Fiona paused, pen still in her hand, ‘But we know who killed him – there were a room full of people with iPhones who bloody well recorded the whole thing, for posterity, to share on their Facebook pages.’
‘Yes, and that’s why the next name you’re going to write up is Richard Grey. There’s a link to all of this. We just need to work it through. Let’s take a break and come back to it after lunch. I want to read through these files again. Did you get the acquisition files from the V & A?’
‘Still waiting. I’ll chase them up.’
‘Good, you do that first, then come and join us here when you’re done. Go on everyone, go get some food.’
The room emptied, leaving Victor Fujimoto staring at the whiteboard. It may as well have been written in Arabic for all he could decipher what he was looking at. What is the key? Who is the key? ‘Damn it!’ The shop was the key. Angrily he circled the name of the shop in red. Why the hell haven’t we been to the shop yet? He threw the pen at the board, before shrugging on his coat, and stomping out of the conference room, shaking his head at his own blindness.
THE ADZE
Wiremu Kepa struggled with his fifth sack of grain that morning, the hessian hard to grip in the humidity. Two of his boys hadn’t turned up today, leaving him to get on with things on his own. Dropping the sack to rub his still swollen jaw, he thought back to when he’d stepped in to protect the English woman. His wife was furious, understandably so. He had a family – they were the only ones who needed protecting. And he’d heard the talk. He knew Joe Jowl was asking about him. Word travelled. People talked, especially in front of people they considered beneath them. It had always been that way, and it would always be that way. He knew it was only a matter of time before retribution was sought. It wouldn’t be long now. Orders had dried up to a mere trickle of what they were before the fight. He ran his hands across the stacks of milled flour, certain that not one of them was tainted with weevils.
Coughing with the disturbed flour dust, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, silently laughing as he considered the very real possibility that, if Jowl didn’t get him, his own mill would. He knew breathing the dust was slowly killing him, he just didn’t how long it would take, and he needed the money it brought in for the future of his family.
Overtaken by another coughing fit, he abandoned the sacks where they lay. He thought he’d left this part of the job behind him when he’d taken on the apprentices, two other Maori boys. But with them not there today, it was all on his shoulders. Given the way his lungs were reacting, he’d be better off calling it quits and heading home early. His baby needed him more than the mill today.
Matariki was coming up – the Maori celebration of the new year – and preparations needed to be made. He’d be home in time to help his wife build the kite they would fly together on the dawn of Matariki, to remember their dead, and to give thanks for the blessings the land, the sea and the sky had given them. He hoped he’d be able to celebrate with his baby in the coming years. Locking the mill door behind him, he laid his palm against it. This was his livelihood, but a man needs his family, for they were the true food for the soul. It was time to move back to his roots, to his tribe. He just didn’t know which was safer. Here, where a stranger to him was hell-bent on ruining him; or down country where he’d never lived; where tribe fought against tribe, some with the British, some against – all of them using British weapons.
Outside the mill, a coughing fit doubled him over. Maybe this was his decision made for him. His health couldn’t continue like this. He was a giant kauri tree being felled by the minute scratchings of the fantail resting on its branches. Decision made. He’d place an advert in the Daily Southern Cross to find a buyer, for what it was worth. Perhaps someone else could make it profitable, someone with a more English-sounding name. Spitting phlegm into flax nearby, he startled a white heron. In silent awe he watched it take flight, its ungainly run met with the effortless majesty of its flight over the living harbour. A bird hunted almost to extinction, its snowy white plumage prized by natives and settlers alike, it was a rare sight in the settlement – an omen. As the heron took flight alone in the vast sky, Wiremu took it as a sign that he too must take flight. To be closer to his ancestral home, to his family.
Turning his back on the mill, he slowly made his way home. His shoulders were finally unburdened from the expectations of society. Now to tell his wife of the journey they needed to make. The journey home.
