In the video, everyone scattered. None of the officers needed to do anything more drastic, and the artiste behind the camera used the lull to scan the grounds.
“There!” Ngaire shouted, pointing at the screen. “Go back.”
“I can’t,” Willis said. “Not while it’s copying. Make a note of the time, and we’ll go back to it once we’ve seen the entire thing.”
Ngaire stopped fiddling with the papers in front of her and directed her whole attention to the screen. The stadium was still filling up with patrons, most of them there for the match while others scanned the grounds, eager for trouble.
The same protesters moved into frame and Ngaire leaned forward. Deb tapped her on the shoulder twice, I see them, too.
Sam Andie, dressed in a simple V-necked shirt teamed with ridiculously high-waisted jeans stood arm in arm with a young man whose face was shielded from the camera.
“Do you think that’s Shannon?” Ngaire whispered. Deb shrugged and crouched next to her, leaning in closer to peer at the screen.
“I can’t tell from this low quality. Where’s that zoom they have on the hi-tech movies?” Deb grumbled. A second later, she added, “They’re leaving!”
The two people on the edge of the frame were headed for a stadium exit on the right-hand side. It was out of the camera’s watchful eye, but the intention was clear. Just before they walked out of shot altogether, the male looked back over his shoulder. Or her shoulder. Before she blinked off the edge of the screen, Ngaire saw a young and exuberant Shannon, laughing at the policeman who yelled at her.
“Who’s the policeman?” Deb asked. “Is there a listing with the names on it?”
“There wasn’t anything attached, but check the box yourself if you like,” Willis said. “The tape was slotted down the right-hand side.”
Ngaire stood up and moved back, sitting in a chair and wheeling it up beside the box. Her leg throbbed along an old injury when she stood on it for too long. Instead, she tucked it underneath her to gain more height and started to rifle through the contents.
“Redding? Willis?” Gascoigne popped his head around the meeting room door. “Come with me, would you?”
Gascoigne retreated as quickly as he’d arrived. Deb raised her eyebrows across the table and gave a shrug, then went back to staring at the television screen. Ngaire watched Doug and Gary as far as she could until Gascoigne shut his office door behind them.
“I wonder if something more important has come up?” Deb said. “Or”—she lowered her voice—“if Gascoigne is trying to browbeat them both into taking their Sergeant’s exams. He had a go at me earlier this week about where did I see myself in ten years and didn’t I think it was time for advancement.”
Ngaire’s heart skipped a beat. “What did you say?”
“I said I was happy being a detective constable for the rest of my life, thank you very much. Who needs the stress of more responsibility?” She checked Gascoigne’s office door, still closed. “Has he asked you yet? I think he’s getting grief from on high.”
“No,” Ngaire said. “He hasn’t asked me anything.”
“Oh, don’t worry, kid. I’m sure he still thinks you’re special.”
Ngaire poked her tongue out at Deb’s cheeky grin and got back to searching through the box. “I don’t think there’s anything relating to the tape in here. Pity.”
“We could try the TVNZ archives if you’re serious about getting a name. They’ll have better records than we do, more’s the pity.”
Ngaire shoved the box away and turned to look back at the screen again. “It’s not a bad idea, although I suppose after this long, having a name might not mean anything.”
“Yeah. Do you remember moving someone along at a protest nearly forty years ago? Pass.”
“Has it ended?” Ngaire asked as the entire screen turned to static. The machine made a sick noise, and she unhooked her leg to hurry over. “Oh, shit. I think the tapes stuck.”
She yanked the plug out of the unit so it wouldn’t get any worse, then hooked up the flap to see inside.
“I think we might need to get a new one.” Ngaire let the door go and sat back on her heels. “I don’t think the tapes going to be any use to anyone now.”
“Move aside, I’ve got this,” Deb said, brandishing a screwdriver.
She unscrewed the box for the unit to expose the video and the tape spooled uselessly out one side.
“We could try rewinding it back into place.”
Ngaire laughed. “Given the quality was terrible to begin with, I don’t know that will work out too well. Still, give it a try if you want to. It beats scanning documents into the archive file.”
“What have you done?” Willis stood in the doorway, his mouth turned down in dismay. “Oh, my god, tell me you didn’t unplug it while it was still recording.”
Ngaire happily obliged, ending with, “except we did. Or rather, I did. I thought it was safer trying to save the tape before the machine ate it all alive.”
“What did Gascoigne want?” Deb asked with her usual subtlety. “Are you off the case?”
“You wish,” Redding said, walking into the room. “Can women not be trusted with technology at all?”
“Call that technology?” Ngaire answered, flipping him the bird. “That equipment was old school before I even thought of applying for a job.”
“Relax, Gary,” Redding said, walking over to where Willis was laid out on the floor. “It’s just a machine.”
“I’ve got the DVD out. Give me a minute, and I’ll see if we managed to save anything of the original.” Willis plugged it into the computer and waited for it to bring up options. After selecting the media player, he stood back, his lip between his teeth.
The same grainy images that had displayed on the video player started to broadcast on the smaller computer monitor.
“What time stamp did you have for the suspects?” Willis asked.
