by Thomas, Paul
‘He’s got a pretty good handle on Brightside.’
‘Get him to share that knowledge, by all means,’ said McGrail. ‘But he’s not one of us, Sergeant. Treat him as you would any other civilian with known criminal, if not sociopathic, tendencies. Is that clear?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why do you think Strick hired him?’
‘I’m guessing for the same reason he would’ve been fucking ecstatic when Brightside shot through. He’s worried that if we get our hands on Brightside, he’ll give it the old “I was only following orders”.’
‘You really think Strick would’ve instructed Brightside to kill Polly? She overheard something extraordinarily damaging?’
‘Maybe wires got crossed in the panic. Maybe the message was “whatever it takes”, and Brightside ran out of ideas when Polly told him to stick the all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland up his shitpipe. Who knows? The point is, the last fucking thing Strick would want is Brightside in custody saying, yeah, OK, it was me, but I just did what the big shots told me to do.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said McGrail. ‘Which raises the question: if Van Roon had tracked Brightside down, what was Strick planning to do then?’
When Ann Smellie answered the phone, she got, ‘This is Ihaka. Where is he?’
‘Good morning to you too, Sergeant.’
‘We did that stuff yesterday,’ said Ihaka. ‘Now it’s for real. So I’ll ask you again: where is he?’
‘Look, it’s not that straightforward —.’
‘Can I be blunt, Ms Smellie?’
‘Something tells me you’re not really seeking my permission.’
‘Don’t fuck with me, all right? Because if you do, I promise you, you’ll regret it. You could fill your cottages for a year with people who wish to Christ they’d never even thought about crossing me.’
‘You say that with some pride.’
‘Not proud of it, not ashamed of it; it’s just the way it is. See, what I’m doing here is trying to find out who murdered a seventeen-year-old girl who probably didn’t do a bad thing in her life. A nice, bright kid who loved her parents and just wanted to make them proud. When she went, she took a big piece of them with her, and they hadn’t done anything to deserve it either.’ Ihaka’s voice dropped and his tone softened, as if he was sharing a confidence. ‘I don’t have time to be the friendly neighbourhood policeman. If people are going to make this thing more difficult than it already is, if they’re going to lie and fuck me around to protect the killer, they need to understand there’ll be consequences. They need to know I’ll smash their fucking little world to pieces.’
‘I get the message,’ said Smellie shakily. ‘This isn’t easy for me. I’m in a very awkward position.’
‘Just tell me where he is and what name or names he’s using. He can’t expect you to put yourself in the shit so he can walk away without a scratch. Well, maybe he does, but what sort of arsehole would that make him?’
‘You think he killed her, don’t you?’
‘I think he could help us solve this case.’
‘That’s cop-speak. It’s obvious you think he did it. More to the point, he thinks you think he did it.’
‘Ms Smellie, don’t waste my time. If you’re not going to cooperate, just say so and I’ll go to Plan B.’
‘He swears he didn’t do it.’
‘They always do. You’ll be hearing from us.’
‘Just hold your horses, all right? Eddie’s prepared to talk to you, face to face. Well, not to you per se.’
‘Who’s he got in mind, Oprah?’
Smellie laughed nervously. ‘Not quite. He’ll talk to your friend Van Roon.’
‘Van Roon’s not a friend of mine and he’s not a cop. The fact that he used to be doesn’t count for shit.’
‘Oh, Eddie knows all about Van Roon. Does the name Tipene Farrell mean anything to you, Sergeant?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Until the day before yesterday Tipene looked after my property. Very well too, I might add. Then Van Roon turned up. Apparently they go way back. Van Roon guessed, correctly, that Tip hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with me about his chequered past and tried to blackmail him into looking the other way while he — Van Roon, that is — broke into my house. Tip told me all this in his resignation speech. He also said word on the street has it that Van Roon left the police force under a cloud. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was a corrupt cop.’
