Just like mine. But mine weren’t as desperate looking as his.
“Holy shit,” Charlie muttered from beside me.
I’d forgotten he was even there.
“Call the cops,” I said, standing up and rechecking the area.
The rope was the same sort of rope you expected to see on a wharf. Or on a fishing boat. It smelled of fish guts and salt. It was crusted in it. Some of the salt and fish scales had transferred to the victim’s neck. I could pick out a few sparkling bits on his chest.
He wasn’t gang patched. But he was definitely dressed like he should have been. His beard was thicker than Darren’s.
I pulled my phone out and shined the light over his body. No tats that I could see on his face or neck, but he did have words written across his knuckles. Born Wild. I took a photo. Then snapped a few more of the body and the wharf just to be sure.
I could hear Charlie talking to the emergency dispatcher on his cell phone. I wondered idly what he was saying about being on the wharf with me at this time of night. I pushed his surprisingly level voice out of my mind and concentrated on the scene before me.
Darren hadn’t mentioned Mangonui Wharf. It could be that this was all coincidental. That wherever Mikey was carrying out his deal was miles away from here. But the rope had warned me, and my neck never lied. Sometimes it was difficult to interpret what it was telling me, but when Darren had mentioned Mikey and that deal in the Taipa Tavern, my neck had reminded me about the rope.
And here was a rope used to murder somebody.
It wasn’t just that either. The scent of fish and sea air had led me to the fishery. And none of that would have happened if Darren hadn’t been talking about Mikey and his exchange on a boat. I turned the cell phone torch off and blinked into the darkness. There were several boats out on the water, any one of them could have been the boat in question. Was Mikey on one even now; watching me? Was the person who had strangled this guy with a rope out there somewhere?
Or had they all fled as soon as the exchange had been completed?
I needed to find Mikey.
I looked down at the body on the ropes and shook my head. Mikey was a lot of things, not least of which was a Rika. But murderer?
Red and blue lights cast an eery alternating glow across the water. Danvers was on the move from the police station. I glanced around, but couldn’t see anything else of interest. Grabbing Charlie’s arm, I hauled him away from the scene and along the wharf.
By the time the police issued SUV rocked up, we were leaning against a signpost, talking softly. Well away from the murder scene.
The headlights of the police car shone directly into our eyes and Danvers did not switch them off immediately. He sat in his car radioing in a report or writing up a note or just plain old watching us. It was a little creepy.
And then the lights flicked off plunging us into darkness and all I could see was spots before my eyes.
Then a car door opened and slammed shut, and steady footfalls sounded out on the concrete. I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, blinking the spots away and wishing I hadn’t had all those beers earlier in the evening.
“Ms O’Dare,” Detective Douche said. “I hadn’t realised you were here as well.”
I glanced at Charlie, but he was looking at the detective.
“Male. Thirties,” I said, pushing off from the signpost. “Looks like strangulation by rope.”
Danvers stared at me and then looked down the wharf.
“You were both together when you found him?”
“Yes,” I said. Charlie said nothing; maybe he thought this was my show now and he’d done his dash.
“Midnight stroll along the wharf?” the detective asked.
“Something like that.”
“With all the fish guts and discarded burley.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
He studied me and then pulled a torch from his belt and shone it over the wharf, from where we were standing all the way to the end of it. He couldn’t see behind the shed; he’d have to walk on the wharf to actually get there. But for now he just looked at what he could see, and then he abruptly turned the glare of the torch on both of us.
The light blinded me, and then I realised he was playing it over my neck.
I turned away and started walking toward the body.
“Stay here, Mr Roberts,” I heard Danvers tell Charlie.
The detective’s long legs caught up with me easily. Thankfully he didn’t shine the torch on my neck again but kept it on the wharf in front of him instead.
“Was this a romantic interlude?” he suddenly asked.
“Interlude?” I repeated.
“Evening. Walk.”
I chose my words carefully, but in the end, there was nothing for it but to be honest with him. If he were anywhere near as decent a cop as I thought he might be, he’d trace my movements this evening and discover some of my secrets anyway. Hiding them now would only look suspicious, and I had the feeling that Detective Danvers was a suspicious kind of man.
“I was following a lead.”
He looked at me sharply, but just then we’d rounded the corner of the shed, and the body came into view. Danvers played his torchlight over the dead man, the ropes, and then the surrounding area.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“You know him?” I asked, surprised.
“No. But I had hoped the caller had got it wrong.”
He’d hoped the man wasn’t dead.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
He looked at me for a moment and then returned his attention to the murder scene.
“That wouldn’t have been easy,” he said, crouching down and nodding toward the rope as it wrapped around the deceased’s neck.
It was thick, heavy-duty rope. The sort of rope used on pulleys and hauling in commercial fishing nets. It was coarse and stiff and would have required a fair amount of strength to wrap around the man’s neck. I could picture it being possible though, if the killer crossed the ends over, and was made of muscle. Or maybe if two people did it, pulling the ends in opposite directions; the strangled man suspended between them.
