Death on Demand

by Paul Thomas

  Her father touched Ihaka’s arm. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “We’ll take care of Tiffany now.”

  At the door Ihaka said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to talk to her again.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “She might find out things about Arden she’d rather not know.” The father looked at him unblinkingly. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  “You mean he was different to what she thought?”

  Ihaka shrugged. “Part of him.”

  “Was he a criminal?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Ihaka. “We don’t know why he was killed – he might have been an innocent victim, or a guy who got out of his depth. But the chances are Tiffany’s going to get hurt all over again.”

  The father nodded. “Poor Tiffany. I always hoped she would never find out how hard the world can be.”

  Danny Howard, the owner/manager of the Departure Lounge, the nightclub where Arden had worked, was a fortyish knockabout who made no bones about the fact that he’d lost an asset as well as a mate.

  “He was worth his weight in gold, that bloke,” he told Ihaka. “A very classy, professional dude – and, just quietly, an absolute chick magnet. I’ve seen a chick scrawl her phone number on the back of his hand while her boyfriend was a metre away buying her a fifty-buck cocktail. I’ve seen another one complain she was feeling crook, get the poor bastard she was with to take her home, then bowl in here solo an hour later sexed up to the max. That sort of shit happened all the time, but he never let it become a situation, you know what I mean? He could handle himself, he could handle these feral women, and if their boyfriends or husbands twigged what was going on, he could handle them too.”

  “What was his secret?”

  Howard threw up his hands. “He just had a way about him. He’d smile that smile of his and come out with some line that let the chick know it wasn’t a happening thing, but without making her feel like a silly little slut for coming on so strong and getting the big fend. Sometimes he’d say thanks but no thanks and do a swift fade, and they’d be standing there thinking, did that really happen or did I imagine it?”

  “Or maybe, is that coke I did in the shithouse fucking with my head?”

  “Hey, come on, man,” protested Howard. “I run a clean house.”

  “Sure you do,” said Ihaka.

  “Damn right,” said Howard, apparently under the impression that Ihaka was being sincere. “And for the record, if there was anyone more anti-drugs than me, it was Arden. He could have a motherfucker of a headache, but he wouldn’t even take a Panadol.”

  “How did he handle the guys, especially the ones who saw it as him hitting on their girlfriends rather than vice versa?”

  “You’re not wrong there, mate,” said Howard. “That’s how it usually works. He’d just laugh it off, as if they were making a mountain out of a molehill. Put them off balance and walk away. Make them think, if I want to go on with this, I stand a pretty good chance of looking like a real fucking jerk. His fallback, when they just wouldn’t let it go, guy or girl, was to tell them he was gay.” He shrugged. “Let’s face it, he was pretty enough.”

  “So it was his professionalism that stopped him taking up these offers, as opposed to the fact he had a girlfriend?”

  “Oh shit no, it was both. Like, Arden was a pro, as I say. He understood you can’t have staff hitting on the clientele, even the singles, because that just pisses off other singles who are on the prowl. But Tiffany had a bit to do with it – he was pretty keen on her. He was just a classy dude, and not screwing around was all part of it.”

  The last confirmed sighting of Arden Black was at around four on Saturday afternoon when he met his business partner at their Newmarket café.

  Beth Greendale went out to Newmarket to meet the partner, a sleek young gay named Lucas Smythe. As he sniffled his way through a pack of tissues, Smythe told her that he and Arden had discussed cash flow and their increasingly temperamental barista and how, if it came to that, they’d spin his sacking at an Employment Relations Service hearing. Arden was his usual chilled-out self, looking forward to dinner with Tiffany at a new Vietnamese restaurant in K Road.

  “Was he a good guy to be in business with?” asked Greendale.

  “Oh, absolutely. The best. But he was just a good guy, full stop. He didn’t deserve this. He wasn’t a hard person, you know? He treated people well. My only peeve with him was that he didn’t spend enough time here because he could pull a crowd, that boy – both sexes. My gay friends were always ringing up wanting to know when Arden was coming in. It was usually after lunch, so he gave a few queens sleepless nights in more ways than one.”

