Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  “Logan,” she began, her voice strained, “are we ok?”

  He looked perplexed for a second and then nodded slowly. Hana instinctively knew he was up to something and her heart sank. Logan used his other hand to stroke her cheek gently. The feel of his fingers, rough against her skin was seductive. Logan leaned towards her and brushed her lips with his. His fringe tickled her temple as he tilted his head and Hana smelled mint faintly on his breath. Her insides turned to jelly and she closed her eyes wanting more. But Logan dropped his hand and moved away, fiddling with the oven and loading the trays of pies into its dark, disgusting interior, a look of distaste on his clean-freak face.

  Hana sat for a moment on one of the staffroom chairs. She couldn’t load the heavy trays one-handed. She was fed up with her cast, but the consultant had said it needed to stay on. “Your arm’s healing,” he said, “but slowly. It’s been a bad break, but the the pins will do their job if you rest it.”

  Hana used her left hand to flick through the camera photos. The close up faces of the two men glared out of the digital screen in quick succession and then it went back round to the beginning, with hundreds of bodies unwittingly photographed from above. Hana thought to herself how colourful people looked en masse. The lights were bright and the scene cheerful and interesting. But the photos of the two men left her feeling chilled to the bone.

  Logan had bruised and bleeding knuckles, a gash on his palm and Hana noticed he kept rolling his shoulder. He dabbed at the cut with kitchen towel as the haemophilia refused to let his blood clot. Hana noticed signs of a bruise and cut to the bridge of his nose and the knees of his trousers were dirty. She wanted to ask what happened, but was afraid to broach it again. There had obviously been a scuffle. Logan seemed quite relaxed, not looking over his shoulder at all so the men must have gone. Hana wasn’t sure whether to feel more relieved or less. “Trust me,” he asked her. Hana sighed and rested her head on her left arm. It felt as though he said those same words to her continually for the duration of their short marriage. Trust me, trust me. Hana squeezed her eyes tight shut. The last man who said that blew her world apart.

  The rest of the evening went quickly. Hana flitted around taking photos and Logan made no objection to her going off alone, although he accompanied her across the dimly lit area to Q Block. It was standing room only in many of the university talks and the turnout had exceeded expectation. At a quarter past eight all the guest speakers were assembled in the staffroom being served refreshments. The prefects arrived and took over the serving role with efficiency and before long, everyone had a glass or mug in their hands.

  Sheila moved round the room speaking to everyone in turn, but seemed to stall upon reaching the representative of a prestigious South Island university. He was a slender man, dark, with a sprinkling of grey in his hair, good looking in an over-fifties-kind-of-way and it was obvious they had discovered a mutual attraction. Sheila’s body language was not for the faint hearted and the flirting game evident from the other side of the room. Logan dumped another tray of pies out of the oven as a swarm of prefects dashed towards him, ready and willing to transfer them onto plates.

  Teenage boys seemed to have asbestos mouths and Logan shook his head as some of the pies made it onto plates and some disappeared hurriedly into giant gobs, decorated by braces and acne. “Bloody hell!” he hissed at the nearest boy. “Did you even wash your hands?”

  The pie was hot and the boy gulped, unable to answer without ejecting the whole thing. Logan pulled a face of disgust. “That’s nasty!” Mind you, he thought to himself, the school staff are just as bad. Those who stayed behind to help filled their faces like they hadn’t eaten for a month.

  Hana moved around chatting to people and Logan noticed her straying towards Bodie. He headed her off, squeezing quickly between two tables but arrived too late as her son with a short hug, greeted her. Logan took Hana’s camera out of his jacket pocket and handed it slickly to her. “You left this on the table, babe. Hey,” he greeted his stepson, a fake smile on his face. “I don’t suppose you’d be able to take Hana home by any chance?”

  Bodie smirked. “STD clinic won’t be open this late.”

  Logan grimaced. “Predictive text mate. Not even funny.”

  Hana looked completely confused and Logan sensed she was about to start asking questions. He tried to squash them from the outset. “I need to sort some stuff out. I’ll be a couple of hours.” He turned towards Bodie, “Mate, could you stay at ours tonight?”

