“Well, you’re not going to.” Jason stood up and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “Come on, Ant,” he said when his friend stayed seated. “Let’s go out and find something fun to do together.”
“Nice meeting you ladies,” Ant said, tipping a forefinger to his head. “But the master’s calling.”
Alice wasn’t certain if she should feel more annoyed or relieved. From the looks of her friend, Sally didn’t know which way to go either.
DS Hogarth crossed his legs at the ankle. “Do you believe Jason was deliberately trying to avoid hearing what you had to say?”
Sally shrugged. “Possibly. Or he didn’t like that I’d asked him to do something special and wanted to get out of any serious talk. I don’t think he had the slightest inkling of what I needed to tell him. He’s certainly never acted in a way that led me to think that, then or now.”
The sergeant squeezed the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb, his eyes closed tightly. Just as he opened his mouth to ask another question, a sound from outside apparently changed his mind.
Footsteps echoed up the front porch and Alice watched Doug stride up to the door. Immense relief cascaded through her body, and she bowed her head for a second in thanks. He’d told them he’d be perfectly safe getting everything done and although she’d believed his words, she still hadn’t been sure her friend could accurately predict the situation.
But, here he was. In good health. In one piece.
“I’ve got it done,” Doug announced from the doorway.
In a moment of shock, Alice realized he couldn’t see the DS sitting just inside the door.
“I paid the gang with your money and they’ve assured me you won’t get any trouble from him again. He’s fixed up. Permanently.”
“Come inside and tell me some more about that,” Hogarth said, rising from his chair and startling Doug so much he jumped. “I’m all ears as to why you’re paying off a gang and exactly who it is that’s taken care of permanently.”
Doug’s eyes flicked to the roadside, charting a path to escape that it was far too late to take. He walked inside, shoulders slumping, and sat on the sofa next to Alice.
After glancing at her for permission, he sighed and began.
Chapter Ten
The construction crew manager clicked his fingers at Doug and pointed toward the Portakabin currently serving as his office. “Can I see you for a minute?”
Doug leveled off the grouting in the top of the brick and set it down between the strings. He knocked it a few times, working the air out so it wouldn’t crumble apart in the first good frost of the season, then followed his manager into the small building.
He closed the door behind him, not that it mattered. With the paper-thin walls, everybody on the crew could hear if they wanted to. If they could hear anything at all above the noise of the building site.
“I’m going to be up in Auckland for the next few days,” the manager said, waving Doug into the only other chair. “I wondered how you felt about looking after the boys while I’m away.”
Doug kept his face steady but felt a glow of pleasure. He’d been working with the same construction team now for ten months and found they’d been like a second family. After uprooting himself from his hometown of Timaru to chase new opportunities in the big smoke of Christchurch, the news was similar to a stamp of approval showing he’d made the right choice.
“Yeah. I could do that. Any money in it?”
The pay didn’t matter, but he knew it would to the rest of the crew. If he wasn’t getting his end on top for the extra supervision, they wouldn’t give him the same respect.
“It’ll be another thirty percent on top and forty if you can get them to sign-off by the weekend.”
Doug sucked in his lips, narrowing his eyes. “That’s only four days. There’re at least five days of full graft still to go, I reckon.”
The manager inclined his head. “That’s why there’s a full ten percent in it.” He slapped his hands down on the desk. “It’s not a have-to, it’s just an incentive in case you think you can get there just by working a bit harder or smarter.”
“Okay.” Doug gave the man a small smile. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
Four days certainly didn’t seem like a lot of time to get into trouble.
“Where’s the corrugated iron?” Doug called out a day later. The manager had given him a walk-through that morning to check they were both on the same page, then left for the airport.
He definitely recalled the large sheets of metal being stacked near the spare truck and now it wasn’t there.
“Anybody?”
The lads ignored him, but Doug knew they could hear him perfectly well. Their lack of response meant they didn’t know, so weren’t going to waste time with the question.
He flipped his hand at them and walked over to the edge of the property. There were meant to be large coils of copper for the wiring sitting near the ditch on the right-hand side. Meant to be. They’d gone walkabout as well.
“Strewth.” Doug took his gloves off to run a hand through his hair. He looked over the site, all the men working away at their individual tasks. None of them were slacking, or paying him attention. None of them looked like obvious thieves.
He’d be facing a loss of maybe half a grand just in the wire. If the iron didn’t turn up, the theft might run to a full thousand.
That ate up his percentage on top plus his full wage. Doug didn’t know if the site manager would take the theft out of his cut, but it was a pretty solid bet since he was meant to be in charge.
“Sod this for a joke,” he muttered under his breath.
Sweat ran down the sides of his face and damped the shirt around his pits. He took a few steps back and sat on a canvas director’s chair, trying to think what to do.
