by T M Heron
For a moment she looks flustered. “I didn’t want to blur the lines of personal and work.”
Suddenly I’ve had enough. “Oh, they’re already blurred. They are very much blurred. Come here.”
She doesn’t move. Just stays standing. But she doesn’t back away.
It’s all the encouragement I need. I grab her by the wrist and pull her towards me. The movement is over-exuberant, and she ends up crashing against me. I’ve never had a woman not jump into my arms, and it’s exhilarating. I bend down and kiss her, and as I do, I understand for the first time ever why people like to kiss. For a moment I become one of those clichés I hate because everything other than Ingrid and what I’d like to do to her fades into the background. And what I’d like to do to her is quite normal in the scheme of things.
When the kiss is over, she doesn’t move away but stands looking at me with her weird, beautiful eyes. She is not much shorter than me and our faces are inches apart. Hers gives nothing away.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” I say. A first.
She just smiles. “I should go. I don’t know how I feel about this.”
She leaves and I don’t try to stop her. Once she’s gone, I fall back down on the couch. I don’t want the moment to end and as soon as I step out of the basement it will. I’m thirty-eight and I’ve just had my first real kiss.
43
Of course I was never going to sleep after kissing Ingrid last night. Nothing in my extensive chemical arsenal could have helped. This morning I’m a disconcerting mix of adrenaline and fatigue. It’s as if I’ve ingested a particularly incompatible drug combination and am getting the worst of both. And in the background the kiss replays itself over and over again in my mind.
It is sub-zero outside. It’s not as warm as I’d like it in my office either, but I’m worried some part of me will fall asleep. The weather is throwing everything it can at us today. The rain is heavy. The wind is gale force and howls like a demon. Normally I love extreme weather. Love the sheer force of it and the jumpy looks on people’s faces as it attacks the building. But today I don’t need any kind of distraction. I can barely focus as it is.
Eliza comes to the door and asks me if I’d like to talk to her outside. It feels as if she’s talking to me from a dream.
We stand in the corridor and Eliza frowns again. “Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“You just look tired.”
“Very late night.”
I don’t like the thought of walking around Bakers looking tired and grey like some of my overworked colleagues. I’ve always been above that and God forbid if Ingrid was to see me like this.
“There was nothing in the emails I printed out that would explain why Leo wanted Jo hired,” says Eliza. “So I thought I’d look through the Partners’ Meeting minutes.”
“You can access those as well?” I say, then sigh. Of course she can.
“The only thing I found was that in September 2015 our Boost program agreed to fly a New Zealand runner, Michelle Goodwin, over to the New York marathon in November. Michelle Goodwin is Leo Packer’s niece.”
“I didn’t know Packer has a niece in Wellington.”
“He doesn’t. She lives in Auckland.” There’s a small pause while Eliza makes the wise decision to let me slowly come to the right conclusion myself, rather than spoon-feed it to me.
“Then it should’ve come out of the Auckland office,” I say slowly. “They have their own nomination process for Boost. Actually, it shouldn’t have happened at all. Conflict of interest.”
I lean my shoulder against the wall. I just want to go to sleep. I should be fired up by this new information. Something about it feels off. But I can feel the adrenaline draining out of my body and the fatigue is suddenly overwhelming. “Is there any way you can find out who put Packer’s niece forward? It couldn’t’ have been Packer himself. But maybe the Boost thing was a favor. It’s like that in this firm.”
“I’ll see if I can get into Boost. Otherwise maybe you can talk to Bernadette. It’s run by PR.”
“I don’t want to have to talk to Bernadette,” I whine, mainly to myself.
Eliza sniggers. “I’m sure I can get into Boost.”
“Great,” I say. “I’m going down to the basement for a sleep.”
◆◆◆
I experience a moment of confusion when I wake up in the basement under the rabbit-fur throw a long time later. Then I check my watch and realize I’ve wasted five whole hours sleeping and feel panicked. I’m running out of time. I check my burner phone and feel even worse. No calls from Ingrid. Not even one! Why hasn’t she called?
