Death on Demand

by Paul Thomas

  McGrail smiled his miniature smile. “Let’s say that was plan B. So what are you going to do now?”

  “Probably stick around for the rest of the week – see a few people, do some chores around home.”

  “I understand Lilywhite’s funeral is on Friday, at the cathedral in Parnell. You might want to attend.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a bit provocative?”

  “For whom?”

  “Charlton.”

  “It’s a funeral, Sergeant. I know the inspector has empire-building tendencies, but for the time being church services fall outside his bailiwick.”

  “His what?”

  “It’s really none of his business if you choose to attend the man’s funeral.”

  “What about Lilywhite’s kids?” said Ihaka. “I’m pretty sure they’d think it was their business.”

  “I dare say. But he did choose you as his father confessor.”

  “That’s exactly what he called me.”

  “Well, there you are then. Ask yourself this: if Lilywhite himself had a say in the matter, would he want you there?”

  Ihaka couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in church.

  As a child, he’d wondered if his parents were devoted to each other in spite of their political and philosophical differences, or because of them. His father was a Marxist, but his heretical streak and relish for rocking the boat often put him at odds with comrades who toed the party line and took direction from a foreign capital. When it came to religion, though, he was a card-carrying atheist. Not only was his mother a believer, but her denomination of choice was the Anglican Church, aka the National Party at prayer. Although compromise didn’t come easily or naturally to Jimmy Ihaka, he and wife Barbara made a deal over little Tito’s spiritual upbringing: he would attend Sunday school, then go to church once a month until he turned sixteen. After that it was up to him.

  Now Ihaka remembered: the last time he’d been in church was a week before his sixteenth birthday.

  After he’d heard his father declare for the hundredth or so time that religion was the opium of the people, twelve-year-old Tito asked him what it meant.

  “Religion and opium both get people hooked and take away their spirit,” said Jimmy. “That makes them easy to control. You can’t change the world when you spend half your life on your knees.”

  Barbara chipped in, “So why do people keep falling for it?”

  “Because they’re ignorant,” said Jimmy. “Once the masses are properly educated, they’ll see religion for what it is, a tool used by the establishment to control them.”

  “Going to university didn’t stop me believing in God,” said Barbara.

  “Yeah, but you’re high-caste. It goes with the territory.”

  “Why did you marry her, then?” asked Tito.

  “That’s a stupid question,” said Jimmy. “Have a look at your mother.”

  Tito did as he was told. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “But why did Mum marry you?”

  Barbara laughed, a sound her husband and son never tired of. Jimmy chased Tito outside, roaring, “Cheeky little bugger. If I get my hands on you, you won’t sit down for a week.”

  Ihaka smiled at the memory, thinking, maybe I should come to church more often.

  The service began. He was surprised to find himself mouthing the words of a long-forgotten hymn – “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day” – and that his wandering mind could seize on a couple of sentences from the priest’s soporific incantation: “I held my tongue and spake nothing: I kept silence, yea, even from good words, but it was pain and grief to me. My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue.”

  During the prayers Ihaka surveyed the expanse of bowed heads, wondering how many of the murmuring supplicants actually believed that God was all ears. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t be bothered pretending to pray. Across the aisle a woman sat and fidgeted as if she was waiting for a well-overdue bus.

  There was something familiar about her, but her face was obscured by a swoop of dark hair. Perhaps sensing Ihaka’s scrutiny, she turned her head, her gaze tracking across the lowered heads and hunched backs to settle on him. He had seen her before, getting out of a car into the pale yellow beam of a street light and walking unhurriedly through the rain to Lilywhite’s front door. After a few seconds Denise Hadlow’s incurious gaze moved on, leaving no sign that she’d placed Ihaka as the persecutor of her former lover.

  Businessman Jonathon Bell delivered the first eulogy, a numbingly thorough review of Lilywhite’s life and times, from their meeting at Christ’s College through to the most recent boys’ weekend, a duck-hunting expedition. It was only when covering the final, inglorious phase of his late friend’s career in property development that Bell discovered the virtue of brevity.