  Bodie shrugged. “Guess so. I’m day off tomorrow and I think I’ve still got stuff at yours.”

  Logan saw him working it out in his head, relieved when Bodie nodded with enthusiasm “It might be quite nice actually. I’ve got some things I’d like to talk to Mum about.”

  Hana’s face displayed a look of doubt as she stared at her husband. “Where are you going, Logan?” Her bottom lip puckered in fear.

  Logan turned and held her gaze. He observed her efforts to trust him as he asked. As his grey eyes looked into her soul, she knew he wasn’t going to tell her. Not now. Maybe not ever. She faltered, struggling internally as though drowning.

  The sound of Angus clearing his throat saved her. “I’d like to thank my wonderful staff for making the event happen, Sheila and Hana.”

  Hana was embarrassed when everyone turned to her and clapped, her cheeks reddening in discomfort. But by the time the noise faded away, Logan had already pushed his way through the crowd and left. Hana watched his tall frame move through the door nearest the stairs, his dark, wavy hair moving in the air current from an open window on the landing. Hana’s eyes communicated the message, don’t leave me. Logan’s grey eyes looked back at his wife momentarily and then with a wistful smile, he was gone.

  Du Rose Legacy

  Chapter 9

  Hana seemed unnaturally quiet walking to Bodie’s car. He carried her bag of work clothes and dumped it in his boot. The Honda was gone from the car park, its spot looking grey and empty in the hazy glare of the floodlights. Hana stared at the concrete, wondering if she went and stood in its space, she might gain some supernatural insight into her husband’s urgent business. Perhaps even into her husband himself.

  “Mum, get in, it’s freezing!” Already in the driver’s seat, Bodie had the heat running, although it gave out a tepid kind of warmth as the engine fought to thaw the interior. Hana slid into her seat, feeling an ache in her heart to match the ones in her body. She was quiet and subdued.

  Bodie concentrated on the dark road ahead but became concerned as his usually talkative mother lapsed into a heavy silence. Eventually, he probed her thoughts, gently, his voice caring and full of concern. “You ok, Mum?”

  As they came to the end of River Road at the traffic lights with Wairere Drive, Hana burst into tears. Bodie reached his left arm towards her, finding her fingers poking out of her cast in the red glow of the traffic lights. He was alarmed. “Mum, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  Between sobs, which punctuated her words with hiccoughs and sharp intakes of breath, Hana managed to spill out, “Logan killed two people. Now he’s gone to get rid of the bodies.”

  The car behind Bodie pipped its horn gently, as the lights turned green and he failed to move. He stared open mouthed at his mother instead. He rammed the gear lever into ‘drive’ and lurched at the open junction, bouncing up onto River Road northbound and then pulling over at the first bus stop he came to. The other car cruised quietly past them as they sat in silence with the engine still running. Bodie’s hands were in his lap and even in the darkness Hana saw he trembled. “I knew it!” he said angrily. “I bloody knew it!”

  Hana wiped her eyes quickly with the back of her hand and turned her body to face him fully. “What happened was this...” she began, but Bodie put his hand up in front of her face to stop her, shaking his head furiously.

  “No!” he yelled at her, “No more! Don’t tell me anything else, Mum. You seem determined to wreck my career. Why di
d you have to marry him?”

  Shocked into silence, Hana felt completely overwhelmed with resentment. It was all about him, all about his life, his career, the effects on him. Right then there was no care for her or his unborn sibling. His anger, his fear, it was all for himself. Galvanised, Hana sat back in her seat and loosened the seatbelt around her stomach. She said nothing and when Bodie made an attempt to smooth things over she ignored him, staring out of the window with a heart of lead. She had given up everything for him. And so had his father. They brought him into the world and they made good, despite the odds.

  Bodie gave up trying to talk to his mother, especially when she shook her head and looked out of the window to avoid saying what she genuinely thought. Hana gritted her teeth, inwardly fuming as brightly lit houses slipped by, filled with happy families’ cosy inside, enjoying their evenings. Even as she thought it, Hana knew it was an illusion. Her thoughts raged on unchecked in her head, unravelling like knitting wool. All her son cared about was himself and his own career.

