Containment

by Vanda Symon

  ‘Possibly could have. What’s in the cartons?’

  ‘I haven’t looked, I didn’t want to disturb it too much. I can reach the top one without moving anything.’ I pulled up the flaps, which had been folded across each other, origami style. Seeing the contents, I laughed.

  ‘What is it?’ Smithy asked.

  I stepped back so he could take a look. He laughed too.

  ‘Little bugger had a bit of fun when the containers washed up, didn’t he? Am I right in thinking those bits and pieces were on the list of goods missing from the insurance claims?’

  ‘Certainly are,’ I said. ‘And I’d hazard a guess that these other ones were stolen too.’

  They probably stockpiled the looted goods here until the heat died down, then planned to offload them. If this was Felix’s room, his parents wouldn’t go looking through the wardrobe unless they were after a board game, so storing it here would be a risk worth taking. Felix and Leo, and whoever else was with them, must have done several looting runs before I encountered Mr McFists on the beach. Trina said Leo had taken stuff, so it was likely some of his finds ended up here. A group effort perhaps?

  ‘The parents cleaned up after the party, you’ll have to ask them about the wardrobe.’ I was sure they’d be thrilled to add stolen goods to the list of their son’s misdemeanours.

  It wasn’t until we walked back through the lounge that it struck me what was missing in there compared to yesterday. The bookshelf find had clearly jogged my memory.

  ‘There’s a picture missing from in here; it was on the wall over there, by the dining table. I remember seeing it; something with flowers. And there was a horse ornament on the coffee table.’

  ‘Was it as ugly as the other things in here?’ Smithy asked.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  47

  No one in the neighbouring houses was home when we knocked on doors to enquire if they’d heard any breaking glass or seen any strange activities. Perhaps they’d gone back to their regular homes in Dunners; quite a few people did that, swapping between their Dunedin houses and Aramoana, and even cribs in Karitane or Waikouaiti, depending on work, the weather and whatever mood betook them. That would be a luxury I could learn to enjoy. Wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, though, unless I found some rich sugar daddy to latch on to. Paul was only marginally more financial than I was, unless he was cleverly hiding something, so I was out of luck there, not that I wanted to latch.

  ‘So what do you make of all this then?’ I asked Smithy, when we were back in the ivory-and-brown granite tower that was Dunedin Central Police Station. Even though I’d been working here well over a year now, I still felt like I was walking into the Hilton or some other flash hotel whenever I crossed the threshold. The only difference was that the sleeping arrangements here were a little more basic than a five-star hotel.

  ‘Huh?’ He was still on another planet. Earth to Smithy. Come in, Smithy.

  ‘Felix Ford doing a runner, his crib being broken into, the very same crib that hosted the party the weekend of the shipping accident, the same party that for a lot of people was the last live sighting of Clifford Stewart, deceased, and his flatmate Leo Walker, missing in action somewhere in Fiordland; the same crib that provided a nice hidey-hole for the stuff they looted from the containers on the beach. All connected? Or a couple of coincidences thrown in?’

  I didn’t do coincidences. There was always some connection, however tenuous, as far as I was concerned. Of course, that was just me. Most people I knew were perfectly happy with the idea of totally unrelated events colliding, and they slept well at night, so perhaps I should pare down my hyperactive sense of interconnectivity … Nah. It was my job to be suspicious.

  ‘He could have done it himself, broken in.’

  ‘Who, Felix?’ I said, amazed. ‘Why? He had a key.’

  ‘Needed some cash, went back to the bach’ – Smithy’s North Island roots were showing – ‘to collect something to liquidate. Staged it as a break-in so as not to further disappoint Mummy and Daddy. I’d be a bit pissed off if he was my boy.’

  ‘Nice theory, but it’s a bit of a drive out to Aramoana and back, on a little road with not too many escape routes. Plus, he’d know damn well that the first thing the police would do when he didn’t show for court was put a warrant out for his arrest, so there’d be a hunt on for his car.’ People could be dumb, but I didn’t think he’d be that dumb. Then again, he’d bashed a cop.

