Marlborough Man

by Alan Carter

  Latifa is on stage in the hotel belting out Etta James’

  ‘At Last’ to a besotted Daniel. She has a fine singing voice.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’ I explain why and she rolls her eyes.

  A long lingering tonguey with Daniel and she follows me out the door. ‘This better be good.’

  It turns out it is.

  32

  Deborah Haruru seems in a lot better shape than the last time we saw her. Her skin is a healthier colour, the eyes have some life, and her posture is prouder. We’re all out on the side verandah in the cold evening air and Deborah has a ciggie on the go.

  ‘You said if I thought of something, no matter how stupid, I should get in touch.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Latifa is bracing herself for the stupidity. Perhaps calculating the options of racing back to Daniel and taking up where she left off.

  ‘About two weeks before everything happened.’ Deb shakes her head. ‘It was a Friday, after school. I was packing the car up ’cause we were heading off for the weekend. Thought it was about time Prince met his uncle. We were headed down to Christchurch.’

  Latifa can see I’m struggling to remember who was who. ‘Deb’s brother is Denzel’s dad, the one who’s in prison. His name’s Travis.’

  Deb, Beth, and Travis. The Haruru siblings. I recall somebody telling me something about a son in prison. ‘Isn’t he still inside? Five years, that’s a long stretch.’

  ‘Different offence,’ says Deborah. ‘He’s been out and back in twice during that time. Never learns.’

  ‘Okay.’ I promise not to interrupt her flow again.

  ‘We were staying at my dad’s place near the marae.’

  ‘Uncle Walter,’ Latifa reminds me.

  ‘Prince was off running around with Denzel and some others down the street.’ She gives a little jolt. ‘I hear a car screech. The kids are laughing so at least nobody’s been hurt. I look down the side of the house from where I am out back and see it go past. Real fast.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was pretty flash for round our way. One of those ones without a roof.’

  ‘A convertible?’ She nods. ‘Do you remember the make or colour?’

  ‘White.’

  ‘Make?’

  ‘Nah, I’m not real good with that stuff. I asked Princey what the noise was all about and he said Denzel gave the finger to some pakeha in a car. I asked why and he said why not.’

  I wait for her to go on. She doesn’t. ‘That’s it?’

  Latifa has the car keys in her hand.

  ‘So I look at Denzel and say, you need to watch yourself, don’t go getting my boy into trouble. And he says, sorry, Auntie.’ She frowns. ‘Thing is, I told all this to Detective Rogers and he wrote it all down. Denzel even remembered part of the number on the plate at the time.’

  ‘Did you hear anything back from Rogers?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So why have you remembered this now?’

  ‘I think I saw that car today. Same bit of number plate too, it must’ve stuck in my head and I never knew until I saw it again.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Straight over the road from here. The Countdown car park.’

  ‘FHW something,’ says Latifa. ‘Round numbers, Deb reckons. Threes, sixes, eights, nines.’

  We’re running it through the system. It being a convertible helps narrow things down. ‘Here we go. It belongs to Ebenezer Holdings, trading as Rent-A-Flash-Bomb.’

  He’s just down the road from the Marlborough Showgrounds and there’s an after-hours as well as a business number. We give him a call and he says, yeah come right over, which is very accommodating for nine thirty at night. He’s an Aussie. The name is Joey and, small as he is, he has a voice that doesn’t need an amplifier.

  ‘Gen Y, mate, don’t you just love ’em? When I was a backpacker, it was a postcard or aerogramme to the folks once a month and I had to sell my blood to a clinic in Kathmandu to get a regular feed. This mob? Hundred bucks to jump off a bridge here, three hundred to skydive there.’ He waves at his fleet of flash bombs: retros, convertibles, zippy sports cars and such. ‘They’ll even lash out for a topless drive over to Rainbow Ski or Harwood’s Hole for the weekend to impress some chick. Am I complaining?’

  We state our business and he looks up the car in question.

