Surrender

by Malane, Donna

  ‘Was there anything else near the body? Backpack? Anything that might suggest he’d been tramping or hunting up there?’

  I don’t know if I fooled him but Robbie stood too.

  ‘Nah. Well, yeah. Sort of …’ He shuffled some more and even in the dim light of the shed I thought I detected a blush. He motioned for me to follow him out into the backyard and over to the fence.

  Mesh wire was attached to the top of the picket fence over a length of roughly three metres. Maybe one warm, crime-free summer someone had decided to grow tomatoes or beans there, though nothing grew on it now. I looked from the fence to Robbie who was running his hand through his hair. I still didn’t get it. I looked at the mesh again and this time saw what looked like tiny threads clinging to the wire diamonds. Up close, I saw tiny patches of interwoven fibres similar to those on the body. Some were almost gossamer, others thicker mesh. I reached out to pluck one off but Robbie touched my wrist.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why? What is this? What did you hang here?’

  Robbie was about to speak when a magpie shrieked. He shaded his eyes and glared up with what seemed unreasonable rancour. The bird paced the branch and shrieked at him again. The heavy beat of wings announced the arrival of another bird. Robbie glared at them both. At least half a dozen magpies were squabbling with each other in the nearby branches. Robbie gazed at them with disgust as he spoke.

  ‘When the ranger wheeled the body in, I didn’t know what to do with it. I was here on my own and when I rang the Sarge he was still having his breakfast and he said to just wheel it out to the shed until he got in.’

  Several sparrows hopped along the palings towards me. A large blackbird, with bright orange beak and beady eye, bounced through the dry grass in our direction. Robbie and I watched the blackbird’s advance. This police station backyard was a regular Disneyland.

  ‘I was halfway down the yard when the wheelbarrow tipped and, well, John Doe fell out. I did my best to put him back in the way he was, but a bit of his clothing fell off and, well, a bit of our John Doe came away with it and I thought, since it didn’t smell too good, I’d hang it out here rather than stink the shed out.’

  The blackbird was within kicking distance. Its beady eye focused on the fence wire — and what was sticking to it. The magpies bobbed impatiently, annoyed no doubt that we were standing between them and lunch.

  ‘So you hung John Doe’s clothing, along with a bit of John Doe, out here on the fence, and the birds ate it?’

  Robbie looked like he was about to throw up. ‘I used to like birds,’ he said.

  I didn’t think Robbie was ever going to make Sergeant.

  The aluminium exterior door clanged open and another uniformed cop came out, hitching his belt with one hand, slapping a brown envelope against his thigh with the other. Robbie’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘Diane Rowe, this is Acting Sergeant Lou Watts,’ he mumbled as the big guy joined us.

  Lou wore the anticipatory grin of a guy brimful of punchlines.

  ‘The death squad boys are here to pick up the John Doe,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘You want to roll him round to the hearse or shall I just get the birds to fly him there?’

  Robbie obliged with his one-sided grin, despite no doubt tiring of this joke. I’d been around cops long enough to know he’d never shake this one off. Lou’s eyes shifted from my face to my chest. His tongue darted out to his lower lip and he gave himself a flick with the envelope. He was looking at my tits with the same beady avarice as the blackbird eyeing the bits on the fence.

  ‘McFay said you’d be coming out to look at the file. Robbie give you everything you need?’ He was one of those men who make everything sound sexual. The tongue darted out again, the pants were hitched. ‘I got one of the boys to run copies of the remains for you.’ He thrust the envelope at me. ‘They make pretty rough viewing.’

  This wasn’t so much deference to any sensitivity on my part, but more a pitch for him to act as comforter. I put the envelope in my shoulder bag.

  ‘Yeah, I’m good thanks, Lou,’ I said, knowing he’d hate me using his first name.

  The long black snout of the hearse crept into view down the side of the building. Robbie threw me an apologetic glance and set off towards the shed. Lou winked at me. There’s not much I hate more than being winked at.

  ‘Maybe you could put a call in to the ranger, tell him I’d like to see where the body was found and have a bit of a talk. It would help if you could smooth the way for me there,’ I said, watching Robbie’s departure only partly to avoid looking at Lou.

