Doom Creek

by Alan Carter

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask through the window.

  ‘Traffic calming.’

  The logo on the vehicles and work uniforms belongs to one of the many private companies subcontracting for the council and roads ministry. ‘Seriously? This is Wakamarina Road. It doesn’t get any calmer than this.’

  ‘Just doing my job.’ She gestures at a bloke talking on a mobile. ‘Feel free to speak to the boss.’

  ‘Back in a sec,’ I say to Latifa and she turns off the engine. The boss notices my uniform and finishes his call. We shake hands. ‘Must be a good phone, you don’t normally get a signal here.’

  ‘Great isn’t it?’ He’s as bouncy as Tigger. ‘The folk in the Lodge put up their own relay tower. Sweet as.’

  Yeah. Sweet as. ‘And did they request the traffic calming?’

  ‘Word from on high, priority.’ Nose tap. ‘They must be well-connected.’

  ‘On high where, ministry? Council?’

  ‘Both. Fast-tracked apparently.’

  ‘It’s a joke. No way this is a priority. Half of the South Island roads closed down due to earthquake, the rest potholed from overuse, and this is what they put you on?’

  ‘Ours not to reason why. Money talks, eh?’

  ‘Rationale?’

  He shrugs. ‘That’s a nasty sharp bend just there, maybe it’s encouraging people to slow down.’

  ‘That can be done with a sign. It looks to me like the road is being narrowed down to a single lane.’

  ‘And a speed bump.’

  ‘Unreal.’

  ‘Should be finished by tomorrow, or day after, all things being equal. Anything else I can do for you, officer?’

  Latifa is fuming when I get back in. ‘Typical. Money talks? Too right it does. Maybe they should try spending some of their own.’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Money. Getting us ratepayers and taxpayers to cough up for whatever it is they’re planning.’

  Yes, that’s annoying. But my mind is jumping from Charlie Evans’ reports of what sounded like automatic or semi-automatic gun fire to a scenario where, with a strategically narrowed road, we’ll have even more difficulty getting a tactical assault vehicle in there. Methinks they’re preparing for a siege.

  And who’s going to listen to a crackpot conspiracy theory like that?

  10.

  There’s nothing we can do about the Lodge. All they’re doing is home renovations, basic infrastructure: a firing range bulldozed into Charlie Evans’ property, a mobile phone signal booster tower, reinforced gates, and the latest as I drove past this morning, two vicious-sounding bull mastiffs chained to the gateposts. None of it criminally illegal – Charlie would have to argue the boundary change in a civil court – and some of it even council sanctioned, courtesy of the ratepayers. I feel like one of those tiny neighbouring countries watching as China built those military bases out of reclaimed sand in the South China Sea. Gaslighted at first by accusations of paranoia, and then left only with the cold comfort of being able to say “see, told you so” once it all goes pear-shaped. But so what if those nutcases believe in the Second Coming and want to turn their property into Fort Knox? They can stay behind their tall gates, play with their guns, read their bibles and we can all get on with living in the real world. Except I just know that one day soon they will surely drag the rest of us into their delusion. Until then I’ve got stuff to do.

  Like the mysteries of Karel Havelka, Gelder’s plumbing jobs, and whether or not I was involved in the latter’s death. Gemma will be coming back at me soon if my DNA is connected to the victim. Do I come clean about my lost hours and trust all to the investigative process or batten down the hatches? At the office, Jessie James from the Journal is patiently waiting outside on her Vespa, scrolling through her phone.

  ‘Morning,’ she says.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Funny, ha-ha. I’m not after anything for the murder in the Four Square, somebody from Christchurch is on that, like it’s too big a story for little me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what’s happening with that body you found up at Butchers?’

  ‘Nothing much. You need to talk to the guy in charge of the investigation. He’s down at the town hall.’

  ‘DSS Maxwell just puts me through to the media department and they seem to have a policy of only ever speaking to the media when it suits them.’

  ‘I can’t help you, sorry.’

