Many of the pipes had rusted out and Tyler had disconnected all except the main shed ones and repaired or replaced pipes in the area where his animals were now in four stalls. When the hot water circulated the temperature would rise to about eight degrees Celsius that was far better than the twelve below outside. When the power was on, pumps would circulate the hot water at a faster speed but even without them the system still worked quite well.
Sam looked at Tyler with mournful eyes and jumped up on an ancient sofa nearby and lay there almost as if to say he didn't expect to be moved until next mealtime.
Tyler laughed and patted the dog's head. "Okay, you're lucky you aren't still working on the station. I'll go and get hay for the animals and clean the place up a bit."
Usually Renee came and helped him but he didn't mind leaving her to look after the visitors. As he filled up the bins with hay and broke the ice layer in the drinking troughs he heard a cough and glanced up.
"Oh, hi there Ian," he said after he recognised the guy with the motorbike that he had rescued. "I think you'll be stuck here another night. The radio said that there's a second snow front on the way and we'll probably not get power for a week."
Ian grinned. "It's no problem. This was my main destination anyway."
Tyler frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I should have told you straight away, I guess but everyone was settling in and Renee seemed to be such a bundle of energy."
"You know her?" Tyler studied the man.
"Not in person but she was Renee Brooks, wasn't she?"
Tyler nodded. "Yes, she changed back to her maiden name after a divorce from a violent marriage but how do you know?"
"I am a lawyer with Anderson, Bidwell and Johnson Associates who are one of the Crown Prosecuting firms in Auckland." Ian grinned. "I'm just one of the guys who does the donkey work."
"And how does this concern Renee?" Tyler felt uneasy and his voice hardened. "She had a tough few years and if you're here to stir up a lot of mud, it will not be welcomed."
"No it's nothing like that. Look, can we find somewhere and I'll explain the situation."
Tyler glowered. The last thing he wanted was some hotshot lawyer from the city interfering in their lives. "So why speak to me and not directly to Renee?" he almost spat.
"My original intention was to do that but after seeing you both here, I thought I'd sound you out first. If in your opinion, what I ask would be too hard for Renee to cope with I'll just spend my few days with you, pay for the excellent accommodation and tell my bosses that she will not be interested."
'That sounds fair but come into the boiler room. I've got a kettle and coffee making stuff there. If it weren't for you and those two girls, Renee would be here with me. We often have a cuppa out here rather than going back to the house. Have you had breakfast?"
"No. I noticed you coming out here and decided to speak to you first."
BACK IN THE QUITE WARM boiler room, Tyler placed a kettle on the small hotplate attached above the furnace and grinned. "Luckily I put water in the kettle yesterday. All the water pipes are frozen. The furnace ones are lagged with sacking that still works after all these years but I talk too much, what is it about Renee that requires a visit from so far away?"
"It's her ex-husband Larry Brooks that we are concerned about."
"Then I don't think Renee would be interested. She wants nothing to do with the man She..." Tyler pouted. "But I guess that if you're from the Crown Prosecutor's Office you know about what happened to her."
"We do and think there was a grave miscarriage of justice there."
Tyler was surprised, "You do? How come?"
"Brooks got off with little more than a wet slap on the wrist because he had an influential family. Partly because of what happened to Renee and others like her, the law about assault within marriages has been tightened. Under our new law he could have been charged with manslaughter or even murder of her unborn child. Our records show that our firm actually pushed for a manslaughter or a more serious assault charge but it never eventuated."
"So you're going to recharge him?"
Ian shook his head. "No that's not possible but any new offences are something totally different."
"What new offences?"
"Violent offenders usually don't change and in Larry Brooks case he has just continued on. Since the time with your partner he has had at lease three partners that we know of and they all finished when violence was involved. The latest is similar in many ways to what happened to Renee. The reason I've come down here, is to see if she would be prepared to testify and tell of her experiences when she was married to him."
"But what about the other women; didn't you say there were several that he had assaulted?"
"That's the trouble," Ian admitted. "I've personally approached all three but none of them will come forward. They all just want to get on with their lives."
"And without this evidence he'll probably get off or admit to another minor charge."
Ian nodded. "That's about it. Unless we can prove he is an habitual offender he will walk away free. In fact, the present complainant is so terrified, she is considering dropping her charge and moving to Australia to get away from him."
Tyler nodded. "Okay, I'll see whether Renee would like to speak with you. Even if she does, I want no hard word put on her to come forward. Do you understand?"
"That's why I approached you first," Ian said. "If, after I tell her everything she still doesn't want to help, that will be it. I promise that nobody else from my firm or even the police will approach either of you again."
CHAPTER 4
Both Tyler and Renee impressed Ian. He had researched her earlier marriage and had, as one does, built up a mental image of her as being a withdrawn type with perhaps even a chip on her shoulder like so many of the other women who were victims in hostile relationships. In fact she was almost the exact opposite.
