Crime Story

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘Yes, I know. Go on.’

  ‘“There’s a swimming pool and a tennis court and a TV set in my room. Grandpa bought me a new trampoline. I can do the double cat twist now. Darlene’s neat. She’s cool. She cooks lots of puddings but that’s okay. Grandma writes a lot and tells me how you are. When you come to Auckland I’ll come and see you.”’ Then he had written ‘I hope’, but had crossed it out. ‘Love, Damon’, he wrote, and put a small X for a kiss.

  As a letter it was what Gwen would have called sparse. Howie felt uncomfortable reading it. He wanted more for the woman in the bed and was disappointed in Damon for not trying harder. What had he been about to hope?

  ‘There’s a kiss in here if you want it’ – and kissed her quickly on the cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ulla said. ‘It is what Gwen would call a liberty, but thank you, yes.’

  Why do we both think about Gwen? She’s got a bloody hold on us, he thought. ‘Does she come and see you?’

  ‘Like her letters to Damon, a lot. She is very good. She is building a room for me in her house.’

  ‘With all the stuff … ’

  ‘Special beds?’

  ‘Yeah, all that?’

  ‘Pulleys and slings? Slings and arrows?’

  He thought of that head floating on the sea, singing its song. Was Ulla singing? What was her song?

  ‘Everybody is so sure I’m going to Auckland,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you have to go there first? The spinal unit’s there.’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘Not in that sense – ’

  ‘I’m grown up. Would you say I am grown up, Howie?’

  ‘Sure you are – ’

  ‘When I came to New Zealand and met your son I was a girl. But I am a woman now. Look at me. I say where I go and what I do – up here, in my head. But nobody listens, because down there is my important part.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Don’t be scared.’

  ‘I’m not scared.’ But he did not know what she might ask. He said, ‘This bed and stuff, I can dub in. I’d like to do that.’

  ‘Athol is paying. My husband pays.’

  He asked if Athol came to visit her and she said no, she did not want it, nor did he; and Howie saw they were past the danger of her song. He put it aside – what song? Crazy Gwen’s stuff. ‘Athol needs a swift kick. What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Leave Athol alone.’

  She closed her eyes, and opened them, showing more blue. ‘I will not ask him to help. Or you.’

  ‘Help with what?’

  ‘Oh, things I am thinking about. Tell me, Howie, will the police ever catch that boy?’

  ‘They won’t say. They’re playing it close.’

  ‘And he is the same one who chopped the woman up?’

  ‘They think so. All they can’t find is who he is. You don’t want to think about it, Ulla.’

  ‘What do I want to think about?’

  ‘Take it easy – ’

  ‘My future?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve upset you. I’ll go.’

  ‘Tell Damon Mummy’s being brave. Say I won’t give up, I’ll do the double cat twist soon.’

  ‘Stop whingeing. It happened. This is how it is, okay?’

  Whiter blue, a flash. ‘Ah, thank you, Howie. Thank you for that.’

  ‘Do you want me to bring more letters when he writes.’

  ‘Don’t make him write. Let him enjoy his puddings.’

  He picked up his briefcase and went into the corridors. Poor bitch, he thought. I would have helped her once but I can’t now. I’ve got Damon to worry about. X ray, said a notice, Autoclave. A trolley came along, with a nurse holding a bottle up over a woman who should have been left to finish her life in peace. Why did they try to save them? For what? They had nothing left. It was like the soaps on TV that Darlene liked to watch: the doctors brought some poor sod back to life with those bloody ping-pong bats that jolted the heart, then punched each other on the arm and grinned like chimpanzees. You didn’t see the patients after that. All you saw was the doctors screwing their girlfriends.

  He stood on the hospital steps and watched the traffic in Riddiford Street. A soup of petrol fumes lapped against the buildings. Mostly, in Wellington, the wind blew fumes away, but today was one of the still days the locals crowed about – half a dozen a year. The Brooklyn hill stood up high, waiting to hide the sun. Ronnie’s restaurant was on the wrong side, you wouldn’t even see a sunset from it, just Newtown and this – what had Ulla told him once? – hospital in Swedish was ‘sick-house’? He started down the steps to find a taxi and get away, but saw Gwen climb down from a bus and walk to-wards him. He went back up the steps and waited for her.

