by Angus McLean
‘Trust me,’ he grinned, ‘it’s science.’
‘Whatever it is,’ Molly said quietly, ‘I appreciate it.’
Dan nodded and smiled, no further explanation needed, and they lapsed into silence again as they got back to work. Later in the afternoon Dan took the car to get a warrant of fitness, kissed Molly as he left and told her he’d do dinner.
It was near closing time when Mike called to say he’d finished his enquiries and was going straight home. Molly gave him a couple of messages she’d taken, and he told her about his enquiries so she could update the electronic file.
With the computers shut down, she watered the pot plants and killed the lights, set the alarm and locked the door behind her.
Despite being a suburban town centre, Ellerslie had a village feel about it with a single shopping street and a number of old fashioned craft and sparkys shops. Businesses were shutting for the day and workers bustled about in the sort of polite rush that set it apart from Queen Street.
Molly had already changed into her sneakers, and now put her bag over her shoulder and crossed over to Ladies Mile. The hill street was long and steep and gave a good workout, which was why she often chose to walk home. She put her head down and got into it, pacing herself steadily up the hill as cars lumbered by.
Half her mind was on the burn in her legs and the other half was on what Dan was cooking for tea. She hoped it wasn’t too rich and that he didn’t use her new frying pan-he’d burned the last one by trying to be too creative and caramelise onions with lots of brown sugar and not much oil. Momentary distraction had rapidly led to disaster and a trip to Millie’s Kitchen in Ponsonby.
Damn those cooking shows on TV.
As she made her way home, thinking about the evening to come, something was knocking at the back door of Molly’s subconscious. Not a loud knock but a persistent one, like the Jehova’s Witness who knows you’re in there and just wants to leave you with a copy of Watchtower.
Something was there. She tried to shake it off and remember what was on the list for dinner. It didn’t matter, Dan was probably going to deviate from it anyway with whatever had taken his fancy today. No, it was still there, bugging her.
A noise. Nagging at her as she crested the hill and dropped down into Marua Road. A car noise.
She glanced around. There was plenty of traffic, cars waiting beside her at the hilltop lights, with the difficult hill start to come, other cars going in her direction, making their own way home with mind-numbed drivers on auto-pilot.
Molly dropped down into suburbia and the traffic noise also dropped.
But it was still there, the thought, tapping away persistently at her subconscious. Something she couldn’t put her finger on, consistent, nagging at her for the last few minutes. Since she left work? Not sure. Maybe.
But it was gone now.
Chapter Three
Mike Manning lived in a secure apartment complex in Mount Wellington, one of those ones full of first home buyers, young urban professionals (or what had previously been called Yuppies, except no one called them that anymore, just accepted they were what they were and tried to ignore them), and even the occasional hooker or small time crook.
He was on the ground floor in the corner, which allowed him to check the whole place out as he walked to his door. He liked that, knowing what was going on, who was about and who shouldn’t be there. The caretaker liked him knowing that too, because Mike tended to keep things in order around the place, helping him clean the pool or deal with noisy parties.
Mike had been to the gym on the way home and was sweaty and wired, his arms still quivering from the punishment they’d received. He got to the door and slid the key in the lock. He felt eyes on him and snapped a quick look over his shoulder. Nothing.
He paused, his eyes searching the darkness beyond the shimmering blue of the pool, where the outdoor furniture sat in the shadows with yukkas and palms behind it. Nothing.
He turned back to the door and pushed it open, stepping across the threshold as he heard a noise behind him, like the scrape of a chair leg on concrete. He spun again, seeing it this time. Movement, a shadow within the shadows, moving from near the pool furniture towards the far side gate.
Mike paused again, watching. The person moved into the ambient light from the closest apartments, and he recognised one of the neighbours with a poodle on a leash.
He let out his breath, not even realising he’d been holding it, and discarded the activity from his mind. For a moment there he’d thought it might have been her. He moved inside and shut the door, tossing his bag into the bedroom as he walked past to the kitchen.
The fridge was looking Spartan, so he checked the pantry instead. Rice risotto and tuna it was then.
The knock on the door caught him by surprise and he answered it with a bottle of sweet chilli sauce in his hand. His neighbour, Simon the sparky, stood on the welcome mat with a large brown envelope in his hand.
‘Hey Simon.’
‘I saw your light on, this came for you today so I signed for it ‘cause you weren’t home. I hope that’s alright.’
‘Yeah, no worries mate.’ He took it from the other man. ‘Thanks.’
‘Not a problem Mike.’
Mike wasn’t much of a small talker and he shut the door quickly while Simon was still there. It wasn’t that he wanted to be rude-Simon was a nice guy-but he already knew what the envelope was going to be and he didn’t want to share it with the neighbour.
He took the envelope into the kitchen, put down the sauce bottle, and broke the seal. The envelope was addressed to him with a printed label, and had a courier sticker on the front.
He opened the envelope and checked the contents.
No doubt about it. It was her.
