by Thomas, Paul
Clayton shrugged indifferently.
Ihaka’s mobile rang: no caller ID. ‘Yep?’
It was an anxious adult male. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Ihaka?’
‘Yep.’
‘This is Barry Shanklin, Miriam Lovell’s partner. She told me to contact you if anything untoward happened.’
Ihaka came to a halt. ‘Has it?’
‘Yes. Miriam was attacked last night. She’s in a coma.’ Shanklin struggled on through ragged sobs. ‘There’s no guarantee she’ll come out of it.’
‘Oh, Jesus. Where is she?’
‘Auckland Hospital. That’s where I’m calling from.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Denise intercepted him, getting that look on her face. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Auckland Hospital. Serious assault case.’
‘There’s always something, isn’t there?’ she said.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, but —.’
‘That’s the way it is?’
‘Yeah.’
He set off towards his car at a slow jog.
Detective Constable Joel Pringle was waiting for Ihaka at Intensive Care. An anonymous caller had rung 111 just before midnight to say there was a body on the eighteenth fairway of the Akarana Golf Course in Mt Roskill. It looked as though Miriam Lovell had been beaten up somewhere else and dumped there. Her backpack, satchel-cum-handbag and contents, including her iPad, were missing presumed stolen. The doctors weren’t saying much, but she was clearly in a bad way.
‘How did you ID her?’ asked Ihaka.
‘We found her driver’s licence at the scene. They must’ve dropped it.’
Ihaka grunted. ‘Careless of them.’
‘Fucking animals,’ said Pringle. ‘I bet she told them “Take whatever you want” but they kicked the shit out of her anyway.’
‘Where’s the guy who rang me?’
‘In the waiting room,’ said Pringle, pointing the way. ‘He’s been here all night.’
‘What’d he have to say?’
Pringle consulted a notepad. ‘She works from home, but was out most of the day. She texted him late afternoon to say she’d probably be late so he should go ahead and have dinner rather than wait for her. When he hadn’t heard from her by about nine thirty, he started trying to get hold of her. No joy. He was just about to ring us when we rang him.’
Shanklin had the waiting room to himself. He looked up as they came in, his expectant expression disappearing into itself when he realised they weren’t doctors.
If Ihaka had had to guess what sort of bloke Miriam would hook up with, he wouldn’t have been far off the mark. Shanklin was in his mid-forties, slim with longish hair and an earring, wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt demanding that something be done about global warming. Gentle, thought Ihaka; sensitive; arty. Probably plays the guitar and writes songs about how hard it is being gentle, sensitive and arty in this fucked-up world.
Ihaka introduced himself. ‘The fact that Miriam told you to call me if anything untoward happened suggests she was worried.’
Shanklin nodded wearily. ‘That’s exactly what I said. She said she was probably over-dramatising, but once or twice she’d had the feeling she was being followed.’
‘Who by?’
‘She had no idea.’
‘Did you believe her?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘I don’t know Miriam very well,’ said Ihaka, ‘so I might be reading her wrong, but is it possible she actually did have some idea but didn’t tell you because you would’ve put pressure on her to drop it, whatever it was?’
Shanklin shrugged. ‘I guess that’s possible. That’s what I would’ve done.’
‘Had she mentioned anything, you know like this guy gave her the creeps, that guy warned her to back off?’
‘No, but I suppose it’s the same issue: my reaction would’ve been, “Let it go, it’s not worth it.” Doing what she does — freelance investigative journalism — she’s bound to stand on people’s toes from time to time, but this isn’t Russia, for Christ’s sake.’
‘What was she working on?’
‘Well, she’s always got a few story ideas on the go, but lately she’s been pretty much focused on finishing her doctorate.’
‘So you’ve been here since just after midnight?’ Shanklin nodded. ‘Is there anyone who lives handy who’s got a key to your place?’
‘Well, my sister’s only five minutes away. Why?’