  ‘Better still, I could take you myself,’ Lou said. I turned back in time to see his eyes shifting between my left and right tits.

  ‘Shall I bring these two along as well?’ I asked innocently.

  It took him a second, but when he got it he hitched his pants again and scowled.

  ‘If you’re accompanying the John Doe remains back to town, tell Tweety Bird he can stay here and clean out the shed. It doesn’t need the two of you guarding a wheelbarrow of bones.’

  I watched Lou head back into the station, safely removed from my dangerous mammary glands and even more dangerous smart mouth, and then I went to help Robbie.

  We found an old piece of tarpaulin to drape over the body. With one pushing the wheelbarrow and the other steering from the front, we managed to manoeuvre it across the grass. At the back of the parked hearse the two attendants sucked on their cigarettes and scuffed their leather shoes in the gravel. We squabbled a bit about how to best lift the remains from the wheelbarrow to the gurney without further destruction of evidence, and without drawing the attention of the kids splashing and squealing in the swimming pool next door. We might have gone on arguing for some time if circling seagulls hadn’t hurried us along. In the end we lifted the whole wheelbarrow into the hearse; the pathologist could sort it out at his end.

  Robbie and I washed our hands under the outside tap. It’s a ritual for me to wash my hands after being in the company of the dead. I suspect the hand-washing was more Lady Macbethian in motive for Robbie.

  ‘You said the ranger brought the body into the station in the wheelbarrow.’

  ‘Uh-huh. He had it on the back of his ute.’

  ‘So, who took the photos of the body? They were taken in situ, right? Where the body was found?’

  Robbie tore off a handful of grass sticking out from under the weatherboards and used it to scrub his palms.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. The ranger took the photos then loaded the body into the wheelbarrow.’

  I wiped my wet hands on my jacket. ‘That was …’ I searched for the word, ‘helpful of him.’

  Robbie was too engrossed in his hand-washing to respond. I decided not to pass on Lou’s message about cleaning the shed. Robbie was still scouring as I went to the hearse.

  The two attendants were already waiting, engine running. They shuffled together so I could join them in the front seat. The interior smelt strongly of peppermints which I guessed from the synchronous jaw movements both guys were sucking. Without comment, the peppermint roll was angled towards me. A Lifesaver. Hang out with cops, pathologists and funeral directors long enough and you get to associate the smell of peppermint with the stench of death.

  The driver was just starting to reverse when Robbie appeared at my window. He handed me his card and I scrabbled in my shoulder bag and then handed him mine. He murmured about having written his home number on the back and I nodded.

  There wasn’t much talk on the drive back to town. These guys weren’t going to let conversation get in the way of their impressive sound system, so we listened to Ben Harper sing about fighting for his mind. I suspected the boys had mixed a bit of leaf with their tobacco, but I didn’t mind. They drove the whole way under fifty km per hour which suited me just fine. One of the smoothest rides you’ll ever get is in a hearse. Wasted on the dead, I thought, as I tapped the numbers from Robbie’s card into my iPhone, te
lling myself it was simply because I was always losing business cards.

  I sucked powerfully on my Lifesaver and settled in to enjoy the trip back over the Wainui hill. I thought about John Doe resting languidly in his wheelbarrow in the back. In all likelihood I’d never discover who he was. He’d lie around the Wellington Hospital morgue until the coroner made a call on how he’d died, and then if no one claimed him, he’d be cremated and his ashes stuck in an unmarked hole in the ‘memorial wall’ at the Karori cemetery. At least he’d have company there.

  I thought about the old custom of bribing gravediggers to bury paupers in existing plots. When Mum died my aunt arranged to have her buried in the old family plot. During the arrangements with the sexton, she uncovered historical records that listed two unnamed strangers buried alongside my great-grandmother. My aunt was horrified and wanted these uninvited guests removed, but I was strangely comforted by the thought that Mum wasn’t lying there with only her own ancestors — that some strangers had dropped in. A gregarious person in life, I reckoned Mum would have liked that.

