‘Justin comes home and tells me Karen has decided to use her mother’s money to take Sunny away to Europe with her. I know this money is Ned’s money. It is the money we have been waiting for. I ring Ned and I tell him: that bitch isn’t going to give you your money. I say to him, what are we going to do? And Ned says not to worry, he’ll sort it.’
Well, he’d certainly done that. It occurred to me that if I’d slept with Ned that Friday night, as I’d been sorely tempted to, he’d never have taken the phone call from Salena; he wouldn’t have flown to Wellington first thing the next morning to confront Karen; he wouldn’t have killed her. On a bad day I could feel I was responsible for Karen’s death. On a good day … well, I hadn’t had one of those for a while, so I’d just have to wait and see.
‘Why did Justin agree Karen could take Sunny away with her?’ My voice echoed around the room but I couldn’t tell if it was a symptom of the blow to the head or impressive bathroom acoustics. ‘Why did he agree to that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Salena said. ‘That’s the truth!’ she added, as if it was a rarity that surprised even her. She spoke to my disbelieving look in the mirror. ‘It must have been something big Karen had on him because he would never even let her name be spoken in the house. He didn’t want Sunny to have anything to do with her. I don’t know what she said to change his mind.’
We all turned at the sound of a siren. The ambulance was only minutes away. I had it all figured out now anyway, but I wanted confirmation. I was hoping this was the last time I’d ever have to see them.
‘So Ned caught the red-eye to Wellington on Saturday morning and stuffed up your plans by killing Karen,’ I said.
Salena did that European turned-down mouth thing that indicated agreement. ‘He said it was an accident,’ she said, not even trying to make it sound convincing. She kept her focus on Ned.
‘Karen dead meant all the money would go to Sunny,’ I continued. ‘The only way you two could get your hands on it then was if Justin was out of the way leaving Salena as Sunny’s guardian.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘So which of you two took the photos of Sunny?’
For the first time since he’d hit me Ned acknowledged my existence. ‘What do you take me for?’ he said. I was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that without me having to spell it out for him.
Salena looked away from us both, caught her image in the mirror and adjusted her hair.
Chapter 25
THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2012
While the two ambulance men attended to Ned, I wandered onto the street to settle my nerves and to keep an eye out for Sunny and Neo. They’d been gone over an hour and I was starting to worry. The pavement steamed from the heavy downpour. Having dumped their load on the city streets, huge grumbling thunder clouds lumbered off towards the Waitakeres. The street was rich with pohutukawa, decked out in their full crimson garb. Soon it would be Christmas with all its accompanying madness. The expanding balloon sensation in my head had been replaced with a high-pitched whistle, like wind moving across the prairie in an old Western movie. I almost expected a tumbleweed to, well, tumble by.
‘Things settled down a bit in there, have they?’ I’d clocked the wiry, middle-aged man bent over stroking a ginger cat but didn’t recognise him until he spoke. Manny made room for me on the concrete fence a few doors down and we sat calmly together for a surprisingly long time, the big ginger cat weaving in and out between our legs. Manny was one of those rare breeds of people that you feel comfortable being quiet with.
‘What are you doing here, Manny?’
‘I hear that everyone does these slide shows at funerals now,’ he said. ‘No reason I could think of why Karen shouldn’t have one of them as well. I came up to collect some photos.’ His eyes slid in my direction without making purchase. ‘It’s her funeral on Saturday.’ The cat leaned itself against his leg, head stretched up in invitation, its eyes narrowed with pleasure. Manny responded with a luxurious stroke of his hand down the length of its body.
‘I’ll let you into Norma’s place when the ambulance is gone, if you like,’ I said.
