by Alan Carter
‘What are you waiting for? It’s pretty much finished.’
‘Indeed. I’ve got a couple of Wellington’s best interior designers mapping out their ideas as we speak. I’m thinking a month or so and it’ll be all systems go.’
‘Lovely.’
We head down a familiar corridor with tiled rooms and plenty of wiring. ‘You’ll have already guessed this is the medical wing. It’ll be state-of-the-art. Better equipped than your local hospital I believe.’
If we’re talking the one in Blenheim, that’s not saying much. Still I offer my coolly impressed face. ‘This adjoining room with the drainage channels and the replaced tiles?’
‘A morgue.’
‘Why?’
‘In the event of a pandemic or nuclear or biological incident we need to be able to perform post-mortems to ascertain accurate cause of death so we can take appropriate measures.’
‘We?’
‘Me. And my team.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ I acknowledge. ‘And where’s the panic room?’
‘I prefer to call it a safe room.’ Bryant nods at Cunningham who presses one of the tiles. On the opposite wall a panel, maybe a metre squared, slides open. ‘Be my guest.’
I crouch down and poke my head through the hole. Simply another room, perhaps a little larger than the proposed morgue. ‘That’s it?’
‘Heavily reinforced and practically undetectable. In time it will be adequately furnished and resourced.’
‘Who or what are you thinking of panicking about?’
He shrugs. ‘Sundry evildoers.’
‘People with Ebola or some such?’ I venture. ‘Thirsty or hungry peasants trying to survive a nuclear winter? That kind of thing?’
‘You get the drift. It isn’t illegal. I could have my Wellington designers create a perfect reproduction of a Spanish Inquisition torture dungeon and that would be entirely my business.’
‘As long as you don’t put it to use.’
‘No immediate plans, I assure you.’
I stand up and dust myself off. The panel slides shut again. ‘Yeah, fascinating but tell me about the replaced tiles.’ I crouch down by one and scrape the grout with my fingernail. ‘They’re what this is all about.’
The door closes behind us. The goons are outside. It’s just me, Bryant and Cunningham in a white tiled room with great drainage.
‘It’s the minor details that do it. Every time. Right, Nick?’
‘Right.’
He shakes his head. Cunningham takes a step forward and I brace myself. The increased stress is playing havoc with the alien lump inside my brain. Vision blurring. Nausea rising. A pounding at the base of my skull. Is it my imagination or is there something trickling out of that keyhole wound under the dressing behind my ear?
‘Mr Chester, are you okay?’
I steady myself. Palm on the cool tiles. ‘Fine.’
Cunningham has his hand on my shoulder, he’s staring into my eyes. Seems amused. ‘You don’t look well, Nick. All this time, I wondered. Mortality, it’s a powerful thing, right?’ He’s pressing me down to the floor. ‘Take the weight off, buddy. Time to relax.’
A sigh from Bryant. ‘Do it. Let’s get this over with.’
Brandon reaches into his pocket.
31.
‘Gelder’s missing mobiles.’ Maxwell is impressed. ‘Nice one.’
The wife, Marnie, had them all along. Unbeknownst to her, Gelder had secreted them in her car taped to the underside of the driver’s seat, battery and SIM removed. He’d cloned the footage onto both phones and left a third decoy phone, containing the offending material, up at the shack to try and throw LeBlanc off the scent. The decoy was among LeBlanc’s stashed possessions when they disappeared him. He’d thought it was mission accomplished but Cunningham was more thorough and hunted down the copies.
‘You have something that precious, you want to hold it close, right?’ Cunningham had been very pleased with himself.
‘So why’d they give them to you?’ wonders Maxwell.
‘Let’s watch and learn.’
We retire to Maxwell’s office with the door closed. A tech has downloaded the photo and video contents of the phone onto a thumb drive and we press play.
‘What’s down here?’
The voice is Gelder’s, behind the wobbly vision heading down that same corridor at Māhana towards the medical rooms. Blank walls yet to be plastered. Loose wires. Wrappings and building debris on the floor.
A voice off. ‘Room one-oh-one, man. Your worst nightmare.’ LeBlanc’s Cajun drawl.
Gelder. ‘One-oh-one? Fuck’s that?’
