by Thomas, Paul
He updated McGrail. Van Roon didn’t feature at all, Ihaka making out that Ann Smellie had facilitated a telephone exchange with Brightside.
‘Where is Brightside?’ said McGrail.
‘He was in Fiji. Christ knows where he is now.’
‘That makes sense. We have precious little leverage in that neck of the woods. So you tend to believe him?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Where does that leave us?’
‘Pretty much back at square one.’
‘What’s the next step?’
‘I’ll think of something.’
McGrail was sitting behind his desk, an old farmhouse table. He tilted his chair back. ‘Sergeant, if you think this is a wild-goose chase, you should say so.’
‘Shit, it’s way too early for that. We had a lead; we checked it out; it didn’t stand up. That happens in pretty much every investigation which isn’t a slam dunk.’
McGrail sighed. ‘That may be so, Sergeant, but it was a very promising lead. And when the crime in question took place twenty-seven years ago, promising leads are few and far between.’
McGrail was renowned for his inscrutability, but he was looking as morose as Ihaka had seen him, sipping his port as if it was canteen tea. This wasn’t the time to talk about putting the investigation on the back burner. In fact, now that I’ve buggered up his evening, thought Ihaka, maybe I should leave him to it. He finished his drink and stood up. ‘Listen, sorry to be the bearer of bad news —.’
McGrail snapped out of it. He leaned over his desk, offering Ihaka the bottle. ‘Actually, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.’ Ihaka took the bottle and sat back down. ‘You’re aware my appointment expires next year?’ Ihaka nodded. ‘A few weeks ago, I was sounded out on the possibility of an extension — another year or eighteen months. I agreed to think about it. Well, I’ve obviously managed to get on the wrong side of the wrong people because late last week I was unofficially but authoritatively advised that I can stop thinking about it. That proposal is no longer on the table. Indeed, I got the distinct impression that when my time is up, a delegation will fly up from Wellington to help me clear out my office.’
‘Yeah, well, we’re a pretty tolerant outfit, but one thing we can’t hack is competence.’
McGrail smiled his ghost smile. ‘The same source, who resides not a million miles from the Minister’s office, also let it be known that my successor will be your friend and mine, Detective Inspector Charlton. It’s too soon for him on a number of grounds, which I assume is why the extension option was canvassed. It seems they’ve decided that the risks inherent in Charlton’s premature elevation are outweighed by the ghastly prospect of having to put up with me for any longer than they absolutely have to. I’m giving you what I believe is known as a heads-up so that you can start thinking about your future. You have to face the reality that, once I’m gone and Charlton’s in the chair, your life is going to be very different.’
‘As in turn to shit?’
‘Well, you certainly won’t have anything like the same leeway. If he gives you any rope at all, it’ll be just enough to hang yourself.’
Ihaka shrugged. ‘I appreciate you putting me in the picture, but the reality I really have to face is there’s fuck-all I can do about it.’
‘You could apply for a transfer.’
‘Where to?’
‘Up north, perhaps. Your family’s got a beach house up there, haven’t they? I imagine life in the winterless north would be rather agreeable.’
‘Weed World?’ Ihaka shook his head. ‘Too much turning a blind eye for my liking.’
‘Yes, I suppose that could be vexatious for a man of your temperament. Does a return to the Wairarapa have any appeal?’
‘Been there, done that.’
‘Very well, how about something completely different? Apparently there’s a lot to be said for embarking on a new career path in mid-life. I’ve even heard it likened to drinking from the fountain of youth.’
Ihaka examined McGrail with frank curiosity. ‘That’s pretty out there, don’t you think? I mean, did you ever consider it?’
‘I did as a matter of fact. I came to New Zealand instead.’
