Death on Demand

by Paul Thomas

“What did you tell him, Blair?”

  “This would’ve been two, maybe three weeks before it happened. The bikers were getting jumpy. There was a crew going round ripping off crims. Like guys would pull a job, they’d be divvying up, next thing these dudes in ski masks with sawn-off shotties would kick the door in and bag the lot. Or if it was a dope deal, they’d take the dope and next week it’d be on the street.”

  “That sort of stuff’s been going on since the dawn of time. No honour among thieves and all that shit.”

  “True, but what I heard, and what I passed on to McGrail, was that there was a cop involved.”

  “Why the fuck,” said Ihaka in his most reasonable tone, “didn’t you tell me this last time?”

  Corvine looked a bit bashful. “I assumed you were just being polite. You know, you pay a visit to the great survivor, what else do you talk about? I didn’t expect you to give a shit. No one else did.”

  “Was anyone else there when you told him?”

  “Mate, something like that, it’s for the boss’s ears only. What happens after that is his call. I went round to McGrail’s place one night, told him face to face.” Corvine paused. “I can understand why it wasn’t in the report, but I would’ve thought McGrail might’ve mentioned it to you.”

  “I would’ve thought so too.”

  Ihaka took the softly, softly approach, sidling up to Helen Conroy at the supermarket, where she was stocking up on toilet paper as if she knew something the rest of Auckland didn’t. He introduced himself in a murmur, holding his ID close to his chest.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Arden Black,” he said. “I can’t give you any guarantees, but it mightn’t have to go any further.”

  She stared at him, trying to blink away her fear and confusion. “But if you catch him, I’ll have to testify in court, won’t I?”

  “Catch who?”

  “The blackmailer.” She mimicked Ihaka’s frown. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  They went to a café deep in the adjoining mall. Helen Conroy had a round, pleasant face and was holding the line in the struggle with her weight. Ihaka imagined her, in happier times, as an eager social animal and energetic supporter of campaigns to make life in her part of the city even more agreeable. But she was pale and fretful now, distractedly fiddling with the cluster of gems on her wedding-ring finger as she contemplated the loss of her good name and enviable circumstances.

  She’d been introduced to Arden by a woman with whom she’d lost touch, an acquaintance rather than a friend. She had an idea the woman was living in the South Island these days. Her account of her dealings with Arden coincided with what she’d told Vanessa Kelly. Like Kelly, she had no knowledge of his secret life beyond her own experience.

  The blackmailer made contact on the morning Arden’s body was IDed. She was home alone. The phone rang and a man speaking with a distorted voice told her to look in the letterbox. There was an A4 envelope containing photographs of her entering and leaving Arden’s apartment building. The camera’s automatic time and date function timed her visit at a fortnight earlier and an hour long. There was also a shot of her framed in the living-room window, eyes closed and head thrown back as Arden nuzzled her neck.

  The phone rang again. The blackmailer told her she had till Friday afternoon to get her hands on $9500 in cash. She was to put it in a zip-up bag, go to the Langham Hotel on the corner of Symonds Street and Karangahape Road at 6 p.m. and have a drink in the lobby bar. At 6.15 she was to take the bag into the toilet off the lobby, go into the middle cubicle, wait there for five minutes, and then exit the toilet, leaving the bag in the cubicle, on the floor. If that cubicle was occupied, she was to go back to the bar, have another drink and try again at 6.30. When it was done, she was to go straight from the toilet to her car or a taxi and get the hell out of there. She was to burn the photos and envelope. She would be under surveillance: if she didn’t follow instructions to the letter or departed from the script in any way, shape or form, her husband would get a set of even more damning photos. Sets of photos would also find their way to the New Zealand Herald’s gossip columnist and various individuals and organizations, including the Baradene College Old Girls’ Association.

  She did as she was told. The blackmailer called again to tell her she was a sensible woman, and as long as she carried on being sensible she had nothing to worry about. He wasn’t greedy; he’d give her time to smooth out the finances before he came back for the second of five payments.

  “Did you see anyone you knew or who looked familiar at the hotel?” asked Ihaka.

