by Bowes, K T
It took a while to explain. Logan had a free period, but Pete didn’t really. His sports studies class of Year 11’s took themselves on a tour of the grounds, including some adjacent gardens. Rotten feijoas were discovered and fun had. Boys arrived back at the end of the period, covered in the strong smelling fruit, heavily fermented and very greasy. They got it in their hair, on their clothes and one even had it up his nose. Mothers were going to be unhappy with their laundry that night.
Despite his usual propensity to mentally ‘wander off,’ Pete managed to stay on task as Logan explained what he discovered. “The fight with the students was over a fifty dollar note,” Logan began. Pete fought with his eyeballs to stop them bugging. He would love a fifty dollar note. “The boys were jointly paid to deliver a message but the dairy outside school wouldn’t change it for them. So they fought about who got to look after it. But the issue for me is what they were paid for.” Logan closed his eyes and Pete watched the flame of temper flare in the rigid stance of his friend’s body. He shifted slightly and got ready to run.
“Bloody Boris!” Logan swore. “The boys were paid to deliver a message to him. ‘Pay your debts, or next time will be worse!’”
“Oh, crap! It’s about that internet gambling thing, isn’t it?”
Logan looked at Pete suspiciously. “You knew?”
Pete cringed like a whipped dog. “Well…er…kind of…like…I knew he was doing it and he’d got into a spot of trouble…but…well…”
“Oh nice one!” Logan stood up and kicked a table leg, causing a heap of papers to cascade off like a waterfall. He glanced at the mess and left it. “Well, one of the boys is Matthew Larne’s nephew. Nice guy, you’ve probably heard of him. He earns a disreputable living by lending money at terrific interest rates to those who have no other choice. Even I’ve heard of him and I’m not a bloody local!”
Pete squirmed, edging himself nearer to the exit. “I…er…I knew Boris had some money worries.”
“Up to his bleedin’ ears!” Logan roared. “If they’re coming after him, it’s hardly a few gold coins is it?” Logan spun on his heel in frustration and then turned back again to Pete. “Why did he not just go back to Germany? It would have been over then. Larne wouldn’t have followed him there. He’s not that big time.”
Pete’s eyes grew wide, like saucers. “But what if they know where Boris lives now? They’ll come and hustle me!” He looked genuinely unsettled at the thought.
“It’s not that,” Logan went on. “I don’t care about Boris’ stupid debt. It was the other part of the message. ‘She’s in Huntly, get the address. No more excuses.’” Pete shook his head to clear his thoughts and then looked disappointingly blank. “It’s Hana!” Logan shouted his wife’s name in fury. “It’s the guys who’re stalking Hana. Boris is telling them stuff about us, to help them find her.” Logan balled his hands into fists, “No wonder he said he’d done something awful and he was sorry.” He used a number of nasty swearwords to describe Boris and then rounded on Pete, “You’re the only one that’s been to our place. Did you tell him where it is?”
“Er…” Pete creased his brow, honestly trying to remember, “I don’t…er, I think I told Henrietta actually…but she was disappointed because I couldn’t remember how to get back to it. No, I don’t think Boris was home when we had that conversation. He hasn’t been around much lately. Did you know he’s been seeing a woman?”
The last comment threw Logan slightly, appearing to be unrelated, but he recovered quickly. “Caroline. Has he been seeing Caroline Marsh?”
Pete shuddered visibly. “I hope not. She’s bad news. Hey isn’t she pregnant? I heard…”
Logan resumed his pacing. “That’s how they managed to get so close to us even though Ethel Bowman left. Hana saw them in Ngaruawahia. We blamed Ethel, but maybe it was Boris.” A sudden thought made him stop and look at Pete, “Hey, remember when your place was done over?” Pete nodded. “There was no sign of forced entry and nothing was apparently taken. But the place was really gone through right?”
