The Ringmaster
Page 3
‘Huh.’ He grunted. ‘To a point. I could look up the pre-packs, but the individual ties go under miscellaneous.’
‘What about how they were paid for? Does the computer record debit- or credit-card details for each sale?’
He gave me that look again. I was tempted to wipe it off his face.
‘This is Dunedin, love, not a US TV show, where you can waltz in and, hey presto, every little detail is nicely recorded for you. So, no, mine doesn’t. The systems are separate.’ The last four words he said real slow.
My fists clenched tighter. Condescension and a ‘love’. I cursed the fact Smithy was off doing the interesting stuff while I was flying solo with the plebs. I took a deep breath and counted to ten in my head, in order not to lose the shred of control I had left. I reminded myself that, for the privilege of wearing that bright-yellow shirt to work each day, he was probably paid bugger all. There was some justice in the world.
I’d already checked out the stock on the shelves before approaching Mr Attitude, and found some very long ties that matched the one used in the murder. The tie used to bind Rose-Marie Bateman’s hands was still attached to her, so all I had for comparison was a measurement and a grisly photo. One small satisfaction was that the discovery of possible candidates meant I had the pleasure of relieving the man of some of his stock.
‘I’ll need to take some samples of those ties for the investigation.’
‘Well, I hope you’re going to pay for them.’
Bloody hell. Here we were, working on the murder of a young woman, and he was worried about a few cents for some crappy bits of plastic. It must have shown on my face as he dropped his eyes and had the decency to look abashed.
‘I’ll give you a requisition form, so you need not worry about losing any money. We would hate to inconvenience you in any way.’
‘Okay, that’s fine,’ he mumbled.
His discomfort gave me a small stab of pleasure. I turned and looked towards the area where the plastic ties were shelved. There was a surveillance camera nearby that possibly covered that section. I turned back to the manager.
‘Your security cameras. Are they constantly recording?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about that one there.’ I pointed to the front corner. ‘How far back would the footage go? Would it be a week or more?’
He assumed that sheepish look again. ‘No, it wouldn’t go back quite that long.’
‘What, only a few days?’
‘Well, no.’
‘What then?’
‘We record over the same file each day.’
I was about to ask why the hell they bothered with it, then? But what was the point? Life was too short. It was almost four o’clock; he’d be counting down the seconds until closing and yesterday’s recording was probably overwritten.
‘Can I get you to at least print out the sales of cable ties going back a week, then?’
‘Yeah, I can do that, but not straight away. It takes a while. These things aren’t instant, you know.’
‘That would be appreciated,’ I said, forcing myself to be polite. ‘Can I pick them up in the morning?’
‘Yeah, fine.’
5
‘Well that was a colossal waste of a day,’ I said, plonking my butt on to a chair at the kitchen table. One of the joys of being adopted into this household was the insistence, when timetables and schedules allowed, of family dinners together, with civilised conversation over good food and, more often than not, wine. The reason I’d been adopted was Maggie, my former Mataura flatmate and current fellow boarder who, fortunately for us both, had very amenable relatives. Her Aunty Jude was shaking up, cocktail-style, what I assume was some kind of dressing for the salad. Her concoctions were always delectable, and she had a vast collection of cookbooks on hand if she ever lacked inspiration. My nose was being wooed by the aroma of roasted chicken with a hint of what I thought was smoked paprika, and my stomach gurgled in anticipation. Uncle Phil was busy consulting the oracle that was the wine fridge – yes, this household could boast its very own, purpose-built, wine fridge. God, I loved Maggie’s family. Although, if I was going to be picky, their commitment to culinary delights didn’t extend to a dedicated chocolate fridge.
‘I thought you guys would have been flat out on the job today,’ Maggie said as she placed the salt and pepper grinders in the centre of the table. ‘I heard there were nasty things going on around the gardens.’
‘Nasty isn’t the half of it. Urghhh,’ I shuddered. ‘It brought back all the wrong kind of memories. What is it with me and having to deal with dead young women in rivers?’
