For goodness sake! As though the fire had any bearing on the body they’d found. Ngaire turned the sound down a few notches, so it was a background mumble. A helicopter crash that morning had produced the first casualty, so far. Add to that, the people in the hospital with injuries from the fire. The report was an insult to both those victims and poor Sam Andie.
Her mobile phone rang, and Ngaire gave a start when she saw Findlay’s name on it. “Speak of the devil,” she answered happily.
“Eh?”
“I was just thinking of giving you a call.”
“Right,” he said, sounding so unsure that Ngaire checked the caller ID to check again that it was him. After a pause, Findlay continued. “Anyway, my editor thought it would be a great idea to run a story all about the fire victim, only he doesn’t have any details. Anything you can let slip to an old friend?”
“Nope,” Ngaire said, smiling widely as she settled back against the couch cushions. “The only thing I could possibly tell you is that the news on the telly has got it all completely wrong.”
“Helpful, as usual,” Findlay said and then sighed. “Are you really not allowed to release the information? It looked like a forensic tent setup, and I can’t imagine you’re going to do that for a body caught out by the fire.”
“Well-spotted,” Ngaire conceded. “But I still can’t give you anything. It’s all conjecture at our end as it is.”
She expected that to tip him into interrogation mode but instead a beep sounded in her ear.
“Sorry, Deb’s just called in on the other line.”
“Deb Weedon? What’s she calling you for?”
“I tried her number and left a message for her before I tried calling you. Thanks, anyway. If you can’t tell me anything, though, I’d like to take her call.”
“Sure,” Ngaire said and pressed the end button before placing her smartphone facedown on the coffee table.
Even though she turned up the sound on the TV, it couldn’t drown out the echo of regret whispering in her ear. He called Deb first? It was one thing to think that she should make a concerted effort to stay in touch and quite another to feel the sting that someone else was now Findlay’s first point of call.
If his editor wasn’t on his back, would he even have bothered to phone at all?
Once upon a time, the thought wouldn’t have entered Ngaire’s head. An ache pulled at her chest, making it hard to breathe. It appeared, somewhere along the way, she’d managed to let their friendship die.
Chapter Five
Dr. Gangarry didn’t look any happier in the morgue at Christchurch Hospital than he had in a pop-up tent that clung to the side of the Port Hills. He nodded up at Ngaire and Deb as they sat in the viewing studio, and did a quick voice check to ensure that they could hear everything.
“I don’t expect we’ll find too much to go on,” he warned. “Given the age of the remains, there’s quite a bit of degradation. Also, without any soft tissue, there’s a whole host of injuries that I can’t check for.”
Ngaire said, “We know,” before remembering that the voice circuits only went one way. She gave a thumbs-up instead to show they’d heard and understood. Dr. Gangarry didn’t even glance up. When Deb gave her a playful nudge in the ribs, Ngaire blushed in understanding. He was saying it for the recording that would be transcribed into the official records. It wasn’t a personal message meant to forestall her concerns.
“I don’t even know why we’re down here,” Deb grumbled. “It’s not like he’s going to make a startling discovery that will have us running to arrest someone and spare members of the public from a similar fate.”
“Play nice,” Ngaire said. “Besides, I quite like this part of it. It’s not every day you get to watch an autopsy without wanting to reach for a bucket halfway through.”
Deb sniggered, perhaps remembering an incident where someone in her team had done just that.
“What did you think of the mom?” Ngaire asked. “It’d be good if we could find any records of the visits she and her husband made.”
“Good luck with that. If they’re not in the file, then you could sort by hand through the entire archive and still not be sure you were finding everything. Even the youngest floater in the station probably wouldn’t relish that task.”
Deb paused and caught the corner of her lip between her teeth. For a second she looked younger, the harsh planes of her face softening. “I don’t think she’s hiding anything, if that’s what you mean. She seemed genuinely cut up.”
“Yeah,” Ngaire agreed. “I wonder what happened to the dad.”
“What are they? In their seventies? Died of old age, probably.”
Dr. Gangarry pulled the mobile light down to inspect a bone more intently. Ngaire leaned forward, waiting for an explanation, but he flipped it back up into the air and continued to notate his standard findings.
“I didn’t see a death certificate in the file.”
“We didn’t see a lot of things in the archive,” Deb said with a quick grin. “Besides, it might be registered back in the States rather than here. It’s not as though it’s a police matter.”
Dr. Gangarry turned from his examination and looked up at them. “I may have a cause of death, although at this stage we’ll never be able to know with certainty.”
“Of course not,” Deb whispered under her breath, and Ngaire laughed.
“I’ll put it on the overhead screen,” he said, and a closeup of the skull showed a moment later.
Ngaire swallowed hard. Even though the display wasn’t as bad as having to look at a whole person being taken apart and sewn back together, there was something about the empty eye sockets of a skull that sent her stomach plummeting and made the nerves in her spine feel like they’d been doused in ice cold water.
“See here,” Dr. Gangarry said, pointing to a cracked abrasion where part of the skull had fallen away. “If this was done premortem that would have been a nasty head wound. There’s also an abrasion, not as hard, on the jaw bone.”
