by Angus McLean
‘Nearly sir, yeah.’ Buck sat back down uneasily. ‘Just tidying a few bits up.’
‘I hear that Dan Crowley has made a complaint, some kind of a threat.’
‘Yeah.’ Buck nodded slowly, wondering how Kennedy knew that. ‘Yeah, he did. Some anonymous letter writer.’
‘Suspects?’ Kennedy’s grey eyes were cold and emotionless.
‘Only about 20, sir.’ Buck went for levity and failed miserably.
Kennedy gave no indication of even hearing him.
‘What stage is the complaint at?’
‘Well, I’ve just entered it in the system, I’ve taken a statement from Molly, who actually received the letter...’
‘So not much then.’
Buck felt his cheeks flush.
‘Well I only just got it...’
Kennedy stuck one small hairy hand out.
‘Give me the file,’ he said, ‘I’ll assign it appropriately.’
‘I was going to do it myself, sir...’
‘As a favour to your old buddy? Don’t you think you’ve done him enough favours, Constable?’ Kennedy cast a critical eye around the small office. ‘And look where it got you.’ His gaze came back to Buck. ‘I thought we’d already had this discussion that any enquiry files you generate are to come to me first, none of this one-man-band cowboy stuff anymore. You are a community constable, not an investigator. This is not your job.’ He allowed himself a slight smile, exposing small, sharp teeth when he did so. ‘Of course, you were a detective once, and we both know how that ended, don’t we?’
Buck’s cheeks burned with anger and he bit hard on his lip, when every fibre in his body wanted to surge across the desk and throttle the man opposite him.
Kennedy stood and picked the file up from Buck’s tray. He opened the attaché case, placed the file inside, and snapped the catches shut again.
‘Yes, I would have thought you’d learned your lesson about giving Dan Crowley any favours.’
With that he turned on his heel and stalked out, leaving Buck to seethe.
Chapter Six
Molly had risen early and had the first shower, taking longer than usual to get ready. She had slept better than the night before but still felt like she’d barely hit the pillow when the alarm went at 630.
Now sitting at the dining room table, she sipped her tea and stayed quiet. Dan watched her as he made toast for them both and brought it to the table. He spread his first slice with margarine and Vegemite, took a bite and sipped his own tea.
‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ he suggested, ‘have a lazy day at home?’
Molly didn’t reply, just shook her head.
‘You can go for a walk,’ he continued, ‘watch crappy soap operas, have a Nana nap...’
‘No.’ She looked across the table at him and smiled a weary smile. ‘I’m fine, just tired. I’ve got stuff to do at work anyway.’
‘Up to you.’ He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘The offer’s there. I won’t even dock your pay.’
She grinned at him now. ‘Considering I do the pay, that would be very hard for you to do anyway, sunshine.’
‘Hmmm.’ He steepled his fingers and affected a bad German accent. ‘Ve haf our vays, fraulein.’
‘Whatever.’ She spread homemade blueberry jam on her toast. ‘The place would fall apart without me there. You and Mike would end up running round like headless chooks.’
Mike had gone straight from home to an early appointment in Onehunga, where he took a statement from a guy who’d been involved in a car crash a week ago. He had been crashed into by an old lady in a supermarket car park, causing moderate damage to both cars and, he claimed, whiplash and back pain to himself.
As far as Mike could see he was trying to milk some compensation, but he took the statement and committed the guy to a story, then took a couple of photos for the file.
From there he’d taken the Southwestern Motorway south across the Manukau Harbour, getting off at Manukau and dropping the car in the mall carpark. He took a manila folder with him and crossed over to the Manukau District Court, making his way through the usual throngs of criminals and deadbeats hanging around outside-including defence lawyers, who he considered to be worse than most of their clients.
The District Court office was busy as usual and he waited in line for 15 minutes behind lawyers filing legal aid claims, members of the public wanting to know what courtroom they had to go to, and a couple of cops getting search warrants sworn. Finally he got to the counter and told the habitually-disinterested clerk that he had some affidavits to swear.
