by Nick Spill
“One night, an old friend from London comes to him with a van full of stolen TVs. He wants to park it in Terry’s garage for the night. Terry says no. The thief pleads and pleads and pleads. Terry still says no. Then the thief hints he can find out who set up the kid who set up Terry. So Terry, in a moment of weakness, says yes. Just till the morning. That night the cops raided Terry’s house and found the TVs. He got the maximum sentence.
“He took to prison real well. A natural organizer. His cockney humor, funny voice worked to his advantage. He could talk his way out of any situation, and he soon got the protection of Maori gangs inside. They actually vied for his brain. He was running all the drugs coming into Parry. He only served five years on account of good behavior. Funny when you think about it. A guy that small usually becomes someone’s old lady real quick, but not Terry. The man who controls the drugs in there, controls everything. And he was the librarian! The screws loved him or were paid by him. He perfected smuggling drugs into prison. I never found out how he did it. He’s still doing it.”
“How do you know all this?” Clovis asked.
“I was inside with him. I worked with him. Not for him, mind you. I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of him. Not outright. Not with someone who had John Eustace around.
“Anyway, when he came out, the police were waiting for him again. Protection for information. Only the police didn’t understand that the game had changed. They needed protection from Terry now. The cops didn’t know that. His wife had aged whilst he was inside, and his kids had left school and drifted away. He felt he had been robbed of the most important years of his life. He felt an outsider in his own family. So he did what he did best. Organize. He had graduated with a doctorate from the University of Crime and now it was time to really get into business.
“The funny part was he opened up another hamburger joint. Twenty-four hours. That was his cover.” Wiremu wound up his voice to approximate Terry’s high-pitched cockney intonation.
“‘Leave me alone. I’m just a little old man framed by the fuzz. I just want to live in peace and look after my sick wife.’ Now he controls a fucking empire!”
Clovis had never heard Wiremu swear. “How come he can get away with all this?”
“He owns property, lives in a nice house, doesn’t act rich. He’s audited every year by the tax people. The cops bug his phones. They probably have stacks of intelligence on him. But he’s always a couple of steps ahead of the law. Usually a couple of miles.
“And I’ll tell you something else, Clovis. I don’t think Terry would come after Plum like that, if that was all she did. Either she’s hiding something from you, or …” Wiremu shrugged. He never wanted to underestimate someone like Terry the Turk.
It was so peaceful outside that Clovis could not move. But he had no desire to come under Wiremu’s scrutiny, so he got to his feet and tiptoed back to the front room to check on Plum. She should be sleeping like a baby, he thought. It was only three o’clock. The silence was such a contrast to the perpetual din that had assaulted his ears back in New York.
Plum was not on the sofa, and her blanket was gone. He ran out to the kitchen, not daring to think what had happened to her. Wiremu, who was about to fix himself a sandwich in the kitchen, immediately stopped buttering his slice when he saw Clovis’s ashen face.
“She’s not there!”
Clovis ran out onto the front porch and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Plum! Plum!” He gripped his head with both hands and tried to scan the street. There was no sign of her. He ran back inside. Mel appeared in the hallway, in her long pink robe.
“Plum’s gone,” Clovis uttered, as he felt his whole world collapse around him.
He came to a few minutes later, on the sofa where Plum had been fast asleep. Mel was sitting beside him with some smelling salts. She addressed Wiremu.
“You can’t expect me to believe there’s this super villain who’s masterminding all this against Plum Blossom! Whoever it is, is probably after you, Wiremu.” She paused, waiting for Wiremu to respond. He kept his sullen expression, though he had no guilt, no sheepishness about him.
“I think it’s better for all of us if you went back to your people so we can go to the police and report Plum missing. We’ll leave you out of everything.”
“Mel! Where have you been?” Wiremu raised his voice. “What good will reporting Plum missing do? You know what they’ll say. ‘She’s over twenty-one. There’s no body. No evidence of foul play. She probably left of her own free will. Now bugger off, we’ve got better things to do!’ That’s what they’ll say.”
“Like track down this Terry the Turk,” Henry muttered from the doorway. He was dressed in his purple polka dot boxing shorts and was rubbing his eyes. “Mel and I will go back to your house, Clovis. You stay here with Wiremu in case she comes back or someone phones.”
“No. I should go,” Clovis insisted. “Perhaps she has taken a walk.” He knew this was not true. She would not wake up. And if she had gone for a walk, she would have told him. No. She would have been afraid to go out alone.
“Okay. Suit yourself. I was just being heroic.” Henry shuffled off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
Mel changed into black tights and a black short-sleeved top. At another time Clovis would have wolf whistled. He followed her to the car as she checked the street for anything unusual. They were in Ponsonby in a few minutes with Clovis scanning the deserted streets, trying to spot Plum walking back to their house. He did recognize the driver of a bread delivery truck, from the bakery he used to work in as a student. They had seen only two cars, going in the opposite direction.
Mel suddenly swung into a driveway. She turned the lights off, shut off the engine and grabbed Clovis’s shoulders. She put her lips to his cheek.
Clovis froze. Her abrupt action sent him into a panic. He could not understand what was going on. Then he tried to kiss her.