He looked back up at them, and Ngaire raised her eyebrows and shrugged. A look of disappointment on the doctor’s face informed her that she’d lost brownie points.
“The wound is something I’d expect to see from a heavy blow to the side of the head.” He held up his arm and brought it toward the skull in slow motion. “Like this. The initial blow hits against the top side of the skull, but the force of the momentum also follows through to strike the edge of the jaw.”
“How hard would the blow need to be?” Deb asked, and it was Ngaire’s turn to jab a reminder elbow in her ribcage. “Shit. Do you know sign-language?”
“I don’t understand why we can’t just get all of this issued to us on a nice, neat report. At the very least, we should be allowed down in the room with the doctor.”
“No, thanks,” Deb said, scrawling a note on her pad and holding it up to the window.
“It would be very forceful, and the instrument in hand would be short.” Gangarry looked uncomfortable for the first time. “When I was doing my residency, I worked overseas for a while in Soweto. It was a common injury back then. The police inflicted it on front line rioters to keep the rest of the crowd under control.”
At the same time as Ngaire’s regard for the doctor went up a notch, her mouth turned down. “He’s saying a policeman knocked the shit out of this kid with a baton, isn’t he?”
“Oh, crap,” Deb said. “Even if that’s not the case, the lack of an investigation is going to look like it was covered up.”
As though he could hear her this time, Dr. Gangarry looked up and met Ngaire’s gaze. “If this wound were inflicted on this young man while he was alive, it would have been enough to kill him.”
Chapter Six
Shannon paused at the door to her room, holding her breath as she listened and attempted to pinpoint her dad’s location.
Not in the living room, otherwise the chair would be creaking as he rocked to and fro. Not in the kitchen or th
e kettle would be whistling accompanied by the shuffle and bang of tea things being set out. With no groans of effort or soft patter of water, the bathroom was out. Absent the soft murmur of conversation from the radio, he wouldn’t be sitting alone in the dining room. No footfalls to indicate he was moving from room to room.
Up in his bedroom, or in the back yard.
If she made a move now, Shannon might be able to leave the house without him stopping her to question where she was headed.
All she needed to do was open the door, and she could be on her way outside. If Shannon left it for another hour, then she risked Gerry waking up and moving on. Sure, she’d be back to the shelter one day. Down and outs didn’t tend to raise up to the standard levels without a long, concerted effort. She’d be back, but it could be weeks, it could be months, it could be that she fell in with the wrong crowd at the wrong time and never turned up anywhere again.
Even if Gerry had already woken up and realized it was benefit day, it didn’t mean that Shannon should stick around home all day, doing nothing. Her dad wasn’t so poorly off he needed her to fetch and carry for him, and the shelter always had work going.
Still, the work was usually hard and only brightened by the faces of the people that she met there. Gerry especially, and if she went into the city mission and missed seeing her, then it would all feel like a waste.
Just go on. Get in there and see if Gerry’s still about. It won’t kill you to try.
No, it wouldn’t kill her.
Shannon backed away from the door and sat down on her bed instead. It was a single mattress. The same one she’d used as a child. Over fifty years on and it still welcomed her tired body into its embrace at night, still sagged and dipped in the outline of her bones.
For a moment, she felt overwhelmed. Shannon’s breathing grew short, panting almost, and her chest tightened, the rib cage struggling to expand. In the corners of her eyes, dots pulsed and danced in a dizzying array. At the last checkup, her doctor had told her that she needed to find ways to de-stress. Her blood pressure climbed more with every year, and if she couldn’t find a natural way to bring it under control, then she’d be placed on the Statins.
That meant regular checkups and more money than she could afford, even with the community card discount. Even worse, she’d be catapulting straight toward a stroke.
Shannon closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, ignoring the pounding of her pulse. Just breathe. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Listen to the tick of the clock and only change over at twenty. In for twenty seconds, out for twenty seconds, in, out.
Often the calmness came back within a few minutes, but today it stayed resolutely away. Instead, the creep of breathlessness added to Shannon’s feeling of panic. The struggle to take deep breaths became more frantic until she relapsed into gasping and panting again.
Failure. Shannon’s whole life was a failure. The drag of it caused her chest to constrict even more.
If she visited the shelter and hooked up with Gerry, they’d have fun for a few hours, maybe even a few days. In the end, Gerry would move on, and Shannon would crawl back into her hole.
Even if she kept him in the loop by texting her whereabouts, Shannon’s dad would be straining with worry. The bad heart she currently fought against had felled him years ago. A quadruple heart bypass and then stents, all to keep the blood flowing around his body. All that work, and sometimes when she glanced over at him, his skin still looked bluish gray.
You deserve to have some fun, too.
The phrase had been tossed out by a coworker a few months ago when they’d been serving on the food line together. Shannon opened up to the teens whose attendance was court-mandated. No chance they were coming back again once their community service card was full. They were as transient as the people they served. Shannon didn’t have to worry what they knew about her.
Misfits and dropouts were her therapists, the only people in the world she could be honest with. Better than the shrink she’d once been forced to talk to, whose eyes wandered in open discomfort to the window as soon as Shannon started to share.