She sighed heavily and called a number of different extensions, trying to find someone to come and do it.
‘Can’t you do it?’ Mike asked impatiently, and she sighed heavily again.
‘No, I’m not trained.’
‘How much training does it take? It’s just an affidavit.’
‘Look, it’s got to be a deputy registrar or above, okay? I’m only a 1.’
‘A what?’
‘A 1.’
‘What do you have to be?’
She sighed again, as if explaining this to a child.
‘A 2, of course.’
‘Oh.’ Mike shook his head in wonder. ‘Of course, how silly of me.’
He waited another five minutes while she found someone who could actually help, quickly swore four affidavits of service and filed them with their accompanying documents. All related to notices served on debtors in civil claims that he’d served in the last two days.
‘This one was only issued yesterday,’ the deputy registrar noted as she checked one of the affidavits, casting an appraising eye at him over her glasses.
‘And served last night.’ He gave her a big grin. ‘Early bird catches the worm.’
He left her to mull that and went back the way he’d come. As he crossed the front courtyard towards the steps he saw his ex-wife heading towards him, a large coffee in one hand, trailing a trolley bag behind her and chatting to a young guy who was probably a junior at her firm. Penny saw him too and held his gaze as the gap closed.
‘Why the face?’ she asked waspishly, ‘seen a ghost?’
‘No,’ he retorted, ‘just a witch.’
Her jaw dropped and Mike walked past, silently grinning to himself. It was always nice to get one over her, and too rarely did it happen for his liking. If it had been a rugby field, he’d have pumped his fists and let out a whoop, but the Manukau District Court was not the place for whooping.
‘He did what?!’ Dan exploded into the phone.
Even across the office, Molly could hear Buck’s voice on the other end, trying to explain. Dan listened for another minute without interrupting and she waited for him to explode again.
When he didn’t, she got more worried. Dan was quick to anger but also quick to come back down, and usually his fits didn’t last too long. However, he also had another side, where a switch tripped somewhere internally and set off a countdown device. He would start what she thought of as a long slow burn until finally he blew.
Molly had only seen it a couple of times, but she was pretty sure she was about to see a repeat performance.
The phone conversation ended abruptly and Dan turned to her. His eyes were dark and focussed, his face pinched with anger.
A stream of vitriol burst forth from beneath the moustache and she waited him out. Eventually he calmed down enough to relay what Buck had just told him.
‘That useless, vindictive mongrel,’ he spat, ‘he’s going to bury the file and nobody’ll even look at it!’
He stood and strode to the kitchenette, returning with a plastic barrel of biscuits. He took the lid off and held them out to Molly. She took a cameo crème and nibbled the end of it tidily. He angrily snapped at one too and dropped crumbs down his front, devouring it and returning for another.
He sat at his desk and fumed, his forehead a mass of lines and his fists clenching subconsciously.
‘You know,’ he finally declar
ed, ‘I knew, I always knew, right from the start, that Kennedy hated me. Even from the first day I had the misfortune of working with him, I could sense he didn’t like me. The longer I worked with him, the more it became apparent. Even after everything went down...’
He trailed off for a moment, flashing back to an episode a few years ago, before snapping back to the present again.
‘Even after all that, I thought I knew how low he would go. Even after he tried to stop me from getting a license, I thought I knew. But now?’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘This is something else. Actively obstructing an investigation?’ He shook his head again. ‘Something else. What a disgrace.’
Molly nibbled some more of her biscuit, nodding in silent agreement.
‘There’s not much we can do about it though, is there?,’ she said, ‘he calls the shots. We’ve passed it on to the Police and it’s up to him what he does with it, isn’t it?’
Dan considered the biscuit barrel long and hard, deciding against another one for now.
‘Unfortunately, yes. He calls the shots, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.’ Molly turned back to her computer, waiting. She could feel Dan’s eyes on her.
