“Go on, have a muffin. One won’t hurt you and you’ll soon lose your puppy fat.”
Louise thought that they might have lamb chops for tea. For Frank, a big eater and a hard worker, she had bought some rump steak. The chops were stored in the freezer in the utility room by the back door.
“Kezia, be a dear and find some lamb chops in the freezer, would you? I think they are in the second basket.”
Kezia came back to Louise, who had begun peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.
“Mum, there’s something wrong. The freezer is turned off and lots of stuff has gone mushy.”
Louise rinsed her hands then turned the tap off. She walked through to the utility room, drying her hands as she went.
The freezer was a mess. It must have been off for several days. Her thoughts flew to Charlotte’s visit. She had never fully trusted Charlotte. Louise quickly dismissed the thought as it was obvious the freezer had been off for several days. If Charlotte had turned off the freezer things would not have had time to thaw and rot. It must have been someone else because most of the food was beyond saving, including Frank’s treasured whitebait.
Louise got some black rubbish bags and Kezia helped sort the things that could be saved from the things that had to be thrown out. It was not a nice job.
Alexander came home.
“Alexander, did you turn off the freezer at the wall?” asked Louise.
“No,” said Alexander, totally uninterested in something he did not realise had serious implications. “Not me.”
Frank came home late so Louise served up his meal separately. He had been drinking and was not in a nice mood.
“My Visa was reported stolen,” Louise said. “Then I found the freezer was off and had to throw out a lot of food.”
“Not my whitebait, I hope?” asked Frank.
“Sorry.”
“Oh, Louise. You’re such a bloody klutz. Why did you let that happen? Surely you checked everything was all right?” Frank’s face was twisted in disgust, his half opened mouth rounded and his brow lowered by his grimace.
“I don’t normally check the fridge, the washing machine, the toaster or the freezer,” protested Louise. Even so, she blamed herself because if she did not check then nobody else would. It was part of being a mother and a wife, two things she was not good at.
“Well you better bloody had from now on,” Frank replied. “And stop making bloody excuses. You imagine this and you imagine that and when anything goes wrong it’s always a mysterious somebody, never you. “
Louise knew that he was referring to the cancelled Visa card and the patches in the lawn. He got up from the table and stomped out to his office in the garage.
Kezia came into the room. “I heard all that,” she said. “It’s okay Mum. You’re not a klutz. Nobody checks their freezer is turned on.”
Louise was only slightly re-assured. It seemed to her that in Frank’s eyes she could never do the right thing. Kezia gave her mother a hug, holding her until Louise stopped shaking.
Finally, Louise pulled away. “Thanks for helping with the mess in the freezer, love,” she said. “I’ll finish up here. You go back to your reading. Don’t let Frank upset you. I can handle him.”
Kezia was not sure that her mother could cope. She returned to studying her books but her mind was no longer on the job.
CHAPTER 16.
After a restless night wondering how someone had managed to get hold of her Visa details, Louise was a little distracted as she finished cutting Alexander’s sandwich lunch. If it had been a total stranger, they would have taken her money, surely? It could not have been Charlotte. She would not have had time, especially as connecting to the bank was a notoriously slow business. It must have been the bank’s mistake. She wrapped Alexander’s lunch in plastic wrap and was putting it in his lunch box when Kezia called her.
“Mum! Mum!”
Kezia sounded upset.
“What is it, Kezia?”
“Come and look. Don’t let Alexander see,” shouted Kezia.
Alexander was in the bathroom. Louise went to join Kezia at the front door. Painted on the door below the glass insert was “SLAG.”
“Someone’s calling me a slag,” wailed Kezia.
“No, darling,” said Louise. “It’s me. I don’t know who it is.”
Kezia was not convinced.
“I bet it’s Julianne,” she said. “She hates me.”
“Careful dear. Don’t make assumptions. I think it is about the party Frank and I went to.”
Louise had not meant to say anything about the party. Her statement left Kezia thinking, which was exactly what Louise did not want.