THE DEAL
The handshake was short, decisive. The two men separated and walked away, no further words needed, the handshake sufficient for their business. Face to face, whispers, handshakes. Safer than email or phone. Going old school was safer now that everyone’s digital communications may as well be projected onto the side of London Bridge for everyone to read, given how intensively ‘big brother’ monitored those channels in these uncertain times.
The second man slipped into the back of the black sedan idling on the street. Of the first man, there was no sign. ‘What have you got for me then?’ Richard Grey asked, his hands firmly in his lap lest he sully himself by accidentally touching the other man.
The shadowy man cleared his throat, raspy from a two-pack-a-day habit which lent a foul smell to the car, ‘She’s gone missing. Her and her friend. They think the CCTV has been altered, but can’t figure out how. No suspects for the murder of the guard. Boyfriend of the other girl knows nothing. That’s it.’
Steel in his voice, Grey replied, ‘That’s it? What do you mean that’s it? People don’t just disappear. Your source is holding out on us – or you’re holding out on me?’
The other man spluttered, ‘No, no, no. I’m telling it to you straight. Lester’s gone missing. No sign of her. Nothing. No credit cards, no cash withdrawals, no passport movements. Nothing. It’s like she just disappeared, poof, like magic. Exactly like the CCTV shows.’
‘You’ve been watching that shop for weeks now, yet you didn’t see her return until she was leaving the shop with her friend – so how can your assertion that she has disappeared without trace be trusted? Hmm?’ Grey wound down his window a fraction, the smell of stale cigarette smoke too much in the confines of the car.
‘She disappeared. You asked me to find out more, and I did. That’s all the police know, the City lot and the Met. She’s disappeared. We’ll have to wait for more info. The detective they’ve got on it is a good one, he’ll find her, and we’ll know when he does.’
Grey dismissed the other man, who slunk back out to the darkness, the only sign of him the red glow of his freshly lit cigarette.
Richard Grey pondered the developments. Seeing Sarah’s face peering out at him from the front page of The Sun had been a jolt. He’d had men like that one watching The Old Curiosity Shop since his arrest and they’d all missed her return. Unforgivable. He couldn’t go himself – he was under Draconian bail conditions, strict in the sense that he wasn’t allowed near the shop, nor Christie’s. He wasn’t allowed out after dark either, but he drew the line at that. No public servant was going to curtail his private life, or his business dealings, many of which took place at night.
In his twisted mind, he held Sarah Lester responsible for his situation. She only needed to have sold him the katar. Where she’d acquired it was another matter. Yes, this whole mess is her fault. The murder of the guard at the museum was an unfortunate by-product of employing subhuman intermediaries, and he washed his hands of any involvement there. That had been the other man’s decision, done without any instruction from him. He brushed off any remorse, and instructed his driver to take him home. A theory was formulating in his mind, but he would not give voice to it until he was certain. He gazed out of the tinted windows at the neon world beyond – its garish commonness was usually an affront to his refined tastes, but tonight it seemed to hint at the impossible.
THE INTERVIEW
‘Do you not think that you could have told me before about Mrs Lester?’ Price asked Graeme Greene
, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
Greene turned around, one foot on the wooden step, ‘Only just thought about it now. She’s been here for years, Mrs Lester – lives at the Manse, does the cleaning and things, the flowers for the church too on Sundays. I’ve never spoken to her, just know who she is, but like most people in this town, we pretty much know everyone – ’cept the new miners who float into town every day now, it seems, but then you know who they are because they aren’t anyone you already know.’
In a way, the boy’s logic made sense. You knew who you knew, and if you didn’t know them, they were strangers. The permanent population, while large compared to the rest of the country, was still small enough for everyone to know you and your business, often before you knew yourself.
‘Where’s the Manse then?’