  She walked tiredly, but you still looked at her twice. Darlene was pretty – round in the face, American looks – but Gwen had been a kind of beautiful. Not the sort that he liked best, which was blonde and fresh, open air; but closed in, hidden, private somehow. She had a bend in her face – it went off to the left – but that didn’t spoil it; it only made you look again, and made you think that she must be amused, deep inside. He had found a painting once, by an Eyetie whose name he couldn’t pronounce – very nude, big hips, black triangle, but the face had been like Gwen’s, crooked and faintly amused. She wasn’t too amused when he showed it to her – thought it was just the sex had got him; and the centre of the picture was, fair enough, the cunt. But he had been hurt that time, yeah hurt, at being misjudged. It had become an argument about ‘the important things in life’, which, of course, she was the expert on, and him always trying to catch her with no clothes on. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ ‘If you’d just look at my face sometimes. I’ve got something up here, in my head.’ ‘Jesus, it was your head I was talking about.’ So on, so on, all their married life …

  ‘Howie! Have you been seeing Ulla?’

  ‘Yeah, I called. Damon sent a letter down for her.’

  ‘What about?’

  He told her, and told her Ulla had asked for a drink of whisky. Gwen would smell it anyway.

  ‘I hope you gave her some.’

  That surprised him – her anxiety and gentleness.

  ‘I let her have a sip. She didn’t like it much.’

  ‘How did you find her?’

  He wet his lips. She seemed to be asking him to soften. ‘I’ve never understood Ulla very well. Ulla, I mean. I guess I’ll never say it right.’

  ‘Was she pleased with Damon’s letter?’

  ‘It was a bit – sparse. She seemed to like it well enough. Damon’s got a lot to get used to.’

  ‘We all have. You look tired, Howie.’

  ‘I’m all right. Never better. How’s Olivia?’ He could not believe they were having this sort of conversation. Her tiredness was the cause, not his – but when tired she most often wanted to snap.

  ‘Her dog died. Butch, remember?’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Old age.’

  ‘Shall I buy her a new one? Would she like a puppy?’

  ‘No, don’t, please. She’s gone past dogs. She seems to be starting to grow up.’ She told him that Olivia had buried Butch in the garden and not marked the place but had planted beans on top without seeming to remember. Howie laughed. Gwen smiled at him. ‘I thought that would appeal to you. I went to see Gordon yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know he’s in Mount Crawford, did you hear?’

  ‘It’s a soft place. They’ll let him out for weekend leave.’

  ‘Not yet they won’t.’ Too many scandals, she told him: crooked lawyers pruning their roses on Sunday afternoon when the public thought they were inside breaking stones. ‘The people they stole from are living on crusts.’

  ‘Not crusts, Gwen. Come on.’

  ‘They stole from pensioners. At least Gordon wasn’t doing that.’

  Howie had Gordon in place; he wasn’t going
to think about him. But he began to see how much Gwen took on, with Ulla and Gordon, and Olivia, and all the ‘issues’ as well that burned her up. She would not abandon those. He thought of telling her about the woman knocking his wallet out of his hand. That would please her. She’d say, probably, ‘You asked for it.’ But she – the woman – was private to him; she came to him in secret and troubled him with her face, so ugly in its rage. He felt the jolt of her hand like a shock of electricity. The scratch on his wrist was healed but it had left a scar, raised in a welt, that itched in the night and kept him awake. Gwen would make a great deal of that. He could make nothing himself, but thought her nails had not been clean and he should have had a shot of something against infection – like Tony Dorio in Turkey with his wife (another traveller, like Gwen, wanting crazy places), bitten by a dog and getting a rabies shot, needle in his stomach, hurt like hell. Howie shivered.

  ‘What’s wrong, Howie?’

  ‘Ah, nothing. Who was that bloke, the Greek with the lyre, who made rocks move?’

  ‘Orpheus. Why?’

  ‘I was thinking, his head … Ulla reminds me … ’

  ‘How clever of you, Howie. Yes.’

  He smiled. ‘You can’t live forty years with someone, something rubs off. Well, gotta go. Plane to catch.’