‘I’m not going to discuss internal police matters.’
‘You don’t have to. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Eddie’s intrigued by Van Roon — the compromised individual, the rise-and-fall narrative. I can assure you I didn’t encourage it. In fact I was quite damning in my assessment of Van Roon, which was probably a mistake because it was all just grist to Eddie’s mill. You should know that he has a perverse sense of humour — and a highly developed sense of mischief.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Ihaka. ‘Just what I fucking need. So what’s the deal?’
‘The meeting will take place overseas. Eddie’s getting in touch today to tell me when and where; I’ll pass that on to Van Roon. Then it’s a matter of Van Roon getting himself to the rendezvous point. Assuming you want to take up the offer, of course.’
‘Who’s supposed to pay for it?’
Smellie laughed. ‘Sergeant, if you think Eddie gives a flying fuck about that, you really have no idea who you’re dealing with.’
Ihaka left a message telling Van Roon he’d be hearing from Ann Smellie and to ring as soon as he’d spoken to her.
The call back came late that afternoon, Van Roon saying, ‘Well, shit, I didn’t see that coming,’ and Ihaka replying, ‘Join the fucking club. What’s the story?’
‘I fly to Nadi, go to the Fiji Airways tranfer lounge and await further instructions. That’s it.’
‘So you might have to jump on another plane?’
‘That was the implication.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Your call, Tito: do I do this?’
‘We don’t have a choice.’
‘Of course you do. It’s a twenty-seven-year-old cold case: no one’s expecting it to be wrapped up all nice and neat. You’ve got your suspect; now you can write a report saying “This is where I got to, over to you”.’
‘I don’t operate like that,’ said Ihaka.
‘I know you don’t, but that’s exercising a choice, as opposed to not having one.’
‘Let’s not split fucking hairs. Brightside fits, but we need to look him in the eye. When you’ve done that and questioned him, you’ll know if he did it. And if the answer’s what we expect it to be, I can go to McGrail and say here’s your killer; over to you.’
Van Roon said, ‘You reckon you can get this past McGrail? I wouldn’t have thought he’d want a bar of me.’
‘McGrail’s not going to know. Nor is anyone else. This is strictly off the books, OK?’
‘I know you keep saying it’s not like old times, but it certainly feels that way.’
‘I wouldn’t read too much into it if I was you,’ said Ihaka. ‘I’m just playing the hand I’ve been dealt. Ring me when you’re ready to go and I’ll talk you through it.’
‘I haven’t forgotten how to interrogate a suspect,’ said Van Roon stiffly.
‘I find it helps to know the full facts of the case.’
‘Why not just send me a copy of the file?’
‘Well for a start,’ said Ihaka, ‘I can’t be fucked doing all that photocopying. I could probably come up with some other reasons if I put my mind to it.’
‘There is one other thing.’
‘What?’
‘Who’s paying?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. You know that dirty money you’ve got salted away? Well, her
e’s a chance to put some of it to good use.’
Thirteen
As usual, Tito Ihaka woke up on Saturday morning with a hangover. As usual, he half-heartedly blamed it on whoever invented those screw-cap tops they put on wine bottles these days.
This was how he rationalised it: you have a few beers and knock off a bottle of red; so far, so run of the mill. But this is one of those times when quite a lot isn’t quite enough. You feel like one more glass. It’s a Friday night and you’ve got the weekend off, so why the fuck not? And the thing with these screw-caps, you can open another bottle, have a glass or two, then put the cap back on and it’s like you never opened it in the first place. The wine’s not going to go off; in fact, it’ll be just as good if not better tomorrow night. Or the night after if, through some extraordinary set of circumstances, it lasts that long.
The problem wasn’t that the preservative properties of the screw-cap encouraged you to open a second bottle, or even that the second bottle went the way of the first. Let’s face it, when you talked yourself into ‘just one more glass’, you didn’t literally mean a single glass and not a drop more. No, the problem was that the lure and logic of the screw-cap was just as strong after two bottles as it had been after one. And so on. Which was how you came to wake up with someone pelting your skull with ball bearings and your tongue feeling like a small furry animal buried alive in a sandpit.