  “No.”

  “Did you notice anyone looking at you?”

  “Not that I can remember. I was so anxious not to do anything wrong that I really just kept my head down.”

  “Was there anyone in the toilet when you went in?”

  She gestured, hands fluttering vaguely. “I think someone came out as I went in. I didn’t really look at her, I just went straight to the cubicle.”

  “What about when you came out of the cubicle? Was there anyone in the toilets, or did anyone come in as you went out?”

  “I think there was but, as I said, I wasn’t making eye contact. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.” She was daring to hope, peering into Ihaka’s face as if he was the saviour. “What happens now?”

  He said he’d do his best to fix it.

  Jackie Vlukovich, better known as Jackie Vee, had always been an early riser, but with each day he spent holed up in the bush, the longer he slept in. His business associates had decided it would be in everybody’s best interests if he dropped out of sight for a while. They’d made it sound like a holiday, but it was more like doing time, just sitting around staring at the wall, so the longer he slept the less time there was to kill.

  The cottage overlooked a west coast beach where the waves thundered in like a cavalry charge, petering out in a splatter of white foam on black sand. Urban to the tips of his crocodile-skin cowboy boots, Jackie had taken a few days to get used to the sound of the wilderness – waves, birdsong, insect buzz – and the sudden, ominous silences. Now that he could sleep through all that stuff, it had taken something else to wake him up: the sound of other people. There was someone in the kitchen. In fact, unless his hearing had gone haywire, there was someone in the kitchen making breakfast.

  About bloody time. Some of his associates had thought about someone other than themselves for a change and dropped in to see how he was bearing up. Jackie rolled out of bed and pulled on tracksuit pants. Confident that his bladder could tough it out for a little longer, he padded down the corridor to the kitchen.

  Neither of his visitors qualified as an associate. One of them was the guy who’d brought in the Alfa Romeo, the stiff’s car, the reason he was stuck out there in hippy-dippy land sleeping in like a welfare bludger. Even if there hadn’t been a pump-action shotgun on the table, Jackie would have surmised that he’d walked into a situation which had the potential to go very bad.

  Like many rogues and fly-by-nighters, Jackie was a fantasist. He thought of himself as a tough guy, among other things, but his toughness was skin-deep, a flimsy veneer made of rough language and callous attitudes. The fact was that his career in violence had peaked around the time he was expelled from Kelston Boys’ High. His uninvited visitors, on the other hand, looked like the real thing: graduates of the mean streets, professionals who measured their productivity in stitches and broken bones.

  The guy standing at the bench pushing bacon around a frying pan, the guy who’d brought in the Alfa, was Greg “G-Force” Cropper. He was a ranking member of a criminal gang called The Firm, named after the outfit headed by the infamous Kray twins that operated out of the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s.

  Although physically unremarkable, Cropper radiated malevolence. On meeting him Jackie’s first thought had been, “I bet this dude owns a pit bull.” Compared to his sidekick, though, G-Force was as intimidating as a door-to-door m
issionary. Spencer “Big Dog” Parks was gigantic, one-eyed and dreadlocked, with garish tattoos and a roadmap of ragged scars criss-crossing his wide, brown face.

  Cropper put the bacon on a plate and began cracking eggs into the frying pan. “Here he is,” he said. “Sleeping Beauty.”

  “What are you guys doing here?” said Vlukovich, his voice cracking as he forced words from a dry throat.

  Cropper grinned wolfishly. “Have a guess.”

  “Hey, man, everything’s cool,” said Vlukovich. “It’s just that we would’ve had a problem with our people in Aussie if we’d—”

  “The fuck it is,” said Cropper. “Everything’s very fucking uncool, man. The cops are hunting high and low for you, and if we can find you, it’s on the fucking cards they’re going to.”

  “Okay then, I’ll piss off. I’ll go to Croatia, I’ve got family there.”

  “Is that right?” said Cropper. “Croatia, eh? The old country. Isn’t that what you Dallies call it?”

  Vlukovich nodded uncertainly, not sure whether Cropper saw merit in his suggestion.