  ‘True, but he could have borrowed someone else’s car.’

  ‘Why go to all that trouble? If he was short on cash he seems to have plenty of mates he could bludge a few bucks off. They’d probably hide him too. It would be a lot less risky than going back out to the crib and possibly getting caught in the act.’

  ‘You’d just say you forgot your key and had to bust your way into the house.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ I asked.

  ‘No one’s side,’ Smithy said with his equivalent of an eye roll. ‘I just know you. You think that everything’s related. In fact it could be complete chance. Some piece-of-shit burglar could very easily have decided to do over a few places at the beach. Give it a few days and, who knows, there may be other reports of break-ins, especially with the weekend coming up and the townies heading out.’

  ‘I suppose.’ I stared out the window for a bit, looking down at people doing bizarre driving manoeuvres and dodging buses to get into the Farmers store car park.

  ‘I wonder just how well Felix Ford knew Clifford Stewart.’

  ‘In what respect? We know they were great mates, and at school together, everyone has said so.’

  ‘I was just thinking about your comment about freeing up cash. If he knew where Clifford’s marijuana patch was, he could go and pick some money. Actually no, he couldn’t – wrong time of year – but what if he knew where Clifford stored it all? It wouldn’t be hard to sell it on.’ Money did grow on trees, well, bushes. My mind advanced a few steps down that ‘let’s suppose’ route. ‘Just throwing a few thoughts out there: Felix has done a runner from court, so maybe he was hiding something else? He could have coveted his mate’s drug empire, bumped Clifford off, bundled him up in a wetsuit – he had some gear, did you see the short wetsuit in the wardrobe? – and dumped him out at sea.’

  ‘Small problem with that theory,’ Smithy said, left cheek drawing up into a smile.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘All his party-going mates saw Clifford alive on the Sunday morning after the party, when they obviously went for a fun looting time down on the beach. Unless it’s slipped your mind, young Felix then gave you a good doing over and ended up in hospital for a week. Bit hard for a comatose man to commit murder and stuff someone in a wetsuit, don’t you think?’

  ‘No need to be sarky,’ I said. ‘It was just a thought.’

  And there I’d been accusing Smithy of being in la-la land with his mind off the job. I felt sickened and stupid. My own mind was occupied by way too many things at the moment. But having my life falling down around my ears was no excuse for such an unprofessional error. Thank Christ none of the others were in the room. You could imagine the flack if anyone else had heard that cock-up. Smithy must have noted my mortification.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. We all make mistakes.’

  48

  ‘So, what do you know?’ I asked Smithy.

  I’d just whiled away my lunch break in the staff gym. After this morning’s effort, I needed a little punishment. Running and cycling were my preferred choices for self-torture – pain was so much better in the great outdoors – but I supplemented them with some weight sessions at the gym. I might be little, but I would never be accused of being puny. In fact I would have bet I had a better power-to-weight ratio than any of the guys here, not that I’d challenge them on it. I’d hate to bruise their delicate egos.

  ‘I know that when you leave the room everything happens,’ he said.

  That would be right, sometimes it see
med a lot went on behind my back. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Got word back from the SOCOs at the Fords’ crib at Aramoana. The break-in was pretty clean. They found some prints, but my bet would be they belong to Felix and the family. And don’t forget they had that big party, so there could be half of Dunedin’s prints there. Oh, and speaking of SOCOs, they wanted to extend their warmest thanks to you for the suggestion of dusting all those beer bottles in the recycling bins.’

  I felt a blush crawl up my face. Great, another fan club. I changed the subject. ‘Did you let Felix’s parents know about the break-in?’ Smithy looked like he was enjoying my discomfort. I could do without being on the receiving end of his noxious mood.