‘Why don’t you ask her to pop round and check the place out?’ said Ihaka. ‘Whoever did this has got your address and Miriam’s keys.’
‘Shit, I hadn’t thought of that.’ Shanklin dug his mobile out of one of his many pockets. ‘If she can’t do it, I will.’
Ihaka and Pringle went looking for a doctor. ‘You really think they’d hit their place, Sarge?’ said Pringle. ‘That’s pretty fucking cheeky.’
‘It’s happened before. I just wonder about the licence. If they bashed her somewhere else, you’d think they would’ve gone through her stuff there, rather than on the golf course. And besides, who the fuck goes wandering around a golf course in the middle of the night? Maybe we were played: they dump her, leave her licence there for our benefit and call 111. We get onto Shanklin; he rushes over here. Net result: no one home all night. One thing’s for sure, if that’s what happened, we won’t get any prints off the licence.’
They found a registrar, a redhead who looked too tired to be at work and too young for her responsibilities. She told them Miriam had suffered major head trauma and was in a critical but stable condition.
Ihaka said, ‘What are the chances of her remembering what happened?’
The registrar had just enough energy to signal, via raised eyebrows, that Ihaka was getting ahead of himself. ‘Well, that would mean our best-case scenario had eventuated. Frankly, as things stand, we’d settle for her coming out of it.’
‘Does it seem like overkill just to get your hands on some credit cards and an iPad?’
‘It all seems like overkill to me, Sergeant. But you know what alcohol and drugs can do.’
‘And you know what some of these bastards are like, Sarge,’ said Pringle. ‘Once they start, the red mist rolls in. They’ll half-kill some poor prick because he brushed against them in a bar.’
‘You know what’s even worse?’ said Ihaka. ‘When there’s no red mist. When some poor prick ends up half-dead — or dead — because someone planned it that way.’
They met Shanklin on the way back to the waiting room. He was in even more of a daze. ‘We did have a break-in last night.’
‘What did they take?’
‘Not that much by the sound of it. Both our laptops are gone, though.’
Ihaka nodded. ‘You’ll probably find they also took files, information storage devices, that sort of stuff.’
‘Why? What the hell is going on here?’
‘I don’t think it was a random mugging,’ said Ihaka. ‘I think Miriam was on to something; someone realised where she was heading with it and freaked out. They started beating her to find out what she knew. And when she told them, they went on with it to stop her going any further.’
Shanklin stared at Ihaka. ‘When Miriam told me to contact you if anything untoward happened, I asked, “Why him?” She said, “Because he’ll take it personally.” I didn’t particularly like the sound of that but she said I was taking it the wrong way: it wasn’t about her, it was about you. What did she mean?’
‘I can’t tell you. All I can tell you is Miriam was right. I am taking this very fucking personally.’
Fourteen
Johan Van Roon sat in the Fiji Airways transfer lounge in Suva Airport making hard work of the novel he’d bought for just this eventuality: hanging around airports; getting the run-around; waiting f
or Eddie Brightside. It ran to eight hundred pages, roughly twice as long as the longest book Van Roon had ever finished. He’d gone for bulk in the expectation that this would be a drawn-out exercise, but the mazy narrative and ornate scene setting — how many times a day could the sky possibly change colour? — made him regret his ambition. He should’ve just got some magazines or a fuckwit-friendly self-help book.
A soldier came into the lounge, turning heads and halting murmured conversations. He was tall and loose-limbed with a pantomime villain moustache, sub-machine gun, uniform ironed to a cutting edge, boots polished to a new-car sheen. He scanned the room, his stony gaze settling on Van Roon. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Van Roon.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for someone.’
The dozen or so other transients watched intently, anticipating drama.
‘Who?’
‘I don’t think he’d appreciate me mentioning his name.’
It was either the right thing or the wrong thing to say. The soldier summoned Van Roon with a jerk of his head. Van Roon slung his bag over his shoulder and led the way out of the lounge.