And as usual, it was raining.
He lay there, listening to the rain on the roof and the commotion in his head. All week abrupt downpours had alternated with patches of tentative sunshine, or squally showers had swept across the city from the Waitakeres to the Waitemata. This rain sounded different. It sounded like it wasn’t going anywhere.
Keeping his promise to go and watch Billy play rugby meant getting out of bed, which would kick his hangover into the red zone, and getting drenched. Fuck. That. The obvious solution was to can the game. The people who ran kids’ footy weren’t complete deadshits. They understood that people who’d done a hard week’s work didn’t want to stand in the rain for over an hour watching a bunch of cold, wet, miserable kids mud-wrestling. It was a no-brainer.
Pleased he’d sorted that out, Ihaka rolled over, pulled the blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes. A few minutes went by. He could feel himself sinking into sleep, his mind suspending all activity, shutting down until further notice. His mobile pinged announcing an incoming text. That’ll be Denise, he thought, to say the game’s been cancelled. He groped for the phone to make sure he was off the hook. It was Denise saying ‘Same time, different place. Game transferred to Cox’s Bay Reserve. See you there.’
The teams were going through their warm-up routines. Ihaka was rugged up in wet-weather gear and a hoodie, so it took Billy a couple of minutes to register his presence. Billy smiled and waved but his body language said something was amiss. All was revealed when the backs and forwards came together for team drills: Billy, who normally played first five eighth, was on the wing; the coach’s son Jarrod, who normally played on the wing, was at first five.
Denise was in a huddle with some other parents under a canopy of umbrellas. Deciding he’d rather get wet than socialise, Ihaka went out onto the field to give Clayton the coach a hand, as he’d been doing for most of the season. Seeing him coming, Clayton blew the whistle on a passing drill and sent the boys jogging off to the far end of the reserve.
Clayton was a thirty-five-year-old vet with a head of glossy black hair. In Ihaka’s opinion it was the most impressive thing about him. Ihaka hadn’t sought a coaching role; the other parents had encouraged him to get involved because Clayton, being a fount of theoretical knowledge who took himself way too seriously, tended to complicate things and take the fun out of it. The pair of them hadn’t discussed Ihaka’s role and the arrangement had never been formalised. Ihaka was vaguely aware that Clayton didn’t always welcome his off-the-cuff interventions but, as was his way, he didn’t dwell on it. He was making a contribution, Clayton had the tracksuit top with ‘Coach’ in big, bright, yellow letters across the front and the arrangement seemed to be working. And, at the end of the day, it was the Ponsonby under-elevens, so who gave a shit?
‘He’s back,’ said Clayton, not sounding ecstatic about it.
‘I’ve been flat stick,’ said Ihaka. ‘I hear we had a bit of a mare last week.’
‘It wasn’t good. I’ve been working on a few new things at practice, so it might be better if you just take a watching brief this week.’
‘Fine by me.’
‘You might’ve noticed I’ve rejigged the backline,’ said Clayton, reading too much into Ihaka’s amenability. ‘It just wasn’t gelling. Billy’s a talented kid, but I’m not sure he’s got the head to play ten. He was taking too much on himself, getting a bit greedy. Jarrod really understands the game plan: he’ll steer us around the park and give us more direction.’
‘Pretty big call,’ said Ihaka. ‘Lose one game so you change what’s worked all season and shift your best player out of the position where he can make the most impact.’
‘You missed the last two games, right? Billy was poor last week and not that flash the week before. And I’ve been picking up a vibe from the other kids that they’re getting frustrated with his tendency to go away from the game plan. Right from day one I’ve hammered the message “There’s no i in team”. I thought everybody involved, players and supporters, had bought into that. This outfit we’re playing is unbeaten so we need to get it right and play as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals. That’s why I made the call, and I’d appreciate you getting behind it.’