If the boys had seen anything, they weren’t telling. Today might be a one-off but Doug didn’t like to put money on it. After another glance around the section, just in case he’d gone metal-blind, he headed into the Portakabin to look up the suppliers.
Notes on the desk showed a steady pattern of thefts occurring on the job. Doug stared at the scribbles in concern, then lifted them up to find an insurance claim underneath.
From what he read, so far the site had lost five thousand worth of equipment and supplies. Sure, the insurance was taken out by the landowner, so was their worry, but still… Doug couldn’t imagine another job lining up with that sort of loss sitting on the books.
He jotted down the losses he’d found so far and called through to the suppliers to see if they could send through replacements. To his surprise, one call got it done. The man who answered told him they had the lot in stock.
At least he could get the crew working on what they needed to do with just a few hours delay getting the new stuff delivered. Doug went back outside, picking another task to work on until they arrived.
It was later that afternoon when Doug saw a theft occurring, right out in the open. One of the younger guys—Willis or Wallace—rolled a jackhammer over to his truck and lifted it onto the back.
Doug was just about to call out, ask him what the hell he was doing, when he reconsidered. That evening, rather than heading home, worn out but pleased with the work he’d gotten done, he hung around, spying on the property from a few houses up the road.
It didn’t take long for the young guy to circle his truck back around and pick up a few more odds and ends from the equipment store. He even had his own key! Nothing worth the same at the jackhammer, but it probably totaled up to another couple of hundred if the site had to replace the tools from new.
When the truck pulled around the corner, Doug put his car into drive and followed along behind it. Although scared he’d lose sight of the man, he kept at least three cars between him and the truck.
The lad might be new to Doug but from what he’d seen on the worksite, the other fellows knew him from around and about. If this was his sideline gig, no wonder. The lad pr
obably only had to work one month out of three, then spend the rest of the time living off his thieving.
He drove through town and out the other side, turning into Linwood Avenue. The night was starting to settle in and as Doug stopped at an intersection, all the streetlights flickered on.
The worker pulled into a driveway and some large-built men moved in to drag a gate shut behind him. Doug took note of the address, then turned and headed home. There wasn’t anything else he could do that night.
In the morning, he rang his boss up in Auckland, hoping to get the call done quickly so he didn’t get yelled at about exorbitant cell phone fees.
“There’s been a theft,” he told his boss. “I followed the young lad to a place on the east side of the city. I wrote down the address, but just wanted to check in with you before I called the police.”
“Eh?”
Doug repeated himself, growing increasingly concerned about the silence on the other end of the call. “Did you want me to take action?” he asked, wincing at how thin his voice sounded. “I don’t mind waiting if you’d prefer to handle it yourself.”
“Look, Doug…”
From those first words, Doug knew he’d gauged the entire situation incorrectly. He stood in the office, staring out at the men arriving at work, and tried to ignore how hard it was becoming to breathe.
The insurance claim. The losses. The ease of replacing the supplies. It was a scam.
His bosses voice continued on in its soothing tone, the words cutting deep. He was being fired. Fired, for goodness’ sake!
“We’ll pay you out for today as well—”
“Don’t do this.”
The silence lasted so long, Doug thought he’d managed to disconnect the call. He actually held the phone away from his ear to check the screen.
“I’ll give you a good reference letter. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding another job.”
The phone dropped out of Doug’s fingers and he walked out of the office and got straight into his car. One of the men called out after him—even jogged over, his forehead creased in concern—but he pulled out and drove home, not bothering to explain.
In his room at home, a flat he shared with another couple of builders, Doug sat on his bed, burying his face in his hands. The references didn’t matter. There’d never be another building job contract with his name on it. He was already self-employed, a contractor for hire. Nobody would sign him onto a job knowing he was a telltale.
How could he have misread the situation so badly?
Of all the times to let his moral conscience guide him, this was the worst.
Doug spent hours sitting in his room, thinking of the future falling apart in front of his eyes. If only he could take back the last few hours, or even the last couple of days. If only he’d told the boss to shove it when he offered him the change in role.
He sat there while his mates came home from work, showered, then went out again. As the room grew dark, he grabbed his car keys off the bedside cabinet and headed out, too. He drove directly to the place he’d seen the young man going the night before.
If he was going to beg somebody for his job back, this would be the place to do it.
The gate was closed but Doug was fired up with injustice enough to think he could easily kick it down. When he planted his first boot directly between the hinges on the left-hand side, the reverberations crawled straight up his leg and spiked into his pelvis.
First, he ignored the pain, then he reveled in it.
Three solid kicks and the gate drooped like a drunk woman at the bar just before closing. Another two, one of the hinges popped free, sending a piece of metal bouncing down the sidewalk to roll in the gutter.
“What the—” A man came running down toward Doug, able to see him straight through the gaping hole at the side. “Who are you, man? What’re you doing?”
