by Alan Carter
‘Yeah.’ She comes up behind, puts her arms around me, leans her cheek against the back of my neck. ‘You scared me.’
‘I scared myself.’
There are messages on my mobile. Although there’s no signal here, I can check them via the internet connection. An email from Maxwell, pissed off that I missed the pre-raid briefing and checking I have my own Kevlar and gun – call time Friday, four a.m. outside the Lodge. Keegan saying she’s coming too. Latifa wanting to know if I’m okay after the interrupted call. After the best part of seven hours in bed, there’s little chance of me sleeping tonight. Maybe I can work through that plumbing jobs list of Gelder’s, finally tick it off.
‘And here’s me hoping for an early night and a cuddle,’ says Vanessa.
‘Eleven. S’pose that is early for you these days.’
‘We’re like ships in the night lately.’
‘Goes with our jobs.’
‘What an epitaph.’ Vanessa shakes her head sadly. ‘She was a well-prepared teacher and he was an obsessive cop.’
‘Let’s not be talking epitaphs yet, love.’
‘Do you know why I didn’t call an ambulance?’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s an hour whichever way you look at it, Blenheim or Nelson. You’ve got to be really sure it’s an emergency before you make that kind of call. And once you are sure it’s probably too late.’
‘Tomorrow’s another day.’
‘I mean it, Nick. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves.’
Under other circumstances it could have progressed into a fight but we’re both too fragile right now. Vanessa heads off to bed and I dig out the list of Bruce Gelder’s plumbing jobs. On it goes, it’s too late to be ringing people to check they were happy with his work and didn’t hold any festering resentments against him. Wekas shout their warnings from the undergrowth, somewhere a morepork hoots. It’s after midnight and even with my seven hours sleep I find myself drifting. Another three or so hours and it’ll be time to get ready for the morning raid on the Lodge to bring LeBlanc in for questioning. That show of force was interestingly timed. It’s like he has foreknowledge of our impending visit.
I missed the briefing so it’s not immediately clear how Maxwell will play it. Ram down the gates and send the AOS in to drag Georges out? Ring the buzzer and ask politely? Both have their merits and their faults. It will be impossible to cover all possible escape routes if he decides to leg it. The property is huge and extends back up the hill into a pine plantation. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.
There it is.
Fourth from last on the list of Gelder’s jobs. About a week before his death. Two days of pipe-laying and fittings at a property at Ketu Bay. Listed under the name of the previous owners but I know where it is.
Māhana Wellbeing Centre.
17.
Pre-dawn. Maxwell, Keegan, a team of Ds, some uniform support and the AOS are all assembled outside the Lodge when I get there. They’ve got floodlights trained on the gates and the Lodge guard dogs are barking themselves hoarse. The AOS tactical vehicle – an armoured car with ramming implements and shields – has already demolished the fence on the property over the road to allow it a run-up. The traffic-calming speed bump has cramped its style, as intended, but it’s still revved and ready for the word. A helicopter hovers overhead.
‘One of ours,’ says Keegan. ‘With a thermal camera in case anybody tries to run away.’ I can hear other chopper noises approaching. ‘News, probably.’
Jessie James loiters down beyond a perimeter tape, trying in vain to make friends with Latifa. You can tell a lot from body language, even from a hundred metres away on a cold dark autumn morning. ‘The media seem to be well-informed.’
‘Not my doing. I’m suspecting they’ve been tipped off by Cunningham. He wants plenty of attention and witnesses for this.’ I update her on the link between Gelder, Māhana, and the Lodge. ‘Even better reason for this circus then.’ She seems both emboldened by what she has put in train and yet terrified at how wrong it might go.
Maxwell appears at Keegan’s shoulder. ‘Ready?’
‘With all this noise and light, they should be awake by now. Press the buzzer.’
He does. ‘Who is it?’ asks a crackly and amused Cunningham.
Maxwell states his business.
‘Georges? You want to speak to Georges?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure. I’ll put him on.’
