Falcon’s screams are right in my ear. He bashes my head with his fists. He’s only little but it hurts. A distorted face appears at the windscreen. A hand brushes away the mud, left, right, left. I try to tell Falcon we’re saved but no words come out. It’s Karen. Her hand is a windscreen wiper. Or maybe she’s waving goodbye. I point to the door and make pulling gestures, but she just looks at me. The car tilts as if hit by a big underwater tsunami. Falcon’s hot face is on my neck. He’s yelling at me.
‘Stop.’ He’s yelling. ‘Stop!’
‘Stop!’ I bolt awake. I’m on the bedroom floor, face down, cheek pressed into the carpet. ‘Stop!’
A man is on top of me, pinning me down. I’m completely naked. His hand is pressed hard on the back of my head, forcing my face into the carpet. His other hand has pinned my wrist to the floor. He is straddled over my arse, knees pressed painfully into my ribcage. His hot face pressed against the back of my head.
‘Stop! Just stop!’
Breathing hard, he gives my cheek a good shove into the carpet for emphasis. Memory and consciousness stutter back. I’m in Auckland. I’m not trapped in a car. I’m not underwater. I stop struggling. Immediately his weight lifts as he scoots backwards off me.
‘What the fuck!’ In the darkened room, he isn’t much more than a shadow crouched against the far wall, the king-size bed angled between us. The slatted streetlight illuminates his palms, held up in a placatory gesture. There’s a raw patch on the back of my head. My cheek burns.
‘Did you hit me?’ My voice is slurred. I sound drugged. I’m still surfacing.
‘I didn’t hit you,’ he said. ‘I tried to wake you. You just flew at me like a madwoman. Are you nuts or what? You attacked me! Fuck!’
‘Fook.’ A faint Irish lilt. My world returned to normal. Normal, that is, apart from discovering myself naked on the floor with a complete stranger who has just attacked me, or me him — whatever. Given the circumstances, it seemed appropriate to go on the aggressive.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m turning the light on, alright?’
‘Fine,’ I said.
He waited, hands up in surrender, until I’d covered myself with the bed sheet. My cheek smarted. My neck was bruised. My pride wasn’t in such good shape either.
Dark-haired, early thirties, ripped shirt — not in a designer way, more in a ‘I’ve just been attacked’ kind of way — one eyelid red and swelling. That would be the eye-gouging. Four distinct finger marks bloomed on his neck; they would go through the full autumn colour range over the next week. Eye-gouging and cheek-raking were techniques I learnt in women’s self-defence classes years earlier. They served the dual purpose of effectively fighting off an intruder and leaving visible wounds to help with identification later. I’d send the self-defence girls an email in the morning. Tell them how well it worked out. But this was no normal intruder. If there is such a thing.
‘I’m going downstairs to the kitchen now,’ he said, loud and slow, like he was talking to a dangerous inmate. ‘I’m going to put some ice on this so I won’t have to explain to everyone that a madwoman tried to kill me.’ The self-righteous type. All drama, he backed out of the doorway, his hands up in surrender mode. I needed ice, too, for the carpet burn. Grumpily, I pulled on sweat pants. He was muttering as he went down the stairs. ‘Unless, of course, you’d rather go straight into round two. What’ll it be this time? Knives? Nunchucks? Pistols at dawn?’
Ha ha. Funny guy. A bra seemed unnecessarily prudish given the naked tussle we’d just engaged in. I yanked a T-shirt over my head.
‘Come on down,’ he called. I heard the clatter of ice being dropped into glasses. ‘Maybe we can try “Pleased to meet you” as an alternative introductory technique this time.’
I didn’t need introductions. I’d already figured out who he was: the good-looker from the photo in the spare bedroom, Karen’s stepbrother.
I probably hadn’t made that great a first impression.