‘Well, you do seem to get more than your fair share. Any more and you’d call it a speciality,’ she said as she slid on to the neighbouring seat. Maggie had been my flatmate back in our Mataura days and like me had decided to upgrade to first class and Dunedin after our lives in the little town went up in smoke. Once we’d gotten back to a more stable financial situation we’d probably look for a flat again, but for now we were both enjoying mates’ rates at her aunt’s.
‘I can think of better specialities. Not that I got to specialise in anything today other than running around after the minor stuff, while everyone else got the good jobs. If this had been Mataura, I would have been the one interviewing the poor girl’s boyfriend or flatmates, or anyone for that matter. God, I’d have even settled for talking to her postman, not getting the crap jobs, as usual.’ My voice sounded whiny. Not good. I promised myself to watch that.
‘Well you are the junior, so to speak, so you’re at the bottom of the pecking order. What do you expect? You should be glad you’re not sweeping floors and making the coffee,’ she said, with a cheeky grin.
‘I do make the coffee.’
‘Oops.’ She gave me a conciliatory pat on the arm.
‘Ah, but you’re probably right,’ I said, this time without the whine. Maggie had far too level a head on her sometimes. If I’d been inclined to believe in reincarnation, she would have been one of those wise old women in another life – the ones with flowing robes, manes of black hair streaked with white and deeply lined faces oozing serenity. Maggs was the modern version; she had the serenity vibe, but was a stylish young thing who could throw the most unlikely garments together and look effortlessly cool. She was also the only person I’d ever met who could make a brown and yellow zip-front tracksuit top look good. Cow. My style, if you could call it that, was more frenetic conservative.
‘You know I can’t help but think I get lumbered with the crud because DI Johns has got his little grudge. Sometimes I wonder if I’d have been better off sticking with being constable of a shithole little town, oops, sorry about the language.’ I looked up at Aunty Jude. ‘At least in Mataura I made a difference rather than getting delusions of grandeur in the city. Here I feel like, well, anonymous.’
Maggie laughed. The sound echoed from two other locations in the room. ‘For a start, you’re anything but anonymous, and secondly, I believe you did rather insult the man, so he’s perfectly entitled to hold a grudge. And, most importantly, I seem to recall some of the locals in that, quote, “shithole little town” you’re so fondly reminiscing about blew up your house and tried to have you killed – and me, for that matter. Got the scars to prove it. In fact, you should come with a public health warning.’
‘Surely you’re not having doubts about your career, Sam?’ Uncle Phil said, as he poured a very welcome drop into the wine glass in front of me. With his foppish hairstyle, almost boyish good looks, high-necked jumper and moleskin trousers, he was the epitome of British country living meets delusional colonial. Despite the airs, like the rest of us, his family were Kiwis from way, way back.
‘No.’ Maggie raised her now-filled glass in a toast. ‘Sam is having trouble adjusting to the fact she’s no longer the centre of attention.’
‘Oh, that’s sad. Haven’t they promoted you to commander yet?’ Phil asked. Finely honed sarcasm ran in the family.
‘Sorry, Sam,’ Aunty Jude chipped in. ‘You’re not a guest, you’re family now. Abuse comes with the territory; that and chores. You’re on dishes duty, by the way.’
‘I thought you’d be on my side. What is this? Pick-on-Sam Day?’
‘That’s what it said in my diary, what about yours, Unc?’ Maggie asked.
Uncle Phil made a ridiculous parody of checking his invisible calendar. ‘Yes, you’re right, here it is under Saturday the twelfth, national Pick-on-Sam-Shephard Day.’
‘Well, there you go. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day at work, dealing with dead people, and dumb-nuts, and then getting bullied in your own home.’ I took a dramatic swig of my wine.
‘Bravo, bravo, dinner and a show,’ said Aunty Jude, giving me polite applause.