‘Except look into it ourselves,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
That afternoon saw Dan parking in a visitor’s slot of Auckland Prison at Paremoremo on the North Shore.
Known as ‘Pare’, it included the main maximum security unit in the country. Home to nearly 700 prisoners, the East Wing Maximum Security Unit housed some of the worst criminals in the country. It was in a remote rural area, a group of ugly concrete buildings surrounded by high wire fences and copious amounts of razor wire. Guard towers with tinted windows manned each boundary.
Dan had been there a number of times previously, and knew the routine.
He checked in at the main Reception, was directed to the East Wing, and underwent the standard pat-down and metal detector check. He had emptied his pockets before he entered, carrying just his keys which were placed into a clear plastic bag, labelled and held at Reception. He was issued with a visitor’s pass which he clipped to his shirt.
‘And he’s expecting you,’ a guard told him, checking off his name on a clipboard. ‘You’re not his lawyer though?’
‘No mate.’ Dan shook his head. ‘I’m definitely not his lawyer.’
The guard looked at him questioningly.
‘I put him here.’
The guard nodded.
‘I thought you were a cop.’
Dan shook his head again.
‘Used to be. Now I’m just a visitor.’
The guard led him through a corridor to the interview rooms, every step of the way being monitored by CCTV and the heavy steel doors buzzing open electronically. He showed Dan into a small cold concrete room with a barred window, a basic table bolted to the floor, and two plastic chairs. A camera in a corner of the ceiling recorded visual for security purposes, but not audio, since these rooms were often used by inmates and their lawyers.
Dan stood and waited a couple of minutes until the prisoner was brought in.
Alan Monty Baker was nearly 40, tall and broad shouldered, with arms pumped by regular workouts. Ink covered most of his visible skin and a large spiders web adorned his neck. His dirty hair was in a Mohawk and his front teeth were grey and crooked.
He was a patched member of an outlaw motorcycle gang, a heavy P user and a pure-bred psychopath. His upbringing had been a matter of survival in a series of foster homes and institutions, where the young boy had been easy prey to the predators he’d met. Once he was old enough, he returned the favours he’d received to anyone who crossed his path.
He had used a loaded shotgun to ‘tax’ another drug dealer of a $72000 Holden Monaro, threatened to shoot Dan during his trial, and got nine and a ½ years jail.
The miracle was he’d never killed anyone. Yet.
He met Dan’s gaze and grinned mockingly.
‘De-tec-tive Crowley,’ he drawled out, ‘long time no see.’
He pulled out a chair and sat down. The guard indicated to Dan that he would be outside and partially closed the door.
Dan stayed where he was, standing with the light from the window coming in from behind him, his hands casually in his pockets.
‘How’ve you been, Baker.’
Baker grinned again.
‘Sweet as, sweet as. All good.’
Dan nodded, pacing himself.
‘Still in max though, I see.’ He cocked an eyebrow slightly. ‘Been misbehaving?’
Baker shrugged non-committally.
‘It’s all good. It’s home.’ He bared his grey teeth. ‘I’m due to go down to medium. Not long to go now though and I’ll be out.’
He smirked.
‘Walkin’ the streets again.’
Dan ignored the obvious attempt at a wind up.
‘You been writing letters, Baker?’
Baker considered him for a moment then grinned again.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Have you?’
‘I said, why’s that?’
They eyeballed each other across the room.
‘Just answer the question,’ Dan told him flatly.
‘What, someone wrote you a letter and you think it’s me?’
‘Did you?’
Dan could feel the tension rising in the room, and deliberately kept his hands in his pockets, forcing his fingers out flat rather than into fists, so he seemed more at ease. Anything Baker could pick up on, he would feed off.
‘What if I said yes?’
Baker said it as a challenge, mockingly, and Dan’s moustache twitched.
