Kezia opened her laptop to show Father Larkin the Facebook posts.
“May the Good Lord forgive them their trespasses,” said Father Larkin. “Louise, they have trespassed, not you. Someone wishes to hurt you, to upset you. ‘Ultor’ means avenger. Who wants revenge for something they think you have done?”
Louise had no idea. She thought she was well-regarded and had offended no-one. She thought silently, her mouth open and her eyes screwed shut. Finally she said, “I can’t think of anyone.”
Kezia had left her mother and the priest alone so that they could talk. She had sent a text message to PC Smith. While Father Larkin and Louise were talking, PC Smith’s car pulled up.
“Kezia, what’s happened?” he asked.
“Come inside,” said Kezia. “You know I said about racism and Youssef Al Tuma, well, you said call me if there are repercussions. Look.”
She pointed at the laptop on the table.
“Good God, it didn’t take them long, did it,” said PC Smith, “What does ‘Ultor’ mean?”
Kezia had checked by Googling the term. She held up her phone. “Avenger.”
“Doesn’t really fit, does it?” asked PC Smith. “Not the Wilsons, anyway.”
“I asked Mum to call Father Larkin,” she said. “She is so fragile at the moment I thought he might help. Mum and my Step Dad have problems.”
Bernard Smith knew about the incidents that had been dogging Louise’s life. Off the record, he also knew that Louise had been a victim of a sex attack. He wondered for a moment if Kezia knew also but came to the conclusion that she did not. The priest seemed protective and supportive. He had arrived so quickly that he must have been concerned for Louise, ready to answer her call if she needed him.
“I should ask her when the priest has gone,” said PC Smith. “My job is to track the source. His is to give compassionate support.”
“He does that, he really does,” said Kezia. “Sometimes I wonder what Mum would be like if she didn’t have Father Larkin. Mr Smith, I think this is about Youssef. What about the Wilsons? Are they trying to get revenge for my report to the Race Relations Board?”
“Are you going to be a cop when you leave school?” asked PC Smith.
“Maybe,” said Kezia. “Youssef wants to be a vet, so I might train with him. But I’ve always wanted to be a forensic scientist.”
“Go to university first,” said PC Smith softly. “Instant pathway to promotion. I’ll get some info for you if you like.”
Kezia’s eyes filled with tears at his kindness, at the same time hating herself for what she perceived as her weakness, dissolving into tears. PC Smith reached for her hand. Kezia thought it strange for a policeman to hold a girl’s hand but she found it comforting.
“It’s alright, Kezia,” he said. “You’ve been very brave; you’ve fought dragons today, and won. I saw you and now this is a reaction to the stress. I’ll get hold of Facebook and then see the Wilsons. I’ll check David Bannister as well, after today’s effort. Maybe one day you’ll tell me what really happened between him and you?”
“I made a promise,” said Kezia. “I can’t say anything. Not yet, anyway.”
“As long as you are not hurt or compromised I’ll let you keep your promise,” said PC Smith. “Hang on a minute. These posts were made on your laptop, Kezia. Who has had access to your computer?”
“It stays in my bedroom. I guess Frank, Alexander but he can’t take photos. Mum. Or anyone who knows Mum hides the house key in plain sight.”
“I’ll go across the road and talk to the Maori lady there,” said Bernard. “She might have seen someone.”
PC Bernard Smith took the laptop with him and went across to Mrs Hohepa’s.
As PC Smith left, Father Larkin came into the lounge with Louise.
“Who was that who just left?” asked Louise.
“PC Smith,” said Kezia. “I called the police about Facebook.”
“How on Earth did you get help so quickly?” asked Father Larkin.
“You have your hotline, Father, I have mine,” Kezia joked.
“Kezia!” said Louise. “Manners!”
“It’s all right, Louise,” said Father Larkin. “Remember, what I told you, sticks and stones and all that.”
Alexander rushed up the path as Father Larkin was leaving.
