Starlight Peninsula

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  Don’t worry. I will look into it.

  I Googled him. Have a look. Am going to see if I can get rid of Jung Ha straight away. Or if I have to give her notice. Do I? I will ask D.

  Okay.

  Ed, have you seen the paper. Weeks. He’s dead. What is going on?

  Ed????

  Don’t worry. No need to freak out. You’ve done nothing wrong obv. I will find out what’s happened — sounds like accident.

  Ed, have you found out what he was doing? How he knew stuff? Did he talk to JH?

  I told you, don’t worry. I have checked. You’re right, it is the kind of thing media like to blow into story: journalist harasses PM’s wife about her eventful past. Is found dead(!) I will calm things down.

  Eventful … I need to talk to you. Are you at the house today?

  Hello Ed? Are you still in Auck?

  Roza, cheer up. Talked to Quilliam this a.m. — at dawn actually — usual awful Waitangi torture. I told him prejudicial outweighs probative value vis a vis your pest caller. I gave him the message from me and by impl from D: there is nothing to see here. Move on. He got the idea. He is going to look into it, also check the path report. I told him: Call off the dogs. Quieten things down.

  D’s right, you’re the best. Good karma …

  All fine. No need to feel you owe me. Only I can’t do much about your Tamara friend shooting mouth off about your private stuff, AA etc. That’s yours to deal with.

  Okay.

  My advice, Roza — do what I do: Pay back double.

  Hartmann said, ‘The police commissioner, you probably remember, was the late Rodney Quilliam. He and Miles were at the dawn service at Waitangi that year. I have found an exchange between Quilliam and a third party that suggests serious interference by Miles.’

  ‘So Miles told him to stop looking into Arthur’s death.’

  ‘Miles saw it could turn into a tabloid thing, Arthur ringing Hallwright’s wife, then dying. Police investigating, maybe finding out what questions Arthur was asking her. It could have fuelled conspiracy theories, right. So he told Quilliam to act. Miles went outside his ministerial powers. He wasn’t allowed to interfere in police operational matters.’

  ‘I had no idea Arthur talked to Roza Hallwright.’

  ‘I guess he got her worried. Asking about her past, talking to some woman she knew. Maybe he found out some bad stuff. These politicians are so alert to the possibility of bad publicity, they will dampen anything down if they can. Even if they haven’t actually done anything wrong. It’s about perception. Miles would have made less of a problem for himself if he had been less proactive. But he had the boss’s wife nagging him to do something. See his line, No need to feel you owe me. Meaning, You owe me. Big time.’

  ‘Oh, Arthur.’ Eloise closed her eyes. Why did he have to go so far? To think of him, spinning a line, somehow luring Roza Hallwright to a phone in the compound, asking her about personal stuff, about her past. Perhaps he really was ruthless.

  She said, ‘He used to get obsessed with ideas, with projects. No wonder he was being secretive. He would have known I’d object to him ringing her. The prime minister’s wife, for God’s sake. I would have said, You can’t do that.’

  Her phone pinged. Scott sending a text: where are you?

  She said, ‘This shows Miles didn’t know anything about Arthur’s death, and neither did Roza Hallwright. They were only worried how it would look.’

  Hartmann moved to the window and looked out, his hands on his hips. He said, ‘You can see why I smiled when my friend gave me this material. It answers your question, Eloise. It tells you: these people did not hurt your friend. He probably just had an accident. And it answers my question: does Ed Miles have an Achilles heel?’

  Eloise thought about this. ‘I had a file belonging to Arthur. It wasn’t much, just photos mostly, but there were notes he’d written about the people staying at Rotokauri. I hid it, not very well, in the boot of my car, and someone’s taken it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been stolen.’

  ‘Also, you said you were being followed.’

  ‘I thought I was, although it seemed so fanciful. Unbelievable. But now someone’s taken Arthur’s file, maybe I wasn’t imagining it.’

