Wolf followed Robbie outside and stayed there watching him drive away. Okay, it’s official: I’m a shit girlfriend; a shit dog owner; a shit missing persons so-called expert; a shit everything. Shit! Wolf didn’t disagree with me one bit. Once Robbie was out of sight, he walked back inside without so much as an affectionate lean on his way past. I followed meekly, determined not to plead or make a craven idiot of myself in any other way. Wolf slumped back down on the floor where Robbie’s feet had been and let out a deep sigh. Fine. Be like that. There was a sheet of paper on the table I hadn’t noticed until now. It bore the letterhead of Jason’s real-estate agency and was headed ‘Offer on Sale of House’. I skimmed down the page until I got to a number: $860,000. I held the paper up close to my face and counted those zeros again. An eight hundred and sixty thousand dollar offer. It was fifty thousand more than Jason thought we’d get at auction. It should have made me feel good.
My newly independent-minded phone had turned itself off again. When I rebooted it, there was another panicked message from Sunny asking me to please, please, please ring her. When I tried, all I got was her voicemail again. Making true what I had told Robbie, I booked a flight back to Auckland, closing my eyes while the website confirmed my credit card payment. I knew I was perilously close to my limit but I couldn’t work up the courage to check exactly how close. Departing at six o’clock meant I had only a couple of hours to do everything I needed to before heading to the airport. I put my recalcitrant phone on the charger and used the landline to ring Jason. He confirmed the offer on the house was genuine and still live, whatever that meant. If he was expecting a squeal of delight he must have been disappointed. I said I’d give him an answer by the same time tomorrow. He started to remonstrate with me but I hung up. Then I rang Sean and matter-of-factly told him what the offer was.
‘Wow. That’s more than I expected,’ he said, his voice pleased.
‘Yeah. It’s definitely a good offer.’
‘So, what do you think?’ he said, failing to suppress the excitement in his voice.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight. ‘I think we should take it.’
‘Okay,’ he said, a little too quickly. ‘As long as you’re …’ he hesitated, ‘if you think so.’ I knew he was trying to let it be my decision and I appreciated that. ‘Do you want to grab a coffee or something?’ he said. ‘It would be good to talk.’
‘I can’t, sorry. I’m flying back to Auckland this afternoon. But listen, Sean. It’s okay. I’m okay about it. You were right. It’s time to sell up.’
‘Actually, Di, it wasn’t the house I wanted to talk to you about.’
I waited, feeling oddly detached while he struggled to find his opening line. Wolf still lay on the phantom of Robbie’s feet. He had turned his back to me, maintaining an unmistakable posture. Who needs teenagers when you’ve got a dog with attitude?
‘Are you and Robbie going to move in together?’
I wasn’t expecting this. ‘What?’ Wolf’s ears pricked with interest at my raised voice.
‘Robbie’s a great guy, you know.’
I tried for a second ‘What?’ but nothing came out.
‘I’d hate for you to stuff it up, that’s all.’
Finally my outraged voice made it all the way past my throat. ‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’
‘Don’t be like that, Diane. I just wanted to say, Robbie’s a great guy and you’re a great, um … woman.’ He ignored my snort and pressed on. ‘You two are good together.’
I sucked in some air and kept my voice steady and quiet. ‘Go fuck yourself, Sean,’ I said, keeping it friendly. We breathed intimately into the silence some more, our breaths mingling in a way they hadn’t for a very long time.
‘Bye,’ I said, and hung up.
It took only a twenty-minute hobbling walk along the lower track of Mt Victoria and the occasional lower back scratch and I had Wolf eating out of my hand again. Literally. Smackos will win over the most standoffish of dogs. Tragic, really. I picked up a pine cone, a young one, firm and closed with a shiny golden sheen the colour of its needles, and lobbed it up the slope. Wolf and I watched it roll back towards us. He glanced at me then continued to breathe deeply at the bottom of a rotted tree trunk. Chasing pine cones has never interested Wolf much. Neither had running round in circles chasing his own tail. That was my specialty.
