Death on Demand

by Paul Thomas

  McGrail’s promotion forced Ihaka to do something he’d been putting off for years: think about his future. He was well aware that the likelihood of McGrail’s replacement granting him the same licence was remote, if not nonexistent, so he had four choices: he could take the view that all good things must come to an end and adjust to the new reality – i.e. toe the line, pull his head in, and join the queue to kiss the new boss’s arse; he could seek a transfer; or he could leave the police force.

  Or he could put his hand up for McGrail’s old job. Realistically, he was a long shot. He hadn’t bothered keeping count of all the toes he’d trodden on, but took it for granted that someone had. He assumed that few among the top brass shared McGrail’s appreciation of his particular attributes, and suspected that even some of those who did felt the risks outweighed the rewards. In other words, he wasn’t seen as officer material.

  He consulted McGrail, who reinforced those perceptions, wondering out loud whether being a detective inspector mightn’t really suit him anyway. “Maybe not,” replied Ihaka, “but if the alternative is being some wind-up toy’s bumboy…”

  As was his custom, McGrail didn’t respond directly to Ihaka’s vulgarity, restricting himself to a slight upward tilt of his right eyebrow. After thirteen years, Ihaka was a highly proficient interpreter of his boss’s body language and subtle shifts of expression: he took this to mean that he was being a prize ass, and that the meeting was over because McGrail had better things to do than listen to the braying of a prize ass.

  Ihaka got to his feet. “Well, thanks for that. Your enthusiasm is infectious.”

  McGrail’s thin lips twitched briefly, indicating that he found Ihaka’s comment hilarious. “Actually, Sergeant,” he said to Ihaka’s back, “I can offer some practical advice. The hit-and-run. You’ll need to have a strategy in place to neutralize that issue, because they’ll certainly tackle you on it.”

  The hit-and-run, as everyone but Ihaka referred to it, had taken place a year earlier. A middle-aged woman on an early-morning jog had died after being hit by a car. The car, which had been stolen from the Auckland Airport car park, was dumped and torched in South Auckland. Everything pointed to it being a boy racer, but Ihaka’s renowned gut instinct told him otherwise. He suspected the woman’s husband had something to do with it, and wanted him to be the focus of the investigation even though there was no concrete evidence to support this theory.

  After six fruitless months McGrail decided to downgrade the investigation and redeploy resources. Ihaka wouldn’t let go. The husband hired a politically connected, media-savvy QC who got to the minister. Word came down the pipe to McGrail: bring your attack dog to heel.

  Which he did, with unusual vehemence. (McGrail’s normal mode of censure was impassive sarcasm, mild only in the delivery.) It was one of the few times in their long relationship when he seemed to take Ihaka’s lone-wolf behaviour personally. What Ihaka didn’t know was that McGrail was closing in on his goal of becoming Auckland District Commander and lay awake at night running through scenarios which could prevent that happening. Almost all of them involved Ihaka.

  Ihaka paused in the doorway. “Oh yeah, the hit-and-run,” he said, making the speech marks sign. “They’ll make a fucking meal of that. Any brilliant ideas?”

  McGrail’s expression became even more dubious. “As in turning the negative into a positive?” He shook his head. “That’s probably a bridge too far. If I was in your shoes, I’d focus on damage limitation.”

  It all went pretty much exactly as McGrail had anticipated. Ihaka never got around to devising a strategy to neutralize the issue. When it came up at the interview, instead of dealing with it quickly by admitting error and declaring that he’d learned from the experience, he said he still thought he was right. The panel chairman observed that Ihaka seemed to be missing the point, which was his unprofessional conduct rather than who was right and who was wrong. With all due respect, replied Ihaka, although respect wasn’t evident in his demeanour, that mindset was another example of priorities being arse-about-face.

  McGrail’s replacement was a detective sergeant from North Shore, Tony “Boy” Charlton, who was six years Ihaka’s junior.

  It was bad enough being overlooked, worse that he now had to report to the guy who’d got the job, but what Ihaka really couldn’t stomach was that Charlton was everything he wasn’t – youthful, good-looking, polished, politically adept, destined for stardom. He was going all the way to the top; it was just a matter of how quickly and by which route. Unfortunately for Ihaka, Charlton’s chosen route ran slap-bang through his career.