‘You thought about it because you were on an IRA hit-list. Charlton’s just another arsewipe with more ambition than ability; they’re fucking everywhere. The fact is I’ve never done anything else and never thought about doing anything else. And anyway, what else am I qualified for: being a bouncer at some club, having fucking drug dealers slip me fifty notes to let their underage hotties in the door? When you brought me back from the Wairarapa I realised, for better or worse, Auckland’s home. I’ll be fucked if I let that little weasel run me out of here again.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ said McGrail. ‘But I make no apology for raising the subject. And while there’s an element of do as I say, not as I did, you never know what your options are until you start thinking beyond your current circumstances. As a fellow once said to me, the most secure prison on earth is a closed mind.’ He allowed Ihaka to mull over that for a few seconds. ‘But then, he was an IRA gunman who shot two people in the head because they made a joke about the Pope.’
Denise Hadlow had texted, asking when would be a good time to talk.
Ihaka got home just before 9.30 pm. He had a sandwich and channel surfed without finding anything that wouldn’t make him fall asleep on the sofa. When he figured he’d given Denise enough time to go to bed, he texted saying he’d just finished work. She rang thirty seconds later.
‘Busy weekend?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been flat out. How did the game finish up?’
‘You could’ve asked Billy that.’
‘Give me a break, Denise.’
‘What, another one? That’s all Billy and I seem to do these days. Have a guess how it finished up.’
‘Well, Clayton seemed to think it’d be a game of two halves. It didn’t look that way to me.’
Denise snorted. ‘Jesus, that guy is such a dickhead. The final score was forty-five to five. Billy got the try which, I have to say, was a stunner. The try of the season, someone said.’
‘Good on him. At least he had something to show for it.’
‘Get this, though. After the game, El Maestro marched over to tell the parents that we couldn’t choose a man of the match. Some shit about the boys failing as a team and having to deal with it as a team. Then he got them in a huddle and gave them a ten-minute speech. Andrew’s dad was hovering at the back and heard most of it. Do you know what that wanker said?’
‘Let me guess: the boys need to focus on their roles in the team instead of trying to be the big star; there’s no point in individual brilliance if it’s at the expense of teamwork; the rest of them could take a leaf from Jarrod’s book, the way he stuck to the task and never gave up.’
Denise said, ‘You’ve talked to Andrew’s dad, right?’ It sounded like a genuine question.
‘I wouldn’t know Andrew’s dad if I tripped over him.’
‘Who then?’
‘I haven’t talked to anyone. I told you: I’ve been head down, arse up. Remember I’ve had a bit to do with Clayton; he’s not exactly complicated. What you see is what you get — over and over again.’
‘Well, seeing as you can read him like a book,’ said Denise, ‘tell me this: is he going to put Billy back to first five?’
‘And admit he fucked up? No chance.’
‘Can you talk to him then? Why don’t you go to practice this week? God knows they need you.’
‘The heat’s on at the moment, so I’ll have to see how it goes. But I suspect it’s got to the stage that if I go into bat for Billy, Clayton will just dig his heels in. Maybe the best bet is to let him work it out for himself. If they lose again next Saturday — which is on the cards because he’s got them playing
like headless chooks — then self-interest will kick in. Getting back to being a winning coach will become a higher priority than being right about Billy and Jarrod. And by then he’ll have come up with some rationale for the chopping and changing that doesn’t make him look like a complete fuckwit.’
‘That’s pretty self-serving, isn’t it?’
‘Well, we are talking about Clayton.’
‘You might be,’ said Denise. ‘I’m not. I’m talking about you. You say you shouldn’t get involved because that would be counter-productive, but this whole Billy/Jarrod fiasco only happened because you went AWOL. I know it’s all about Clayton, but he wouldn’t have had the nerve to swap them if you’d been there. If you really wanted to, you could talk Clayton into back-tracking and get these kids enjoying playing rugby again. But you obviously don’t want to.’
‘By going AWOL, you mean missing some under-elevens footy because I was investigating a murder?’
‘We’re all busy people. The way it works is we make time for the things we value and the people we care about. It’s pretty clear Billy and I don’t make the cut. So what I really rang to tell you is that I’m done covering up and sugar-coating. Next time the subject comes up I’m telling Billy that he’s going to have to get by without you. And not just when it comes to rugby.’