By the time I was back home re-packing my bag, Wolf and I were best buddies again. He even awarded me his most loving of gestures, a surreptitious lick to the inside back of my knee. I bet he wouldn’t mention that little intimacy to Robbie. The knee laceration worried him and he spent some minutes sniffing a diagnosis, while I tried ringing Sunny’s number again. But what with my useless phone continuing to turn itself off and Sunny’s always flicking to voicemail we didn’t make any voice-to-voice contact. Justin’s arrest would have come as a complete shock to her. As far as I knew, she had no inkling that her father was a suspect for Karen’s murder; in fact, she didn’t even know Karen had been murdered. It was a relief when my phone finally rang. I thumbed the answer icon and tentatively held the phone six inches from my head. When the shattered screen did eventually drop out, I didn’t want it falling into my ear.
‘I’m Manny Spears,’ the voice said. ‘Karen Mackie’s friend.’ He made it sound like he was her only friend. ‘I want to talk to you.’ This was a bonus. Tracking down the friend Karen had been planning to go to the commune with had been top of my to-do list. ‘Can we meet?’ he said. ‘I want to talk face to face. I don’t like phones.’
I had two hours before I needed to be at the airport. A gust of wind buffeting the house reminded me of what to expect at takeoff.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What are you doing now?’
Manny arrived less than fifteen minutes later. Giving a stranger my home address is not something I would normally do, but already it felt more like a house than my home. No doubt in preparation for it being sold, I was separating myself from it ASAP, as Jason would say.
Wolf went through his usual theatrical routine with strangers while Manny stood in the doorway: head bent, eyes averted, weighing him up like an old enemy. The prison tattoo on his hands and cheekbone reinforced my suspicion he’d had run-ins with Wolf’s compatriots in the past. Normally I’d tell Wolf to rein in his performance, but this time I let him go the full three acts. After a few days separation from me, he needed to reassert his role in our relationship, and it didn’t hurt for this stranger to know I had an ex-police dog in the room on full alert. Wolf turned on a top-notch performance, baring his teeth and raising his neck hair. I almost forgot myself and applauded. When he had finished announcing his full credentials, I instructed him to stay by the door and offered Manny a coffee.
‘I’ll take a seat but I won’t take up your offer of a drink, thank you,’ he said, and lowered himself tentatively into the chair furthest from the door. He stole furtive glances at Wolf but kept his eyes out of reach of mine. Once seated, he slid a hand into a pocket and extracted a soft-leather black book. It looked suspiciously like a Bible. I didn’t notice any change in Wolf, but it sure made my hackles rise. Manny made no reference to it, but kept the book squeezed tightly in his palm. The cut in my knee oozed blood as I lowered myself into a chair opposite him. ‘What can I do for you, Manny?’ If he started to preach at me, I’d set Wolf on him.
‘Karen liked you. She thought she could trust you. Thought you were straight up.’ He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. ‘I want to meet Sunny. Karen’s daughter. I want you to arrange it.’
Tiny blisters of sweat formed on his upper lip. It was hard to tell if it was me or Wolf causing them. Maybe neither. The simple act of conversing seemed to be a real strain. He had a past, this man. An unpleasant one.
‘I don’t think I can do that, Manny.’
For the first time he lifted his eyes to mine. I saw the sweat bead on his forehead with the effort. ‘I know how I look with the prison tattoos and all and some folk can’t
see past them. I don’t blame them for that.’ He’d reached his limit of comfortable eye contact and turned to look out the window. A fine drizzle slurred the glass. ‘I marked myself as a criminal so the world would know it and I have to live with the consequences of that.’ His hand squeezed the Bible, tightly clutched beneath four white knuckles riddled with tattoos. ‘But this has left more of a mark on me than any ink could.’
I remained unmoved by the Bible, but Manny’s use of it as an emotional anchor was real enough. ‘Why do you want to see Sunny?’
He struggled with some inner argument before deciding, ‘I can’t tell you that.’
His eyes darted around the room and returned to touch down on Wolf. Possibly he was looking for an escape route that didn’t involve passing my dog. Wolf kept his unblinking stare fixed on Manny. His milky blind eye appeared all-seeing.