“I accused a friend of acting like a tramp,” said Louise. In fact, she had said nothing to Charlotte throwing herself at the young man who was obviously after one thing only, but had eventually said nothing. Now she would have to confess to telling white lies.
“I’ll get some paint before I go to work,” she said to Kezia. “It really is about me, so you hurry along now.”
Alexander came to the door but he did not notice the word painted there. Kezia moved in front of it.
“Mum? Have you got my lunch? I need to go,” he said.
“On the bench top, Alexander,” said Louise. “You get it, then come and kiss me goodbye.”
“Oh, do I have to?” asked Alexander.
“Yes, you do,” said Louise. “It’s what you do when you say goodbye to your wife or mother.”
Kezia noted that Frank seldom kissed his wife goodbye. She moved off to allow Louise to stand in front of the word. The two women exchanged smiles. Kezia kissed her mother on the cheek then left just as Alexander came back. He stopped in front of his mother to put his lunch box into his back pack, trying to delay or escape the moment when he had to kiss her. Louise leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek.
“Have a good day, Alexander,” she said.
With both children gone, Louise wondered where she would get paint to brush over the lettering. There was paint in the garage but Frank kept the garage locked to stop her using gardening tools, although he did not seem to mind what Kezia had done in the garden in her spare time and never asked where Kezia had got the rake and spade and wheelbarrow from.
‘That girl really surprises me,’ she thought as she crossed the street to Mrs Hohepa’s house.
“Sorry to bother you, Mrs Hohepa,” said Louise, registering the surprise on Mrs Hohepa’s face.
“Have you come about the garden, Louise?” asked Mrs Hohepa in a sharp voice.
“Oh, I meant to thank you for that,” said Louise. “Kezia amazes me at times. Frank and I had words over me spending too much time in the garden, and after Frank was so rude to you, I couldn’t do any more gardening. Now Kezia and Youssef are doing it, and she gets the tools from you. Thank you so much.”
“You don’t mind Mr Sissons helping? It won’t cost you,” said Mrs Hohepa.
‘So that’s how Kezia and Youssef got so much done so fast,’ thought Louise. Aloud she said, “I have come to pay you for his time.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” asked Mrs Hohepa. “Mr Copperfield is such an angry man and he won’t like you paying for a man if he won’t let you garden.”
Again, Louise thought quickly.
“I am afraid you are right, Mrs Hohepa,” she said. “I thought I might give you petrol or supermarket vouchers.”
“We’ve known each other for many years. Mrs Hohepa makes me feel old. Please call me Annette,” said Mrs Hohepa. “That would be very kind of you. My word, young Kezia is growing up fast, isn’t she?”
“Too fast for my liking,” Louise replied. “But the gardening will keep her fit, stop her sulking in her room with her iPad. Another thing I came over for, have you got some white paint and a brush? Someone has written graffiti on the front door.”
“Let me have a look,” said Mrs Hohepa.
The two women, one older and looking like a mother to the other,
crossed the street and looked at the front door.
“Louise, is this about Kezia or you?” asked Mrs Hohepa.
“I told someone at a party that she was acting like a tramp,” said Louise. ‘Another lie!’ she thought. ‘I’m becoming an awful liar!’ “So I think it is about me.”
“It’s an oil based enamel paint, which is slow to dry. It should come off with a bit of turps. Wait here and I’ll get some.”
Mrs Hohepa turned on her heels and went back to her house. Louise was still waiting by her front door when she returned.
Mrs Hohepa applied some turpentine. The paint melted on to her cloth but a nasty black stain was left, and one could still see the outline of the letters. Mrs Hohepa produced a spray can of white paint.
“We’ll have to wait a short time for the turps to evaporate,” she said. “Then I’ll spray the area with white. Let me see what Kezia has been up to.”
They walked around the garden. Kezia and Youssef had certainly been busy. Teenagers could do so much so quickly when they put their minds to it.
Back at the front door, finding the turps had dried, Mrs Hohepa gave the paintwork a wipe with a rag and then shook the cylinder of paint and lightly painted over the discoloration.