The soldier unlocked a door marked ‘Airport Security Staff Only’ and herded Van Roon down a long corridor past a succession of numbered doors. They stopped at door 6. The soldier tapped on it with his sub-machine gun, got the go-ahead from within and stepped aside. Van Roon entered a small, windowless interrogation room containing a desk, two chairs and Eddie Brightside. The door closed behind him.
Van Roon had wondered what Brightside would look like. At first he’d thought in terms of dramatic change: reduced to a haunted shadow of a man by two and a half decades underground, or gone to seed through over-medicating with alcohol and narcotics, or transformed by cosmetic surgery. But then his rekindled affair with Ann Smellie and the fact that he’d been recognised at a glance by the old journo McCormick suggested Brightside still bore a strong resemblance to the man he used to be.
As proved to be the case. Brightside didn’t look like a casualty or a refugee. He wasn’t shrunken or wasted. He hadn’t been remodelled. He still smiled like the only person in the room who got the joke. He just looked older: the yellow hair had gone grey and the round face had started to deflate.
Van Roon sat down. ‘Mr Brightside, I presume?’
‘Now there’s a blast from the past.’ Brightside had a golden-oldies radio voice, mellow but potentially cloying. ‘No one calls me that any more.’
‘What do they call you?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’
‘It shouldn’t be too hard,’ said Van Roon. ‘Now that we know where you’ve been.’
‘We? So you’re back on the payroll?’
Van Roon shook his head. ‘No, I’m still a private operator.’
Brightside’s thin smile stretched. ‘Not on this gig. You’re working for the man, my friend — not that he’ll ever acknowledge it. You do realise that, if this goes bad, you’re on your own?’
‘Why should it go bad?’
‘No particular reason. Then again, shit happens. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. And by the way, knowing I’ve been in Fiji won’t get you anywhere: the people I work with here know I like to stay low. Besides which, these days the Fijians are very selective about what they share with the land of the long white cloud. Any request for that information would come back stamped Go Fuck Yourself.’
Van Roon shrugged. ‘No skin off my nose. So what do you do here?’
‘I’m a consultant,’ said Brightside blandly. ‘My clients are ultra security-conscious; I advise them how to be ultra security-efficient.’
‘Your clients being politicians in uniform?’
Brightside chuckled. ‘Military dictators are people too, you know.’
‘How do you sleep?’
Brightside leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk, resting his chin on clasped hands, staring at Van Roon. ‘Like a baby. How about you, Johan? You look tired. Is that because you work too hard or don’t sleep too well?’
‘I couldn’t honestly say I’m run off my feet.’
‘A little late in the day to develop a conscience, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, it’s not my conscience that keeps me awake,’ said Van Roon. ‘It’s the noisy pricks who live above me.’
Brightside’s smile returned. ‘So complain to the landlord.’
‘They are the landlord.’
‘So relocate. A man needs eight hours stacking Zs.’ Brightside said it the American way: ‘Zees’.
‘I keep having to tell people this,’ said Van Roon. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about me.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, you did. The only reason you’re here is because I’m intrigued by your chequered past. I know quite a bit about you, Johan: there mightn’t be much information-sharing between your ex-colleagues and their Fijian counterparts but they still exchange tittle-tattle. I assume this Ihaka guy’s not bothered by it?’
‘My chequered past?’ Brightside nodded. ‘If only. Ihaka and I used to be mates. You could say he was my mentor, although he’d pretend he didn’t understand the word. He was also the one who worked out what I’d been up to in my spare time. How’s this for irony? If it wasn’t for Ihaka, I wouldn’t have made Detective Inspector, but if it wasn’t for him I’d still be one. A minute ago you said if this goes bad, I’ll be on my own. In actual fact, if this goes bad, Ihaka will put his hand up and say it was his idea, even though he’d be out on his arse. He wouldn’t disown me, but on the other hand he’ll never forgive me.’
‘Sounds like an interesting guy.’