Mel pushed him away. “You pig! You put your tongue in my mouth!” She was disgusted.
“But you started it!” Clovis yelled back, now more confused than ever.
“Didn’t you see the police car?” She was embarrassed.
“No.”
“Oh god. Any car out at this time they take note of. Especially a BMW. I saw that trick in a movie once. It must’ve worked.” Mel backed out of the drive before switching on her lights. She wiped her mouth and glanced at her shocked passenger. “You okay, Clovis?”
Clovis could not speak.
At the top of Summer Street they saw a fleet of fire trucks, police cars, crowds of people in their bedclothes, an ambulance and a traffic police car blocking the top of the road. With all the red and blue and white strobe lights bouncing over the small compact houses, it was difficult to see where the fire was.
• • •
Grimble had two missing cars, a dead body and a break-in. Then there was Plum Blossom and Clovis Tibet. What sort of names were they? Courier names? The house was another mystery. Not a trace of a controlled substance. He would have to go back and check.
Cadd opened the car door and collapsed into his seat. He held his notebook and faced his superior. He took a deep breath.
“The Lincoln’s owner died last year and it now belongs to a Mr. B. Golacinski at 137 Ayr Road, Parnell.”
“And there’s no such address.”
“Yes. That’s right!”
A fire truck roared past with its siren cutting through the night.
“Shit!” he uttered. “The house!” When things start to go wrong, they go totally wrong. Why did he drag that Maori into the house? At the time it seemed a smart idea. Now it could backfire on him. He swung the car around and followed the flashing red lights back down John Street. At the bottom of the street there was another fire truck with firemen unwinding hoses as they ran up Summer Street. The inspector came to the corner and parked the car facing the wrong way.
He walked quickly up the street till he came to the fire truck nearest
the house. The house where he had placed the body of Hone Wilson. The wooden structure was engulfed in flames. The fire had already reached the roof. Grimble could see the red heat dance across the overhang like a curtain of flames. The front windows exploded from the heat, as the firemen started to direct high-pressure hoses onto the house.
“Oh shit!” he whispered to himself as he felt the heat of the flames on his face. He turned to Cadd. “We better keep this to ourselves. Understand?” Grimble screwed up his eyebrows as he scanned the sergeant’s face. He could see the red flames flickering in Cadd’s blue eyes.
• • •
Mel pulled over at the top of Clovis’s street. A traffic officer sat in his car, his red lights on, blocking the way. Mel took out her doctor’s bag from the trunk and the officer automatically let her pass. Clovis trotted behind her. Down Summer Street there were three fire trucks lined up and miles of entwined hoses, like giant spaghetti. Clovis and Mel passed Polynesian men and women in their nightgowns and children in various states of undress. The entire street had got out of bed to watch the fire.
Mel’s walk slowed down and her body stiffened as she realized where the fire was. Clovis grabbed Mel’s arm for support.
“My house is gone.”
One sidewall stood, together with the brick foundations and the back wall. Charred twisted pieces of corrugated iron, the remains of the roof, hung from the center brick chimney. Firemen in silver fire boots were wading through the smoldering black hunks of wood that had turned into ashen sludge. Water from their hoses poured down the road, overflowing from the drains and flooding the bottom of the street.
Clovis was scared that Plum had been in the house. Perhaps deliberately burnt by her abductors. Then he remembered Mel’s story and how she had left her attacker in there. He saw that Mel was treating an older woman in a nightgown who had collapsed in the street. He could not think clearly. He walked away from the crowd of neighbors he was standing by and approached two men who were obviously plainclothes policemen.
Clovis Tibet addressed the older detective who looked Clovis up and down.
“How did it happen?” Clovis asked.
“That’s what we’d like to know. Where were you?”
Clovis wondered how the detective knew who he was.
“I was with some friends.”
“Why did you come back now?”
“We were up talking.”
“Do you live with anyone else?”
“Yes. A young woman. Plum Blossom. She was with us, but left.” Clovis’s voice trailed off.
“Is that her real name, and could you describe her to me?”
“Small. About 5’2”, looks Chinese but she was born here, and her name is Plum Blossom. She changed it by deed poll when her parents died.”
“Stay here.” The detective walked across to the group of policemen who stood in a huddle near the battered down fence and layers of limp hoses. A plain black van drew up from the bottom of the street, guided by a traffic officer. There were now dozens of spectators. The detective came back to Clovis.
“Mr. Tibet, I must ask you to come back to the station for questioning.”
“What? What for? I mean, what’s going on?”
“Oh, just routine.” The detective smiled.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Ah. Should you be?”
“What about Plum? I’ve got no idea where she went.”
“Did you have an argument?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Well, come on. No use standing here.”
Clovis followed him to a Honda Accord, the other detective close behind. Clovis tried to find Mel’s face in the crowd, but he could not see her. He wondered if he should yell out to her, but thought better of it.
The detective carefully drove the car between the fire trucks and police vehicles.
“Terrible things, fires. Happens so quickly. I hope you were insured.”
“No. I’m not.” Clovis sat in the front seat, wondering what was going to happen to him.
