by Jude Knight
Cheryl was the name on the envelope Jason had given her to put in her handbag. He’d spent ten minutes at the airport card-stand, choosing a birthday card then writing a brief note. “I’ll get you to look after that till we find a post-box,” he said, right before he crowded her against one wall for a kiss and whispered in her ear, “Time to escape. Go with the woman who says ‘Trevor Greenshaw’. Off to the ladies with you, and don’t worry. You’ll be safe now.”
Trevor tried to sleep on the plane from Sydney to Christchurch, but his mind wouldn’t stand down; wouldn’t accept that the hundreds of other passengers, the shifting flight crew, were no threat.
Fair enough. Best to take the opportunity to clean away the last vestiges of Jason Winterleaf; to give Trevor Greenshaw back full control of his thoughts and feelings. And for the last time. He was resigning from undercover work, seeking reassignment.
Long ago when he was a boy, his mother had abandoned him for four months in a monastery in South East Asia. She had, he later learned, been in prison. In the monastery, he had learned to set the world to one side, and now he composed himself; let himself sink into awareness and nonawareness. Mindfulness, they called it now. Being mindful of the complex hum of sounds, focusing on each and then letting it sink again into the background. Nothing mattered more than anything else. Nothing mattered less than anything else. Exhausting the sounds in his environment, he turned to the other senses, one after another. Touch. Sight. Taste. Smell. He gave each its due attention.
Then, in a mental exercise all his own, he set out to give that criminal Jason Winterleaf the death he deserved, at the side of Bernard Pritchard and at the hands of the good cop, Trevor Greenshaw. It was a trick he’d developed after his first undercover assignment, sickened by what he had needed to ignore for the sake of the bigger goal.
He could justify the neglect, the failure to protect. He could have prevented a rape here or a murder there, but that would have broken his cover and meant failure. Every person hurt after he revealed himself to save one victim would be on him. Part of his job was ignoring the excesses until he could stop them all, even celebrating with the scum of the earth who perpetrated them.
But the facts didn’t ease the ulceration that wore away at the Trevor hidden deep inside Jason. Punishing his alter ego after the job was over eased his soul. The other cops would laugh, so he never told them, but the departmental psychologist said, “If it works for you, Trevor, keep doing it.”
On his flight from Sydney, leaning back in his seat, eyes closed, Trevor took his mind to the first days of his infiltration, and began to remember the crimes for which Jason Winterleaf must die.
3
Lee’s first sight of Cheryl was in the farmhouse doorway, a tall dark shape outlined in the light from the open door.
She greeted Kev and Sid by name, looking past them to where Lee stood on the path.
“This is your brother’s new wife,” Kev said. “Mrs Greenshaw, meet Cheryl Karaka.”
Lee forced her feet to move, and her voice to work. “Lee. Please call me Lee.”
Cheryl ignored the offered hand, moving backwards out of the door. “You’d better come in. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Thanks,” Kev told her, “but we can’t stop. I’ve got parent-teacher interviews, and I’m going to be in trouble with Cynthia if I’m late. Sid, get the luggage. Mrs Greenshaw, we’ll probably see you around. Take care, now.”
Moments later, Sid returned from the car with a couple of slightly worn cases Lee had never seen before, and the two men were gone.
Her hostess picked up one case and led the way through a cluttered washroom—laundry appliances on one side, coats and boots on the other—and into one end of a large country kitchen. Following with the second case, Lee barely had time to take in the gleaming appliances, the large old-fashioned kitchen table, the hint of a dining zone in the shadows at the far end of the room, before being ushered down a narrow hall, and into a small bedroom, plain and neat, with a white coverlet on the single bed, a tall chest of drawers, and a lamp on the splay-legged wooden table beside the bed.
Cheryl seemed too large for the room, a Xena Warrior Princess in scruffy jeans and a tee that proclaimed “I Was Normal A Bunch Of Sheep Ago.” No makeup or jewellery. Long dark hair caught at the nape of her neck in a stretchy band. Bare feet.