  ‘It’s rented to some Pom.’ He lifts his eyes from the screen to me. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’

  ‘Jeremy Gibson. Money to burn, that boy. You can tell the way he speaks. I think he might be a viscount or something on the quiet.’ He taps a couple of keys. ‘Due back, day after tomorrow.’

  ‘How long have you had the car?’

  ‘Couple of years, maybe.’

  ‘Who did you get it from? Do you have the records handy?’

  ‘Easy. One of my regular suppliers. I buy up the best of their old executive fleet every two or three years.’ He closes his laptop. ‘McCormack Forestry.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ says Latifa. We’re on our way back to Havelock and I’m driving. She thinks we should pass everything over to DI Keegan and the Pied Piper investigation.

  ‘You’ve changed your tune. Not long ago you were getting stuck into me for suggesting exactly that.’

  ‘That was different. That was about doing right by the community. People like McCormack, you have to do it all by the book.’

  ‘He plays squash with the DC, he runs the region, it’ll get buried. He’ll just say I’m running a vendetta.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘At the moment we have half-memories from Deborah about a car that might have been near the marae five years ago. There’s no mention of it in Rogers’ case notes. It’s flimsy at best.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘If we dig deeper ourselves …’

  ‘Yourself.’

  ‘And find corroborating evidence, it’ll be harder for the DC and Keegan to cover up. McCormack will be obliged to answer questions.’

  ‘So to avoid the appearance of a vendetta, you’re going to run your own little unofficial side investigation into this bloke whose guts you hate?’

  ‘That’s it.’ I cast her a sideways glance while negotiating the racing bend into Renwick. ‘You can keep out of it.’

  ‘Too late. I can’t unknow something.’

  Latifa’s right. She’s compromised and culpable if I push ahead with this. ‘Okay, I’ll call Keegan in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t have to. I was just sayin’, that’s all.’

  33

  The way some of these people live. It must be like falling off the horizon, or one of those ravines in the ranges. There’s just a precipitous long drop of loose shale and every move you make loosens your grip. Of course he’s seen people living in worse conditions than this but at least things were simpler there – live or die, fuck or be fucked: law of the jungle. There’s nothing noble about these savages though. Here survival is a question of how much you can con out of Work and Income, who’s left their valuables in an unlocked car, whose livestock you can poach tonight, can you stay one step ahead of Child, Youth and Family who want to take your snotty brat away from you, who’s dissing you on Facebook and needs a bottle in the face.

  Not long now. She’ll strap the ugly little runt into the seat, light up the first ciggie of the day, and gun the stinking rust bucket into town. Lodge her claim, stare in the bargain shop windows at all the shit she’ll never be able to afford, come home and find that, yes, things can get even worse in her sorry life.

  It’s a new sensation for him, feeling this angry, but to have scum like this getting in his way – well, really.

  Off she goes. The dog barks. But it always barks and nobody takes any notice. He rolls his car down the drive into the shadows under the tree. There’s a shed, not a well-stocked one, mainly empty bottles which will end up in a gully some day because the town tip charges too much to dump shit there. T
ools? A chainsaw in need of cleaning. An axe. Nasty, rusty little implements that look like they belong in the Inquisition, plenty of possibilities.

  It’s like everything has been laid on for him. Then he sees what will do the job. It will work a treat.

  34

  On my way down the valley to work I call in on Charlie Evans. As usual he’s up and about early, attending to the alpacas and chickens.

  ‘Need any eggs?’ he says. ‘Plenty to spare. Better you have them than the stoats.’

  That’s a yes and he’ll leave a dozen in his letter box for me to collect on the way back at the end of the day. ‘Denzel not here yet?’

  ‘No, probably another half an hour before Walter drops him off. Not in trouble again, is he?’

  ‘Just wanting a word. No bother.’ I inquire after Mrs Evans.

  ‘Up and down. But maybe more down than up the last few weeks.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it.’

  ‘But I have had a win on another front.’ He thumbs at the hill over his shoulder. ‘The court has ordered a temporary halt on McCormack logging the other half of the hill.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘And I’m now a crowd of two. An anonymous donor contributed to my legal campaign.’

