It was only after I’d given the driver Sarah’s address and settled myself into the back of the taxi that I figured out what building backed on to the alleyway — what building Chris Ross had been so interested in. It was Pussy Galore. I remembered Niki telling me about the euphemistically named ‘discreet entrance’, promoted as a private entry and exit for ‘gentlemen’ who preferred their visits to the club to be confidential.
In reality, it was used to heave out punters who’d thrown up over themselves. The pissy lane was also where any strippers’ jealous boyfriends were dragged and nunchucked into behaving reasonably. Niki told me she’d taken to using the discreet entrance to go to and from the club. She said it was less hassle than trying to leave by the front entrance. I realised now, with shame, that I hadn’t asked her what she’d meant by ‘less hassle’. I reckoned a good evening’s entertainment could be had watching the lane — perhaps not as good as Marie’s ‘window of opportunity’, but arguably better than being inside the club itself. Thinking back over my own La-Z-Boy experience, I realised that there was probably a bit of the voyeur in all of us, and Chris Ross’s viewing platform, looking down as it did on the back entrance to a strip club, was the ultimate location to watch from.
What was Chris Ross up to? Was it just a coincidence that a guy Niki had blackmailed had a prime location for viewing the ‘discreet’ entrance to the club she worked at? The entrance she used to leave by in the early hours of the morning? I thought about what he must have felt when he realised Niki had set him up. If my theory was right and Ross had paid Snow to kill her, he must have had to pay a hefty sum. Niki dead would have meant a big drop in Snow’s earnings, and Ross must have offered a generous cash incentive for him to do it.
I hoped my little real estate act in the alleyway was convincing. It was dumb to have made myself visible to Ross, and I knew it. I’m not normally that reckless. Well, not by accident, anyway.
CHAPTER 19
Sarah Crossen-Smith was a compact, fox terrier of a woman. I judged her to be in her early sixties, which fitted with the age the John Doe would have been had he lived. Her steel-grey hair was cut in a mannish style, longer at the top but bristling short at the neck. There was a lot about Sarah that bristled. Her suspicious little eyes darted over me as she dropped into a chair and planted her elbows on the table. She had the look of someone gleefully anticipating a bloody good argument. I suspected this was how Sarah approached most things that entered her world unexpectedly.
I started by asking her what Christian name the initial B. stood for.
‘B for bastard,’ she shot back, flicking the few strands of hair that had dared to move out of place. I decided it was time to ask what her relationship was to Mr ‘B for bastard’ Crossen.
‘My relationship?’ she sneered, using the heel of her hand to wipe the corner of her mouth. ‘He was my fiancé.’
I half expected her to spit. I was getting the distinct impression that learning ‘B for bastard’s’ body had been found wasn’t going to be all that traumatic for Sarah. She may have read something in my expression.
‘I can’t be expected to go on grieving forever,’ she added defensively. ‘Brian died over forty years ago.’
I made a non-committal noise. She glared at me for a while, then shrugged in response to some internal dialogue she’d been having.
‘You want a drink?’ she asked, hauling out a wine cask from the fridge. I noticed there wasn’t much else in there.
‘Sure,’ I said.
There was enough of the Irish blood sloshing around in my veins to make a drink obligatory when talking about the dead. Or about nuns. Or mothers. Actually there was quite a long list of conversational topics that a drink was obligatory for. Sarah clasped two large-sized Marmite glasses in one hand, and banged them on the table between us.
‘I’m guessing you found him, then. Brian.’
She acknowledged my nod by filling the glasses to the top and knocking hers back in one gulp. I’d never seen anyone do that with wine. She just opened her throat and threw the full glass of wine down it.
‘Where’d you find him?’ she asked, refilling her glass to the brim.
‘In the Rimutaka State Forest Park. A ranger found him.’
I took a sip to give her time to take it in. She grimaced, but I couldn’t tell if it was the wine or a reaction to finding out where her fiancé’s body had been found.
‘Did you bring him with you?’ she asked, peering at my shoulder bag as if I might suddenly whip him out of it. I couldn’t figure out if she was winding me up. Sarah didn’t seem the joking type.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’ I said, biting the cap off my pen.
