by K T Bowes
Chapter 33
“What’s the password for the laptop, love?” Odering looked at me with fondness in his eyes, perhaps sorry for my hitching chest and puffy eyes. “The techs will get into it anyway and do a forensic recovery of anything deleted. But you could save us some time and you’ve already been helpful.”
“What about the money?” I asked, reluctant to give any more without some concession. “I know nothing about any betting scam and my uncle paid off the rest of the loan and bought me the car in good faith.” I jerked my head towards him. “If the money’s stolen, I lose everything all over again.”
He tutted and reached to stroke my hand, thinking better of it. It made me wonder if he’d lied about Jack not being able to see or hear my interview. “I’ll talk to someone,” he promised. “But let’s see what happens first.”
I wiped my nose with the last tissue. “What about Pete’s sexuality?” I gave a disgusting sniff but didn’t have the energy to feel ashamed. “He didn’t want people to know.”
“Why?” Odering asked and I dropped the tissue on the table and stared at him in surprise.
“Because he was a Saint! There are some rules we just don’t break.”
Odering’s nod seemed slowed down for effect and he stood and offered me his hand. “I’ll stay in touch, Mrs Saint,” he said, clasping my fingers in his. “But that password would be great. Your search history will be recovered by the techs, so it’s best you tell me now, seeing as you’ve admitted logging into it. You have my word that nothing will go any further than it needs to, but it’s possible the person in the chat room is connected to the scam.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied with a sigh, pulling my cardigan across my body and stretching the seams too tight. “But the password’s a swear word. Pete said it a lot.” I leaned forward and whispered the two words which summed up my husband’s life, embarrassed about saying them out loud.
Odering wrinkled his nose. “Yep. Wouldn’t have guessed that,” he said, dragging a pen from his shirt pocket to write on his hand. It looked incongruous, the awful words written on the back of the hairy flesh. He stared at it and I read it upside down, remembering how easy the password came to me as I sat in my classroom with the laptop on my knee. The detective’s writing resembled his appearance; rushed and messy. I read the upside down capital ‘F’ and he moved his hand to reveal the second word. ‘Up’ ‘Effed Up.’ I couldn’t repeat it again, not even in my own head. My mother detested swearing, especially the ‘F’ word but Aunty Margaret spent a lot of time using it. It showed in our respective usage as adults.
“Thanks, Ursula,” he said with warmth, using my first name as though we’d become friends. My smile didn’t reach my eyes and he jerked his head towards the door. “And thanks for signing that other thing. It will save us a lot of time.”
“Please may I have my phone call now?”
I called Aunty Pam and she fetched me, fussing over me in the car and in her kitchen. “This is awful!” she said after I’d told her everything. Larry stared at me in disbelief, swallowing as though saliva entered his mouth on a conveyor belt. “Do you know who the other man in the chat room is?” she asked, lowering her voice to a hush.
“You mustn’t repeat any of this,” I begged. “The cops asked me not to.”
“We won’t, I promise,” Pam gushed, her cheeks flushed from my chaotic confession. “Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you.” I’d decided I wouldn’t. I’d gone over and over the conversation in my head and felt sure I knew who it was. It could only be one person and I needed to speak to him myself.
“They’re really gonna exhume Pete’s body?” she whispered and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
“He didn’t kill himself,” I stated, surer than I’d ever been. “Mark Lambie behaved as though he’d been drugged. They’ll check Pete’s body for other drugs and signs of injury too, which they might have missed first time around.”
Larry looked sick at the thought of samples being taken from a decomposed body and I watched as his colour moved from pink to grey and back again.
“It’s bad about Mark,” Pam sighed. “Dora’s not good at all.”
I sipped my strong tea and looked at my aunt through narrowed eyes. “Did you know about Dad and May-Ling?”
She quailed and Larry looked away, their faces shrouded in guilt. “Sorry, love,” she said, chewing her bottom lip. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Yeah, well I walked in on them.” I shuddered at the memory.
