Only the Dead

by Ben Sanders

He hoped they didn’t wrap up early. It had been known to happen. He ran a quick search. There were more paperclips in another drawer. He matched one colour for colour with his stand-in pick, attached it to the stack of forms. He looked at the photographs: three shots, a stuttered time lapse that tracked about fifteen years. Their presence made him feel guilty, like he’d strayed inside the guy’s sentiments. Lock-picked past the hard exterior to this place of things dear.

  Twenty-seven minutes after seven. He moved around to the printer. It had managed about half the stack. He stopped it there and watched the scanned pages transmit through to his email, picked up the documents and tamped them square. Mistake: it skewed the original alignment. He couldn’t get the binder hole to line up.

  Twenty-eight minutes after seven. Feet in the corridor.

  He braced the open folder across his knees and held the loose papers in two hands and ground them onto the steel binder.

  Voices in the corridor. The filing cabinet drawer began to roll shut on its own accord. Murmur that sounded like McCarthy. Key-chime, and then the door handle turning.

  Devereaux just sat there blankly, the open folder across his knees. Sweet talking would be futile. He just waited for impact.

  It never came.

  The door cracked an inch. Hallway light slipped in, shy. Keys clacked and peeped around the edge of the frame. Bowen’s voice further along the corridor — a question — McCarthy’s reply from the other side of the door, terrifyingly clear. Footsteps as The Don moved away down the hallway to Bowen’s office.

  Devereaux let out held breath through ground teeth. He got the folder contents square and pulled the drawer back just before it closed, slotted the binder home. He realised he wouldn’t be able to relock it: a key was needed whether you wanted to open or close. Leaving it as he’d found it would mean repicking the lock.

  No time.

  No choice either: a clean scene was paramount. He knelt close and worked the paperclip, clenched teeth, focus split between the lock and the door.

  Six seconds. Seven. A frantic inverse break-in. McCarthy’s voice faint in the corridor, filtering from Bowen’s office.

  Fifteen seconds. This is madn—

  The pins aligned. The barrel twisted. He tried a drawer for certainty: locked.

  He stood up and rolled the chair back behind the desk and shut the photocopier down. He stepped across the room, reached around and cupped the keys to stop them ringing, then pulled the door and slipped into the corridor. A neat escape: tiptoed, like some dance move, heart in mouth.

  Canned food wasn’t going to cut it.

  Duvall ordered pizza for dinner, treated himself and had the thing delivered. He paid cash. The transaction almost cleared his wallet. It was a fitting analogy for his net worth: combined savings from the Baghdad work, plus his parents’ now-liquidated property, were fast declining. Bank statements didn’t make for happy reading. Somehow he’d reached the point where he had only two grand to his name. Either he made some money or he’d have to sell the house.

  He collected the laptop and his case folders and brought them through to the living room and sat cross-legged on the floor under a narrow tent of lamp-glow. A sitcom from a neighbouring unit reached him word-perfect. Ten years ago the intrusion might have pissed him off, but the Iraq work had reset his datum for tolerance: two or three times out of ten, Baghdad apartment noise meant an armed break-in. Regular exposure to danger had bolstered his lenience, tenfold. Any noise that didn’t imply kidnap was imminent, he could live with. So he blocked out the blare and focused on his files. He had reams’ worth of redacted witness testimony. Compiling it had been a nightmare. He interviewed bank employees after the October eight robbery. He assuaged suspicion with claims he was a police consultant. His PI licence made for enhanced veracity. People were very helpful. He ran a solid week’s worth of questioning. He canvassed the street following the armoured van robbery, got vague descriptions of gunmen and hyperbolised robbery recountals. All a waste. He had nothing tangible to pursue. The cars used had been stolen. Nobody even glimpsed a skin tone, let alone facial attributes. He tried searching for related crimes going back five or ten years, but robberies were too numerous and imprecisely documented. It was impossible to establish correlations. And Google only got you so far.

