Hounds of the Underworld (The Path of Ra Book 1)

by Dan Rabarts

  “Steer the car!” Penny screeches, reaching for the wheel.

  Matiu grips the steering wheel again, as the Commodore slows to take the bend. “I’m just saying, is all. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Chicks, man. Chicks.

  - Pandora -

  No doubt Patisepa Taylor would describe Rose Fletcher’s north shore suburb as a desirable enclave of colourful two-hundred-year-old rimu villas, renovated to today’s modern standard, conveniently located close to the city, and surrounded by nature. And it’s true that the occasional picturesque villa still exists, money pits for misguided preservation enthusiasts. But mostly the outlying suburb is run-down and tired, a cornucopia of flaking paint and rotting lintels, populated by retirees with no need to make the daily trip into town, and whose sense of smell has dulled so much they’re no longer offended by the pong rising off the green sludge of the ocean. Although, to be fair, Rose Fletcher’s building isn’t without its charm: an old high-rise of sixteen stories, its shared entrance lined with a grid of little red mailboxes. With mechanical keyholes. Talk about a blast from the past. That delightful little touch of kitsch almost makes up for Matiu’s tardiness in picking her up, trying to talk her out of the only paying job she’s had in weeks and then, when she didn’t agree, almost driving her off the bloody road. Actually, no. It’s going to take a lot more than a row of little letterboxes to make up for the crap she’s put up with from him today. Only minutes ago, when she’d leaned in to grab her satchel from the back seat of the Commodore, she’d told him to wait outside until she’d finished her interview. She’d only made it this far—the building’s external glass door—before the stubborn shhlrrrp of the car door announced his plan to completely ignore her instructions. Again.

  She whirls to face him as he starts up the painted concrete steps. “And just where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Inside. With you.”

  Penny puts her arms akimbo, blocking his path, Matiu’s eyes level with hers even though he’s standing two steps down. “No, you’re not. I won’t have you coming in and sticking your mitts where they’re not needed. This is my case.” Matiu lifts his chin defiantly and pushes his lips out. It’s a classic James Dean look, sans cigarette. Penny still has girlfriends who would go weak at the knees if Matiu were to throw that look in their direction, but it doesn’t work on Penny. She’s seen him wearing dinosaur pyjamas. “I haven’t got time to play games, Matiu. You’re not coming in.”

  His dark eyes smoulder. “I have to, Penny,” he says. Now he calls her Penny? Because he wants her to listen to his hocus pocus? “Believe me, this isn’t a game. I wasn’t kidding before. This case, there’s something not right about it. It’s—”

  “Yeah, I heard you before: it’s shit. I tell you what, Matiu…” She bats her eyelashes, exaggerating the movement, a Betty Boop caricature. “If you don’t like it, maybe you should do what I ask, and stay in the car.” Turning her back on him, she makes a point of daintily stepping up the remaining steps to the intercom.

  She presses the button.

  It’s another piece of olde-worlde kitsch. After the harsh tone—the same one you get if you give the wrong answer on a game show—a crackle of static escapes, and then, almost immediately, a woman’s voice asks, “Darius? Is that you?”

  Penny hates to let her down. “No, it’s Penny Yee, Ms Fletcher. We talked earlier.”

  “Who?”

  Penny takes a step closer. “Penny Yee. I’m the scientific consultant to the police: here to talk to you about your missing brother.” Matiu is suddenly at her shoulder. He leans in, pressing against her back to get closer to the intercom. What’s he doing? Is he sniffing it? Penny jabs at him with her elbow, forcing him to back off.

  The internal entry door buzzes and Penny and Matiu both rush to get to it before the mechanism clicks off. Unfortunately, Matiu does a text book front row fend and gets there first. All boyish charm, he holds the door open, sweeping his hand across his body and inviting her into the corridor where the lift awaits. And then he follows her in.

  Penny pushes the button to go up, but by the time the doors open Matiu is there, stepping into the lift first, muscling his way to the control panel. He raises an eyebrow.

  “Twelfth floor,” she huffs.

