Hounds of the Underworld (The Path of Ra Book 1)

by Dan Rabarts

  “Hey, Craig. Good to see you, man.” Stepping in, Matiu shakes Craig’s hand and simultaneously slaps him on the shoulder in the traditional post-match ritual. “Been way too long. You must be coming close to running the country by now.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says Craig, beaming.

  “Well, it won’t be far off,” Mum interrupts. “Craig was just telling me he got a promotion recently. He’s reporting directly to the Transport Minister now.”

  “Really? That’s great, man.”

  Craig waves his hand dismissively. “I’m a glorified coffee boy with a bit of extra paperwork, that’s all.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll be kissing babies before you know it,” Mum insists.

  Penny can imagine how pleased her mother is to have squeezed a mention of babies into the conversation. She fancies Craig for Penny. Or rather, she fancies him for the leg up he can give the family business, with Penny being served up as the sweetener. Bartered like a piece of common property. This isn’t the Middle Ages. Penny doesn’t appreciate her parents’ assumption that she’ll play along, even if all that’s involved is a few hours of small talk over a family dinner. And she definitely will not be providing any sacrificial babies. Things like that don’t have to run in generations. All Penny has to do is stop the cycle. Although convincing her mother of that may be harder than getting a rainfall reading in a hailstorm.

  Craig, though, seems happy enough with the unspoken arrangement. Penny considers the man chatting with Matiu. Something about him makes her skin prickle. He looks well enough, but he has a slightly too-polished air about him, which has nothing to do with his plastic enhancements. Perhaps it’s that his belt doesn’t have a single over-stretched belt hole, or it’s the flawless triangular symmetry of the Windsor knot in his shot silk tie, or the perfect rounded curve of his manicure. Whatever it is, it makes Penny want to go over there and muss up his hair—and not in a sexy way either. Craig throws back his head and laughs loudly at a comment of Matiu’s, their mother chiming in with her tinkly treble notes. He might be full of good-natured bonhomie, here in a private setting among longtime friends, but Penny suspects in public it’d be another story. In any official capacity, Craig’s the sort to put a judicious layer between himself and anyone who might tarnish his campaign image. Someone like Matiu would be shunted into the background by Craig’s security entourage. In a photo, he’d be digitally removed, or at the very least another body be slipped in to buffer Penny’s bad-boy brother from the political politeness of her suitor. But behind closed doors when the curtains are drawn and the lights dimmed? Who is he then? When that immaculate Windsor knot is loosened and the mask comes off? Stifling a shudder, Penny thinks of the tests waiting for her back at the lab. She heaves a sigh. It’s going to be a long evening.

  Throughout the meal, Craig is über-charming. Penny can’t help but be flattered by the attention. She wonders if perhaps she’s misjudged him; not bothering to look past the shiny packaging to see the product it contains. “So tell us a bit more about your new lab, Pandora,” he’s saying, dabbing at the corner of his lips with a napkin. “I must say, I think it’s entrepreneurial of you to go out on your own. Kiri tells me you’ve been doing environmental analyses? That’s valuable work.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Pandora’s always been a big proponent of the environment,” says Mum.

  Craig nods, his head bobbing, reminding Penny of her ecology studies and the ritualistic nod-swim ducks make when mating. “It’s very commendable.”

  Penny’s mother beams and nods back, making Penny feel slightly nauseous. Craig may be charming, but she wishes her mother wouldn’t throw him at her. Does she really believe that if she presents the lost puppy enough times, eventually Penny will scoop him up and take him home? Penny’s quite capable of choosing her own date. And her own husband for that matter. On this point, Penny holds to her mother’s Māori heritage which allows a woman to choose with whom she sleeps. Or indeed, with whom she chooses not to sleep. Although, obviously, in Penny’s case, a half titre of Māori doesn’t count.

  “Actually, Pandora’s been contracted by the police,” Matiu interrupts.

