“Stay strong, mate,” Matthew said in a deep voice, slapping Andrew in a friendly way on the shoulder. “I know it’s rough, but we’ve all been there in some form or another. Just keep your mind on where you want to go and who you want by your side. Hell is forever.”
Ngaire shivered. The house was old and improperly situated to gain the warmth from the sun. A hangover from when the British laborers turned up with building plans drawn from the wisdom of another hemisphere. If she was suffering from the cold in the middle of summer, she didn’t want to think what cold drafts moved through this house when frost lay thick upon the ground each morning.
“I’m sorry about that interruption,” Matthew said after Andrew had shuffled out of the front door. “We do have our crises from time to time, and they demand we address them at once.”
“It’s no bother,” Ngaire said, following him along as Emilia slipped away behind her. “I’m just happy you had the time spare to see me at all.”
“What’s this about?” Matthew said, closing the door. Ngaire’s eye’s widened when she saw the keyhole but relaxed as he moved away without turning it. “My wife didn’t send through a lot of details.”
The tea, Ngaire thought. Emilia must have sent through an email or similar when she went into another room to make the tea. The woman was slyer than she’d given her credit for.
“I’m here on police business,” Ngaire said, taking her reward in the immediate straightening of Matthew’s posture. “We’re tracking down the known associates of a man who was murdered in Christchurch back in 1981. Sam Andie.”
Matthew sat still, feigning indifference. His act didn’t stretch out enough to cover up the widening eyes or the increased color in his cheeks. Surprise or recognition. Both, maybe.
“I’m afraid that you’ve confused me with somebody else,” Matthew said, raising his hands briefly then letting them drop to rest palms down on the table. “I wasn’t in Christchurch in 1981.”
“When did you leave, Mr. Jamieson?” Ngaire asked, pulling her notebook from her pocket and sitting with her pen poised ready to write. When the silence went on for a few seconds, she smiled and pushed. “Did you family move straight down to Dunedin or did you stop someplace else first?”
A small frown creased Matthew’s brow and then disappeared. His expression settled into one of worry but not for himself. Directed outward at her.
“Perhaps my name has been mixed up with someone else,” he suggested, leaning forward an inch. “Jamieson is a prevalent surname.”
Ngaire sat back in her chair, eyebrows raised. “It is, Mr. Jamieson.” She nodded and then fell silent, urging him to fill the gap.
“My family has always resided in Dunedin,” he said. “Born and bred.”
“Are your family still here now? Perhaps if you have an address for your mother or father, they might be able to remember more clearly. You would only have been a teenager at the time.”
“Eighteen,” he blurted, then clamped his mouth shut. Matthew lowered his gaze and drew his chin in. “Both of my parents are deceased.”
Whatever else he was covering up, Ngaire wrote that down because it had the ring of truth. “You called the Dunedin South Police Station on August 22, 1981. The desk sergeant recorded your number and traced back your name. You told him that you’d seen Sam Andie alive and well in Dunedin, which was a good trick, considering that by then he was a week dead.”
By now, Matthew’s hands were pressed so hard against the table that the skin was glowing white. “It wasn’t me.”
“Well, now. A bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? A man with your name calling the police station from the phone number at your address.”
“I didn’t give—” Matthew bit down on his words so quickly that he closed his eyes. After a short pause to collect himself, nostrils flaring, he tried again. “I didn’t make that call. I don’t know why someone would impersonate me, but I’ve never phoned a police station in my life, so I can assure you that whoever made that call, it wasn’t me. I don’t even know somebody named Sam Andie, so I could hardly call to say that I’d seen him.”
Ngaire pulled a printout of the scanned photograph out of her bag and placed it under Matthew’s line of sight. His mouth opened in a silent sigh and after a moment, he turned away.
“That’s a photograph of Sam Andie taken shortly before his death. A murder that went without a proper investigation because someone called into the police to say that he was still alive and had run away from his parents.”
Ngaire leaned forward over the table, placing the pen and pad down with a thump. “Do you know how much it has hurt Sam’s mother over the years, to think that her son had run away from home and never bothered to ever give her a call? Then, after all those long years of hurt, she finds out that he never ran away at all. Instead, for close to forty years, his body had been rotting on a hillside instead.”
Matthew looked back at Ngaire, then flinched away. He tilted his head to look down at the table but instead stared straight into the bright eyes of Sam Andie. He jerked back, taking his hands off the table and crossing his arms.
“Look,” Ngaire said, leaning back, “if you tell me here and now why you did that, then it might look better for you in the end. When we charge you with wasting police time and obstructing justice, and Matthew”—Ngaire banged her finger down on the table—“believe me, we will prosecute, then we’ll have some mitigation to put before the judge.”
While Matthew’s eyes flicked toward the window as though he was thinking of leaping straight through it, closed or not, Ngaire hammered home her point.
“Those forty years where the police weren’t looking for Sam, they’re years that the evidence got harder to piece together. We’ll still get there, but it will take a lot more manpower and a lot more time and judges don’t like the public price tag for either. Unless you cooperate, then you might easily strike someone who thinks a custodial sentence is the only appropriate punishment.”