“Victim,” Ngaire said. “And it was about four minutes in, then again at eight minutes.”
Willis scrolled the footage forward until Ngaire shouted, “There.”
The four of them crowded around the screen, looking at the tiny, snowy figures from almost four decades earlier. Sam Andie looked like a backing singer in a rap video while Shannon Rickards resembled a businessman who’d dressed down to casual wear for the day.
“It’s definitely them,” Deb said. “Alive and well and with no traces of being hit over the head with a baton.”
“That exit comes out onto the main road,” Redding said, pointing. “I wonder how long the council keeps the traffic footage from the CCTV.”
“Did they even have it back then?” Deb said. “Look, there they go again, leaving.”
Ngaire sat back and closed her eyes, trying to sort it out in her mind. “If she was arrested, then there should be some kind of record, shouldn’t there?”
“Not necessarily,” Redding countered. “If she was banged up for public disorder and released without charge, then it’s possible that nothing was entered beyond the station log. I don’t know where that would be now.”
“Shannon said she left the game and that Sam was injured,” Ngaire said. “But now we have footage of them both alive and well and departing in each other’s company. At the very least, it warrants another interview with Shannon Rickards.”
“And not in her lounge this time,” Deb said. “Not with her dad hanging around to cut things off when they get uncomfortable. This time she can bloody well come into the station.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Shannon Rickards, I’m Detective Ngaire Blakes, and this is Detective Deb Weedon. I’m speaking to you in connection with the suspected murder of Sam Andie, on or about the 15th of August 1981.”
“I know who you both are,” Shannon answered, her wry expression undercut by a wheeze in her voice. “I may be older than you, but I’m not so senile that I’d forget within a few days.”
Ngaire shot Deb a look, raised
eyebrows, should we? Deb gave a small, tight nod in return. Do it.
“You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to make any statement. Anything you say will be recorded and may be given as evidence in court. You have the right to speak to a lawyer without delay and in private before deciding whether to answer any questions. We have a list of lawyers you may consult, available via legal aid. Do you understand these rights?”
Shannon glared across the table at the two of them, her mouth set in a thin line. “You said this was voluntary.”
“This is as much for your protection as ours,” Weedon said. “If we don’t caution you, then you might not understand your rights.”
“If I wanted to walk out of here, right now,” Shannon asked. “Would that be possible?”
Ngaire and Deb exchanged a glance, then Ngaire cleared her throat and said, “We’d prefer that you didn’t do that, Ms. Rickards. We’re investigating the murder of someone close to you, and it’s in Sam’s best interests that you stay.”
Shannon snorted and issued a harsh caw of laughter. “Yeah, I’d say Sam’s best interests went by the wayside a long time ago, wouldn’t you?” She leaned forward in her chair, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her clasped hands. “Fine, whatever. Let’s go.”
“Could you explain to us the last time that you saw Sam Andie?” Ngaire asked.
“I’ve already told you,” Shannon said, exasperation already present in her tone. “We were at the First Test Match of the Springbok Tour together, and then I was arrested. That was on the 15th of August 1981, as you said in your caution. I never saw him again after that.”
“We have a photograph from that test match. Would you be able to look and identify the people in this photo?” Ngaire slid across a still from the DVD that Gary Willis had managed to create, accompanied by a large amount of swearing, the night before.
Shannon stared at Ngaire for a long moment, moving her right hand down to place a fingertip on the photo and pull it closer. A small frown appeared before she looked down. A flush began to travel up Shannon’s chest, crawling up the side of her neck with crimson inked fingers before it swiped long blush lines across her face.
“This is me and Sam at the match.” Shannon picked it up with careful fingers, holding the picture by the edges as though it were precious. She tipped it back and forth beneath the hard, fluorescent light, letting it spill at different angles across the matt surface. “It’s early on,” she added and placed the photograph gently back down on the table, “well before the match got started.”
“How can you tell that?” Ngaire asked.
Shannon tapped a finger near the edge where Sam’s image appeared. “Sam doesn’t have the rucksack yet.”
“When did he get the rucksack?”
“He brought it with him but left it in our mate Hollis’ car. When we realized, we headed back, but we had to find him first. It probably took maybe twenty minutes to remember, then double that to get it back.”
“Did you leave the grounds during that time?”
Shannon looked at Ngaire with an expression that suggested she thought Ngaire was either dimwitted or ill. “Of course, we left the grounds. Hollis didn’t have his car parked in center field.”
She looked down at the photo again, her eyes devouring the image and locking it away, then pushed it back toward Ngaire.
“We weren’t gone for long, though. By the time we got back, the protest was getting into high-gear. Some members had managed to invade the pitch, and the crowd was chucking cinder blocks at our heads.” She whisked a hand above her head.
“Who was Hollis?” Deb interjected when Ngaire opened her mouth to ask the next question. “You said he was a friend? How close?”
Shannon shrugged. “We hung around with him a lot at the time, and I haven’t seen him since at all. That’s how close.” She sighed and shook her head. “Not as close as anyone wants to believe.”
“Was he more your friend, or Sam’s?”