  As the lift ascends, Penny gives it one more go: “Just stay out of the way, OK?” She reads his answer in his scowl, reflected in the elevator’s mirror. He turns to face her, placing one hand above him on the wall, in a blatant attempt to make her feel small.

  “Look, Pandora—”

  Penny shows him her palm. “Talk to the hand, Matiu,” she says wearily as the elevator doors ping open.

  Rose Fletcher has the appearance of a weed grown in the dark, spindly and white and scared to breathe lest anyone notice her and pull her out at the roots. She jumps at the sight of Matiu, overlarge in the cramped apartment, like a giant come to a little girl’s tea party. The ink on his face doesn’t help either. It isn’t the first time someone’s found it intimidating. Penny motions for him to sit down. Can’t he see he’s making her witness nervous?

  Rose Fletcher has already made the tea. Unlike her hands, which are limp and white, the tea is black and strong. And lukewarm. Definitely less than 60°C. Assuming it was 85°C at the moment of pouring, and then kept in a stainless steel teapot at ambient temperature, if she considers the volume, calculates for heat loss…it was probably made twenty minutes ago, when Penny had phoned from the lab.

  “You said you had news of Darius?”

  Penny replaces the teacup on its matching saucer. “Not exactly, Ms Fletcher. We’re here to follow up on the call you made to the station.” What could they tell her? For the moment, they had no concrete evidence to go on, just supposition and hearsay.

  “You’ve taken a long time to get back to me.”

  “Yes, well…”

  “Five days.” So, clearly she’s not as frail as she appears. Penny supposes even weeds can be tenacious.

  “It was Halloween, Ms Fletcher,” Matiu says in the charming voice he reserves for hostesses at tea parties. The kind of reassuring voice that gets middle-aged spinsters eating out ot the palm of his hand. The voice that turns the tattoos on his cheek from frightening to alluring. “As you would expect, there were a few calls to follow up from that night—a bit of trouble in town, some street fires—so we’ve had to prioritise.”

  Penny hesitates. They can’t tell Rose the police didn’t believe Darius could be missing until today, or that even now it’s not certain, with no body to speak of, and only the real estate agent’s word that the clothes were his, until her analysis of samples from the scene bear out the facts. “Yes, that’s right,” she says, glowering at Matiu with her best ‘butt out’ face. “Our colleagues at the station have had some backlog. They…they…”

  “What makes you think your brother is missing?” Matiu interrupts, smooth as satin.

  Turning to offer Matiu a piece of almond slice on violet sprigged crockery, Rose Fletcher directs her answer at him. “Darius didn’t come for dinner.”

  Quick.

  While the witness’ back is turned, Penny whips out her adhesive sample tape and pats it on a strand of dark blonde hair she’s spied on the arm of the chair. It’s probably Rose’s, but a close enough genetic match to the DNA on the blue polo shirt could support her suspicion that the clothes were her brother’s, potentially placing him at the scene.

  “Could he have had another engagement, perhaps?” says Matiu, observing Penny’s rapid sampling manoeuvre and keeping Rose’s attention away from his sister.

  “He didn’t mention anything else, and he always has dinner with me on a Tuesday.”

  “Even Halloween?”

  “Of course. Where else would he go?”

  Penny stuffs the sample into h
er satchel, smoothing down the flap. “No girlfriend then?” she asks.

  Rose Fletcher flaps her hands like a chicken. “No, Darius didn’t have time for all that. He was too driven. There was a girl, Sandra someone, but that was almost a year ago. It wasn’t anything serious.”

  “So, on the date he’s alleged to have gone missing, you’d seen him earlier that day?”

  “I didn’t allege at all, Ms Yee. Darius is missing,” she says frostily. Clearly, Rose Fletcher would like to cast Penny in the role of bad cop with Matiu as the darling golden boy. Penny tries to shrug it off. Rose Fletcher doesn’t know her. Doesn’t know anything about her. Anyway, as roles go, playing second fiddle to Matiu’s first is one Penny doesn’t have to rehearse: she’s played it all her life.

