Marlborough Man

by Alan Carter

  Marty stepped into the breach to run things while Sammy was inside. He escaped the conspiracy charge because it’s only Sammy we had on tape, not him. He was able to run the line that he was just serving time for his offence and no way would he have gone looking for more trouble, whatever Sammy Pritchard might have said on the tape. That’s another thing that surprised us about Marty: his loyalty to Sammy. He’s not made a move, yet anyway. It seems he’s just minding the shop. He was in the courtroom and his eyes never left me for the full two weeks of the trial.

  On the last day, while the jury deliberated, I was taking a piss and admiring the graffiti on the wall in front of me.

  ‘Nicky.’

  I turned my head, zipping up at the same time. Marty was standing by the wash basins checking himself and me in the mirrors – nobody else around. I had to get past him to get to the door. He reached inside his jacket and I launched myself at him. He nimbly sidestepped, like a matador with a wounded bull, and he had me face down in the sink with my arm up my back and his knife against my ear.

  ‘I could do you now, Nicky. Push this through like a shish kebab and you’re gone.’

  I thrashed and struggled. Furious with myself. ‘What’s stopping you, Marty?’

  A prick of pain on my ear lobe, a warm trickle down my cheek. ‘Consequences. I need to be out and about, keeping Sammy’s business going. Besides, I like the idea of you never knowing where or when we’ll come for you.’ He twisted my arm higher, near to snapping. ‘Mark my words, Nicky. I am coming after you.’

  I’d love to know how he got that knife through the metal detectors, maybe it was pre-planted. ‘How about I have you arrested right now?’

  ‘What for, where’s the witnesses?’ He turned the tap on and cold water gushed over my face. ‘Need to clean yourself up, mate. It’s nearly time for the grande finale. The jury’s coming back soon, I hear. You’ll want to look your best.’

  ‘It works both ways, Marty. We can keep after each other for years to come or we can get on with our lives.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Sammy. I said, mate, cut your losses. Forget the bastard. But you’ve hurt him, Nicky. You got him to trust you and like you. Now he’s a jilted lover. Heartbroken.’ A knife caress down my neck. ‘Does Vanessa know how good you’ve become at the lying game? I’d be worried if I was her.’

  And all of a sudden he was gone again and I was left looking at myself in the mirror, face flushed, hair sodden, blood on my collar. A short, sharp taster of the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

  At home, the temperature has been frosty since the court case and now that we know where we’re going, it’s dropped a few degrees further.

  ‘New Zealand?’ says Vanessa. ‘Jesus, Nick. I’ve got a good job here, there’s a deputy head retiring soon and I’m up for it. Paulie’s only just settled into his new school. And Mam gets her diagnosis next week. You can’t do this to us.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How many times do you want me to say it? But the alternative is worse, love. Much worse.’ I’m thinking about bodies in the boot of a burning car, about people chopped up and left on display on the town tip, about the missing Moldovan girl, and about Marty’s knife blade in my ear.

  We’ll keep our given names but we’ll change the family name. Trying to change too much else will just blow Paulie’s mind. From now on we’re no longer Burgess, we’re Chester. And I want to carry on being a cop somewhere to make sure there’s some good money coming in for the Paulie Fund.

  ‘Chester,’ we drum into Paulie. ‘Chester.’

  ‘Chester,’ he says. ‘Not Burgess.’ A frown. ‘Will Buster be coming?’

  ‘No, pet,’ says Vanessa. ‘Nana and Grandad’ll look after him.’

  While my mam makes a fuss of Paulie and the dog, my dad pulls me aside. ‘It makes you easier to track down, keeping the same Christian names and the same kind of job.’ He’s a retired cop and he’s worried for us. I acknowledge he’s right. He knows my reasons though and he lets it go. He knows also that we can’t have any more contact, ever. ‘Your mam and me. We’ll miss you.’ His shoulders shake when we hug.

  I know we haven’t covered our tracks anywhere near as much as we should. It’s like I’m almost willing them to find me eventually. Unfinished business.