  Charlton had been given his nickname by an Aussie cop over on secondment. “Boy” Charlton was an Australian folk hero of the 1920s, a swimmer who set world records and won an Olympic gold medal. The famous public swimming pool in the Sydney Domain overlooking the Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf was named after him.

  Ihaka was thrilled to learn, in the course of a moan to a contact in the New South Wales Police Service, that the Boy Charlton Pool was a renowned homosexual hangout and pick-up spot. He’d disseminated this information far and wide but the take-up was disappointing, perhaps because Charlton’s wife was as good-looking as he was. The fact that Charlton was a lust object for some female officers and administrative staff might also have had something to do with it.

  One step behind Charlton came Detective Sergeant Ron “Igor” Firkitt, a shaven-headed hulk with a chain-smoker’s poisoned well of a mouth. Some likened their bond to that between McGrail and Ihaka, but there was no comparison. Charlton and Firkitt were rusted onto each other, hence Firkitt’s nickname referring to the shambling monster who does his master’s dirty work in Gothic horror stories.

  Given that Ihaka regarded Charlton as personifying the police force’s transformation into an organization in which he didn’t fit, he might have been expected to find common cause with Firkitt, who was even more old-school than he was. It didn’t work out that way. Perhaps there was an element of two bulls in one paddock, of Auckland Central not being big enough for both, but from day one Firkitt made it clear he wasn’t interested in cooperation. Whereas Charlton treated Ihaka with studied politeness, Firkitt never missed an opportunity to remind him that there had been a power shift and now he was on the outer. Ihaka assumed the aim was to isolate him, and that Firkitt, as always, was doing his master’s bidding.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Ihaka. “I just forgot.”

  “What a load of shit,” said Van Roon crisply. “So are you coming?”

  Ihaka turned around. The floor space previously occupied by the woman had been taken over by a couple of young Asian guys who smiled shyly at him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Friday night in Ponsonby, though. It might take a while to get a cab.”

  “If you have any trouble, give us a ring and I’ll come and get you,” said Van Roon. “I’m on OJ tonight.”

  Ihaka looked around. The woman was over in the far corner, talking animatedly to a handsome Polynesian who had the pale glow of minor celebrity.

  He drained his beer and headed for the exit.

  When Ihaka walked into the inner-city pub bar where the farewell function was beginning to wind down, Firkitt sucked even more fiercely on the unlit cigarette he’d been toying with for several minutes. “Well, fuck me,” he said. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  Behind him, Charlton was taking his turn to butter up Worsp. He paused in mid-sentence, glancing over his shoulder to see what Firkitt was talking about. “Must be a mighty big cat,” he said.

  Worsp, who had a backside that wobbled in the wind, broke into a silent, heaving chuckle. “Bloody typical,” he said. “Still, better late than never, I suppose.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” said Charlton. “Another would be: better never than late.”

  He was so pleased with his witticism that he shook Worsp’s hand for the fourth time that day. “I really have to hit the road, Ted, but don’t be a
stranger. It’d be a crime to let all that wisdom and experience go to waste.”

  Even though he’d been lapping up free drinks and flattery all night, Worsp hadn’t had his fill of either. “Just quietly,” he purred, “I suspect life after Ted will come as a rude shock to some of these chaps. But you know me, sir, the old warhorse. When the bugle sounds, I start pawing the ground.”

  “You’ve been a good soldier, mate,” said Charlton, his voice husky with camaraderie. “All the very best.”

  Firkitt dropped a rough hand on Worsp’s shoulder. “Good on you, champ. Take it easy now.”

  They watched Worsp lumber off in search of someone who hadn’t shouted him a drink. “Don’t be a stranger?” said Firkitt incredulously. “A good soldier? Give me a fucking break.”

  Charlton shrugged. “Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to sprinkle a little sugar. Needless to say, I rely on you to make life hell for anyone who encourages that old fraud to come within five kilometres of Central.”

  “You bet.”

  “Right, I’m off. Are you sticking around?”