“Not doing it?” Pam’s eyes widened in horror. “I thought it was just for her visa.”
Larry sniggered. “Geez, she’s earning that then.”
Pam kicked him under the table and the movement slopped hot tea over my fingers. I stood and reached for a cloth. “Why would Dora think May-Ling was Mark’s mistress?”
“Because she was.” Pam lowered her voice and glanced towards the lounge where Alysha’s son played in front of the TV. “He bought her on the internet because Dora wasn’t supposed to survive the last round of chemo. Then she rallied and he’d already got May-Ling ready to be the next Mrs Lambie. Jordan agreed to let her live at his place and act as his carer, which gave her a legitimate reason for being in the country.” She frowned, her face disapproving. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Larry?”
“Do what?” Poor Larry looked shocked.
“Get someone ready to replace me if I got sick.”
“No!” Her husband’s expression was hurt mixed with fear. “Don’t talk about dying, please?”
I patted Larry’s hand, watching the horror in his face at the thought of Pam not being around to iron his underwear or fluff up his delicate ego. “It won’t happen, Uncle Larry.” I offered reassurance which wasn’t mine to give, hearing the futility of the words even as I said them.
“Jordan got attached to her, anyway,” Pam finished. “And she threatened to leave if Mark didn’t marry her before her holiday visa ran out.”
“So Dad put a ring on her finger?” I crinkled my nose, comparing the lazy Asian woman to my saintly mother. “That’s gonna bite his bum.” The memory surfaced of May-Ling’s lithe bottom going up and down in my father’s lap and I wondered who’d got the worse end of the deal. It wouldn’t end well. “Could Mark have gone off in a strop because he lost May-Ling?” I asked, trying to fit the jolly man with that image and failing. We’d taken him home and he looked fine, apart from being drunk as a lord.
Larry shook his head but Pam answered. “Na. He was fine about it. I think he came to his senses and realised it wasn’t fair on poor Dora.”
“And now she’s all alone,” I mused. “She’s lost out either way.”
“A bit like you, sweetie,” Aunty Pam said, caressing my hand. “What will you do now?”
I shrugged and thought of Teina’s soft lips on mine. I ached for contact with him, realising once again that I’d failed to get a number for him. “No idea,” I sighed. “Live my life, I guess.”
“I still can’t believe Pete was gay,” Pam said, lowering her voice. “We always thought he was a womaniser, didn’t we Larry?”
Larry nodded but didn’t commit fully to the movement. I saw his awkwardness and felt bad for him. Most men reacted with distaste as though homosexuality threatened who they were in their own skin. I gave him a comforting smile and squeezed his fingers, confused when he dragged his hand away.
“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Pam asked, her expression of maternal kindness reminding me of Mum.
“Na. I’ve got work tomorrow.” I punctuated my sentence with a yawn and stretched. My dress felt dirty after a day’s wear and the black sand had left dirty streaks ingrained in the fabric. “Could I please borrow a laptop? The cops took mine and I want to do some research about soccer match fixing.”
“Why?” Pam pulled a face. “The cops will work it out.”
“I’ve been at every single local game sin
ce the age of four,” I said, standing. “If something’s going on, I’d like to think I’ve tried to find out exactly what before the cops do. All Saints means everything to this family; if someone’s cheating them, I’d like to work out how.” I didn’t add that I’d like to know who, convinced I already knew the ringmaster.
“Larry, give her Alysha’s old one. It’s in the spare bedroom. The charger’s in the top drawer.”
Pam’s husband trooped off to the bedroom and returned empty handed. “Can’t find it,” he said. “I’ll drop you home, Ursula. Don’t get a taxi.”
Pam groaned. “Men! You don’t look properly for anything, do you? I’ll get it.”
I raised my hand. “It’s ok. I’ll do it tomorrow at work. Probably best if I just go to sleep tonight. I feel exhausted.”