A few seconds later, LeBlanc asks, ‘How can I help you, sir?’ There’s laughing in the background. They’re having a real party back there.
‘We need you to come back to the police station with us, Mr LeBlanc. We need to question you in relation to a serious matter.’
‘Ask away, bud. I’m right here.’
‘At the station, under caution, formally and with a lawyer. You need to come out now Mr LeBlanc or we’ll be coming in.’
‘That would be trespass.’
Keegan steps forward, nudges Maxwell aside. ‘We’ve got a warrant. If you’re not out of that gate in two minutes we’re coming to get you.’
‘Ma’am, that would be your honourable prerogative.’
There are, as you might expect, differing accounts of what happened next. Certainly the news cameras in the approaching helicopters only caught the tail-end of it and, even broken down later, frame by frame, were next to useless in bringing any clarity to the confusion. Here’s what I know. The tactical vehicle, unable to get sufficient run-up in the tight angle, managed only to buckle one of the gates enough to allow a single-file gap for the AOS to squeeze through. It took three attempts to neutralise the guard dogs – kill them, in fact – after the first two guys through the gap took a vicious mauling. Cunningham and his boys were waiting at the top of the hill armed not with their semi-automatics but with buckets of shit to chuck over the approaching AOS. Tempers were fraying big time on our side but Cunningham was keen to keep his guns out of it. That was a fight he knew he couldn’t win on this occasion.
The good old boys were having a good old laugh and not even retaliating when the AOS got heavy-handed. After a few minutes the residents of the Lodge were lined up facedown on the manicured lawn and cuffed. Gemma, Maxwell and I checked off each against our list. There were two missing. LeBlanc and the young guy, Melvyn.
‘Drop it.’
I remember turning. There, in the glare of the floodlights, was Melvyn aiming an AR-15 at us. He’d been spotted by Latifa and now her gun, and the guns of a dozen AOS, were trained back on him.
‘Melvyn,’ I said. ‘Put it down.’
The boy shifted position, nestling the stock more comfortably in his shoulder. Squinting down the barrel.
‘Mate,’ I said. ‘Please.’
Maybe he imagined himself as a computer-generated figure on a screen. Kill numbers ticking over in the bottom left of the frame.
‘Do as he says,’ said Cunningham, struggling under an AOS grip to turn his head from a position prone on the ground.
Latifa edged one step closer. ‘Drop it.’
But Melvyn kept on pointing the gun and then his finger moved on that trigger.
18.
‘What was a fifteen-year-old kid doing among those animals? And armed to the teeth?’
Back in Nelson, District Commander Marianne Keegan has a lot of explaining to do and she’s looking to me for answers. Theoretically the chain of command via her and Maxwell should keep me off the hook and it would be possible to force that point. Truth is though, I feel like this has been coming ever since Cunningham sucker-punched me that day in the bakery.
‘The paperwork says he was Cunningham’s nephew and he had official guardianship of him.’
‘Why isn’t he at home with his mum and dad?’
‘Maybe we can ask Cunningham.’
‘Yeah, let’s do that. And ask him where he thinks Georges LeBlanc might have gone.’
As far as we can tell, LeBlanc escaped th
rough an old mining tailrace, a narrow four-metre-deep gully hacked out of the bedrock in gold rush days to allow tailings and water run-off to escape down to the river. It had since been adapted to suit their particular needs by being roofed over with material to foil the police chopper thermal cameras. By midmorning the story is on every TV channel and lighting up the internet. Conspiracy theories have blossomed and the US ambassador in Wellington wants a full briefing. It would be fair to say that Keegan might well be fighting for her career. Then again, a kid just died with a dozen AOS bullets in him. One from Latifa too.
Cunningham has the Wellington lawyer Helen Kostakidis with him in the interview room. She glares at me as we take our seats. ‘Is my client under arrest?’
‘No,’ says Keegan. ‘And I’d like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt condolences. This was …’
‘Murder,’ says Cunningham. He’s remarkably composed for someone who has just lost a family member. It’s pretty plain he has me in his sights for that.