LeBlanc steps into vision now. Turning the door handle and waving Gelder inside. ‘You never read Orwell? After you, ignoramus.’
‘Got any more of that blow?’
‘Swap you.’ The biggest spliff in Christendom appears on screen in exchange for a half-drunk bottle of Wild Turkey.
Inside the room. Acres of white tiling. Gelder’s voice again. ‘Call this scary? My auntie’s front room is scarier. Doilies everywhere.’
‘Look there.’
The phone camera tilts, bounces around and settles on shiny steel rings embedded into the tiled wall. ‘The extra wide pipes and drains you put in today, Brucie? That’s the reason.’
‘Not with you, brother.’
A giggle. ‘Neither are they. Yet.’
‘What?’
‘The dusky maidens. Jewels of the South Seas. Call them what you will.’
‘You for real?’
‘Oh man, once you get the taste for it, there’s nothing better. We’re gonna make us some warrior babies for the Rapture.’
‘Fuck you on about?’
‘But for disposals, well, I could have told them. You need abattoir drains for that shit but they wouldn’t listen to the likes of me.’
‘What?’
‘Ignore me, Brucie bro. I’m drunk.’
The video closes in on the drainage channel. Follows it to the outlet at the far end. Zooms in on a clump of dark hair.
‘What you doing, Brucie?’
‘Nothin’. This place gives me the creeps. You’re one crazy motherfucker, Georges. Let’s go and finish that whiskey somewhere.’
‘We’re brothers, right, Brucie? I can trust you?’
‘You got me the job, mate. I owe you.’
‘That’s right, man. I need to piss.’ And he unzips and does so right there in the drainage channel.
‘Gross,’ says Gelder. ‘No class, you Yanks.’
‘Pussy.’ LeBlanc zips up. ‘Easy. Once you’re done you just turn on the hose and flush it all away.’
And that’s what he does.
The line is that the steel rings were LeBlanc’s idea. He had them installed and as soon as Cunningham found out about it he had them taken out. We’ve invited Brandon into the town hall to explain himself. Maxwell lets me do the running but it’s hard to get a word in edgeways.
‘Like your man Gelder said, Georgie was one crazy motherfucker. He got a taste for abusing migrant women at that abattoir he worked at in Nogales. Treated them like just another piece of meat. Kept them shackled, hosed them down. Disgusting. When one of the union guys confronted him about it he killed him.’ Cunningham shakes his head in disbelief at how low humanity can go. ‘Loco, huh?’
‘But still you hired him.’
‘Yeah, but we didn’t know he was like that until too late. He had plans for your Miss Latifa too.’
He knows that’s guaranteed to rile me, press my buttons. ‘You’re the only one who’s showed that kind of interest in her. Maybe you’re projecting?’
‘Harmless. Pure gamesmanship on my part. To stir things up.’
It’s bullcrap. Nobody arranges to have steel rings installed in their employer’s new house and hopes to keep it a secret. ‘I’m not convinced.’
A shrug. ‘Prove otherwise. Once I confronted Georges about the rings, he knew he was in trouble. That’s
why he went after Gelder. He remembered enough from his night on the booze to know there was footage that might make him look bad. He went too far and involved my nephew in his sickness.’
‘Hell of a place to be raising your nephew, among all those sick violent men and their guns, far from home.’
‘Plenty of men and guns back home too.’ Cunningham picks out a spot on the wall behind me. ‘His mama’s hooked on crack and pappy’s in the hospice waiting for lung cancer to finish him. I thought I could save Melvyn.’
And in his own twisted way, maybe he really did think that. ‘But Georges took the boy under his wing?’
‘We realised LeBlanc was a problem and we intended to deal with him. Pity he ran away and fell down that mineshaft.’
LeBlanc was in no state to run anywhere. ‘Which one?’
‘Forget. Sorry.’
‘You should have left him in our custody. That was our job.’
‘What? With those two mad Māori? They were out of your league, Chester. You had no control over them. Anyway, by bringing Georges to your country we contributed to the problem. It was our duty to end it.’
He’s making this up as he goes along. Couldn’t give a shit what we think. ‘Very noble.’