  Her mind forged back to the moment in the hospital, as she lay there with her arm smashed and Bodie realised that she was pregnant. Hana remembered his instant dismay and the way he coldly excused himself. Because it didn’t suit him. All those years of trying to parent an insolent, difficult teenager alone, recruiting mentors for him from around her work and church friends to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. Hana constantly made excuses for him, blaming his sullenness on the loss of his father. She wrestled over his behaviour during sleepless nights, agonising over what to do next. And finally when she needed his help more than ever, all her precious son wanted to do was distance himself as far as possible from her problems. Something snapped inside Hana and she felt hard and brittle. Selfish, selfish boy, was all she could think.

  Bodie activated the gate for Culver’s Cottage and slipped up the driveway. He pulled up on the flat section outside the house and switched off the engine. But Hana got quickly out of the car and bending down so she spoke to him through her open door said, “Thank you for the ride Bodie. I don’t need you to stay.”

  She shut the door, trying not to slam it. Bodie got out of the car and came round the bonnet towards her. “Look, Mum, sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

  Hana knew she should back down - they shouldn’t part this way, but she felt hurt and tired and desolation churned deep within her spirit. There had been too many times her son had hung up the phone on her, leaving her alone in her bed at Achilles Rise to worry about him, too many times he had stomped off to bed and cut her out of his life. In her irrational state, Hana justified her own behaviour, waving him off dismissively and walking up the front steps alone to deal with her exceptionally complicated life by herself.

  Not sure what to do, Bodie followed her part way up the steps, plainly out of his depth. “It’s ok, I can come in. I promised Logan...”

  Hana struggled with the front door lock and then dealt with the alarm warnings, which sounded loud in the still darkness. Then she turned back to her son. “I don’t want you to. Thank you.”

  Bodie held his ground, affronted. “Why?”

  Perhaps it was the plaintive tone of his voice or the hint of arrogance, but whatever it was acted as a match lighting the blue touch paper on a firework. Hana exploded, “Why? Because it’s all about you! It always is!”

  Bodie stayed half way up the steps and Hana moved back out onto the porch. “You know what really gets me? It’s that while you were interfering in my life, chasing off any male friends I might have, ensuring I stayed completely and pathetically alone, you were making free with another man’s wife, who you then abandoned, pregnant!”

  Bodie held onto the rail and shook his head. His face creased into a sneer. “Far out! I didn’t know Amy was pregnant! Is this about Graham? That was years ago, Mum!”

  “He was a friend!” Hana shouted. “Just a friend. He told me what you said to him. I was so embarrassed. And all the time while you were wrecking my life, you were fully enjoying yours!”

  “Why are you bringing this up now?” Bodie shouted, his face a dark mask of anger.

  “Because you make everything about yourself,” yelled Hana, “and I am sick and tired of it. Logan’s been kind to you and it’s still not good enough...”

  “You just told a serving police officer your mafia husband killed two people tonight and went off to hide the bodies!” Veins stood out on Bodie’s neck and his eyes were wide in mock disbelief. Hana paused for a second and thought about Bodie’s words. She remembered Logan asking her to trust him. Hana shivered with misery in the freezing air; she had already broken that promise.

  Hana needed to choose between her men and it was an unpleasant feeling, like something cold and slippery dropped down the back of her neck. She shut her eyes and gritted her teeth but her voice was a whisper. “Please go, Bodie. I can’t do this right now! And never ever call my husband that again!”

  Bodie opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. The night had a feeling of unreality about it, as though some journey was being made over which he had no control. As the front door clicked shut, he turned away and walked slowly back down the steps. He wondered if maybe he did make things about himself too much. Recently it seemed as though Amy grew tired of him. He made little effort with her, apart from the rudiments of sharing responsibility for Jas. Bodie Johal enjoyed an unblemished career record, until now. He was upset by the bawling out he got from the Superintendent for associating with Logan over the incident with Boris. He reacted by detaching from the whole situation.