  “How close were you?” asked Greendale. “I mean, did you socialize?”

  “No, not at all,” said Smythe. “I’m a single gay, he was a coupled-up straight. Plus he had his nightclub gig, so he wasn’t into clubbing on his nights off. I can relate to that: I only ever go into a café to work or to check out the competition. Plus Arden was kind of obsessive about keeping the different parts of his life separate. Like, I’ve spoken to Tiffany on the phone heaps of times, but I’ve never actually met her. He wouldn’t even show me a photo. He had this saying, ‘That’s why they call it a private life’.”

  “Really? So you didn’t know Tiffany was Asian?”

  “Nooooo! You’re kidding me.”

  “Does that seem out of character?”

  “Oh, God no. Arden was a cool guy, he didn’t have any hang-ups or prejudices. I just assumed she’d be some drop-dead gorgeous model girl. Not that Asian girls can’t be drop-dead gorgeous – we get them in here all the time. Oh my God, I’m tying myself in knots here. You know what I’m trying to say.” Smythe paused. “I did find out one of his secrets, although I never let on. You people must know this.”

  “What?”

  “His name. You obviously know about his name?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about his name?” said Greendale.

  The thought of being one step ahead of the police did wonders for Smythe’s mood. “When we started up this place and set up the partnership, we used Arden’s lawyer. Because I was always here and Arden often wouldn’t answer his cellphone – he was quote too busy unquote, although he wouldn’t tell you what it was that kept him so busy – the lawyer usually dealt with me, so I got to know him quite well.

  “Anyway, one night I ran into him in a bar in Ponsonby. He turned out to be one of those people who get a bit indiscreet when they’ve had a few. ‘I could tell you a secret about your partner,’ he said. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘You bet,’ he said. ‘You want to hear it?’ And I said, ‘Should you be telling me this?’ He said it wasn’t a big deal, it was just funny, so I said, ‘Okay, let’s hear it.’ He said, ‘Arden Black isn’t his real name. He went through the process to get it changed legally.’ ‘Is that right?’ I said, thinking, wow, some secret. He said, ‘You’ve got to promise not to let on to Arden that you know. When I tell you what his real name is, you’ll understand why our friend Mister Cool would be absolutely mortified.’ That sounded a bit more like it, so I crossed my heart and hoped to die. He lowered his voice as if he was about to reveal some hideous scandal: ‘His real name,’ he said, ‘is Warren Duckmanton.’”

  Smythe shook his head in wonderment. “I mean, really, Warren Duckmanton? My dear, in my entire life I’ve never met anyone who was less of a Warren Duckmanton than Arden.”

  Wellington sent up Eve Diack’s dental records, which gave the dead white female a name. Where would we be without dentists, wondered Ihaka. Even though her divorce had been finalized more than a year earlier, she’d understandably opted not to revert to her maiden name, which was Duckmanton.

  Ihaka was on the phone to Van Roon when Beth Greendale passed him a note. It said: “Arden Black wasn’t his real name. He changed it from Warren Duckmanton.”

  Ihaka stared at the note, hardly hearing the sensational information concerning a prominent politici
an, a transvestite and a rude awakening which Van Roon was sharing with him in the reasonable expectation that it would make Ihaka’s day.

  Ihaka ended the expectant silence that followed the punchline by asking, “Did Eve have any brothers and sisters?”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Sorry, mate, my mind was somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “On the job, as a matter of fact.”

  “You need a holiday,” said Van Roon. “You’re losing your sense of perspective.”

  “A couple of brutal murders can do that to you. Brothers and sisters, yes or no?”

  “Keep your hair on,” said Van Roon. “Okay, let’s have a look here. Yep, she had a younger brother.”

  “Called?”

  “Warren.”

  “Where’s he these days?” asked Ihaka, already knowing the answer: Warren Duckmanton was downstairs on a cold slab.

