Containment

by Vanda Symon

  ‘It went a little bit beyond protection, Sam. In fact, thanks to you, he’s very lucky he’s not facing a manslaughter charge, or worse.’

  ‘Yeah, but still, it’s no wonder people are reluctant to go to anyone’s aid nowadays. Not when the chances are you’ll end up in hospital, or in court, and the other bugger will get off scot-free, and probably get awarded damages.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call being unconscious in ICU scot-free, but I see your point. Don’t you worry, Sam. I’ll be having a little chat with your assailant when he’s up to it. Did he know you were police?’

  ‘Yes, I told him, and that I was going to arrest him if he didn’t stop what he was doing and put the box down, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.’

  ‘Not very smart then. Judges get a bit perturbed about things like assaulting an officer. He’s extended his sentence by a fair amount, I imagine.’

  ‘So what about the skull? That sounds really freaky.’

  ‘The area’s cordoned off, the SOCOs are there and ESR is on the way from Christchurch. The victim clearly wasn’t killed on the beach this morning, so it must have happened elsewhere. So we have a murder enquiry, a maritime enquiry, several dangerous driving charges, a few assault cases and a shitload of looting charges to keep us busy.’ He rubbed his hands together with glee.

  I found it a bit difficult to muster up that level of enthusiasm, but one thing was clear: Dunedin’s reputation as Grand Conservative Central had just been shot to hell.

  6

  I’d been having a delightful conversation with the teeniest, tiniest little spider who was making the most amazing web between the pipe thingies coming out of the wall, bringing oxygen and whatever other stuff they pumped into people. Her name was Crystal and she had been busy explaining why Einstein could not possibly have believed all that stuff about mass and matter, and that she’d told him this, again and again, but he wouldn’t listen, and now look what had happened, and we were all stuck with this cumbersome theory of his. She also thought he should have done something about his hair. I was just about to point out to her that, in fact, we humans were quite taken with the man and his ideas, when my flatmate and favourite friend, Maggie, walked into the room.

  ‘Maggie, great to see you, come meet Crystal, you’ll like her. She’s great. She was just telling me—’

  ‘Good God, Sam, look at your face. That’s gotta hurt.’

  I put my hand up to my face to make sure it was still there, and then laughed. ‘I know. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But they gave me this drug, I don’t know what it was, but I must get the name of it because I think it’s rather good, even if I had to have a jab in the bum, and you know I don’t normally like needles, but this wasn’t so bad, and the male nurse was kind of cute, and I’d quite like some more actually, because I feel kind of nice, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, well it does, kind of, but not really, you know?’

  ‘Do you think they may have given you a little bit too much?’

  I looked more closely at Maggie’s hair. She’d clearly forgotten to brush it after she washed it this morning because the titiwai glow-worms were still trying to make their strings of beautiful little diamonds to trap the flies. They sparkled and glittered, and their luminosity threw such a pretty light on Maggie’s face. They must have been annoying her though, because she lifted up her hand to swipe them away.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, as she swept her arm and a multicoloured rainbow trailed the movement. ‘How did you do that? Can I try?’ I waved my arm in front of my face, but it didn’t quite work properly, so I tried again, and again, and then on the fourth and most enthusiastic try it worked a treat, but I nearly fell out of the bed. I gave a squeal of delight, straightened myself back up and practised a few more times, just to make sure I’d got it right.

  ‘They called me to come and take you home, but I’m thinking that’s not such a good idea right now.’

  At that moment Crystal butted in and said, ‘Don’t look, but she’s put her eyes in back to front.’

  So, of course I looked, and they were, all of them, and it was so funny that I burst into fits of giggles, which floated out across the air and popped like little bubbles against the walls.

  7

  ‘Oh, God, someone shoot me.’ The clamps squeezing my guts gripped even tighter, another wave of saliva flooded my mouth and I retched once more into the toilet. When I was done turning my innards inside out I sat back on my heels and accepted the warm facecloth that was placed in my hand. I held it over my face while trying to breathe away the explosive pain in my head. It wasn’t working.

  ‘Not enjoying the happy drugs quite so much now, huh?’ Maggie said, with a charming combination of mirth and concern.

  ‘Ugh.’ I pulled off some toilet paper to wipe my eyes and then blew my nose. It hurt. The happy drugs had well and truly lost their charm. I felt like a dead duck in a thunderstorm.