‘You’re welcome.’
There’s more to it. There has to be. ‘It wraps things up pretty neatly and keeps us away from Bryant.’
‘If you say so.’
‘The clump of hair in the outlet pipe. The blocked drains. Did LeBlanc test the facilities for himself?’
A shrug. ‘You might need to look at your missing persons files.’
‘We might need to dig up Māhana,’ says Maxwell.
‘Be my guest.’
‘Don’t need to. I’ll bring a warrant.’
I can see from the expression on Maxwell’s face that’s well and truly on the agenda. ‘On the recording LeBlanc suggests others knew about it.’ I press play as a reminder. But for disposals well, I could have told them. You need abattoir drains for that shit but they wouldn’t listen to the likes of me. ‘Who’s them and they? What “shit” is he talking about?’
‘His own weird shit. Who listens to anybody like him?’
‘Warrior babies for the Rapture? I’ve heard as much from you too.’
‘They’re only words. Don’t worry about what people say. Look at what they do.’
‘But the big wide abattoir drains are in there now. Courtesy of Bruce Gelder. It’s done.’
‘Some plumbing. Arranged and paid for in cash by Georgie for his own crazy reasons. He’s no longer anyone’s problem so what’s the worry?’
‘Still seems extreme, doesn’t it?’ I venture. ‘If LeBlanc really was a rogue male, then all you had to do to fulfil your moral responsibility was to hand him over and allow justice to run its course.’
‘Maybe we were hasty but our intentions were good.’
‘And maybe you didn’t want him shooting his mouth off about what he knew.’
‘As a former law enforcement officer, I understand your scepticism. It goes with the job.’
That’s about as far as it goes with him today. Night has fallen and I need to be getting home. Maxwell claps me on the shoulder as I’m leaving. ‘You’ve done well, Nick. Wrapping things up nicely.’
‘Too nicely. I think LeBlanc knew something that got him killed. Him being a bad guy was convenient in the end but he was originally hired for his badness.’
‘The useful idiot. Where would we be without them?’
At home, the last of the donated casseroles awaits me in the microwave.
‘What are we going to do when these run out?’
‘Have another crisis?’ offers Vanessa. ‘Stock up on frozen pre-cooked?’
She’s moving more easily although still obliged to pop strong painkillers every now and again. A quiet resolve has set in. Vanessa intends to get through this. Somebody has to.
‘Any gossip?’ I ask, after giving her mine.
‘Jan and Mim dropped Paulie off today. Jan seemed a bit cool and distant. Did you upset her in any way?’
‘I just mentioned that we thought, from Mim, that they used to live in Nelson. They didn’t. Apparently it was Greymouth.’
‘Yeah, I remember you saying. Funny thing for her to get huffy about.’
‘Takes all sorts.’
Vanessa sniffs. ‘Another Top of the South feud in the making no doubt. Came from nowhere, goes nowhere. Ten years later you’re still bricking each other’s windows and can’t remember why.’
‘That’s a universal, love. Used to happen in Hylton Castle all the time. Not Fulwell, though. We’re more civilised.’
‘My arse.’
‘G’night.’ Paulie gives us a wave on the way from the bathroom. He’s hardly acknowledged my existence since I got home.
‘Something I said?’
Vanessa shushes me. ‘He and Mim had a falling out. Same reason Jan’s acting funny.’
‘So he thinks I’m to blame?’
‘It’ll blow over. Leave it.’
While Vanessa says a proper goodnight to Paulie, I polish off the casserole and check my unread messages. A whole bunch more from Nigel Watson wanting to know if I’ve confronted Keegan and Ford with his insinuations. The man needs a good talking to, face-to-face. So far those west coast cases are not my concern and he shouldn’t be using me to fight his battles. I can conjure up plenty of my own feuds without being drawn into other people’s, thank you very much.
I send him a reply text to that effect:
It’s not my fight, leave me out of it
Another one comes through. A photo this time. Three men in a pub: Darren Robertson, one man I don’t recognise, face half-obscured by a raised hand holding a glass. Another man I do recognise – Karel Havelka.
A message.
Check out the silver chain on the Czech’s neck
32.
‘Interested now?’