“Two more coats,” she said. “Put the kettle on while this lot dries, love.”
Louise liked being called ‘love’. She was impressed with Mrs Hohepa’s capability, given her age. She knew that Mrs Hohepa would be offended if she said anything about age and capability. Perhaps old people were more able than she had realised?
Louise had to go to work so she had to leave Mrs Hohepa to continue her good work with one more coat of white. Louise felt a warm emotion towards Mrs Hohepa who was always so willing to help. She did not tell Frank. He would say she was being neurotic and it was a random attack by a school kid vandal.
CHAPTER 17.
Stuart Larcombe usually met contractors in his office or at lunch or dinner in an upmarket restaurant. Meetings with Frank were different. They usually met in a pub, in Frank’s office in the garage or in Larcombe’s home where there were no secretaries and no records were kept. There were good reasons for this.
Estimates and then quotations were made on the basis of median market costs. In this, Frank was an expert. He knew the cost of almost everything in the building trade. The estimates were given to the prospective customers, following which quotations would be drawn up followed by plans for submission to the Local Authority if the quotation was accepted.
There was money to be made if there were no expensive delays. With a largely foreign work force to house and feed, to transport and to pay, delays meant paying wages with no productivity. Most companies allowed for a ninety percent attendance at work, with five percent allowed for sickness and accidents and five percent for downtime. Stuart Larcombe allowed nothing for either contingency, squeezing the wages and allowances of the overseas workers he brought into New Zealand specifically for each job.
For the Vietnamese workers Stuart had used in the past this was to be expected. They still took home sixty percent of what they had been offered, and could claim income tax back from the New Zealand tax department, leaving a margin of twenty percent for Stuart Larcombe to use in negotiations. Opposition companies found themselves outbid, but not by a huge margin.
Nigel Jones looked after the bureaucratic reasons for delay. It was a two part process; Nigel hampered the opposition’s applications but fast tracked those of Copperfield Construction Limited, the commercial arm of Copperfield Building Limited. He also released to Larcombe the quotations made by the opposition, allowing Larcombe to adjust his offer before submission. Because this was unlawful, Larcombe paid Nigel Jones very well for his services, by a series of transfers that ended in the Cayman Islands.
Frank Copperfield was the front man for the actual building process, although it was Stuart who arranged all subcontractors. In the case of the shopping mall, much of the work was subcontracted to concrete manufacturing companies because the buildings were essentially concrete walls held in place by the steel roof beams and the vertical steel pillars or studs set in the walls.
For the residential buildings of the Huatere Valley Development Frank and Nigel and Stuart used Copperfield Building Limited, the liability of which was registered at ten thousand dollars. This limited the amount Copperfield Building had to pay in case of default of any kind.
A prudent buyer might not deal with a company with such a low liability but most of Frank’s customers were simply satisfied that Copperfield Building had an excellent reputation, was well-priced compared with opposition firms, and appeared to be expanding where many other firms were having to draw back in the present economic climate.
Stuart Larcombe asked to meet Frank at Frank’s home while Louise was at work. They did not need records of their decisions, and that was just as well because some of what they were talking about could see them in gaol.
Usually they met in Frank’s office, which was in the garage that Frank kept locked. When Louise was at work they met in the front room of the house where they could ease back in comfort on the leather lounge suite.
The lounge was a large room with a bay window facing the street and another large window facing the neighbours, the Thomson’s. The lounge was adjacent to the dining room which was an open plan design that incorporated the dining room. This arrangement allowed Louise to talk to friends who called. When people called in she could chat while making tea and coffee and setting out the baking that was the custom in Wahanui.
The lounge could be shut off from the rest of the house by closing the door to the dining room and the door to the passageway that led to the bedrooms, allowing television to be watched while not disturbing the sleeping children. On this day the doors had been left open.
