The One That Got Away

by Jennifer Palgrave

  ‘Don’t you remember,’ said Lauren. ‘I’m not going till Monday evening, I’m seeing Kevin Driscoll’s mother on Monday. I talked to you about it yesterday.’ Kirsten lifted the phone again, walked about the room, and said ‘No, I’m tied up then too. Let’s get together during the week. A drink after work, or even dinner.’ She smiled as she finished the call and slid the phone into her pocket.

  ‘Who was that?’ said Lauren. She hoped it sounded casual but she could not help feeling nervous.

  ‘Oh, just Bee.’ Kirsten hesitated. ‘We’re trying to organise a get-together in a week or two, the gang from Greece.’

  ‘Give my apologies,’ Lauren said coolly.

  Kirsten flushed. ‘I didn’t think to talk to you about it since you’re not usually up here.’ It was clear that Kirsten didn’t see Lauren as one of ‘the gang.’ Fair enough, but why did Lauren feel that there was more to it than that. Recalling Bee’s manner in Greece, as well as their little spat, Lauren smarted. Still, may as well keep the peace.

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ she said lightly and changed the subject. ‘Kirsten, about my visit to see Mrs Driscoll, can I borrow your car? She still lives down in South Auckland in Lange’s old electorate.’

  Kirsten was unusually snappish. ‘Of course you can borrow it. But I’ve been thinking about what you told me. I don’t know why you want to go on a silly wild goose chase.’ Lauren was offended and looked it.

  Kirsten ignored the look. ‘Everyone knows Lange wasn’t well in his second term and he died a few years later. Probably because of all that weight he carried.’ Kirsten prided herself on her fitness and a slim figure. ‘And as for that backbencher’s claim, he was probably just trying to impress the woman with what a devil he was. Surely you don’t believe it? Things like that don’t really happen in New Zealand.’

  ‘Oh yes they do.’ Lauren snapped back. ‘What about the Trades Hall bombing in Wellington in the eighties–they still haven’t found out who killed that poor caretaker.’

  Kirsten snorted. Their earlier mood was shattered. She got up and said, ‘Would you like tea before we go to bed? I’m pretty tired, it’s been a busy week at work.’

  The weekend’s shaky start was forgotten when they woke the next morning. They lingered in bed, made up in a very satisfactory manner and emerged for showers late on Saturday morning. Any tensions seemed a long way off. The rest of the weekend was their usual pleasurable mix of walks, meals out and music. This weekend it was a concert in the Town Hall, the Auckland Philharmonic playing Mozart, Berg and Mahler, with a wonderful guest soprano. The Mozart was frothy, the Berg songs romantic and the Mahler was profoundly moving. When they talked again about Lauren using Kirsten’s car, it was just about logistics.

  On Monday morning Lauren drove Kirsten to her Parnell office. Kirsten’s new car was a work one and Lauren wondered if she should really be driving it, but there seemed to be few rules these days. You had to be available at all times and in return, the company supplied you with everything you needed. Lauren could see into the glass foyer of the agency, people lounging around on bean bags and a couple of them playing pool, presumably staff, not clients. She told Kirsten she would have the car back to her by lunchtime. She hoped they could have lunch together, but Kirsten said she would be busy and would drop off Lauren at the Skybus. Lauren was hurt but didn’t say anything.

  She pulled out of the entry way into the Auckland traffic, making sure she was in the correct lane at the Grafton on-ramp. Once she had driven over the harbour bridge by mistake. A tense moment or two while she wondered if she’d pulled it off and then she was on the southern motorway.

  Kirsten had advised her to use the GPS, but Lauren was too impatient to sit parked, learning the unfamiliar technology. Kirsten should have set up the GPS for her. Too late now, she just followed the old route towards the airport exiting at Gillies Avenue, crawling through Epsom, Greenlane, Onehunga, and across the Mangere Bridge. As she crossed it she looked down at the old bridge, now used by walkers or folk fishing. It always reminded her of the famous strike over building the new bridge, which went on for years. Her father used to reminisce about it, and Kevin’s father was one of the hold-outs.