Pete nodded again, feeling miserable. It took hours to put everything back. Henrietta refused to visit, in fear the intruder might come back. Logan carried on, “What if it was Boris? Looking for the thing this Laval guy wants?” Then he countered himself, “No, he would have known it wouldn’t be in Henrietta’s room. But he might have given someone a key just to get them off his back temporarily.”
“We need to find Boris and ask him ourselves,” said Pete, decisively straightening and squaring his shoulders. Then his usual reticence returned, “I’ll let you find him. You’re better at hitting people than me.”
Logan nodded in agreement on both counts. That was the only solution for now. They needed Boris to tell the story. He was alarmed by how quickly his mind turned a good friend into an enemy. It seemed to make sense all of a sudden. Logan wracked his brains. Had Boris been there on the day they moved Hana into Culver’s Cottage? He didn’t think so. He decided to ring and ask Bodie.
Bodie answered on the first ring. He sounded like he was in a fast food place, judging by the pop music in the background and the noise level. “Hey dude,” he answered amicably. His phone display warned him it was Logan. “S’up?”
Logan tried to explain as succinctly as he could. From Bodie’s end there was the sound of a till shutting and food wrappers rustling, then the noises changed to outside ones, traffic and birds. Finally, the clunk of a car unlocking, then silence. “Sorry mate,” he conceded, “I’m on duty, I nipped in for a coffee and a burger. You know what, I don’t think any of those guys helped. It was a weekday and it all went through quicker than we thought. I remember changing the time, bringing it forward. Me and Marcus did it with the removal guys. You came over in the afternoon.”
Logan visibly relaxed. He and Pete were walking around the school site looking for Boris, who should have been teaching in the gym, but neither he nor his class were there. Pete searched the classrooms in the sports complex and Logan scouted the grounds in case he took them for a cross-country run. He thanked his stepson and having explained the gist of the problem, rang off. “Get Mum somewhere else,” Bodie suggested forcibly and Logan grunted in reply.
“She won’t go. I already tried that.”
“I’ll speak to the new detective and let him know about this angle. It might help,” Bodie offered and Logan thanked him with gratitude. “Hey,” Bodie said before they ended the call. “Stay away from this Boris Lomax. Don’t go after him. It will mess everything up.”
Logan said goodbye and rang off.
At the start of the interval, boys poured out from every building and Pete and Logan had to admit defeat. Pete wandered off to the PE office where the sports teachers often met up, mainly to play table tennis and skull energy drinks and Logan went to scout out the staffroom just in case. He also decided to surreptitiously check on Hana.
Going through the common room, knowing he was about to see his wife, Logan experienced eagerness in the pit of his stomach. It was like a delicious anticipation; everything in him yearned desperately for that smile she kept only for him and he found it hard not to be near her every minute of every day. He couldn’t wait for them to be a family. His ideal would be for them both to go and live at the hotel, bringing the baby up together in the beautiful countryside and relaxed atmosphere of the farm. He enjoyed this mental image of coming home after riding out with the lads, fetching cattle or breaking horses, dusty and tired, to see Hana waiting for him holding their baby. It wasn’t real. He knew it wouldn’t work, but in his head it represented a kind of perfection. The-girl-on-the-train. She had been in his heart and his head all those years and now he was married to her.
Logan Du Rose felt both lucky and desperate as he piled into the small office. There was a queue of boys waiting to see Sheila to navigate through and then he saw her. Hana’s cheeks were flushed a healthy pink and her hair hung down her back where it finally escaped the clip. He loved how her belly had start
ed to round out with his child. It amazed and excited him. Astounding that in such a gossipy school nobody noticed.
Logan froze. Sat in Pete’s dirty seat, was Boris. He chatted idly to Logan’s wife as though nothing was amiss. Logan struggled to control the instant rage and the way his body knotted into a tense hardness. He wanted to drag Boris out of the room and smack some answers out of him. But he didn’t.
