Blossoms in the Wind

by Ross Richdale

  Terri nodded. "There's no need to apologise. I took no offence." She almost frantically changed the topic. "Thanks for letting me continue to rent my home. The renting firm contacted me and said they were handling the property for you and I've arranged an automatic rent payment from my bank account. They said my new contract would be reviewed in six months time."

  Jeff nodded. "That's what I asked them to do with all the properties I inherited from the family trust. His death has made no difference to the agreements made." He glanced at her. "Did you did reimbursed for the paint and carpet that my father was going to pay you?"

  "No but it doesn't matter."

  "Sent the invoices to the rental firm and I'll instruct them to deduct the amount from your rent."

  ACROSS THE ROOM, DI Andy Tullock nodded at Sergeant Gloria McKenzie. "Who's that woman Jeff Sutton is talking so earnestly to?" he asked.

  Gloria followed his gaze and brought up a list on her iPhone, scrolled down the mug shots and stopped at one. "Here she is Andy," she said. "She's an employee in the firm that David Sutton managed and also rented a house from him in Mount Albert." She switched over to a Google map and brought up a view of the house to show to Andy. "Quite a pleasant home in a good part of the suburb."

  "Interesting. Now why would she have rented a house from him? Add her to out list, Gloria. How many women in their twenties do we have now?"

  "Six, Andy. They're all similar in many ways. All attractive, single and probably unattached."

  "He knew how to pick them, didn't he?" Andy retorted. "You're a woman Gloria. How to scumbags like him attract young professional women?"

  "Charm and money, I guess," Gloria replied. "He wasn't my type though."

  Andy grinned. "Lucky he wasn't otherwise you might be on that list of suspects we're investigating." He reached for a savoury and scrutinised the other women round. "And who's that redhead standing by the door?" he asked.

  CHAPTER 11

  Gloria actually enjoyed the cup of coffee offered to her by Salty in his tiny kitchen. She glanced across at Norris, a new constable seconded to the CIB, and gave him a nod. The instructions given to him were to follow her lead in what was said and he'd done just that.

  "I'll show you," Salty said and unrolled an ancient topographical map of the coastline across the table. "We're here," he said and rested his thumb on a faded cross marked on the map. "Those arrows I drew out to sea are dated according to the season. The red arrows show the current at this time of the year."

  "So how did you find out about them?" Gloria asked.

  "Just looking?" Salty replied. "Oh I know satellites use infra-red equipment to study sea temperatures, speed and depths of opposing currents etc. but they have never really needed to make detailed studies of this area. I've found that debris on the shore at the base of cliffs can also tell more than sophisticated equipment. Once found a dead cow on the beach with an ear tag. I traced it back and found the farm it came from..."

  He continued on with a detailed explanation of how the carcass would have floated down a stream from the farm that was several kilometres inland from the spot where it was found. Gloria brought him back to the discovery of David Sutton's body and asked Salty where it probably came from.

  Salty pointed to the map. "See that rocky point. On this side, the slower current from two streams gets driven back in this direction."

  "Just two?" Norris asked.

  "That's right. North of that point, outflows from more northern streams go out to sea so any corpse floating from them would bypass this coast and not come back in for another twenty or so kilometres to the south. You see..." He traced his fingers over the map and rambled on with the topic he obviously enjoyed talking about.

  "Are these the two streams?" Gloria interrupted and ran her own fingers across the map.

  Salty nodded. "Yes. They twist through bush in deep ravines but I'd say it is Matau Creek where he came from."

  "Why?" Norris asked.

  "Access from the road. There is a local road used by hunters and trampers that leads to a walking track. See!" Again he showed a dotted line that indicated that it was a walking track with no vehicle access. "I'd say here!" His finger stabbed the map.

  "You sound certain." Norris said.

  Salty grinned. "There's a swing bridge here, one of those narrow ones only trampers can use. Anyone or even two people carrying a body would have trouble getting across. It is above a deep gorge hidden beneath trees, ferns and other overgrowth. The stream is narrow with rapids and is almost impossible to walk through. Except for a flash flood, any body tossed down there could remain unseen for years." He glanced up. "If I wanted to dispose of a body that's where I'd toss it."

  "So you've been there?"

  "Yep! Don't do as much walking as I used to but in my younger days I walked them all. Helped find lost trampers a few times, you know."

  "I'd heard that," Gloria said. "You have quite a reputation."

  "I guess. Slowed up in the last few years, though. If you'd like, I'll come as a guide to inspect the area. It's wild country and it is easy to go the wrong way."

  "Thanks," Gloria replied. "I'll get back to you."

  EVEN BEFORE THE POLICE party reached Matau Swing Bridge across the creek of the same name, Salty proved useful to Gloria and Norris. He was the one that noticed the thin wheel-marks and accompanying elongated rectangles imbedded every few metres in the soil with footprints between them.

  "Interesting," he commented almost to himself at one corner beneath trees where, in spite of the hot dry conditions over the previous month, the ground was still reasonably soft. "See those marks?"

  Gloria nodded. "They're unusual."