Manny smiled and again ran his hand confidently down the cat’s back, fingers expertly massaging the muscular shoulders. It arched its back with pleasure, tail rising like a pump lever. Though he still avoided any eye contact with me, Manny studied the cat with direct and unmistakable liking. It did the same in return.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘I can let myself in.’ Somehow he caught my expression. ‘I warned Karen about keeping her key under the welcome mat, but she wouldn’t be swayed by me. She said she wanted to keep her trust in some things.’ He smiled to himself at the memory of their conversation. ‘I’ll come back for the photos later.’ He stood, keeping his eyes averted but otherwise at ease. ‘There’s no hurry.’ He brushed some golden cat hairs off his pants but then bent again to give the insistent cat another full body stroke. Something occurred to me.
‘Manny.’ I waited until his head tilted in my direction. ‘Did Sunny come back? While you were here?’
‘Aye,’ he said, amiably. ‘She turned up here with the wee boy about the same time I did. And if you’re going to ask me if I spoke to her, yes, I did. I managed to say what I needed to say to her out of hearing of the lad.’ He threw a fleeting glance in my general direct. ‘I had a message for Sunny, you see, from Karen. That’s what I needed to give her. That’s why it had to be me who gave it to her.’ I followed the direction of his glance. Salena’s car was gone. Manny smiled shyly. ‘She needed some time to think.’
The cat startled as my feet hit the gravel. ‘You let Sunny drive off in the car? With a six-year-old!’
For the first time he looked ill at ease. ‘She didn’t steal it, did she? She told me it was her mother’s car. She had the keys.’
He’d missed my point entirely. ‘Manny, she’s fourteen years old, for God’s sake!’
‘Is that a fact?’ he said, unconcerned. ‘Well, it’s true that I didn’t look at her all that closely.’ Manny didn’t look closely at anything. He didn’t look at anything. ‘She drove off well enough,’ he said. ‘It looked to me like she knew what she was doing. She seemed a very capable sort of girl,’ he declared confidently.
Clearly, in Manny’s world, fourteen-year-old girls driving off with their six-year-old brother in the back seat wasn’t something to be too worried about.
‘What did you say to her, Manny?’
He waited for the cat to return and worm around his legs again before he answered. ‘I didn’t know Sunny would be here at her gran’s house,’ he said, blunt tattooed fingers massaging the cat’s neck. ‘God must have planned that I’d come across her this way and I’m glad he did.’ He gave the cat’s back a final stroke. ‘I find He usually knows what He’s doing,’ he added with a shy smile. And then to my surprise, he stretched his hand out and squeezed me reassuringly on the shoulder as if I was just another feline in need of a good stroke. His touch surprised me. ‘I’ll come back for the photos later. I’ll let myself in and be gone before you know it.’
Suddenly he turned and strode quickly off down the road. I was about to call out to him but just then the front door opened. He must have heard them before I did and wanted to make himself scarce. First an ambulance attendant emerged and then Ned on a stretcher. Salena hovered next to him, his hand squeezed tightly in hers.
When I looked back up the road, Manny was gone.
A pad of wet gauze covered Ned’s eyes. I gave him a poke so he’d know it was me. ‘Just so we’re clear, I’m telling the cops what you told me.’ His mouth turned down at the sound of my voice but other than that he didn’t respond. ‘If you want to make it easier on yourself you should give them your version firsthand. It’ll go better for you, if you do.’ He turned his head away without saying anything and the attendants slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Salena held out her hand for one of the attendants to help her climb in the back. They ignored her.
She turn
ed her attention to me. ‘Where’s Neo?’ she asked, looking me up and down as if I might have him hidden in my clothes somewhere.
‘He’s with Sunny,’ I answered evasively.
Satisfied with that answer, she removed her impossibly high heels and hauled herself up into the back of the ambulance.
‘Salena, listen,’ I said. ‘Ring Justin and tell him to meet me here as soon as possible. It’s important.’ She hesitated and then reluctantly reached for her phone. The driver closed one of the back doors. I leaned in before the other door was closed. ‘And while you’re at it, you might want to tell him who took the photos of Sunny.’
The attendant closed the other door before she could respond.
I only had enough time to grab my jacket, splash cold water on my face and take a couple of paracetamol to quieten my whistling-kettle head problem before Justin burst in the door.
‘What the fuck’s going on? Salena said there’s an emergency and then she just hung up on me. Where’s the kids?’