‘Thank you, thank you, now pass me the bottle.’
‘Must have been a bad day.’ Maggs got the understatement-of-the-day award. ‘So it was a university student, is that what they’re saying?’ she asked, bringing the conversation back to more serious matters.
‘It looks that way.’
‘What was her name? I hope she wasn’t one of mine.’ Phil lectured in Social and Preventive Medicine at the Medical School. It seemed almost everyone in town had some connection to the university. It swelled the local population with nigh on twenty thousand young, exuberant, and, it seemed, often drunk students every year. It was one of those love-hate relationships between the city and the students. The city loved them for the vibrancy, knowledge, culture and income they brought with them, but they hated them for some of the yahooism, excessive rubbish, broken glass and the occasional sofa-burning.
‘Her name hasn’t been released yet, probably later on tonight now the next of kin have been notified.’ That had to be one of the hardest jobs in the force. I’d had to do it on occasion and it never got any easier with experience. That was one aspect of the Mataura job I didn’t miss. There was no such thing as a gentle way to shatter someone’s world.
‘I do hope she’s no one you know, or me for that matter,’ Maggie said. ‘Everyone seems to know everyone else at the uni – or know someone who knows them. Degrees of separation and all.’
‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I said. Maggie looked confused. ‘Degrees,’ I said.
She grinned at her own cleverness. ‘Oh yeah, I am funny, and I don’t even have to try.’
‘Well when you’ve finished congratulating yourself on your wondrous humour, bearing in mind that as she was a student, along with half the population of Dunedin, it seems, we have an awful lot of people at the uni to talk to. You never know, I might end up questioning you, and you too, Uncle Phil.’
Maggie, with great flair, and intake of breath threw her hands up to her cheeks.
‘Oohh, the prospect of being interrogated by you makes me very, very nervous. I’ll have to go work out my alibi.’ Aunty Jude placed a platter of delicious-looking chicken and roasted cubed potatoes in the middle of the table, to go with the café-trendy salad already waiting. ‘But that might have to wait until after dinner.’
6
Sunday morning and work was a madhouse. Under normal circumstances the detectives here would be involved in a range of activities from cheering the kids on at sports, to absorbing the Sunday paper, to snoring. A murder had upped the ante. A considerable amount had been done in the twenty-four hours since Rose-Marie Bateman’s body had been discovered, all of this while I was swanning around on my pointless, poxy pursuit at the whim of DI Johns.
Police and CIB had been out canvassing the streets, door-knocking around Rose-Marie’s flat, and the houses and flats that backed on to where she was found. They had set up stands at the Gore Place entrance and at the Botanic Garden, hoping to jog the memory of any passers-by. The story was big news on radio, but, as the Otago Daily Times didn’t do a Sunday paper, we’d have to wait until tomorrow’s issue to put out a public plea for information. It was all go, and it seemed to be going without me.
My only saving grace was that Smithy had been put with the Officer in Charge of Suspects and snuck me in on proceedings as much as he could. It was courtesy of his goodwill that I was here at the university, sitting in the Pharmacy Department, listening to him interview the students and staff Rose-Marie knew. The university had always intrigued me, with its mix of stunning Gothic bluestone buildings such as its iconic registry clock tower, contrasting with some sixties’ monstrosities that defied all rules of aesthetics, and several modern cutting-edge glass-and-metal numbers. This building, alas, fell into the monstrosity category and was over by the hospital and Medical School, rather than the central campus. It was so ugly, with its flat, concrete utilitarian walls and inset iron windows in cack-green it was just as well it was tucked back off the street. Probably more fascinating to me was the thought of all that intellectual might going on in the university’s hallowed halls. If you looked past the well-publicised drunken shenanigans of a few students, it was incredible to think of the young people passing through the halls and buildings, striving for higher and greater things. Of course, the fact that none of them seemed to have mastered the art of crossing a road would surely knock back the tally of graduates at the end of the year. That, and the few who insisted on skateboarding down the busiest and/or steepest streets in the city. They were head injuries waiting to happen. In a way, that was another form of Darwinian selection. Those who were dumb enough to do that wouldn’t live to propagate the species. See, I didn’t need a flash paper degree or diploma to prove I had a clue. Still, that didn’t stop me feeling a pang whenever I set foot on campus, wondering if perhaps Maggie had the right idea, after all. Maybe some study could be useful. But no, I’d dedicated myself to being a detective, and I loved this job. I lived and breathed for this job. Which made it rankle even more when the arseholes tried to spoil it for me.