  We’d driven all the way to the Basin Reserve before Ben stopped singing. I noticed how people in the cars alongside the hearse glanced nervously at us and then looked quickly away. The boys beside me stared straight ahead. I don’t think they realised the music had stopped.

  ‘Is Smithy doing the autopsy on this one?’

  The guy next to me shifted his feet around what I had thought was a KFC takeaway box but now realised was someone’s ashes.

  ‘Yup,’ he said, reaching to push the ejecting CD back in. ‘I think he’s on all this week.’

  I thought I’d try my luck before Ben started up again. ‘Did he handle that stabbing from Cuba Street?’

  Ben drowned out his response, but I caught the nod and at the same time a cry went up from the Basin. I don’t think anyone was celebrating the news that Smithy had cut Snow open from sternum to pubis, but I’d be happy to join in if they were. More likely someone had just hit a six on the cricket grounds. The traffic lights turned green, Ben Harper whined again about fighting for his mind, and the hearse purred forward into Adelaide Road.

  I helped the boys unload the wheelbarrow and roll it into the hospital morgue discreetly hidden away in one of the older buildings of the spanking new hospital. While they went in search of munchies from the tuck-shop, I checked the paperwork and read that pathologist Dr Grant Smith, aka Smithy, was down to perform the autopsy on my John Doe at ten o’clock the next day.

  I took the opportunity to flick back a few pages, and confirmed that Smithy had also performed the autopsy on one James Patrick Wilson (aka Snow). There was no clue to the findings of the autopsy — that would have been too easy — but the forms noted that Snow’s body had been released to Hooper Funeral Directors. Killers often go to their victim’s funeral, which is why cops attend the funeral as well. Families think cops are being sensitive. If they knew the funeral was also being filmed they might rethink the sensitivity bit. I hadn’t seen Snow at Niki’s funeral. I hadn’t really seen anything except that coffin. It occurred to me I’d never asked Sean if Niki’s funeral had been filmed.

  It was only when I waved goodbye to the Ben Harper fans as they drove off and I stood looking blankly at the empty car park space that I remembered my car was still parked outside the Wainuiomata Police Station.

  CHAPTER 7

  I knew enough about Snow to bluff the telephonist at the Hooper Funeral Directors into believing I was a relative of the deceased who wanted to attend the final service for my good old cousie Snow. I was relieved I didn’t have to taxi over there to bullshit her in person. She told me the service was at two thirty today at St Joseph’s — a big, modern hybrid of a church that motorists swing past between Regional Wines and the Mt Victoria tunnel. Having a church at the entrance to a tunnel seemed appropriate somehow.

  I had about half an hour to get there. Given my carless state and the fact I hadn’t yet eaten, the timing was perfect. I’ve always considered stomach rumbling at funerals bad mannered, topped only by farting and taking phone calls during the service. I would behave well at Snow’s funeral for the sake of those poor bastards who had loved the prick at some time in his useless excuse for a life. If it had just been between me and Snow’s ghost, I’d have had no qualms about dancing naked on his coffin, stomach rumbling, farting and singing loudly into my phone.

  The walk from the Newtown hospital to Mt Victoria and the seafood with double cheese sandwich on the way made me feel better in opposite yet strangely complementary ways. I was at the church in plenty of time to pick out the tinted-window van parked in Brougham Street from which the cops were filming the arrivals, and to find myself a place in the church where I could watch the grieving mourners without being too noticeable. I’d been to funerals at the U-shaped St Joseph’s before and knew that the best sight line was over by the organ to the far right of the entrance.

  The church was filling up but I excused my way past the few people already seated and shuffled to an empty possie at the tip of the U. From there I could see pretty much everyone face on, except those directly in front of me. The design and architecture attempted a fusion of modern and classical, Christian with secular. A big ask but they’d done their best. I craned my neck at the ceiling — looking heavenward is what you’re supposed to do in a church. The architect had gone for a lofty form with dark-stained, arched beams ribcaged across the ceiling, presumably in an attempt to simulate flying buttresses of the gothic variety.