“Hey babe, I was just telling Boris how lovely the house is looking. We should get the guys over for a barbeque sometime. What do you think?” Hana looked so innocent and , Logan did valiant battle with his inner fury. For her sake. She didn’t know that side of him. It took every single fibre of Logan’s self-control not to, but he moved over to them, fixing a smile on his face and trying not to show his teeth were tightly gritted together. His grey eyes flashed and danced in his face and the air around him crackled with electricity, so the perceptive male occupants of the queue shuffled uncomfortably, picking up the danger signals. Logan grasped a stray piece of hair from Hana’s cheek, pushing it behind her ear lovingly. The action was tender and intimate but Hana noticed the little tick in the side of her husband’s neck, which betrayed his great irritation and she was instantly concerned.
Boris didn’t know Logan well enough. They had been housemates for a couple of months and got on easily. But he didn’t know the warning signs. “Angus wants to see you,” Logan said calmly to him. It wasn’t a complete lie. Angus certainly did want to see him. Borrowing money from sharks, involving students willingly or otherwise and bringing the filth of his personal life into school. Certainly Angus wanted to see him. But Logan was going to see him first. Boris nodded, but made no move to get up. “He said now.”
Logan’s kept his voice monotone and Boris reluctantly shifted. He seemed to be finding it a little difficult to move easily and Logan wondered if he endured hidden bruises beneath the school tracksuit. Boris said goodbye to Hana and Logan tried to wink reassuringly at her as he exited, but could already see she wasn’t convinced. It occurred to him she would assume it was about Caroline and felt sorry she would now spend wasted time thinking about the toxic other woman.
Logan followed Boris down the narrow stairs into the reception, staying close behind him as he headed to the principal’s room as though he was under arrest. They didn’t speak. The staircase didn’t allow for it, but neither seemed to know what to say. Angus had taken his tea at the desk and despite his assistant’s protest, Logan insisted he asked for Boris. Angus rose as the men entered but then to Logan’s sheer annoyance, dismissed him. “I think I can take it from here Mr Du Rose.” His voice was like steel and Logan faltered, trying to protest. Angus wasn’t budging and Boris looked suitably relieved.
Realising he was getting nowhere, Logan leaned in close to Boris’s ear as he sat rigid in his chair, saying quietly, with menace, “I will see you later.”
Then he left the room, this time slamming the door behind him. Angus’s assistant looked sick of the sight of him, especially when he grabbed a piece of scrap paper and hurriedly wrote his mobile number on it. “Please ring me when he comes out?” he begged her. The woman took the paper but didn’t reply either way. “Angus,” Logan changed his mind. “Ring me when Angus is free. Please?” He plumped for asking for Angus so he would know when Boris was loose and hoped it paid off. The assistant wouldn’t tell him when Boris came out, deeming an errand like that far beneath her remit. If it didn’t involve Angus, she didn’t care.
Hana Du Rose
Chapter 36
Logan had to teach the next class. After all, it was what he was paid to do. But as the Year 13 boys waffled through a whole host of appallingly bad Shakespearean accents in an attempt to capture the essence of Hamlet, Logan’s mind was elsewhere. He let the boys ramble through the text, impatient at their ignorance of iambic pentameter despite a term of teaching on it, but not focusing too intently on their antics. He kept his phone in his trouser pocket, pulling it out periodically and checking it was still on.
He kept trying to make a link between Larne and Laval, but couldn’t. As the lesson drew to a close, his heart began to sink, suspecting the snooty personal assistant to the principal stitched him up. The nasty thought she might be sweet on Boris crossed his mind, but he dismissed it quickly. The woman had to be in her early sixties…but then again. He shuddered visibly, causing one of the boys to ask if he was all right. Logan seized the opportunity. “You know what boys, actually I don’t feel so great. Let’s wrap this up for today. Go on, you can go.”
The boys cheered loudly and were gone in the blink of an eye, amidst large backpacks and much rivalry to get out of the door. Logan slammed the door quickly behind him, his hands shaking slightly as he fought with the key in the lock and was gone down the back stairs as fast as he could. The man blasted into the assistant’s office, skidding to a halt on the expensive carpet. She half rose from her seat, her face a look of perpetual disdain. Angus’ door was once again open. Both he and Boris were gone. Logan whirled around to face her. “Where is he?”