  Immediately, their mother’s antennae go up. “What’s this about the police?”

  Damn it, Matiu.

  Mum raps her chopsticks impatiently against the side of her bowl, as if she’s been using them all her life and not just since she married Dad, trying to prove that she’s something, or someone, she’s not. Because any Chinese child knows that rapping your chopsticks against your bowl is the height of bad manners.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Heaven help her if Penny dared to do the same. Yet another thing for her parents to reprove her for, but then, she’s not the parent, and this isn’t her house. “I don’t like the sound of Pandora carrying out analyses for the police,” Mum says “We don’t know what she might be getting herself into. Hing, tell her. I don’t want Pandora getting involved in anything untoward.”

  “It’s not really that big a deal…”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Matiu says. The missile loosed, he scoops translucent vermicelli noodles into his mouth, his eyes on his bowl, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

  Well, two can play at this game. Penny plasters on a smile. “Matiu, I know it’s sweet of you to drive me, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate to be discussing a case…”

  “So it is dangerous. Hing, please say something. I don’t like this at all. And working with the police. It’s so…so sordid.”

  “Pandora?”

  “I told you before, Daddy. It’s just work. Matiu’s exaggerating. Honestly, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Pandora, when you asked us to give you some money to set up your lab, you led us to believe that you’d be taking on contracts the bigger laboratories didn’t consider lucrative. You planned to create a niche, providing routine, low key work in a timely manner. I’m sure those were the words you used. There was no mention of crime work. It was going to be straight-forward medical analyses and environmental sampling. Not police work.”

  “I didn’t say…the money was an investment…”

  Her mother turns to Craig. “I’ve never liked it when she works for the police, even when she was working for LysisCo.”

  I’m right here, Mother.

  Craig shakes his head like a teacher whose favourite student has turned in a C paper. “I’m afraid I have to agree with your parents on this one, Pandora. The police deal with some shady characters. The circles I’m in, I hear things. And not particularly savoury things either. Forgive me for saying this, but I think it’s highly inadvisable for a woman like yourself—and especially from this family—to be carrying out scientific trials for the police.”

  Penny is livid. Who does Craig think he is? Just a few minutes ago she’d thought him amiable and charming. The pompous oaf! He needs to get his head out of his arse. Since when does making public policy entitle him to decide what she should do?

  “You see? Even Craig agrees,” her mother concludes, as if Craig’s are the last words to be said on the matter. “It’s far too dangerous. You’ll have to phone them up immediately, Pandora. Tell them to get someone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Mum, I can’t do that.”

  Her mother’s eyes flash. She points her chopsticks—like a witch’s wand—at Penny. “But surely, since we’re shareholders, we get a say, don’t we, Hing?”

  Dad’s expression is stony. “As Pandora’s parents, we get a say.”

  Penny throws down her napkin and pushes back her chair, a pang of disappointment at leaving the rest of the fun see chow wan yee. It can’t be helped. In the short space of one evening, her family has managed to negate two centuries of women’s suffrage. Someone has to make a stand. “I’m sorry, I’ve just remembered something I have to do.”

>   “But you haven’t finished your dinner,” her mother wails.

  “It’s really quite urgent.”

  Urgent that she get out of here.

  “Pandora!” Her father stands now, the sound of his chair grating on the schist.

  Bum. If her father is prepared to step away from his favourite dish, then it’s serious. Penny stops, waiting for his rebuke.

  “Since you’re going to insist on being imprudent, then I will insist that Matiu go with you at all times.” He speaks in a near whisper.

  “But…”

  “Pandora.”

  There’s no point in arguing. Penny wishes she’d never agreed to the loan. She should’ve known it would come with strings attached. Who’s she kidding? Her parents don’t need the threat of calling in their loan to manipulate her. Suddenly, she catches sight of Matiu chasing a slippery piece of pak choi around his bowl with his chopsticks. The look on his face. He’s smirking! Knowing that by this point she must be as pink and sizzling as a shrimp on a hotplate, Penny glares at her brother.