  An early wintry blast sweeps up the main drag. Jessie zips her puffer jacket up tighter and adjusts her specs. ‘Is it true there was bad blood between you and the Four Square victim, Gelder?’

  ‘I thought you were interested in the Butchers Flat story?’

  ‘I’m interested in everything that happens around here. That’s why I’m a small-town reporter with no plans to go anywhere fast.’

  ‘Can’t help you. Maybe try the police media department?’

  ‘Nick.’

  ‘Sergeant Chester to you.’

  ‘Jeez, you’re not easy to be friends with.’

  This from somebody who tried to fry my career just eighteen months ago. ‘Jessie, I really can’t help you. Both investigations are ongoing and of a sensitive nature. You need to speak to the people duly authorised to talk to you. Meanwhile I need to get on with my day.’

  ‘Heard anything about those new people at the Lodge? A Doomsday sect they reckon. Like Jonestown or Waco.’

  ‘No, nothing. But feel free to look into them if you want. We only have so many resources.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A reaction. Finally. You don’t like them, do you?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge they have not committed any illegal acts.’

  ‘Good enough for me.’ She nods. ‘I can usually count on your grudges to deliver me a story.’ She revs up the Vespa. ‘Thanks, Nick.’

  Steve is out on traffic duty. Flick on the kettle and drop a bag into a mug. It was probably wrong to set Jessie James sniffing after Cunningham and his cronies. Maybe even negligent, they’re shaping up as a dangerous and ruthless bunch. I call her mobile but she’s out of range. Leave a message, she says. How to put this?

  ‘Jessie those guys at the Lodge shouldn’t be messed with. Feel free to look into them online or whatever. But you shouldn’t approach them personally. Okay?’

  She calls back a few minutes later as I’m squeezing my teabag out. ‘They really have got you wound up, haven’t they? Tell me more.’

  ‘I can’t. But trust me, this isn’t a joke and they don’t play nicely.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, voice sober. ‘Noted. Thanks.’

  Duly warned, maybe she’ll use her journalistic skills to uncover something we might not otherwise have found. That reminds me, Keegan said she’d find out what the spooks had to say about Cunningham.

  ‘Somebody’s getting back to me later today; an old colleague from Porirua. She went into SIS until she decided motherhood was more useful to society than being a secret agent.’

  ‘Whatever you can get would be great.’ I fill her in on the latest, including the traffic-calming, and lay out my conspiracy theory for inspection.

  ‘Bit far-fetched don’t you think?’

  ‘I’d love to be wrong about them.’

  ‘Generally I trust your instincts, Nick. However cockeyed. If there’s any substance to this we’ll act on it, believe me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Meanwhile that Havelka execution. I was telling you it reminded me of something?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You’ve heard of the Whakakitenga Community?’

  ‘West coast religious sect? Kind of Amish meets the Taliban. Been some scandals over the years?’

  ‘That’s the one. Loosely translated from te reo it’s something about prophecy and revelations apparently. Mainly run and populated by white dudes. I investigated a homicide over that way a few years ago, five, six maybe. A Wellington-based mum had abandoned her fam
ily and run off to join the sect the previous year. She was found raped and stabbed in a motel in Westport.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Havelka?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Six months later, the motel owner was killed, kneeling with an execution-style shooting in the back of the head. Nelson detectives caught the case. No arrests in either. I’ll send you the database access codes and references for both homicides so you can check them out.’

  This sounds even flimsier than my conspiracy theory. ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘Who knows? The timing and MO are strikingly similar. What do you think?’

  Gift horses, who am I to be choosy? ‘I’ll follow it up. Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure. All of this could be at your fingertips if you joined us over here, Nick.’

  Sometimes she has a way of saying things that can heat the blood. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  Shuffling and tapping noises at her end. ‘Just got a text message from my Porirua friend. She’s cancelled coffee. Looks like there’ll be no news on your crackpots today. Watch this space.’