‘Put it this way: he’s not like any other cop you’ve ever come across.’
‘I’ve come across a few bent cops in my time. I’d have to say you don’t remind me of them.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Van Roon.
‘I’m not sure it was meant as one. Those other guys were predictable; you felt like you knew which way they’d jump in any given situation. I don’t have that feeling with you, Johan, and that worries me a little.’
‘You don’t need to worry about me, Mr Brightside.’
‘Call me Eddie.’
Van Roon nodded. ‘As I said, you don’t need to worry about me. You tell me what happened that night, I go home, I tell Ihaka what you said, word for word, and that’ll be that. Literally: it’ll probably be the last conversation he and I ever have.’
‘And when he asks you whether you believe me?’
‘I’ll give him an honest answer — unless you make it worth my while to do otherwise.’ Brightside cocked his head questioningly. Van Roon said, ‘That was a joke. Apart from anything else, Ihaka’s a hard guy to lie to.’
‘If I wasn’t such a busy man, I’d take that as a challenge,’ said Brightside. ‘So now that you’re just another civilian, are you worried that someone you fucked over, either in the course of enforcing the law or breaking it, might come looking for you?’
Van Roon shrugged. ‘I’ve got more pressing stuff to worry about. Hopefully, as far as the pros are concerned, it was all just part of the game. Hopefully the psychos are behind bars.’
‘Or dead?’
‘Even better.’
‘You can’t beat the old pre-emptive strike.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re driving at, Eddie.’
‘Oh yes you are.’
‘If you mean who I think you mean, a certain self-styled master criminal whose unsolved murder has been the subject of lurid speculation, he was never going to come after me. That wasn’t his style.’
‘So why did you blow him away?’
Van Roon’s smile was a mirror image of Brightside’s. ‘Assuming I did, that would be for me to know and you to find out.’
It was all be
cause of David Lange and his fucking anti-nuke crusade, said Brightside. And Gerry Waitz and his fucking paranoia.
Waitz’s parents were Russian Jews who’d fled to the west at the end of World War Two. His extended family wasn’t so lucky, aunts and uncles and cousins transported like livestock to the Gulag Archipelago, never to return. Waitz had little patience with anyone, including fellow Jews, who as he saw it were obsessed with a threat that no longer existed. He called them ‘Ghostbusters’, telling them, ‘Stop fixating on the fucking Nazis — they’re history.’ Waitz wanted people to focus on the Soviets: they were just as bad as the Nazis; more to the point, they were right here, right now and getting stronger by the day. If those fuckers got their way, which was world domination, there’d be death factories from Inverness to Invercargill, working around the clock.
While he had the tycoon’s tendency to assume that what he wanted to happen would happen, Waitz had heeded Brightside’s warnings that Labour was going to be re-elected and would stick to its anti-nuke policy. Plan B included putting together a mini-network of strategically placed people who shared his view that New Zealand effectively opting out of ANZUS would be the crack in the dyke holding back the red tide.
Brightside was an agnostic, a card-carrying Cold Warrior who believed the Soviet Union had to be contained but couldn’t quite see why New Zealand not allowing the US Navy into its ports would undermine the western alliance. As usual, he managed to have a foot in both camps, enthusing about the political benefits of the no-nuclear-ships policy when advising the Government and nodding along while Waitz and his cronies catastrophised.
Waitz arranged for his little group to gather at Barton’s party for a post-election stocktake. About eleven o’clock, when the threat to everything they held dear had been confirmed and their mood had soured accordingly, a meeting convened upstairs in what Tim Barton somewhat grandiosely called ‘the library’. As well as Waitz and Brightside, there were MPs from both the major parties; a guy from the US Embassy in Wellington; a couple of spooks, one from the SIS, the other from ASIO, the Australian equivalent; and stockmarket pin-up boy Benny Strick, whose recent conversion from apolitical dilettante to fire-breathing anti-communist was a by-product of his man-crush on Waitz.