As they walked out of the boiler room, he noticed that he could now see around the shed in the early morning light. His motorbike was parked there beside a vintage jeep and old Jaguar car, with both appearing to be half restored.
"Are you into restoring vintage vehicles?" he asked Tyler.
"More by accident than design," Tyler replied. "I'm more into the building side and aim at bringing some of the old cottages here up to standard so we can rent them out for skiers and trampers. We already have a couple that we use. Old Barry, the previous owner of this depot was in the car restoration man. When we visited before we bought the place he had a dozen or more old vehicles here. When they left, he asked if he could leave them with us until he found a new home for them. He took most away over the following few months but never got around to these two." Tyler waved his hand around. "Some of the equipment like that lathe were his too. Anyway, he died three months back and his widow offered us everything here including these old vehicles and spares for a song." He grinned. "It's too cold to work in the cottages over winter so I have begun putting them together. There were and still are, bits all over the place."
They walked across to Tyler's bike that had a flat front tyre and bent frame.
"I hit something sharp," Ian said.
Tyler examined the motorbike and rubbed his chin. "There's a cut in the tyre but I can probably repair it. As for the bent frame, we can straighten it out enough to get you going."
"Doubt if that will be today," Ian replied. It had stopped snowing outside but everything was covered in fifty centimetres of snow and black clouds hid the mountains to the west.
"Possibly two or three days before snowploughs reach us even if the snow finally stops," Tyler added.
Throughout the rest of the morning Ian mainly watched as Tyler repaired the motorbike tyre and straightened out the frame including welding a couple of broken sections together.
"It'll get you back to Christchurch but don't try doing a hundred and twenty k.p.h on the flats. Also get a panel beater to look at it before you head back to the North Island.
"
"Thanks," Ian replied. "I could never have done what you did."
The outside door opened and he glanced up. The taller girl that he met in Tyler's tractor came in and shut the door. Now what was her name? That's right, it was Sofia.
She was quite a good looker, too.
"Hi Guys," Sofia said. "Renee sent me. How about coming over to the house for lunch? It's been simmering away for half an hour."
Tyler grinned. "Got carried away repairing Ian's motorbike. We'll come now."
Ian glanced at Sofia. "So you'll be missing out at the ski field?"
Sofia grinned. "I don't mind. In this weather I doubt if much will be open anyway and I love it here. Never seen so much snow in my life...." She chatted on as they all walked back to the house through a well-made track in the snow just as new flakes began to fall.
Ian thought back. In someway she reminded him of Hope, a girlfriend from university days. It made him think of life back in Auckland and his present position at Anderson, Bidwell and Johnson Associates.
ERIC JOHNSON, THE SENIOR partner of the firm walked into Ian's open-plan cubical on the fifteenth floor of an office block in downtown Auckland.
"I've got bit of a job for you, Ian," he said and pulled up a chair beside him.
Ian sighed. The last time Ian had 'bit of a job' it involved almost a month's investigative work, not that he minded. It was much better than mountains of paperwork and document reading on the computer that he had to do when he first arrived. The firm used to employ private detectives but found them expensive and not particularly efficient. In Ian's opinion they were slimy little bastards who weren't much above the criminal class themselves. One had once been a police officer who had left the force under suspicious circumstances.
Almost by chance, Ian had been asked to help find witnesses for a case where the police evidence was mainly circumstantial. In Eric's opinion there was little hope of obtaining a conviction unless more witnesses could be persuaded to come forward. Ian had succeeded and helped them to obtain a conviction. After that, he was the first one that the senior lawyers assigned investigating jobs to. He worked with police detectives on occasions and found them helpful but often distracted by a multitude of cases. He though, was usually just given an assignment and left alone to get on with it.
Eric swung the computer monitor around a little and brought up a file showing a mug shot of an ordinary looking guy in a suit.
"Heard of Larry Brooks?"
"No. What's he done?"
"He's one of those characters who has rich parents and grew up thinking he owned the world." Tom continued on to tell Ian about the case with Brooks' former wife, Renee and how he had beaten her so badly that her unborn child was killed. Because of his family's influence, he received just a light sentence.
"And the present case?" Ian asked.
"The police are about to arrest him on a murder charge. His latest partner, Jocelyn O'Sullivan had a child by him who died in suspicious circumstances after a car accident. At first the police suspected she may have been responsible for the infant's death but they switched their attention to him after finding out he had been assaulting her for months."
"But they have no proof?"
"Actually, there is quite a bit but his defence will be that she was responsible for the baby's death and at the moment, it is her word against his."
"So you want witnesses to come forward to testify that he is not the upright citizen that his family name implies?"
"That's about it. You need to find the other partners in his life and, even more important, persuade them to testify against him. I have two women's names but I'm sure there are more so if you could check the shelters' records about battered women and so forth, his name may come up.
"And this Renee Brooks. Is she still in the country?"
"We believe so. The police checked and found she changed her surname back to Stevens, her maiden name, by deed poll even before they were divorced. She lived in Auckland for several years but we believe she has now left the city. You shouldn't have trouble finding her."
