by Bowes, K T
The ambulance men were first into the house, kneeling down next to Boris and firing questions at Logan. He answered stiffly, knowing whatever he said would incriminate him.
“No, he wasn’t conscious when I found him.”
“No, he hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“No, I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Yes, there’s been a faint pulse all the time. His breathing’s slow and shallow.”
It was the same information he gave the operator.
The second vehicle disgorged cops hot on the heels of the medics, one of them hauling Logan to his feet roughly. “Come on, sir, up you get!”
The Maori staggered as he rose, his knees numb from kneeling next to Boris. As he righted himself with his hand on the floorboards, one of the policemen misinterpreted his action as resistance, shoving him hard and drawing a baton from his belt. Logan Du Rose took a step backwards, feeling the racism ooze from the ginger-haired cop. Logan’s heart sank into his stomach as a familiar disappointment returned, laced with dismay.
Boris lay sprawled on the ground, a pool of blood forming from his head wound. The ambulance men worked efficiently and Logan watched, knitting his brow and feeling useless. Blood coated his hands from feeling for a pulse and it felt sticky and uncomfortable on his skin. He resisted the urge to wipe it on his work trousers, aware of the young cop’s nervous stance with his nightstick still raised in self-defence. “Sorry, my legs went to sleep.” Logan indicated feebly towards Boris, whose head was being fitted into a neck brace. “I was kneeling for a while...with him...” Logan tailed off with a sigh, seeing it was pointless. The cop held his threatening stance and Logan forced his body to relax in defiance, looking away with disgust evident in his face.
The cop was little more than twenty, still green and thrilled with his own sense of power. He remained in an attack position, his weapon drawn and one leg sharply forward for balance. He held the posture much longer than necessary. Logan’s rubbed at his numb right leg; he wasn’t going anywhere. The cop’s skin, usually white and sickly, was flushed with excitement and his carrot orange hair stood out from his head like the fluff of a soft toy.
Logan wanted to laugh at the incongruousness of the ridiculous situation. Then he thought of Hana and the smirk melted from his lips. He ran his hand across his face and the cop twitched. “Do I have to put up with this joker?” Logan snapped and appealed to the other uniformed officer who watched nearby.
Tired with the antics of his colleague, the man of around fifty with a broad stomach and gentle face, tugged on Logan’s arm and moved him to the side of the large hallway. Logan comically shuffled backwards, shooting a sneer at the stick toting maverick.
While Logan tried to rub the blood back into his legs, the older cop flipped open his pocketbook and withdrew a small pen, pointing it at the other policeman. “Now you’ve drawn your baton,” he said slowly, as though speaking to someone mentally impaired, “you’ll have to record it in your pocketbook.”
Logan was impressed with the man’s restraint and seemingly endless patience in keeping his frustration under wraps. His relaxed posture demonstrated he was used to it as he turned to Logan with a casual smile. “I’m sure you understand, sir, as the first person on the scene we’ll need to ask you some questions. I’ll do so briefly now, sir, but we’ll have to revisit this at a later date. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure,” Logan replied and exhaled slowly without drawing more attention to himself. Boris lay on a stretcher, giving the smallest of grunts as his body moved from the floor to the trolley. Logan reached out for the ambulance officer, causing the young cop to go into a paroxysm of excitement again, redrawing the baton already painstakingly folded down and inserted back onto his belt.
“Bloody hell!” The older policeman sighed as his patience finally cracked. He looked away, rolling his eyes at the younger cop and shaking his head.
“Hey, how is he?” Logan asked the ambulance man. “Will he be ok?”
The man barely broke his stride. “Too early to say, mate.”
Logan bit his lip, realising he had interrupted the first of the cop’s questions. He turned back apologetically and made an effort to stay on track.
When did you last see Boris Lomax?
What time did you arrive at the property?
Did you see anyone else here?
Was Boris conscious when you found him?
In your opinion, how did the injury occur?