  Then the children had their say. Matthew had a patrician air to go with the accent he’d acquired during his five years in London. He evoked a warm, caring father endowed with robust common sense and an unerring moral compass. While not a churchgoer, Lilywhite had drummed Christian principles into his children until knowing right from wrong came naturally to them.

  Sandy declared that Lilywhite had never really recovered from the loss of his wife and the “ordeal” he’d been subjected to, her steely demeanour giving it the air of an official announcement. But the crackle of indignation soon gave way to a fragile tremor. After a few minutes she trailed off in choking sobs and had to be helped back to her seat.

  The service concluded with the Twenty-third Psalm. The middle-aged mourners sang it with gusto, their raised voices swirling around the vaulted emptiness: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

  Lilywhite wasn’t counting on that, thought Ihaka. He took it for granted that God had washed His hands of him.

  Hand in hand Sandy and Matthew followed the pallbearers down the aisle and out into grey heat that throbbed with the threat of rain. The congregation swept after them. Having sat through the ceremony designed to reduce death’s sting, the friends of Christopher Lilywhite were now eager to emote. Ihaka went with them. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t think it would be well received or do any good, but it felt like the right thing to do.

  Sandy saw him coming over the shoulder of the woman she was hugging. Her expression went blank. She must have said something because the other woman made a clean break from the clinch and moved aside.

  Ihaka pushed in front of another sympathizer, a woman wearing a hat from the era of royal tours and cigarette holders. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

  Sandy shook her head weakly, like a pummelled fighter signalling he’d had enough. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “What are you doing here? I don’t want your fake sympathy, so just go away.”

  The crowd buzz hushed. People stared. As Ihaka turned away, he heard Matthew call out, his acquired accent faltering under the strain, “Is that him? Is that the guy you were telling me about? Hey, you, hold it right there. I want a word with you.”

  The crowd shrank back, creating a clearing. Sandy wanted nothing to do with it. She plucked at her brother’s sleeve, reminding him that they were due at the crematorium.

  Matthew freed himself, giving her hand a squeeze. He got up close to Ihaka, his shiny eyes bulging. “I want to know what the hell’s going on.”

  “I’m not involved,” said Ihaka. “You should speak to Detective Inspector Charlton.”

  Matthew’s jabbing finger stopped just short of Ihaka’s chest. “I want to hear it from you.”

  Ihaka shook his head. “No you don’t.”

  Matthew grabbed his arm, but Ihaka shook him off and shouldered his way through the crowd, ignoring the complaints, just wanting to get the hell out of there. When someone yanked on his sleeve, he whirled around to give them a good look at what they were mes
sing with. It was Denise Hadlow.

  “You’re Ihaka, right?”

  He put his expression in neutral. “Yeah.”

  “Well, you’ve got a nerve,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  “No, they all pretend I don’t exist,” she said. “I just have to keep a low profile and not talk to anyone.”

  “Have you got a minute?”

  Before she could answer, Firkitt materialized at her elbow, flourishing ID. “We’ll take it from here. Detective Sergeant Firkitt, Ms Hadlow. We’d like a word.”

  She raised her eyebrows at Ihaka, mimicking his resigned shrug. As a DC led her away, Firkitt lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Ihaka’s face, forcing him to take a step back.

  “You never learn, do you, fat boy?” said Firkitt.

  “I’m on leave.”

  “Well, go fucking fishing. If you don’t back off, Charlton’s going to come after you with a fucking flame-thrower. And don’t think Creeping Jesus will protect you. He’ll be too busy covering his own arse.”

  “Is it okay with you if I go and get a cup of coffee? See, the thing is the fancy stuff, your skinny decaf lattes and what not, are a bit hard to come by down my way.”

  “Do it and get the fuck out of town. Last warning.”

