“Do you think she would’ve gone back to Oskin?”
“Nah, she was besotted with this guy, Uxxl. He kept both women happy, and they’d do anything for him. But Oskin, no – he had no idea how to treat her, eh? She was kept like a caged animal, she was. No bloody wonder she wanted out. All the same, that’s what women are for, eh? Making babies, cooking and cleaning? I dunno who she thought she was, eh? She wanted her freedom, mate, anyone could see that. I dunno why she married that Oskin. He’s a bloody cruel sod, everyone knows that. Mind you, she deserved what she got in the end for disobeying him like that.”
“So you think women should stay at home and obey their husbands and not have a life of their own?” Curtis expected this kind of response but was hoping Baxy would let something slip if he kept him talking. He did seem to be at least a little understanding of the injustices meted out to women. But then he’d resort to the standard Ryxin opinion, as if he realised he’d better stick to the dogma he was reared on.
“She’s Ryxin, and that’s what we were taught women were for. Firstly they must obey, and then if and when they want to go out they can – but only if their husbands give them the go-ahead. He didn’t want her out, probably ’cos she had a wandering eye and would sleep with the first Ryxin who showed his face. Turns out Oskin was right – it didn’t take her long to get a lover, eh? After that she got a taste for it. Oskin told me he suspected her. Then he had her followed one day and found out the truth.”
“Perhaps all she wanted was a little more freedom and kindness.”
“No, mate, you don’t know these Ryxin women. If you don’t keep them pinned down they take off and you can never get ’em back. I’ve known some who’ll sleep with half a dozen men in a week and still be looking for more.”
“You don’t have a partner, you said?” Curtis was curious that he’d never seen either Ferdy or Baxy with a woman of their own.
“No, mate, but I do have a woman who comes to me once a week for mating purposes only. That’s a bit different. It’s like a business arrangement, you see. We both understand each other and I make it worth her while. But at the same time she can’t pull out of the contract. It’s a five-year one. If she tried to I could make life hell for her. I’ve been seeing her for a year now. She’s a real looker, mate. I’m going to offer her another day soon and change the contract. Make it two days a week for the next year and then see how it goes. If I’m happy with her I might renew it. Strictly business, that’s the best way for me, and she seems to like it that way too.”
Baxy nodded authoritatively. “Last week she told me she wanted a break so she could go overseas on holiday. I had to turn her down – not part of the original contract, you see. But I could see she was upset so I said we could renegotiate. We’re having a meeting soon to work something out. I’ll probably say she needs to find a replacement for while she’s away. That would be something I’d consider. If she agrees to that we can set up an interview. I’d have to approve the woman first and get her to sign a contact too. To be a fill-in for Lodax when she’s sick or wants to go on holiday. Lodax is the best partner I’ve had.” He smiled lasciviously.
“Is she Ryxin?”
“She’s a professional Ryxin, one of many who have made themselves available as long-term mating partners. You see, there are some Ryxin men, forced into marrying Human women for the sake of breeding babies, who still have the need for Ryxin women. That’s why Lodax and others like her have gone into this particular business.”
Curtis looked over at Janux. She had her notebook open and was scribbling furiously. He made a bold decision to get straight to the point. “Did you know that Nayxana Vasco was born with the telepathy gene?”
Baxy seemed to hesitate for a couple of seconds. “That’s very interesting, Mr McCoy. So you think if I knew that then I’d want her dead?”
“Well, wouldn’t you?” Curtis knew he’d penetrated Baxy’s armour at last.
“As you know – all pure-bloods would consider her to be an aberration. I’m no different, mate. Why would I be? But no, I didn’t know and I didn’t kill her.”
“Where were you on Tuesday, 13th May?”
“Tuesday the 13th of May? Like I said, I was on the mainland with Lodax at her house. I’d been there overnight and all the next day. We used to spend the night together once a week, like I already told you. Only it wasn’t always the same day. Then I’d come back to Muritai the following evening. I usually caught the late ferry home. Hell, I knew nothing about the murder until the next day.”