Sarah shrugged. ‘Fire away,’ she said, then opened her throat again for more wine. The way she drank reminded me of a sword swallower.
‘Brian Crossen was your fiancé,’ I said, printing it in clear large letters so she could read it. I’ve always found that people open up more easily when they can see what you’re writing.
‘We were engaged November 1968,’ she said, hefting the wine carton to her ear and shaking it. There was a faint slosh of wine against plastic — the sound seemed to depress rather than please her.
‘When did you last see him, Sarah? Do you remember?’ I asked.
She ripped the cardboard box open, reached in, and pulled out the plastic bag before answering. Wine in plastic bags always makes me think of catheters.
‘I remember exactly when I last saw him. Four thirty p.m. on the tenth of September 1969.’
It was obviously not the first time she’d reeled this off. I wrote, ‘Last seen tenth of September 1969’. When I looked up, she was staring at what I’d written. In the fifteen minutes I’d been there, Sarah had efficiently thrown five glasses of wine into her stomach and was now, suddenly, drunk. The alcohol had softened her edges. All her little bristles were flattened, and her face had fallen into soft folds as if she was melting. I’d managed to get away with only taking a sip, but even if I’d drunk my whole glassful I doubt if she would’ve refilled it.
‘Tenth of September 1969,’ she repeated, and then stuck the little white nozzle in her Marmite glass and used both hands to squeeze the last of the wine out of the plastic bag. She gave the nozzle a little practised shake like a man does when he’s finished peeing.
‘It was his stag night. We were getting married the next day.’ She let the last of the wine sit on her tongue before swallowing. There was a little crusty sugar line on her bottom lip.
‘Stag night,’ she slurred, with the sort of contempt only a drunk can muster. ‘His mates took him off to the pub, started drinking, and never stopped. That’s what you do on a stag night, apparently.’ She stared malevolently at my glass of wine until I pushed it towards her. ‘Bastards,’ she added. She drank half of it in one mouthful, and kept hold of the glass. ‘They’d got him a stripper. Some slut.’ She dragged her head up to look at me, but her eyes slid away from mine before they could make any real purchase. ‘The bitch even had the … shit … to turn up at his funeral.’ She took another mouthful, being careful to leave a dribble in the bottom for later.
What funeral? John Doe couldn’t have had a funeral. No one knew he was dead. I was starting to get a really bad feeling about this, but before I could clarify things with Sarah, she was off again.
‘Totally pissed, he fucks some slut. Then he gets in his car and writes himself off on the motorway. Kaput. Fucked. Night before we were getting married.’ She was so close I could smell the sickly sweet, diabetic smell of wine on her breath. ‘S’pose you’re wondering where I was, while he was having his stag night.’
Actually, I wasn’t wondering that at all. I was wondering why my John Doe had been wearing boots with Brian Crossen’s name in them, but I didn’t have the heart to interrupt her story. I had the feeling nothing would have stopped Sarah anyway, so I nodded. I don’t think she noticed that either. Sarah was her own audience — I was nothing more tha
n an accidental hostage.
‘I was playing pin the tail on the fucking donkey with a bunch of other stupid bloody women just as bloody stupid as me.’ She belched into one cheek, and then released the fumes slowly before resuming. ‘There he was with his mates, getting pissed, fucking some whore, and writing himself off, and there was me, four months pregnant, playing kids’ party games with a bunch of other stupid chicks. What did we call those nights? They weren’t called showers then. Hen’s Teeth or something …’ She drained the last of the wine and belched violently. ‘Can’t remember. Pin the fucking tail on the fucking donkey. If it wasn’t so dumb it would be tragic.’
Sarah staggered to her feet and yanked open the fridge door. ‘I was going to be Mrs Brian Crossen the next day. I’d even practised writing my new married name.’ She swayed in the cool air of the open door and glared at its few contents. ‘So anyway, after he was dead, I changed my name by deed poll, added his on to mine. He owed me something, so I thought I might as well take his name — he didn’t give me anything else worth keeping.’