  ‘I don’t see why you would be imagining it. It is like I said, people are not as independent as they think. Just like the herd at the waterhole, suddenly pricking up the ears and moving: they start responding to outside forces, moving in the same direction at the same time. When you started to ask questions, other people started asking, too. Who knows what signals come from the universe.’

  ‘Signals?’

  ‘People want the same thing you’ve been looking for: the same information.’

  ‘I don’t know about all that. The universe …’

  ‘Jack Dance, for one, will have started asking questions about the guy who’s trying to take his job: Ed Miles. And about his super-rich backers, Mr and Mrs Soon Empire.’

  Hartmann folded the sheets of paper and put them in his bag.

  Eloise said, ‘Why don’t you give me a copy?’

  ‘Finders keepers,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  He put his big hand on her arm. ‘Do you understand, Eloise, if you tell anyone about this, all you’ll do is attract unwelcome attention. You will make people angry with you. And you will have no proof to back your claim. Zero gain for you.’

  ‘So give me the proof.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That would not be in my interests.’ Hartmann stood up and held out his hand. ‘I want to thank you. The information has currency.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  He said, ‘I am going to spend it very quietly, Eloise.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Well, let’s see. I have had so much negativity from Mr Ed Miles, that I really don’t want to hear another word from him.’ He smiled and fussily arranged his scarf. ‘And so, Eloise, I am going to talk to our esteemed Prime Minister. I am going to reach out to Jack Dance!’

  He turned to go. ‘I want you to know, Eloise, I care about you. I care about your safety. I am protecting you by not giving you a copy of the messages. Ed Miles is a powerful man, and so is Hallwright. I, don’t forget, have nothing to lose. I’m a wanted guy. Mr Obama wants me. Mr Biden wants me. They say I’m the biggest copyright thief in the world. They call me “Bond villain”. I’m like something out of a movie except, guess what, I’m real! I could be bumped off, why not? It would be cheaper for them.’

  Eloise smiled. ‘The poison umbrella. The radioactive cup of tea.’

  ‘Exactly. So let me be the one to play with fire. And you be content you have your answer. Okay?’

  ‘It seems wrong. I have to think about it.’

  Hartmann said, ‘You have more time than I do. I have a suggestion. You say Arthur’s file is stolen. So make a file of your own. Write down everything you know, everything you suspect. Make a list of times, names, dates, and keep it. Who knows, one day it might all come out. It is useful to put things in order. Give it a name: that’s what I would do.’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘Operations and files need a name, Eloise. For focus, purpose. It’s what spooks do, with their ridiculous FIVE EYES and SPEARGUN and PRISM. Something that sums it up: the Hallwrights, Ed Miles, Arthur, your hope that one day all will be explained.’

  ‘Arthur used to say the same thing: write it down.’

  ‘Okay, there you go. Now, let’s go and say hi to Scott.’

  She followed him out, not listening to his talk about the weather, his health, his battles with the court over his finances.

  Shall I follow his advice, Klaudia? Call it the Rotokauri File. The Last Days of Arthur Weeks. I will put it down on paper, make my own file. Soon.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘So, Eloise, it’s been a few weeks. I am sorry I had to attend a relative’s funeral in Germany.
It was very cold back in my home town, I can tell you!’

  Eloise let this latest betrayal pass without comment.

  She waited for a moment, then said, ‘I’ve decided to write a record, my own file on Arthur. To replace the one I lost. And to make up for the fact I didn’t ask enough questions.’

  Klaudia swallowed, placed her fingertips on the page in front of her and said, ‘It can be useful to note down your thoughts.’

  ‘The morning Arthur died I wasn’t there. I was absent. By the time I arrived at the flat he was gone; there was only the memory of him. He’d disappeared through a door in the air, he was just an outline, the black shape of a man …’

  Klaudia listened. The light, pouring in through the window behind her, caught her blonde hair, illuminating the fine strands. The air was full of specks of shiny dust. When Klaudia listened intently, she had a way of wrinkling her sharp nose and turning her mouth up at the corners that made her look sly, silken, complicit.