  When we arrive in New Zealand it’s wetter than a Sunderland summer’s day.

  20

  I didn’t get to bed until after midnight. There was a fight in the pub: a local and a backpacker with their eyes on the same woman. It was pretty much over by the time I arrived. Meanwhile she had gone back to the hostel with her girlfriend. And a car crashed into a culvert on the way out to Pelorus Bridge. Bruises and scrapes but nothing permanent, except the write-off to the vehicle. And even though I was in my camp bed by twelve thirty I didn’t get to sleep for a few hours more. Marty and his mind games. So what will he do now? Hire a better class of killer? Maybe. But knowing him and knowing Sammy, I think not. They may as well stop wasting their money on amateurs, and I’m sure Marty himself will want the pleasure.

  The camp bed has left a crick in my neck. I have the sour taste of late-night coffee in my mouth. The kettle goes on while I brush my teeth at the tiny kitchen sink. The sun is streaming down outside and the main drag is waking to the Saturday morning shoppers and strollers. The phone goes. It’s the DC.

  ‘You’ve been talking to a retired officer, Des Rogers. That right?’

  ‘Has he made a complaint?’

  ‘Not exactly. He was found hanging in his shed this morning.’

  ‘Why call me?’

  ‘Your business card was in his pocket.’

  When I arrive at the DC’s office in Nelson, he’s got DI Marianne Keegan with him. Straight-backed, frowning at something on her smartphone, not interested in saying hello. She’s probably not happy to have her weekend interrupted. Or is she? Summoned away from the family home with your marriage going down the toilet?

  ‘You told Records you were on my team so they’d give you Rogers’ address.’ She’s acting severe but her eyes aren’t cold enough.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So spill,’ says the DC. ‘What’s going on, Nick?’

  I tell them: Uncle Walter, Denzel, Prince Haruru, his mum, Deborah. The lot.

  ‘And when were you planning to pass all this on to the task force?’ says Keegan.

  Task force. That sounds impressive. ‘I left a message for you yesterday. Assumed we’d talk on Monday. So you’re getting it two days early.’

  ‘But you’ve still had this for what, three or four days already?’

  ‘It only crystallised after I spoke to the mum yesterday.’

  ‘Crystallised,’ says the DC, nodding.

  ‘Any further details on Rogers?’ I ask.

  The DC flicks his eyes at his computer screen. ‘Looks like suicide. Hanging from a hook on the shed wall.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as suicidal. Seemed too bitter or lazy to bother.’

  ‘Maybe you were the tipping point,’ says DI Keegan. She arranges for me to brief Benson on my inquiries to date. ‘In the absence of any other similar cases, this could be useful.’ She packs some things into a bag. ‘Don’t ever try to pass yourself off as a member of my inquiry team again.’

  I promise not to. After she leaves, I tell the DC that Marty has been in touch.

  ‘So it’s settled. We’d better get you and the family moved on then.’

  ‘We’ve got, what, two weeks left before your Chinese bigwig comes to town?’

  ‘That’s right but I don’t want to piss about anymore. We’ve tried your way and it hasn’t worked.’

  ‘One way or another I reckon it’ll all be over by then.’

  He sighs. ‘Tell me.’

  I tell him about the way Sammy and Marty work and think. Sammy relies on Marty, so Marty is the key; he’ll want to get up close and personal and he’s already hinted in his email to that effect. Now we know who is coming, it’s a matter of looking out f
or him. Waiting, watching, and pulling him in when he makes his move. ‘With them both locked up, that’s the end of it.’ Simple really. Fingers crossed.

  The DC is thinking. ‘It would be a shame to lose you.’

  ‘To Marty? Yeah, my thinking too.’

  ‘To some other force, dickhead.’

  He gives me the fortnight but insists anyway on setting the wheels in motion for an evacuation and new life elsewhere, if required.

  ‘Vanessa?’ He lifts an eyebrow. ‘Is she in on your decision?’

  I smile reassuringly. ‘She seems happy where she is for the time being.’