I relented. ‘If there’s something you want me to give Sunny, something of Karen’s, I can do that for you.’ This was a big offer on my part. The Bible he was clutching was most likely what he intended to offer and I wasn’t keen on being the gift-bearer of it.
‘It’s nothing like that,’ he said, frowning at the floorboards. His whole body was stiff with tension. ‘Karen already organised all that. With us preparing to go away and everything.’
He stalled. ‘Karen had come into quite a bit of money recently,’ I prompted. ‘When her mother died.’ I posed it as a statement, unsure how much he knew.
Manny threw me a quick glance. ‘She kept that pretty quiet, especially while she was still inside. It can be dangerous if word gets out that you’ve got money stashed away.’
‘Is it possible word did get out? And that’s what got her killed?’
He thought about the question for a long time, turning the Bible over and over in his hands like worry beads. ‘We were giving up everything we had anyway. It’s one of the rules of the commune. If it was her money they were after, well, that would be a …’ he struggled to rein in his emotion. ‘Well, that would be a crying shame now, wouldn’t it.’ He stopped, his voice thick. Out of respect, I looked away. Untethered from my gaze, he continued. ‘Karen didn’t need anything. Except God, of course,’ he added matter-of-factly. ‘Prison teaches you that. As for me, well, I’ve never had much anyway. Giving it up is not as big a deal as you’d think.’
‘You’re still going to the commune?’
‘Aye. As soon as I’ve sorted things for Sunny.’ His jaw clenched in determination. Whatever Karen had feared for Sunny, she’d passed on that concern to Manny. I leaned forward, trying to catch his eye again. ‘Do you think Sunny’s in danger, Manny?’
He looked at me directly. ‘Aye.’
‘Then tell me what it is. I’ll help. I won’t drag you into it.’
He closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I gave my word.’
He had retreated from me. Lips moving in silent prayer, he stroked the leather with his thumb, smoothing out the corners. There was a fine filigree of gold tracing the edges. His unconscious stroking gesture was an old learned one. At sometime in his life Manny had calmed animals. I let my frustration with him go.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Manny. I can’t help you.’
There was no way I was going to let him Bible-bash Sunny, particularly now with her father arrested for her mother’s murder. She was vulnerable, a prime candidate to get sucked into anything on offer. ‘I keep my clients’ information confidential. That’s the deal. Karen knew that when she hired me.’
We had reached an impasse. I stood, an indication there was nothing more we could say.
Neck bent, Manny frowned at the floor for a long time, breathing heavily through his teeth. He ran his hand repeatedly over the pliable leather as if he was kneading shiny pasta dough.
‘I’m the only one who can give it to her,’ he repeated.
If I had been wavering, his sudden intensity convinced me. Wolf felt the tension build and rose to his full height, letting out a high-pitched whine of displeasure. Manny’s chair screeched painfully as he pushed it back. Wolf moved rapidly. Pushing in front of me, he pressed protectively against my legs, a low rumble of discontent vibrating against my damaged knee. Manny wasn’t the eye-popping, muscle-bulging gym type but he had an intensity that hummed with strength. I looped my finger lightly through Wolf’s collar. I would release him if Manny made even the slightest move towards me.
As quickly as he’d coiled, Manny relaxed. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have expected less. You shouldn’t be putting someone you don’t know in touch with that little girl.’ He reached his hand across the table to me and when I eventually took it, he squeezed mine with convincing force. ‘Could you ask your dog to let me leave unmolested, please?’ he asked politely.
‘He won’t attack unless I tell him to,’ I said confidently, and put my hand flat on Wolf’s head to remind him of it.
Manny walked slowly to the door, his shoulders hunched, the Bible clutched in front of his body. The holy book might have effectively warded off any number of dangers but not Wolf. He was most definitely an atheist. The only god Wolf paid homage to was the heaven of late-afternoon sun on his pelt, the sacred smell of a bitch in season and the state of ecstasy reached after long hours gnawing on a bone.
Manny lifted his collar against the drizzling rain and bobbed his head in farewell, all the time keeping his eyes lowered. I was sure his aversion to eye contact was nothing more sinister than a symptom of his shyness.