  With some assistance from Maggs, I got to my feet and shuffled over to the washbasin, where I made the unfortunate mistake of looking in the mirror. I immediately wished I hadn’t. On any normal day I quite liked what I saw: large, warm brown eyes under high eyebrows, straight nose, full mouth and smooth, olivey skin, all framed by longish dark-blonde hair with a slight wave. I’d have liked curls. I didn’t consider myself to be beautiful – more, pretty. That was on a normal day. There wasn’t anything normal about this.

  My eyebrow looked like a row of five little blue spiders were going for a constitutional along its cracked, red ridge. The bruising had developed into beautiful shades of crimson, purple and black. Their depth of colour and contrast with my general pallor was quite striking. The bruising I could handle. Unfortunately, the swelling was beginning to subside, which meant my right eye had opened up to a slit. And while I could see out of it, which was a huge relief, the sight of it alarmed me. A blood vessel had broken, which made me resemble some bruised, red-eyed alien/human hybrid. I made an executive decision to avoid mirrors for a week or two.

  ‘Ew,’ I said to Maggie. ‘You didn’t tell me about that.’

  ‘I couldn’t quite find the words,’ she said. ‘It could be worse, it could have been both eyes; and you should be happy your nose is where it belongs.’ She was right. At least I’d taken the blow more to the side of my face. And my sense of vanity felt slightly buoyed by that thought. The cut was right on top of my eyebrow, so any scar would eventually disappear and there’d be no permanent reminders of the assault. I’d just have to live with the artistic bruising, red-eye special, ringing ear and 6.8-on-the-Richter-scale headache for a bit longer.

  ‘I need some paracetamol,’ I said, and shuffled for the kitchen.

  ‘That won’t do anything. Shouldn’t you take something stronger?’

  ‘After that stuff they gave me, no way. It was fun for a while, but man, what a downer.’ I’d been a horribly conservative teenager and had never smoked cigarettes and never tried drugs; way too much of a control freak for that. A token drag on a marijuana joint when I was eighteen didn’t count, especially when the resultant coughing fit took all the fun out of it. And after this experience, I didn’t think any high, no matter how ‘whoa, dude’, would be worth this kind of crap. This experience had made it crystal clear to me that my body and anything potentially hallucinogenic didn’t mix. Trust me to be one of the 0.5 per cent who may experience hallucinatory side effects according to the package insert. Marvellous.

  ‘For the record, you were really entertaining when you were high, but not so much fun anymore. You’re a bit messy now. Interesting reaction though. I’m sure that doesn’t happen often or else they wouldn’t dare administer it to people.’

  ‘Yeah, well, aren’t I the lucky one? I can’t actually remember much of the evening. Was I bad?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say bad, more like amusing. I really loved the way you got back to nature, communing with the animals, particularly the bugs. Very Charlotte’s Web.’

  ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’
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  ‘I don’t know. What’s it worth?’

  My brain wasn’t working well enough to think of a currency with enough appeal, so I lay myself at her mercy. ‘Name your price.’

  Maggie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You must be feeling bad. Lucky for you I’m not the sort to take advantage of the infirm, so a packet of Toffee Pops and we’ll call it square.’

  ‘Done.’ And we shook hands on the deal.

  Maggie was my flatmate/confidante/psychologist/social secretary/voice of reason/long-suffering friend. She had put aside all regard for her own personal safety and continued to live with me despite the inadvertent danger I seemed to be good at putting us in. We had flatted together back in our Mataura days, as well as elsewhere in Dunedin, with interesting results. Perhaps she felt her life lacked an element of excitement or danger, and associating with me, more often than not, provided it. Her loyalty defied all logic.

  Besides supplying me with stability, amazing coffee and fair-trade chocolate, she also gave wardrobe advice, which I desperately needed. She did effortless chic; I did thoughtless conservative. Her way looked better. I hoped one day a little bit of her innate style would rub off on me, but it hadn’t so far. Mind you, it helped that she was tall and shapely and had that gorgeous milk-chocolate-coloured hair and the skin of someone whose mum was tangata whenua. She oozed a grace and elegance that I sadly lacked.