I pushed that decidedly morbid imagery away.
“What lead?” Danvers asked, checking much the same things I’d done upon arrival.
“Pardon?” My mind was wandering. Or trying to wander from the gruesome sight of a dead man.
“The lead that you were following to here.”
“Oh,” I said and chewed on my lip. Danvers stopped what he was doing and stared up at me.
“Everything all right, Ms O’Dare?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding a little too vigorously. My head spun. My vision wavered. I reached out a hand, and Danvers caught it.
He sniffed. His face too close to mine. “Have you been drinking?” he demanded.
“All part of the cover, Detective.”
He said nothing for a long drawn out moment, and then he let me go and pulled out his cell phone. I took the chance to suck in lungfuls of air without him watching me too closely and moved away from the body.
I’d seen dead bodies before, of course. Some of them were important to me. Some of them were strangers. I’d trained in Auckland, so I’d seen a fair few gruesome things. Blood didn’t alarm me, but there was no blood here, and I didn’t know the man who’d been killed, so I shouldn’t have felt so off-kilter.
It could have been the beers, I told myself. But it was more likely the fact that I wasn’t sure if Mikey wasn’t somehow involved in this. I couldn’t even think the words; that he had done this. Murdered someone. But they were there.
As was Tia’s face and Darren’s swat of his palm on my rear and the Coffee Cube and the Rika homestead and the scent of marijuana and sea salt on the air.
Danvers appeared in front of me, crouched down so he could look me in the eye.
“Did you know him?”
“No.”
“Have you seen a dead body before?”
I nodded.
“It can be quite a shock.”
Phantom ropey fingers circled my throat, but it was only a memory; not a sensation or a premonition. There’d likely be no more rope around my neck unless the murderer chose that method of killing again. The message had been received, and my psychic ability never bothered to repeat itself if it wasn’t necessary.
An event always triggered it, but once the event and consequences had played out, the sensations ceased.
The touch of oily liquid and the scent of brake fluid led to my parents’ car crash when I was eight. Once the crash had happened, I never felt that sensation again.
The case file Danvers had presented me led to the linen sheets from the laundromat. Once I’d connected Mikey to the case, the linen had stopped touching me. The rope and scent of fish guts led me to the wharf and the body. I knew now what it meant. There’d be no more phantom strangulation for me.
Or so I hoped.
I’d long ago stopped trying to work out why this happened to me. I found things others couldn’t. I solved puzzles the police had failed to complete. I knew things when I shouldn’t. Detective Pieters had come to accept my bizarre announcements; not as gospel as such, but as a clue that was treated roughly the same as any other piece of evidence he gathered.
He’d check it, prove it, then use it. It didn’t matter how I came by the information or lead; he’d go through the same motions every time I helped him solve a case.
But crouched here on the Mangonui Wharf with the new detective in town and a dead body, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to go through training him the way I’d trained Pieters.
Danvers watched me now as if he could pluck the answers to his many questions out of my head by simply staring at me. I knew I must have seemed strange to him. This young woman who people spoke of as being kooky and yet the police kept my name on file as the go-to girl for unsolved mysteries.
I wanted to tell him. To get it all off my chest.
I knew if I did, I’d never get another case file from the police.
“Remember the laundromat,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
He nodded his head and said nothing.
“Mr Huang let someone go who had worked up at the Shimmering Sands Apartments.”
Still nothing, but then he’d figured this much out, hadn’t he?
Mikey’s name would not be unknown to the detective, but somehow me voicing it felt like a betrayal. I felt guilty.
“I know the Rikas,” I whispered as if saying it quietly wasn’t as bad as saying it at all.
“Michael Rika,” Danvers said.
“Mikey,” I corrected, he arched a brow but said nothing. “They usually have a drink at the Taipa Tavern on a Friday,” I said.
“The beer.”
“Yes.”
“And the wharf, Ms O’Dare?”
“Summer.”
He didn’t repeat it. His lips pressed into a thin line as if he was making sure he didn’t repeat my name back to me.
Whatever Mikey Rika had got himself involved in, I couldn’t help him by remaining silent. And if he was involved in this, then what did that say about me? About my license to investigate? I might have had a few tricks up my sleeve for solving a crime, but I was still subject to the law.
And the Mangonui Police had hired me.
I was bound. I was trapped. I could protect the Rikas only so long as no one got hurt and no laws had been broken.
I’d hoped to find Mikey first. To beat it out of him. To string him up by his short and curlies, and make him spill the beans. Mikey would have caved. He always caved to me. But Mikey wasn’t here, and a dead body was, and I knew - I knew - that this was where the exchange was supposed to have happened.
That this was where Mikey had last been.
I stared at the detective. He stared stoically back at me.
He had his secrets too, I thought. Were they his to keep? Or were they the Mangonui Police’s?
“What was stolen?” I asked.
“What led you to the wharf?”
“You know,” I said, pushing up to my feet and making the detective stumble backwards, “sooner or later, you’re going to have to come clean with me.”