Larry nodded and fetched his jacket from the hook behind the front door and kissed his wife on her cheek. “I won’t be long,” he said with a smile.
“You always say that,” she sighed. “I’ll be asleep by the time you crawl into bed.”
Chapter 34
I’d been in Larry’s car a million times over the years and settled back into the passenger seat. We didn’t speak on the journey back to my apartment but there was nothing unusual about that. Larry shared my introverted nature and we got along well in companionable silence. “I’ll come up,” he said, glancing up at my darkened windows and I smiled with gratitude.
“Thanks. I’m a bit nervous about going home at the moment. If Jack’s there, would you throw him out for me?”
“Yeah. Course,” he replied with a reassuring grin.
Upstairs, my apartment looked just as the cops left it. I straightened the items they’d fingered in the lounge and stripped the spare bed of Jack’s sheets, dumping them in a pile in the laundry. Larry wandered around checking and rechecking windows before meeting me by the front door. “Thanks for everything, Uncle Larry.” I stood on tiptoes to kiss his rough cheek.
His lips parted and his hooded eyes narrowed to slits, his face expression perplexed. “I thought you wanted to talk,” he said, tilting his head.
“We have talked.” I sent my brain spinning through the conversation at my aunt’s place, confused. “I’m tired now.”
Larry’s face took on an uncharacteristic hardness. “You said you wanted to talk to me. Here I am.”
I floundered, drowning in confusion as the atmosphere took on a strange and frightening tinge. I shook my head. “I’m good, Uncle Larry. Just knackered. We can talk tomorrow if you like.” I put my hand on the front door handle and he squeezed my fingers hard, taking me by surprise.
“You can’t leave it hanging over me. What do you intend to do?”
“What?” I shook my head, wishing to dislodge myself from the bizarre day and fall into bed.
“I didn’t want it to be like this with you.” Larry’s voice lowered to a hush and fear prickled my insides as instinct got there ahead of me. I swallowed, not sure what he meant by the peculiar statement.
“Like what?” The fine hairs on the back of my neck created a crawling sensation and I wanted to put my hand up to touch it. “Be like what with me?”
“I thought we understood each other.” Larry’s gentle face morphed into hard, desperate lines and the patch of baldness on his crown glowed red as his blood pressure hiked. “I’ve been good to you.”
“I know.” I pulled my hand from beneath his and forced a wooden smile onto my face. “You have. Aunty Pam and you have been like parents to me. I couldn’t manage without you.”
“So why?” Larry took a step towards me and I pressed my back against the wall. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? You’re scaring me, Uncle Larry.” My chest tightened in anxiety and his breath caused my fringe to shift as he closed in.
“Why would you let them exhume Pete? Why would you do that?”
“I don’t have a choice.” A badly timed swallow cut off the rest of my sentence. An air of madness surrounded us like sulfuric fog. “The cops would’ve done it anyway.”
“Geez, Ursula!” Larry turned and ran a shaking hand over his face. He’d always seemed so small and meek but his broad back eclipsed my view of the door and the only available escape route. The sinking feeling in my gut told me I should fear a friend and it hurt with a physical ache. I pushed myself against the wall and closed my eyes to stem the terror.
“I need to find out how Pete died.” My voice wavered, a remote communication from my trembling knees. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life believing it was my fault.”
“It was your bloody fault!” Larry bellowed. “It’s all your fault. Things were fine until he married you; he took the money and scored the goals but the guilt got to him. Because of you! Karen raised you honest, Ursula! Too bloody honest!”
“We were fine after I knew the truth,” I stammered. “I thought he was my friend. We would’ve been ok.”
The futility of my words sickened me. Teina’s face flashed before my inner vision and stripped bare the lie. He’d opened my world to a greater love than my crush on Jack Saint and my passion for him slammed the door behind me so I couldn’t go backwards. I might have been content with Pete but a whole big world out there would’ve threatened it eventually, dousing me with the cold water of sexual fulfillment and snuffing out my cozy, fraternal marriage.