  Eloise briefly considered this: Klaudia is at her most charming when she is listening. Just as Simon Lampton is at his most fetching when he drops his smile, turns serious.

  She went on, ‘I thought someone had been in the flat, but perhaps it was just the outline of Arthur I sensed. The presence of his absence.’

  ‘Perhaps. That is a little obscure.’

  ‘Obscure? I suppose. It’s possible seeing you has made me much less sane.’

  Klaudia looked at her steadily. She was wearing glasses today. She put her index finger on the frame and lightly pushed.

  ‘My mother would say, Stay away from shrinks. With their corniness and their mumbo jumbo. They’ll turn you mad.’

  Klaudia smiled. ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘She’s a kind of emotional prude. Beyond stiff upper lip.’

  ‘Too much stiffer lip equals dead,’ Klaudia said coolly.

  Eloise let out a slightly wild laugh. She covered her mouth. ‘Sorry.’ Klaudia’s mouth turned up in her Joker smile. She seemed larger, more solid today, with a slight edge of irritation in her smile. The glasses made her blue eyes severe. Eloise looked at Klaudia’s big, pale hand, the square fingers, a tight bronze bracelet pinching the skin on her wrist. She was wearing her paua shell necklace. Also a rather flattering shirt. She probably had a date.

  Eloise sighed. How about you cancel your date, Klaud, and come over to my place. I’ll forgive you for putting a trivial ‘funeral’ ahead of me. I’ll cook you something. Ready-made curry, sushi, pizza, whatever you like. I’ll show you the peninsula, before I have to leave it. I’m so sad I won’t be living there any more.

  ‘I’m going to have to move. Leaving the house will feel like losing my mind,’ she said.

  ‘How are you getting on with your neighbour?’ Klaudia’s voice sounded thick, sleepy.

  Eloise, who’d been hoping for more of a reaction, looked for the rat (no sign) and said, ‘He’s South African.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When he visits, I have a feeling of …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Don’t do it, Klaudia. Don’t look at your watch.

  Klaudia glanced at her watch.

  With a sense of sorrow (Klaudia, you break my heart!), Eloise said, ‘When he comes over, I have a terrific feeling of being safe.’

  Klaudia smiled. ‘That is good, Eloise!’

  Safe. How nauseatingly corny Demelza Hay would find that.

  At home on the peninsula, Eloise phoned Carina and voiced the opinion that Silvio was yearning for a visit. ‘Pining for it. The park. The wide open spaces.’

  Her sister wearily promised to discuss the matter with the Sparkler.

  ‘Bring her, too,’ Eloise said.

  She phoned Scott’s and spoke to Thee. Who said, ‘So, this neighbour. Do we like him?’

  Eloise said, ‘Want to meet him?’

  ‘Definitely. Bring him over.’

  Eloise said slowly, ‘Maybe you and Scott could come over here. And the girls.’ It was the new idea: filling the house with people. Not that she’d be living here much longer. She was waiting for the call from Jaeger’s: Scott’s secretary, Voodoo, would call to schedule a meeting with whichever Tulkinghorn or Jackal Sean had engaged to act for him. They would summon her to the Jaeger’s boardroom, sit her down in front of a photo of the new girlfriend and tell her: fifty-fifty. Or, just as likely: go away. Not fifty-fifty, one hundred-zero. Why was she so paralysed, so unable to rouse herself to consult a lawyer of her own?

  Thee was saying something enthusiastic. They’d love to come over, and bring Iris. Perhaps Rachel Margery would be free, too?

  Eloise looked around the sitting room. The place had turned into a bit of a dump lately, it had to be said. Amigo had been languid, once-over-lightly. Dreamily wafting his feather duster. Waving his Hoover around like a light sabre. Last week he’d gone so far as to call in sick.

  Eloise wondered whether she actually owned a vacuum cleaner, and, if so, whether it worked. Had it gone up in the fire?