"But persuading her to testify is a different proposition?"
Eric grinned. "That's where your skill comes in, Ian M'Lad. Try to get it sorted within a couple of weeks, if possible."
Ian grinned. "Okay, give me what you have about the case and I'll get onto it."
IAN'S RESEARCH FOUND out much about Larry Brooks. The man apparently came across as a normal businessman who was the managing director in a family firm originally owned by his grandfather. Discrete inquiries showed that there was another young woman living with him in a modern home on the North Shore, one of the upmarket Auckland suburbs.
It amazed him how somebody like this guy could always find another seemingly young, attractive and upmarket woman after years of violence against females. He guessed that in a city of one and a half million inhabitants, it was easy enough to hide his behaviour by moving across town and acquiring a new set of acquaintances.
He made a note of this information and moved onto finding and interviewing the women involved with Brooks over the previous twenty or so years. He had found that there were four, all educated women with one point in common. They all froze when he mentioned Larry Brooks and refused to say more than agreeing that that they had once been his partner and yes, there had been violence in their relationships. One, he found out had even been married to him before his marriage to Renee Stevens. Again, the woman, a sole parent of two older teenagers from this union was sympathetic but refused to come forward.
"Larry was a violent man but is my children's father," she said. "They know little about him for he has had nothing to do with us and all attempts to get any maintenance money when the kids were little failed. Sorry, but I don't want to have anything to do with him again."
"BROOKS MAINTAINS A front of being an honest hardworking citizen who belongs to service clubs, a golf club and seemly works hard," Ian told Eric the following week.
"Seemingly?" Eric replied.
"It's more an observation than anything actually," Ian replied. "He is the managing director of the family firm called Fredrick Brooks Holdings and has a reputation of demanding a lot from his workers."
"Especially the women?"
Ian pouted. "Could be but why do you suggest that."
"Fits into the profile. His sort always consider females inferior and exploit them." Eric closed a folder on his desk. "You've done well but what now, Ian?"
"I've found that Renee Stevens lives in a remote Canterbury township with a long term partner. I've got a spot of leave due to me so thought I'd take the motorbike holiday down there."
"Bit cold at this time of the year," Eric replied.
"Oh I don't mind. Give me a chance to get in a bit of skiing. I did quite a bit in my student days."
"Okay. We'll pay expenses for a week as long as you aren't too extravagant. Don't get your hopes up, though. The chances are that this Renee will be the same as the other women and not wish to come forward. Perhaps that was why she moved so far away in the first place."
AS RENEE LISTENED TO Ian's reasons why he wanted her to testify against her formal husband, memories flooded back to her own experiences and sadness over those desperate years. She asked questions at regular intervals and sympathised with the other woman who had been caught up in similar situations. Except for the one that Larry was having an affair with during her pregnancy, the women were strangers to her and even their photographs that Ian showed her from a folder he had meant nothing.
"With no electricity and being out of range of everything, it was lucky I had the forethought to have paper copies of them," Ian said. "There is a video on my iPad that I'd like you to see, if you don't mind."
"What of?" Renee asked.
"It's the highlights of an interview I had with Jocelyn O'Sullivan and brief shots of evidence we have accumulated."
Renee glanced at Tyler who, unusually for him, avoided her eyes. It was almost as if he didn't want to
influence her one way or the other about Ian's request. All he had done when they came in for lunch was to tell her about Ian and his reason for being there. At her own request Aza and Sofia were both present and at times joined in the conversation.
"I'll be frank and say that I am not at all keen about giving evidence at any trial against Larry but will watch the video," she said.
"'I promised Tyler that I'd put no pressure on you, Renee," Ian replied. "If, after watching the video you want to having nothing to do with the trail or wish to think about it, I will respect your wishes."
It was Aza who spoke up. "But without evidence like Renee's, the chances of getting a conviction are low?" she asked.
"Unless I can find evidence of his historical prone to violence, especially with woman he attempted to control, my firm may recommend to the Crown Law Office that the trail should not even take place." Ian replied.
Renee glanced across and saw Aza looking directly at her. No doubt, she was thinking about her own situation at the university. They were different but some aspects regarding human behaviour were similar. Aza smiled slightly, looked away and just nodded in response to Ian's reply.
"Okay," Renee said. "Let's see the video, Ian."
Her first opinion of Jocelyn O'Sullivan when she appeared on the iPad was how young she looked, even with the bruised face, scorched hair and haunting eyes. As well, she came across as an educated woman but one who was nervous and under a great deal of stress. The video began with Ian stressing that the interview was not the same as that the ones she had had with the police who may have suspected that she was responsible for the death of her child.
"We are assuming that the accident was not in fact one and that Larry Brooks, not yourself was responsible. However, in stating that we must remember that it is us, as Crown Prosecutors to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he deliberately planned the vehicle crash that killed your son. You are free to tell us anything without fear of incriminating yourself, as you will not be the one on trial. Do you understand?"
Snow Bond Page 4