“The truth about what?” Larry demanded, his grey eyes as hard as grit. “About the gambling or his preferences?”
“About him being gay,” I replied, appalled by the whine in my voice. “It would’ve been ok.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Larry dislodged the fine hairs attempting to cover his bald spot and turned to face me. They hung down beside his left ear like a curtain, drawing my attention away from his eyes. “Give her babies and she’ll be fine.”
I dragged my gaze back to his face, realisation dawning and a lump forming in my throat. “You’re the man in the chat room. You’re Plus One!” I hissed the words, the remaining colour draining from my face. “I thought it was Uncle Terry.”
Defeat etched itself over Larry’s face and he groaned out loud. “So I’ve jumped the gun again.” He shook his head. “It seems to be my specialty.”
“Why did you tell Pete not to do something stupid?” I begged, my voice a whisper. “You were the last person to speak to him before he died.”
“He didn’t see that message,” Larry replied, leaning with his back against the front door. “He turned up at my office. Decided he couldn’t do it anymore. New Zealand Football were onto us. The cup final was one step too far. We got greedy and the payout was awesome. Pete was going under financially and it stood to pay everything off for all of us.”
“What happened to the money?” I asked. “Pete died a bankrupt.”
Larry laughed, a cruel, bitter sound. “We weren’t supposed to win, you stupid girl!” he yelled. “They paid us to lose!” Blue veins stood out on his neck.
My jaw dropped and I remembered my father’s elation at Pete’s goal in the dying minutes of the game. My husband had looked across at me and smiled, kissing his fingers and raising them to me. He’d dedicated the goal to me and destroyed everything. “Oh, Pete!” I put my hands over my eyes and accepted his final gift; honesty.
Larry lurched and slapped my hands away from my face. “I just needed to calm him down,” he said, his eyes wild and channelling dangerous recklessness. “He wasn’t mean to die. I only wanted him to chill and not go to the cops.”
I slid sideways, moving towards the kitchen using the wall against my back to bolster my spine and my courage. “He’d already gone, Larry. He didn’t tell you, did he?”
Larry shook his head and curled his upper lip back in a snarl. “How could he do that to me? After everything we’d been through.” He swallowed and white spit speckled the corners of his mouth like a frothing, rabid dog. Another head shake dislodged more victims of his complicated comb over and soon he carried a ribbon of hair down
one side of his head. His sad smile made him look helpless. “You never score in the first ten minutes.” He looked at me as though I should understand and I nodded, faking it. “The first thirty seconds or the first three minutes; it’s like a red rag to a bull.” He swallowed and licked his lips. “But he couldn’t help himself. It didn’t matter what we agreed with the other team, he had to do it. I think he wanted us to be investigated. He wanted to be found out.”
I nodded and backed away, reaching the corner and readying myself to run. The phone handset sat near the microwave and I measured my steps, counting them out in my head while facing Larry as he ranted. “What about the suicide note? It looked like Pete’s writing.”
Larry grimaced. “I stopped him doing it once before. I found him in time. He bought painkillers and drank straight whiskey. I saw him at the liquor store and followed him up to the cliff top at Mangawhai Heads.” Larry ran a hand through his strings of hair and seated them back on his head like a haphazard web. “Stupid bugger. The suicide note got shoved in the glove box and I guess he forgot about it.”
“The cops found it.” I remembered the coroner’s confusion about its almost secretive placement in the vehicle, but it only seemed to compound Pete’s desperation as he drove off the road into the tree, mangling himself, the car and the glove box.
I put my hands over my eyes and felt my heart labour under the burden of knowledge. “What did you do to him?”
“Pete? I drugged his drink. He said he wasn’t going back to work and we planned to talk tactics after his bloody stupid stuff up of the cup game. I thought he’d be with me for longer and give the valium time to wear off, but we fell out and he got in the car. I sent the message on my phone but he never saw it.”