“Hello Father,” said Alexander, stopping his mad rush just before crashing into the priest. Father Larkin rubbed Alexander’s hair and said, “Blessings, my boy.” He got into his car and drove off.
“Don’t tell Frank,” said Louise after Alexander had eaten his sandwich and left. “Oh, Kezia. What would I do without you?”
Kezia wondered that, too. Since the party Louise had been very depressed, crying at times when she thought she was alone, snapping and growling at them all. Kezia put the pieces together. First Louise was upset over something at the party, she went to church even though she had been up all night, the priest was calling in regularly, and men were calling on her in the afternoons, according to Mrs Hohepa. Louise was upset and distant from Frank. She was absent minded, unwell, feeling sick. My God, was she pregnant? From the party?
No, Kezia had seen that Louise had her regular monthly periods. It wasn’t that. But she was very hard to live with, and Kezia had to help- her along and buddy up to her all the time. What would Louise do without her?
Just up the street a little, Stuart Larcombe was watching Louise’s house from the comfort of his Mercedes, while in the garden next door, Charlotte was studying the photographs she had taken of Louise’s distressed state. Across the road, Bernard was asking Mrs Hohepa if she had seen anyone enter Louise’s property.
“Yes, the tall skinny man, young, like the Syrian boy but with long blond hair,” said Mrs Hohepa. “He got the key out of the front garden. He always wears black, one of those hood things pulled up over his head. See him quite a lot. Like bees round a honey pot, boys are for Kezia now she’s losing her puppy fat. She’s quite pretty now, isn’t she Officer? Don’t you think so?”
Mrs Hohepa’s description was not helpful. PC Bernard Smith could ask colleagues to keep an eye out for a tall young man dressed in a black hoodie, in black trousers. He suspected his colleagues would fall about laughing, or turn up with two hundred suspects.
As far as Mrs Hohepa’s comment was concerned, Bernard liked Kezia for what she was, an honest young woman with a determined character. He also thought she was becoming an attractive woman. He thanked Mrs Hohepa for her neighbourly concern and drove back to the office. Perhaps the Sergeant would send a car around occasionally as this stalking thing seemed to be heating up.
CHAPTER 29.
Summer moved on in a blaze of heat. The weather was so unfailingly good that work quickly progressed on the building sites. The areas for the mall and the street for the houses were cleared quickly, with no hold up from the weather. Stuart Larcombe quickly solved the inevitable bureaucratic delays allowing the labour force to come from China on fixed term visas. Frank knew that the cement company in Vietnam who had previously financed much of their work pulled out when Stuart Larcombe insisted on Chinese supplies. He assumed Larcombe’s new contact. Mr Xi Wei, was supplying finance and dealing with bureaucracy at his end in China.
Frank hired big machinery to build the roads he needed; an access road from the valley floor, diagonally upwards to the west from the stub of road that had been there from the early days to level off then run slightly uphill parallel to the road on the valley floor. Frank could build houses on either side of the road, above his roadway and below. Long driveways were driven off the new road, leading up and down the slope the hill in a herring bone pattern to lessen the effect of heavy rain. That meant Frank could place two houses above the road and two below.
The area he decided to develop first seemed to him to be on quite stable land. Frank was neither a geologist nor a civil engineer but he was a good builder who had been building houses for a long time. Nestled together in groups of four
houses, the footings should be quite safe and should not require pinning to bed rock. He thought that he could drive a new road down from the road along the ridge at the top, to make three cul de sac entries for four houses at a time. These probably would require to be pinned.
Frank decided to leave the first four houses in a cul de sac from the existing top road until later. It turned out to be a wise decision. The cul de sac was made but no houses were built there. Below his new road leading across the hillside, Frank found that the contour of the ground allowed for two more houses, making ten in all for the lower development of stage one.