‘Go for it. I seem to remember I suggested being straight with him a while ago. But before you go, you remember what started all this?’
‘All what?’
‘Us at each other’s throats all the time. Us falling apart.’
‘How could I forget? It started with you bailing on going to Devonport with us so you could hook up with your old girlfriend.’
‘Well, she wasn’t my old girlfriend and we didn’t hook up, but that’s your story and you’re sticking to it. Do you remember her name?’
‘Of course. Miriam.’
‘So I assume you also remember our conversation at Depot, when I told you what Miriam had wanted to talk to me about. You laughed your head off, reckoned it was the biggest load of bullshit you’d ever heard.’
‘And your point is?’
‘That serious assault case I was called to — it’s Miriam. She’s in a coma she mightn’t come out of. I’m pretty sure the reason she got her head smashed in was because she went poking around in the biggest load of bullshit you’ve ever heard and found out it actually wasn’t bullshit. Not by a fucking long shot. You should hear yourself sometimes, Denise.’
‘Don’t call me again.’
Before Ihaka could point out that she’d called him, the line went dead.
Sixteen
Miriam Lovell’s partner provided the name of the ‘old union guy’ who’d put her on to Ethan Stern’s diaries.
Stu Boyle was into his seventies, a bald, bright-eyed, freckle-splattered bantam cock whose barrel chest had gone south. Inside and out, his Birkenhead villa was a testimony to house-proud retirement or keeping up with the Joneses. ‘I knew an Ihaka,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be —.’
‘I’m Jimmy’s son.’
Boyle lit up. ‘Is that right? He was a good bloke, Jimmy, but Jesus, talk about always swimming against the tide. My mother had a term for those sort of people: “contrary blighters” she used to call them. Well, your old man was the most contrary blighter I ever came across. You like boxing?’
Ihaka shrugged. ‘I don’t mind it.’
‘Boxing’s my thing,’ said Boyle, wriggling back into his La-Z-Boy with the contented air of a man about to hold forth on his favourite subject. ‘I did heaps of it as a young bloke. Amateur stuff, of course. You know the Rumble in the Jungle — Muhammad Ali against George Foreman, Kinshasa, Zaire, 1974? Every man and his dog reckoned Foreman was going to give Ali a real dusting, shut that big mouth once and for all. Sure, some of it was wishful thinking, people who’d been waiting a long time to see Ali taken down a peg or two. But to be fair, he was a lot older than Foreman, he’d been beaten by Joe Frazier and Ken Norton who Foreman absolutely murdered and it was seven years since they took the title off him. “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” When you think how much hot air was expelled saying why we shouldn’t be in Vietnam, Ali nailed it in six words. I was a big fan so I was talking up his chances — I could give you more reasons why he was going to win than you could shake a stick at — but, deep down, I was scared for him.
‘Then I came across an interview with a fellow by the name of Bill Faversham who was part of a group of white businessmen who managed Ali before he joined the Black Muslims. Faversham still called him Cassius — his “slave name” — but obviously had a soft spot for him. Before the Foreman fight he said, “I can see Cassius isn’t hitting with his left any more and doesn’t dance after a couple of rounds, but nothing overwhelms Cass. Not even if he met God.” ’ Boyle shook his head, smiling like Punch. ‘Isn’t that great — “Not even if he met God”?’
Ihaka smiled back, humouring the old guy.
Boyle leaned forward to tap Ihaka on the knee. ‘I can see you’re sitting there thinking you didn’t come here to get a history lesson from this old coot, but there’s a point to the story. Jimmy was like that: he wouldn’t have been overwhelmed if he met God.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Ihaka. ‘He was a pretty staunch atheist, so I reckon meeting God would’ve pissed him off no end.’
Boyle chuckled. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’ He settled back in his chair, his little mouth flattening to a grim dash. ‘You think this dreadful bloody business had something to do with Miriam’s research?’