  ‘A big one?’

  He nods. ‘It’s certainly levelled the playing field. All came in via some law firm in Auckland.’

  The day is shaping up well. ‘McCormack must be spitting.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Uncle Walter and Denzel roll up early. That’s good. ‘Got a moment?’ I explain my interest and Walter nods his permission for me to address the boy. ‘Remember about a week before Prince died, you and him were playing in the street and there was some pakeha in a sports car?’

  He puts on a show of thinking back. ‘Yeah. What about it?’

  ‘Your Auntie Deb said you’d been cheeky to the bloke, made him slam on his brakes. She’d mentioned it to the cops after Prince was taken.’

  ‘So?’ He’s got a glower like Uncle Walter.

  ‘Remember what the bloke looked like? How old, that kind of thing?’

  ‘We’re talking five years ago, man.’

  ‘Try, Denzel. It might be useful.’

  Walter nudges him. ‘Do as you’re told, boy.’

  A shake of the head. ‘He was wearing a baseball cap and shades. Didn’t get a good look at him. Just a whitey, that’s all. Tend not to look too closely at them unless they’re giving me grief.’

  ‘Big bloke?’

  ‘Not especially but he was sitting down in his car so, you know.’

  ‘Fat, skinny?’

  ‘Skinny.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Yeah, he had clothes on.’ Walter slaps him around the back of the head. ‘Light-coloured shirt. Pink maybe. Bit gay if you ask me.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah, nah, sorry.’

  ‘If you think of anything.’ I hand over my card and we all go our separate ways.

  In the office I phone Joey from Rent-A-Flash-Bomb. Does the car in question have a GPS satnav? Yeah, sure, these are flash bombs after all, not your average. Did it come with the car when he bought it? Yep. I send Latifa over to pick it up off him and reassure him I’ll cough up for a temporary replacement.

  ‘What’s this about then?’ he wonders.

  I make up some cock and bull story about drug syndicates and he reckons it’s cool. ‘Mum’s the word, eh?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ says Honest Joe.

  But now I have the problem of trying to access the satnav memory to see where the vehicle might have been five years ago. Normally you just send it to the police IT geeks, but I can’t because hush-hush side-run vendettas don’t have a valid job code.

  ‘No problem,’ says Latifa. A phone call. ‘Beth’s on her way.’

  ‘Beth?’

  ‘I told you already. She’s a whiz at this shit. Did some course at Nelson Tech and topped the class. She would have been eminently employable if she wasn’t such an airhead dropkick with everything else in her life.’

  Half an hour later Beth arrives with two laptops, some cables, and a pack of cigarettes. We set her up on the back verandah with a coffee and an ashtray and away she goes. While we deal with reports, circulars, timesheets, expenses claims and such, we can hear Beth uttering expletives and breaking for the occasional ugly cough.

  ‘Here’s the cunt,’ she mutters after about twenty minutes. ‘January seventeenth. Driving past Deb’s house, just like she said.’

  It’s up there on the screen, a map of his movements, from McCormack Forestry offices in Nelson, along SH6 and turning off towards the marae where he does a couple of circuits, then out and back to Nelson again via a brief stop off at Havelock Marina.

  ‘Can I get a copy of that?’

  ‘The whole thing? All those backpackers going all over the place as well?’ No, I say, just up until the car is sold to Honest Joe. She shrugs. ‘Still shitloads. You sure?’

  ‘How about a separate folder, just with the week before and after Prince’s murder?’ I begin to give her the dates but she lets me know that’s not necessary.

  ‘Only my own fucken nephew. Think I don’t remember when it was?’ Latifa swears Beth to secrecy and I say we owe her one. She waves me away, slightly offended. ‘Like I say, he’s my nephew. We all want to catch this bloke.’ She shakes her head. ‘But jeez, McCormack? He’s the only one offering any jobs around here, even if it is shit pay. Why’d it have to be him?’ Latifa points out that it’s all very circumstantial and nobody should be jumping to any conclusions. Beth sniffs. ‘Yeah, right.’

