Soon

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Pete Brown was looking over. He said, ‘I’ll meet you in the lobby.’

  Riding down in the lift, anxiety flared in his body like a bad cramp. They were putting pressure on him; they must think he had something to hide. It was brutal having hope squeezed out of you like this; it must be how cancer patients felt when you told them, I’m sorry, the news is not good.

  Here she came, marching through the lobby holding her notebook in the crook of her arm, her silent partner O’Kelly in tow. She was wearing cargo pants and boots and a short leather jacket, she was frowning, and the frown and the odd-coloured eyes made her face slightly crooked. Her hair was messy, the blonde strands standing out from her head and catching the light. He thought she looked like his own Claire when she was tired, dark shadows under the eyes, narrow cheeks and that pained look of concentration, and suddenly he saw Weeks’s body sprawled on the concrete, thin shoulders, bony ankle, the fingers of one hand gently curled, a defenceless boy’s hand.

  The three of them sat down in the big squashy seats by the plate-glass window. Pedestrians walked past noiselessly outside. Simon’s phone rang, he checked the screen, let it go to messages. Da Silva was looking closely at him. O’Kelly opened his notebook, clicked a ballpoint pen.

  Simon said to the young woman, ‘Been working hard?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I suppose shift work’s tough.’

  ‘I don’t mind it at all. Now, can we just go over something again — what did you say you and Arthur Weeks talked about when he rang?’

  Simon pretended to consider. ‘I told you. He wanted information about the Hallwrights.’

  ‘Did he tell you about his project?’

  ‘Project?’

  She said, ‘He wanted to make a feature film about a National Party Prime Minister. A tall PM with blond hair and a limp, would you believe. Who mispronounces his words.’

  ‘That’ll be why he wanted to know about the Hallwrights. That explains why he rang me.’

  ‘The screenplay’s in his flat.’

  ‘You read it?’

  ‘No. Not personally.’

  So, were others poring over it? Her silent colleague, O’Kelly? Simon looked away from them, out at the moving crowds. ‘How did this person die again?’

  ‘He fell, broke his neck.’

  ‘Why are you spending so much time on him?’

  ‘We’d like to know how he came to fall.’

  ‘You mean, was he pushed? Can you tell?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Simon said, ‘I suppose you must have plenty of physical evidence.’

  She said, unsmiling. ‘You tell me, doctor.’

  He looked at her eyes, the dark and the light. Her expression was definitely antagonistic now.

  ‘Why are you asking me?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we?’

  Should he try anger on her, or should he tone it down? A little rush of panic, he couldn’t think how to pretend to behave. The male detective’s silent stare was distracting, as was the repetitive clicking of his pen.

  She said, ‘Can you think of anyone who would want to harm Arthur Weeks?’

  ‘I told you. I. Don’t. Know. Him.’

  Weeks’s ‘screenplay’. What detail had he worked into it? How about: a married doctor who visits a young woman in South Auckland on his way to and from the airport. A little wooden house on the edge of a South Auckland field, where he goes to escape from his life. He saw Mereana walking away across the grass, the metal roofs of the warehouses across the field reflecting the evening sun.

  Da Silva looked at her notebook. ‘If you think of anything else about Mr Weeks or the night book, ring me.’

  ‘The what book?’

  ‘That’s the name of his film script.’

  ‘Knight, like knighthoods?’

  ‘As in opposite of day.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dr Lampton, do you think anyone would want to harm him because of what he was writing?’

  ‘No.’

  Her eyes were fixed on him. He hesitated.

  ‘Well . . . actually, I don’t know what he was writing, but the idea of someone harming him because of material he was inventing; that sounds like fantasy, like a conspiracy theory.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Anyway, who do you mean? David Hallwright? Because Weeks was writing about a Prime Minister? That’s pretty far-fetched. Not to mention outrageous.’ His voice had risen, he felt the heat in his cheeks. Careful. But he pushed on, ‘I mean, what are you trying to insinuate? Someone pushed him off a wall because of a film script? We’re not living in a dictatorship, some . . . banana republic.’