The last question caused Logan to stop and think. He shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t here but it looks like someone beat him up.” He knitted his dark brows in concentration. “I suppose he could have fallen or had some kind of fit but...” Logan thought about the older bruising and Boris’ laboured movements earlier and knew the truth. He tutted as his own stupidity struck him hard. You’re an idiot, Du Rose, he chastised himself as the young cop held out his hand for Logan’s phone, making him insert it into the see-through evidence bag himself. “So that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?” he said to the policeman, who laboriously wrote everything down in the pocketbook with his tiny pen. “I’m here, so I must be your suspect. Sterling work guys, as always.” Logan couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his tone. He cursed inwardly at the predicament he’d accidentally put his stepson in. As soon as they checked his phone, they would find the call to Bodie, right after he dialled emergency.
The cop stopped writing, looking up with one bushy eyebrow raised. Logan reverted to his hardened Du Rose persona; afraid of no-one. “Just so you know, this morning at school Boris had the makings of a black eye and moved like he was hurting. He also had a split lip...look, it’s a long story, but he was involved in some nasty stuff and may have put my wife in danger. Why the hell aren’t you down at the school protecting her?” Logan stopped talking and sighed heavily, tilting his head back to look at a spot on the ceiling. He was going to make it worse, whatever he said. “I’m wasting my time here. I want to talk to Detective Sergeant Odering please,” he said finally, “and I won’t be saying anything else until he gets here.”
The cop wrote that down and shut his notebook with a snap. He nodded towards the ginger cop. “Call it in. Get Odering here.”
The slender detective arrived suspiciously quickly, perhaps something to do with Bodie’s prediction that the policeman was already out looking for Boris. Well, now you’ve found him, Logan mused, fighting frustration as he tapped his boot heel on the gravel with poorly disguised impatience. By the time Odering’s large car swept up the gravel driveway, Logan was outside and the whole house cordoned off with tape.
“Victim’s reached the hospital,” ginger-cop gushed with excitement. “Shall I take the suspect in now?”
Logan let out a snort and shook his head, experiencing a wave of exhaustion. “How is he?” he asked, staring at the older policeman and deliberately ignoring the bouncing idiot at his side.
“Too early to tell, sir,” the man replied with respect, but Logan noticed his colleagues leap into action, dealing with the area as a bona fide crime scene. Logan spent his time sitting in the back of one of the cop cars. There were plenty to choose from and he went there willingly. He sensed ginger cop’s excitement at the thought of slapping on the handcuffs, but the older man held the youngster at bay, allowing Logan to sit in the back seat sideways, with the door open and his feet firmly on the gravel.
“Typical Maori, lazy arses. That’s how they sort everything out, using their fists. Course he did it, they always do!” ginger-cop muttered, loud enough for his colleague and Logan to hear.
“Hey, enough of that crap!” the older man rebuked him.
Logan gritted his teeth. It was just that sort of racism which made him want to exercise his fists. He massaged his scarred knuckles and worked hard to control his temper until Odering was out of the car. Logan wrinkled his nose as the detective walked across to the Scenes of Crime Co-ordinator, a small, neat lady with a white jumpsuit, who directed operations with a precise and practiced
air. They spoke quietly together for a moment and Odering nodded his dark head as though satisfied. Then he turned on his pristinely shined shoes and looked across at Logan.
As he walked across there was a heaviness in his step. Logan tried to stand and hold out his hand, but Odering pointedly ignored it and the older cop gently pushed him back to a sitting position. The Detective Sergeant stood with his hands on his slender hips and looked carefully at Logan. “What a bloody mess, Mr Du Rose.”
Logan nodded. “Yep.” He gritted his teeth and stared at a point in the distance, watching a white cloud scud overhead.
The detective bent down on his haunches, one neatly pressed trouser leg resting on the gravel. “I don’t for a minute think this is your handiwork, Mr Du Rose,” he whispered, “but I have to take you down to the station and proceed as though it is. Following process is the only way we’ll get this cleared up. I suggest you comply with everything asked of you for the time being.”