“Sam’s, I guess. He introduced me to Hollis initially, anyway.” Shannon closed her eyes for a second, then blinked and looked around surprised as though expecting the setting to be changed. “I spent more time with Hollis than Sam did while we were together. We got on like a house on fire.”
Ngaire noted the hurt look in Shannon’s eyes. Kicked two teenage boys to death while they were pleading and screaming?
“What were the police doing at the time you returned?” Ngaire asked.
“They were giving us protesters the bum’s rush, trying to force us out of the grounds.” Shannon laughed and rubbed the side of her forehead. “We only got into the stadium because the ticket collector seemed enamored with Sam.” A smile crept onto the corners of her mouth, then dropped away. “Sam could turn on the charm when he wanted to. That poor kid they put on the gate was no match for him in full offensive.”
“Did Sam often dress in drag?”
The wince on Shannon’s face was large enough that Ngaire was sure even the tiny camera in the corner of the room picked it up nice and large. She opened her mouth to apologize but stopped when Deb pinched her elbow. Let it go.
“Sam was exploring dressing in the gender that he identified with more, the same as I did,” Shannon said, picking the words carefully. To Ngaire’s ear, they sounded more tentative than a girlfriend would normally have to use. “He looked stunning dressed as a woman.”
Her lower lip protruded in a small pout. Ngaire tipped her head forward in understanding. She could spend her whole income on clothes and makeup and never compete on the same playing field as Sam, who hadn’t even started off there in the beginning.
“When we first met, he wasn’t dressing up that way, and he desperately wanted to pay for the operations to alter him for good.” She issued a small laugh tinged with bitterness at that one. “I told him to just go ahead and try it. Neither one of us had the money, nor any prospect of saving that much soon. I could barely afford to keep my own place on full hours at the shop, and Sam only worked part-time in a supermarket.”
Deb caught Ngaire’s glance and raised her eyebrows. Now? Ngaire shook her head. They could graduate to the unexpected bank balance in Sam’s account later.
“Once he started dressing and putting on makeup, I think the desire to get the surgery passed,” Shannon said. “Or, at least he put it on a back burner for later.” She hunched her shoulders forward defensively. “If you looked that good with a simple coat of Farmers’ makeup then you didn’t need to spend tens of thousands on an operation,” she said, her voice dripping with the juice from sour grapes.
Bob Rickards paused at the automatic door. In the short journey from the car, he’d lost his breath. He stood, trying to get it back, feeling like someone else was stealing it straight from his lungs.
Too late, he remembered the smoke. The smell of it was now so familiar that he scarcely noticed it in the air. Without that twigging his brain, he’d forgotten that he should move inside as soon as possible.
Not that there appeared to be much difference, not to him, anyway. Inside the building, his eyes stung the same, his breathing just as fraught with difficulty. The steps between the entrance and the service desk stretched out like a flooding river.
The distance to walk to the visitor chairs was much shorter. Bob took that option, feeling a cough building in his chest. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket before it could get started. Of late, his coughs had often brought things up that were better not shared in public.
Ann would have been dismayed at the state of the handkerchief in his hand. Though the edge was still double sewn and turned over for extra thickness, holes frayed along its length. The fabric had worn so thin from multiple uses and even more washes that the light flowed freely through. Like tissue paper, except once it was used it would go back into his pocket to be chucked in the washing machine and used again.
Of course, his late wife, Ann would have been dismayed by a lot of things in Bob’s life. The
daughter that remained his pride and joy fifty-four years after he’d first clapped eyes on her would no doubt top the list.
“It’s unnatural,” she would repeat like a mantra to ward off evil every time Bob tried to broach the subject. As though a longing that had been part of Shannon’s soul since birth was a bad habit that she’d picked up.
A tomboy from the cradle but Ann insisted that dressing up like a boy was one thing and becoming one quite another. To Bob, they were extensions along the same continuum, a river flowing along an established course.
He’d funded her. That was his folly. If he hadn’t done that, then it was possible that none of the rest of it would have happened. One step too far, that’s what the lawyer had said. One. Step. Too. Far.
Concerned eyes looked at him from behind the glassed-in counter, but Bob just waved them back to whatever they’d been doing. He knew the course of his disease, understood the progress. It would easily be another fifteen to twenty minutes before Bob regained his breath enough to speak. He pulled his blue inhaler out and squeezed off two puffs, holding them in for as long as could.
If he concentrated at night, Bob could feel the tissue in his lungs morphing and expanding. The tubes that once had been filled with air, now hampered with the overgrowth of flesh.
A fat person, inside-out. When the doctor first explained the progress of his heart and lung disease, that was the image that came into his mind. Nothing that Bob had read or heard since then was enough to push that out in favor of another.
Fat lungs, fat heart. Both of them sitting around and getting bigger instead of working their ass off to stay trim. Ann would laugh her head off if she knew what finally caught up with him. All Bob had ever wanted was a nice and peaceful life. Never standing up when he could sit back and let things develop without his involvement. Preferring the sofa and the TV to tell him about the world, rather than venturing out into it more often.
His disease suited him the same way Ann’s had suited her. Cancer ate the flesh from her bones, revealing an interconnection of sharp angles like razor blades and scythes.
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 10