  Rose Fletcher adjusts the platter on the coffee table, then pushes a tiny crumb into the corner of her mouth with her finger. She goes on, “Darius dropped in briefly on his way to work that morning. He often does. We were both in our teens when we lost our parents, and we don’t have any other family.” She taps the surface of the coffee table and brings up an old holographic photograph of a young family, pushing the platter to the edge of the table to reveal the entire image. “That’s all of us. Before.” Penny and Matiu lean in obediently, but hardly waiting for them to study it, Rose swipes her hand over the table and brings up a second image. “And this is Darius here. That one was taken last year at a work function.”

  Forty-ish, with a square jaw and dazzling blue eyes, Darius Fletcher had won the genetic lottery over his sister, although he’d had a few plastic enhancements done. The decent head of hair could be cosmetic too, were it not for his resemblance to his dead pater.

  “He’s a very good-looking man.”

  Rose Fletcher reaches across to swipe at the table-screen. “And this one was taken just a few weeks ago.”

  Penny examines the image. “He’s lost a lot of weight in this second photo,” she remarks.

  “Yes, seven kilos. It didn’t take him long either,” the woman gushes, Penny’s compliments about her brother causing her to warm. Penny, however, has nothing nice to say about her own. Matiu has moved from the couch and is roaming the apartment, touching things. And more sniffing. What does he think he is? A bloodhound? He needs to sit down. If he keeps that up Rose Fletcher might throw them out. They’re only here by proxy. Penny tries to distract the woman from Matiu’s poking about. Why’s he going into the kitchen?

  Luckily, the woman is more interested in telling Penny about her brother’s dieting success. “I’ve never lost a kilo my entire life,” she’s saying. “I really should ask Darius how he did it. It was his talent agent who suggested he go on a diet. She said at his age he needed to be careful or he could find himself out of a job. It’s a cutthroat business. He’s in broadcasting, you see: the presenter on Dish-It. Do you know it?”

  Penny shakes her head. “Sorry, no.”

  “It’s a daily gossip U-View show. Not the calibre of the Antiques Roadshow, of course—that’s show’s been going for nearly a century—but very funny and extremely successful. The ratings go up practically every week, Darius tells me.”

  Where is Matiu?

  Penny tries to note down the name of Darius’ show without moving her eyes from Rose Fletcher. It’ll probably be illegible.

  “I did wonder if work was the problem—”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, yes, because some people can’t see the funny side of things. I thought perhaps he’d ruffled the feathers of someone he shouldn’t have. One time, he got offside with two of the Prime Minister’s secret service guys: outing both of them as plushophiles. He said it was just too good a story to miss. A fluff piece, he called it. Secret agents with a thing for soft toys. Who wouldn’t want to run a story about that? Darius didn’t mean anything by it, you understand. For him, it was just business, but the secret service men didn’t see it that way and since those guys carry guns, Darius went underground for a bit. They knew where he was—they were in the Prime Minister’s secret service, so they had means—but so long as Darius was off the air, it allowed the rumours to die down and they were satisfied. He was gone for ten days. After that, he was more careful about what he broadcast.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went that last time?”

  “We own a few buildings, Darius and I—our inheritance. They’re mostly rented but at the time one of them was between tenants so Darius camped there.”

  Penny nods again, desperate to prevent Rose from noticing Matiu doing God-Knows-What in the rest of the apartment. “Uhm, you don’t think something like that has happened again? Perhaps he’s gone to hole up in one of your rental buildings.”

  “No. Darius would’ve told me.”

  “Would you mind if I kept a copy of this photo?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Penny touches her tablet to the table to effect the transfer.

  “When he dropped in that day, do you remember what he was wearing, by any chance?”

  “No. I don’t recall.” Rose looks into the space to her right, searching her memory for an answer. “Can’t think. Look, it’s all very well you people asking me these questions, but when are you going to look for him? I know he’s a grown man, but I’ve called his office and they say he hasn’t been there either. They’re not very happy. He didn’t call in sick and they’ve been forced to play pre-recorded material. I’m getting quite frantic with worry.”