Curtis found Baxy’s story convincing, but his alibi would need checking out.
As if reading his mind, Baxy suddenly said, “I can give you Lodax’s phone number if you want and you can ring her now. And you can ask Oskin as well. I told him I’d be seeing Lodax on the 13th and he said okay. He always allowed me at least one day off every week. Anyway, I think he knew he’d never get his wife back. That’s why he killed her, I reckon – to get revenge.”
“Okay, Mr Hurzy. So you’re still working for Sly Onyx, I take it?”
“There’s only me and Ferdy now. Ferdy’s been put in charge of the Breeding Programme until the Master’s better. I’m in charge of the house and anything else Sly wants me to do. I owe him, you see.”
CHAPTER 14
After breakfast the following morning Curtis and Janux went to his study and sat down to plan their next move.
“Lodax wants to meet me again, but not in the cafe this time.”
“So how did the pig know you were going to meet there?” Curtis said, clicking his pen as he spoke.
“Maybe he was following Lodax to find out where she was going and who she was meeting.”
“Perhaps that was it, but we need more information and I have an idea. I want you to go back to Uxxl and Zelene’s and search Nayxana’s room. Thank goodness Ryxin custom means that anything belonging to the deceased is not touched for at least six months after their death so everything should be intact. You’d better phone them first and request a search. It’ll be another step in your training, my love. Anyway, they know you now. I’ll be in the car outside. I don’t want you to risk going out alone until this is sorted. Okay?”
“All right, but what am I looking for?”
“Remember what it says in the handbook. You don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it. But I wonder if she kept any notes or maybe a diary? Go through everything, Janux. I think we’re getting warm now and we don’t want to lose the trail.”
The following morning, Janux and Curtis set off for the Aogans’ home. Janux had arranged to search Nayxana’s room at 9 a.m. and Zelene said she would be there to let her in, but then she’d have to leave for the Ryxin Women’s Refuge where she had recently begun working as the cook.
“No one has removed anything from Nayxana’s room since she died,” Zelene said when she let Janux in. “We loved her very much, you know.”
“Thanks, Zelene. Curtis will wait for me in the car while I search. We’re both positive that pretty soon we’ll know who killed her.”
Zelene’s eyebrows rose and she paused on her way out the door. “Can you give me any idea who you suspect?”
“No, we don’t have sufficient proof yet.” Janux had already been warned not to disclose anything to anyone who might ask.
Janux pulled on latex gloves and began going through Nayxana’s wardrobe. She felt in every pocket of each jacket and coat. She found a red lipstick, a wrapped cough lolly, and a fifty-cent piece. Then she began on the chest of drawers, going through each drawer and shaking out each item of clothing and inspecting it carefully. This time she found two letters, still in their envelopes. They were both addressed to Nayxana Vasco at 56 Kekeno Street, Seal Bay – her old address – but how did she get them? Perhaps Aidan had brought the letters to her.
Janux sat down on the bed and began reading the first letter.
Dear Nayxana,
Your father and I know you have left your dear husband, Oski
n, and gone to live with another man who must be very evil for taking you into his home, knowing you have disobeyed your loving husband. As your mother, I’m begging you to return to your legal husband. He will forgive you and he has told Ogar he will welcome you back if you return. There is nothing to fear from sweet and gentle Oskin. He has always thought the world of you.
I don’t understand why you have done such a foolish thing, my daughter. We brought you up to obey everything you were told to do. That is a woman’s place in the world, dear daughter, and you have failed in this, much to your parents’ shame. Perhaps we needed to be stricter with you, Nayxana, and make you see how lucky you were to be rescued from the home where you could have been put to work at aged five and never been allowed to marry.
You have caused your hard-working and generous husband, Oskin, much suffering – as you have us too. We love you and beg you to go back and begin serving him again and doing his will rather than your own. That is your duty, to wash and clean and make his home perfect for him. He deserves nothing less as he has always treated you like a queen.
Your mother,
Freda.