“You deserve to have some fun, too,” Britney had told her as though everything in the world was fair. “It can’t be all work here and at home, or you’ll go stir crazy and wind up living with eighty cats.”
Funny girl. Britney had a way with words and a quick mind. Her tongue could be evil sharp if you got on the wrong side of her. At eighteen, her world was black and white, segmented and portioned, balanced across the board. If Shannon told her how life really was, she’d nod and smile but wouldn’t for a moment believe her. Gray is such a difficult shade to navigate or comprehend when you’re that young.
What would have happened if Shannon told her the whole truth of her life, all fifty-six years of rottenness piled on despair? If she’d explained how it felt to live in the same room as an adult that you’d fought to leave as a teen? To be grateful to have the opportunity to live somewhere she was loved at all?
Nothing would happen. A young brain couldn’t comprehend the weariness of failed dreams day after day. Not for more years than they’d been born. It would be unnatural.
Suddenly, Shannon bunched her hand into a fist and pounded it into the bed. This was stupid. Perhaps her dad would be ecstatic that she wanted to go out and meet somebody. He might be grateful that after so many years of solitude, she’d finally made a friend.
She stood and walked across the room. Tensing her muscles against the impending noise, Shannon turned the handle and opened her door. The WD-40 had run out last year, and neither she nor her dad had bothered to replace it. When the hinges started to squeak, no remedy was on hand to cure the sound.
Ten yards down the hall, ten seconds unlocking the front door, and she could be out of the house and stay out the rest of the day.
Maybe if she caught Gerry in time, Shannon could persuade her to go out to the lake. The paddle boats there were twenty dollars to hire for a half hour, but Shannon knew the lad who rented them on Thursdays and could probably swing the treat for free.
Gerry might just laugh in Shannon’s face and head off to get plastered, anyway. What was it that the kids called scoping out the relationship, these days. DTR. Define The Relationship. Not DTF. Shannon had used that acronym in the wrong place accidentally and once was enough to make her learn it through and through.
Maybe if she caught up with Gerry, they could spend the day doing that instead. Take the time to sit outside in the warm sun and have an awkward conversation that would have Shannon blushing like a sunstroke victim. She might find out that Gerry didn’t think of her in that way at all. Or she might end up the day with a girlfriend.
Shannon took one step out of her room, then another. She steeled herself for another squeal of protest from her hinges and began to pull the door closed.
Then the back door slammed open and shut. Heavy footsteps tramped in through the kitchen. Shannon backtracked and spun into her room, backing away from the closed door.
Her heart hammered in her chest. A flush crept up the side of her neck. Not the anticipated blushes of joyful embarrassment but the hard, red stain of shame.
Her father’s steps paused at the corridor landing. Shannon could hear the swish of his hand against the raised wallpaper as he leaned against it. Both of them, on different sides of the same wall, each struggling to catch their breath.
A clump of footsteps sounded as her father moved again, then the creak of springs as he settled into his chair.
As her heart started to settle into a steady, calmer beat, Shannon felt a flush of shame. Here she was, fifty-six years old and still in thrall to her daddy. For all the progress she’d made in life, it may as well have ended when she was in primary school.
Have some fun, she mouthed as she swung her legs. Have some fun. She closed her eyes to see the rippling waters of the lake down at the Groynes. Always too stirred up to be a still, reflective pool, it suited her personality down to a T.
When she was a little girl, going down to the Groynes was a fun day out. The sort of thing you did before there were more than two TV channels and none of them screening anything much worth seeing. The tangle of woodlands down there had been cut back to safe levels, enough for the beauty but not so dense it was possible to get lost there. Ducks could be fed freely from packets of white, springy bread. Long before any animal welfare officer thought to explain how bad that diet was.
One time, an older woman had shown her and a group of girls how to weave the ribbons on the maypole down there. Shannon usually hated girlish things, but this dance involved planning, subtlety, and timing for a perfect execution. More than once, she’d wanted to yell out in frustration as another child stumbled and caused the entire pole to be untangled and the ribbons laid out again.
The sun had been warm but with enough of a breeze to cool the sweat on her brow so that Shannon didn’t become too sticky. If it had been any hotter, she would have given up and gone to plunk her legs into the water of the nearby stream.
The last dance attempt had started out the same as every other one, each child concentrating on what they were doing. That time, though, the dance had sucked them in, and they’d executed each step in perfect timing. Under, over, in, out. While the sun overhead had slipped toward the horizon and the pinker rays of late afternoon, the girls had all worked in unison until the pole was bound with ribbons and the song was at an end.
Shannon had been flushed with pride, smiling at the other girls standing at rest around the circle. Then mothers had rushed up, clapping and congratulating, and whisked their progeny away.
If Shannon took Gerry there, it would be impossible to tell her about the emotions that memory engendered. To invite her into that slice of her life also opened up the chance that the set of emotions bound up with that place would be filtered, added to, or deleted.
As she lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, Shannon felt her heart fill with the same pride she’d felt that day. A beautiful feeling, not often experienced.
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 4