Molly’s morning started the usual way, clearing email and phone messages, making a couple of calls and tidying up the coffee table. She gathered up the post, including John Standen’s invoice and a couple of others, and popped down to the Post Office. She dropped the mail in the box, cleared the company’s PO box, and picked up a Herald from the dairy.
On the way back to the office she stopped by Mutual Insurance, two doors down from Chase, and spent a couple of minutes with the branch manager, Julie. A mousy woman in her 40’s who wore grey every day of the week, except for summer when she occasionally broke out into deafening pink or yellow, Julie was on medication for her nerves and it was Molly’s job to keep her calm and onside.
Chase did all Mutual’s investigative work in this region and intended for it to stay that way, so a bit of schmoozing always helped.
Molly dropped off a couple of files to Julie and picked up three more, chatted briefly about how busy Julie was, sympathised about how Julie’s neighbour’s cat kept digging up her petunias, then gave a cheery goodbye and headed back to her own office.
As she opened the door she stood on a piece of paper, lifted her foot and stepped back, staring at it.
It was a plain piece of white A4.
Printed on it were the words YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
Molly spun to look behind her, expecting some psycho to be standing behind her with a knife and evil grin.
There was no one.
She went inside and banged the door shut behind her, locking it with trembling fingers. She put the piece of paper, the files, the post and the newspaper on her desk and moved around to take her seat. The thought suddenly hit her that maybe locking the door behind her was exactly what the sender of the message wanted, so he could jump out from behind a pot plant.
Molly snatched up the stapler off her desk and prowled the office, throwing open the door to the bathroom and checking the kitchen.
Nothing.
She moved on to the other desks, checking that nobody was hiding behind them.
Nobody was.
She went back to her desk and put the stapler down. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she told herself aloud, ‘you’re b
eing paranoid. Get a grip.’
She glanced behind herself again just to be sure and repeated again, ‘Get a grip!’
The phone rang beside her and she let out an involuntary shriek, jumping back and staring at it for a moment. She snatched the handpiece and almost shouted into it.
‘What?!’
‘Mol?’
It was Dan.
‘Oh. It’s you.’
The feeling of relief swept over her and she felt her knees go weak. She eased herself into her chair and held the receiver with both hands.
‘Uh, yeah...is something up?’
Molly felt her eyes starting to prickle and she paused, gathering herself to speak.
‘Honey? What’s up? Are you okay?’
The phone receiver trembled in her hand as she told him, and within minutes he was there.
Chapter Four
For the second time in two days Buck found himself back in the Chase Investigations offices, taking a statement.
He had slipped the message into a plastic sleeve using rubber gloves, then written out Molly’s statement, short as it was. There was nothing really to say except she’d left, come back, and found the note.
‘That’s it?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘That’s it. What else can I say?’
She looked to her husband, and he shrugged.
‘Nothing really.’ He held a photocopy of the note in his hands and stared at it with a scowl on his face. He’d been scowling since he’d got there, and she noticed his fists kept clenching and unclenching.
‘Any idea who the author could be?’ Buck asked.
‘Not really,’ Molly answered.
‘Depends who it was for,’ Dan said. ‘If it was Molly, then probably no. Who would want to scare her?’
‘But if it was you?’ Buck prompted.
‘But if it was me, who knows? Take your pick. I’ve worked a lot of cases as a PI, and most of those cases end up with someone being angry or upset. Twelve years as a cop...a lot of people in jail.’ He inclined his head thoughtfully. ‘Doesn’t tend to make them happy.’
‘Anyone threaten you that you can remember?’ Buck asked, ‘or anyone you can think of that might do it?’
Dan’s moustache twitched.
‘I’ll email you a list. At least then you have some start points to run through AFIS.’
‘AFIS?’ Molly asked.
‘The fingerprint system. Buck’ll get the letter printed and have any nominated suspects checked against any prints they lift off the paper.’
Buck frowned.
‘Yeah, Buck’ll do that,’ he said with a touch of sarcasm.
‘Probably swabbing for DNA too,’ Dan continued, and Buck frowned again.
‘Or not,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean?’ Dan looked surprised. ‘You wouldn’t check for DNA?’
‘Probably not. Budget cuts for forensics, we can’t put everything through. It costs a bomb you know.’
Dan scowled even harder now.
‘So you put through swabbing for two-bit rats and mice burglaries, or when a car gets broken into and a few CDs get nicked, but you don’t do it for threats to kill?’
‘There’s no actual threat to kill in the letter,’ Buck said placatingly, but Dan wasn’t having it.
‘Crap,’ he snapped, ‘it’s not laid out but the meaning is pretty clear, and doesn’t it come down to how the victim takes it? If they take it as a threat...’
‘Okay, okay, okay.’ Buck put his hands up defensively. ‘I’ll see if I can slip it through. It has to go through a DI though...’
Dan saw immediately where he was going with that.
‘You don’t have to take it to Kennedy,’ he said, ‘he’s not the only DI around. Give it to one of the others.’
‘But he’s the only one for this area. They all have to go through him.’ Buck put his hands up defensively again. ‘It’s not my choice, Dan, it’s the process.’