  “Breakfast’s ready,” said Cropper. He placed two heaped plates on the table, which at least gave Big Dog something other than Vlukovich to fix his harrowing monocular stare on.

  “You know what?” said Cropper, projecting through a mouthful of churning protein. “You should be having a feed, not us. Like in the old days, when they chopped cunts’ heads off or put them up against the wall or whatever, they always gave them a hearty breakfast. I reckon it’d be wasted on you, but one bite and you’d spew your ring out.”

  Cropper’s point – that if they could find Vlukovich, so could the cops – was borne out sooner than he’d expected, or indeed allowed for. As he and Parks guffawed over the spreading stain centred on Vlukovich’s crotch – the imminent prospect of having his face blown off proving a bridge too far for his bladder – the back door was smashed off its hinges as Ihaka and his team stormed the kitchen.

  To make room for the plates of bacon and eggs, the toast, cups of tea, salt and pepper and the bottle of genuine Texas-style kick-ass barbecue sauce, Parks had moved the shotgun to the other side of the table, out of easy reach. He lunged for it, belly-flopping down on the table, which crumpled under his 140 kilos. As he wallowed among the wreckage, Ihaka took a couple of long strides and booted him concussively behind the ear.

  Cropper didn’t even think about trying for the shotgun. Notwithstanding Ihaka’s exhibition of unarmed combat, it was pretty clear these guys wouldn’t need much encouragement to use the semi-automatic pistols they were pointing at him. He sat back down and put his hands on his head.

  Ihaka stood over Vlukovich, who’d crawled into a corner and assumed the foetal position. “I think you should come with us, Jackie. As safe houses go, this place leaves a lot to be desired.”

  The cops hit every known or suspected Firm hangout. They found drugs, drug-making equipment, unregistered firearms, implements designed or adapted to inflict grievous bodily harm, wanted persons, unwanted persons, missing persons, persons who were out way past their bedtimes, and a cornucopia of stolen goods. They didn’t find Arden Black’s laptop or personal organizer, but in the rat’s nest that served as Cropper’s bedroom they found the linen jacket which the late gigolo was wearing when last seen alive.

  Parks had nothing to say, which was true to form. The total number of words he’d uttered in his various police interviews over the years was zero. For Big Dog, being staunch meant not saying anything to the pigs, ever. G-Force had plenty to say, but it was all foul-mouthed bravado which didn’t shed any light on why Black, and presumably his sister, had got so far offside with The Firm.

  Sensing he was on a roll, Ihaka asked Miriam Lovell out for a drink. She suggested a wine and tapas bar on Ponsonby Road.

  Lovell arrived twenty minutes late in a gust of apologies and expensive perfume, both of which Ihaka interpreted as encouraging signs. Being a regular, she recommended that they shared a plate of tapas and a bottle of the house red. They swapped “how was your day” small talk, Ihaka hinting that she could sleep a little sounder as a result of his exertions.

  “I’ve got to say, this is a first for me,” said Lovell. “I’ve had a drink with cops in the line of duty, as it were, but never out of choice.”

  “You got something against cops?”

  “Well, I used to be quite left-wing. Probably still am in most people’s books.”

  “Say no more,” said Ihaka. “My old man was a commie. When I told him I was joining the police force he bloody near disowned me on the spot.”

  Lovell’s mouth fell open. “Don’t tell me your father was Jimmy Ihaka.”

  Ihaka nodded.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw a photo of him.”

  “But that’s just it: I have seen photos of him. God, how thick can you be? You’re practically peas in a pod.”

  “Where did you see a photo of him?”

  “When I was younger and definitely more foolish, I decided to do a Ph.D. The best part of a decade, a stalled career and a broken marriage later, I can just make out a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel, although knowing my luck it’ll be a glow-worm. Anyway, my thesis is on communism in the trade union movement in the sixties and seventies. Your father cropped up quite a bit. He had this extraordinary appetite for confrontation. What was he like at home?”