  Step one is to knock off a reply to Marty.

  Marty. Ball in your court bonny lad. Better be quick though. They’re getting antsy here. Moving on soon, 2 weeks max.

  I’m counting on him not being the master criminal he thinks he is. Counting on him having an ego as big and empty as the stadium in Sunderland on a week day. Counting on him doing exactly what I want and need him to do. And hoping to hell that I’m not wrong.

  Downstairs to brief Benson on the Prince Haruru case. Benson would have liked a weekend home with the family in Wellington too, but his rank doesn’t allow it. He taps away on his keyboard, with an MP3 recording as backup, while I narrate.

  ‘So it’s a similar case but still no suspects or useful witnesses,’ he concludes.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And it doesn’t get us any further forward.’

  ‘Unless you re-interview the witnesses on record, and find some new ones, and look for points of correspondence with the Riley case.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘And maybe compare whatever forensics there are, and the postmortems.’

  He looks at me. ‘And you just a sheep-shagging sergeant from the hills. Who’da thought?’

  ‘I’ll leave it with you, then?’

  ‘You do that, mate.’ His eyes never leave the screen. ‘Stay in touch, won’t you? You’re an asset to the task force.’

  Marianne intercepts me in the corridor on my way out. ‘You spoiled my weekend.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She notices the car keys in my hand. ‘Make up for it, drop me at my hotel. I came here straight from the airport.’

  ‘Sure.’

  She loads her case in the back and hops in. ‘You’ve been a busy boy. The handover to Benson go okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘So now I’ve got an afternoon to fill in Nelson.’ Her hand rests on my knee. ‘Any thoughts?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘No?’ Her hand glides along my thigh. ‘That’s what you said in that motel room in Blenheim, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have, but …’

  A caress. ‘But here you are anyway, stiff as a board. Ready to abandon yourself once again.’

  I shift in my seat. ‘No.’

  A shake of the head. ‘You want it both ways. You want to think of yourself as a good family man and if it wasn’t for fickle fate: drink, temptation, job stress, whatever, you’d never stray. Would you?’

  ‘Marianne, I …’

  She takes her hand back. ‘Me? I know I’m a lost cause as a wife and mother and I can live with that. You? Maybe you spent too long undercover, Nick. All that time pretending to be something you’re not.’ She nods out the window. We’ve arrived at the Rutherford. ‘This is me.’

  ‘I’ll call you on Monday. About the Rogers stuff.’

  She slams the boot down. ‘Yeah, Nick. Speak to you then.’ A playful smile. ‘No hard feelings.’

  Back at the office I draw the curtains and endeavour to catch up on some sleep ahead of what might be a busy Saturday night. It’s been warmer than usual today, high twenties at least. For some that’s a great excuse to drink more. But of course sleep eludes me. I lie and think of Marianne’s hand on my leg, her words dissecting me. And then there’s ex-detective sergeant Desmond Rogers. Was it me that drove him to suicide? I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. I don’t recall him putting my business card in his pocket but I do recall him staring at it contemptuously where I left it lying on that greasy table of his. So he picked it up and kept it close to his person. Did he have second thoughts? Was there something more he wanted to tell me? What else could he possibly have to offer? He never investigated Prince’s death, he didn’t give a damn.

  The camp bed creaks and the frame digs into my side.

  Let it go. It’s down to the Riley Task Force to take it further. I drift off to sleep with flashbacks to a motel room in Blenheim and dangerous thoughts about Marianne Keegan, drowsily weighing the pros and cons of my own failing marriage.

  It’s late afternoon. I’ve managed to snatch a couple of hours kip and it’s taken the edge off. After a shower, I wander over the road to the cafe for some early dinner. At this time on a Saturday the choice isn’t great and they’re getting ready to close. I treat myself to a Red Bull and a burger. Another two weeks of this and I’ll be too fat to save my marriage, but maybe Marianne Keegan will still have me, blubber and all. On the cafe noticeboard, Charlie Evans has pinned up a petition against McCormack Forestry and he’s trying to crowdfund some kind of legal action. If I didn’t have the Paulie Fund to think about, I’d chip in.