  Her mouth was turning up. She glanced at her partner; his eyes crinkled. They were laughing at him.

  He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. ‘You’re supposed to be investigating a death. You think it’s a laugh?’

  She looked very young suddenly, under her mop of hair, the odd eyes lit with savage enjoyment, as if his indignation was the funniest thing she’d seen all day.

  Then she dropped the smile. ‘Thanks for your help,’ she said.

  He took a breath. ‘All this bothers me. This man rang me. I don’t like the idea he was some kind of stalker, trying to get to the Hallwrights through me.’ He avoided her eye. ‘But I also don’t like the idea of a young man dying. You said he was young? It . . . bothers me.’

  He was sweating, rambling. He’d lost it. It wouldn’t be surprising if they handcuffed him straight away.

  But she only said, ‘I don’t find it amusing, no.’

  He was too far gone to gauge her tone. Her phone rang, she answered it, said yes a couple of times, sounded flustered. She ended the call and said, ‘I take it you have no idea how Mr Weeks came by the contact numbers?’

  ‘Numbers?’

  Her phone rang again.

  ‘Just a minute.’ She answered, listened, said yes another couple of times, hung up.

  Simon looked from one cop to the other, ‘You said numbers?’

  She sent a quick text, looked up. ‘I asked how Weeks managed to get hold of private cell phone numbers.’

  The male detective coughed, frowned.

  She glanced at her partner and changed tack. ‘It must be interesting spending time with the Prime Minister.’

  Simon leaned forward. ‘You’re interested in him? That makes me wonder . . .’

  They waited. He swallowed and went on reedily, ‘That makes me wonder whether you’re spending all this time, wasting my time, interrupting me at work, because you have some voyeuristic interest in . . . in . . .’

  The man had stopped clicking his pen. Da Silva put her head on one side.

  ‘. . . Some recreational interest in the Prime Minister. His fame, his private life. Just as your dead writer apparently did. And if that were the case, it would be highly unprofessional, I would have thought. Worthy of a complaint to . . . to . . .’

  ‘He wants to complain,’ Da Silva said. She turned her mouth down on one side, a cartoon grimace.

  A long silence.

  The male detective got up and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder. ‘Put it in writing, mate. Don’t hold back. Make sure you mention we shouldn’t talk to you because you’re the Prime Minister’s friend.’

  Sunk in the big soft chair he watched them go, imagining he could hear the tiny clinking of metal as they tramped through the hushed lobby. Jink jink. The exchange had been so disastrous he was actually surprised to see them leave. Did they not realise how close they’d come, how weary crime had made him? He didn’t have the strength for it; a soupçon more of their youthful aggro, a few more sarcastic cracks from blonde Marie and he would have broken down, perhaps with a burst of hysterica
l laughter. But they’d walked away, and now emerged on the street in deep discussion; the man leaning one elbow on a car roof and making a forceful point before they got in and pulled away. Last glimpse of Marie Da Silva’s face through the driver’s window: a flash of laughter.

  Pedestrians streamed past the window. It was hot in the still air of the lobby. She was actually laughing as they pulled away. Had she no sense of . . . What? Decorum? Decency? No, of course not, none of that. She would be hard as nails and enjoying every gritty moment. Even I am a step away from hysterical mirth, the hilarity of despair. How close were Da Silva and Detective O’Kelly? Did they go for beers after work, fall into bed together, exorcise the day’s crime scene horrors with strenuous lovemaking? Brief daydream: Da Silva pouring herself a restorative chardonnay, rustling up a stir-fry in her rented apartment,

  O’Kelly lounging with a glass of red wine. Fractured thoughts. Yes indeed, he was close to . . .