Janux could see that Nayxana had received no support at all from her mother. She took out the second letter, which was dated a month later than the first.
Dear Nayxana,
I was shocked to read in your last letter that you are under the impression Oskin is having you watched. The dear man has been grieving ever since you left him. To say there have been three different men following you around and watching you simply cannot be true, daughter.
You know, as do I and your father, that it is your own guilt that is causing you to believe such things. Dear Oskin is such a kind, gentle man that your father and I cannot fathom why you are not still by his side, taking care of him and tending to his needs day and night as you should be, daughter.
Neither of us can know if you are genuine in your concerns about being followed. You had an affair behind your long-suffering husband’s back while he was out toiling to provide you with every luxury you could have wanted.
Please don’t tell us such silly stories about three men following you. Why would they do that? You are no longer to be trusted, Nayxana, after your deceitful betrayal of your sweet husband. Of course we will always love you, but we cannot tolerate your behaviour, dear daughter. Please see the error of your ways and return to your deserving husband who has always treated you with such loving-kindness and generosity.
Your mother,
Freda.
Janux shoved the two letters into her pocket and kept going through Nayxana’s clothes. She wondered about the three men Nayxana had told her mother were all watching her. It was obvious that Nayxana’s mother saw a very different reality from the one lived by her daughter.
Nothing more of any significance was found so she moved to the bedside table, on which were some books. One was in the Ryxin language, which surprised Janux. She opened the slim drawer and saw two small books inside. One was a notebook in which Nayxana had noted down the dates and times when she’d been watched by “the short heavy-set man with the wrestler’s arms”. She had kept careful notes on where he was standing and how long he was there.
Janux read through each detailed entry and was about to close the notebook and place it in her pocket when there seemed to be a change in what Nayxana had noticed. On 1st May she’d written she’d seen a second man, also watching her. She’d written that this man, who was tall, always stood hidden from the first man, as if he was watching him as well, but secretly.
After about three days she didn’t see the tall man again. Janux kept reading but there was no mention of this second man again in the notebook. Nor was there any mention of a third man.
She looked out of the window of Nayxana’s room, at the front of the house, and saw Curtis still sitting in the car. Janux had spent an hour the previous night praying to Kieran to protect them both. She sensed danger more acutely than ever now as they were getting closer to the truth about what happened on 13th May.
“I’m meeting Aidan again tomorrow,” Curtis said, as they drove back to Tahatika Road. “I still think there’s something he’s not telling us. He might be trying to protect his father, which makes me a little suspicious. If so, what is he trying to protect him from?”
At 10 a.m. next morning Curtis and Aidan were sitting in the Blue Planet Cafe in Muritai village. Curtis felt despondent at having no new leads, except for the brief note in Nayxana’s diary saying she’d seen another man also watching her. And then there was the letter from Freda.
“There’s a letter from Freda berating her daughter for saying there had been three men watching her. Did your mother say anything to you about these other two men?” he asked Aidan as the waitress set down their two cappuccinos.
“Three?” Aidan added sugar to his coffee and stirred it. “I knew about one other man. She told me about that.”
Curtis almost spilt his coffee. “What? So you knew about one of them. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Mum said it was nothing to worry about.”
Curtis sighed. “Did she say what he looked like?”
“Oh yes. She said something about him having a shaved head, gold studs in his ears, and he was tall. She only saw him a couple of times. I didn’t think it was important.”
Curtis wanted to give Aidan a lecture. Instead he said. “Did she say anything else about him?”
“Yes. You see, I was on holiday on the island at the time. She asked me to follow him, so I did. He lives in Cliffside Drive. But then Mum said it was okay and not to worry about him.”
Curtis sipped his coffee. “Did she say why she wasn’t worried about this man?”
“No, not really, but I think she felt safe with Uxxl. She used to go with him to the office every day. Anyway I was going back to the mainland. My holiday was over.”
“Can you remember his address?” Curtis asked, pen poised over his notepad.