I’m happy to front up. ‘Melvyn Cody was given a number of warnings to drop the weapon, including from you, Mr Cunningham.’
‘He was fifteen. Scared.’
‘He was fifteen and holding a semi-automatic assault rifle. As his legal guardian, maybe it was incumbent upon you to assume duty of care.’
‘Incumbent, huh?’
Kostakidis taps her pen lightly on the desk. ‘What’s the purpose of this interview? If it’s only to try to justify this tragic shambles we can all go home now.’
‘I can assure you there will be a full investigation into the matter,’ says DC Keegan.
‘Oh yes,’ says Kostakidis. ‘I’ll make damn sure of it.’
Before everybody retreats to their ringside corners for the next round, I try a final jab. ‘LeBlanc’s disappeared.’
‘Has he?’ says Cunningham. ‘Must’ve been terrified by your stormtroopers.’
‘He knows why we want to talk to him. And so do you.’
‘Georges is a good man.’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Besmirching a guy’s name. Need to be careful about that, Sergeant Chester.’
‘That sounds like a threat.’
A scraping of chairs. ‘We done here? I need to make funeral arrangements for my nephew. Get his body shipped back stateside.’
‘Why wasn’t he at home with his parents?’
‘None of your damn business.’
What’s become clear by lunchtime is that Cunningham and his compatriots are going to paint themselves as victims and they will be ably assisted in that by the news media, the conspiracy theorists and, to be fair, the facts. Fact: the record of exchanges over the gate intercom, while showing a degree of playfulness on the part of the Lodge residents, also suggests at best a willingness to cooperate and at worst a lack of promptness in complying. These guys were having a laugh and we lost our patience and went in guns blazing. Fact: our aim was to question one of the residents about a serious crime but our grounds for doing so were circumstantial. Did it really warrant such a show of force? Fact: we failed, the guy disappeared. Fact: we failed, a kid died. Fact: we have history between us, this looked like a settling of scores. Keegan is being lined up to take the fall for this fiasco, unless she can find alternative candidates. That would be Maxwell and me. He’s as aware of that as I am and has given me carte blanche on the Gelder case to look into whatever might save our arses.
‘Chase all the wild geese you want, Nick. Fill your boots.’
While Keegan and the spin doctors deal with the fallout, all us mere mortals can do is build the case against LeBlanc and person or persons unknown – we know there were, after all, at least two people involved in Gelder’s murder – and let the AOS hunt down Monsieur Georges who no doubt has the backwoods survival skills of Daniel Boone himself.
Back in the Havelock cop shop, Latifa is studying LeBlanc’s file photo closely. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s not my guy. The eyes don’t work for me.’
‘Shame.’ I want to ask if she’s sure but it won’t be welcome. Of course she’s sure. She was there.
‘We need to go back out to Māhana. If that’s the job that got Gelder killed, the answer is out there. You up for another boat trip?’
Latifa closes the photo and logs out. Rubs absent-mindedly at the fading weal on her neck. ‘Okay.’ She grabs bits and pieces and crams them into her backpack. ‘Any fallout from this morning?’
‘There will be but so far Keegan and Maxwell are doing their best to manage it.’
‘First time I’ve ever shot anybody and it has to be a kid.’
‘You did your job. You, the AOS, all of you. He should have put the gun down.’
‘Yeah.’ She slings the backpack over her shoulder and turns the door sign from Open to Closed. Pulls the door shut, squints at the sky.
This fucking job can swallow you whole.
The waters are calmer today and we make better time out to Ketu Bay on Lizzie’s boat. The two guards, Vernon and friend, are waiting for us on the jetty. I give them a wave. ‘Hi guys. All good?’
Vernon answers. ‘Mr Cunningham told us to expect you and afford you every hospitality.’
Shit, that means they’re already ahead of us and whatever we were looking for has been cleared away. But it also means we’re on the right track even if Cunningham knows we are. ‘Is Vince the foreman around?’