Logan stared at the detective with grey eyes which flashed in the daylight. He sighed and nodded as Odering stood up. “Mr Du Rose can go to the station now, please. Do the usual checks and hold him until I get there.” Out of the corner of his eye, Odering spotted the ginger cop drawing his handcuffs and commented smartly, “There won’t be any need for those thank you. I don’t think Mr Du Rose has any intention of running.” He looked hard at Logan. “He has more reason than most, for needing to sort this out.”
Down at the police station, Logan donned a white, hooded jumpsuit with integral booties and his clothing was taken from him. His gold St Christopher was removed and signed into a plastic envelope by the custody officer, a disinterested man in his thirties who stuck meticulously to the rules and showed no emotion whatsoever. Logan’s watch and wedding ring went with it. He had only been married a few months, but his finger looked bare, almost naked without his ring. Sorry, Hana. His heart sent the message across town to hers. He was photographed and fingerprinted, holding tightly to innocence in his treatment as a guilty man.
Every part of the procedure made him feel like an animal at a cattle market, impersonal and without relevance. Finally, after sitting for what seemed like hours in a bare, clinical, only partially graffitied cell in the bowels of the Hamilton central police station, Logan was allowed a single phone call.
It was not to Hana, his wife that he made the painful call, but childhood friend and fellow schoolteacher Peter North, who subsequently lost his place in the canteen queue. “Oh, what?!” Pete screeched loudly as his phone bleated out into the throng of sweaty male bodies. “No!” He had already been to the tuck shop once that day but his fiancé, Henrietta would only be gone for a week and when she returned, his pie quota would be severely cut. A swarm of small boys filled his place, surging forward like water as Pete wedged a pudgy finger into his ear to drown out their chatter, shouting, “What now?!” like the person on the other end was also deaf.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 2
It was left to Pete to apologise profusely to media studies teacher, Gwynne Jeffs, for his car being behind yards of plastic tape bearing the words, ‘Crime Scene. Do Not Enter.’ “Na, bro! I dunno what’s goin’ on. Cops say you can have it back later.”
“Bloody last time I lend Du Rose my stuff,” Gwynne complained. “I should have gone with him.”
“What? To both beat Boris up?” Pete said, his eyes bugging like a frog’s. He snorted and a bogey dived from his hairy nose and onto Gwynne’s shoe. Pete stared at it for a moment. “Hey, bro? What if the cops find the drugs under your front seat?” He looked smug, pleased with his joke.
The older man fixed him with a penetrating stare which went on far too long for Pete, who didn’t read people awfully well. Moving close and invading Pete’s personal space with deliberate threat, Gwynne whispered in his ear, “I’d be more worried about the gun in the glove box!” Then he turned on his heel and walked briskly away, enjoying the nervous look on his foolish colleague’s face and still chuckling to himself as he poured coffee in the staff room.
Pete pulled his collar away from his throat, feeling suddenly overheated and rattled. It just goes to show you don’t always know people that well, no matter how long you’ve worked with them, he chuntered to himself. He should have gone to Logan’s wife, Hana next, but instead he went in search of Angus, principal of the Waikato Presbyterian School for Boys.
“Mr Blair is delayed at his meeting and won’t be back for at least fifteen minutes,” the Pit-Bull-personal-assistant at the desk informed him.
“That’s ok. I’ll wait here,” Pete replied with a facetious grin. The secretary grimaced.
“Touch anything and I’ll kill you,” she said, menace dripping from her carefully crafted sentence.
“Ok,” Pete said, immediately getting busy fingering ornaments and trophies and knocking over a bowl of peppermints.
After the second mishap with mints, which Pete collected back into the bowl using the tiddlywink method, the secretary sent him out. “Out! Out!” she screamed and reached down the side of her desk, producing a cricket bat signed by the Black Caps.
“You wouldn’t!” Pete breathed in shock as the elderly woman wielded the priceless object.
“Watch me!” she hissed and slammed her door in his face. Pete settled down in reception with a woman’s magazine he found in the seating area. He made oddly disturbing noises as he marvelled at the ‘bikini bodies’ on offer, smirking and giggling like a lunatic. Even the mild-mannered receptionist became sick of him. The ‘runner,’ a small Year 10 randomly selected to be the staff skivvy for the day, found Pete much more entertaining than running messages and a backlog piled up on his desk.