  He switched his attention to January thirty: his hypothesised botched witness protection job. His background on it ran light. He had three newspaper items, single-column pieces, a cumulative twelve inches of reportage. Details were scarce. He guessed a media block was in place — he’d worked a mid-’eighties kidnapping under similar circumstances. The exposition was bare bones, fleshed out with bold supposition: drugs/gang activity/organised crime. None of the victims was named, although all three pieces noted that both civilians and police staff had been killed. How hard would it be to fill in the blanks? He’d done doorman work at joints frequented by cops, he could probably gain some ground by questioning them directly. Bit of luck, he could even unearth some of his old contacts. ’Eighties policing had been a different flavour. Criminals and detectives had frequent social contact. Friday afternoon bar visits facilitated easy hobnobbing: he’d built a thick portfolio of people privy to unsavoury happenings. But that was twenty-five years ago. By now they’d be either dead or eaten by the system. Same was probably true for the other side of the equation. He stared at the computer screen. He had database subscriptions to births, deaths and marriages; credit ratings; vehicle ownership; but all they were doing was steadily draining his net worth.

  He rubbed his eyes. The print was ghosting double. He squinted in favour of finding his reading glasses in the box clutter.

  Maybe he was yet to exhaust Google. He fired up the search engine. He tried variations of ‘30 January shooting’ and ‘30 January murder’ and ‘30 January multiple homicide’. The system returned a page worth of hits. Most were regurgitations of what he had: verbatim reprints under a Guardian or New York Times or Weekend Australian header. He trawled the archive sites of the local publications that had filed the original pieces. He skimmed and sparked on a name: Robert Davis. He’d authored a three-inch Herald piece. He couldn’t think why it had tripped his recall. He checked his original hard copy, but his scissoring had excised the author’s name.

  He ran a search on Robert Davis. Links to archived news articles unfurled. He skimmed headlines. Pages one through five, nothing triggered. Memory flared halfway down page six: In retrospect: the Marie Langford murder, fifteen years on. Robert Davis investigates.

  Marie Langford, the body in the van. His first CIB case, vintage ’ninety-seven.

  Had he met Davis? He must have, otherwise why the recollection?

  He navigated back to the paper’s web page, found a general enquiries contact number. He stretched his mobile tight against the charger cable and dialled. A courteous female tone informed him his balance had dropped below the five-dollar mark. Shit. So let’s make it quick.

  An automated system answered his call and launched a flavourless welcome. He button-pushed his way through the proffered options until reception picked up. He crossed his fingers and asked for Davis.

  ‘He’s out of the office until Monday.’

  He asked to be put through anyway, hoping the answer machine message included a cell number. Reception complied. Alas, he got a stock-standard speak-after-beep instruction. No mobile.

  He persevered. He brought up the digital archives and found Davis’s piece on the January thirty shootings. His name and email address were footnoted. Duvall opened a blank email and sent it to Davis’s listed address. He got an automated out-of-office reply in seconds. It was more informative than the answer machine: a mobile number was conveniently listed for after-hours contact. He called it. Davis picked up. Duvall took a breath and went for it, reeled off a haughty announcement that they’d met during the Langford case back in ’ninety-seven.

  Davis met it with a long pause. He said the name rang a bell.

  Duvall stayed on
the front foot: ‘I saw your retrospective piece earlier this year; it was very well done.’

  ‘Thanks. What can I do for you?’

  No small talk: the guy didn’t remember him.

  Duvall said, ‘I’m looking at these shootings in West Auckland, back on January thirtieth.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘I’m investigating them.’

  ‘You’re still with the police?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Then I don’t think I’m going to be of much use to you.’

  ‘If you could just bear with me a moment I could run some questions past you anyway.’

  ‘Unless you’ve still got a badge in your pocket, I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be discussing this.’

  ‘We haven’t discussed anything yet.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Mitchell Duvall. I worked the Langford case.’

  ‘Yeah, to be honest, it’s not triggering anything.’