  ‘Yes. They weren’t too happy to hear about it. I imagine they’d be in need of a liquid lunch after the time they’d had recently. But that’s not the only piece of news that came in. There’s something much more interesting.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘We now have a likely scene of crime for the murder of Clifford Stewart.’ Wow, he was right. Things did happen when I left. Maybe I should take time out more often.

  ‘Well, tell me then, don’t leave me in suspense.’

  ‘Felix Ford’s house in Pine Hill.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  That was not what I expected to hear, and it did not bode well for Felix ‘done-a-runner’ Ford, even if he had a damn good alibi. ‘But there weren’t any obvious signs of a violent struggle or fight when we had our little recce. We could see into most places.’

  ‘That’s because there weren’t any.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It would appear that whoever did this cleaned up.’

  ‘And that would be the same people or person who went to so much trouble to make his death look like a diving accident. That makes sense; they’d been thorough with the disposal of the body, so they’d be thorough about the scene of the crime. So in what part of the house was he attacked then?’

  ‘There was trace evidence of blood on the lino in the entranceway, some on the carpet adjoining the lino, and on the walls. The carpet would have been the hardest to clean, but whoever it was, they made the effort.’

  ‘Was there any sign of a break-in? The door wasn’t forced,’ I said.

  ‘No, everything was secure.’

  ‘So, either Clifford was already in the house and opened the door to whoever it was and let them in; or Clifford paid a visit to the house and was invited in, then assaulted in the entranceway. Either way, he must have known them.’ My mind was whirring away.

  ‘It’s about now I’d like to have a little chat to Leo Walker,’ Smithy said. ‘DOC have contacted him, and he’s on his way out, although the weather over there is foul, so it may take a while. I think he may have some explaining to do.’

  ‘Yes, it sounds like it.’ Despite his girlfriend’s protestations. ‘It’s likely that one of Felix’s mates has a key to his house – they might even use his gym equipment.’ I thought about who else might have had access to the place. ‘When Felix’s parents found out he was in hospital, that week after the murder, surely they’d have been to his house to pick up some things to take to him, or even to stay while they were in town. It’s not that far to the hospital from Pine Hill. It’s likely they would have a key too, or that they would know where a spare was hidden.’ Mum and Dad had a key to my place, just in case. I presumed most people’s parents did. ‘It would be useful to talk to them and see if they noticed anything unusual.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll get on to that. Reihana is out talking to the neighbours, to see if anyone can remember anything unusual. Which reminds me, I must get some chocolate.’

  ‘Beaten you to it, but I did leave you a few bars. In the meantime, we have to try to figure out exactly how Clifford’s murder connects back to Felix Ford, other than it happened at his house. And we have to ask ourselves if Felix did a runner because all leads were starting to point towards him,’ I said, before Smithy chipped in with:

  ‘Or was it just a coincidence?’

  49

  I seemed to be on the receiving end of a communication blackout from home. I was desperate to know what was going on with Dad, but neither of my parents rang me, and when I tried to ring them, it was inevitably Mum on the end of the phone. Any of my questions regarding Dad’s health were deftly parried, and I was stung with the customary ripostes:

  ‘You don’t really care.

  ‘You never come visit.

  ‘Your antics will be the death of him.

  ‘What are you doing with that nice young man?

  ‘Are you going to marry him?

  ‘Isn’t it time you settled down and had a family like your brothers?

  ‘Sheryl is lovely. Steve is so lucky to have a wife like that.

  ‘At least they help us out.

  ‘When are you going to get out of that job?’

  These bouts always left me feeling tense and weary, and the most recent phone call had hurt more than most. I knew Mum was upset and stressed and worried, and lashing out at everyone, but all the same, as I put the receiver down the words that echoed around in my head were ‘shame’, ‘hoped for more from you’ and ‘disappointment’. They burned as much as the tears.

  50

  ‘Sam, are you okay?’ Maggie asked the moment I walked into the room, the concern in her voice perfectly proportional to how bad I must have looked. It was the disadvantage of having a transparent face, in all senses of the word.

  ‘I’ve been pinged,’ I said. ‘Mum.’