‘It’s unlikely,’ lied Ihaka. ‘These things are usually crimes of opportunity — the victim’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’re just trying to put together a picture of where she’d been and what she was doing.’
‘Well, from what she said to me, she was interested in how much trade union militancy in the seventies and early eighties was about politics as opposed to industrial relations. See, you had union leaders who were staunch communists, so when they were shit-stirring the question was — and the likes of me and your old man used to raise this all the time — was it to put a few more bucks in their members’ pockets or strike a blow against capitalism? There was this outfit called the Workers’ Vanguard Party, Moscow-aligned commies. It had bugger-all members, a few hundred at most, but they included a fair number of union officials and jokers who had a lot to say in the workplace. There were plenty of times when these blokes pushed hard for strike action even though it obviously wouldn’t achieve very much and their members were going to end up out of pocket.’
‘So why did they do it?’
‘Because they were dyed-in-the-wool reds. They believed capitalism was an assault on the working class and had to be resisted and sabotaged. When push came to shove, that was more important than their members’ welfare. As your old man always said — and, by Christ, didn’t the WVP hate him for it — they used the rank and file as cannon fodder in a war it hadn’t volunteered for.’
‘Who called the shots?’
‘Willie Smaile ran the WVP, with an iron fist. One thing Miriam was trying to get a handle on was whether Smaile steered his own course or took his lead from the Soviet embassy.’
‘The guy’s name was Smaile?’
‘Yeah, Willie Smaile. Why?’
‘Ethan Stern’s widow told me that, after his death, she was rung up by some union guy called Small wanting to get his hands on the diaries.’
Boyle shook his head. ‘I don’t remember any Small.’
‘So it could’ve been Smaile?’
‘I suppose so, although Willie preferred to operate behind the scenes. He was a puppet master, see. Other blokes would front the stoush — they’d be on TV and in the paper, copping flak from the media and the Tories — but Willie was pulling the strings. He wasn’t a union heavyweight — assistant deputy something
or other in one of the little unions no one took too much notice of — but he was General Secretary of the WVP, so if you were a party member, even if you ran a big union, you bloody well did as you were told.’
‘Or what?’
‘Well, we weren’t in the Soviet Union so you got sent to Coventry, not Siberia. But if all else failed, the WVP had a few bruisers on its books and wasn’t shy of using them.’
‘You mean muscle?’
‘I mean big buggers with small brains who’d put the slipper into their granny if the boss told them to. You must know the type, Sergeant. Never been a shortage of them in your mob.’
‘Can’t think of any off the top of my head.’
Boyle had his full-face smile back. ‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see.’
‘Whatever you say, Mr Boyle. How did Miriam get on with Smaile?’
‘She got nowhere. He wouldn’t give her the time of day. What’s more, he put the word out to the old comrades, so Miriam just kept running into a brick wall. Willie might be getting on — he’d be ten years older than me — and the WVP might’ve folded the best part of twenty years ago, but what he says still goes.’
‘So when she got stonewalled by Smaile and co, you suggested she should look for Stern’s diaries?’
‘That’s right. She didn’t find them, but she did come across a reference to Tom Murray in amongst Stern’s stuff. It’s funny: it hadn’t occurred to me to mention that name. I see him on TV from time to time, but he’s a very different kettle of fish to the young fellow I knew.’
‘I’m not with you,’ said Ihaka. ‘Should I know this guy?’
‘Don’t you follow politics?’
‘Why the fuck would I do that?’
‘I just thought being Jimmy’s son.’
‘Maybe that’s why not.’
‘You’re not interested in Maori issues, the Waitangi process and that?’
‘I wouldn’t mind if some of the dough they chuck around came my way, if that’s what you mean,’ said Ihaka. ‘I’m Maori, I belong to an iwi, so what? Everyone comes from somewhere. Not saying I’m not proud of it, but just because I’m Maori doesn’t mean I act and think a certain way. Opinions aren’t like steak knives: you don’t get a set when you’re born. I’m just me; I don’t belong to anyone.’