The gap before she could draw in a new breath focused her on the craving in her lungs rather than the pain of old battle wounds.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out.
Of course, Findlay would move on. He’d probably done so long before. The only place where he existed as a single man pining forever for her lost affections was in Ngaire’s mind.
Findlay was an attractive man with an exciting career. The pay wasn’t great, but his quick wit and ready comebacks were ample compensation for that. Who needed job security when you had humor? Who needed Brad Pitt when you could be seduced into bed by a ridiculous litany of one-liners?
How could she reasonably expect her friend not to move on to other opportunities when she built a wall around her sexuality that no one could break through?
As she started the car to drive away, Ngaire dared to flick one quick glance back at Findlay’s house. Just as she did so, the lights flipped off. The room plunged into the darkness of the surrounding night.
Another stab into her chest, already overloaded with self-loathing and guilt. Ngaire put her foot down on the accelerator and felt the satisfaction of the car tires squealing against the road as she pulled away.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When Ngaire arrived at the station house the next morning, a sticky note was on her keyboard. “Forensic Accounting Came Back.” She sat and signed-in to the computer, quickly finding a file from the department.
“Ngaire? Ten o’clock okay for a quick catch-up?” DSS Harmond asked, coming up behind Ngaire and laying a hand briefly on her shoulder.
Ngaire turned. “Sure, that sounds good. Did you write this?”
The DSS shook her head. “That looks like Angel’s handwriting. Why? Did you need to speak with him? I think he’s out in the field.”
“No.” Ngaire shook her head. “I’ve got the file. I just wondered if the department told him anything more.”
“If they had done, he would’ve written it down there or sent an email.” The DSS raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. He’s not the type to withhold anything.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that.”
“If you need to listen to the call, I can bring that up on the computer when we have our meeting. Everything is recorded, just let me know.”
“Sure,” Ngaire said. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Harmond frowned at her for a second. “Okay. I’ll see you later, then. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Ngaire turned back to the computer and started reading again. The forensic guys had traced back every business in the area surrounding the local bank branch at the time, then narrowed it down to who paid in cash. A large job, considering that bank cards were a brand-new thing at the time. There was even a vague idea that plucked at Ngaire, saying employers had the legal duty to pay in cash if requested.
What a nightmare.
Out of the cash businesses, they’d narrowed down the field by checking the old employment records kept on file. Luckily for them, the company in question had stayed up to date with its tax requirements. Otherwise, they could have researched forever and never turned up a thing.
Ngaire picked up the phone and tried the number given for the nightclub that had Sam Andie noted as an employee, albeit under a different name. No luck. The company details might have been out of date for a month or three decades. She looked through the company details the forensic accounting department had provided and researched the company director instead.
Bingo.
“Hey, there. You’ve reached the number of Jenna Shipman. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
Not bloody likely. Ngaire traced the address back from the number and booked herself out on a job.
Eight o’clock. That gave Ngaire another two hours before she needed to be back in here and reporting to Harmond. As she walked out of the building, she hoped it would be with another item on her scorecard.
“I haven’t thought of that place in a while,” Jenna Shipman said. She poured Ngaire a cup of tea and stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.
After Ngaire rang the doorbell, she’d almost given up hope before a reluctant hostess answered. With eyes bleary from lack of sleep and dressed only in a silk robe, Jenna had soon come to attention when Ngaire said she was police.
“We used to get raided at least once a week, often more,” Jenna continued. There was a dreamy look on her face as though she was thinking of good times, though, Ngaire knew from experience that a police raid was a shocking and disturbing thing.
“Every time they bust through the door, there’d be a chorus of ‘Oohs’ to catch them all off-guard.” Jenna shook her head and smiled at the memory. “There weren’t many that looked like you back then, love. I can’t even remember now if I ever saw a woman in uniform at one of those things.”
“Times have changed.”
Jenna nodded, then shrugged. “Never as much as you hope, and not quite so much as you think. Still, it may have been rough to run our sort of place back then, but I wouldn’t have done anything else.”
Ngaire nodded and took a sip of her tea. Chamomile, though Jenna had gone ahead and added milk as she’d asked back when she thought it would be your bog-standard black tea.
“How long did you run the nightclub?”
Jenna pursed her lips like she was blowing bubbles. “From start to finish, it wouldn’t have lasted more than eight years. In the end, it was the real estate agent that did us in. He refused to sign off on a new lease.” She shrugged. “That was after the homosexual law reform and all. These days, I don’t think he’d be allowed to get away with that. We tried to get a new place, but we’d cut it too close and couldn’t get anywhere. In the end, we were shut for long enough that our clientele drifted away to new haunts.”
“How long did Sam Andie work for you?”
“For about six months, I guess. It’s hard to remember precisely, it was all so long ago.” Jenna smiled broadly and leaned forward as if confessing a secret. “He was hugely popular while he did last. I’ve never seen a boy could get his natural eyelashes that long.”
“What job did he do at the nightclub?” Ngaire asked. As a quick note of caution, she added, “He was too young to be a server, wasn’t he?”