  “Try not to be too concerned. A lot of people are reported missing and most of them turn up eventually.”

  “But I’ve been up and checked and he hasn’t been home.”

  “Been up?”

  “It’s up one floor, on level thirteen. I have the entry code. It’s another reason I’m positive something has happened to him. He wouldn’t have left without making arrangements for Cerberus.”

  “And Cerberus would be…?”

  “Darius’ dog.”

  A dog…

  “I’ve been going up there to feed him. Well, obviously I can’t have him down here. My apartment’s not suitable: he’d wreck everything. Although, the neighbours are going to get tetchy soon. He keeps yowling for Darius.”

  Suddenly Matiu is there, standing over them. “We need you to take us to Darius’ apartment, Ms Fletcher. We need to see it.”

  “The apartment? Or the dog?” she asks, puzzled.

  “Yes,” Matiu says, his broken grin smothering any further questions she might have as she melts into a befuddled smile.

  Penny rolls her eyes.

  CHAPTER 4

  - Matiu -

  “What the fuck are you, Mister Detective now?”

  In Matiu’s periphery, Makere’s shadow slides along the wall. Footsteps that aren’t there thump in the back of his skull, like an echoing heartbeat. “Stay out of this,” he hisses under his breath. He’d ignore Makere if he could, but that just makes him more insistent. Makere getting more insistent tends to give Matiu a headache, which can drive him to violence. It’s easier just to shut him up early, rather than suffer the consequences.

  Like ending up in prison.

  “What?” Penny asks, her voice just as low so that Rose won’t hear.

  Matiu waves her off, ignoring her sullen glare. Just edgy, slightly crazy Matiu muttering to himself again. Nothing new to see here, sister. Rose presses the button for the elevator. The shaft hums and creaks as the car drops to meet them.

  “You’re going to love it when you find it,” Makere snickers, which winds Matiu’s guts even tighter. He can’t help feeling there’s nothing Makere knows that he himself doesn’t know already. And if Matiu knows, it means he’s involved somehow. He only knows Darius Fletcher from the streams, but the dogs…

  Thinking about dogs turns his stomach. Too many late nights walking the shadows on the
fringes of abandoned factories and warehouses, listening to the screaming crowds, the growling and the tearing, the smell of money tainted with blood. Too many still or twitching bodies dragged by their collars from the barbed wire rings with spiked gaffs. Too many teeth, gleaming red and white under halogen floodlights.

  The doors slide open with an artificial ‘ding’, synthesised to replicate an old-school elevator, but not quite achieving the authenticity the designer was going for. It’s not the tone that doesn’t ring true. It’s the resonance. It’s missing the vibration that runs through your spine when a bell tolls, the unheard notes which distinguish the real from the illusory. Telling these two apart is something Matiu has to do constantly. It’s a skill he’s grown very practiced at.

  Matiu steps into the car. Real or not, with a swipe from Rose’s access card the elevator takes them up.

  Darius Fletcher is not a man who likes to share. As such, the lobby of his floor is just that—the lobby of his floor. When the doors whirr open with another faux tinkle, Matiu steps out into a small space sporting black leather couches flanked by tall brass flower pots. Their foliage is drooping, dried pollen scattered across the backs of the settees like a dusting of snow, or wind-driven sand. The blinds are pulled, thin slivers of afternoon sun cutting through the gloom as the motion-activated overhead lamps flicker on with a warm buzz. Across from the lift lurks the only other door on this floor, its muted timber grain smacking of too much money and nothing to spend it on. No doubt the door is real wood and, from the grain’s golden-yellow glow, it’s probably kauri—endangered, protected, centuries in the growing. Matiu doesn’t have a lot of time for U-View gossip shows, but if Fletcher is some sort of B-Grade mini-celebrity trying to make an impression on his peers, then it’s unlikely the wood is recycled. “Jerk,” Matiu mutters over a fake cough, as Rose bustles past him to open the second door with her swipe card.