  For now, it was some ungodly hour of the morning and Maggie, way beyond the call of duty, was playing nurse to my beat-up, head-clutching, vomiting patient. With great dedication she’d been waking me up at hourly intervals, as instructed by the hospital, to shine a vicious little light in my eyes to ensure I hadn’t had some kind of a vascular blow-out. I was sure I’d thank her for it at some stage. This time, though, she’d woken up to the dulcet tones of my violent retching and come a-running. Like I said, way beyond the call of duty.

  I was glad she was here, and glad I was at home instead of sharing a hospital room with lots of sick people. I had a norovirus outbreak, the resultant ward shut-down and not enough hospital beds to thank for that. I was also glad that Paul had called earlier to say work had thrown a wobbly at his attempts to get time off, and he couldn’t make it tonight. I couldn’t picture any guy coping with this punch-drunk, hungover, retching, red-eyed, poor impersonation of a human being.

  8

  It felt decidedly odd to be on the other side of the police mechanism. I was feeling restless, het up and about ready to explode at home, so I came down to the station to make my statement. The paracetamol had barely dented the headache, but seeing as I hadn’t thrown up for at least five hours, I decided I was up for it. Judging by the amount of whiplash-inducing double-takes and sympathetic looks from my colleagues, the face wasn’t good. I wouldn’t have known, I hadn’t looked that morning. The hair probably wasn’t much better. Mind you, if it had been particularly awful, I’m sure Maggie would have said. She drove me down to the station. Even I realised I shouldn’t be in control of a car when I was still having trouble maintaining control of my legs.

  Smithy was going to do the honours. Yesterday’s hospital visit had been to take a few pictures and assess how I was, which was a bit too woozy to remember much. Today I was more lucid and we had to get down to business.

  ‘You know, Sam, I could have come up to your flat to do this,’ he said as I settled into the chair and wrapped my hands around a warm mug of coffee – today I was desperate enough to settle for instant crap.

  ‘I know, but I needed to get out of the house.’

  ‘It can’t feel as bad as it looks then.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, it feels plenty bad.’ Short of one or two memorable hangovers, I couldn’t recall having ever felt worse. Mind you, judging by the interesting shape of Smithy’s nose and his few battle scars, I’d say he knew exactly how I was feeling.

  ‘Then why the masochism? Are you trying to go for the sympathy vote?’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t think I was so desperate to be accepted here that I’d play the sympathy card. But, while my closest colleagues liked me well enough, there were those who still questioned my fast-tracking into the CIB. Surely my subconscious hadn’t dragged me here because of that.

  ‘Shall we get on with it then?’ I tacked away from that subject.

  I did my best to recall the chain of events at Aramoana the previous morning. It took a bit of an effort to remember the details, but I certainly remembered the mood. Common decency had given way to looting and assault and battery. After the battery bit, it was all a little hazy.

  One thing I did remember was the cordoned-off area that contained the skull and, as I’d been in a bit of an information blackout, I was more interested in finding out what was going on with the enquiry than revisiting an assault that was a bit too fresh in my mind. But Smithy had other ideas and insisted on making me repeat my story, my actions and the words I’d spoken to Mr McFisticuffs; he wanted to ensure that I’d clearly identified myself as an officer and warned him of his pending arrest.

  The guy now had a name, Felix Ford. I positively identified him from a selection of photos of similarly aged and similar-looking guys. There was no hesitation, that face was burned into my memory. Likewise, I identified the man who had come to my rescue, a Mr Iain Gibbs. He was easy to pick out, courtesy of the walrus moustache.

  Smithy then took me down to the photographer for a few more pictures of my glorious face to go with the ones he’d taken yesterday at the hospital. I declined his kind offer to look at the snaps on the camera’s digital display.

  ‘So, how is this guy, Felix, now?’ I asked. I’d finished giving my statement and knew Smithy couldn’t fob me off any longer. I was torn between fury at Felix Ford and concern for his well-being. Not an easy tussle. Despite all that, I felt somehow responsible for him, which, given the circumstances, seemed stupid. Still, I couldn’t ignore my feelings; I wondered if this was a hangover everyone who had saved a life felt. ‘So is he awake and talking?’

  Smithy shook his head. ‘Still in a drug-induced coma until the swelling in his brain goes down. His parents came in and identified him for us earlier this morning.’