“He was a performer, darling,” Jenna said, sweeping her arm wide and extending her words with a drawl. “That boy was born to be on the stage, and who would I be to stop him from fulfilling his natural calling?”
She dropped her arm and the theatrics, her face falling as she remembered why Ngaire was there, to begin with.
“Our show was pretty simple. One performer at a time, synching to music. Occasionally, if someone was an outstanding singer, we’d let them sing to a backing track.”
“Was Sam a good singer?”
“Goodness, no. He couldn’t keep a tune to save his life. Just as well,” Jenna said, pausing to take a sip of tea. “Enough jealous nellies were crowding up his changing room. If the lad could sing as well, there would have been nails drawn.” She curled up her fingers and made a hissing noise.
“How much did the job pay?”
“Standard fee per performance was fifty bucks. Any notes that got shoved onto the stage were theirs to keep.”
“Fifty dollars per song?”
“No, per night. Christ, I would have been out of business long before if we’d paid that much.”
“The wages still seem quite high for that long ago,” Ngaire said.
Jenna laughed and shook her head. “That included danger pay,” she said. “If I wanted to keep performers after the police raided and took names, then I had to pay over and above. Besides, this wasn’t your typical nightclub where men go to pick up woman. We had a particular class of clientele, and they paid handsomely for the privilege of attending.”
“Were there any extras on offer?”
“We didn’t need to provide them,” Jenna said. “We were the only nightclub in the district who catered to the pe
ople we were targeting.” She shrugged. “If anybody ever did anything over and above, that was their call and on their terms. I would put a stop to it if I saw anything.” She leaned forward again and tapped the side of her nose. “But I had notoriously bad eyesight.”
“Did Sam ever indicate that he was putting money aside for anything in particular?”
Jenna laughed merrily at that, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t have dared ask what someone intended to do with the money I paid them. None of my business would be the response I’d expect from that.”
Ngaire shifted in her seat. Her butt was starting to go to sleep. Too many interviews and too many hours spent traveling in between. She needed to go on more meth busts and fewer murder investigations if she wanted to stay in shape. Or use her gym membership for the first time this year. Or last.
“Do you recall anybody who used to hang about with Sam? Friends, girlfriends. Anyone who struck you as out of place?”
Jenna polished off the rest of the tea and leaned forward to replace her cup in the saucer. Her movements were dainty for someone with such large hands.
“He had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, depending on how they liked to be addressed. Sharon? Shannon? Something like that.” Jenna giggled. “They were an odd couple, even for my lifestyle. A boy dressing like a girl and a girl determined to be a man. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“I’m not aiming for anything in particular,” Ngaire said. “I’m just trying to build as full a picture of Sam’s life at the time as I can get.”
“Hm. Well, there was another boy who hung around with them, or with Sam at least. I’d throw him out if I caught him sneaking around, he was way under my license age.” She tapped the side of her nose again.
Ngaire nodded. “How young was he?”
“Younger than Sam, older than jailbait. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. Somewhere around that age, though it gets hard to tell. Post-pubescent, if that’s any more help.”
“What do you mean by ‘hung around?’ Did he watch the shows?”
“Christ, no. If the boy had been in the crowd when the police raided, I’d never have been able to open my doors again. No, he’d meet Sam in the dressing room and talk to him in between appearances.” Jenna pursed her lips and frowned. “I got the impression that he was one of us but didn’t have anyone in his own group that he could talk to. So, when Sam showed him some attention, he just latched on and wouldn’t let go. What was his name?”
Jenna tapped one long, manicured fingernail in the center of her forehead. After a few minutes, she shook her head.
“Nah. I’ve lost it. For a second there, it was dancing on the tip of my tongue.”
“Did Sam have any regular audience members? Someone who would always turn out just for his show, stuff like that?”
“There were plenty of patrons who hung on every show he did, but none who would have stayed away if Sam didn’t show. I mean, that boy was a looker, but our clients came because they wanted to feel good about themselves, you know?”
Ngaire nodded. She did.
“If Sam wasn’t on for a few nights running, I might have to field a few queries, but no one was going to stay away. We just weren’t that sort of club.”
“Did Sam ever talk to you about any trouble he was having? Any personal conversations that might show some insight into his life at the time?”
“Honestly, he wasn’t one for a heart to heart.” Jenna held her hands up, cupping the air. “Sam had his girlfriend and his little groupie. That’s more than most of us at that time. If he’d confided anything to anybody, it would have been to one of them.”
Jenna walked Ngaire out to the door, blinking like a vampire in the morning sunshine.
“If you think of anything later, give me a call,” Ngaire said, handing over her card.
Jenna tucked it into the side of her brassiere. “I will.”
As Ngaire wound down her window to get a breeze going through the overheated car, she heard a yell and turned to see Jenna picking her way in bare feet down the rough concrete path. She made it to the car and rested her hands on the edge of the open window for balance.
“I just remembered,” she said. “The name of the boy that used to hang about with Sam Andie. It was Matthew. Matthew Jenkinson.”