  By now my tea has gone lukewarm. Sip, grimace, and open up the restricted database files on the west coast murders Keegan mentioned. Seven years ago, thirty-one-year-old Lucy McLernon, from a well-to-do Wellington family, had left her lawyer husband and their one-year-old son to join the Whakakitenga Community on the north-west coast of the South Island. Just over twelve months later she was found by housekeeping staff on a blood-soaked bed in Pine Lodge motel in Westport, eighty-odd kilometres away. Subsequent tests would show she’d been raped and stabbed. The wounds were notably vicious, a virtual gutting according to the pathologist. Lucy had run away from Whakakitenga six weeks earlier alleging instances of abuse. Whakakitenga had, in turn, alleged that she had been expelled for mental instability. For some reason she hadn’t returned to her family in Welly’s Oriental Bay. A local Westport GP confirmed that Lucy presented with bipolar symptoms, had been taking prescription anti-psychosis medication, and was due to see a psychiatric specialist in Christchurch the week following her murder. No arrests to date.

  Six months later: winter in Westport and storms whipping the ocean. While photographing a spectacular sunset on Carters Beach, an Israeli tourist stumbled across the half-buried body of a middle-aged man. The unusually high tides had washed away the sand. He was facedown and there was a wound in the back of his head. The tourist, doing his OE gap year after army service, knew he was looking at a murder. The victim was Darren Robertson, manager of the Pine Lodge motel, reported missing by his wife two days earlier. From entry and exit angles the pathologist posited an execution scenario with Darren kneeling, shot, and then covered with sand where he lay. No arrests to date.

  What connects the two Westport murders apart from coincidence? What, if anything, might connect Robertson’s murder to Havelka’s, apart from method? Stories from the past, other times and places. It all feels like a diverting sidetrack. Instead I call the number that was left on the bat savers’ whiteboard and arrange to meet the volunteers coordinator at Pelorus Bridge for lunch. It more directly concerns Havelka, his pastimes, and his associates. In the meantime, back to the list of plumbing jobs Bruce Gelder was doing in the weeks before his grisly death. Try as I might, nothing returns to me for that Monday night at his shack. I recall a hypnotist we consulted once in Blenheim to try and retrieve a lost memory. Are things that desperate yet?

  Dripping taps, burst pipes, wayward spas, tick them off. Nobody unduly pissed off with Gelder – sure he missed an appointment here and there but usually because he was tied up by a complication on an earlier job. He never overcharged his hours or fabricated unnecessary repairs. Some people found him personable, others could have done with less chat, and others more. Whatever got Gelder killed, I’m concluding, it wasn’t his plumbing work. My mobile goes. DSS Maxwell.

  ‘Reckon you could pop by for a chat, Nick?’

  ‘Sure. What’s up?’

  ‘See you in five. I’ll get the kettle on.’

  Walking into the town hall is like walking into the saloon in Dodge; if there’d been a piano it would have stopped playing. Eyes track me across the big room, up the steps to Maxwell’s backstage office. He and Gemma are waiting for me with a pot of tea, a plate of bikkies, and a printout of a forensics report.

  ‘White and none. That right?’ says Maxwell pouring.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Have a Ginger Kiss.’

  I take two. Might not be eating again for a while. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘Hoping you can shed light on something for us.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘What’s your skin doing under Bruce Gelder’s nails?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’s it?’ says Gemma. ‘Ah?’

  ‘The truth is, I don’t know. Or rather, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Tell me,’ says Maxwell.

  Okay, here goes. It was sunset and I had pulled into a gateway just beyond the Lodge to brood about Cunningham’s sucker punch and to fantasise about how it might have gone if, like Cher, I could turn back time. A few ciders in the Trout will do that. Maybe I shouldn’t even have been driving. I was in the family ute on my way home and when Gelder went by he didn’t realise it was me. And so, a safe distance behind, I followed. It was obvious where he was going and he had no business going up there on a Monday. His dredging days were weekends. Or maybe he had every right to go and potter in his shack. I couldn’t leave it alone though. For sure he was up to something.

  ‘So you had a bone to pick with him?’ says Gemma.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t intend to confront him.’

  ‘Yet you obviously did.’