“This’ll be yours. The bathroom is next door, toilet one door further along. Try not to make too much noise; my grandfather is asleep. I’ll go make the tea.” She stopped in the doorway and half turned her head. “Or do you prefer coffee?” Coffee, the tone said, was the sort of barbaric drink American criminals on the run would drink in the middle of the night, and Lee agreed that tea would be fine.
Lee took off her jacket and unzipped the cases, which were filled with clothing. Not the sort she usually wore. No designer slacks or pencil-thin skirts. No soft silk shirts or pull-on tops. No expertly tailored jackets or killer heels. Not even any name-brand casuals. Practical jeans, cotton tees, and loose sweaters, all sized to fit her.
A toiletries bag held more brands she had not seen before, and a pencil case with a glittered Hello Kitty picture proved to contain some cheap pieces of costume jewellery.
Some of the garments were new. Most showed signs of wear. Whoever had put her luggage together had taken pains to make it look as if she’d bought her clothes over time, like a real person. Apart from her Givenchy handbag and the clothes on her back, everything she had came from someone else’s life.
The tea was waiting when she emerged back into the kitchen, the pot covered with a knitted cover in the shape of a large pink pig. Cheryl waved her to a seat and held up a jug. “Milk?” No smile, no warmth, hostile eyes. No. Wary eyes.
“Please, and sugar.” What did this sister know? What could Lee tell her?
Cheryl pushed over a mug and then a china tub of sugar. “I can make a sandwich if you’re hungry.”
Lee shook her head. “They gave me a meat pie. Somewhere. Ms Karaka, what have they told you about me?”
Cheryl sat with both strong hands on her mug, her head tipped slightly to one side as she considered the question.
“Don’t ask. Don’t tell. My brother married you this morning. That’s all I know. I don’t know who you are or what trouble you are in—or what trouble you are to Trevor. Did he marry you because he loved you or as part of his investigation?”
Lee’s throat went suddenly dry, remembering the roaring confrontation between Jason and Bernard. “To save my life. I — I don’t think I’m meant to say more.”
Cheryl leaned towards her across the table. “Is he okay? They never tell us anything. A note now and again to say he is alive, and the investigation is ongoing.”
“He was when I saw him this morning,” Cheryl assured her. “He… I think I’m to give you this.” Lee handed over the envelope and read the card upside down when Cheryl opened it. The front said “Happy birthday. Here’s to another year of you successfully evading my assassins.” Cheryl near impaled Lee with her gaze when she reached those words. “Assassins? Flippin’ Heck!”
Inside, Jason had written, ‘I’ve asked some friends to drop off a lame duck they rescued for me. Look after her, Lily. I’ll drop by and get her when I can. “It wasn’t signed. He’d just drawn a leaf, a few deft strokes of his pen.
“Daft idiot,” Cheryl opined with a small smile, closing the card and putting it back into the envelope. “Okay, Lee. My brother wants you here, that’s good enough. But we don’t carry deadweight. You’ll do your share of the work in return for your board and keep.”
“I’m willing, but I’ve never done farm work.”
“Never chipped a nail, looks like.”
“I’ll learn,” Lee vowed.
She did. Cheryl started her with easy things, like feeding the chickens and the pigs, who were huge and frightening at first, but cute in the way they came running as soon as they heard her coming. Within a few weeks she was learning to strain fence wir
es and to drive the ute. Cheryl thawed by slow degrees, but Mr Greenshaw, Old Trev, grumbled out of the corner of his mouth about the boy sending his work home instead of coming himself.
“Time he gave up that work and took over the farm,” he barked at Lee, several times a day. “I’m not getting any younger.” It was Cheryl, though, who had taken over the farm. It was patently obvious that she loved it. She didn’t argue with her grandfather. Just carried on with the next task in a never-ending list.
One evening, Lee screwed up her courage and approached Cheryl who was wrestling with paperwork at the kitchen table. “Can I help, Cheryl?”
“Do you know New Zealand tax law?”
