Crime Story

by Gee, Maurice

  Crime Story

  Maurice Gee

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 1994

  Copyright © Maurice Gee 1994

  The right of Maurice Gee to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

  Digital conversion by Pindar NZ

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

  www.penguin.co.nz

  ISBN 9781742288024

  For Abi

  Acknowledgements

  ‘The Dead One’, from Evening Land: aftonland, by Pär Lagerkvist, translated by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg, Souvenir Press, 1977

  I would like to thank the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Trust for awarding me its ECNZ Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, 1992. My thanks also go to the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand for sponsoring the fellowship, and to the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.

  I would also like to thank the many people who helped me with advice – medical, financial and criminal – for this novel.

  The characters in Crime Story are imaginary. No likeness is intended to any person living or dead.

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  He looked like them and moved like them but knew he must not open his mouth. Walk fast so no one’s got the time to ask any questions, but not too fast or they’ll notice you. Up past the bookshop, up the path by the graveyard. Look like you’re going to a lecture, is that what they call the bloody things?

  His clothes were dead right, they couldn’t be better. Jeans like his were coming down the hill, sneakers like his, though half of them were Reeboks and his were only Lasers. He’d look in shoe cupboards and get himself a pair of Reeboks soon. And get a sweatshirt with a university name. Uppsala. Where was that? Texas State. Or maybe he should look for one that said Cubs or Bears, although he could not wear a name when he was out working.

  He crossed the quad. That was what they called it, because he’d heard a girl say, ‘Meet you back here in the quad’ when he’d passed through last week, sussing out Kelburn. He strode under the glass roof, with the library on his left. How did you get in there and get out again? And why would you want to anyway? Books made him suspicious. He felt that they were a part of some big con.

  Smokers were sitting on the steps. They had the sour look of people kicked out and he went amongst them, turning left and right, knowing he was okay, he could sit down and light up and no one would think he didn’t belong. But he had come without his cigarettes. Most students didn’t smoke, he’d noticed last week, and he wasn’t going to do a thing to make himself stand out. He wanted a smoke to calm his nerves and he inhaled secretly in the grey air.

  He joined the students dodging cars on Kelburn Parade, then slowed down on the footpath. Out here he knew what to do. He felt like a shark in the streets, swimming round, waiting for something to swallow. When he worked in the Hutt or out in Miramar it was like the mudflats, but here it was like nosing up the side of a reef, coming from deep down towards the houses in the trees. Rosser grinned. He felt his teeth shining and air like water moving in his mouth.

  ‘Got the time?’ a student asked – neat and clean she was, pale jeans and shirt, shoes as white as milk, blue ribbon banded on her forehead. She should have her own watch, a gold Tissot, a present from Daddy. Easy to snatch her bag and run – be up those steps and out of sight, flick of his tail – but he didn’t do bag-snatching any more. Showed his teeth at her instead, hooked his sleeve back with his little finger, bared his watch; made her turn her head on one side, and then walked on.

  ‘Thanks,’ she called. He didn’t look back, kept walking round the curve, and the university showed itself again, twin towers, red and grey, with people in offices eight storeys high, working on a level with him as he went by. He wondered what they did in there, what was so important. All of it was a con and the way he got his own money just as honest to him. He crossed the road and went into a street that doubled back on a higher level. Swam into it, half pace. Nothing fast and nothing slow. He had to look as if he knew where he was going. See the chance and take it, then vanish down a hole. They’ve seen a student in the street, that’s all. He’ll sink into the quad, past the graveyard, and then into the city, where he’s lost.

  If this street gave him nothing, the next one would or the one after that. Sometimes he felt drunk with it – the hundreds of houses waiting for him, all in a row.

  The dog came first, with its belly naked and its legs like a dwarf. It pulled the woman into the road but she jerked it back while she slammed her gate, then let it lift its leg on the agapanthus by the fence.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Rosser told himself. The woman looked about fifty, which probably meant her old man wasn’t retired but the kids were gone. The house would be empty with any luck. She crossed the road, then stopped to let the dog shit, fair in the middle of the footpath, and rolled the turds over the kerb with her shoe. They made a pile in the gutter, shining like cheerios. A dachshund. They didn’t go for rottweilers round here.

  He turned his eyes left as he passed her, and she the same – cancelled out the shitting, cancelled each other out – but he’d had a look at her while it was going on. Watch and shoes, and even the dog-lead, showed that she only bought the best. Her dog was probably pedigree and mated with its own kind. It wheezed like it had asthma, dragging her along. Rosser grinned. She was taking it for its daily walk, or maybe to the butcher for a piece of fillet steak, but on the way back she’d have to carry the bloody thing. He could give himself a clear ten minutes in her house.