Chapter 9
FRIDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2012
According to Ned, he had used the spare room on a regular basis when Norma was alive and since her death he’d continued to stay there roughly one week out of every four or five. They were his clothes in the wardrobe. Karen, apparently, was happy with the arrangement. He had his own key, which was waggled in front of me as proof. In the excitement of learning she was going to meet her daughter, Karen had obviously forgotten to tell Ned and me about each other. He claimed to have been as surprised to discover me in the house as I clearly was to discover him. Though we had each, he repeated several times with increased emphasis, reacted rather differently to the situation. He had tried to wake me to introduce himself, whereas I had flown at him like a freakin’ she-devil. Despite his words, it seemed to me he actually looked quite thrilled each time he said it and I noticed some new little detail was added with each repetition. Finally he settled on the story: I threw myself at him like a freakin’ she-devil and set about ripping him apart with my bare hands. No doubt by the time the story had done the rounds I, the she-devil, would have ripped off each of his limbs and consumed them one by one. Even as a joke, I didn’t want to encourage him by suggesting it. At least he’d had the decency not to refer to the she-devil being stark bloody naked when she attacked him. Not yet, anyway.
Eventually I apologised, begrudgingly. The explanation of my deep-sleep condition fascinated him. Well, he seemed fascinated. But he was an inveterate charmer from way back, this one, with his elaborate storytelling and the attention he paid. With every new story the accent grew stronger. I accused him of turning it on when it suited.
‘Oh, well, everyone loves the Irish, you know.’ He swirled his wine around the glass before knocking it back. ‘Except the Irish,’ he added, with a wink. Normally I hate being winked at, but I laughed.
‘So where are you from then?’ I asked.
‘I was born here, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘And now?’
‘And now I’m based in Perth, but I travel between here and Australia on a fairly regular basis.’ He stopped as if he thought that was information enough. It was unusual to meet someone who didn’t want to dominate the conversation with information about themselves.
‘How come?’ I’m a born questioner.
‘Well, I’m one of the partners in a restaurant in Perth and another in Melbourne, though that’s more of a bar than a restaurant, really. And I’m a silent partner in a little place here in Parnell.’
‘What’s the difference between a silent and a sleeping partner?’ I asked. ‘I’ve always wondered.’
‘I thought you’d know all about that, being the expert on sleeping and all.’ He tilted his head in my direction and I smiled and tilted mine back at him. He wasn’t going to let the she-devil incident go easily.
‘So why restaurants?’
He seemed to genuinely think about my question before delivering me an expressive shrug. ‘I’m a useless cook.’
‘You own restaurants because you can’t cook? Seriously?’
‘Well, no. The one thing you can say about me is I don’t do anything seriously. I’m constitutionally unsuited for it. I’m told that’s part of my charm.’ They were right about that. ‘But even though I’m a dreadful cook myself, I love food. Actually, I don’t so much love food as the eating of it. With other people, I mean. There’s just nothing that compares with sitting at a table with a bunch of people, eating and drinking and carousing. I love it, especially the carousing. What do you love, then?’ Innocent though the question was, it made me blush. He smiled so readily in response, maybe the question hadn’t been innocent at all.
We talked and drank wine and crunched the ice cube splinters from our makeshift ice packs, then at three o’clock he cooked up the only dish he claimed to be able to cook: a big plate of scrambled eggs and toast. We squatted on stools either side of the benchtop island, fork in one hand and ice-packed facecloths against our sore bits in the other, while he fille
d me in on the family history. His father, Arthur, had been in a relationship with Karen’s mother, Norma, for ten years before he died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. That was two years ago. Ned liked Norma. He was an adult when his father started up with her and he had no problems with their relationship at all.
‘They made a great couple,’ he said. Karen’s father had been killed in a car accident more than a decade earlier and Arthur’s first wife, Ned’s mother, died when he was a teenager. After his father’s death, Ned continued to stay at Norma’s when he was in Auckland. He said he hoped Norma enjoyed his company. ‘She and Dad used to have a good time together. He was good company and she missed that when he was gone. I could make her laugh,’ he said, smiling appreciatively at the memory of her. ‘She liked a good laugh.’ Having spent a few easy hours with this man I could well imagine she did enjoy his company, particularly with her man-friend dead and her only child in prison.
‘What about Sunny?’ I asked. ‘Did Norma see much of her after Karen went to prison?’