  He did this.

  Exasperated, she turns on her heel and, grabbing her satchel, makes a stormy exit. It’s not until she’s out on the street that she realises she’s stuck. Without Matiu she’s got no way of getting back to the lab.

  CHAPTER 6

  - Matiu -

  As the door slams, Matiu stands and spreads his hands in a placating manner.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” he says, putting down his napkin. “It’s been a big day. You know our Pandora, doesn’t cope very well under pressure.”

  “Yes, well,” Mum says, tapping her wine glass with one manicured nail, “that’s why I don’t think she should be getting herself mixed up in this police business. You go talk some sense into her, darling. She listens to you.”

  “That’s right,” Dad agrees, his voice relaxed but the tight set of his shoulders speaking volumes. He turns to Craig. “So, this new biofuel prospect in the Waikato, who’s behind it?”

  Dismissed, Matiu nods to their dinner guest and heads for the door. Pandora isn’t in the hallway, so he presumes she’s taken the lift to the ground floor. He calls the elevator and descends to the parking garage.

  Cerberus isn’t tied up where they left him near the car—No, of course you can’t bring a dog up here, Bituin had said on the phone, your mother will have a fit—so Matiu scoops up the blanket, tips out the water from the bowl and tucks these, along with the dog’s biscuits, into the back seat. Penny might be a temperamental little princess sometimes, but she’s not silly enough to go walking the streets of Auckland after dark without some sort of protection. He guns the engine and swings up the ramp, headlights sweeping the footpath and dark shop windows. Tapping and swiping the screen of the onboard GPS, he quickly locates her phone and pinpoints her location, one block over.

  She’s walking, shoulders hunched, Cerberus straining at the leash, in the direction of the lab, which is just silly. It’ll take her an hour to walk that far, if she makes it at all. Lot of nutters between here and there. He winds down the passenger window and pulls in to the curb.

  “Hey lady, wanna ride?”

  “Sod off,” she growls.

  “Just hop in. I’ll take you to the lab.”

  Penny stops, wiping one hand across her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be hauling me back in front of our parents for another interrogation?”

  Matiu snorts. “Hell no. I needed an excuse for us to get out of there. You storming out was as good as any.”

  She glares at him through the open window, her eyebrow raised suspiciously. “You wound me up just to get out of dinner? What are you up to?”

  Matiu spreads his hands in mock innocence. “We’ve got a case to investigate, sister. Crime never sleeps and all that.”

  “Those cutesy puppy-dog eyes don’t work on me, remember?” But nevertheless, she opens the back door so that Cerberus can clamber in and settle on his blanket, then slides into the passenger seat. “You can talk and drive, right?”

  Matiu checks his mirrors and pulls onto the street. “You’re cute when you’re angry. Craig’s gonna love that when you’re hitched.”

  “Shut up about Craig and tell me about the dogs. And what, specifically, do you think you’re going to find on Fletcher’s laptop?”

  “Porn, probably,” he says, “but hopefully not dog porn. That’d just be gross.”

  “I’m so glad we can agree on something,” Penny deadpans.

  “I’ve got an idea about the dogs. But I need to know who Fletcher was in contact with before he disappeared.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Not yet. Mum and Dad aren’t even happy with you being involved with the police. They sure as hell wouldn’t want you getting mixed up with the people I know.”

  “You see?” Penny throws her hands up in frustration. “This is the thing I just don’t get. I’m the responsible one. I’m the one with an education and a career and some life skills, but they treat you like their golden boy. You, who went to prison for possession and aggravated assault. You, who, freaking well talks to himself when you think no one’s listening. How in the hell are you the model child, and I’m the one they constantly think they need to fix?”