‘He’s no longer with us.’
‘Dead?’
‘Fired. Breach of contract.’
‘So which of you fine gentlemen will be our guide today?’
‘Both of us. Here …’ he hands us each a fluoro vest and hard hat, ‘you need to wear these.’
‘What’s your friend’s name, Vernon?’
‘Blake,’ says the guy all by himself.
‘Is that your first name or family name?’
‘My Christian name.’
‘I seem to recall you acting in a threatening manner on our last visit, Blake. Can I count on you to behave this time round?’
‘Yes,’ says Vernon, ‘he’ll be fine.’
‘Great. Lead on, Macduff.’
‘The name’s Blake.’
‘Actually it’s “Lay on, Macduff.” A common misquote.’
The voice belongs to Lizzie the boat skipper. She holds up the book she’s been reading. Collected works of Shakespeare.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Pleasure.’
We get the same tour as Vince gave us. Up and down the halls, through the outhouses. Nothing stands out except for those couple of rooms with extra wiring and drainage.
‘We’ll be offering a well-equipped medical facility in case of emergencies.’ Blake is downright ebullient. He’d make a great tourist guide. ‘It’s pretty isolated out here and you get some wild weather in those Marlborough Sounds of yours.’
‘And the strong rooms? Extra thick, heavy doors and reinforced walls?’
‘Storage. Resistant to earthquakes. Neat, huh?’
‘You’ve thought of everything.’
‘Not yet, but maybe by the time it’s finished.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Few months maybe.’
‘You had some plumbing work done here a couple of weeks ago,’ says Latifa.
‘What of it?’ says Vernon.
‘Can you show me where?’
‘Just some pipes. They’re buried underground now.’
‘Still, how about you show me where that is?’
And they do. It’s a patch of earth leading off one of the wings and it looks pretty innocent. ‘Happy?’ asks Blake.
‘As.’ Latifa is champing at the bit. ‘Let’s take another look at those medical rooms.’
‘Why?’ says Vernon.
‘Because I say so.’
He turns to me. ‘You’re the boss. Do you need to see that area again?’
Latifa backs Vernon against a wall while I lift a staying hand at Blake. ‘First and last warning, Vernon.�
�� Finger prod to his chest. ‘Show some respect.’
‘We’re a team, Vern. I think you’d better do what my colleague says.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Boss.’
And back we go. One room is shiny, tiled. An operating theatre in waiting. The other longer and narrower but also tiled and with a wide drainage channel running along one wall.
‘What’s this room intended for?’ says Latifa.
‘Medical.’
‘That’s your other room. This one doesn’t have the right shape, and less electrical connections you might need for specialist equipment.’
‘I’m not the architect, ma’am.’
‘You have the plans?’
‘No, ma’am. They’re held by Mr Cunningham.’
Latifa crouches down, rubs a hand over a patch of tiles. A few steps, about two metres away she does the same. And repeat, two more times. ‘What used to be here?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘These spots along the wall, the tiles have been replaced, they don’t quite match the others.’
Vernon puts hands on hips. ‘I didn’t realise the little lady was a tiling expert.’
‘Answer the question.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, I can’t help you there.’
‘Did Bruce Gelder, the plumber, do any work in here?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Positive.’
Latifa gives him a smile. ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’
‘My pleasure, ma’am.’
‘It’s all about that room.’
The boat cuts through the still waters of Pelorus Sound and a flock of gannets swoop on some fish near a mussel farm. It’s a fantastic day, calm and clear. But I can see Latifa is agitated.
‘Tell me your thoughts.’
‘These guys are usually the jetty guards. Goons. What do they know about what each tradie is doing on a day-by-day basis? That’s Vince the foreman’s job. Vernon was adamant Gelder didn’t do any work on that room. He was vague about everything except that.’
‘Fed the line by his superiors, no doubt. Point taken. Anything else?’
‘The fresh grouting. The tiling had been replaced at those spots along the wall. Didn’t notice last time we were here because I wasn’t focused on it.’