I thought it would be wise to start with some good news. ‘Justin, you’ve been cleared of taking the photos of Sunny.’
He stared at me. ‘What the fuck?’ I saw the hope ignite. ‘For real?’
‘Yep. The person who took the photos has confessed.’
‘You’re shitting me.’ He lowered himself into a chair, a smile tempting his lips as he processed this piece of information.
‘That’s the good news,’ I added and then mentally started counting to ten.
At the count of five he suddenly shot to his feet. ‘Who did it?’ Bingo. ‘Who took those photos of Sunny? I’ll fucking kill him!’
I took a deep breath. ‘Salena.’
‘What?’ It made no sense to him. ‘Salena?’
I nodded.
‘Bullshit. Why would Salena take dirty photos of Sunny?’
I took an even deeper breath. ‘Okay. Well, that’s more bad news.’ He waited. There was only one way to do this — quickly. ‘Salena and Ned have been having an affair. I don’t know for how long, but long enough for them to decide to set you up so that you’d be out of the way and they’d have access to Sunny’s inheritance.’
‘What?’ he said again. I didn’t think I could repeat it. I was about to say I was sorry but then that unidentifiable bruised organ of mine reminded me it hadn’t yet forgiven him for being rammed against the bridge post.
Justin was looking at me like I was some kind of dangerous nutcase, which, given the strange whistling brain event I was still experiencing, might have been a reasonable assessment. ‘What have you done with my kids?’
I swallowed. ‘Sunny drove off in Salena’s car. She has Neo with her.’ His face drained of colour. ‘But I’m sure she won’t have gone far.’
Justin sank to his knees. ‘No, no, no!’ He rocked back and forth, hands holding his head in an eerie mirror image of me earlier. I knew this was definitely in the bad news category, but his reaction was worse than I had expected.
‘She can drive, right? She’s a smart girl. She’s driven Salena’s car before?’
He just stared at me, his face fallen in ashen folds, his mouth open.
‘It’s an automatic,’ I added weakly.
I hadn’t been all that worried about Sunny until confronted by her father’s all too real panic. He was staring at his mobile.
‘Does she know?’ He looked up at me. I saw the hope in his eyes. ‘Does she know it wasn’t me took the photos?’
I shook my head. ‘Not yet. But you can tell her.’
‘I can’t ring her,’ he said. ‘Not until she knows. She won’t answer if she sees it’s me’
He was right, of course, but I couldn’t help. A good percentage of my mobile was presently speeding towards Auckland Hospital embedded in Ned’s face, and Norma’s land phone was on Fanshaw’s desk in Wellington. Or more likely in Fanshaw’s rubbish bin.
‘Ring Neo.’
He pressed Neo’s speed-dial number and waited. I could hear the ring tone from where I was standing. After just three rings Justin looked close to breaking down. Then he let out a yelp of relief.
‘Neo! It’s Dad. Where are you? Neo? Neo!’ He brought the phone round close to his face, and stared at it. ‘She cut me off. She grabbed the phone off him and cut me off.’ He dialled again but we both knew it would go to voicemail.
‘It’s okay, Justin. They’ll be okay. We’ll find them.’ His reaction still seemed disproportionate to me but his fear was infectious.
He turned his face to me. It was bleak and grey. ‘We’ve got to ring the cops,’ he said.
‘Okay. We can do that.’ I took the phone from his hand and prepared to ring them. He seemed to be paralysed, in shock, incapable of doing anything. ‘Do you have any idea where they might be?’
He didn’t answer. His head dropped into his hands and his body folded in half until his forehead rested on the floor. I didn’t know if he was praying or if he’d collapsed. A terrible sob racked his body. His reaction seemed way over the top. Okay, Sunny was only fourteen but heaps of fourteen-year-olds can drive as well as anybody. And then, looking at him, a whole heap of things suddenly became clear.
I knew why Justin was so devastated. And finally, I knew what Karen had told him the night before she died.