He reached out and grasped my arm before I could walk away from him. From this.
“And sooner or later, Ms O’Dare, you’re going to have to be honest with me.”
The way he said it, the way he looked at me, made me think he was asking for more than just the secrets I’d accumulated during the course of the evening. It made me think he was asking for more than I could give him.
It made me think he wanted every last secret about me.
I shook myself free and met his narrow-eyed gaze. I felt like a deer caught in the sights of a hunter. No escape.
I scoffed mentally. Smiled brightly. And said, “Check for drug residue on his hands, Detective. This was a drug deal gone bad.”
Then I walked back down the wharf and as far away as I could get from Detective Danvers.
Constables had arrived and were cordoning off the area. Charlie was lying on top of the Holden’s hood, asleep. We’d both have to make statements, but this was Doubtless Bay; they could wait until the morning.
“Hey, Gnarly Charlie,” I said, shaking him by the shoulder. “Take me home or lose me forever.”
He blinked open big brown eyes and stared at me, goofily.
“Isn’t that meant to be, ‘Take me to bed or lose me forever?’”
I choked on a surprised breath of air. He rolled off the hood and winked at me.
It was only when I turned to get in the front passenger seat that I saw Danvers had followed me.
I felt his eyes on the back of my neck all the way along Waterfront Drive, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was real or part of what made me kooky.
Chapter 10
Murder Was Another Kettle Of Fish
Morning came complete with too-bright sunshine peeking through a gap in my curtains and stabbing me in the eyes like a drill, seagulls making a racket next door as Mrs Bread and Butter Sutter fed her leftovers to the birds, and the loud banging of someone determined to break my door down or collapse the roof on top of my head. It was debatable which would win; both the door and roof needed replacing.
I rolled out of bed muttering expletives to myself and wondering where I’d put the aspirin, and then shuffled to the kitchen door in my jammies. I’d even managed to get my fluffy pink slippers on with my eyes closed, which was quite a feat and something I was extremely proud of.
Of course, opening up the door to a disgruntled looking Detective Douche in nothing more than a t-shirt that said Let’s Get Weird emblazoned across it and boy-short undies was not the best impression to make. Add in the picture of Gonzo doing the cha-cha over my boobs, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Oops,” I said. “Forgot the dressing gown.”
I’ll give him some credit. He tried his best not to let his eyes travel south, but either Gonzo, the challenging words, or my boobs finally did him in. And then his eyes snagged on my legs, and he paused.
Leg man, not boob man. Good to know.
“Coffee?” I asked, turning and leaving the door open for him to enter.
“Yes.”
“Excellent,” I said pointing blindly in the direction of the kitchen bench where I kept a Nespresso machine and milk frother. “Three full-strength pods and three heaped teaspoons of sugar, please,” I told him.
I didn’t look back, but by the time I made it to my bedroom, I could hear the detective opening cupboards and clinking coffee cups together. I managed a quick brush of my teeth, a quick brush of my hair, and a quick grumbling brush of my clothes - Doug had slept on them - and made it back in time to accept a steaming hot cup of Ristretto as it was offered to me by an outstretched hand.
I’d traded the boy-shorts for cut-offs and Gonzo for Animal. I could have chosen better, the words Party Animal spread across my chest reminded me of all th
e beers I’d consumed last night.
I sank onto a stool at the kitchen bench and sipped the coffee while I watched Danvers make his own one. Black, no sugar. I shook my head and instantly regretted it.
The detective turned around and leaned back against the bench, watching me.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Not really.” No, I didn’t think it was. He looked exhausted. No wonder he hadn’t baulked at helping himself to a coffee. I didn’t think Danvers was the kind to chat over tea.
“Have you ID’d him?” I asked.
“John Joseph Logan out of Kaitaia.”
The name meant nothing to me. I nodded - carefully - and drank more coffee.
“Where is your boarder?” he asked, sipping his own nectar from Eden.
“If he has any sense, he’ll still be asleep,” I told him.
“Would you mind checking?”
I arched my brow at him, but slid off the stool and made my way to what I generously called the guest wing. When I received the house as part of Gran’s estate, I spent what little money I’d saved while working down in the Big Smoke on redecorating. The most expensive addition to the place was an ensuite bathroom attached to the bedroom that used to be Gran’s. I’d decided to stay in my smaller room that ran along the front of the house where the driveway and garage were, and which was right next to a tiny spare room that I made over into an office, complete with gun safe.
Gran’s bedroom had the pressed tin ceiling tiles and decorative mitred crown mouldings. It also had the best view of the sea and double doors that opened up onto the balcony. With the addition of a bathroom, it became practically self-contained. A coat of paint, new putty on the windows and French doors, upgraded furniture with a leaning toward a coastal theme, and the room became a viable money earner.
It was neither girly nor masculine, but it was well away from my side of the house and had the best views in Northland. Or that’s what my page on Airbnb claimed it had.
I knocked on the door and heard a groan from the other side.
Chasing Summer Page 8