  So now we have independent corroboration that the McCormack car was in the vicinity of Prince Haruru’s home in the week before his murder. But what was it doing there and who was driving?

  I could happily pore over the downloads Beth has provided and spend the next week full-time tracking McCormack via his five-year-old satnav records, but my job keeps interrupting. A tractor has rolled near Okaramio and the driver may lose his leg. Jessie James is on the scene taking pics and getting in the way. She sidles up to me.

  ‘Back at work, I see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I heard the air ambulance was called to your place a few weeks back. That Maori bloke that died on your property. And the other one, the Brit. What was that all about? The real story.’

  ‘Bad blood, going back years.’

  ‘Who between? The Maori guy and the Brit?’

  ‘A tragedy and a waste of life. Probably best to let the families grieve in peace.’ I change the subject. ‘How’s your investigative piece coming along?’ Her look says, uh? ‘The impact of logging?’

  ‘Oh yeah, that.’ She tells me she’s been invited in to the offices of McCormack Forestry for a briefing by their PR person.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘The other side of the story?’

  ‘What other side of the story?’

  Journalism School ain’t what it used to be. ‘Maybe there’s a trade union that has another perspective. Or an environmental group. Or an aquaculture business out on the Sounds that’s now got silty mussels or muddy salmon. Farmers. Tourism operators. Get my drift?’

  ‘That’s a lot of work.’ She nods to herself. ‘You’ve really got it in for McCormack haven’t you?’

  I’ve a feeling this is going to come back to bite me.

  On the way back from Okaramio I get a call saying there’s been a hunting mishap up the Wakamarina Valley, not that far from home. An ambulance is on its way from Blenheim as the nearer Havelock one is tied up with an accident on SH6 out beyond Pelorus Bridge. It’s nearly the end of the day so I make it my last call and grab the free-range eggs out of Charlie Evans’ mailbox on my way past. A couple of kilometres short of my house on some clear-felled pasture there’s a cluster of shacks built in that spartan style that says not stayin’ long. It’s where Gary and Steve parked their dogs and guns before I relented
and allowed both on my property. There’s a bony unkempt horse chewing on tufts of grass, a lamb braying in the undergrowth, and a pig dog that won’t stop barking.

  ‘Hello?’ I yell, double-checking the address of the call-out. Yes, this was definitely it. ‘Hello? Nick Chester, Havelock Police. Anybody home?’

  The householder’s name is John Fernandez. Johnny to his mates and to the cops he frequently deals with. He exists on a balance of welfare state benefits, occasional labouring work, and miscellaneous windfalls. He’s only nineteen and already he has an extensive record for firearms licence infringements, drug possession and supply, firewood and farm machinery thefts, and drinking without a clue. He also has an eighteen-year-old de facto wife and a one-year-old toddler.

  ‘Hello? Johnny? You here?’

  The call-out was logged forty-six minutes ago and mentioned a man having his hand caught in one of his own possum traps. That fitted Johnny’s MO. The call-out was in his name. There’d be no mobile coverage here. Did he wander in with the possum trap stuck on his hand and call from the landline? Maybe he’s since lost some blood and fainted?

  ‘Johnny?’ I try the front door.

  It’s not locked, but that’s not unusual up the valley. Pushing it open, I can hear the TV on in the lounge room down the passage. Sounds like a kids show, a cartoon maybe.

  ‘Johnny?’ What’s his partner’s name again? ‘Shania?’

  I glance in the other rooms on the way along the hall. Messy but empty. I get to the lounge room door and between the yowling pig dog and the TV blare, I’m getting jumpy. I pull out my gun and nudge the door open with my foot.

  ‘Johnny?’

  Johnny is there and yes he’s got the possum trap on his hand. I doubt he’s feeling it though. His skull has been demolished and blood has sprayed up the walls; pinky-grey brain matter glistens on the rim of a coffee mug and drips from the corner of the table. There’s a claw hammer on the floor beside him, matted with blood and hair. I hear a noise, a door opening back along the passage, and I whip round, gun levelled.