  Opposite the gate he looked back and saw her dragged from sight around the bend, her skinny legs, her skinny butt – she probably went to jazzercise. He put his foot on a brick fence and pulled his shoelace undone and tied it again, getting the lines of sight worked out. No one could see him from the downside, the houses were below street level there. Up top they were hidden by trees. One leaned its second storey over the branches but the windows angled southwards towards Pencarrow Head. The risk came from people in the street or in their gardens.

  He took his chance, crossed over, and went into the cutting by the gate. It was like a cave, with agapanthus growing up each side and oozing gluey sap from butchered leaves. ‘Dog on Duty’ the gate said. ‘Bloody liars,’ Rosser grinned. That wheezing dachshund wasn’t
a dog. A good drop kick would lift it clean over the neighbour’s fence. He opened the gate and stepped inside; stood motionless, listening; then walked up the path as if he belonged, switching on a smile as the windows came in sight. ‘Is Clyde at home?’ he would ask if anyone was there. People didn’t think you could make up Clyde.

  A car went by down in the road, close enough to jump on the roof. Volvo. Volvo country. The flying brick. He wouldn’t have one even if he won it as a prize. The car he would get one day was a Porsche, wait and see. A Porsche for driving and a Mercedes for the garage. A Volvo didn’t have any class.

  He went on to the front porch and knocked at the door, loud enough for someone inside but too soft for the neighbours. Waited for the grandma to climb out of her chair, though they didn’t keep grandmas much in this sort of place. He felt easy on the porch. He was going to have a house like this one day, though not in Kelburn, with dog shit on the footpath and Volvos all over the place – on a hill out the Hutt, next door to the millionaires, and another one in Sydney, by the harbour. ‘I’m King of Crime,’ he whispered to himself, and knocked again. No one came.

  He went around the back, deep in a path between the side wall and a hedge. They looked as if they might have a gardener, some old pensioner growing radishes, he needed to see. Hi, I’m looking for Clyde: he had it ready. But an empty glasshouse, growing ferns, a birdbath with a sparrow, a flymo on the half-cut lawn – that was all. A padlocked shed. A seagrass chair unravelling underneath a plum tree. I’m in, he thought, and tried the back door, and Christ the bloody thing opened, just like that. He almost stepped back. Someone had to be at home. But he waited, one foot in, one foot out, breathing soft. ‘Clyde, you at home?’ The woman had looked too sharp and mean to leave her door open, she looked the sort for deadbolts and alarms.

  After a moment Rosser stepped inside. He wiped the handle with his handkerchief and closed the door softly. All right. He took his rubber gloves out, a size too small, and felt like a surgeon as he worked them on. His eyes were darting. Kitchen and dining room on the right, staircase left, living room ahead, with a view, probably, over the harbour. The bedrooms would be upstairs. That was where he’d find the money and jewels that he was after, and maybe a small camera – anything small. Leave the videos and computers and sound systems for the boys who came round in the vans.

  He went up quickly, two at a time – not a creak or whisper from his feet. Doors all wide – fresh air freaks: he wasn’t going to open one and find some kid with the measles staring at him from a bed. ‘Shit!’ A cat. It was by him like a weasel and down the stairs. He heard a cat-door rattle in the kitchen and stood still for a moment, calming down. But he liked that sort of cat, not the ones that slimed around your legs. He couldn’t work with cats watching him. There was a guy in England who strung them up with pantyhose from the wardrobe door. Trademark. It disgusted Rosser. He wasn’t a nutter, he was a pro. No sign at all was his mark.

  He looked in two rooms and found them empty, with the beds stripped; so he was right, her kids were gone. And in the big front bedroom there was only a single bed, centred on the wall, with the paper bright on each side where a double bed had been. She was widowed or her old man had taken off. It disappointed Rosser, his chances would be halved. But he wasted no time thinking: went to the windows, moving sideways along the wall, and looked out round the curtain; saw the road with a car, another bloody Volvo, going down. Further off, on a strip curving out of hedges and curving in, he saw her and her dog crossing over, the dog still pulling along in front. They climbed the steps over the hump leading to Upland Road. So she was heading for the shops. It gave him time – but he didn’t need time. Whatever the conditions he worked fast, cutting risks to the minimum. It was a test he put himself to: get in and out fast, no matter how much he wanted to enjoy a house – eat the food, lie on the beds, piss in the fancy toilets. He never did that. Never trashed a place – hated the bastards who did. He liked the people he stole from. The richer they were the better he liked them.

  He didn’t like this woman though. What was she, some female hermit? She had nothing. A stack of ten cent coins tipped on its side on the dressing table. A two dollar note with a scrap of paper clipped to it – ‘library fines’. No jewel box. A wedding ring lying in the dust by the coins. That was all. Rosser couldn’t believe his bad luck. All the time he needed and a house with nothing in it. He dropped the ring and the two dollar note in his bag and felt he was cheapening himself. No one lived like this in a half-million dollar house.