  “Interesting,” said Van Roon. “Warren shot through years ago – hasn’t been heard from since.”

  There was no serial killer. Serial killers either had a specific gender/age/physical type victim profile, or exploited target-rich locales opportunistically. A brother and sister sadistically murdered felt like a vendetta. It felt deeply, savagely personal.

  After the break-up of their marriage, Eve’s ex-husband Ray Diack had moved to Auckland to become head of PE at a North Shore high school. He lived in Mairangi Bay, in a weatherboard cottage whose peeling paint and tragic flowerbeds reminded Ihaka of a former life.

  Diack had long silvery hair, a gold earring hanging from his left lobe, and was slightly browner than Ihaka despite being Pakeha. His brief shorts and singlet showed off densely muscled thighs and arms. Ihaka guessed he was into bodybuilding and nudism, both of which he associated with sexual deviance.

  After examining Ihaka’s ID minutely, Diack took him out to the backyard. His outdoor furniture consisted of a well-padded recliner and a couple of wonky plastic chairs. When Diack was reclining comfortably, he said, “You look like you could use a beer.”

  It was a warm afternoon. There was a film of sweat on Ihaka’s face and damp patches under his arms. “I’m on duty,” he said.

  “You want a juice or something?”

  “She’s right,” said Ihaka. “I don’t want to take the edge off my thirst. I’ve got big plans for it.”

  Diack chuckled. “Know what you mean, mate. I’ll be lining up a few frosties when the sun goes down.”

  “You seem to be bearing up.”

  Diack fiddled with his earring. “Yeah, well, it was a hell of a shock, obviously. Bloody terrible business.” He stopped fiddling and looked Ihaka in the eye. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’ve been bawling my eyes out. Eve and me, we had some good times, but it didn’t last and she hasn’t been part of my life for a couple of years now.”

  Ihaka’s eyebrows twitched inscrutably. “So you weren’t in touch with her?”

  “There was the odd loose end, but that was it. Put it this way, we didn’t ring each other to say happy birthday.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  Diack decided it was time to deploy his sunglasses. “About a month ago, I suppose. She was coming up here and wanted to know a good restaurant. I’m a bit of a foodie, you see.”

  He made being a foodie sound like an achievement, akin to doing the Coast to Coast or adopting a little Chechen.

  “So she was up here a month ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’d be useful to know exactly when.”

  Diack shrugged. “Mate, it was like a two-minute call. I didn’t make a note of it.”

  “Did she say why she was coming up?”

  “We didn’t have those sorts of conversations. She asked about restaurants, I made a couple of suggestions, she said thanks and hung up. It was short but not particularly sweet.”

  “You ever meet Warren, her brother?”

  “Not many people have,” said Diack. “He disappeared well before I came on the scene.”

  “Did Eve ever talk about him?” said Ihaka. “What he was like, why he shot through, that sort of stuff?”

  “Oh yeah, now and again, but she didn’t have a clue why he buggered off. No one did, as far as I could make out.”

  “How did she feel about it?”

  “She felt for her parents, I know that much. It was kind of hard to get a handle on what she really thought about it because she went through phases. She’d be pissed off, almost bitter, for a while, then she’d go, ‘Oh, fuck him: he obviously doesn’t give a shit about me, so why should I give a shit about him?’ A few weeks later she’d be teary-eyed, saying how much she missed him and beating herself up for not doing more to track him down.”

  “So she did try?”

  Diack’s sigh drew a line from the pointlessness of Eve’s attempts to trace her brother to the pointlessness of Ihaka’s line of questioning. “Well, up to a point. She used to put ads in the personal columns on his birthday: ‘Dear little bro, I miss you. Please get in touch.’”

  “But he never did?”

  “No.”

  “As time went on, would you say it was more or less of an issue for her?”

  Diack tilted his head one way, then the other. “Shit, that’s hard to say. See, the longer we were together, the less we communicated, so for all I know it could have been driving her nuts.”