For once I take the lift back upstairs to my office. I don’t have the luxury of time to fritter away on personal well-being. A week from tomorrow is the Partners’ Conference. If Jo’s murderer hasn’t been identified by then, Anthony will have no problem ensuring that they cut me loose. My father will have won. From the grave he will have won. Even dead he will be proven to have more influence than I do.
“You’re not going to win. You’re dead, you miserable prick,” I say as the lift rockets upward. A couple of people turn and stare.
Upstairs I start ploughing through the firm’s various databases for some mention of Floyd Masters or the unfortunate-looking Nigel Berryman. There is nothing. I google them. Masters is ex St Andrews and lives in Auckland where he heads a small venture-capital firm. He could quite conceivably have come into contact with anyone from Baker’s Mergers and Acquisitions but he’s not showing up on any of our databases.
Berryman is also ex St Andrews and now lives in Sydney. He has somehow become exceptionally wealthy. This doesn’t surprise me. Men who look like Berryman typically flounder or flourish. They have more to prove than everyone else and they either reach the very top or die trying. From what I can see he spends an inordinate amount of time playing golf.
I check my burner phone again although my ears are finely attuned to its ring and there is zero likelihood I would miss a call. And of course I haven’t. I experience a sudden infusion of hatred towards the woman who would be so cruel as to leave me hanging like this. Then I think about the kiss and it dissipates.
Eliza appears at the door. “Anthony Hartman nominated Michelle Goodwin’s grant,” she says. “She’s meant to be our next hope at the Olympics.”
“Anthony?”
“Indeed.”
“It still shouldn’t have gone through Wellington,” I reply. “Although who is ever going to oppose our great leader?”
I mold the new information to see where it fits with what I already know. Packer hired Jo. Anthony ensured Packer’s niece got a grant. A board of which Anthony was a member welcomed Jo’s unsuitable daughter into an elite private school. And someone with money hidden in the British Virgin Islands financially backed it. Is Anthony the man behind this? If he is, he’s the last person I want to come up against.
A large yawn escapes me. “I’m going home. I’m going to have an early night.”
There is really no point in staying. Of the tasks Ingrid and I set ourselves there’s very little left to investigate. And I’m hardly going to do work with my employment hanging in the balance.
It catches my surveillance team unawares when I fly out of the car park at 4.15 p.m. Tonight I’m going to take something incredibly heavy and get some sleep. Tonight I won’t let myself reflect that it’s been a whole day without hearing from Ingrid, who usually calls daily with updates. Tonight I’ll try not to think about the fact that a week from tomorrow I’ll be hurled out of the partnership. That maybe one day in the near future the cops will once again arrest the wrong person for murder and this time that person will be me.
44
When I awake on Friday morning my mind is back in working order. What a difference a good night’s sleep makes. The wind has vanished, the rain has stopped, and a watery winter sun is trying to break through the clouds. I juice myself some breakfast, snort a line and I’m ready to fac
e the day.
Ingrid calls as I’m driving to work. My heart spasms strangely at the sound of her voice but other than that I’m fine. “I’m sorry I was MIA yesterday,” she says. “Family emergency.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I’m sounding way too eager. And in the back of my head I’m already wondering if there really was an emergency, or if it’s just an excuse. But Ingrid doesn’t make excuses. And I’m hoping there aren’t too many extraneous family members to demand her time and attention.
“Everything worked out okay. Did we make any progress yesterday?”
“I looked into Masters and Berryman but couldn’t find a connection. Anthony was behind Jo’s recruitment, I think, but he distanced himself by getting Leo Packer to do the deed.”
I glance over at the lane to my right and see what is sure to be today’s surveillance team.
“This is great progress,” says Ingrid. “If that’s the way he went about Jo’s hiring I wonder if he did the same sort of thing with Charlotte and St Andrews. Got someone else to nominate. Like Masters and Berryman.”
“We’ll never know. I can’t question Anthony. So it’s all come to a dead end.”