‘What did it say then?’ he asked, and Baker’s eyes flickered, immediately telling Dan that he wasn’t the guy.
‘Did I say I’d written it? No.’
‘Huh.’ Dan had read psychological reports on Baker, and knew him well. He knew he didn’t like being mocked or belittled.
Dan sneered at him, and saw Baker’s nostrils flare.
‘You’re so predictable, Crowley. You come in here all high and mighty, trying to play head games with me, standing up so you’re above me, with the light shining in my eyes.’ Baker tried his own sneer, but he’d lost it now and they both knew it. ‘Loser.’
Dan gave a harrumph and shook his head as he headed for the door.
‘You’re an idiot,’ he muttered as he walked past Baker.
The prisoner was immediately on his feet and grabbing at him with both hands. Dan ducked and side stepped, missing a swinging haymaker, turning into Baker. He slammed a hard right jab into Baker’s left kidney, buckled Baker’s left leg from behind with his knee, and grabbed hold of his Mohawk and shoulder.
Taking two steps to the side he swung Baker across the room and threw him into the wall face first. There was a loud crunch and a spray of blood as Baker’s nose broke, then the guard was rushing into the room and getting between them.
‘He attacked me as I left,’ Dan stated clearly, ‘it’s all on camera.’
Baker swore through the blood flowing steadily down his face and moved his front teeth gingerly with his tongue. A large mark on his forehead would soon be an impressive lump, and tears filled his eyes from the pain in his face.
‘I’ll get you for that, Crowley,’ he snarled, and lunged at him again.
The guard held him back and Dan turned to the camera, holding his hands out to his sides expressively, an innocent look on his face.
Two more guards arrived and as they handcuffed Baker, Dan held his gaze steadily.
‘How soon did you say you were going down to medium security, Al?’ he asked.
Chapter Eight
‘Gee,’ Mike said sarcastically, cracking open an icy Corona and passing it to Dan. ‘You’re a real popular guy.’
Dan took a draught of his beer and relaxed in his deck chair. They were sitting on the Crowley’s deck, surveying the back lawn bordered by Molly’s flower gardens, the vege g
arden in the far corner beside the shed and a cluster of citrus trees along the back fence.
‘I know. Everywhere I go, I make new friends. I’m like a Moonie.’
Mike gave him a quizzical look.
‘The dudes that hang out at the airport looking like Hare Krishna’s, trying to get people to join them?’
‘Exactly. A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet, you know.’
Mike grinned and popped the cap off his own bottle.
‘Rrriiight,’ he drawled. ‘I did three of the civvies on the list today, and none of them had anything good to say about you. You mustn’t get many Christmas cards.’
‘Huh. Which ones were they?’
‘Ahh, Millen the cheater who got beaten up by his wife’s new boyfriend, Pearce the thief who has been out of work since she lost her job at the supermarket, and Ip, that fake Chinese doctor who lost his house.’ Mike took a long swallow of Mexican beer. ‘Na, none of them liked you much at all.’
‘I’ve got another prison appointment tomorrow, but all the others currently serving time have declined to see me.’ He hiked his shoulders. ‘Some people are so picky.’
‘I’ve got another four to see tomorrow,’ Mike said, ‘I rang the rest but didn’t get anywhere with them.’
‘Why didn’t you just cold call them? Nobody wants to go out of their way to help you unless they have no choice.’
‘I told them all I was investigating you and your suitability for a license,’ Mike grinned. ‘Most of them were happy to talk about that.’
Molly stepped out onto the deck with a plate of meat in one hand and a fruity fizzy drink in the other.
‘Is the barbie hot yet?’ she asked, and Dan got up, taking the plate from her.
‘Sure is, baby doll. Ready, willing and able.’ He gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Just like me.’
She rolled her eyes and sat down in his chair, watching as he placed the pork chops and sausages on the grill with a satisfying hiss. Glancing at Mike, she noticed he was sitting still with his head cocked to the side.