  Bodie got back into his flash silver car and popped the interior light on. Reaching over, he took Logan’s neatly written list from the glove box and placed it on the passenger seat. Then he turned off the light, started up the vehicle and drove down the driveway, making sure the gates closed behind him.

  Hana sat at the kitchen table, still with her long jacket over her dress. Her boots squeezed her feet and her handbag cut uncomfortably across her body. She put her head down on her left forearm and wept. “What have I done,” she cried, but only Tiger heard her. She had turned away her only son and thrown her lot in with Logan. Her heart said it was about bloody time, but her head screamed warnings and misgivings until it throbbed and ached. She realised her bag of work clothes was still in Bodie’s car, which only made her more miserable as she wasn’t willing to text him and ask for them and they were the last pair of leggings she could realistically squeeze into.

  The camera dug into her side through the thin leather of the handbag and she took it out. She fiddled until she got ‘replay’ amidst snot and tears and flicked through the captured scenes. She kept scrolling, looking for the photo of the two men. It clicked around to the last snap, Sheila talking to the uni rep. Despite herself, Hana smiled at Sheila’s very obvious body language. She tried to zoom in, to see if Sheila’s pupils were big in her eyes. She read somewhere it was a dead giveaway for spotting physical attraction, but the camera flash caused ‘red-eye’ so it was hard to tell. From that close up, the red eyes made it look more like Sheila was about to eat him like a rabid vampire, rather than ask him out on a date.

  Hana flicked right through the photos again. She went back, looking for the photos Logan took, sure she had missed them. Getting to the beginning, she started over. There was a close up of Pete, cross-eyed as he stared delightedly at the bogey on his finger, then back to Vampire Sheila. The pictures of her assailants were gone. They had been wiped. Hana was a technical moron by her own admission, but she managed to find the ‘recycle bin’ and check there. Nothing. Not even the picture she deleted before, which Pete snapped of his tonsils that afternoon when she was charging the camera. The message on the digital screen declared ‘the recycle bin is empty.’ Someone went to a lot of trouble to get rid of the evidence. And she knew exactly who.

  Poor Hana sighed and rested her head on her forearm again, stretching the other arm in its cast to keep it out of the way. She felt exhausted. The bab
y decided it was playtime and Hana sat there in discomfort while it danced the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ on her bladder. Under such circumstances, it was amazing she managed to fall asleep and was still sitting in the same position, when a tired Logan let himself in the front door and stumbled straight over the ‘other’ boots, which Hana hastily rejected before she ran out the door that morning. He swore as he managed to right himself at the last minute.

  He pulled his cowboy boots off and stood them squarely against the skirting board, out of the way. Then he bent down and stood Hana’s boots up next to them. Two large moths dashed in with him, making a gleeful beeline for the comfort of the bare light bulb in the hall, which they circled happily in a frenzy of glee. Logan swatted at them without enthusiasm. He looked dreadful. His hair stuck up and the stubble which had been a shadow at nine o’clock the previous night, was a widespread dark beard at three in the morning. Grey circles ringed his eyes and he carried his left hand carefully, pain etched across his face. He was certain he had chipped the bone somewhere on his middle and index fingers and his hand looked swollen, like a bunch of bananas. Stress, altitude and the head butt, conspired to give him a nosebleed as he went over the mountains and rattled down the long driveway to the hotel and it still oozed and ran slightly.

  Logan sighed as he saw Hana sleeping with her head on the table and stood watching her for a long moment, leaning with his right arm against the wall to recover. His face had a look of tenderness. “Come on sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair, peeling her out of her seat and picking her up like a child. She stirred and murmured something unintelligible, snuggling into him as he carried her down the hallway to the bedroom. His hand was uncooperative and awkward, but he fumbled her top layers undone despite the delicate buttons and managed to take them off her. Logan left Hana in her bra and knickers and covered her up so only her head poked out of the duvet. Waking up with cold shoulders was a miserable thing, so he made sure she was snugly tucked in. Tiger was indoors and milling around and almost legged Logan up on his way to the bathroom, winding round and round his feet.