Ihaka nodded. ‘I’ll observe with interest.’
Clayton had just enough sense not to react to Ihaka’s scepticism. He walked back out onto the field. Ihaka went over to Denise who was looking good despite the shapeless puffer jacket and a beanie pulled down to her eyebrows.
‘So, did El Maestro bring you up to date?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Billy’s really pissed off.’
‘He’s got every right to be.’
‘I freely acknowledge I don’t know shit about rugby,’ she said. ‘And every night I ask God to strike me down with a bolt of lightning if I turn into one of those parents who think their little Johnny is the second coming of Dan Carter and the rest of the team are just there to make up the numbers. But even I can see that swapping Jarrod and Billy around is idiotic. Can’t you talk him out of it?’
Ihaka shook his head. ‘He pretty much told me to butt out.’
‘So it’s all about precious little Jarrod? Jesus, it makes me sick.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Ihaka. ‘Some of it’s about Jarrod, but it’s mostly about Clayton. This is where he gets to prove he’s a coaching genius: he pulls a rabbit out of the hat and, hey presto, the boys get their mojo back and knock off the top team. He’s been dreaming of this situation all season. It probably gives him a half-mongrel.’
‘A what?’
‘An in-betweener; mid-way between slack and full stalk.’
‘What language is this?’
‘A semi-erect penis,’ said Ihaka loud enough to attract the attention of the nearest cluster of spectators. ‘You should be familiar with the concept: you were up close and personal with one the other night.’
Denise hunched against a gust of wet wind. ‘Oh, we’re still there, are we? I was daring to hope we’d moved on.’
‘Where to?’
The teams were in position for the kick-off. ‘Back to where we used to be,’ said Denise. ‘Before we started finding whole new ways to screw it up.’
The referee blew his whistle to get the game under way.
With time almost up in the first half, Ponsonby were down 20–0. Ihaka was reminded of the old gag about getting such a hiding you were lucky to score nil. Billy had hardly touched the ball. Jarrod had touched the ball a lot,
but not with the Midas touch. Having had Clayton in his ear all week telling him to be a playmaker rather than a glory hunter, Jarrod had simply shovelled the slippery ball on. The problem with making his intentions so clear was that the opposition also got the message and eagerly zeroed in on whoever was on the receiving end of Jarrod’s hospital passes.
Prompted by Clayton’s frantic semaphore, Jarrod had gone to Plan B: field position, otherwise known as hoofing the ball aimlessly downfield. The opposition had returned his kicks with interest in the reasonable — and, as it turned out, well-founded — expectation that Ponsonby would be as flaky under the high ball as they were in most other aspects of the game.
Ihaka joined Clayton who was pacing up and down the touchline under his umbrella. ‘What do you think?’ he asked in a studiously neutral tone.
Clayton kept his eyes on the action. ‘It’s going to be your classic game of two halves,’ he said with the rasp of someone having to explain the bleeding obvious. ‘We’ve got the wind in the second half.’
That was debatable. Ihaka would’ve said the way the wind was gusting and swirling it didn’t particularly favour either side. ‘Thinking of making some changes?’
Clayton sighed theatrically. ‘If you mean am I thinking of putting Billy back to ten, then no way. Jarrod’s finding his feet. You can’t expect him to be perfect from the get-go, especially against class opposition.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting perfection,’ said Ihaka. ‘Billy’s not getting much of a go.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s got to go looking for work, doesn’t he, instead of waiting for the ball to come to him.’
‘Last week he was greedy, this week he’s lazy. The kid’s got issues.’
The half-time whistle blew. Ihaka fell in beside Clayton as he marched onto the field. ‘I won’t speak to the boys,’ he said. ‘I’ll just have a quiet word with Billy, tell him to get more involved.’