The secretary drew herself up to her fullest height, which still wasn’t taller than Logan’s six feet and four inches, but made her feel more secure about herself. “He’s gone to a principals’ meeting in Cambridge,” she said.
Logan shook his head impatiently. “Not Angus, Boris! Where did Boris go?”
The woman seated herself back down, relieved she was no longer defending the honour of her employer and quickly lost interest. “I have no idea. And, if I did, it would be confidential and nothing to do with you!”
Logan clutched at straws. “When did they leave?”
But the secretary was done. Refusing to answer, she pointed towards the office doorway, indicating he should leave, her face betraying the fact that she wished it to be permanently.
By the time the lunch bell sounded and the boys filed out into the fields and corridors, squabbling in the queue for the canteen and knocking soccer and rugby balls around, Logan was almost at the Gordonton House. As he flew up the last part of Tramway Road he almost collided head on with a black BMW, which was on the wrong side of the road coming around the final bend. Logan swerved heavily to the left, narrowly avoiding a dreadful accident. It was so sudden he didn’t even have time to sound the horn of Gwynne Jeff’s old 4 x 4. It lurched horribly on its massive wheels and shuddered back onto the road surface.
Logan continued his journey carried along by the adrenaline rush, shock setting in seconds later bringing shaking hands and a sickness in his stomach for what may have been. Fortunately Gwynne’s old truck was robust and solid. Logan was grateful to the teacher who not only lent him the vehicle, but also agreed to babysit his Year 12 classical studies class for period four, if he failed to return. The Honda had been too far away to reach quickly as Logan made a split decision to track Boris himself.
Logan bumped down the familiar rutted driveway, pulling up in front of the Gordonton house. The front door was wide open and the place eerily silent, a cool breeze fanning the wide leaves of a potted umbrella plant in the hallway. The boards clanked underfoot as Logan ran up the steps and inside, skidding to a sudden halt. Boris lay on the hall floor, a pool of blood spreading out along the rimu floorboards from a gash behind his head. He lay on his back, his arms splayed out unnaturally and his cheekbone looking an odd shape on the right side of his face, already swelling. Logan’s heartbeat shook his whole body from the inside as horror coursed through him. He heard his own blood stampeding through his veins, keeping him frozen in position at the sight of his friend collapsed before him.
“Boris, I’m so sorry. What the hell did you get yourself messed up in?” Logan whispered, understanding he was probably too late.
DU ROSE LEGACY
The Hana Du Rose Mysteries
Book 4
K T BOWES
Acknowledgement
For Maureen, who would rather have been Naomi.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 1
L
ogan felt tentatively for a pulse on his friend’s blood soaked neck and found one. He reached for the phone in his pocket and dialled triple one for emergency, explaining what he needed and where he was to the efficient operator.
While he waited, Logan felt around Boris’ body for other injuries, suspecting he had a broken arm and possibly a dislocated knee, judging by the angle his leg was aligned with his body. He knelt on the floor next to the prone sports teacher, relieved to hear the shallow, guttural breaths and prayed fervently Boris lived. “Come on man, help’s on its way. They won’t be long.”
“Don’t move him,” the ambulance operator stated calmly. “Stay with him, monitor his vital signs and talk to him.”
Logan hung up before the man could tell him to stay on the line and dialled his step-son, Bodie. The young police officer let out a string of swearwords. “What the hell...why did you go after him? You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you? Geez mate, don’t get any blood on you and don’t touch anything! I told Detective Sergeant Odering, you idiot! He was looking for Boris. Far out! If you’d stayed in school, you’d have an alibi!”
Bodie didn’t hide his exasperation or alarm and Logan felt a flicker of fear. “Sorry, I know. Sorry.” He hung up as he heard sirens and checked Boris’ weak pulse again. The sound of tyres on gravel heralded not one, but two vehicles.