  ‘I don’t know what else to tell you.’

  ‘You were CIB back in ’ninety-seven?’

  ‘Probationary. I was a uniformed tag-along.’

  ‘You remember the case well?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘So what was the first thing the husband said, during confession?’

  ‘I could just look it up.’

  ‘You could. But I want an answer right now.’

  ‘He said, “I saw things going differently”.’

  The phone went quiet. Duvall pictured his phone credit slowly bleeding out. Asking Davis to call him back probably wouldn’t be tactful. Davis said, ‘All right. What can I do for you?’

  ‘What do you know about January thirtieth?’

  ‘Not a lot. Read my article?’

  ‘I have. You didn’t give many details.’

  ‘Wasn’t a lot of choice.’

  ‘I guessed that. I’m just trying to work out whether it’s because you don’t have any info, or you’ve been told to pretend you don’t.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re experienced enough you know what’s going on, but you’re operating under a media block.’

  ‘That’s lavish praise.’

  ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m very experienced.’

  ‘No, is there a block on information?’

  Davis hesitated. ‘Yes, there is.’

  ‘Who requested it?’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘But who specifically?’

  ‘It came through a guy called Don McCarthy.’

  McCarthy, hellbent on containment.

  Davis said, ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yeah. You must know who’s involved, surely?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by involved.’

  ‘Victim names.’

  ‘Look, what’s your interest in this?’

  ‘I’m trying to solve it.’

  ‘Thought you said you’d retired.’

  ‘I’ve crossed the line. I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘Leaking info isn’t going to win me any favours.’

  ‘It will with me.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry.’

  The phone gave a soft beep: credit critical. ‘Please. I just need to know if you have a name.’

  ‘It’s covered by the block. I can’t divulge anything.’

  ‘I’m not looking to publicise anything.’

  Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, might set the guy’s imagination working on the possibility of rival stories.

  Duvall went for terse: ‘Come on. Just give it to me.’

  Davis took a breath. He relented. Just like that.

  Constable Ian Riley, dead by gunshot, morning of January thirtieth.

  Duvall thanked him. His credit hit nil, and he lost the line.

  Hale drove into town and found a bar on Ponsonby Road. It was a heritage area, hundred-year-old buildings fronting the street. Road slashed narrowly by fingers of late sun, taxis dawdling in hope of a pickup. Sidewalk tables and chairs let patronage spill outside. He saw huddled trios, a tent of hunches over tall dew-glazed glasses. Sudden hard laughter and the slow, white unfurling of smoke from laden ashtrays.

  The bar was a narrow place on a corner site. An outdoor couch beneath a silver gas heater spanned the front wall. Inside, a bar along one side reached half the depth of the room, a small band podium in the back. Tuesdays must have been a slow night: patronage was him, and two guys at a table near the rear.

  It was a familiar environment. He’d been exposed to it his whole life. His father had been a factory foreman, forced to pull night shifts at the local bar to make ends meet. He remembered watching from a stool behind the counter: taste of cold Coke through a straw, acrid waft of cigarette smoke that hung like grey cloth below the ceiling. The line-up of big men crammed elbow to elbow along the counter, lined faces cut by thick wedges of gap-toothed smile. Rolled sleeves above worn forearms. The shift of atmosphere as the night progressed: rowdy blare of a packed room, to the dark quietude of the small hours. The downturned faces, the soft click of fingers as refills were summoned. The overlapped moisture rings across the counter, across the tables. The frustration at that ubiquitous chainmail print.

  His phone rang. He eased himself off the stool and checked the screen. Unfamiliar number: he walked to the door and took the call outside.

  ‘Any luck with Mr Dryer?’

  Dryer: his finance company friend from Monday night.

  ‘I spoke to him yesterday,’ Hale said.

  ‘“Spoke” doesn’t sound that persuasive.’