“9B Cliffside Drive. I wrote it down for Mum. But then she said she’d not seen any sign of him again. I think that’s why she just put him out of her mind.”
“I know who the other man is.” Curtis told Janux over lunch. “From the description Aidan gave me, I’m certain his name is Spryz Frurster, who I thought was still living in Australia. That’s where he went, you know, after Mistle’s trial and conviction.”
Janux remembered how Spryz Frurster and Vandy Legox had tried to take over the running of the Ryxin Breeding House in Pohatu Cove and deceive their boss, Sly Onyx. “So what are we going to do now?” she asked. “He’s one of the worst of those pigs in my view.”
“We’re going to pay him a visit, my love. You’d better take your binoculars and some peppermints.”
Janux saw Curtis’s eyes flash red, something she had rarely witnessed. “Let’s go then,” she said, getting up from the table. She grabbed her rucksack from her room on the way past, having followed the handbook rule to be ready at all times to go out into the field with all equipment ready.
Once they’d found the address - up a right-of-way at the back of 9A - they sat in the car and waited. After an hour, a man came out and went over to a red four-wheel drive.
Curtis felt sure he was the one and opened his car door and called out. “Mr Frurster, can I have word with you?”
Spryz looked angrily at him. “What about?” he spat, and then a look of recognition showed on his face. Curtis saw again his evil-looking, tawny, slanted eyes. “You’re that half-blood PI I’ve met before, aren’t you? The stupid one who meddles in affairs that have nothing to do with him? You’d better get out of here. I don’t speak to emotional weaklings like you.”
Curtis stood his ground. “I believe you knew a woman called Nayxana Vasco. You were watching her. Can you tell me why you were doing that?”
“I’ve never even heard of her. Now bugger off.”
As Spryz was getting into his car, another man came from the house and joined him. Curtis knew him too
. A rangy man called Vandy Legox who had once treated his friend Claudette so badly. Vandy opened the passenger door, climbed in and then slammed it shut. Spryz gunned the engine and they drove off, laughing loudly.
Curtis felt the hot redness in his eyes as he started the car and drove slowly back towards home. Janux sat quietly writing notes in her case-book. He wondered what she thought of his feeble attempt to deal with Spryz Frurster, who’d obviously set up home again on Muritai. Curtis knew from past experience how powerful these men could be, especially in gangs. So did Janux.
“Well, Janux. Where do we go from here?”
She turned towards him. “I think we need to visit the crime scene. I don’t mean inside the house, but the street itself. After all, there was supposedly a neighbour who rang Oskin and another who rang the police. Why don’t we interview the neighbours and see what they have to say?”
“You’re a genius,” Curtis said.
Unexpectedly he began thinking of Luxinda again. Every time he thought of her he had a strange sensation which he could only explain as like being deprived of a drug. And when he felt down he wanted her badly, just like an addict needing a fix. He found this hard to reconcile with the love he had for Janux, but wasn’t this tendency a kind of curse all Ryxin males were born with?
He couldn’t do without Janux either – she was like his rock. Still he didn’t crave for her like a drug, perhaps because she wasn’t locked away like Luxinda.
“Let’s go to Kekeno Street now,” Janux said. She knew Curtis well enough to sense he probably felt like an abject failure right now.
When they arrived in Kekeno Street, in the wealthy suburb of Seal Bay, Curtis decided to be cautious and stopped the car a few houses away.
“Okay, there’s the driveway where the van must’ve gone in,” he said. Janux was drawing a sketch of the house and its surrounds in her case-book. “It looks as if it goes round to the back of the house. Also there’s a hedge between the driveway and the neighbour’s house, so no one could see anything from there. If no one saw them drive in, then they had complete privacy. I can see from here that the hedge also blocks the view from the back and the other side too. So if there was a phone call from anyone in the street they must’ve heard something, perhaps a scream or a shout. I want you to go door-knocking, Janux, and see if you can find anyone who saw or heard anything at all they thought was unusual on that day. I don’t believe it was a neighbour who called Oskin but we must at least rule it out.”
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