  "I think they come from a wheelbarrow, one of those old ones with a steel wheel. See how narrow it is and how deep the wheel-marks are? Somebody was pushing a heavy load up this track. Look at the footprints. There were two people. You can see the slightly different sizes but neither are that large. I reckon the wheelbarrow was pushed by women or perhaps an older child. They stopped here to have a rest and swapped over so the second woman took over pushing the wheelbarrow."

  "You've done s well Salty," Gloria said. "Is there anything else?"

  Salty stepped across the area and pointed to more footprints going in the opposite direction. "That's them coming back but there's no wheelbarrow, not even the sign of an empty one. Whoever walked up here with the wheelbarrow returned without it."

  Gloria walked across and nodded. The footprints showed the same tread but weren't as deep in the soil. They would be going down hill so were lighter on their feet. As Salty had observed, there was no sign of wheel-marks. She turned to Norris. "Take photos of everything here and be careful you don't contaminate the evidence with your own footprints."

  "Right, Gloria," Norris replied and proceeded to take a dozen or more photographs at various angles.

  They continued on and saw more wheel-marks and footprints on the way. From all appearances, nobody else had walked through the track in recent times. The only other footprints were all but obliterated by the storms before the summer drought.

  Finally they arrived at their destination. Again Salty seemed to be spot on, for there was no way a wheelbarrow could be pushed across the bridge because it didn't even have a wooden deck. In place of one there were a couple of thick steel cables, guide wires and handhold wires for trampers to grip.

  Gloria stared down at the ravine. She could hear water tumbling below but ferns and trees hid everything else from view. "A perfect place to toss a body," she said.

  "And without the flash floods it could have remained undetected for years," Norris added.

  Meanwhile, Salty had walked a few metres upstream and called to them. "This looks like the place they tossed their load over," he said. "The crushed grass hasn't re-grown." He gazed over the steep cliff. "There are also broken branches down there. No wheelbarrow though. It would have become stuck in the foliage and remained in view."

  "So they dispo
sed of it somewhere on the way back?"

  "Probably. There are other places where it could have been tossed in the stream or even down a ravine filled with rocks or ferns. I'm sure if you get dogs up here they'll be able to find it."

  "More photos, Norris. Later, it might pay to get a team down to the stream to find evidence such as bits of clothing and so forth." Gloria turned to other companion. "Thanks Salty. Everything you had predicted appears to be true. If we find the wheelbarrow we can look for fingerprints on it. Meanwhile we'll make a cast of those footprints. I doubt if the women involved would think to dispose of ordinary sneakers."

  "I'll get onto it," Norris said and unpacked a plaster of Paris kit from his backpack.

  CHLOE WAS STILL ON maternity leave and usually took a few moments to relax in the morning after everyone left for work and baby Shona was having a morning sleep. When the baby awoke about eleven she would gather her up and head down to the supermarket a few blocks away or to the local mall to do other shopping. Being Wednesday, she would refill the car with fuel at the local Mobil station. This had become a bit of a routine. She'd pull into the petrol station, fill up the car and walk across the concourse a few metres and use her credit card to pay.

  For a mere three minutes or so, Shona would be alone in her car cot in the back seat. Chloe was walking back to the car when she stared in horror for a woman rush up to her car, step inside and the vehicle roared off. Her car was an older model that still used ignition keys. She must have left them in and somebody had seized the opportunity to steal her car.

  She turned and ran back inside. "Someone's stolen my car," she screamed. "My baby's aboard!"

  The girl behind the counter looked dumbfounded for a moment and did nothing. Chloe though had her mobile and punched in the emergency number, spat out her predicament to the police and ran back out of the forecourt. She gasped for she saw her car had actually pulled into the kerb a couple of blocks away.

  My God, a woman was lifting the baby from out from the back seat.

  "Stop!" Chloe screamed as she tore along the street!

  But it was too late!

  By the time she reached her car, still with the back door wide open, the woman had disappeared. "Did you see a woman carrying a baby get out of this car?" she asked a bystander.

  "She got in a white Toyota and drove away," the man replied. "Seemed to be in a bit of a hurry."

  "It's my baby!" Chloe sobbed.

  The man smiled slightly, muttered condolences and hastily moved away as if he wanted to avoid becoming involved.

  Chloe turned, heard a siren and stepped from the kerb to wave down an approaching police car. In gasping sobs she told the officers everything she knew. One spoke on his radio while the other, a young woman hardly much older than Ava, spoke soothing words and assured her that everything would be done to get Shona back.

  THE POLICE WERE EXTREMELY helpful but insisted that Chloe leave the car until detectives checked it out for fingerprints and so forth. The policewoman called Adrian and after a brief talk to him handed the police mobile over to her. In a sobbing almost incoherent voice she told him the tragic news. The policewoman also spoke to reassure him that everything was being done to find their baby. Chloe sat in the police car as another one roared in as well as a mufti car from which detectives stepped out of. Within minutes a cordon encircled the car and traffic was diverted away from the entire block.

  Chloe wanted to wipe away the tears running down her face so reached inside the small shoulder bag for some tissues she always had in it. As her fingers felt inside she gasped and brought out her car keys. She had not left them in the ignition after all!