There was an air of pomposity about the professor we were interviewing. In fact, I felt it hard not to laugh at the stereotype of an academic he embodied. Framing a surprisingly youthful face, he had grey streaked hair that looked about four weeks overdue a cut. I’d guess him to be early forties, but according to his birth date, he would be celebrating the big five-oh later this year. Perhaps some of his research pertained to the elixir of youth. That, or working with young people all day was rubbing off. His glasses didn’t help with his airs. The way he peered over the top of them suggested they were for reading, not looking, so why the hell he didn’t just remove them was beyond me. His clothing suggested that he hadn’t had time to shop since the mid-seventies, and he’d lost weight since then. He couldn’t have been married – no woman would let him out of the house in that state. But then, he had a certain Conneryesque appeal. In fact, if you spruced him up, he’d be really quite dishy.
‘So Professor Simpson, if you were supervising Miss Bateman for her doctorate, how often would you work with her?’ Smithy asked.
‘We met regularly to talk about her research.’
‘Every day?’
‘Oh, no. The majority of her day-to-day lab work was with Dr Penny Hawkins and Dr Jeffrey Collins, so they would have seen her all the time. I met with Rosie once a week or so to discuss any issues and get an update.’
‘So, you didn’t do any of the lab work with her?’
‘No, not the practical work. That’s for the graduates and junior staff.’ It was stated simply and without any perceived snobbery, but I noted Smithy’s eyebrows rose as he jotted that down.
‘And she got on well with her colleagues?’
‘I imagine so, she was a lovely girl. Fun, polite, very conscientious. I’m sure everyone enjoyed working with her.’
‘But you don’t know for sure. You didn’t hear any murmurs of discontent, nothing on the department rumour mill? I’m sure the university must be a hotbed of gossip, everyone talking about everyone else.’
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‘Well, I don’t like to give too much credence to that kind of thing.’
‘But?’
‘I think there may have been a few petty jealousies.’
‘What kind of jealousies are we talking about here? Relationships? Boyfriends?’
‘No, nothing like that. Anyway, Penny is married, and I think Rosie had a boyfriend. No, professional. I believe there may have been a little tension between them over their research workload. Academics can be a little particular about protecting their patch.’
I gave some consideration to whether a woman would be strong enough to smash a head against a rock in the way that Rose-Marie’s had been. I supposed it was possible, but I couldn’t imagine women sorting out their differences quite that directly. I’d have thought supposedly intelligent women would never get to that point in the first place, and if they felt the need to take action, it would be a damned sight more subtle – a bit of sabotage, maybe, or muck-racking, something with a bitchiness factor about it. But murder over stepping on toes or a few research hours? It seemed a bit of a stretch. Mind you, there were plenty of murderesses rotting in prison to prove me wrong. I would be very interested to hear Penny Hawkins’ slant on the situation.
Smithy must have been thinking along similar lines. ‘We’ll be talking to Dr Hawkins later in the day,’ he said.
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t tell her I mentioned anything.’ Simpson looked very uncomfortable with the idea of being identified as the nark.
‘You don’t need to worry. I do know how to conduct an interview, Professor.’
I turned to stare. Smithy’s frostiness surprised me, but seemed lost on the prof. Although Smithy was the one asking the questions, I blurted one out to allay any possible awkwardness over the comment. ‘So what exactly was she researching?’