  ‘Keep going, Nick,’ says Maxwell, effectively shushing Gemma.

  So I do. There’s a track to a logging site just back from his block. I went up there and sat and waited for him to leave. After half an hour it was fully dark. Headlights went by. He was gone. I went down to have a look around, see what he was up to. It’s a pretty basic place. No electricity or running water – apart from the river of course. A prefabricated shed, a camp fire, a pile of firewood and cleared trees. His dredging equipment, padlocked to a black beech.

  ‘You remember all this from that night?’ says Gemma, looking up from her notepad.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you don’t remember what happened?’

  ‘I’m getting to that.’

  They wait, and I continue. I had my torch. There were maps blu-tacked to the wall of the cabin: the river and the outline of where his claim lay. Photographs of the glory days: hard men with shovels and picks and a river full of detritus. A copy of Gold in a Tin Dish, the history of the Wakamarina gold rush, on an upturned milk crate next to a fold-out camp bed. A bar fridge with a few beers in the door, a tub of marge, some cheese going bluey-green. I can’t see what he’s come up here for, nothing surprises, what couldn’t wait? Maybe he left something behind from the weekend: a watch, a mobile, a set of keys. How can I remember this kind of detail but not what happened next? But from around nine p.m. on Monday to early the next morning is a blank.

  ‘Nothing?’ says Maxwell.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t even know how I got home.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ says Gemma.

  ‘Don’t blame you. I would too.’

  ‘Let’s try and work through it,’ says Maxwell. ‘To get your skin under his nails he had to come into contact with you. So you must have had an altercation of some sort.’

  ‘Must have.’

  ‘And if, as you claim, you have no memory of the rest of that evening then the altercation must have happened during that timeframe, perhaps at that location.’

  ‘Maybe. Probably.’

  ‘And you had injuries to your hands, knuckles,’ says Gemma. ‘Still not completely cleared I see.’

  I examine my hands. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not making this easy, Nick.’ Maxwell sighs. ‘We really
should arrest you or something.’

  ‘It’s your job,’ I concede.

  ‘We’ll need to go through your house,’ says Gemma. ‘Talk to Vanessa and your son.’

  ‘No.’

  Gemma looks at Maxwell but he’s giving nothing away. ‘Your wife has misled the investigation. She knows you weren’t home when you and she said you were. We could charge her.’

  ‘Keep them out of this. I lied to her about when I got back and she believed me. Do whatever you want with me.’

  ‘Boss?’ she says to Maxwell.

  ‘Get all this statemented officially. Get forensics up to Nick’s home and back to this shack of Gelder’s. How come we didn’t have that place done already?’

  Gemma reddens. ‘We did. But there was no sign of struggle. No significant traces of others. It must have been cleared up.’

  He looks at me. ‘Was that you?’

  ‘Might have been. Or it might have been him. Or the murderers. You said there were two, I seem to recall.’

  ‘So where did you keep Gelder during Tuesday?’

  ‘I didn’t keep him anywhere. My memory is intact from Tuesday morning. However Gelder ended up in that coldroom in the Four Square is nothing to do with me.’

  And that much he does believe. ‘We’ll have to suspend you until we can clear this up. I’ll inform Keegan. You and the family will have to go into a hotel until we’ve finished with your house. Meantime if you remember anything, call me.’ A shake of the head. ‘Nick, I really don’t need this.’

  Who would? ‘Can you make sure somebody feeds the animals and collects the eggs?’

  Suspended. That probably means I shouldn’t keep my appointment with the woman from the Pelorus Bridge bat savers. But I can go and have a pie anywhere I like, and the Pelorus café does good ones. It’s hard to choose between the venison or the wild pork and kumara but eventually the latter wins out plus a flat white. I’ve phoned Vanessa and alerted her to the latest developments and that we’re booked into the Havelock Motel.

  ‘Bloody hell, Nick. Are you going to jail or what?’

  ‘Don’t know. Hope not.’

  ‘Is there wi-fi at the motel? I need to be able to log on to the school system for marking.’