“If we assume that he did, we still need to know why. Do you want me to look into him?”
“You’re going to have to be discreet,” I say. “I can’t afford to be seen to be going up against him.”
When we hang up, I put my foot on the gas and roar off, weaving in and out of the traffic until my surveillance team are far behind, stuck in the quagmire of Wellington morning motorists.
◆◆◆
It’s not until I get near to Bakers that I realize I can’t face work today. I have no investigative work to allocate Eliza and I can’t stand the thought of her suffocating attentiveness and sympathy. I also don’t have the patience to sit cooped up in my office pretending to do work and being nice to colleagues. In a week’s time chances are I will be forced to resign, because this investigation is going nowhere.
I also realize I have lost my followers. So I blow off work for the day and keep driving. I find myself parked up at Lyall Bay, smoking a joint and watching the surfers. It’s hard to believe anyone would want to be in the water at this time of the year, but there they are. As resilient as flies.
Although I shouldn’t allow my mind to wander down this path I find I’m wondering how Savannah is coping. Has her stepfather beat her again lately? Or worse? And here am I, unable to do a thing about it. What will become of her if I’m jailed? I haven’t seen Pacitto for a very long time, but I know he is there behind the scenes working slavishly to absolve himself from being forced to arrest Kaleb Perry.
Suddenly I’m tired again. This level of exhaustion is a new experience for me. It’s a foul combination of physical and emotional strain juxtaposed over the anticipation of the truly horrible things on my horizon. Me losing my partnership, Savannah being killed by her stepfather while my mother visits me in jail. I can foresee my sister wanting to visit me too. I can see her glee as her eyes feast on the indignity of my surroundings.
As drowsiness sets in, I try to shift my thoughts to something other than my sister. Sleep is coming and I don’t want to dream about her. Helena often drops in when I’m dozing, to flaunt her scarily accurate predictive ability — another reason why I’m constantly tired. However, to be thinking of her as I drift off is the equivalent of sending her a written invitation.
I focus my attention on a couple of surfers who have just parked next to me. They wear their dreadlocks and full body tattoos like a uniform and are sitting in their car openly smoking weed as if it’s as legal as ice cream. Between them is a large beat-box type stereo. One of the surfers glances over at me, his face scornful and condescending. As if it’s cooler to be jobless and smoking dirt-cheap weed in a fifteen-year-old vehicle than it is to be wearing a suit that cost more than a month of their combined benefits and driving a Bentley. Oh well, it’s not me who is going to be submerging myself into sub-zero waters.
Sleep rolls in slowly like a lazy wave on a summer’s day. And I’m falling deeper into a heavy slumber when I’m disturbed by a violent thwack against the Bentley, followed by laughter. The surfers next door are disembarking and one of their boards has connected with my car and become the subject of great merriment.
Before I know what is happening, indeed I have just woken up, I’ve leapt out of my car. I slam my fist straight through their car window. It hurts a little and the hurt feels good. The window doesn’t shatter completely but fractures into a complicated spider-web arrangement. Both men turn, startled by the noise. My second punch shatters the glass completely and I reach through and pull out their stereo.
“Who has an old-fashioned piece of shit like this in this age?” I say. “Did you inherit it from your grandmother?”
“That’s vintage, man,” murmurs one of them.
“Vintage,” I say, and emit a series of laughs that even to my own ears sounds slightly manic. Then I assume a rugby stance. “Watch this,” I say, and kick the stereo halfway down the beach as if I’m trying to convert a try with it.
The surfers turn back towards me, but they are stoned and no match for someone who is naturally inclined towards violence and has shouldered implausible levels of rage and frustration for a prolonged period without relief.
The surfers are a gift from God. In my frenzy I don’t even know which one I beat first. It doesn’t take long and when I am finished there is still excess energy, so I set about mutilating their car, just like that bitch did to mine in the associates’ car park that day.
At the end I stand, breathing evenly, and finally have the presence of mind to check for company. But with the exception of the two broken surfers lying beside their car and a few of their brethren out in the waves the beach is deserted. A fine mist is drifting in from the sea and I turn my face to it and embrace the moisture.