“Cost. Me. My. Job,” Doug said, aiming a lighter kick between each word. His leg was growing tired, and the ache had spread around to his back. If he rolled out of bed tomorrow, it would only be to fetch the aspirin.
“Who—?” The man turned as an enormous companion joined his side to glare at Doug.
“What’s going on?” The new arrival’s voice was a deep rumble in his chest. “What did the gate ever do to you?”
“I told him to stop,” the first man yelled out. “He’s gone crazy.”
With one final kick, the gate pulled off its sole remaining hinge and fell onto the ground. Doug strode across it, standing with his hands on his hips before the two men. He had to crane his neck to stare up at them. “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here.”
“No, you don’t, man.” The first man stepped forward. “What you want to do is get out of here before anyone else comes along.”
Doug shifted his position, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m not going anywhere. Some lad brought in a lot of gear last night. He cost me my job and probably got me blackballed. I need to know why, and I want reparations.”
“Reparations?” The first man burst into high-pitched laughter. He pulled a swiss army knife out of his pocket and slowly slid out one small blade. “I don’t think you comprehend where you’re standing.”
“Bring him up, Jericho,” a man called out from an upstairs window. He’d retreated back inside, slamming it shut, before Doug could get a good look at him.
“You’re gonna regret this, man.” Jericho hefted the knife in his hand a few times, then put it away with an expression of loss. “Come on.”
Doug followed him in through a door that opened by magic when they drew close. Inside, there was a tumble of haphazard furniture, positioned wherever the person who dragged it inside had given up on the effort.
A scent permeated the air, one Doug remembered well from a brief stint living in a student flat. The odor of pot and male sweat. It seemed to ooze out from the walls.
“Up there.” Jericho stood aside and pointed upstairs.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Jericho’s face turned ashy and Doug felt the first buds of misgiving. He looked around the room, six pairs of eyes studiously avoiding his gaze. “Right.”
He walked up and through the door indicated. By the time he got there, his heart was pumping at double speed.
“Don’t look so worried. After the kicking you gave that fence, I’m the one who should be hesitating.”
The owner of the voice looked about ten years older than Doug, a fact he greeted with some relief. There was nothing worse than trying to talk to a child about adult matters. He hoped he wasn’t so young the situation was flipped.
“Sorry about that. I wanted to get in and talk to someone and guessed I could stand out there all day shouting and not get anywhere.”
“Looked more like you had a whole heap of aggression and needed to take it out on something.” The leader patted the cushion beside him and Doug sat down, cross-legged. The ache spreading out across his lower back wasn’t happy about the change in position.
“Some of that might be correct,” Doug agreed. “I lost my job today because of somebody here.”
“Oh, yeah?” The man lit a cigarette, squinting to keep his eyes on Doug even through the smoke. “Who’s that?”
“His name’s Willis, or Wallace. He stole a bunch of stuff off a building site I was working.”
“You got blamed for it, huh?”
Doug tipped his head forward, tracing a pattern on the threadbare rug. “Something like that.”
“He got hired to lift that stuff. No use taking it out on him. It’s your boss you should be angry at.”
“Believe me, I’ve got plenty of anger in me for him, too.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while the man smoked his cigarette right down to the butt. When he stubbed it out in an old metal ashtray, he shook his head. “You need to fix the gate.”
Now that his immediate rage was dissipating, Doug realized he’d just worked himself into a state for nothing. What had
he expected to happen, coming here? It was never get his job back for him. Never going to fix up the fact he might never work again.
“I can bring my tools down here tomorrow and fix it up.” Doug stood up and walked over to the window, staring down with a frown while he surveyed the damage. Someone had propped the twisted metal gate up against the rest of the fence, leaving a gap about a foot wide. The paint had flaked off in large sheets where his boot had punched into the metal, again and again.
The gang leader spoke up again behind him. “Do a good job and I might have a few other things need fixing around the place.”
Chapter Eleven
“That’s how I got to know the gang,” Doug said. He smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat.
Alice didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak for such a long time before. In fact, even if she strung together every word she’d heard Doug say during the long years of their friendship, they mightn’t add up to the same.
“The gang you paid off, today?” Hogarth’s smile had grown ever grimmer during Doug’s explanation.
“That’s the one.”
Doug spread his legs until he hit against Alice’s knee, then seemed to remember himself and stood up instead. “They were good blokes, it turned out. From the moment I fixed up their gate good and proper, they always had another job lined up ready if I needed it.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it felt like they kept me around for their own amusement, but they did more for me than many others I would’ve called friends at the time.”
Alice guessed she was one of the jobs now taking up Doug’s time, so he no longer relied on the gang. She knew he also had regular contracted work through the Department of Conservation and the local council, but she used up as much time as he could give her.
The Double Dip (A Honeybee Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 6