  The rest of the evening involves several drives up and down SH6 and pulling people over for speeding and/or drink driving. The pub stays trouble-free after a terse talking-to last night. The licence is up for renewal at the end of the year and they don’t need me objecting or seeking to vary the conditions. Things quieten down by about eleven and I’m back at base shortly after. There’s another red dot flashing on my computer.

  Marlborough Man.

  Looking forward to the reunion. Been a while.

  M.

  21

  ‘Get your essay done?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Had a good swim at the pool, too. You?’

  ‘Same old, same old.’ Late on Sunday, Steve and Gary got back from the Sounds. It looks like they’ve earned some good money. They’ve brought back a new fishing rod and eel net, and in the fridge there’s a carton of Speight’s plus some fresh salmon from the marine farm. I’m glad to have some company, waiting for Marty’s next move. They were too stuffed for the gory details so I promised to fill them in after they’ve had a good sleep.

  Latifa has just read the Monday morning round-up of the weekend incidents. She’s going to be shirty with me because I never mentioned the Des Rogers thing over the weekend. So I mention the Des Rogers thing now.

  ‘Good riddance.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Want me to cry or something?’ Latifa asks me if I passed on all that Prince stuff to the Riley inquiry.

  ‘Task force,’ I correct her.

  ‘La-di-dah.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got everything. But as we don’t have any viable suspects or witnesses in either case, it’s still not much further forward.’

  ‘But the likes of Deb, Uncle Walter and so on. They can expect a visit from your …’ she does air commas with her fingers, ‘ “task force”?’

  ‘Probably.’

  She nods. ‘I’ll warn them. Tell them to cooperate, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘For a twenty-four-year-old you seem to wield quite a bit of influence.’

  She lifts her chin. ‘Bother you?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll be your boss, one day. After I get my law degree, eh?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘My tutor in Nelson reckons I’ll make the big time.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a law school over there.’

  ‘There isn’t. He’s just a casual supervisor, more like a mentor. The faculty down in Christchurch arranged him. He’s been up in PNG. Reckons I could make waves there.’

  ‘Rising star, huh?’

  ‘That’s me. So watch yourself.’ She grins and turns to answer the ringing phone. A moment later the grin has gone. ‘Deb’s taken an overdose
.’

  Deborah Haruru is hooked up to a respirator in Nelson Hospital, as the hospital in Blenheim didn’t have the necessary equipment available. Her chances are fifty-fifty.

  ‘What’s she taken?’

  The doctor tells me the name of the drug and I’m none the wiser. ‘A bottle full of the anti-depressants she was on at the hostel,’ she clarifies.

  ‘The happy pills?’ says Latifa. ‘Deb should be on cloud nine.’

  ‘Plus something we’re still trying to identify. We’ll have a better idea by the end of the day.’

  ‘Suicide attempt?’ I ask.

  ‘Looks like it.’ The doctor checks her file. ‘There’s a history.’ She pats Latifa on the arm. ‘I’m confident your friend will pull through. We got to her in time.’

  It’s nearly lunchtime. We drive down to Trafalgar Street and grab some Malaysian takeaway from a street corner stall. A block down is McCormack’s place and I see him exit the building, mobile phone glued to his ear, and hop into that flash car of his. There’s somebody in the passenger seat but I can’t see who.

  ‘You talk to Des Rogers, and now Deb, and they’re wantin’ out of this world. It can’t be coincidence.’ A mouthful of noodles. ‘Sarge.’

  ‘They’re both messed-up people.’

  ‘They both must know something. Or knew, in Rogers’ case.’

  ‘If Deborah knew something she would have told us, wouldn’t she?’

  Latifa taps her chopsticks pensively on the food box. ‘Maybe Deb doesn’t know that she knows?’

  ‘We’ll ask her if and when she wakes up. But let’s not get too Miss Marple here.’