“Tell me more about Sally’s blackmail?” said the interviewer.
“The Deputy Principal asked the Principal to expel the Afghani refugee and have Immigration deport him. That would have meant certain death for him, unless my daughter performed indecent acts on him that I knew from my own experience would lead to sex.” Alice paused. “I tried to kill him.”
“You tried to kill him?” asked the interviewer incredulously, with full knowledge of what had happened.
“Yes. I was desperate because I could get nowhere. After I complained to the Board, the Board sent a letter that said they were surprised that a respectable lady like me would cast salacious aspersions about an upstanding man. I’ll read the letter to you.”
Louise unfolded the letter from the Board. The cameraman came in for an ultra-close up shot so that the audience could read the letter themselves as Alice read the words. Louise’s name, the Board’s identity and Bannister’s name were blanked out. As she read the letter Alice’s voice broke on two occasions.
“So, boys joining hands to defend their own. Go back to the confrontation, please. Tell me about intending to kill him,” said the interviewer.
“With my share of the money following the separation from my husband, I sent my daughter to another school in another town. I paid for the young man to go to a university language school so he could go on to train as a vet.
“I was so angry with the Deputy Principal that I took a knife from the drawer. I thought he might ask me to do things again, and I might cut off his penis or kill him but I lost my nerve. He then said it was entirely my fault because I had enjoyed having sex with him, and he thought my daughter should have the same experience.
“I think I would have killed him at that point, but he easily disarmed me. He said he had not touched my daughter. After that I had a breakdown.”
“No wonder,” said the interviewer. “You lost your job and custody of your son as a result. And now you have found this wonderful organization to support you and other women in compromised situations. You deserve a medal for Calling Out your Monster!”
The aftermath of the documentaries spawned an outcry. Firstly, Louise was arrested and charged with attempted murder. Before there was publicity, Mary McMillan made a statement that she saw the knife held by Bannister at Louise’s throat. Subsequently, Louise was released without charge and Bannister was charged with threatening with a deadly weapon. He was released on bail pending investigation.
Other committees of Calling Out Monsters were formed all over the country. Louise and Mary found themselves leading a national organisation with a central core of advisers that could be ‘loaned’ to any COM Group. Donations of money came rolling in; Chief Justice Dame Margaret Blaize created a government fund to reimburse COM or other such units for their services in assisting the police. She recommended forming a Board of Directors that would engage a national manager. She suggested eminent people who could be approached to sit on the Board, Louise and Mary asked Dame Margaret to be the Chair. Dame Margaret said she would as soon as she retired, in three months’ time.
Although Mary and Louise felt that they were losing what had essentially been their organisation they were happy that they had created a formidable weapon in the fight against sexual abuse. They would still be involved but there were now paid employees to do the tiring work, leaving them free to contribute as and when they wished.
If Louise had hoped to disguise the identity of Mrs X she had only partial success. In Wahanui Mr Jackson suddenly retired from being Principal. Instead of taking over the school as its head, Mr Bannister told the Board that he was considering taking early retirement. In the meantime, the Board granted his request for twelve weeks sick leave, which would take him through to Spring.
Mr Bannister received a note from the Police, asking him to respond to the formal complaint of one Louise Copperfield relating to historical sex abuse.
Shortly afterwards, Frank Copperfield received a phone call asking him to help police with their enquiries regarding possible perjury by a witness in a child custody case.
Tom Hoar rang Louise to ask her to come to dinner on Sunday.
“There’s something we need to discuss,” he said.
Louise replied, “Will Charlotte be there?”
“No,” said Tom. “But it is about Charlotte, and it is about Bannister, and it is about your television programme.”
“How did you know the programme was about me?” asked Louise.
“About you and about Charlotte and God knows how many other poor innocent girls,” said Tom. “I’ve finally put two and two together.”
“Mr Hoar, I won’t come to dinner,” said Louise. “I think you already have your answers. What you might do is come along to chat in the Calling Out Monsters Office.”
Tom called for an appointment. He met with Mary McMillan, after which he joined the organisation as a supporter. His chat with Mary was to have far reaching consequences.
Momentum was gathering. Louise had built a storm that was about to engulf them all.
THE STORM GATHERS
preparing for drastic action.
CHAPTER 59.
The summer had been unusually dry, with strict water rationing despite a new reservoir being commissioned. Drought settled on the land like a hot dry stifling cloth held over one’s mouth and nose. It was a long and hard six months.
Farmers in the district named the drought ‘The Big Dry’. Attempts were made to seed the few clouds that sometimes appeared with a silver compound to make rain fall, but that did not work. Temperatures were in the high thirties every day, the heat and the winds caused by them sucking out any remaining moisture from bare dusty fields.
Farmers sold their stock, getting poor prices because there was an oversupply at the sales yards. Many moved the sheep and cattle away from the district, leasing grazing in faraway places. As most of the South Island was in drought, that meant expensive cartage to places like the Waikato in the North Island and Southland in the South Island. The meat works in Wahanui and even in faraway Christchurch offered low prices because stock was in poor condition compared with previous offerings.