Greene looked amused, before answering, ‘On Manse Street, of course. I wouldn’t go calling there today, though. Wednesday is the day the new bishop receives his visitors. He’s not as open as the last minister; keeps strict “business hours”, gets upset if he’s bothered outside of Sundays and Wednesdays. He’s a funny one, that one.’ Flushing at his baseless observations, he hastily added, ‘... or so I’ve been told. I don’t know him myself. I go to a different church, but Wednesdays, that’s the day best to call. He’ll be busy, and won’t be too fussed if you speak with Mrs Lester because she has to speak to all the visitors, doesn’t she ...’
‘Thank you for your help today, Graeme, and for the information. We’ll call by on Wednesday then – you can introduce me.’
Nodding to the carriage driver, he carried on to his lodgings. Supper would be waiting for him, he knew. Damn supper, damn the bishop, and damn courtesy. He wanted to speak to Mrs Lester now, this minute. Head in his hands, he never saw the Manse as they drove past, its glorious gardens shrouded in shadows, dragging the night behind them.
No matter how much you wish time to pass, it carries on its progression regardless of your desire. Morning follows night, night follows day, the sun rises, the moon chases the day away. Babies are born, the elderly die. And so it was that Price spent Tuesday walking aimlessly through the newly born streets of Dunedin, occasionally pausing to peer aimlessly into shop windows; passing the day. He stopped to admire the skill of the workmen installing stained-glass windows festooned with English ivy in the empty sockets of a building precariously placed across the road from a freshly turfed cricket ground. Cries went up as a batsman thwacked his ball over the roof of the Albion Hotel. Price took one last look at the master craftsman installing his windows, and chuckled to himself, recognising the grim determination of a man paid to do a job, regardless of the perils. Those windows wouldn’t last long.
Around him, people went about their lives, the high and mighty as invisible to him as the Chinese hurrying in matched pairs through the streets, long black braids swaying with their strangely quick gait. Travelling in pairs was the safest option in these times of mistrust. Men all around Otago were succumbing to madness brought on by greed. Nothing changed a man’s nature as much as money. Fascinated by the twin backs of the Chinamen, Price turned to watch them a moment longer, and promptly walked straight into a woman coming the other way. The smaller woman tumbled to the ground, her woven basket disgorging its contents over the hard pressed dirt, her hat stolen by the wind.
‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted the startled woman.
‘Sorry?’
It was then she realised she’d spoken aloud, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I never meant to ... oh my goodness. You must think I’m dreadful. I never meant to say ...’
Taking Price’s proffered hand, she pulled herself up. Meeting his eyes, her cheeks blushed red with embarrassment at her swearing – totally unacceptable, in any company, let alone at the side of a busy road. As he looked at her more closely, Price realised it was the same woman from Sunday, the woman who’d offered him directions.
‘I seem to making terrible habit of causing you harm, madam. It is I who must apologise.’ Removing his own hat, he gave a little bow. Entirely appropriate for the times, but one which always drew a self-conscious laugh from Annabel Lester. Regardless of how long she lived in this time, these small decorous moments caught her off guard. She never knew whether she was meant to bow or curtsy back in response.
Recovering her composure, she ventured forward, ‘Perhaps we should introduce ourselves?’
‘Certainly. I am William Price, and it has been a great pleasure running into you again. Please forgive the physicality of it, and my behaviour on Sunday.’
It had been quite some time since anyone had spoken to Annabel in such a flirtatious way. She never imagined that she would again feel the flutterings of temptation within her heart, but that could be the only explanation for the sudden feelings of teenage joy coursing through her body.
Shaking Price’s hand shyly, she managed to say ‘Annabel Lester, of the Manse.’
Instead of releasing her hand, as common decency dictated, Price instead grabbed her hand in both of his. ‘Mrs Lester? You are the lady I have been searching for.’
Confused, Annabel tried to extract her hand from his grasp. Why would this man be searching for her? Something to do with the Bishop? Uncertainty gripped her, and nervously she began looking for an escape.