  “Not for long,” said Firkitt. “Looks like she’s running out of steam.”

  “Well,” said Charlton, “should you happen to find yourself tête-à-tête with our brown bro…”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “If you talk to him.”

  “Oh, I’ll be talking to him all right,” said Firkitt. “And I’ll tell you what, I won’t be sprinkling any fucking sugar.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Charlton. “The man’s overweight. A little sugar is the last thing he needs.”

  Ihaka was beginning to relax. Maybe this wouldn’t be a complete horror show after all. He’d done the decent thing by Worsp, biting his tongue when the old prong greeted him with, “Let me guess – your mother had another fall?” He’d bought Worsp a Scotch and dry and let him crap on about how the troops at Auckland Central would soon discover the meaning of the word “indispensable”. He’d remained calm when Worsp suggested – “Just putting it out there” – that maybe they hadn’t seen the last of him because Boy seemed reluctant to let him “ride into the sunset”. And he’d shaken hands and said all the right things as if he meant it. Yes, he felt a little nauseous but, at the same time, quietly proud of himself, like someone who has eaten something disgusting to win a dare.

  Charlton had left so that was another plus, and Firkitt had either taken off with him or was outside having a smoke. McGrail, of course, was long gone which was also a relief: now that they didn’t have a day-to-day working relationship, he wasn’t all that comfortable around the Ulsterman. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy: Ihaka was keeping his distance from McGrail on the assumption that McGrail, now that he was district commander, would want to keep his distance from him.

  In fact, leaning on the bar with his sixth beer of the evening chatting to Van Roon and Beth Greendale, who’d left the force a few years earlier to have kids, Ihaka was in danger of enjoying himself.

  Firkitt entered the conversation like a home invasion. “Well, well, fucking well,” he said. “Look who’s here.”

  Ihaka sighed. “Igor.”

  “You can knock that shit off for a start,” said Firkitt.

  Ihaka asked Greendale, “Do you two know each other?”

  “We’ve met,” said Greendale, giving Firkitt a tight smile. “How are you finding Central?”

  “Since you ask, it’s Fred Karno’s fucking circus,” he said. “But we’ll sort it out.”

  “We being you and Charlton, I assume,” said Greendale, “and the circus being everybody else?”

  Firkitt grinned, a sight that resembled an artist’s impression of a black hole. “Got it in one, darling.”

  “If there’s one thing on God’s green earth I’m not,” said Greendale, “it’s your darling.”

  “Is that right?” said Firkitt. “Well, when you’re back in the suburbs changing nappies and wiping arses, it won’t matter a damn either way, will it?” He turned to Ihaka. “Fucking class act you are, showing up three and a half hours late.”

  “What do you care?”

  “I couldn’t give a shit,” said Firkitt. “I’m just pointing it out. That’s why you never had a dog’s show of making DI – you’ve got no fucking idea.”

  “Whereas you, on the other hand—” said Van Roon.

  Firkitt eyed up Van Roon. “The difference is I know my limitations. Or, to put it another way, I don’t have my head up my big, fat, brown arse.”

  “There’s no room,” said Ihaka. “You’d have to ask Boy to remove his cock first.”

  “Well, you’d know all about that,” said Firkitt. “How many years did you bend over for Creeping Jesus?”

  “Listen, guys,” said Greendale, “it’s been great to catch up, but I think I’ll be running along. When you’ve been out in the suburbs changing nappies for a few years, this sort of gay banter doesn’t do it for you any more.”

  “See you,” said Firkitt without looking at her.

  “Hang on, Beth,” said Ihaka, “me and Igor have run out of things to talk about.”

  “Like fuck we have,” said Firkitt. “I’m just getting started.”

  “Give it a rest, Firkitt,” said Van Roon. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  Firkitt pulled a cry-baby face. “This isn’t the time or the place,” he whined. “I’ll be the judge of that. It so happens I’ve got some stuff I want to share with big boy here, so feel free to bugger off.”

  “You might as well,” Ihaka told the others. “This is like therapy for him. It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

  Having had a brief but vivid reminder of why she didn’t miss being a cop one little bit, Greendale couldn’t wait to get out of there. Van Roon offered to see her to her car.