  The phone broke in, roused him: it was Clarice with a complaint, something about one of the other receptionists on their floor. Nag nag. He listened but didn’t hear, made soothing noises. The exchange distracted him, gave him strength to take the lift up to the conference room, where the Professor of Pelvic Floor was demonstrating exercises with the aid of a giant silver Swiss ball. A detail bothered him. Da Silva had referred to cell phone numbers, plural.

  Could Weeks have called others?

  Weeks had asked about Roza, implying she had things to hide. Was it possible he’d phoned her, that she and Simon had been secretly worrying about the same thing?

  Increase your tolerance to uncertainty.

  Sudden memory: sitting on the deck at home, holding the newspaper and running his eye down the column of Death Notices, hoping he would see a name: Mereana Kostas. Losing himself, he’d clung to Mereana; when he’d recovered, he’d turned away. Now, through Weeks, Mereana could take everything from him — as if the universe had observed his behaviour, had judged it unfair and bustled in with its hands on its hips and given her the comeback she deserved . . .

  But there is no God, he thought. There is no divine justice, no higher power. Which was why it was still possible for him to hope.

  ——

  He was driving up the Harbour Bridge after the conference when another memory rose: Elke in the kitchen aged eight; he’d come in out of the rainy night and she was awake as she often was, the child who couldn’t sleep, who greeted him when he walked in at five in the morning, exhausted but still buzzing after a chaotic shift.

  ‘Dad. You see people die. Is death different for you?’

  ‘Most of my patients stay alive, actually! And I don’t know what you mean, different.’

  She took hold of his hand, plaiting his fingers. ‘If you can cut people’s bodies without freaking out, would it be easier for you to kill them?’

  ‘Easier?’

  ‘Easier for you than for other people.’

  ‘No.’

  She was trying to find her way to a question that eluded her. ‘Everyone else sees dead and not dead. Do you see something different?’

  ‘No.’

  Sudden, huge rain on the corrugated iron roof. Dawn light had begun leaking over the garden, a bird hopped on the lawn. He fed slices into the toaster, made a pile of toast and jam, poured her a glass of milk. She watched him, expressionless. Outside in the dawn, the dreamy rain fell.

  She said, ‘Is my mother dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would you like us to try to find out?’

  ‘If you save lives, does God owe you?’

  ‘There is no God.’

  ‘Barbara says there is.’

  ‘Grandma Barbara has many delusions.’

  She didn’t laugh but persisted, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘There are no ghosts.’

  ‘You’re allowed to cut people with a knife. You could kill them if you wanted to.’

  ‘Scalpel. Not knife. Anyone could kill someone with a knife. When I use my tools it’s to fix people, make them better.’

  Elke drew a face in the crumbs on the table. ‘What if dead people can see us? If they want to come back, they’re crying to come back, but they’re stuck in the other place forever.’

  He put his hand on her arm. ‘No. No, it can’t be like that.’

  Now he crossed the Harbour Bridge and drove out of the city. Beyond Albany he hit a long patch of roadworks and drove through slaloms of orange plastic cones, directed by men in reflective vests. They were resurfacing the motorway and the road was white with dust. He passed the road crew and speeded up, his windscreen speckled with the pale grit swirling across the road, and when he turned on the wipers the glass was immediately smeared and grey. He slowed, peered. The wipers made a rough scrape-scrape on the glass; disliking the sound he pulled over and used a piece of cloth to wipe off the dirt.

  He’d stopped on the edge of a hillside, looking down on a sweep of beautiful, undulating land dotted with sheep. The sheep’s bleating drifted up the hill, the wind sighed in a stand of pine trees, below him a hawk turned and turned above the paddocks. To the north beyond the headland the sea reflected the afternoon sun in dazzling points of light.

  This weariness . . . He wiped dirt off his hands and thought about his last conversation with Da Silva. If she didn’t give up and if he were charged in relation to Weeks’s death, he could be struck off the medical register. If they took away his practice he might as well kill himself.

  He imagined Mereana browsing through the newspaper. Scanning the Death Notices, leaning forward . . . Simon Lampton! Dead!