At the mall site, things progressed quite smoothly. It was a relatively simple development project requiring the sports field that had been there for many years to have access road and car parking built. The actual mall complex was large but long rather than square or circular. The building comprised a set of large cells to house each of the businesses that would rent space there, twenty five in all. The German design was spacious, with a curving concourse between the hexagonal cells. Vertical steel beams held up the roof that covered the whole area. Pre-cast concrete panels made up the exterior walls. The concrete floor, the steel beams in the roof and the vertical studs provided a cage of metal to which the concrete panels were attached.
The floor was reinforced with high quality steel mesh from a New Zealand manufacturer. It was designed as a raft in time of flooding or earthquakes but as it sat on the bed of a primeval swamp it had to be pinned with piles going down to the bedrock some ten meters down.
Frank altered the design so he needed only one third the number of piles. Larcombe did not see the need for any piling because he was convinced the floor would maintain its integrity. The two men crossed swords over this issue with Frank insisting that he was the builder and the piles were essential. Frank saw a different side to Larcombe, who had quite a mean streak in him when decisions went against him.
The German architects modified the plan to suit New Zealand conditions and everything was approved quickly by the Council which stood to gain financially through fees and licences and indirectly through increased employment and trade. It was all up to Nigel the Chief Town Planner now.
CHAPTER 30.
Frosts began in the middle of March, the end of a scorching summer where everything had parched. Parks were not watered as reservoirs ran low. At the schools the grass crackled under the feet of the pupils, grass made brittle by the constant evaporation of the water it needed to survive.
There had been little progress on the issue of DNA from the samples taken. Unlike popular television programmes, real life analysis takes time and much depends upon the urgency of a particular case. A Judge had declined the applications made to test Bannister and Larcombe. There was not enough cause for tests to be taken, and both were upstanding citizens. Mr Bannister had recently had a police clearance for his application as a Justice of the Peace. Jayne would have to find another way.
At the Copperfield’s house, rows and niggles continued between Frank and Louise. Kezia had had enough and was thinking of moving out, of going to stay with her grnaparents. Louise would not hear of it.
“Darling, it’s a big year for you at school. You need to stay in one place. I know it’s stressful, dear, but Frank’s just tired,” she told Kezia. “I can handle him, don’t worry. He leaves at daybreak and gets home after nine at night. He’s just worn out. And my mother doesn’t need a teenage kid in the house, much as she loves you.”
Kezia looked again at her mother’s state of health and candidly assessed her parents’ relationship
“It’s not going to last,” she told herself. “Frank is intolerant and just doesn’t understand women. Mum is so fragile it’s unreal. I think Alexander and I are the only things holding them together. Would it be fair to leave them now?”
She should talk with Grandad Moore, who had been a teacher. He was wise and knew how to keep his mouth shut. He would know what to do. But before Kezia had a chance to get her Grandfather on his own, events brought the family issues to a head.
It was Alexander’s task to feed Tess the dog each day. He had to check her water supply – she had an upside down bottle that released water when the level dropped, a bottle that needed checking daily and refilling every two days or so.
Tess normally heard Alexander approaching. She would come to the wire mesh part of the dog motel, waving her tail in anticipation. Alexander wondered what was wrong when she did not appear.
“Tess, come on,” he called. There was no response. The kennel had a door at the back to make cleaning the dog house part of the motel easier. Alexander unlatched the door and opened it.
At first Alexander thought that the dog was asleep. When Alexander pushed her shoulder, Tess moaned but did not move.
“Mum! Mum!”
Louise was fitting dishes into the dishwasher. She was bending down with her head below the level of the counter when she heard Alexander’s voice. She had never heard Alexander cry out in such a manner, almost as if he had found a dead body. Louise slammed the dishwasher door shut.
“What is it Alexander?” she called as she moved quickly to the yard door, with Kezia right behind her.
Alexander was crying, tears rolling down his seven year old cheeks as he strained to compose himself.
“Tess. She’s dead!”
“Let me see,” said Louise, her nursing training swinging into action as she gently moved Alexander from the rear of the kennel to Kezia’s arms. He was getting to be a heavy boy who could no longer be lifted bodily so she had to propel him with a hand behind his back.