  ‘Yes, goodbye. I’m sorry that things aren’t going well in your work … ’

  He had gone two steps down, but turned and went back. Her face slanted as she frowned at him. ‘On the radio, just before I left. I thought you’d know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The council not letting you have a permit. I think it was to pull that building down in Lambton Quay. Howie … ?’

  He turned from her and went down the steps. That’s what comes of being soft, he thought. He had travelled too far from where he was meant to be.

  No taxis. Where was a taxi, where was a car? He understood why Ronnie Quested carried a cell phone. Buses went by. He could not work out from their names which way they would take him. I’m building this city and I can’t even read the buses, he thought. In the end he got on a station bus and it let him off only a few steps from the office. He rode up in the lift and went in to Dorio.

  ‘Howie,’ Dorio said, ‘where the hell have you been? I needed you.’

  ‘What’s happening? Make it quick.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now if it’s quick or slow. The whole thing is finished, understand?’

  Howie sat in a chair. His knees would not hold him. The glass tower crashed down; sheets like ice came sliding off the walls.

  ‘Ronnie had a field day. He saw the whole thing coming. Where were you, Howie?’

  ‘Was there anything I could have done?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it doesn’t matter. No permit, eh?’

  ‘Exactly that. They’ve notified a change.’

  ‘Can they say no on that basis? A committee decision?’

  ‘Lonnie says yeah, if Council gave them delegated power. We can appeal. But look, Howie, this fucking thing can drag on and on. It’s costing us.’ Tony did not often swear. ‘We haven’t been thinking clear. None of us have. Especially you. You’re supposed to be the boss but you’re up in the air these last few weeks.’

  He could not object to that; had no strength for it. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We’ve still got the rights to the air space. We’ve got that till 1999. So we hang on and let it ride. Three or four years. Then we’ll try again. We’ll get it one day, nothing surer. Maybe we can tell them that we’ll save the facade, heritage building stuff, maybe that. But for now we let it go.’

  ‘Get our costs back?’

  ‘Sure we do. We’re not letting them get away with that. But we do it easy, Howie. If we want the thing to go again we’ve got to keep them on side. We don’t make a big production of it.’

  I haven’t got three or four years, Howie thought. ‘Where do we go then? Restaurants?’

  ‘Restaurants? Ronnie was playing games. It’s a shopping mall. Along on the Imperial.’

  ‘Shopping mall?’ Howie could not see it. The building would not stand up above the roofs all around.

  ‘Ronnie’s had that one brewing too. He had it on the table before Kitchener hit the ground.’

  ‘Has it, Tony? Hit the ground?’

  ‘Sure, it has. For now. Dead as a doornail.’

  Doornail, I like that, Howie thought. ‘Can we get this shopping mall?’

  ‘Ronnie says maybe. He’s got a client. The property’s the hard bit. It all rests on Gil Fox.’

  ‘Fox?’

  ‘Ronnie says. I’m not too clear on it. Look, Howie, I know how you feel, but you’re outvoted. I’m warning you, you’re on your own.’

  ‘Gilbert Fox.’

  ‘He’s maybe holding an option, I don’t know. Ronnie knows.’

  ‘So you’ll go with them? Ronnie and Fox?’

  ‘And Doug Sanderson. And Peter Kleber.’

  ‘Kleber too? He’ll work with Fox?’

  ‘It’s business, Howie. It makes sense. Who you like doesn’t come into it. Do you want to see this thing? I’ve got it here.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t. Leave me out. I’m going home.’

  That’s the way it comes to an end. That’s the way your life comes crashing down. I cared too much about it, he thought.

  He did not want to see anyone; took a room at the Glencoul; said, ‘I’m not here. No calls.’ He lay on the bed until the hills across the harbour had turned black. Then he ate in the restaurant, picked up an Evening Post and went back to his room. Darlene only half expected him – no need to phone. He watched the harbour again, the lights of cars moving in Eastbourne and Days Bay, and the few pin-pricks on the hills. We don’t get far up in this town – although a necklace curve went up, the road to Wainuiomata. The road to nowhere, he thought. There’s Auckland and Wellington and nowhere else. I should have been born in a bigger country.