“Good grief!” Pete squeaked and turned the magazine upside down. “How did she get that on there?”
Angus Blair glided elegantly through the double doors, backside first. “It’s started raining,” he announced to nobody in particular. His arms performed a flapping action with his soaked umbrella, shaking off the deluge which confronted him halfway across the car park. Turning to greet the receptionist, Angus face scowled with dismay at the sight of a giggling Pete, attacking a guest magazine with a small pair of nail scissors. He appeared to be snipping out a picture of a buxom woman in spotted underwear.
“North! Go and do some work!” Angus bellowed. He shook his head, wishing the images would recede and strode bravely towards his office, hoping against hope Pete was only loitering. No such luck. As he turned to hang his jacket on the coat stand, he found himself nose to nose with Peter North, who silently followed him in.
Thus, it was left to Angus to summon the busy Hana to his office and break the news about her husband as gently as possible. “My dear, it appears Logan is in custody...ahem...” Angus cleared his throat, squirming in discomfort. “He’s suspected of assaulting Boris, who has sadly not yet regained consciousness.” The tremor in his Scots lilt betrayed his private anxiety and irritation. Logan Du Rose was and always has been, a law unto himself, he thought crossly.
The beautiful, redheaded administrative assistant looked stunned, her green eyes widening in disbelief. “Sorry, I thought you said Logan...oh, you did say that.”
Angus shut his office door, thinking there might be hysterics but Hana sat in front of him, deadly silent. Angus felt perplexed. “My dear, you seem more surprised the victim is Boris, than at the allegation your husband hit him.
“I think I’m learning what a force to be reckoned with my husband can be. But Boris? I don’t understand. Please tell me what happened?” Hana begged, running her delicate hand lightly across her swollen stomach and shifting in her seat as though uncomfortable.
Angus sighed and tried to fit the pieces together for her. “Boris apparently had a gambling addiction, mainly online. He got into financial difficulties and made a foolish loan from a known shark, whom he then couldn’t pay. He began to receive threats. The shark made his big outlays from the oversized pocket of one, Michael Laval, who became interested
in Boris because he worked here at the school.”
Hana let out a gasp at the mention of Michael Laval and the colour drained from her face. Angus paused to check she was alright and then continued. “Something happened this morning and Logan chanced across an exchange between Laval and Boris, via the loan shark. Logan and I correctly deduced Laval was pressurising Boris for your home address or at least trying to get to you through him. Unfortunately, we don’t know what Boris already told them. What he said to Logan suggests he did something foolish and deeply regretted it.”
Hana sighed heavily. “No wonder Logan behaved strangely earlier. He came to my office and tried to make me go to his parents’ place in the mountains. Then later, he seemed horrified to find Boris talking with me. I thought he brought him downstairs to see you.” Hana looked pointedly at Angus, who shifted in his seat, making the expensive leather creak.
“Yes. I’m afraid I mishandled the situation and sent Logan away to avoid a punch up in my office. It seems it only delayed the inevitable.”
“No.” Hana looked even more striking when determined. “Logan would have been angry but he’s not stupid. Besides, he and Boris boxed together at the gym. My husband might have taught him a lesson, but he wouldn’t have half-killed him.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a mafia princess.” The words were a joke, but Angus’ expression held no humour. Hana showed her exasperation in the pursing of her lips as she held her employer’s steely gaze. She shook her head in irritation. “Laval’s men have been trying to find me for months now, ever since I left the old house. They’ve attacked me, my vehicle, my home; I feel I’m not safe anywhere. Logan goes to great lengths each morning to get me to work without being followed. They didn’t know where I moved to, but now you’re saying they might?” Hana ran her hand across her lips in frustration.
“I’m so sorry, dear. I mishandled things. Logan could see what was going on and I heard Boris out and then let him leave. It was a big mistake and Logan must have borrowed a vehicle and gone after him. I take full responsibility for this mess.”