Chapter 26
APRIL 2005
Sunny
The day Falcon drowned, Mum had the yips really bad. She’d been hanging out for her drugs all day. I hated her when she had her drugs but I hated her even more when she didn’t. It was Falcon’s birthday and I felt sorry for him that he wasn’t having a normal birthday with cakes and party hats and games and other kids. Falcon didn’t have any friends. I had friends, but I knew not to bring anyone home. I knew Mum’s drugs and her yips weren’t what other mothers had and I knew if I said anything about it to anyone, we’d all be in terrible trouble. It was a family secret that was so secret even the family didn’t talk about it. I hated the weekend days because it meant we had to spend the whole time trying to keep out of Mum’s way. Usually Falcon would just do what I said and I could protect him, but something was funny about him that day. Gran had sent him money for his birthday. He’d never had real money of his own before. He kept hassling Mum about taking us to The Warehouse to buy his present. He kept asking Mum if she was sure he had enough money to buy a PlayStation. How did she know how much it cost without ringing up the shop to ask? When were we going to go and get it? That sort of thing, the sort of thing that would really wind Mum up. It didn’t take much to wind her up when she had the yips. And on Falcon’s birthday she had the yips worse than I’d ever seen.
When the car was filling up with water Falcon kept saying ‘I’m scared, I’m scared’, and then he undid the seat belt on his booster seat and put his arms around my neck because I was in the front seat. The car was floating down. It kind of tilted head-first, which made my ears pop like on the plane that I went in once with Dad when we going to see his granddad, or maybe it was his dad.
I told Falcon not to be scared and I sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ to him because that was the song he learnt at kindy. It was his favourite, even though Dad said it’s not really a boy’s song. Falcon joined in singing with me but then he started to cry again and put his face in my neck. I told him it was okay. I told him he was going to heaven where it would be his birthday every day forever. A real birthday with presents and a cake and party games, not the shit birthday Mum was giving him. I told him that heaven was a bit like Rainbow’s End, only better, and that he’d be allowed to go on all the rides. He said he wanted to go to The Warehouse with Mum and get his PlayStation but I knew Mum had spent his birthday money on her drugs and she wasn’t going to The Warehouse at all, she had just been saying that to shut him up. And when he cried more, when the water came gushing in from the tops of the windows, I promised him he’d get his very own PlayStation in heaven and it would be far better than any PlayStation Mum could get him. That it was called PlayStation Zillion be
cause it was so flash. I told him we were going to go to heaven together and that I would look after him. And I was — I wanted to. But the man saved me and it ended up that I didn’t go with Falcon. I didn’t want the man to save me. I wanted to go to heaven with Falcon and get away from Mum forever. That’s why I took the handbrake off when she got out of the car to have a cigarette. I knew that when she went into that house with the scary dogs tied up outside and blinds all down, then when she came out again with her eyes looking like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I knew she had used Falcon’s birthday money to buy her drugs. I knew we weren’t going to The Warehouse to buy Falcon’s PlayStation. But he didn’t know that.
The man who pulled me out of the car made me sit on the grass next to all the swan poo. He told me to stay where I was and he dived straight back into the water again to try to get Falcon. But his arms came up through all the weed and then his head popped back up out of the water and he was gasping in big gulps of air but he didn’t have Falcon with him.
Mum came and put a blanket around me that smelt like a dog and she sat beside me like she didn’t notice all the swan poo and we watched all the other people diving into the water. All those people scared the swans away. I heard people say ‘She’s in shock’, but I didn’t know if they were talking about me or Mum. And then ages later when the ambulance was there, two men came out of the river with the water pouring off them and one of the men was carrying Falcon in his arms and he had green slime all over him and he was white and very wet. They tried to push the water out of his stomach with their hands.
Afterwards, when I was in the hospital, it was nice. Everyone wore shoes that squeaked on the floor. The nurses were kind to me and gave me green jelly cut up into squares and strawberry ice cream. They wouldn’t tell me if Falcon was dead but I knew he was and then later Dad came in with his eyes all red and told me the doctors hadn’t been able to save him.
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