  Her face screwed into an ‘ow’ scowl. ‘Was it bad?’

  ‘I’d give it an eleven out of ten. She shoots to maim, not to kill.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse.’ What I needed was an escape from it all, and while the idea of a night out on the turps was appealing, it wasn’t such a good scheme when I had to work in the morning. Mindless abandon for a few hours was a safer option. ‘Do you want to see a movie tonight? I need to get out of the house for a bit and get my mother’s voice out of my head.’

  ‘What’s on?’

  ‘We’ll have to check the newspaper, but I was thinking of something funny; nothing too dark. God knows I need a bit of a laugh.’

  ‘Sounds great, but Rudy was going to swing by this evening. Do you want me to fob him off till another night?’

  That would be ideal and I knew she would for me, but I couldn’t ask that of Maggs. Mr Gorgeous-and-Foreign was far too lovely for me to have too many jealous pangs over him stealing my best friend, but I did allow myself the luxury of an inner groan.

  ‘Drag him along too. I’m sure he’s big enough and ugly enough to cope with two women on his arm.’

  ‘He’s French, it’s what they do.’

  *

  The Octagon was something special by night. Sure, by day it had its charms, circled by architecture from the Gothic to the modern to the frivolous, and with Robbie Burns looking down, doing his best to look nonchalant under the garnish of seagull crap. But it was at night that it really came into its own: the spotlights throwing artistic shadows onto the ornate masonry of the Municipal Chambers and lighting up the foreboding steps and frontis of the glowering cathedral; the fairy lights glistening in the barren branches of the plane trees, making the avenue dance and seem alive in the midst of winter’s leafless death.

  The wildlife could be interesting too, although normally the worst of the drunken shenanigans didn’t spill out from grand bar central until the wee hours. Judging by the commotion up ahead, though, a group had started early.

  In a manner unfortunately common in this day and age, most people walked past pretending there wasn’t really a group of four louts having a go at some poor individual. From this distance it looked like they were at the circling and shouting abuse stage, but were leaning towards push and shove. The policewoman in me went on full alert, while the human in me thought, This ain’t right. We were getti
ng close enough now to hear snatches of conversation and the words ‘cripple crap’ and ‘mutant’ with f-word prefixes drifted on the breeze.

  ‘Nice,’ Rudy said as we neared. ‘What will we do?’

  One of the hoodie-wearing bodies shifted aside, and I got a glimpse of the target of their attentions. The hunched figure struck a chord of recognition.

  ‘Shit, it’s Spaz.’

  ‘What? Do you know him?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Yeah, I do. He’s got cerebral palsy. Great of them to pick on the disabled guy. Really big and brave, aren’t they? We’ve got to get him out of there.’

  ‘You might have to pull out your police card and tell them to clear off.’

  A quick scan around told me there weren’t any other boys or girls in blue in the vicinity. If there had been it would never have got to this point. I looked at the situation and the amount of aggro involved and realised that one small female mufti trainee detective throwing her weight around was not going to be the smartest option.

  ‘No,’ Rudy said. ‘That would not work. They are, how do you say, spoiling for a fight, yes?’ Mr Frenchie had read the situation correctly; thuggery must be a universal language. I had a better idea, I hoped.

  ‘Look, I’m going to go in there, and I need you guys to follow my lead, okay? Just pretend you know him and play it by ear.’ I took a big breath, smoothed down my Jacquard coat (thank God I’d gotten dressed up), strode forwards and called out, ‘Hey, honey! There you are.’ I walked between two of the thugs, straight up to a startled-looking Spaz, put my arms around his waist and kissed him squarely on the lips. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’re going to be late.’ I looked around at the faces of the gits, recognised two of them as station regulars; judging by their expressions, they recognised me. Which meant they recognised that I knew their parole conditions. ‘Is there a problem here?’

  Spaz clearly was not one to miss an opportunity because he dived in for another kiss before stuttering, ‘No, no problem, sweetie.’