‘Was Brian a tramper?’ I asked. ‘I think I might have his, ah, boots.’ It sounded pretty lame even to me, and the look Sarah attempted to level at me suggested she thought the same.
‘I thought you said you’d found Brian, not his boots!’
I took a breath and laid it out for her as clearly as I could. ‘A body was found in the Rimutaka Forest Park wearing boots with the initial B and the name Crossen written inside. We think the body had been there for about forty years. I’d presumed he was your fiancé, Brian Crossen.’
Sarah showed no emotion at all, but she did release another belch as she let the fridge door sigh shut.
‘Nah, that’s not Brian,’ she said, hefting a new carton of wine from under the table. She suddenly seemed quite affable. Helpful, even. She used her thumb to push back the little flap in the carton, and wrestled out the plastic tap. ‘Three weeks in intensive care before he died. I was there every day for him. I even held his hand when they turned off the life support.’ She paused with the tap positioned over her glass. ‘And you know what I was thinking?’ She didn’t wait for my reply. ‘I was thinking that the last thing he did, the last thing he’d remember, was getting drunk with his mates and fucking a whore.’
She repeated this several times, shaking her head in disbelief each time she said it, but she perked up again as her glass filled.
‘I wore my wedding dress to his funeral. People gave me a hard time about it, but I didn’t care.’ She looked genuinely happy at the memory. ‘What the fuck else was I going to do with it?’
I still couldn’t figure out why she thought I might have had Brian with me. Sarah was addled but not that addled. As if reading my thoughts she started up again.
‘I kept him on a shelf in the garage. Well, his ashes. Same thing. I wanted my son to remember how his father died. I thought maybe seeing his Dad there every time he got in and out of his car might stop him speeding. Couple of months ago he went missing.’
‘Your son?’ I said.
Sarah looked away from me. ‘Jayden was killed in a hit-and-run last November.’
I murmured an inadequate ‘I’m sorry,’ but Sarah didn’t even seem to know I was there any more.
‘I’d forgotten all about Brian being on the shelf until I went in there a couple of months ago to do something or other,’ she said. ‘And I saw he was gone. Someone must have nicked him.’ Her eyes finally acknowledged me. ‘I thought you might have found the box of him somewhere.’
Making a getaway wasn’t difficult. Sarah had settled in for the evening. I’d said my goodbyes and made it as far as the letter box when she hailed me from the doorway.
‘I remember the boots, though,’ she called out. ‘They were quite flash. He hadn’t had them long. I gave all his gear to the local Sallies. I guess your dead guy must have got them from there.’
Walking away from Sarah’s, I thought about dead ends. I’d been so sure I’d found someone to claim my John Doe. Someone who’d take the sad little pile of bones off Smithy and have them buried. Someone who’d say, ‘I loved him,’ and maybe even lay a gentle hand on the remains. Someone who wouldn’t see a pile of bones, but the armature of a life lived. Wouldn’t see the creepy articulation of a skeleton, but would remember legs running, fingertips on warm flesh, the gentle rise and fall of chest, arms embracing, sunshine on warmed silky skin. Would maybe remember golden hairs on delicate wrist bones. Maybe. And I thought about other dead ends. About how some people live out their entire lives as if they’re barrelling towards a dead end, and just don’t care any more. Sarah was a prime example.
I decided to walk back to collect my car from HQ rather than get a taxi. I felt exhausted after being with Sarah; not the healthy kind of exhaustion you get from physical tiredness, but the sapped, depleted feeling you might get from spending an hour watching an animal tied to a stake — tugging at the rope occasionally but resigned to being held captive. It seemed to me that one event can totally screw up your life. One terrible incident can define you, set you off on forty years of rope-tugging or maze-running. I thought about Sarah, and how her fiancé’s death had become the defining event in her life; and then I started to think about Niki and the effect her death had had on me. I only thought about that for a little while, and then I heard that ‘Danger, Will Robinson. Danger’ warning inside my head, and decided to stop thinking about it. For now, anyway.