  Ihaka sat in the car arguing with himself. It wasn’t his case, wasn’t his problem. He could spend the weekend with the whanau, then go home. Yeah, Wairarapa was home now. He’d been perfectly content with his life before this interruption and would be again. Well, perfectly was a bit strong: he’d been content. Yes, the fact that Lilywhite had confessed to him made it personal, but there was no way back in; Charlton would make sure of that. It was over.

  But less than forty-eight hours after Lilywhite had opened up, he was murdered. That was quite a coincidence. Why would you kill a dying man? Maybe whoever knocked off the wife had got wind that his client was talking to the cops and had shut him up.

  There was another way of looking at it: less than twenty-four hours after Ihaka had spoken to Yallop, Lilywhite was murdered. Was that how the killer had got wind that Lilywhite was telling all? Yallop’s view that murder in the eastern suburbs didn’t have a professional criminal feel to it made a certain amount of sense, but go back to the starting premise: the Prof would tell the truth only if he had nothing to gain from lying and if he calculated that by playing along he could bank a favour to be called in down the track. But Yallop had made it clear he saw Ihaka as yesterday’s man, an Auckland nobody. Why would he help a cop who couldn’t return the favour?

  It started to rain as Ihaka drove over to Ponsonby. By the time he parked on a bus stop across the road from the café, rain was hissing from a milk-white sky, emptying the pavement tables. Yallop’s table was occupied: a couple of real estate agents, guessed Ihaka, and two plump sitting ducks from the secretarial pool, fifteen years younger and depressingly eager to live down to expectations.

  He asked the guy behind the counter what time Yallop had left. Yallop hadn’t been in that day. He’d probably popped over to Sydney for a few days.

  Ihaka rang Central to get Yallop’s address. Yallop lived in a short street on the south side of Jervois Road, behind Three Lamps village. As Ihaka expected, the restored villa was neither more nor less twee than the neighbours’. Yallop knew how to blend in, whatever the setting.

  He climbed the steps to the veranda. Six jabs on the buzzer got no response. The front door was locked and the curtains were drawn.

  The gate at the side of house opened to Ihaka’s push, although there was a deadbolt on the inside. He would have picked Yallop as a stickler for basic security. He went down the side of the villa to the back porch. Yallop had been out there having a beer while he barbecued a steak. The beer was on the outdoor table, half-finished. The steak was on the grill, half-cooked. Yallop lay on his back with a neat hole in his forehead.

  Ihaka sighed. “You didn’t see that coming, did you, Prof?” he said. “Guess you weren’t so fucking smart after all.”

  7

  On the last day of her life Lorna Bell had a $375 haircut and lunch at the Viaduct Basin. She drank a champagne cocktail while she studied the menu, another with her pan-fried snapper, and a $200 half-bottle of Chateau Rieussec with her two desserts – summer berry compote and crème brûlée. While a regular luncher, she wasn’t in the habit of eating alone and rarely drank more than a glass of innocuous white wine or gave the dessert menu more than a lingering, regretful glance. Equally out of character, given that she was a responsible citizen whose husband was in the public eye, she drove home to Paritai Drive knowing full well that she wasn’t entirely sober.

  She got changed into a pair of baggy track pants – the sort her daughters called “fat pants” – and wandered around the house just looking at things: the art (a recent magazine profile of her husband had called it “undoubtedly one the finest private collections of New Zealand modern art”), her favourite pieces of furniture, photo albums. Several times she picked up a phone and started to make a call, but thought better of it.

  She went into what used to be the girls’ bedrooms. They were guest rooms now, as immaculate as the rest of the house, stripped of all trace of girlishness or teenage posturing. She didn’t regret doing that: her daughters were young women now, one foot in the present, the other in the future, and unsentimental about the trappings of their indulgent childhoods. Some of her friends had kept their children’s bedrooms intact, as if they had some historical significance, like the royal bedchamber in a French chateau: this room has been preserved exactly as it was when Samantha was in her last year at St Cuthbert’s; note the poster of Madonna in her Jean Harlow phase. It seemed like a slightly tragic form of denial, empty nesters not wanting to accept that the chicks had got too big for the nest and wouldn’t be back. Still, she wished she’d kept the books she used to read the girls at bedtime, sitting on their narrow little beds, watching their faces sag and their eyelids flutter as they slid into sleep. Thank God they were adults now, too far into their own lives to turn back.