“No, but I can learn. I know my way around double-entry bookkeeping, and most common accounting systems I can make a spreadsheet get up and dance, and I like keeping neat and tidy records.”
She was good at, it too. Otherwise, she’d never have discovered the hidden layers of figures under the ones that fooled the revenue services in fifteen countries and kept even most of the Pritchard Corporation staff completely in the dark about the true nature of the company.
Even the interviewers who came up the valley to ask her about the files she had stolen from Bernard were impressed with the report on them she’d written and didn’t hesitate to say so.
Cheryl was cautious at first, but thawed still further as Lee took to the paperwork with enthusiasm. The New Zealand tax forms were super simple, and it was so nice to finally do something she was better at than Cheryl.
They set up a stand-alone computer, and Lee designed some forms and calculation sheets to set out the information that Cheryl needed to transfer to all the government agencies and other organizations demanding information from farmers. All Cheryl had to do was type the totals into the right places in the online services while Lee called out the numbers.
“I love you,” Cheryl said. “If my brother doesn’t want you, I’ll keep you myself.”
Lee put both hands over her belly, over the baby she could no longer pretend wasn’t there, and burst into tears.
The Sydney to Christchurch flight was full of people getting an early start on Christmas, but Trevor managed to ignore them all as he delved into his memory.
His history with Pritchard Corporation predated Kirilee Pritchard’s arrival by nearly twelve months, interacting as Jason Winterleaf every minute of every day, until Trevor Greenshaw was nothing more than a remote observer in the rear of his brain. Trevor watched everything, heard everything, kept a mental record, no more able to act than the electronic recorder embedded in his arm.
The implanted recording device sent its burden of information in a single heavily compressed pulse four times a day, wiping itself clean every second day, and data pulse by data pulse the international team built their case against Pritchard and his organization.
Now Trevor would download and erase his mental recordings.
The first year. A few major incidents, most of which he had been able to use to claw his way closer into Pritchard’s inner circle. A lot of lacerations to Trevor’s soul, all laid to the account of Jason Winterleaf.
Then Lee came. She wasn’t Jason’s type: too shy, too naïve, too prim and proper. She was Trevor’s type. Smart as a whip, and quietly competent.
Lee was an oasis in the desert of Jason Winterleaf’s reign over Trevor Greenshaw. A calm eye in the centre of the storm. Undetected by anyone else, Trevor came out when he and Kirilee worked together. Since she was on her brother’s team of personal assistants, and soon led the team, and he was head of Pritchard’s personal security, they worked together on every trip, event, and meeting.
She was all business. A pretty package in designer clothing who projected efficiency rather than glamor, with a gift for keeping her lacquered fingertips on all the myriad of tiny decisions and actions within her job description, while never losing sight of the overall purpose. Give Pritchard what he wants, when he wants it, and make him look good.
Jason thought Pritchard had made a wise choice, hiring his sister. She was good at the job, and she didn’t cause trouble. She didn’t flirt; didn’t seem to even be aware of the interest one or two dared show her, either so attracted they didn’t count the risk that Pritchard would disapprove, or (more probably) so ambitious they thought the chance to get closer to Pritchard through his sister was worth the danger.
In Jason’s opinion, sexual relations were best kept out of the office. Pritchard had been shagging the previous personal assistant, and the woman’s emotions impaired her performance, first in the office and later in Pritchard’s bed. Yes. Jason approved of the sister.
Trevor hated having her there, and each week he found it harder not to tell her, “Leave. Find an excuse to resign and go far, far away.” How could the prime manipulator, the arch villain, have a sister so young and naïve? So innately good? But every check he made, every subtle test he tried, confirmed his instincts. Kirilee Pritchard was as innocent as her brother was dirty. She didn’t deserve what was going to happen when Trevor and his colleagues took Pritchard down.
He was still trying to solve the conundrum when she ran.
4
Decorating the tree took most of the afternoon, not so much putting up the ornaments and streamers, but the stories behind each one. As she unwrapped and passed out each ornament, Cheryl said who had chosen it, why and where, dropping tantalizing snippets of family history. “Look. This is a sheaf of wheat that we gathered from the hens’ run and dried and bound. I must have been about ten, so Trevor would have been thirteen. Mum was back for Christmas that time. When she left again, Trevor went with her.”