It had been a long day. It had begun with learning from Chloe the details of my little sister’s business acumen in the sex industry, and was finishing with dead-end Sarah. Add in the trauma of meeting Sean’s pregnant girlfriend for the first time, and lay all that on top of less than four hours’ sleep, and all I really wanted to do now was hang out with some good company. Since I hadn’t spoken to Gemma after she’d hit me with a few home truths about myself in the bar that night, and since I wasn’t ready to rip open that suppurating little wound just yet, it seemed to me I really had only one other option.
An hour later, I chucked the dog bone and a boil-in-bag rice dinner for one into the back of the car and started the engine, but instead of reversing out of the supermarket car park, I sat staring out the windscreen at the plastic bags and bits of rubbish being blown around. Shoppers scurried across with shoulders hunched and collars pulled up against the slanting rain, their faces tight and closed to the weather and anything else that might be coming at them. The gusting southerly juddered the lamp-post lights, and sent reflected colours scattering across the puddles. It could have looked pretty but it didn’t. In fact, suddenly, the whole scene depressed me — the supermarket, the hunched figures, the rain. I nearly didn’t bother answering my phone, but when I picked it up I saw Robbie’s name pulse at me from the screen.
He wanted to know if I’d checked my outlook today. Given my despondency, it took me a minute to figure out which outlook he was talking about. The one I’d been staring at through the car window wasn’t exactly rosy.
‘There’s a bunch of emails gone back and forth between the ranger and the tramper who found our John Doe’s left boot,’ he explained.
He must have mistaken my silence for disapproval because he added, a tad defensively I thought, ‘They cc’d me in.’
I switched off the engine, and listened while Robbie filled me in. The tramper had emailed that he’d found the second boot about eight years ago in a place roughly one and a half kilometres south-west of the hut where I’d found it being used to house the roll of toilet paper. Robbie said he’d rung and talked to the tramper, was pretty confident he could find the spot, and thought he’d head in there tomorrow morning with the hope of finding something else belonging to the John Doe — like the dead guy’s head, for example.
There was a pause while I listened to Robbie’s breathing, and then he said he wondered if I might like to go with him. It was definitely a weird idea for a date, but sadly, I’ve had worse offers. I felt a smile spread across my face, and that seeme
d to kick-start a chain reaction of good feeling right from my scalp’s hair follicles to the soles of my feet and everywhere in between. Tragic, really.
Grinning, I asked if I could bring my dog, and Robbie sounded like he was grinning too when he said, ‘Sure.’
I offered to pick Robbie up from the Wainuiomata Police Station so we could drive the rest of the way in one car, but he rather bashfully admitted that tomorrow was his day off, and suggested it might be better to meet at the car park entrance to the forest. He asked if 6 a.m. would work for me, and then it was my turn to say ‘Sure’ — and I was definitely grinning. We giggled like a couple of naughty schoolkids when he reminded me that the ranger had a bit of an attitude about dogs so we might have to keep out of his way. I let myself enjoy the sound of his breathing in my ear for a full ten seconds before I rang off.
Truly, truly tragic.
The evening’s intimate cross-species tête à tête didn’t turn out to be quite as intimate as I’d planned. With exquisite delicacy and good manners, Wolf had taken the bone from my hand and loped off to his special gnawing place to spend quality time with it, and I’d just squeezed the steaming rice out of the bag on to a plate, only burning myself twice in the process, when Gemma turned up clutching a couple of bottles of Pinot. We both knew they were peace offerings, and that she’d come to apologise for what she’d said about my relationship with Niki.
Her heartfelt and genuine apology took the form of not mentioning it or referring to it in any way at all — which was just fine with me. I doled out two plates of rice since neither Gemma nor Wolf was too keen on sharing his bone for dinner. Two bottles of wine later our relationship was back on track, almost like nothing had happened. Almost. It certainly wasn’t Gemma I was holding a grudge against. It was me. Gemma was right. I’d judged Niki, holding myself up as the success story to the mirror of her failure. I’d need to look at all that more closely one day. One day soon, in fact.
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