  Lorna stood on the terrace looking out at the harbour and the gulf beyond, as still as a photo in the breathless humidity. How many hours of her life had she spent captivated by that shimmering vista? Not enough. There was a faint growl of distant thunder. Another wild night was on the way; it had been that kind of summer.

  She roamed the garden, the self-contained world where the hours meandered by like bumblebees. Their garden guru had been through a few days earlier, otherwise she might have been tempted to get down on her knees with a trowel.

  She reminded herself that she was working to a timetable. She could probably afford to spend another hour dwelling on what she’d leave behind, but what was the point? She went inside and washed her hands, taking care not to look in the mirror.

  She poured vodka into a cut-glass tumbler and added orange juice, hurrying now, almost in a rush to retrieve the sleeping pills from the bottom of the drawer, under layers of winter cashmere.

  She climbed the stairs, the drink sloshing in the glass, not noticing the art now, just concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other.

  She went into her bedroom – she and her husband no longer slept together; his snoring had been the catalyst, or perhaps the excuse – and shut the door behind her.

  Her husband, meanwhile, had spent a not atypical day in the life of a corporate titan: five and a half hours in an aircraft, two and a half hours in airports, two and a half hours in cars travelling to and from airports, forty-five minutes in a meeting, and three and a half hours in one of Sydney’s most expensive restaurants. He got home at 1.15 a.m.

  On discovering his wife’s body, Jonathon Bell did what he always did when things hadn’t gone according to plan: he rang his lawyer.

  When Tito Ihaka arrived slightly late for the Sunday morning meeting in the Auckland District Commander’s office, at which he would have to explain why and how he came to d
iscover Doug Yallop’s body and then be interrogated and abused by Charlton and Firkitt, he was surprised to find it unoccupied.

  “They’re going to be late,” said McGrail’s secretary. “Something’s come up.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “What’s that?”

  She smirked, telegraphing the lie. “No idea.”

  He nodded. “How long are they going to be?”

  “No idea.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to let me know?” he asked. “Seeing as I am on holiday.”

  “I’ve been flat out,” she said, paying more attention to her computer screen.

  Ihaka thought about making her wish she’d called in sick, but he was in enough trouble as it was. Besides, scaring silly bitches out of their frillies was something else he was trying to give up. He walked away. She was still bleating that the ADC could be there any minute as the lift doors closed.

  He was finishing his short black when he got the text to say the meeting had convened. He hailed the waitress to order another coffee.

  It wasn’t the confrontation Ihaka had expected. McGrail and Charlton were preoccupied with Lorna Bell’s suicide, and Firkitt was on visible police presence duty in Paritai Drive.

  Ihaka went through why he’d gone to see Yallop in the first place, what the Prof had to say on the subject of hitmen, and why he’d gone back for another go.

  Charlton leaned back in his chair, examining the ceiling. “Do I detect a pattern here?” he said. “You talk to someone. Some time later you think of all the things you should have asked them and realize you’ll have to go back for another bite at the cherry. Except by the time you get around to it, they’re dead and therefore unable to answer the questions you should’ve put to them in the first place. I know Lilywhite asked to see you, but you sought Yallop out – which probably means your inability to follow orders got him killed.”

  “Yallop was a piece of shit that we’ve been trying to nail for fucking years,” said Ihaka, “so excuse me if I don’t have a cry. And if he was killed because someone saw me talking to him, then the question is: why me and why now? Because as you know bloody well, Inspector, over the years plenty of blokes around here have talked to him. I’d bet a month’s pay Firkitt’s been up to that café for a few chats. Who knows? You might’ve even been up there yourself. I mean, that’s what we do, isn’t it – talk to people who might be able to provide useful information.”