The soil opened up as the clay base of the town dried out. The town lay on a fan shaped delta with three fingers of hills making two major valleys, one of which was Huatere Valley. There was minor subsidence as the ground around the houses shrank as it dried out. The roads buckled as the contraction of the soil pulled them this way and that. Letters appeared in the newspapers questioning whether this area was safe. Frank and Stuart told those who had purchased houses that this was normal; Wahanui had never had trouble before, and with modern building techniques there was no danger, despite the old wives tales about Huatere Valley.
“Look,” said Frank to a television reporter, “see those houses over there? Many were built seventy and eighty years ago. Still standing.”
In fact, the other side of the valley had a different geology because it had not lain buried under a lake and silted up like the land where Frank was building houses. On that side of the valley the stony hills had eroded and had shrunk over the millennia that saw the rise of the ridge opposite. One side of the valley had light top soil on rock. The other side had layers of slippery clay overlying the bedrock by sometimes as much as twenty metres. It was on this slippery back that the Huatere Housing Project was being built.
CHAPTER 60.
Stuart Larcombe sat in his office considering what to do about Louise. She was not the over-anxious push-over he had thought her to be. She was a feisty credible opponent who constituted a danger to Larcombe.
Larcombe had previous issues with sex abuse involving date rape in Australia. He had managed to dodge the bullet, escaping to New Zealand before investigations had been completed. That was why he could not afford to have his DNA taken, because New Zealand might refer back to Australia if any charges were laid.
Larcombe found New Zealand to be fresh pastures for his perverted tastes. It seemed to b
e a liberal society, especially among the young, where alcohol and recreational drugs were consumed in massive quantities. Recreational drugs were legal and cheap, almost any kind of love drug was cheap and available although illegal. Alcohol was drunk more than water, especially the drinks marketed as RTDs, mixed spirits ready to drink. Larcombe was right at home, able to use Ecstasy and GHB at will.
Stuart had a problem His profligate life had left him unable to become aroused unless his victim was totally under his control. That meant drugged. The surprising discovery was that Louise was an exception. He genuinely wanted Louise and became aroused in her presence. He had spent much of the previous month quietly grooming Louise, but it had not worked.
Larcombe had been surprised when Louise rebuffed his attempt to get Frank’s money back by speaking forcefully and spinning a yarn that it was really his money. What threw him off-balance was Louise’s knowledge of the wager with Frank to have sex with her. He supposed quite rightly that she knew he and Frank were secretly changing building specifications. They could go to prison for fraud if their building practices were found out. She was just the woman to tell them. The two things together, the sexual abuse and the fraudulent buildings practices, made Louise a genuine threat.
Larcombe decided that he would have to remove Louise forever. He had removed other threats, including Joseph Hamilton, with no reaction from the authorities but how to murder Louise without getting caught needed some thought. It was all a matter of being smart.
He could use Frank. He could set Frank up, bring some heavies down from Auckland, the same heavies who had dealt with Joseph Hamilton. They got away with it once, they could get away with a killing again. He could tell the heavies Frank would pay extra to get rid of his ex-wife. The police would investigate Louise’s death and find that Frank benefited by her death as no divorce settlement would be needed. If they had a mutual will, as Stuart thought they might, Frank had another reason for killing his estranged wife.. Two and two made four; police were always quick to prove their suspects were guilty. Or, given her chronic depression, Louise could be seen as a suicide waiting to happen. That might be the best way. Louise was a well-known mess.
Stuart Larcombe had no idea that he had left a condom in the bed the night he had sex with Louise, the night he had not needed to dose her with Rohypnol because someone had already done the work for him, stupefying Louise before Larcombe could do it. The police would trace the Rohypnol, or track down other victims, and blame the other guy for doping Louise.
Was it the guy who brought the Coca Cola over? Bannister? Or that guy behind the bar? Perhaps the muscular Bruno? Who knew? All that mattered was the other person would be blamed and Larcombe himself would never be charged. With her dead, it would all be forgotten anyway.
Larcombe decided that Louise should die while Frank and he were nowhere near Wahanui. It had been risky taking out Joseph Hamilton in the same town where they were living and running a business. They had got away with it because of the crowds who came to see the first rugby match of the year. Could he do the opposite and find an away game somewhere so they would have no connection to her death?
On the Internet Larcombe found what he was looking for, a series of rugby games between Australia and New Zealand, the Bledisloe Cup. Thousands of New Zealanders would travel to Australia to see some or all of these games. Because of their projects, Frank and Larcombe could not afford to be away for the full three weeks but they could manage the third game and perhaps some car racing at Mount Panorama in Bathurst. If they took a fortnight, they could see two games of rugby, one of which must be the deciding game.
It seemed like a good plan. He picked up the office phone, but put it down again. He needed a public telephone for his conversation with his hired killers.
CHAPTER 61.
Stuart Larcombe’s father was a Licensed Realtor, a very wealthy property dealer, who had told his son about a block of land that would pay a huge dividend at some time in the future. Larcombe had bought the block. Because of changes in regulations and because his father’s predictions for population growth had been accurate, Larcombe wanted to check out the block to see if the time was ripe. He had booked the whole trip for both him and Frank Copperfield so they would both be in Australia in the period leading up to and including Labour Weekend.