  Mangere itself was a puzzle to Lauren. She usually went straight through on the motorway to and from the airport. The volcanic cone was to her right and the main part of the suburb was on the southern side. She exited and drove past streets of near derelict state houses before arriving at the new town centre.

  Mrs Driscoll had given her directions from there. They were not hard to follow. She turned right at the street, original state houses which looked in good shape, mostly owner-occupied after a generous buy-back scheme in the sixties. No kids out and about, one man with a walking frame, no cars rusting on the lawns. Nice shrubs and flower beds in the front gardens.

  She pulled up at number eleven. The Driscoll house was distinctive. The front was a mass of planting, no lawn, just a pathway winding up to the front door. A climbing plant practically obscured the garage on the right.

  She pushed the doorbell but could hear no sound within the house. Remembering her recent spell of door-knocking for Labour, she thought yet again that no Kiwi doorbells ever worked, they must just have been a 1960s fashion. So she tapped on the glass and soon heard footsteps.

  Mrs Driscoll was spare and slightly stooped. She wore a shabby green cardigan over a shapeless dress, despite the warm summery day, and stockings with her scuffed moccasins. Her face was wrinkled, with white hair pulled back into a bun. She greeted Lauren less than effusively but was polite enough. ‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll put on the jug.’

  She turned and set off at a good pace, Lauren following her through the gloomy hallway and the living room, into a sunny kitchen and dining area. The place was run down, original wallpaper bearing the marks of time, scuffed carpet and dusty venetian blinds. The living room looked as if it was frozen in the seventies, with its vinyl covered lounge suite and chrome ashtray, although there was a softer cushioned chair facing a newish flat screen television.

  They sat down at the kitchen table with their cups of tea, lemon balm it tasted like, though Mrs Driscoll didn’t say so and obviously expected her to drink it without comment. They exchanged a few pleasantries, the older woman recalling how accomplished a gardener Lauren’s mother had been, noted for her lavenders. Lauren raised the topic of naturopathy courses. Mrs Driscoll was not too keen on them. ‘Healing with herbs is a gift. If you don’t have it, you won’t learn it from doing a course.’ After ten minutes of this, Lauren steered the conversation to Kevin.

  ‘I was talking to someone back in Wellington about the Lange era when your son Kevin was an MP at the time. Did you see much of him then?’

  ‘He was always a good boy.’ Mrs Driscoll smiled fondly. ‘Charlie died after Lange became MP for Mangere and Kevin continued Charlie’s activism, working for the party.’ She looked proud. ‘After school Kevin got a management training job in a factory on the North Shore. He took a flat over there and seemed very settled. Then he put himself forward for Birkdale. He worked very hard and the party liked him.’

  She pondered, rattling her cup down on the saucer. ‘Though he always worried he was getting places on Charlie’s coattails. The dear boy, he had plenty of talent himself.’ Lauren murmured encouragingly, hoping she’d get on with it. She was having a hard job pretending to be impressed by the young Kevin Driscoll’s achievements.

  Mrs Driscoll continued. ‘He won in 1984, I think it was, when Labour got in. Then he had to spend a lot of time in Wellington. He came back to his electorate Fridays and Saturdays and always came to lunch on Sundays.’

  So far, so good, thought Lauren, but how could she raise the matter of the tonic? She persevered with the discussion about Kevin. ‘It must have been tiring for him, all that travel, and good to have a decent meal cooked by his mum on Sundays.’ Abject flattery, somehow the kitchen didn’t look as if Mrs Driscoll spent much time on meals. There were herbal pre
parations and glass jars on every surface.

  Mrs Driscoll accepted the compliment. ‘Yes, they spoil their appetite for proper meals, all those functions and the alcohol flowing. Kevin has a delicate constitution, not like his father.’

  Delicate constitution–Lauren had a heaven-sent memory, a moment of inspiration. ‘I expect you gave him some of your tonic,’ she said. ‘When my mother was poorly, you gave her a bottle.’

  ‘You’ve got a very good memory, dear.’ Mrs Driscoll looked a little suspicious, though it was hard to tell. That seemed to be her natural demeanour.

  ‘Mother mentioned it in one of her letters. We used to write every week when I was a student at Cambridge.’