  He saw Mereana’s face. Her green eyes. Chipped nail polish, slim legs, a scar on her hand. Nothing shocks her. She has a sarcastic laugh, is quick to anger, is kind. She is twenty-eight, clever, poor, has lost everything, even her child, and when he visits her he feels as though he’s crossed into a different world, stepped outside time, and he loves her.

  Weeks was dead, it was an accident, he would have done more harm than good calling an ambulance. Repeat this. Keep it in your head.

  But now he’d lied to the police the consequences of discovery could be much worse, and perhaps he’d made an appalling miscalculation, imagining such a crime could remain unsolved. Still, he could hope. The police weren’t superhuman . . .

  Suppose he rang Marie Da Silva now and told her everything, explained why he hadn’t come clean. He imagined the relief as he unburdened himself, appealed to her: Ms Da Silva, what would you have done? I had no choice; I did no harm; I sought only to minimise damage to my family and friends. (Not to mention to the government.) But think about it: he would be supplying her with a motive for harming Weeks. And had he wanted to harm him? He could hardly remember now, the whole terrible day was a blur. No, he had only wanted the trouble to go away. Yet he could imagine what his blonde tormentor, aggressive little Marie, would say to that: ‘You wanted the trouble to go away. So you came up behind him and pushed . . .’

  Da Silva, with her rare eyes. Like Claire, that mix of youthful aggression and vulnerability. When Claire was on the warpath you could deflect her with a show of coldness. She would fix those big clear eyes on you, look suddenly lost. She always thought she was ‘just being rational’; it took her by surprise, hurt her, when she made people angry.

  He was still standing on the side of the road. A truck roared by, the blast of its slipstream shaking the car. The sheep sent up their mournful cries. It was fanciful to compare Da Silva to Claire, to imagine he could outwit or bully a trained detective. He got in the car and drove.

  Confession

  No one knew where Ford was. Karen said he’d been playing tennis with Garth and now he’d gone walking over the dunes, but the beach was empty as far as Simon could see except for a couple with a dog and some kids hurling themselves, screaming, off the top of a bank of sand. He went out to the road and asked Ray, who was
sitting in the gate house with his feet up doing the Herald crossword. Ford hadn’t been past. On his way to the Little House he met Tuleimoka, who shook her head, no.

  He said, ‘Thanks. Oh, Tulei? I was just wondering . . . Jung Ha?’

  ‘She is leaving.’

  ‘Why?’

  Tulei raised both hands and adjusted the comb in her shining black hair. Her expression was hard, closed. ‘Don’t know. Between her and Missus.’

  He went to the edge of the main lawn and saw Ford had walked south, out to the point, where there was a seat under a crooked pine tree and waves breaking on the rocks below. When he got there Ford was stubbing out a cigarette on the edge of the wooden seat.

  ‘You’re smoking again.’

  ‘Only two a day since Emily left. There’s no one to nag me.’

  Simon sat down. ‘I’ll nag you. Even two a day’s bad for your heart. You know that, don’t you.’

  They watched the gannets diving, hitting the water like missiles.

  ‘You need someone to nag you. There must be lots of women would love to have you, have some kids with you.’

  Ford said, ‘I did have Emily’s kid while we were together.’

  ‘I know, you said she was obnoxious. But you’d love your own.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t obnoxious. It was difficult, that’s all.’

  Ford lit another cigarette and glanced at Simon. He said, ‘The day before Emily left, the council had redone the pavement outside the house, made verges and planted grass seed. There were long strips of dirt scattered with the seed. Caro walked on ours, left her footprints all over the soil. I was annoyed, I said don’t be such a destructive little shit, now the grass won’t grow, you’ve squashed the seed. Emily and I had a row because I’d told Caro off and she decided it was the last straw, she was off. A couple of mornings after they’d gone I came out of the house, and in the dirt were Caro’s footprints. No other grass had grown, but where she’d stepped, the shoots had come up exactly in the shape of her shoe. These little green footprints made of grass.’