  Firkitt was in full, toxic flow before they were even out of earshot: “Do you ever think about what a fucking loser you are? I mean, mate, you had everything in your favour: you were the man on the spot, you’d put in the hard yards, you had the new DC on your side. On top of all that you’re a Maori and, as we all know, it’s not a level playing field these days. Three capable white blokes and a deadshit Maori go for a job, Hori gets it every time. That’s what the fucking world’s come to. So you have to ask the question: what sort of a cunt would you have to be to have all that going for you and still blow it?”

  Firkitt rocked back on his heels, hands in pockets, awaiting Ihaka’s response with an expectant half-smile. He’s had a few, thought Ihaka, but he’s not pissed. He knows what he’s doing: he’s seeing how far he can push me.

  “I’ve got to take a piss,” said Ihaka.

  “Me too.”

  Firkitt followed Ihaka into the toilet, hovering on his shoulder. “You know what really fucked you, right? Harassing that poor bastard whose missus got cleaned up by a boy racer. Christ, that would have to be the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of. Even you brownies can’t get away with that sort of shit. I mean, you can have your little sluts on tap, bone them up the arse with a baton if you want. That’s fine; we understand you people like that sort of thing. But deciding you don’t need a scrap of evidence to know some eastern suburbs big shot took out his wife, following him around, barging in on him at some ungodly hour, fuck me.” The diatribe ended in a jarring cackle.

  Ihaka registered that none of the stalls were occupied. He stepped up to the weeping wall. Firkitt followed suit, still snorting with amusement. As Firkitt unzipped, Ihaka threw a hard, fast elbow, spearing it into the side of his jaw, just below the ear. Firkitt bounced off the wall, his knees gave way, and he slid face first into the trough of the urinal. Ihaka unbuttoned his jeans and took a long, leisurely piss. The drainage flow encountered an obstacle, but the obstacle didn’t seem to notice.

  Ihaka washed and dried his hands and walked out of the toilet. Firkitt still hadn’t moved.

  He left the bar without looking left or right and got a taxi home. Home was an Edwardian bu
ngalow in a quiet cul-de-sac near Eden Park, one of a number of houses in the streets between Dominion and Sandringham Roads which were built for troops returning from the Turkish campaign. He went into his shed, found a hammer, and pulverized his cellphone, partly because he wanted to be incommunicado, partly because he blamed the cellphone for the way the evening had turned out. He had a ham and cheese sandwich, made a thermos of coffee, and threw a few items into an overnight bag. Forty minutes after leaving Worsp’s farewell, he reversed his car out of the drive and headed for the harbour bridge. He was almost certainly over the limit but his head was clear. Besides, he firmly believed that he drove better with a few beers under his belt than most civilians did stone-cold sober.

  Ihaka went north to his family’s bach, an authentically dilapidated pole house at Tauranga Bay on the south head of Whangaroa Harbour, where he spent the next thirty-six hours sleeping, fishing and sitting in the sun. He didn’t think about the Firkitt incident or the likely consequences because he was a fatalist and it wasn’t in his nature to fret over things that couldn’t be undone or potential developments that he couldn’t control. On Sunday afternoon he drove back to Auckland. The checkout girl at the Victoria Park supermarket was the first person he’d spoken to since getting out of the taxi.

  There were twenty-three messages on his answerphone. If there’d been three or four he might have listened to them. He showered and had a couple of beers while he marinated some chicken thighs, scrubbed new potatoes and prepared a salad. When he was ready to barbecue, he switched to red wine.

  Ihaka was a latecomer to wine, as he was to cooking. Wine had been something other people drank and their rituals and palaver stirred up the dormant class warrior in him.

  Recently, though, he’d begun jettisoning some of his fixed ideas, particularly the ones he’d carted around since his state-house childhood. What was the point of trying to improve your lot in life if you wouldn’t let go of the habits and prejudices that epitomized everything you were trying to outgrow – fast food, slop beer, bad attitudes, wilful ignorance? A bloke just had to keep in mind that wine wasn’t meant to be drunk quite as fast or in quite the same quantity as beer.