  ‘You were the bright one, weren’t you?’ Once again, Mrs Driscoll had a slightly disparaging tone. Sometimes, thought Lauren, you just have to push harder or you won’t get anywhere. She steered the topic away from her mother and the unsuitably academic daughter. ‘You must have been concerned about how poorly David Lange looked during his second term in office?’

  ‘I was. He was a dear man and he so often didn’t look well. I asked Kevin to take the tonic to Mr Lange.’

  ‘Really? And did he appreciate it?’

  ‘Oh yes, he told Kevin it gave him a real boost and asked for more. Kevin took it to him regularly over a few months. Then Kevin told me that some doctor told him to stop taking it.’ Lauren was puzzled, she wondered if someone knew what was going on? Mrs Driscoll went on. ‘Silly fool, doctors can be so narrow-minded. Such a pity he was taken so soon. I put that down to conventional medicine.’

  The older woman got up and looked in a cupboard for something, but apparently did not find it. A bottle of tonic, perhaps? She came back to the table and started talking again. ‘Mr Lange came from a fine local family. His father was a GP. He delivered my Kevin.’ Lauren smiled with some effort. ‘Dr Lange always respected my remedies and sometimes recommended them for his patients. Not like some doctors,’ she added darkly. ‘Dr Lange even wrote a letter to the chemist so that I could buy ingredients that you couldn’t get off the shelf. The chemist had a register and you needed special dispensation to get them.’

  ‘Gosh’, Lauren said innocently, ‘I’ve never heard of that. Do you mean poisons?’

  Mrs Driscoll looked at her sharply. ‘Some ingredients are dangerous in the wrong hands.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Lauren. ‘Can I perhaps see where you make your remedies?’

  Mrs Driscoll brightened. ‘Come out the back and I’ll show you.’

  They walked slowly across brick paving where a black cat lay stretched out in the sun. The ramshackle shed was padlocked. Inside the shelves were neatly organised, neater than the kitchen. There were shelves of empty bottles, presumably waiting to be filled. Another wall held labelled jars of powders, liquids, commercial preparations and dried herbs.

  Mrs Driscoll said, ‘I grow most of my own herbs and gather some traditional Māori remedies from the bush.’ She began to explain some of the principles of herbal medicine. Lauren tried to listen as she spoke, but at the same time, she was running her eyes over the jars. They were organised in alphabetical order, and in a moment she had spotted aconite.

  She interrupted, hoping Mrs Driscoll would not find her query odd. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ve just been hearing about aconite. You use it, do you? My friend was telling me that she’d got interested in naturopathy because someone had given her homeopathic doses before she had some surgery.’

  Mrs Driscoll looked interested. ‘Yes, I don’t altogether hold with homeopathy but I do use homeopathic doses in some of my preparations. I’m not letting you into a secret, because it’s the mix that’s important, but aconite is the key ingredient in my tonics. It’s a homeopathic dose there, it has to be measured very carefully. Even though I grow aconite, it’s one of the ingredients that I get from the chemist because the titration has to be accurate. Like many plant remedies, a little is good, too much can make you sick or even be fatal. That’s why I won’t pass on my recipes–I don’t trust anyone else to do it right.’

  She ushered Lauren out of the shed, locked it and they walked slowly back to the house. Lauren thanked her and left. Poor lonely woman with her off-putting mannerisms, wasting her small supply of affection on her mean-spirited son. But she had been something of a heroine in helping out girls in trouble back in the days before abortion law reform. Would she have taken risks to help out her son? Surely not, she spoke so affectionately of the Langes. Kevin must have acted alone, taking some aconite from his mother and spiking one of the bottles of tonic that he regularly delivered to Lange. Anyway, there it was. Aconite.

  12

  ‘Tell me truly what thou thinkst of him’

  At four thirty on Tuesday Lauren fronted up to police headquarters, got through security and made her way to the seventh floor. She was excited, very pleased with what she and Ro had discovered so far. When she had arrived home from Auckland on Monday and told Phyl about the tonic, Phyl had immediately arranged a meeting with Deirdre Nathan. She said the new evidence could be important.