  Matiu nods a little. “What can I say? I’m the prodigal son. Fell in with the wrong crowd is all. Cleaned myself up, paid my dues. You, you’ll always be their little girl. More than I was ever their little boy. They look out for you, that’s all. Leave me to look out for myself.”

  Penny’s mouth opens, but she closes it again without speaking. Matiu keeps his eyes on the road, letting the words sink in. She knows as well as he does that they were never equals, growing up. Pandora’s mother had had an obligation to whangai the young Matiu, bringing him into their home and raising him as their own when it became apparent her sister couldn’t care for him. And Matiu had taken after his biological mother in that regard, a black sheep of sorts, for reasons he could never explain to his adoptive parents lest they medicate him into a waking stupor. How do you tell your distracted, craven father and your hand-wringing, guilt-ridden mother that you have an imaginary friend who actually talks to you, all the freaking time? And that with the sort of shit he tells you, about yourself, about other people, it’s no real surprise Matiu used to lose his wicket and lay into the other kids far more often than was reasonable, even for a kid of his age. Or that when he was old enough to make the right contacts, he delved into whatever substances he could lay his hands on in the vain hope of making the voice at his shoulder just shut the hell up for a while.

  Not that anything ever worked, until he’d started driving. Spending nine months in a cell with Makere had nearly driven Matiu absolutely bat-shit crazy. It was there, behind bars, that he’d learned to deal with Makere as best he could, and where he made his resolution to stay clean and out of trouble when he got out, just so he’d have a chance to work as a driver. Because when he was driving, for whatever reason, Makere couldn’t taunt him. He had the family connection to land a driving job, but even Daddy Yee with his lucrative government transport contracts wouldn’t let a drugged-out thug behind the wheel of his cars. So Matiu got out of prison, stayed clean and held down his job, and Makere was pushed a little further from his mind. Eventually, he just might push him all the way out. But Makere was a tenacious bastard.

  “You know that’s not true,” Pandora says quietly. Dank streetlights flare and decay through the windshield, painting her face in waves of burnt umber, jaundice, and shadow.

  Matiu shrugs, swinging onto a side street. “Don’t see them making any effort to marry me off.”

  He flinches as she hits him in the shoulder. “Think yourself lucky. I mean, Craig Tong. Seriously? Here, daughter dearest, please marry this delightful Investment Fund. What a creep.”

  He spares her a glance. “Ye
ah, but with all your science and shit, you could probably slip him something and make it look like a natural death, right? I mean, once all the legal stuff is done, and you’re his sole benefactor and all that?”

  Penny stares at him, horrified. After a moment, she finds her voice. “You can’t be serious? Please tell me you’re not serious.”

  Matiu turns back to the road. “Hey, I’m just saying.” The bewildered shock in her eyes is priceless. He holds his composure for a suitably dramatic moment, then chokes back a snort of laughter. “Chill out, sister. You’re too uptight.”

  The car slides down the alley. The lab is dark.

  “Looks like Beaker went home.”

  “Good,” Matiu says, parking the car and pulling on the handbrake. “I reckon we might find out some things he doesn’t need to know.”

  - Pandora -

  A soft shaft of orange neon spills onto the benches from across the road. It’s a pity Matiu took Cerberus to do his business, Penny muses, because she could be entering the Kingdom of the Dead, and it would be comforting to have the slobbery rambunctiousness of a dog loping along at heel. But the poor dog has been shut up for days: he needs a run and a pee, Penny isn’t having him exercise either of those functions in her lab, so Matiu has taken him off for a quick tour of the park. Instead, she contents herself with the welcoming hum of the refrigerator and the cheery hello of her shoes in the gloom. She turns on the lights, fumbling to manage both the computer and the satchel, and blinks a second as the luminosity changes from 1 to 1000 lux, the recommended level for work tables in research environments. Popping the gear on those well-lit work tables, she goes to her coat hook, switches Beaker’s lab coat to the correct hook—honestly, Beaker—then takes down her own.