He shuddered dramatically and polished off a forkful of eggs before answering. ‘It was a terrible, terrible thing Karen did. Norma never forgave her, you know. Well, who could? Even if you were her mother.’
‘But she did keep up the contact with Sunny?’
‘No. She decided it was best not to.’
I was shocked. ‘How could that be best? She was the child’s grandmother!’
‘Norma didn’t like to talk about it.’ I waited while he forked some eggs onto a piece of toast. ‘I do know that the day after—’ He paused, toast forgotten. The Ponsonby clock chimed four times before he carried on. ‘You know, I keep wanting to call it the accident but of course it was no accident.’ I nodded. I’d done that too. ‘Anyway, the day after the drowning, Dad and Norma went to the house to see Sunny. Karen was taken away that day, of course. The police came round and she just confessed. Anyway, Dad went off to the kitchen to talk to Justin, offer his condolences and all, and Norma went to find Sunny.’ The accent was back in full force. He turned the ice pack over. I caught a glimpse of red and purple before he pressed it back into the eye socket. ‘And the next minute Dad heard her screaming the house down.’
‘Who was screaming the house down?’
‘Sunny. She screamed and screamed. There was no stopping her. Justin told Norma she should go. Eventually, she turned around and left and Dad followed.’
‘Why?’ I was confused. ‘Why would Sunny do that?’
He went back to the scrambled eggs. ‘Dad thought maybe it was because Norma reminded the child of her mother.’ He nodded in the direction of a framed photo of Norma and Karen on the shelf behind me. ‘They do look alike, don’t you think? Did look alike, I mean.’
A chip of melting ice was dribbling down his neck. I resisted the urge to wipe it away. Despite the intimacy of our earlier contact, I reminded myself we weren’t that close. I craned to look at the photo. He was right. Mother and daughter did look very alike. Sunny continued the family resemblance. I wondered if she knew that.
‘Dad said Norma was devastated. Far as I know, she never went back, never saw Sunny again. Personally,’ he said, carelessly wiping that dribble from his neck with the back of his eating hand, ‘I thought she should have gone back to see the child. She should have gone to the funeral. When all was said and done, it was a bloody selfish decision Norma made.’
‘Selfishness seems to run in the family.’ I clamped my mouth shut. It wasn’t like me to make personal remarks about my clients, especially not to their family. I blamed the 4 a.m. supper and shared ice packs. Annoyed with myself, I carried the plate to the sink, sluiced it under the tap and stacked it on the bench. I leaned my head against the cold fridge door behind Ned. All this time he hadn’t spoken or moved.
‘It was selfish what Karen did, killing that little boy. And what she did to Sunny.’ He swivelled on his stool to face me. ‘But I blame Justin as much as I blame her. He was always so in control, you know?’
This was interesting but I kept my mouth shut. One indiscretion a night was enough, and if I included the freakin’ she-devil attack my indiscretion count was already on the rise. Ned kept the ice pack on his eye with one hand and opened the cleverly disguised dishwasher door with the other. I stacked the dishes into it.
‘And then Karen gets sent to prison, Justin cuts her out of his life, divorces her in a flash, turns his life around completely, marries a stupendous Polish blonde, sires a replacement son and makes himself a cool fortune.’ He set the machine going. ‘Plus he got Sunny. Karen can’t have been happy that he got custody.’ He looked at me expectantly.
‘She’s my client, Ned. Even if I knew how she felt about it, I wouldn’t tell you. ‘
‘Oh sure, sure,’ he said, waving his hand in apology. His accent was back after a sustained absence. He dropped his ice pack in the sink with a loud clatter. His eye was the size of a purple golf ball. It was swollen shut so he probably didn’t see me flinch at the sight of it. ‘I was forgetting myself, us sitting here chatting and all.’
I didn’t intend to go back to sleep and I thought my sore bits would make it impossible but my brain had other ideas. When I woke at nine Ned was already gone. The dishwasher had been unpacked, the bench wiped down. There was a note on it, held down by a wind-up monk wearing headphones: ‘Prego. Tonight. 8 p.m. I’ll be the guy wearing the eyepatch.’