Louise was not at work. Feeling unwell, she had taken a taxi home rather than drive herself. She would need a taxi in the morning. She was lying on the spare bed in Alexander’s room, next to the lounge room. She could hear every word the men said quite clearly and was uncertain whether to announce her presence or not. She decided to pull a sheet over her head and pretend to be asleep so if anyone came into the room they would think that she had heard nothing.
“So, Frank,” said Stuart, “we have to shave off over two hundred. Then we will break even, so to shave even more is sensible.”
Frank thought for a moment and then said, “We should have stayed with the Vietnamese cement company. Their price for the panels would have been cheaper than the local stuff. Can we go back to them?”
“Afraid not,” said Stuart. “We burned our boats when we took the Chinese offer. Mr Le Duyen Tu said we acted in bad faith. They employed men and ordered materials on our behalf and we left them high and dry. Mr Le was quite angry. No more business through him. Now the Chinese have reneged, sorry, I’ll rephrase that. Mr Xi Wei says that we misunderstood his offer, it is a language problem. We have a signed contract from which we can’t escape, at a much higher price than Vietnam.”
“If we can’t save on the concrete we will have to save on the steel,” said Stuart. “We could save well over two million if we import the steel from India or China.”
“But it won’t be New Zealand certified,” said Frank. “That was the deal with Nigel, how he got the permits to build. New Zealand Certified steel. What do you suggest, Stuart?” asked Frank.
“Do what we’ve done before, but on smaller jobs,” Stuart replied. “Get some certified steel as show and tell but build with Chinese steel. We’ll get no help from the Indian cartel but our billionaire sponsor Mr Xi will find labour and get the best price for freight. We’ll have to pay the import duty though.”
“What if it collapses?” asked Frank.
“We’ll go to prison,” said Stuart. “But with careful investment of our profit, we will at least be rich prisoners.”
It was said as a joke but the message was clear. Frank had to build so that the uncertified steel did the job of the cert
ified stuff.
“We’ll have to buy Chinese Certified, not their uncertified crap,” said Frank. “Their Certified is meant to be way below our New Zealand Standard in durability but it should have the strength unless there is heavy snow, which has never happened in Wahanui. We get light snow now and then but that’s all. We won’t be around in fifty years when any problems might start to show up.”
“Do not, I repeat, do not tell Nigel,” said Larcombe. “As far as he is aware, we are using Certified steel. He doesn’t need to know it’s Chinese Certified and does not meet our standards.”
“By the way, when are you going to pay me that thousand?” asked Larcombe.
“I’m not going to pay because you had to use Rohypnol.” said Frank. “There’s no way she would go to bed with anyone. She’s frigid and my bet was a certainty.”
“I didn’t use ay drugs,” said Larcombe. “She was drugged but not by me.”
“A technicality. You have to get her using the charm you’re always skiting about,” said Frank firmly.
“Okay, you did say no drugs,” said Larcombe. “Never fear, I still bet you the Larcombe charm never fails. Double or quits?”
Frank could have pulled out but he felt absolutely certain Louise would never have sex with Larcombe, nor with anyone else for that matter. He believed that women were randy when they wanted babies but when that past they simply dried up, like Louise.
“Agreed,” he said. “Two thousand. You are going to lose, my friend. You just can’t win. Coming for a beer?”
Louise heard the two men leave the house. She was so concerned about cheating on building materials that she gave little thought to the comments about Larcombe seducing some poor girl. Was Frank doing the same? Having sex with someone else? Using Rohypnol like it had been used on her?
Like it had been used on her! Suddenly it dawned on her. The men were talking about her. That was why Frank stayed away after the party, so she could get home before him. That was why he was so charming on the couch after church. Suddenly she hated Frank. He had changed into a cheat and a fraudster and a sex drug rapist. Like the clouding over of the sun or the sudden darkness of the fall of the winter night Louise knew that she was going to have to leave him. She dismissed the thought of Larcombe seducing some poor girl. It was Louise who had been date raped and Frank would not pay because Rohypnol had been used. Used by somebody. Bannister! He had brought the drink.
The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Page 8