Matthew’s eyes widened again, and he swallowed hard. “I didn’t—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Matthew,” Ngaire said. “You almost said it before, remember? You’re going to say, I didn’t give them my name, and we’re all going to know that for over three decades, you’ve been lying.”
“I’m not—”
Ngaire held up her hand to stop him. “It’s no use denying it, Matthew. This isn’t a problem that’s going to run away. Don’t you remember Wearside Jack, the guy who sent in fake tapes about the Yorkshire Ripper?”
Matthew shook his head. At least, Ngaire thought he did. So much of him was shaking by now that it was growing harder to tell.
“They tracked him down through DNA twenty-five years after he played his little prank. Do you know how much time he got for perverting the cause of justice? Eight years. Do you want to spend the next eight years in prison, Matthew?” She leaned forward again, catching his eyes with hers and keeping them locked. Ngaire dropped her voice to a low, insinuating whisper. “I’m sure they’d love you in there.”
The change in Matthew’s face was remarkable. It was like watching a steel barred gate slam across and clang into position. Every muscle in his face became rigid. His skin shone where it stretched over his jaw.
“I did not phone the police station on the night in question. I’ve never called a police station.” Matthew pressed his fingertips down on the reproduced photograph and pushed it back across the table with such force that it tore halfway down one side.
“I don’t know and have never known anybody called Sam Andie.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Travel should be banned, if only because it gave Ngaire far too much time to think. On the flight back up, Matthew’s strong negation still ringing in her ears, Ngaire tried to concentrate on the case. What should her next steps be or, if not her, then who should be directing them?
Instead, her mind strayed into areas she thought she’d banned it from long ago. “Don’t dwell
on things,” her mother, Marylin, had once called out, as an afterthought although it landed like an insult. Strangely enough, it was the one that stuck with Ngaire, the only motherly offering to ever resemble good sense.
Of course, a short lecture delivered in her mother’s silver tongue did nothing to curb the problem by itself. No. Will power, determination, and an ardent desire to turn away from the past were needed in more quantities than Ngaire had left to exert.
The pamphlet that Dr. Sanderson had given her was still tucked inside her bag. Ngaire pulled it out and took a deep breath, just as the plane hit enough turbulence to send her adrenaline levels skyrocketing. Once upon a time, she’d enjoyed the tussle of an aircraft fighting headfirst through the clouds. Now, each time it happened, it freaked her out more than the last.
She leaned her head against the seat back in front of her, focusing on the words in front of her to ignore the potential for a horrific death that clawed into the plane from the outside. When trapped inside a tin can held in the air by magic, she preferred it stay there without struggling so hard to get away.
Asexuality: this refers to individuals with low to nil sexual desire. People who identify as asexual may exhibit low or absent sexual behaviors, exclusively romantic non-sexual partnerships, or a combination of both absent sexual desires and behaviors. Some self-identified asexual individuals may engage in sexual activity to please a partner or solely to procreate.
Ngaire started to close the pamphlet, embarrassed, but forced herself to open it up again. Curiosity overriding fear.
Counseling for asexual individuals, or a couple including one or both partners who identify as asexual, may be helpful if they wish to pursue a long-term relationship. While some individuals may be aromantic—in that they do not feel a need for romantic attachments at all or the need to seek a relationship—a lot of asexual individuals do want to pursue a romantic relationship with a steady partner, but either lack or do not feel confident in their skills to do so. We counsel partners to have honest conversations with each other and counsel singles on how to approach these subjects without sabotaging a potential relationship before it’s begun. Whatever your individual situation, we can help.
The bold statement ended many of the pages inside the informative leaflet. Ngaire assumed it was confident because it had to be. Who wanted to pursue expensive and intensely private counseling with the end goal of failure?
Once upon a time, Ngaire had been sexually active. Far too young and with far too little protective knowledge in her head or at her disposal, but it had happened with her consent. For everyone who would stridently insist that underage girls couldn’t consent may even be mollified that the boy it happened with wasn’t at an age when he could consent, either, albeit the law at the time didn’t recognize that as an issue.
Ngaire had found it pleasant to be with him, had enjoyed their dates which always seemed to be out in public, not costing anything because what school kids have money? Nice, joyful even. If that had been all a relationship was then it was something that she would happily pursue.
Holding hands was the limit, though. Kissing, no. Touching under the clothes, no. Unfortunately, the limit only existed inside Ngaire’s head and expressed itself as repulsion through her body. At a time when the word, “No!” said clearly and firmly would have landed her back at her home, unscathed, she couldn’t find the way to say it.
Maybe if the entire incident hadn’t ended in a pregnancy that brought her even more trauma, Ngaire wouldn’t have worried so much about it. Wishing that problem away didn’t do anything back then, and it did nothing for her now.
Afterward, Ngaire found her voice. She still enjoyed the company of boys and then men. She still reveled in the close attention and found joy in reciprocating the same. Kisses, no. Touching, no. A mistake that hadn’t been made again.
In thirteen years, it had never occurred to Ngaire that talking to somebody could contribute to making it better. Even when she’d forced herself into counseling for other matters, this part of her life had been roped off with bright yellow police tape—do not cross.