Nigel Watson offered to come over to Havelock but I insisted on making the trip to Nelson. I probably shouldn’t be driving but this head thing comes and goes and, what the hell, you only live once. We’re on a park picnic bench by the Riverside swimming pool overlooking the dancing current of the Maitai. Ducks catch the rapids and joggers pound the path behind us. It’s a cool sunny day. There’s takeaway coffees on the go in plastic-coated cardboard cups – more landfill in the making.
‘Where did the photo come from?’ I tossed and turned all night much to Vanessa’s disgust. This feels like I’m being played.
‘Ollie Harper, local reporter down that way.’
‘You’ll be his unnamed police source, I’m guessing.’
‘No comment.’
‘Where did he get the photo?’
‘I prodded him in the right direction. Tipped off by you, I asked him to see if he could find anything linking Havelka to events over that way.’
I bring the pic back up on my phone. Enlarge it with my fingertips. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘Social pages of the Greymouth Gazette six years ago. Top of the South Volunteer of the Year awards, held in Nelson. This is about a month before the Lucy McLernon murder. Havelka was nominated for his work as a boxing coach with a youth club for troubled teens in Blenheim. The newly established girls boxing team was his “groundbreaking initiative”.’ The latter delivered with finger quotes. ‘Robertson gave a lot of his spare time preparing and delivering food parcels to destitute and dysfunctional single-parent households on the bleak west coast. More vulnerable teenage girls. Spot a pattern here? The other bloke? Some do-gooder from Nelson or somewhere. But you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?’
‘Havelka was involved with Robertson in the rape and murder of Lucy McLernon?’
‘That chain around his neck is a ringer for the one at the crime scene. Bet it matches his DNA too now we have his corpse.’ Watson prods the photo. ‘And they’re in each other’s company just a few weeks before the deed. Partners in crime.’ He br
ings some pics up on his iPad. ‘Did some background digging on your Havelka case while you’ve had other things on your mind. Lucy McLernon in her prime. Lovely, eh?’ He swipes another pic into the frame. ‘Havelka’s daughter, Lisbet. Could be twins, you reckon? Maybe he was able to project some of his domestic fantasies on to poor Lucy.’
‘You and Morgan Hopu been talking?’
‘Funny you should mention it. He got in touch, out of the blue.’
Who’s playing who here? ‘How did he know you’d be interested?’
‘I guess he’s a finger-on-the-pulse kinda guy. Makes it his business. He’d made the same enquiry to the journo Ollie Harper – any Havelka links to Robertson – and Ollie put him on to me.’ Watson smirks. ‘A confluence of interests.’
‘So whoever did Robertson on that beach did Havelka too. Same fashion. Same motive. That’s your theory?’
‘Makes sense.’
‘And Hopu insists he had nothing to do with it. Somebody else got in first.’
‘I’m inclined to believe the sly old rascal. He told me he’d been looking forward to doing Havelka. He was spittin’ about not getting the pleasure.’
‘So who are we looking at?’
Watson bats away an overattentive duck with his foot. ‘Fuck knows, but commanders Keegan and Ford have some explaining to do about tampering with the Robertson/McLernon evidence. Don’t you think?’
I can’t argue with that any more.
Nigel Watson doesn’t get off scot-free. That’s why I insisted on coming to Nelson. I’ll set the meeting up because odds-on they wouldn’t give him the time of day. Watson can front up to Keegan and Ford himself and I’ll tag along for the ride.
‘I’ve got my pension to think about,’ he grumbles.
‘Haven’t we all. Man up, mate. You can’t keep getting other people to fight your proxy wars.’
Ford is none too pleased to be summoned in from his Happy Valley home to explain himself to a bottom-feeder like Watson and it’s written all over his face. Keegan on the other hand seems mildly amused but is no doubt storing it away in her Day of Reckoning ledger. This could backfire badly, for both Nigel and me.
‘Nick and Nigel. Good to see you guys hitting it off.’ We’re sitting in Keegan’s office in Nelson with its third-floor view out over the streets and trees, the botanic gardens, river and the Centre of New Zealand monument atop a nearby hill. She flips her hand in an over-to-you gesture. ‘Something you want to say about these west coast cases?’