  He pulled out the drawers and felt underneath the clothes. He opened the cabinet by her bed and found her nightie and bedjacket stuffed inside. It made him curl his lip as he felt under them. Clothes should be folded, you didn’t just bunch them up and shove them away. He shook the books, each one, in the stack by her water glass, he even felt in her slippers and went through the clothes in the wardrobe. She was fooling him in some way, he was sure. There had to be something in the room.

  He went into the bathroom – en bloody suite – which didn’t look as if she used it much. A toothbrush, child-size, dangled from a holder, with an uncapped tube of Colgate underneath. Nothing in the shower, not even shampoo, although she’d been in today because the curtain was wet. He took off a glove and felt in the lavatory cistern, but found only a brick to save on water. Rosser felt a surge of rage. The bitch was cheating him. He lifted out the brick, meaning to slam it in the toilet bowl, but controlled himself and pressed it on the toothpaste tube instead. A worm of paste wriggled out and made a cock and balls. Rosser didn’t like that and he squashed it with the brick. He dried his hand on a towel and worked his rubber glove on, then went back to the bedroom and hunted some more. How could people live like this? It was immoral.

  He looked in the main bathroom. The bath was furred with dust around the plughole. A dead blowfly lay on its back beside a dried-out cake of soap cemented to the enamel. Downstairs was no better. The dining-room looked as if she never ate in it. There were books all over the table and leaning in stacks against the wall.

  ‘Two fucking dollars,’ Rosser said. You got that sort of place but it shouldn’t happen in Kelburn.

  There was nothing to do but get out now, leaving no mark. Then he remembered the brick and was offended with himself. Lack of discipline, that’s what it was. He went upstairs again to make everything tidy. They had to wait until they found their jewellery gone before they knew Brent Rosser had been around.

  He put the brick back in the cistern. He wiped the bench top clean with toilet paper and stopped himself from flushing it away. Some flushes were so loud you could hear them next door. He crushed the paper into a ball to chuck into a rubbish tin down town.

  ‘Drat the girl,’ a voice whispered harshly in his ear. Rosser almost dropped the wadded paper. He thought someone was in the bathroom with him, then found the range of the words and realised they came from outside. He stepped to the window and looked down between the louvre blades on to the side porch of the house next door. A woman with silver-yellow hair and bare shoulders and bony knees was bending over a potted fern on a wooden stand, fiddling with the moss around the roots. Rosser watched with pity and approval. They all thought their hiding place was original.

  She stood up and stepped out of sight, clattered in wooden sandals down the steps and down the path. He heard a gate open and close and a garage door rattle. He put the toilet paper into his bag, stepped neatly out of the bathroom and slid along the wall to the front windows. Half an eye was enough. A car backed out of a garage dug underneath the lawn. It went away with a jump and Rosser watched until it appeared on the stretch of road further down. He felt he had been made a gift, and he took the two dollar note from his bag and put it back on the dressing table. Next door would make it up to him.

  He went downstairs, let himself out, closed the door softly. The cat was by the birdbath and it shot off behind the garden shed. He liked cats because they were loners – and where you found cats you didn’t oft
en find big dogs. All the same he stopped at the gap in the hedge and looked for a kennel, looked for bones. It was dangerous coming at a house from the back.

  Clyde. He got it ready. A trampoline with a sweatshirt lying on it arms spread out, stood on the lawn, on blocks of wood. So there were kids – but school wasn’t out. Sheets and towels and tea towels hung on the line: the hot wash, no panties. Rosser put the thought out of his mind. He wasn’t a perv. Once he’d nicked an envelope filled with dirty photos but had felt sick having them in his bag and got rid of them in a rubbish tin back in town. Ponder would have given him something, maybe quite a lot, but that wouldn’t make up for carting them around. He didn’t do porn and he didn’t do drugs.

  A lawnmower was growling two or three houses away and through a gap between trees, on the next hillside, a man was painting a roof from silver to green. Close by there was nothing. The section was still and the house was empty. Even the wind seemed to turn away.

  Rosser went along the path to the side porch. He found the key in the moss, first try; opened the door a body-width, slipped inside. This was better. This was going to be the place. Okay, it was untidy: vacuum cleaner sitting in the middle of the floor, phone book open, whiteboard full of messages half smeared out, a pile of old Dominions spilling off a chair. But he knew that untidy didn’t mean you were short of loot. Sometimes it meant the opposite: you were so rich you didn’t have to care. It made him contemptuous all the same, made him draw himself in a little. Keeping tidy was part of keeping clean. Two houses in a row with dust and blowflies. He felt he deserved to take everything they had.