because I don’t think three’s a great number,’ she later said. ‘Two’s company and three’s a crowd.’ She felt Scott had ‘sifted’ in and out of the farm as it suited him and questioned whether he was truly committed to it. ‘I thought it was quite convenient for him in between things he was doing . . . but, you know, the farm paid well and I think probably that might have been a pull, rather than him loving and being passionate about the job.’
    Scott’s job on Byreburn meant he spent much of his time working on his own, on the tractor, away at the back of the farm. Gradually, a sense grew among the other workers that Scott had the easier role and wasn’t pulling his weight. While Scott would work long hours at cropping time, Macdonald calculated he was working 1000 hours more a year than Scott. ‘Here I was,’ Macdonald later wrote, ‘with two young children, still doing long hours on the farm, 4.30 am—6 pm, plus checking cows calving during the season at all hours of the night. And then there was Scott, starting at 7.30 am and finishing at 4 pm and having a lot less of a workload and in my opinion, a cruisier job.’
    Farm consultant Simon Redmond noticed the difference between the two. ‘Ewen was streets ahead and more technically competent than Scott. He could have held down a job anywhere. He was a seriously good operator.’ Redmond felt the farm’s success owed more to Macdonald. ‘My view was that [Scott] was a good operator—but not startling.’ However, Redmond was aware Scott had a different view. One of Redmond’s clients reported having dinner with Scott and Kylee and Scott describing Ewen as the useless one. Whoever was responsible, the farm was very successful, often being used as an example of a good business for Fonterra’s visitors. As Redmond put it, ‘Byreburn is a farm that is operating at the top level. Byreburn is running at three times the industry average for the Manawatu in terms of output, which is why they can have three families on the farm.’
    By 2006