For Karen’s sake I tried one last time. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Manny. Are you sure you won’t let me give something to Sunny for you?’
For the first time he smiled at me. A transforming smile, all sloped around one side of his face. ‘No, girl. It’s not something you can give her.’
He was halfway down the path when I called out. ‘Manny.’ He turned. ‘What time did you leave Karen’s place on Friday?’
‘The police have already asked me that.’ I bet they had. Many times, no doubt. He paused, hoping it would be enough for me. It wasn’t. ‘I left around nine-thirty. We were going to have a prayer session, but she was too excited about meeting her little girl the next day so we called it an early night.’
He lifted his hand in a silent farewell, turned his back and continued down the path. Only when he was completely out of sight did I breathe properly again. His tension had been infectious.
Arohata Women’s Prison is laid out a bit like an army barracks with one long single-storey wooden building serving both as dining room and visiting area. My visitor’s permit was already on file from the last time I was here; to hear Vex describe the details of my sister’s murder. I remembered it word for word. I could still hear the thrumming of a desperate bumblebee against the window, the background noise to her confession; could still picture it, image by image. An unexpected tsunami of grief threatened to engulf me. I held it back but the effort made my eyes sting.
Having previously been vetted, this time I only had to turn up, show my ID, endure a pat-down and relinquish my phone. The warder on entrance security studied my shattered mobile suspiciously but made no comment other than a derisive snort. She had the same response to my driver’s licence photo so maybe the snort was an habitual response. Visiting hours were coming to an end and fractious kids, bored with being cooped up all afternoon, were being packed up to go. The room smelt of soiled nappies. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom; in fact, there was a surprising family picnic atmosphere I hadn’t been expecting.
Vex spotted me before I saw her and had a chance to hide any reaction my unexpected appearance might have caused. She stayed seated and waited for me to approach. It’s one of the few defiant exertions of power available to inmates forced to deal with people from the outside. Inside the razor wire-topped nine-metre-high fences, the everyday power struggles between inmates are very real; whether you survive or not depends on your ability to understand and negotiate them. Vex was smaller than I remembered. The level grey eyes were the same
, though, the whites, once startling in their healthiness, were now the colour of two-day-old hard-boiled eggs. I recognised the smattering of freckles across her nose. Her innocent look had been a staple of her prostitution work before she was incarcerated. I doubted she would be able to pass herself off as the girl-next-door type any more.
It is oddly deflating sitting opposite the person responsible for your loved one’s death. This prison visit was starting to feel like a mistake, but it was too late to pull out now. I cut straight to the chase. The sooner I was out of here, the better.
‘Why did you send Karen to me?’
Vex raised her eyebrows at my bluntness, but her tone was flat. ‘It’s what you do, isn’t it? Find people? She wanted to find her daughter.’ My eyes were fixed on the filigree of fine lines extending from her eyes to her hairline. How dare she grow old when Niki would be stalled at twenty-one forever. She was aware of me studying her and didn’t seem to mind it one bit.
I forced my attention back to why I had come here. ‘Do you know who killed Karen?’
‘No. Do you?’ she shot back.
It would be public knowledge soon enough but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the news of Justin’s arrest. I forced myself to breathe slowly. If I was going to get anything out of this woman, I had to play it way more softly than this. Before I could come up with my next question she spoke.
‘How’s Sean?’ she asked, going back to first moves, making it clear whose terms this conversation was on. Vex had had dealings with Sean.
I answered honestly. ‘I don’t know.’
She smiled at that. We were both quiet for some time, while she decided what, if anything, she would tell me.
‘You know that Karen turned Christian,’ she said, and glanced around the room. ‘A lot of them do that in here. There’s all sort of benefits.’ She studied one of the guards for a long time before continuing. ‘But with Karen it was the real deal. She went straight; got off the drugs, stayed out of trouble …’ she said, counting off Karen’s achievements on her fingers. Her nails were nibbled to the quick. ‘Believe me, it’s not so easy in here.’
My Brother’s Keeper Page 14