  She lay down with Chekhov. For thoroughness (which Arthur believed in) she was reading the notes at the back of the book. The composer Shostakovich was enthralled by ‘The Black Monk’, she read, which he believed was connected to his fifteenth symphony. He told his biographer, ‘I am certain Chekhov constructed “The Black Monk” in sonata form.’

  Eloise read the sentence twice. She sipped her tumbler of wine. What did the story mean? When Kovrin believes in the existence of the black monk he’s happy, but mad. When he realises the black monk is an apparition, he’s miserable.

  Now, she conjured up Klaudia. Glass of wine, Klaud? How about a slice of this disgusting pizza? Make yourself comfortable. Loosen that paua shell necklace. What a pretty shirt you’re wearing! Now, tell me. Do we need our madness in order to be happy? If you cure someone of their illusions, do you risk that you will render them bereft, or even insane?

  Write down your thoughts, Eloise. And don’t forget to breathe!

  She sat up and opened her laptop.

  When I arrived at the flat, Arthur was already dead. Remember the sky that morning, the hard, bright light on the side of the mountain, the cicadas making their shimmering wall of sound. He walked out through a gap in the air, leaving a black outline in the fabric. There was only a space, the absence of his presence. Is that what I sensed in the flat — the photographic negative of Arthur?

  But what was the question that came at her out of the air, hurting her eyes? A bright squiggle of light, as if she were looking at her own thought …

  ‘When Mum’s angry with me, she calls me Rachel.’

  The Sparkler and Silvio were sitting on the couch, side by side, watching TV.

  Eloise took her head out of the hall cupboard and said, ‘Remember the fire?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did we … do you think it involved a vacuum cleaner?’

  The Sparkler wrinkled her nose, thought about it. ‘No!’

  ‘But maybe it was in the initial layers? The sort of pile underneath?’

  ‘There’d be bits of it left,’ the Sparkler said.

  Eloise looked at her niece. Her muddy sneakers and knobbly knees. Her vivid, intelligent little face.

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Maybe Amigo’s gone off with it. Or Sean. No, that’s not likely. We’ll have to go and buy a new one.’

  Eloise paused and looked vacantly at the Sparkler’s cartoon. Soon, the fiendish dwarf, and his virtuous brother Starfish were consulting the oracle known as the Red Herring. An object hovered in the lurid mauve sky above them: it was the Bachelor, swooping down on his flying bed, accompanied by his hissing girlfriends, the Cassowaries.

  The Cassowaries were birdlike, as the name suggested, also bedizened, colourful and insanely jealous.

  ‘It’s kind of psychedelic,’ Eloise said, of the cartoon. ‘Trippy. Maybe Mrs Hallwright was stoned when she wrote it.’

  ‘Wot?’ the Sparkler said in a glazed voice. She had her small hand twined in Silvio’s wool. Her
eyes had turned dreamy.

  ‘Cassowaries — the actual birds — are really dangerous. Have you ever seen one?’

  The Sparkler shook her head.

  ‘They’re Australian. I saw some in a wildlife park, behind a high fence. They have really bright feathers. They’re huge and they chase you, run after you, try to peck you to death.’

  The Sparkler went on watching. The Red Herring, having consulted various scrolls, was delivering a pearl of wisdom: Too many cooks spoil the broth.

  Eloise said, ‘Okay. Dinner. Nasty pellets for Silv. What about you and me?’

  ‘Too many cocks spoil the breath,’ the Sparkler said.

  ‘What? Who told you that? That’s disgusting!’

  The Sparkler laughed behind her small, grubby hand. ‘Let’s have fish and chips.’

  ‘What about your food groups. Your vitamins.’

  The cartoon finished on a cliffhanger: Soon and Starfish were taken prisoner by a villainous and camp old woodsman called Uncle Wayne.

  Eloise ordered her niece to switch to the news. Beyond the windows, the estuary was brimming with a high tide, the bay as smooth and glassy as a pond. In the golden evening light, the dog owners were making their way towards the park.