  Ihaka laughed. “I used to get asked that a lot as a kid. I remember a cousin whose old man was a bishop saying he got the same thing, people always asking what was it like to have a bishop for a father, as if he walked in the door in the evening and said, ‘Let us pray.’ I wouldn’t say Dad left his politics at the door, but those labels they pinned on him – firebrand, maverick, class warrior, all that stuff – meant bugger all to me. He was just the old man.”

  Lovell nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course. We’re all different people at home.”

  “Plus Mum had his number. Whenever he started going a bit Jimmy the Red on us, she knew how to bring him back to reality.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Took the piss, mostly.”

  Ihaka’s cellphone rang: Firkitt. Ihaka made his apologies and went out onto the footpath.

  “Where are you?” said Firkitt.

  “Off duty.”

  Firkitt grunted derisively. “No such fucking thing.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve had a pretty big day.”

  “Bully for you, champ, but in case you haven’t noticed, crime doesn’t run to our clock. There’s been another murder, so it’s all hands to the pump. Charlton’s giving a team-talk in half an hour. Be there.”

  “This murder. Would it have anything to do with all the other murders we’ve had lately?”

  “You bet your arse it does. The deceased is Phil Malone, that TV guy whose partner got knifed. You know, one of the ones Lilywhite picked out.”

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  “The cleaners found him in the bath, along with a plugged-in, switched-on hairdryer. The dryer belonged in the bedroom. According to his wife, he was so safety-conscious he wouldn’t let her use it in the bathroom. He had headphones on, listening to his iPod. Probably didn’t see or hear a fucking thing.”

  13

  When Phil Malone sold his company to the Brits, over his partner’s dead body, he built a McMansion on a lifestyle block in rural South Auckland. He was home alone there when the killer came. His wife and daughter were at a hockey tournament in New Plymouth; his son, a Monday-to-Friday boarder, was at school.

  The Malones loved the privacy of their lifestyle block. So did the killer. No one had seen him or her come and go. There were a couple of sightings of unfamiliar cars in the area, but they were hopelessly vague. Someone remembered seeing a late-model dark grey sedan, a Nissan or a Honda. Or maybe a Mazda. Come to think of it, it might’ve been a Mitsubishi – it’s hard to tell those Japanese cars apart. Someone e
lse saw a late-model light-coloured SUV. He was pretty sure it was a SsangYong until he remembered a guy at work had been talking up his brother-in-law’s new SsangYong and the name might have just stuck in his head.

  Ihaka sat at the back of the room, half-listening to Boy Charlton’s briefing. Charlton had the jargon down pat, and his slick presentation was testimony to a hundred Toastmasters breakfasts. When all was said and done, though, he’d dragged people into Central at eight o’clock at night or away from whatever they were doing to tell them what they already knew: there were no leads.

  Now he was into the big rev-up, part motivational up and at ’em, part boot up the arse. Even before Malone, the media had been having a field day: the term “Murder City” was getting a workout on shock-jock radio, a columnist had actually used the phrase “the killing fields” and editorials dispensed advice in lofty generalizations. Down in Wellington the opposition was claiming that Aucklanders no longer felt safe in their own homes, and the Prime Minister had acknowledged that the public needed – and were entitled to – urgent reassurance that the police had the situation under control. The heat was on.

  Ihaka glanced at his watch: 8.45. Miriam Lovell had told him to ring her if he got through before nine. If she wasn’t soaking in a bath, they could reconvene at the tapas bar.

  Charlton finished with a flourish. Ihaka was almost out the door when Charlton’s voice cut through the hubbub: “Sergeant Ihaka, a word before you slip away.”

  Firkitt followed Ihaka into Charlton’s office. Charlton dropped into the chair behind his desk with a grunt of fatigue. Up close he looked wound up and worn out.

  “There’s a press conference first thing in the morning to announce a breakthrough in the Arden Black case,” said Charlton. “Your presence isn’t required.” He waited for Ihaka’s response, which took the form of a non-committal shrug. “I suppose you’re thinking, here we go: I do the work, Charlton takes the credit. I wouldn’t particularly blame you, but the way I see it, if I have to take the heat, I get to deliver the good news. And, believe me, I’ve taken some heat lately, mostly from McGrail.”