I get back in my car, look out at the waves and feel better.
My thoughts turn to Jo. If only whoever killed her had done it a day earlier. That would have been a true stroke of luck. Instead, here I am valiantly fighting against being brought down by her death. It occurs to me that today was her half-day where she used to deceive me so she could spend time at Cathedral Day Spa, then having a massage. And inside me a remaining fragment of rage starts rebuilding. The audacity.
And sitting in my car contemplating Jo’s duplicity is where I have the first part of my epiphany. Jo had a spa treatment that ended at midday and a massage that started at two. But what did she do during the two hours in between?
In front of me two more surfers emerge from the sea. They are long-haired and wear the same uniform as their fallen comrades. They are laughing at some shared surfer joke.
I turn my thoughts back to Jo. Although my investigation into her life has yielded many a surprise, she was boringly predictable. And I’m willing to bet the time in between those sessions that wasn’t spent in transit was spent eating. And furthermore I’m willing to bet, given there were no payments of any kind coming out of her bank statements that related to her secret activities, that she also used that time to withdraw cash from another bank account.
I sit up straight in my seat. Both Cathedral Spa and the Massage Center are in Hataitai. And as luck would have it, Hataitai is only a ten-minute drive from where I am now.
I wind down my window to let in some more air as I drive to Hataitai village. I’ve never spent much time in this area. The village is small, expensive and family friendly. It feels safe. But one of my girls came from Hataitai so we know this to be an illusion. As I drive slowly along the village, I see no franchised donut shop or Sam’s Sandwich Shack, these being the mainstays of Jo’s diet.
Undeterred, I turn and head for Kilbirnie, which I have only just driven through on the way to Hataitai. I should’ve thought to keep an eye out there. But I generously forgive myself this oversight.
I hum as I drive. I don’t remember when I last felt so much like my authent
ic self. And I realize that I have been going about this investigation all wrong. I have been investigating how normal people, like Pacitto, investigate. I have been investigating in a law-driven, process-orientated manner instead of embracing my own natural talents. My skirmish with the surfers has reminded me of this. Reminded me of who I am. I am a hunter. And now I am hunting. And rapidly it is all becoming logical.
As I reach Kilbirnie the houses become less impressive. They are a depressing mix of state housing and ageing no-frills apartment blocks. Women surrounded by poorly dressed children and mongrel dogs sit smoking and talking on the porches. Two hours ago this would have depressed me, but as my new old self I simply look upon them with a healthy dose of contempt.
I park at one end of the main street and walk towards the center. As I walk, I look ahead at the shops on my side and also across the road at the other side. There is a sense of economy to this search and I feel excited but calm.
And then I see them. Across the other side of the street. A small but uniform Krispy Kreme donut shop and two doors to the right the familiar gaudy pink and orange colors of Sam’s Sandwich Shack. But this is not all. Because squeezed in the middle of these two shops, like a jewel in the crown is a bank.
A sense of knowing washes over me. This is it. This is Jo’s secret bank. The Financial Community Bank, of all banks. And in my eyes, there is a warm aura about it that glows, beckoning me.
I cross the road and enter without delay. I’ve never been inside an FCB: this particular branch is small and, with the exception of the sign asking folks to remove their sunglasses and hoods, welcoming. Along one wall there is the normal proliferation of leaflets and brochures enticing people to open an account, start a business or take up a mortgage. I sidle up to it and start reading a flyer about superannuation so I can discreetly size up the rest of the bank.
There are only two tellers and, as with all banks, judging by the number of customers waiting, they look to be about twenty-five percent understaffed. They sit, looking suitably official, protected from the restless line of customers by a wall of Perspex. One of the tellers is a woman of similar shape and bulk to Jo herself. I instantly know she will be more trouble than she is worth to bother with. And so it is that the other teller, an alternative-looking girl called Tasha Driver, becomes the person I will follow home. Tasha is the person who is going to tell me all about Jo’s secret account.