  It made me feel as if I was trapped underneath an upturned boat but it didn’t seem to be having that effect on anyone else. It was hard to tell though, given that most of the fifty or so people were looking distressed anyway. Funerals do that to you. Floor-to-ceiling stained glass window panels separated the congregation on either side of the altar but there were no shepherds or bleeding hearts for the rosy light to shine through. Instead they’d gone for safe geometric shapes which I believe were popular in the ’70s as background to shag-piled conversation pits.

  The coffin was centre stage, one step down from an almost aggressively simple linen-covered altar. There was a pervasive smell of alcohol — either the mourners had been drowning their sorrows already, someone had gone overboard with parallel import aftershave, or the priest had been sampling the altar wine. Perhaps all three.

  A trio of large, black-clad women was hunched together in the pew nearest the coffin. I was pretty sure the one in the middle was Snow’s mother Maureen, which would make the props on either side Snow’s twin sisters Peaches and Cream. Could have been worse, I guess. They could have been called Bubble and Squeak or Benson and Hedges. I remembered Sean telling me that Snow’s first criminal offence had been a charge of assaulting Peaches. The remainder of the congregation had given this central cast a wide berth.

  Looking around the room, I recognised a few of the small- and not-so-small-time crims Snow must have had dealings with. Okay, maybe they were his friends, too, although it’s not easy to think of your little sister’s killer having friends or being liked by anyone. The cops scattered through the congregation stuck out like the proverbials. It wasn’t so much their dress, though they all had that tidy-casual look adopted only by guys who have been in the forces, spent their formative years in boarding schools, or who play golf. It was the way they stood, legs slightly apart, hands clasped in front of their genitals, head slightly bowed, that gave them away. I watched as one of these cops lifted his sleeve to his mouth, as if to stifle a cough. He was wired, in both senses of the word. I could tell from his shoulders and neck muscles that he was tense.

  Someone had ordered Snow to murder my sister. A year later someone had killed Snow using exactly the same method. That looked like a message to me and I was pretty sure by the number of cops in the church that they thought the same. The crims might be Snow’s friends but I was willing to bet that every one of the cops was there on business. The wired cop was scanning the room, studying each face, memorising it. I d
id the same. The cops knew, and I knew, that there was a good chance Snow’s killer would show.

  The entrance of the priest brought everyone shuffling to their feet, blocking my view of the congregation. As master of ceremonies the priest made a little speech about forgiveness, but I wasn’t buying it. I tuned out by studying the neck of the guy two rows in front of me. Something about it was familiar. I’d seen it recently.

  As if feeling my X-ray eyes, he half turned and lifted a hand in greeting. I’d seen him at the strip club. I scanned my memory for his name. Dope … Spiff … Stoke! That was it. Even that night he’d seemed familiar, but I’d put it down to his uncanny resemblance to Wolf. His scruffy-haired hangdog look was definitely German Shepherdish.

  The priest led the mourners into the first song. I couldn’t imagine who chose Dean Martin singing ‘Green Green Grass of Home’. I hate singing in public. I’ve been known to mime ‘Happy Birthday’ at friends’ parties but I didn’t even bother with that pretence for Snow. I kept my mouth clamped and tried to figure out why Stoke had seemed so familiar at the club, and even more in this different environment. Or maybe not so different. I guess the worship of sex and the worship of God have a kind of synergy.

  I picked out Stoke’s voice as he volumed up for the chorus. And suddenly I remembered. My skin went cold and the sub-sandwich reminded me it hadn’t been digested yet. It was the singing. I remembered him singing. I’d heard Stoke singing at Niki’s funeral. And I’d heard him sobbing.

  The funeral reached its finale. Snow stayed dead in his coffin. I couldn’t ask for more.

  Keeping Stoke in my sights, I joined the stragglers as they filed out. The wired cop was right behind Stoke, shadowing him. I slowed my step — it wouldn’t be smart to be caught on tape talking to a suspect. I was picturing the look on McFay’s face if he heard about that particular field tape, when I felt an all-too-familiar hand in the small of my back. The kind of familiarity only an ex-husband exercises. I allowed Sean to shepherd me into an alcove next to the room where sandwiches and sausage rolls were laid out on trestle tables. He started right in.