  ‘Oh.’ That didn’t sound very promising. ‘What’s his prognosis?’

  ‘They’ll have to wait until he’s conscious before they can assess if there’s any permanent damage. If it all looks good for him, he’ll have plenty of long-term recovery time in a nice, comfy prison. Assaulting an officer and resisting arrest doesn’t tend to sit well with the courts, or any of us for that matter. So you don’t need to worry, he’ll be dealt with appropriately.’

  I couldn’t help but think he’d been dealt with already. But then, if he’d done this to one of my colleagues, I’d want the book thrown at him too. Sometimes I was a bit too soft for my own good. I’d been working hard at building up a thick skin, despite a few of my colleagues trying to pick away at it, but I was beginning to face the fact that on the scale of humanity, I was down the nurturer end of the spectrum. Sometimes that was a good thing; at other times it was a curse.

  ‘What about the murder investigation? What’s happening with the skull on the beach?’

  ‘Come, see for yourself,’ he said with a grin. Smithy didn’t often grin, and it was a disturbing sight, especially in the context of what I’d just asked him.

  We’d taken the statement in the staff canteen, so this would be my first venture into our CIB squad room.

  A wolf whistle greeted me from behind Reihana’s desk. ‘Looking pretty this morning.’ I noted he had his usual Johnny-Cash-wannabe uniform on. His sentiment was echoed by similar comments from around the room.

  ‘Looking good, Sam.’

  ‘Damn fine.’

  I did a slow twirl and then framed my face with my hands, as if posing for the camera. ‘Thank you, thank you very much, thank you for your concern.’

  This was odd. The mood was altogether too jovial considering there was a murder investigation going
on. My eyes flitted to the whiteboards, expecting to see a list of names assigned to facets of the investigation, but there wasn’t one. Where was the hubbub; where was the tension?

  ‘So, what’s going on?’ I said, my voice wary.

  ‘Come over here; pop quiz for you.’ Smithy pulled a folder off his desk, and after a flick-through pulled out six photos. He placed them side by side on the desk. ‘There you go. Get this right and I’ll shout you a drink on Friday night.’

  The photos were of a skull, with measurement markers, taken from the front, back, in profile, from above, and from below.

  ‘This is the skull they found at Aramoana?’

  ‘Yes, one and the same. Tell me what you see.’

  ‘Is this a trick question?’

  ‘Kind of, but there’s a beer in it.’ A couple of the others had gathered around to watch. I had the strange feeling quite a bit rode on my response. The vision from my right eye was still pretty blurry so I had to squint and blink a bit to take in the details. The blinking didn’t help the pain levels at all. I took a few moments to examine them.

  ‘Well, for a start, it’s a very clean skull, quite white,’ I leaned closer, ‘and very smooth.’ Not that I had great experience with skulls. Most victims of crime I saw were of the flesh-covered, and mostly still alive and kicking, variety. I’d seen plenty of shiny, bald scalps, in varying states of repair, but a shiny skull was a novelty. ‘That would suggest it’s not new or fresh, I guess.’ I saw them eyeball each other, twitches of smiles in the corners of their mouths. This was a game, and I didn’t know what the rules were, but I suspected it ran along the lines of ‘trip up Sam’. I wasn’t in the mood for public humiliation today so I checked for the obvious. ‘There’s no apparent injury, and all the teeth look intact. The jaw’s missing.’ Still the conspiratorial looks. Okay, what assumptions was I making? Was it bone? I checked for tell-tale moulding marks or seams, but apart from the cranial sutures which should be there, nothing. ‘It looks like it’s real bone, not a facsimile.’ I saw heads cock at that comment – I must have been closer to the mark. My eyes skipped over the smaller anatomical features and came to a skidding halt when I looked at the photo taken from the underneath perspective. I picked it up for a closer look, closing my right eye and peering at it with the left. That wasn’t natural. ‘It’s got a serial number.’ It was minute and pale brown, but it was definitely there, handwritten by the looks of it, right by the hole the spinal cord would have passed through. What kind of a skull would have a serial number? Then I clicked. ‘You’re kidding me, this is a specimen skull; a medical specimen? I thought most medical specimens had a flip-top lid and hinges or a hook out the top for hanging, but this is entire. So that’s why there’s no murder investigation going on?’