  “What went wrong between you two?”

  “We just weren’t cut out for marriage.” Diack’s teeth gleamed. “That whole monogamy thing.”

  “When you say ‘we’…”

  “I mean ‘we’.”

  “Well, at least you had something in common.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” said Diack. “Problem was, it got to the stage where we were both pretty much doing our own thing, so there didn’t seem much point staying together.”

  “Sounds pretty amicable.”

  More teeth. “Well, I made the call and you know what women are like – they prefer to make that decision. And they don’t like getting cut, whatever the circumstances.”

  “It’s possible Eve and Warren were killed by the same person,” said Ihaka. “Are you aware of the Duckmanton family or Eve herself having any enemies, or being involved in any sort of row or dispute?”

  “I had bugger all to do with the family – by choice – but as far as I was aware, Eve didn’t have an enemy in the world. And that includes me, by the way.”

  With the chesty strut of a man who felt he’d handled himself well, Diack walked Ihaka to his car. As he went to shake hands, Ihaka said, “Shit, I almost forgot to ask. Where were you on Saturday and Sunday night?”

  The sun had almost gone and so had the sunglasses. Diack blinked as if he’d been slapped by a stranger and his mouth opened and closed. “Are you serious?”

  “Two people have been murdered,” said Ihaka. “Whoever did it went to some trouble to make it a lot more painful than it needed to be. You fucking bet I’m serious.”

  “I was here,” blurted Diack. “Both nights.”

  “Who with?”

  “No one.”

  “So you spent the whole weekend on your own?” said Ihaka, laying on the scepticism.

  “Well, I was out during the day, of course. I’m just not in a relationship right now, okay?”

  Ihaka nodded sympathetically. “Hey, brother, I’m a single man myself. Still, that does make you a suspect. Technically speaking.”

  9

  Detective Constable Pringle traced the taxi driver who’d picked up Eve Diack from the motel. He took her to Mission Bay, but not to a specific address – anywhere around here, she’d said when they hit Tamaki Drive. He’d watched her in the rear-view mirror as he drove away. She stood on the footpath looking around, taking in the scene: Sunday afternoon on the waterfront, a sigh of breeze, a few ghost clouds out on the horizon, twenty-seven degrees of deep blue heat – there was a lot to take in.


  She was quite chatty, he said, the usual taxi-ride small talk, stuck in a car with a stranger for fifteen minutes and not wanting to seem rude: now this is my idea of summer – in Wellington we’d call this a heatwave; I don’t know why I put up with Wellington weather really, not that I could live here – the traffic would drive me nuts. Par for the course for visitors from the capital. They knock their weather to soften you up for the tourism-bureau spiel: having said that and on the other hand, Wellington’s a real city, it’s got a heart, it’s got a soul, it’s got cafés for Africa, it’s got culture coming out its arse. Absolutely, positively bullshit, the taxi driver called it, and Eve Diack had it down pat.

  They plastered Mission Bay with photographs of her, but no one came forward. She hadn’t come up to Auckland twice in just over a month to go for a stroll along the waterfront: she’d gone to Mission Bay to meet someone. Her long-lost brother? He was already dead, but she wouldn’t have known that. Maybe they had re-established contact and her trips to Auckland were making up for lost time.

  A lot of cruelty had gone into these murders. Maybe Warren was killed because he knew too much and the killer wanted to know if he’d shared that knowledge with anyone. In his pain and fear and desperation, Warren could have given up his sister and the time and place of their rendezvous. She went to Mission Bay to meet him, but the killer was waiting for her.

  Then what? Did the killer go through the same savage routine to make absolutely sure he’d covered his tracks? Or did he just enjoy hearing a woman scream?

  Ihaka stood in the domestic terminal at Auckland Airport, looking up at the departures board. Almost as if the gizmo could read his mind, it did that ripple thing. When the rippling stopped, his flight to Wellington had been delayed for an hour.