Price wasn’t about to let her get away. ‘I was going to come to the Manse tomorrow, to speak with you, but here you are, like a gift from God.’
‘I hardly think He had anything to do with it, more the case of you not keeping your eye on the road,’ she parried, trying to lessen the intensity of the moment. He was the best looking man she’d stumbled across in Dunedin – the tallest and the most intriguing – but he scared her. There was something in his eyes she couldn’t interpret. The last thing she needed was another religious zealot in her life. She lived with a pair of them and, although she’d become resigned to her living arrangements, there was no space in life for those who believed in the divine right of their god above all else – above just being kind to all. Pulling her hand free, she continued, ‘I’ll be seeing you at the Manse tomorrow then. Good day, sir.’ Pulling away from Price, she tried to smother the short-lived feelings of attraction. She didn’t need a man in her life. Life was complicated enough without one. He would make it doubly difficult. Besides, she was already married, to a man she hadn’t seen for over a decade, but that didn’t diminish the vows she’d made, did it?
Plaintively, Price called out to her, ‘Mrs Lester, please wait, perhaps we could take a cup of tea together, there are things I must discuss with you that cannot wait until tomorrow.’
‘Oh I’m sure they can. Good day, Mister Price.’ She could feel the curious glances of other women on the street, too uncouth to keep their noses to themselves. Another downside of living in a small town. At least in London, a city teeming with every form of humanity, you never need see the same person again. But on the streets of Dunedin, she knew they’d be talking about this interlude on the street from now till Sunday. Fuel for the fire that she was a ‘fallen woman’, kept by Reverend Cummings for his personal entertainment until he was deposed by Bishop Dasent.
Leaving her spoiled goods in the earth where they’d fallen, she hurried off, never once looking back at the pained face of Warden William Price.
THE SAVOY
Bryce Sinclair stretched out in the luxury of the king-sized bed, the crisp white sheets crackling under him. The steady splash of the shower was the only sound invading the peace of the hotel room. From the bed he could see the London Eye slowly turning against the frame of the watery Thames. Crystals dripped from a lit chandelier, the ornate ceiling rose painted white in contrast to the dusky pink of the walls, and the upholstery of the couches tastefully positioned around the suite. A bunch of purple lilacs was the single jarring note in the bland room.
This was a far cry from the absolute luxury Sarah had experienced lunching here at the Savoy in the 1890s, served by Escoffier himself. Not that Sinclair was to know th
at. Anywhere with a bed was sufficient – but this room far surpassed any luxury he’d ever dreamt of.
Silence filled the room as the shower switched off. With the bathroom door ajar, he could see Melissa Crester, the American, vigorously towelling herself off. Her body was no mystery to him after a night spent together. It was that of a much older woman than her face had led him to believe. Parts of her were completely foreign, and he’d spent much of the night pondering those peculiarities. Her breasts. They sat high, like those of a young woman, but were solid, like over-baked bread rolls. There had been no joy in fondling them – not that that had stopped him from enjoying the rest of her offerings.
‘What shall we do today?’ she trilled from behind her towel.
‘Buy more wardrobes?’ Sinclair offered facetiously, causing Crester to howl with laughter.
‘Oh, you funny man. I think I’ve reached my limit for wardrobes this trip – a girl only has so many clothes, you know. No, I think today we will go hunting off-piste.’
‘Hunting? With guns?’
Crester laughed again. It sounded like she was laughing, although the laugh never made it to her frozen face, ‘No, they wouldn’t let me bring my guns here. Crazy right? How’s a girl meant to protect herself? What I meant was, we’ll head off round the local antique shops, have a look see what they’ve got. Often they have stuff which is just as good as the stuff auctioned off at Christie’s, but without the price tag. It’s always good to keep your fingers in as many pies as you can, that’s what I’ve always thought. You keen to come with me? You can be my protector.’ She giggled like a schoolgirl flirting with the young caretaker by the bike sheds.
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