Louise reached into the rear of the kennel part of the dog motel. As a result of Tess had vomiting several times, the smell in the kennel made Louise hold her breath. She touched Tess gently, pleased to feel some warmth. Tess stirred slightly but her head stayed on the ground.
“She’s alive,” said Louise. “She’s sick but she’s not dead.” ‘Yet,’ she thought. “Alexander, run in and get an old towel, would you, please?”
“Kezia, the dog has been poisoned, I think,” said Louise. “Can you please organize Alexander and get him off to school? He shouldn’t see this. While you’re both gone, I’ll get a vet to come and see what can be done for poor old Tess.”
“Definitely poison,” said the Vet, a pleasant young woman with a narrow face and straggling hair that kept finding its way over her left eye. “It looks like Pindone to me.”
“Pindone?”
“Pindone. Used to kill rabbits. It is sold in the form of bait set in a waxy carrier. Looks a bit like green chalk that kids use to draw on the pavement,” said the Vet. “Pindone is deadly to rabbits but a dog would need a hundred times the dose for a rabbit. Who feeds Tess?”
“Alexander, usually,” Louise replied.
“Nice name. Mine is Alexandrina. I call myself Andrina, Andrina Pilkington. Any Pindone around the house?” asked the Vet.
Louise was grateful for the name cue. “No, Andrina. Never has been.”
“Can we look? Where does Alexander keep the dog food?” Andrina looked around as if trying to find a sack of biscuits or a stash of bones.
“In the laundry,” Louise replied. “I’ll show you.”
The laundry was by the back door, on one side of the porch. Beside the washing machine was a small chest freezer for bones for Tess, and beside that a sack of dog biscuits. Andrina put two hands into the sack and lifted up the biscuits as if she was about to rinse her face with water. Their shapes varied, and their colours also; small square ones; some green and some yellow, red triangular ones, brown circles, and some like small sticks. She smelled the biscuits and then held her hands out to Louise. Nestled among the coloured biscuits were 3 centimetre long waxy green sticks.
“Gotcha,” said Andrina. “I’ll take some of these with me, and Tess also. I hope I can save her now I know what’s wrong with her. I suggest you get the police to inspect this sack of biscuits so they can follow up on it.”
There had been a recent spate of interference with foodstuff in Australia with needles and nails being pressed into strawberries and small fruit. It looked like dog food was the latest target of the mindless vandals.
‘But who would do this? In a supermarket? No,’ thought Louise. ‘The bag was sealed when I opened it. The poison was added here, in the house.’ She shuddered involuntarily.
“Louise, can you help me with Tess, please?” asked Andrina. “In the back of my station wagon is a large blue gardening bag with leather handles. Could you please fetch it while I give poor Tess a shot?”
Louise found the bag easily. It was made of a very thick blue vinyl and had strong leather loops stitched to opposite sides to make handles. Louise had seen similar carry bags in expensive garden supply shops but she just used an old wool pack when she was weeding.
Andrina had pulled Tess out of the kennel by the dog’s back legs. The dog lay where Andrina had left her, on her side, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth and back legs stretched straight. The two women lifted the dog and put her in the gardening bag. Without speaking, each took a handle and lifted. Tess was not light but neither Kezia nor Louise could lift her alone. The gardening bag made the job quite easy.
Louise was please that Alexander was at school. The sight of Tess being carried off like garden rubbish would have haunted him.
‘Haunted?’ thought Louise. ‘Am I haunted? Is there some hidden force doing this to me?’
Andrina had been thinking along the same lines.
“Have you any enemies? Someone who would want to harm you?” she asked.
“No,” said Louise. “I can’t think of anyone. Certainly nobody cruel enough to harm an innocent dog.”
She said nothing about graffiti. That had been aimed at her. And the freezer? And Facebook? And the front door? Was someone out there after her? Had she been targeted for some reason?
She remembered back to her school days, when she had been bullied and called a slag. ‘Louise Moore, the school whore,’ was the chant.
The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Page 13