Ngaire arrived back at the station in time to attend her scheduled meeting with DSS Harmond. After catching her up to date on the events of the past day and a half, Ngaire returned to her desk and started tracking the name. She had her suspicions, but wanted proof.
Within an hour, she’d got it. Matthew Jenkinson had existed on registers and on reports until the end of 1981. After that, he disappeared without a trace.
Matthew Jamieson did the opposite. A history created in the space of a few months. The name and official records belonged to a gravestone out in the Cashmere Cemetery. Until a young man began to use them to carve a new identity for himself down in Dunedin.
Somewhere in there, Matthew had taken the time to officially change his name by deed poll, and the two records became synched up. A step that he’d seemingly taken so that his wife could marry an actual living person. A nice touch, maybe even a declaration of love.
Or the act of a callous man who realized that no one was looking for him.
Either way, it gave Ngaire a direct trail back between the two. Once established, she began to look more closely at the records held under Matthew’s original identity. It didn’t take long to see the connection to Sam Andie. Matthew had been in the same class as George Kenton and Jessie Collingwood. The first trace of him down in Dunedin came a few days after their murder. A tenancy agreement in a new name and a phone call to the police station saying he’d seen someone that Ngaire now believed Matthew knew for a fact to be dead.
A link. Tenuous for a court of law, maybe but enough to keep digging in case she struck gold.
Feeling triumphant, Ngaire used the surge of emotion to pull out her mobile phone and dial through to Findlay. Given that it wasn’t yet noon, she didn’t expect him to answer so was happy to hear his message—“Findlay here, you know what to do.”
Before her foot could insert itself into her mouth or cotton wool could grow until it was stuffed full, Ngaire spoke quickly but clearly into the voicemail.
“It’s Ngaire. Can I see you tonight, when I get off work? I need to talk to you about something.”
She hung up and slipped the phone back into her pocket, feeling her cheeks begin to glow bright red.
Chapter Thirty
“I never knew it would be this hard to be charged with something I’ve admitted I’ve done,” Bob Rickards grumbled.
Shannon shook her head and gritted her teeth, trying to ignore his muttering. She had enough stress in her life without her father dumping another load more into the steaming heap.
“I told them, flat out. I told the police, I did it. I murdered those boys. For all the hours they kept me in that interview room, you’d think I’d walk out with an armed guard, but no.”
“I’m going down to the City Mission,” Shannon said. The break would do her good, and the chance she’d run into Gerry was an extra temptation. Not that Gerry would be due in there again yet. Even if she was bad with money, it took more than a few days to burn through the whole lot.
“I thought we were about to have dinner,” her dad said. His voice wasn’t a whine, not yet, but it was well on its way. With a glance of fury in his direction, Shannon turned her back and gritted her teeth further. By now, her jaw was clenched so tight that a headache had started pounding in her temples.
“Get yourself something down at the chippy,” Shannon said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
She slammed the door behind her before Bob could utter a response. If she stayed long enough to hear him, her entire head might explode.
The air was starting to be easier on her lungs, the smoke from the retreating fire growing thinner each hour. It might be burning just as fiercely on the other side of the hill, but tha
t was some other bugger’s concern.
Shannon stalked along the pavement, feet stomping, hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jeans. If someone had been there to give her a shoulder bump as they passed, she might pound their head with her fists before her mind shouted the command to stop.
The rage that boiled inside her stomach, inflating her head with too much blood, so even her vision went hazy, was the same as when she was younger. A teenager meant to be looking forward to a promising future but instead caged like an animal.
At times, back when Shannon first started her prison sentence, she’d been so consumed with anger that she couldn’t loosen her jaw for long enough to eat. On some occasions, the tension headache throbbing in her temples had morphed into stabbing pain behind her eyes. At night, she imagined an ice pick being inserted slowly and carelessly into her most vulnerable part.
Now, her doctor cited high blood pressure. Then, before such things were routinely measured, Shannon had been like a pressure cooker with the bolts in the lid loosening millimeter by millimeter, the temperature on the dial steadily rising. It had been her protection against the other prisoners. No one dared to come near her, the anger rolled off her like heat waves.
If it hadn’t been for that, she could easily have become a target. Except, and Shannon didn’t like to examine this potential path too closely, there was a chance her fury kept away the women who could have healed her.
Like any group of females, a good proportion of the prison population hadn’t moved past mothering. If Shannon had tamped down the negative emotions, one of them might have taken her under their wing. Instead of coming out of prison, friendless, as dry as an old husk left on a sun-baked porch, she might have come out ready to blossom. Ready to take on the world she’d so abruptly left.
Shannon pulled her hands from her pockets and crossed her arms. Whenever her thoughts strayed too close to what she’d lost, what she’d forsaken, Shannon needed to form a protective shield.
Waiting at the bus stop, a kid called out “Motherfucker” from the passenger side window of his friend’s beaten up old car as it sped along the road too fast on bald tires. The swear word hit Shannon in the face like a slap. Her head jerked away, and she took a step back, her heart pounding like a jackhammer.
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