  Lauren was ushered into a small nondescript office. The walls were institutional cream and sported a calendar and year planner, the desk was utilitarian and held a computer as well as piles of paper, and there were two upright vinyl-covered visitors’ chairs. The most interesting feature of the room was the woman who came out from behind the desk to greet her. Deirdre Nathan was tall with an upright stance, not in uniform but in a smart black suit. She had strong dark wavy hair with a tinge of grey around the edges and watchful brown eyes which gave nothing away. Not so much younger than me, Lauren thought.

  Deirdre offered Lauren one of the visitor’s chairs and instead of retreating behind her desk, took the other, and got straight to the point.

  ‘Phyl tells me you’ve got something new on the Lange investigation.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Lauren. ‘Thank you so much for seeing me so promptly.’ She poured out the story. The two recorded interviews with Judith Butler that led to Kevin Driscoll, Michael having seen Lange taking a tonic that Kevin’s mother had sent, Lauren visiting Kevin’s mother and confirming that she supplied the tonic, and that it contained aconite.

  ‘So,’ she finished up, ‘it’s clear that Kevin Driscoll tried to poison Lange, all the evidence points to him, don’t you think?’

  She paused and Deirdre, who had been listening intently, said, ‘I’m afraid not. You see, we already suspected it was the tonic.’ She reached over to her desk and shuffled through some old-looking files. ‘Yes, here it is. A statement from Dr Waddell. He was the registrar who spotted something unusual about Lange’s symptoms and arranged special tests, which showed it up.’ She smiled at Lauren and put the paper back on the desk.

  ‘Oh!’ Lauren was gutted. She stared at Deirdre open-mouthed. ‘You mean we’ve done all this to find out something you already knew?’

  Deirdre didn’t disagree. She explained that they’d asked Lange at the time what he’d been eating or drinking and a tonic with unknown ingredients was an obvious source. After Lange said Kevin Driscoll brought it for him, from his mother, they’d called in Kevin, but he insisted he just delivered the bottles. They had tested a bottle still on Lange’s desk to find it had just a trace of aconite, appropriate for the tonic.

  ‘Either we were on the wrong track, or Kevin had covered up well,’ said Deirdre. It was clear that she thought it was the latter.

  Lauren felt deflated. She and Ro had been so pleased with themselves. Then she brightened. ‘But surely the interviews with Judith Butler are new evidence?’

  Deirdre looked doubtful. ‘Send them through to me and I’ll have a listen, but it’s just a second-hand report from an old lady who could have misremembered or made it up. And it doesn’t sound as if she would be fit to testify. A defence lawyer would rip her to bits.’

  She went on, ‘Kevin would have to do something very silly to be brought to book. We do keep an eye on him, we take attem
pted murder very seriously, but nothing substantial has come up. He’s an immigration consultant these days, working largely with overseas business people who want to settle here.’ Her voice was neutral, but Lauren felt she might not approve of Kevin’s current occupation.

  ‘He always hung around business people, apparently,’ said Lauren, ‘though I guess you know that too. I know one of them–Brett Wilson–he was a student in Cambridge at the same time as I was. An Australian who stayed on in England and then had a career as an international money man, whatever that means. I expect to see him soon, he and his wife are coming on holiday to New Zealand, planning to buy a piece of land here.’

  Deirdre looked interested. ‘We think that if Kevin did try to kill Lange, he wasn’t acting alone, and as you say, he did hang round with money men. From memory, Brett Wilson is one of the names that came up when the case was investigated. Contact me again if you should learn anything else.’ She stood up, and it was clear the interview was over. She ushered Lauren to the lift and said goodbye.

  Lauren drove home, disconsolate. It was obvious that Kevin had tried to kill David Lange, and Judith Butler said that other people had been involved in the plot. How could she find out enough to persuade the police to prosecute? Deirdre was impressive, so it would have to be convincing.

  She was still pondering, still feeling gloomy, when she drove over to Ro’s the next day. She parked the car and walked into the property. Skirting the customary obstacles she made her way to the back door, open as usual, knocked, called out and went in. She was halfway down the hall as Ro emerged from her study. She led Lauren into the living room, still looking somewhat abstracted. Lauren knew that look: Ro was half with her, but her mind was still back in her study working on whatever she was doing.