If she’d talked about it beforehand, perhaps Findlay wouldn’t have walked out of her life forever. If Ngaire had learned to have an “honest conversation” then in another world, they might have found a way to overcome her obstacles and form a stronger bond.
Too late now.
Ngaire leaned her head back against the headrest and gritted her teeth as the small plane fought off the attack from a strong updraft. It felt like the aircraft was travailing the Rocky Mountains; up, down, up down. Luckily, her stomach had recovered from its earlier indignation and stayed where it was meant to be.
When the plane landed, Ngaire navigated the staircase with shaky legs and pulled her jacket tighter around her body as the evening wind whipped across the airport tarmac. Inside, she had to take it off as the walkway radiated heat stored up through the long, sunny day.
As she paid for her car’s stay and walked up the concrete steps to the long-term parking for her vehicle, Ngaire wondered why her mind had so quickly given up her and Findlay’s relationship as a lost cause. Was she that much of a coward that the thought of saying something intimate and potentially embarrassing aloud would still her tongue into silence? Could she actually throw away their friendship just to keep a shameful secret close to her chest?
The sky was still lit by the sun falling behind the horizon. Even though it was seven-thirty when she landed and closer to eight by the time she drove away, the days were still long, the nights slow to claim their victory of darkness.
The list of questions that Ngaire had toiled over, framing each one so carefully to have the strength to ask Dr. Sanderson and gain the knowledge she was so desperate for—unasked. When it came down to the crunch, she’d accepted a brochure with a once-over-lightly approach instead of pushing aside her vanity to do the stronger thing, and ask.
A year before, Ngaire had faced the same issue of bravery and cowardice with her physical body. After a knife blade cut her flesh but cut a deeper wound into her mind. If she’d sought the help she needed then, instead of trying to push herself through the lurking terror and pretend it didn’t exist, then her recovery would have been sooner. Where she’d had to take time out from the police force to recuperate, Ngaire might have been able to stay on the job and not lose her training momentum.
No wonder that Gascoigne didn’t think she was worthy of promotion. He’d seen her display of vanity and self-preservation over courage and seeking help when it was needed. He knew that she’d chosen the wrong path then and had the capacity to do so again.
As the intersection approached for her to turn off and head home, Ngaire forced her hands to angle the steering wheel another way. Nosing the car toward Findlay’s house. Yes, their relationship was probably lost for good through her inability to face up to her own sexuality. Damn it if she couldn’t muster her courage for one last ditch attempt at a save.
As Ngaire nosed the car into Findlay’s driveway, her heart leaped at the sight of another vehicle already parked there. He had company. Immediately, her coward’s mind tried to back out of it. She should go, it wasn’t meant to be, she could talk to Findlay on another day.
Instead of giving in to the voice, Ngaire parked out on the street and got out of the car before she could talk herself into inaction. The beep of the lock behind her helped to force her stiff legs forward—along the side path of Findlay’s house, then up the wooden steps of his verandah.
From inside the house, Ngaire could hear voices. The low rumble of conversation muted by insulation and weatherboard, then the unmistakable sound of a woman’s laughter.
She froze, hand up in the air ready to knock. Pinpricks of self-consciousness prickled up and down her spine.
Ngaire whirled, checking to see if her senses were reporting an actual danger. Nothing behind her. Nothing outside in the yard. The prickles were from her own embarrassment, not an external force.
While he
r mind fought a valiant battle between her need to express her situation to a lost friend and the need for self-preservation, Ngaire took a few steps back along the porch. Through a gap in the thin curtain, she could see a woman seated on the sofa where she’d spent many a night talking with Findlay. This woman wasn’t talking. Her head was back, looking up at the man who stood in front of her. She gave a tiny shrug, then reached up to pull Findlay down beside her.
Ngaire jerked back. Her ears thrummed nonsense music into her brain, and her eyes were shot through with streaks and stars of light. Every sense overwhelmed her until she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She was trapped inside a marble sculpture of her own body, frozen solid in a single moment of time.
Another whoop of female laughter was the impetus that broke through her trapped state. Ngaire moved one foot, then the next, until she was running back to her car.
She seized the handle and dragged at it, one of her fingernails breaking off with a quick, sharp dagger of pain. After a frantic moment where Ngaire felt that the entire world was conspiring against her, she remembered to press the key fob and release the car door lock.
Her face was coated in sweat, drenched where the still, summer night didn’t warrant such a response. Ngaire sat behind in the driver’s seat, her hands gripping the steering wheel as though it was the only thing still securing her to the planet. A scar along her chest burned as though dunked in acid. The back of her leg felt the insertion and twist of a knife.
Breathe. Just breathe.
This long down the path to recovery, Ngaire was shocked that the old troubles were still lurking there, so close beneath the surface. She panted, leaning her head forward and pressing her burning face against the cold leather of the steering wheel.
In through her nose. Out through her mouth. When Ngaire felt some of her control returning, she began to consciously time the breaths against her watch. Twenty seconds in, pause for ten, thirty seconds out.
The Only Secret Left to Keep Page 19