  He read about himself in the paper: his unavailability for comment. It bored him. Game-playing bored him. It was meat and drink to Ronnie, of course, and Fox and Kleber. Tony Dorio would learn it too. I’ll set up something on my own, without them. I’ll do it in Auckland, not this town. But Auckland would not come clear – a canyon street, a grey sprawl. Had he lost it too? He saw his tower in Lambton Quay, full of green light, and little streaks of red in it as the lifts went up.

  The phone rang. ‘Mr Peet, it’s your wife calling from Auckland. Shall I put her on?’

  ‘Howie,’ Darlene said, ‘are you all right?’

  He told her not to worry, he’d had to stay the night and was so busy he had forgotten to call. There was nothing down here he couldn’t handle. ‘Don’t say where I am. I don’t want reporters hanging round. Just say I’m unavailable. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, Howie. Kiss, Howie?’

  ‘Yeah, okay, kiss.’ Hard to say. She gave a little half-laugh and hung up. He did not seem to make her laugh any more.

  He picked the paper up and rattled it as though to shake out something to distract himself with. Starvation. Massacre. He was dismayed. Found a murder – was struck, dizzied, by the name Peet jumping out.

  They were seeking – who was seeking? – Brent Nelson Rosser, who might also have information regarding the attack six weeks ago on Mrs Ulla Peet in her home in Kelburn … the murder of Mrs Ponder was particularly savage …

  So, Howie thought, they know who did it. They’ve taken their time, but now they know.

  ‘A bizzare twist to the case,’ he read, ‘is that Mr Rosser was, until recently, a tenant in a house owned by Athco Properties, a company registered in the name of Athol Peet, Mrs Peet’s husband. The police attach no real significance to this.’

  Small towns, Howie thought. We don’t have any cities, we have towns. The guy who kills your wife lives down the street. It seemed to make his tower more unreal. Athol’s fifty houses were the scale. He folded the paper and left it in the chair; put his
jacket on, went into the streets. It was half-past nine and dead: it might as well be Henderson on a Sunday night in 1946. They don’t need me, Howie thought. They don’t need that Beehive either, or the men inside – all they need is a few clerks to run this country. He went up Bowen Street and climbed the steps round the Commerce building – shaped like a liner, sailing where? The cemetery behind it gave a better idea of the town. He crossed the pedestrian bridge over the motorway, walked on gravel paths through more old graves – leaning headstones, lost half-names, Elizas and Thomases who had thought they were important once. The guy who murdered your wife, who chopped her up, might be sitting on a gravestone, drinking beer. That was how small it was. Why should I build them anything?

  He climbed above the rose garden and the begonia house, where glass panels made a chessboard pattern, gleaming or dark; and looking over the city he suddenly found it huge: it shone, it pulsed, it stretched and climbed the hills, with pods pushing out, illuminated. It was like a box spilled; it was a box of jewels. He wanted his tower again, climbing up and shining, with a thousand people inside. He could not understand how they had taken it from him.

  The cable car went down, the wires hummed, and the city said it was alive – and that he had no part in it. He refused to let his sadness increase. It would reduce him, Howie Peet, to nothing at all. It was better to be angry, and be stupid. ‘Keep your bloody city,’ he said. And might have gone through the university and down the long steps to his hotel, but found Central Terrace opening like a mouth and went in there. A man ran by, blind behind his glasses: my son, he thought, Athol Peet. He ran with a shuffle, grown old. But he had had a shock today. The spade murderer had been one of his tenants. That would knock his faith in his houses out of him. Little houses, Howie thought, no safer than what I build. He watched Athol run away into the dark.

  The houses on the high side stood half lit. The one he had lived in was no brighter than the rest. It had its gabled windows set too close, like a frown. Gwen had let it run down and lose value, but would say it didn’t matter just as long as she was happy there. It was a home, not a house, she would say. But how did she feel, knowing that the murderer had prowled around in there? From the windows, Howie thought, you would have been able to see the top floors of my tower. It would have stood above the hill and been like a lighthouse – but it’s gone, and I’m the only one who cares. She doesn’t believe in high-rise buildings. How can you ‘believe in’ and ‘not believe’? People can’t live their lives like that. He wanted to go up the path, into the house, and argue with her. He had never hit Gwen, but knew that he might hit her tonight. He could have been a murderer coming off the street.