‘Well the process sucks,’ Dan told him emphatically. ‘Get creative, man. Think outside the square.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Buck replied, standing and making for the door. ‘I’ll let you know.’
The door closed behind him and Dan shook his head in frustration.
‘He was a good detective,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘And now he’s a broken arse professional meeting attender.’
‘Go easy on him,’ Molly chided her husband, ‘he’s helping us out. We could’ve been waiting all day for someone to attend it.’
Dan stood and stalked towards the kitchen to put the jug on.
‘Yeah,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘well he better sort it out before I do.’
Chapter Five
Buck had gone through the list emailed over from Dan, checking each name through the intelligence system to see where they were at and if they would be in a position to deliver such a threat.
Of the 20 names listed, most of them were practically nobodies as far as the Police were concerned. That is to say, they had either no criminal history or very little. Not surprisingly, most of these were people he had encountered since going private.
The other names, however, included some heavyweight criminals. Going through this shorter list reminded Buck of the old days, racing round like a crazy man with his senior partner, Detective Dan Crowley. Dan took him under his wing and taught him the ins and outs of being a good detective and a good street cop, taught him about being thorough and persistent, turning over rocks and seeing what crawled out, paying attention to detail, talking to people and even more importantly, listening to people.
‘People want to tell us stuff,’ he had told the new probie one day, ‘Sometimes they don't know it, but they do. But cops usually just don't listen, they get too caught up in getting this job sorted out so they can move on to the next one and forget to actually do the job right in the first place. The best detectives are good interviewers. You want to be a good detective, Bucko?’
Buck had nodded eagerly. ‘Of course.’
‘Then be a good interviewer. It's just conversing with people. Keep your gob shut and your ears open. Got it?’
‘Of course, yeah. Gob shut, ears open.’
Dan had grinned and given that little nod.
‘Yeah, of course.’
Buck went to the next name, one he recognised straight off. A patched gang member they had arrested for a shotgun robbery, a career criminal with a list as long as your arm and the personal integrity of a used tea bag. He also had a huge grudge against Dan, who he thought had disrespected him. He'd threatened to kill the detective during his trial, which did nothing but bring him more grief and an extra six months jail on top of the nine years he got for the robbery.
He was still a serving prisoner, so would've had to have organised an associate to deliver the note. Buck put him on the B list of suspects and moved on.
The next name was a child rapist, a true psychopath in every sense of the word. Apparently he'd found God while in prison, and had sent Dan a letter from maximum security explaining how Dan's judgement day would come and he would be judged by a higher court.
No explicit threats were made but the letters had continued for a couple of years, every six months. The guy had even found out Dan's birth date and sent him birthday cards for a couple of years.
Eventually it was stopped by the prison authorities, but Buck knew it had affected Dan. He wasn't scared of the guy as such, but he was certainly unnerved. He had once described the bad guy to Buck, in a moment of sombre reflection, as ‘pure evil.’
Of all the crooks Dan had dealt with over the years, including some of the worst criminals to ever come out of the mean streets of South Auckland, he had always rated this guy as the worst.
Buck moved him to the A list, and moved on.
There were a couple of serial rapists there, guys serving long terms of imprisonment and in no position to deliver the note, but the man who put them there certainly wasn't on their Christmas ca
rd lists. They made the B team.
The last name was a killer, a cold blooded murderer. He had just the one conviction, for bashing and then stabbing his wife. But he hadn't just stabbed her, it wasn't some domestic that got a bit out of control, this was a totally calculated, pre-meditated execution. After realising that she was finally going to leave him, he had put a plan in place.
His wife had walked into the dining room to be met by a blow from behind by a rolling pin. This of itself had nearly killed her, and he had then got more violent. 72 stab wounds to every limb and part of her body had come from a kitchen knife, enough to bleed her out if he'd left her alone. But he hadn't, he'd then cut her throat and made sure she was dead before trying to cut his own throat.
Dan had arrived on the scene minutes later following a 111 call from the neighbour, and found the killer lying on the floor with a knife in his hand and a gaping neck wound. He had disarmed and restrained the offender, then stemmed the blood flow until an ambulance arrived.
Rather than ending it all, the offender's plan had been stymied by Dan's quick actions, and he ended up with life in prison, which didn't please him at all. He had also threatened to kill Dan, and was quite serious about it at the time. Six years later though? Buck put him on the B list as well.
He drafted an email to Fingerprint Section listing the details of the two groups of suspects and asking them to be checked against the letter. For now, there wasn’t much else he could do.
He tossed the file into his tray and sat back, checking the time. Nearly knock-off time.
The front door opened and someone stepped into the foyer of the small community constable’s office. Buck was still getting up when Detective Inspector Hugh Kennedy stalked through and into the back office.
He was a small man with severely thinning hair that dropped dandruff on the shoulders of his otherwise immaculate dark suit. He carried an attaché case as usual and looked like he’d walked into someone else’s fart.
‘Ahh, sir...’
‘Constable Buckmaster.’ The DI took a seat across the desk from him, carefully placing the attaché case between his feet. ‘Nearly home time is it?’