“Pity. Been living there long?”
“About a week.”
“Where were you before?”
“New York. We just got back.”
“Never been there. They say it’s a wild place.”
“Not as wild as here. I never had anything happen to me like this.”
“Any valuables there?”
“Yes.” For a second Clovis could not breathe. He thought his heart had stopped. Then the attack subsided. “No. Only clothes and books. And I’d just bought some furniture. Thank god! My violin.” Clovis gave out a big sigh. “I took it over to a friend’s house.”
“Oh. You play?”
“Yes. Just got a position with the Symphony Orchestra.”
“The Auckland Symphony?”
“Yeah.”
“Ah.” The detective did not show he was impressed. He thought he was dealing with a drug courier hippie, not a classical violinist. “My elder daughter plays in her school orchestra. Been playing since she was eight.”
Clovis was in no mood for a chat about violins with a detective who had not introduced himself and with the silent policeman in the back seat who was taking notes. The detective drove in silence to Auckland Police Headquarters at Cook Street. It was a hostile fortress-like building, made taller by its position on the crest of a hill. Cold and forbidding, Moscow modernist architecture was how Clovis remembered someone describe it.
Clovis was left in a small room with bare green walls. He sat opposite two metal chairs and a table on which rested a form he had to fill out.
“Thank you for coming here, Mr. Tibet.” The detective entered the room and shook his hand, as if they had just been introduced. Clovis discovered he was talking to Inspector Grimble. The name rang a bell, but he could not place it. Grimble sat opposite Clovis and picked up the completed form.
“Who were you staying with tonight?”
“I already told you, with friends.”
“Yes. But who?”
Clovis saw the inspector was holding a computer printout and was comparing it with the form Clovis had filled out. It was the Wanganui computer! They knew more about him than his mother, who was dead anyway. Tax, overseas travel, money in the bank, police intelligence files (if they existed for him, which he doubted), who had employed him, that he had applied for an outdoor musician’s license and was written up by every policeman in downtown Auckland. It was that complete! He should never have read Kafka when he was fourteen. It made him paranoid. The Castle. The Trial. They were nothing compared to New Zealand bureaucracy and the police. He felt guilty, even though he had done nothing wrong. Well, apart from hosting Wiremu.
“Was anyone else in the house when you left?” Grimble was exhausted.
“No. We live alone, I mean, with Plum.”
“What time did you leave Summer Street?” The inspector looked at Clovis’s wrist again. Not even a tan line for a watch, just some big freckles.
“Oh, about six. I’m not sure. I arrived with Dr. Johnson and picked up Plum and we went to their place for dinner.”
“Did you notice anything unusual on the street? Any parked car with someone inside?”
“No.”
“What time did you leave Dr. Johnson’s?”
“I don’t know. But we came straight to my place.”
“What time did Plum Blossom leave?”
“I don’t know, I was outside on the terrace.”
“In the front?”
“No! In the back.”
“Were you talking to Dr. Johnson?”
“No.” Clovis fought to stop his face from turning red. How could he deceive this detective?
“Where was Plum Blossom?”
“In the living room. I think she fell asleep. Er, she was definitely asleep.” He felt his face return to normal.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she had a headache and Dr. Johnson gave her some aspirin and she put her feet up.�
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“Was anyone else in Dr. Johnson’s house?”
“Yes. She lives with Henry Lotus.”
“How long have you known him?”
“About one, almost two weeks.” Clovis told himself he had not actually told a lie, he had just left out certain key facts. “He’s a physicist. Real interesting to talk to.”
“And Dr. Johnson is his wife?”
“No. I don’t think they’re married. But they’re in love.”
“Did you have anything valuable in your house?”
“Well, my Post Office Savings book, all my music! Oh my god!” Clovis let out a moan, all the sheet music that had taken years to collect. And his orchestral sheets all burned. How could he explain that to his new boss, the conductor?
“There were clothes, all Plum’s clothes. But I’m worried about Plum. It’s not like her to disappear. Once she falls asleep she never wakes up till morning. I’m really worried about her.”
“Can you think of anyone who would want to rob your house? Burn it down?”
Clovis did not realize how close the inspector was to the truth. Grimble thought that Clovis was mixed up in a drug conspiracy. The inspector did not need any intuition to realize Clovis was not telling the truth. His sweating red face and earnest facial expressions were an open book.
“No. No one.” Clovis was afraid his eyes would betray him.
The tall detective came into the room. He handed Grimble another computer printout and stood behind him.
“I’m going to need a list of everyone you’ve met since you got back. And I want a full description of Plum Blossom, including what she was wearing.”
“Okay. But my address book and diary, everything was lost in the fire.”
“Well, do the best you can. See to that, Sergeant. I’ll be back shortly, then I’ll take you, er, do you have anywhere to stay?”
“Yes. But what about Plum?”
“File a missing persons report. Get it for him, Cadd. Show it to me when he finishes. Oh, by the way, how old is she? And did she graduate from University?”
“Twenty-two. Auckland University, a year ago.”
“Good. Cadd, get a photo from the Registrar’s office. First thing this morning. What about her parents. Where do they live?”