  She turned to the policewoman. "I didn't leave my keys in the ignition," she gasped. "How could the thief have started my car so quickly without them?"

  IT HAD BEEN A DIFFICULT time for Nicole Wilks since David's death. As she had only lived with him for less than two years the New Zealand common law did not recognise her as a next-of- kin. In fact, she really had no rights at all to anything that belonged to David. Chloe Sutton would get everything. Absolutely everything!

  And to make things worse the woman had just given birth to David's child! She had no doubt at all that it was his. Sure she'd moved in with some other guy and, no doubt pretended it was his so she could sponge off him.

  Now he had gone she had nothing! But there was someone, his baby!

  She remembered that she had once mentioned that he had a large number of extra keys on his main key ring including a different car key. He'd told her it was Chloe's car and to just toss it away. However, at the time she had decided to keep it and was glad that she had.

  She meticulously planned everything and had followed Chloe's movements for two weeks and discovered that she always filled up her car up on Wednesday morning at the local Mobil station. She could wait for her and steal the car!

  The Wednesday evening's flight to Singapore was booked for her and the baby and a rental car was hired so she could drive to the airport. If, by any chance Chloe never filled up that Wednesday she could postpone the trip until the following week.

  But the woman had arrived at the Mobil station almost at the exact time as on the two previous occasions. The plan was perfect!

  The rest was easy.

  After swapping over to the rental car she drove away, just as a police car's siren wailed in the distance.

  "And what's your name, Honeybun?" she gushed as she glanced in the inside mirror at the baby who had awoken. "I'm your new mummy and we're going on a trip right across the world." She chuckled. "Doesn't matter, though, does it? You're now Molly Wilks; isn't that a beautiful name? Wee Molly, your daddy would have been so proud of you."

  The baby began crying but she'd also planned for that, too. A thermos flask of warm baby milk was in the car along with other items new babies needed. She'd drive a few blocks to where her own car was parked, leave the rental car that had been hired under a fake name anyway and spend the rest of the day at a motel near the airport. Paying five hundred bucks for that fake driver's licence was well worth the money.

  She had visited London a few years earlier and still had friends there. From Singapore she'd fly on to England and begin a whole new life for Molly and herself.

  She grinned as another police car came roaring along the road towards her,

  "You're too late, Mate," she yelled. "Tell the slut, she'll never see David's child again. Molly will never know that I wasn't her birth mother."

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR Andy Tullock glanced up at his sergeant from the computer and raised his eyebrows. "So we've got the Sutton name again, this time to do with that baby snatch, Gloria?"

  His sergeant nodded. "We're looking into a connection, Andy. David Sutton had a partner who had an abortion not long after she shifted in with him."

  "That's the Nicole Wilks who's on our list of suspects connected to his death?"

  "Yes. She was a victim of domestic violence before she met him. It seems she is attracted to macho guys prone to do this. David Sutton had a record going back a couple of decades of violence against females but was never convicted of any crime. One came close to one but the women concerned both withdrew their complaints at the last moment."

  "And the reason?"

  Gloria grimaced. "They were similar, actually. The women had new partners and didn't want them to know about the assaults. He seemed to like young women as mistresses that he could blackmail into keeping quiet when things went wrong."

  "Was this Nicole Wilks one?"

  "No, she was promoted quite quickly in the firm where he was manager. We believe she slept with him to get the rapid promotion. When he left his wife Chloe, she shifted in with him and the cycle of violence began."

  "Right. Find out everything about her, Gloria ... everything. This abduction could be just the tip of the iceberg. Move her up the list of suspects for Sutton's murder, too. I'll get someone else in to check the cars involved in the baby snatch while you concentrate on an in-dep
th look into her background."

  Gloria nodded. "Perhaps Norris. He's proving to be quite a capable detective who uses his initiative."

  "Fair enough. I'll have a word with him. Speed is important at the moment."

  THE MOTORWAY WAS REASONABLY busy but the bumper-to-bumper traffic from earlier in the day had freed up a little. Nicole had fed the baby who was now asleep in the back seat and everything had gone without a hitch. She was in the centre lane travelling across town towards the airport and the distant siren from behind didn't worry her.

  She frowned though when a police car passed her on the outer lane with all lights flashing and the siren changed to a sort of whoop whoop sound. It pulled into her lane and slowed several cars ahead. All the vehicles braked and she glanced in the mirror as she also braked. Another police car was right behind her with its lights flashing.

  Her iPhone beeped and a message flashed. The centre lane is closed ahead. Please change into the inner lane and the emergency stopping area three hundred metres up the road.

  Her fear turned to relief when she noticed that all the traffic was slowing, Trucks in the slow lane had braked and let the line of cars, including her own, through. She saw the police car had stopped in the emergency-stopping lane. A police officer jumped out and waved them all down. Her heart raced but she reassured herself that there must have been an accident ahead. This was common enough on Auckland's overstretched motorways.

  She pulled in behind a line of cars and waited as two police officers walked along and waved the cars in front forward,

  The uniformed officer who approached her was accompanied by a woman dressed in a business suit. At the same time two other police officers alighted from the police car behind and walked briskly up the kerb and within seconds her car was surrounded.