Stuart had his lunch in town then ambled to the pre-arranged place for discreet calls, the Wahanui Central Library. In the foyer was a telephone booth, a left-over and forgotten piece of equipment from a bygone era. It took coins.
The phone rang at two o’clock. “Moss?” asked Larcombe.
“Hello Larcombe,” said Moss
”Another job, this time in Christchurch, then another in Wahanui. First job is a man called Nigel Jones. He’s a little fellow. I have found out that his journey to the States has been booked with Air New Zealand at Labour Weekend. My business partner tells me Jones is going to LA on the late morning flight on the Saturday. He’ll be at the Ajax Airport Hotel from Thursday. Got it? He probably has the plans and details with him. Track him from the airport to his hotel, get into his room, find a set of building plans and some papers. They are big and heavy, probably in a case of their own.”
“Okay, Boss,” said Moss. “If the papers aren’t there, what do I do?”
“Take all the papers you find and his money so it looks like a robbery. Then take him out. Same as the other man, Hamilton,” said Larcombe. “Those papers can send me to gaol, and court cases will take all my money. I will be in Australia. Phone me twice and hang up to say the jobs have been done. Don’t text. Then I’ll call you later from a public phone. Keep the papers safe for me when I return.
“Now the tricky part. Do him first then fly to Wahanui. Book seats even if you don’t use them. Go to 13 Allnatt St. Same deal. Find any papers. Collect them all. Leave nothing behind. Then do the woman. Make it look like suicide. She’s been depressed. The ex wants her gone. He’ll pay you the same rate I do but he’ll pay through me”
“How much for the two?”
Larcombe said, “I’ll pay you both twenty k, ten for each takeaway. With my partner’s twenty thousand that could be forty thou coming your way. Do him first, and her on Labour Weekend, when thousands will be travelling. I’ll leave the details to you.”
Larcombe left the phone booth in the Library foyer and walked back to his office. He and Frank would be in Australia when Nigel and Louise got topped. Frank was paying him twenty thousand dollars to get rid of Louise. If Larcombe handed over the whole twenty thousand the money trail would lead back to Frank if the Mollisons were caught. Perfect.
If the Mollisons did somehow manage to botch the suicide, some poor guy who was fingered by Louise in one of the Calling Out Monsters docos would be blamed for her death, no doubt, and the Mollisons might get away with it. Even if they were caught red handed, nobody would suspect the link between the two dead-beat boxers and Larcombe. After Labour Weekend, Larcombe would be home and hosed, with the original plans and specifications in his possession and completely in the clear.
CHAPTER 62
Storm clouds were gathering over Wahanui. It had been a strange climate-change kind of winter with warm wet days in the twenties followed by snow and ten degrees of frost. Snow in Wahanui was not unknown, but the alternation of warm wet weather and freezing cold spells was new. The frosts cracked the ground and the heavy rains flooded through the cracks.
The ground on one side of the Huatere Valley was greasy-back clay with an overlay of thin top soil hosting trees and shrubs to hold everything in place. The trees and shrubs were gone. New roads carved their way across the bare hillside. Ten new houses now had families living in them, while another ten houses were under construction. Heavy machinery pushed the covering of the land to and fro, piling up the top soil to be sold by Larcombe to garden shops and nurseries.
Nigel Jones’s staff found that the deep piling that was a condition of the building consent only partially happened, and uncertified steel w
as used in the Huatere Shopping Mall construction. Nigel Jones wrote a report for the Council’s consideration, detailing what his staff had found and decrying the broken promises of the developer Stuart Larcombe and the builder Frank Copperfield. He asked for both projects to be halted pending discussion and satisfactory outcomes.
The meeting agendas were always delivered by hand two nights before the meeting so that Councillors could study the business to be discussed and research the items on which decisions had to be made. A copy was sent to the reporters’ desk at the Wahanui Times.
The Council considered Nigel Jones’s report at the first meeting of the full Council in June. The early delivery of the agenda and support papers allowed Councillors to lobby in favour of their own opinions. In this case it was the Mayor, Mr Cameron, who lobbied strongly against Jones’s proposals. Nobody asked him why, they just assumed that Larcombe had somehow persuaded the Mayor to be on his side.
The Council had no Joe Hamilton to speak about possible consequences. Stan Rivers was in hospital after suffering a heart attack. The remaining members generally supported business interests because these were good for the town. Businesses created employment and spent money and these factors created votes.
Nigel outlined what he believed were the consequences of climate change. The clearing of the vegetation and the consequent cracking of the soil by frost and the heavy downpours might constitute a high risk for a landslide as the climate changed.
The shopping mall roof held the walls in place. Any movement in the steel beams due to excessive expansion and contraction, an unexpected weight such as the heavy snowfall that had earlier caused the roof of the stadium at Invercargill to fail, or an earthquake could cause a twisting or a failure in the reinforced steel studs, the metal pillars that supported the roof joists. Certified steel had been tested to withstand such forces but uncertified steel was of an unknown quality.
The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Page 22