Lee had never directly asked, but she gathered that Old Trev’s daughter Bronwyn, Cheryl’s and Trevor’s mother, had been a nomad, drifting around the world, in and out of trouble, sometimes with and sometimes without her two children. Two children who had borne the names Waterlily and Leaf until they were old enough to change them by deed poll.
Cheryl held up a little English Bobby, with holly on his helmet and a red Christmas bow on his truncheon. “You’ll like this one. Trevor bought it at the Police Training School. He passed out top of his intake, you know.”
A long row of Christmas snowflakes in glittering crystal had come back from Bavaria in Cheryl’s luggage when she returned after an internship on a Bavarian farm. A merry trio of Santas, with sax, trumpet and guitar, had been sent home from New Orleans where Trevor was trying to break into the music scene with a couple of men he’d met in a diamond mine in West Africa. The patchwork bauble decorated with wool and sequins was a legacy of Bronwyn, who had made it in her last days, returning as a sick and dying refugee to the house where she had been born.
Two carved wooden angels received thoughtful silence. “Granddad made these after Tamati died,” Cheryl said, at last.
“Your husband,” Lee prompted.
Jamie, the neighbour one hill over, had told Lee about Tamati, who had been diagnosed with cancer a few days after his and Cheryl’s wedding, and died six weeks after graduating from vet school. He wasn’t courting Cheryl, Jamie said, because she’d never looked at another man before Tamati or since. Lee, who had seen the way Cheryl’s eyes followed Jamie when he wasn’t watching, told him he should let her know how he felt. So far, he had not done so, or if he had, Cheryl had rejected him.
“Yes. Did Granddad tell you?” Cheryl didn’t wait for an answer. “Tamati.” She hung the larger of the angels in a prominent position part way down the tree. Then, her voice much softer, “the baby.”
“Oh Cheryl, I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Very few people did. It was still very early, and we only told his parents and Granddad. And Trevor, of course.” She gave the little angel, now hanging in the shadow of the larger one, a gentle caress with one hand, setting it swinging. “It wasn’t to be. Shall I put the kettle on again? We always cut the Christmas cake for afternoon tea on tree decorating day.”
“I’ll help.” Lee levered herself
to her feet, letting Cheryl brush the emotion back under the surface. New Zealand reserve made even the quietest American appear exuberant, and Cheryl was more reserved than most.
Trevor had booked a flight to Wellington and then one to Palmerston North; with a stop-over in Wellington forced on him by the Christmas passenger volumes. But when he made it through Customs in Christchurch, the check-in machine rejected his ticket, and at the counter they told him the flight was oversubscribed and he’d be rebooked on the next available flight.
He hung around the airport for a while, still on Western Australia time, but when they finally transferred a new ticket to the phone he’d just purchased on his way through duty free, it was for a flight to Wellington in the morning. If he hired a car and headed north, and was lucky enough to find a place on the ferry across Cook Strait, he couldn’t make it a lot faster.
He thought about phoning home, but his heart was set on surprising them. Instead, he took a taxi to the nearby airport hotel, where a sleepy reservations clerk gave him a key and a cardboard container of milk. “Check out by ten, or an extra fifty dollars for a one pm check out.”
Trevor refused the extra fee, and followed the directions up to the fifth floor, keen for a shower and some time on the internet, to check three years’ worth of news from family and friends.
Old Trev woke up in time to join them in a slice of Christmas cake, another traditional New Zealand treat she’d tried tentatively and come to love.
“That tree-bucket cover you made looks beaut, Lee,” Old Trev told her, as he admired the tree. It was patchwork, and one of a dozen tree-stand covers she’d made for the Christmas Fair. Old Trev had demanded that she sell him one to replace the crepe paper with which they usually wrapped the bucket, insisting on making a donation to the Christmas Fair when she tried to give him the cover.