  ‘It was a firm discussion.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Nothing concrete.’ He took a seat on the couch. Supple leather creased and caved. ‘I told him I knew he had undeclared assets.’

  ‘And that rattled him, did it?’

  ‘Maybe. Either way, if I’m right he can go down for perjury.’

  ‘I don’t care if he does time. I just want my money back.’

  Hale didn’t reply. He sipped his drink and watched traffic crisscross his vision.

  ‘So what exactly did he say?’ the guy said.

  ‘Not very much,’ Hale said. ‘But he didn’t look very well.’

  ‘I was hoping for a bit of guilt.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a feeling he’s familiar with.’

  ‘So this was a waste of time then.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It’s fear that’ll get your money back.’

  ‘And is he scared?’

  ‘He was initially. Question is how fast it’ll wear off.’

  ‘You don’t exactly fill me with confidence.’

  ‘I can’t force him to do anything. I’ve got no legal backing.’

  ‘People have lost their life savings.’

  ‘It’s devastating. I understand.’

  ‘No offence, but unless you’ve lost forty years’ worth of careful investment, you’ve really got no idea.’ He went quiet before continuing: ‘Some people here’d really like to snip his line, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Best I can do is apply pressure and hope for the best,’ Hale said. ‘Which is what I’ve done.’

  ‘I hired you on the basis you get a quick result.’

  ‘Depends how hard I push.’

  ‘I get the feeling you could have pushed harder.’

  ‘Maybe. People with money and lawyers need special finesse.’

  The guy laughed drily. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. You’ve sent an invoice, have you?’

  Hale thought about it. ‘I want to try a new system,’ he said.

  ‘Does the new system benefit you, or benefit me?’

  ‘Both of us. We’ll give him to the end of the week. My payment is one per cent of whatever goes into your account by five p.m. Friday.’

  ‘One per cent of ninety million is nine hundred thousand dollars.’

  ‘And one per cent of zero is zero dollars.
The risk cuts both ways. I’ve spent three weeks full-time on this. But if Friday comes along and nothing’s happened, I won’t charge you.’

  ‘Performance-based payment sort of thing.’

  He felt the gentle warmth of the heater on the nape of his neck. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And in the event we get to the end of the week and our account’s still empty?’

  ‘Then you’ll need to approach this from another direction.’

  ‘You’re not going to go back for round two?’

  ‘There’s no point. All I can do is scare him. If it didn’t work once, it’s going to work even less the second time around. Much as I sympathise, it would be a waste of time. Mine and yours.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ the guy said.

  Devereaux went back to his desk, used a double espresso to caffeinate himself back to even keel. At seven-forty he went through to McCarthy’s office. The break-in was running a constant mental loop: he couldn’t lose the feeling he’d forgotten something. An open drawer, an errant staple — had he nudged one of the photographs?

  The door was ajar an inch, just as he’d left it. He knocked once and walked in. McCarthy didn’t even look up. ‘You’re late,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been here since seven.’

  No response. The computer had McCarthy’s attention. He’d changed since this morning: a navy blue suit in preference to his trademark grey.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Devereaux said.

  McCarthy took his eyes off the screen and looked at him. ‘Interview work. Maybe something, probably nothing.’ He paused a moment. He grinned. ‘Promise not to shoot anyone.’

  Devereaux didn’t reply. He ran a quick appraisal, eyes only: the desk, the cabinet, the printer. They seemed okay.

  The Don flicked paperwork on his desk, fingertips only, like brushing off lint. ‘Go and book us out an unmarked,’ he said. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’ He yawned and linked his hands behind his head. Elbows cocked, he had a massive wingspan. ‘And for Christ’s sake, lose that tie,’ he said.

  The tie stayed on, just to spite him. Devereaux rode the lift down to the garage and signed out a CIB pool vehicle. He parked up just inside the exit and waited, window down, the garage beyond cool and exhaust-laced. McCarthy joined him a moment later. He walked over and braced one forearm against the edge of the roof, leaned in like a roadside stop.