It wouldn’t hurt to have a meal with him. Okay, another meal with him. Call it research. But if the waiter gave me a funny look when I arrived I’d know the she-devil story had preceded me and I’d be out of there toot sweet.
I figured that since I was on the clock I should spend the extra time I had in Auckland finding out what I could about Justin. Apricot was a registered company, with both Justin and Salena nominated as shareholders and company directors. It was the same with the gym gear and health supplement importing business, which was registered under the company name of Orpheus. Both the websites for Apricot and Orpheus gave the impression of small-time businesses. Justin also had a specialty wine import business. From what I could make out it was so boutique as to be a company in name only, set up to provide tax-free expensive wines for Justin and Salena and their dinner guests. His own ‘private cellar’ I believe is the term used. I didn’t get very far by tracking the line of imports and sales for Justin’s gym gear and health products so I made a couple of phone calls complaining about missing deliveries and managed to glean much more information about the size of the import loads. On a roll, I followed this up by phoning the gym and posing as the personal assistant of a high-profile media celebrity who wished to remain anonymous. Eventually, after a lot of name-dropping on my part and a rather feeble struggle with confidentiality on hers, I convinced the receptionist to part with the gym’s membership list. By the time I had hung up I was confident my first impressions had been pretty close. Both businesses were doing okay but were hardly mega money-earners, which didn’t entirely gel with the house, the lifestyle and assets so ostentatiously on display. The Herne Bay multi-squillion-dollar villa with the barn-sized kitchen was owned by a trust, presumably for tax purposes — again — and presumably the trustees were Justin and Salena. I was about to check this when I realised it was five o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything since Ned’s scrambled eggs in the early hours of the morning.
Over a coffee and muffin at Café Cézanne, a little place in Three Lamps, I thought over what I’d learned. It looked to me like Justin was spending more money than he earned from either the gym or the online store. This could mean the money was coming from somewhere other than from legitimate businesses. Possibly Justin had taken his alleged history of drug use to a new level and had switched from consumer to supplier. Possibly this was what Karen suspected, which would explain why she was concerned about Sunny — possibly. Justin’s assistant Anton with his gold-spangled chest ornaments and bulging water-winged biceps would pass as a classic drug-dealer accoutrement. I made one more call.
Oliver was affectionately known by those in the media as ‘accountant to the stars’. He had some luminary clients among the film and celebrity set, who paid him handsomely to look after their books. What made Oliver extremely hot property was that he was the most unlikely of accountants: convivial company, a popular spinner of unlikely yarns, an accomplished singer, lover of the high life and, most importantly, Oliver adored spending money. His own, that is. A generous big spender who was able to legally and legitimately protect his clients’ money from the taxman — the only surprise Oliver offered was that he wasn’t inundated with marriage proposals. I’d done some work for Oliver a couple of years earlier, tracking down his birth mother. It was an emotional time for him and by the end of it we weren’t exactly friends, but we were definitely more than acquaintances. He’d said at the time he’d be happy to help if I ever needed anything. I wasn’t counting on Oliver being Justin and Salena’s accountant but I was confident he’d know who was.
‘You want me to do what?’ he responded archly.
‘I’m just asking you to have a drink with their accountant and if something should happen to come up in conversation that you think might be of interest to me, you could let me know.’
‘And I would do this for you, why?’
‘Okay, never mind. Forget it.’ It hadn’t occurred to me it was a lot to ask until he hit me with the tone. ‘Sorry I asked,’ I added belatedly.
His voice softened. ‘What’s this all about anyway?’
I thought over how much I could tell him. Not much. ‘There’s a kid involved, a young girl. I want to check that she’s okay, that she’s in a safe place.’
I waited out the silence. ‘And you give me your word you’re not working for the IRD?’
‘What!’ I was truly insulted by the suggestion. ‘No. Of course not! What do you take me for?’
I heard him smiling at my outrage. ‘I may or may not be in touch,’ he said. Which was about as good as I was going to get.
My Brother’s Keeper Page 6