Crystal Ice

by Warren Miner-Williams

  “You could be of far greater importance to the jihad where you are in Tasmania. We need soldiers all around the globe, so that we can strike at the soft underbelly of the infidel. Be patient my son, your time will come.”

  Robert only had to wait until later that same year to fully understand what Korošec meant.

  At five past eleven on 12th of October 2002, a suicide bomber detonated a small explosive device hidden in a backpack that ripped through Paddy's Bar, in the town of Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali. The survivors of the blast immediately fled into the street, where seconds later, another more powerful car bomb, packed with ammonium nitrate dissolved in diesel oil, was detonated remotely in front of the Sari Club. The massive blast left a crater almost three feet deep. The final death toll was 202, and included 88 Australians 26 British and 7 Americans. The bombing was a coup for Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic extremist group linked to al-Qaeda, for having the highest death toll since the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, on September the 11th 2001.

  Robert was in awe that the Islamic jihad could reach so far around the world, and he couldn’t wait for his turn in the fight against the infidel. Though he was frustrated that he could not wreak his revenge on his cousin’s killers directly, he remained silent about his intentions. When details regarding the American Embassy bombing in Zagreb eventually surfaced, and his cousin Casimir Zupančič was identified as one of the bombers, Robert stuck the newspaper clippings in his scrap book under the title; “Casimir Zupančič, a Hero of Islam.” With a death toll of 342, – 140 more dead than Bali – Zagreb took the record for the greatest number of deaths in a single attack since the infamous 9/11 attack. Robert highlighted both the numbers of dead and the name of his cousin quoted in the newspaper articles. Things were looking good for his participation in the jihad and he wondered if his efforts would kill as many of the infidel as Casimir’s did. Whatever Matej Korošec had in store for him, Robert knew he could be as brave as his cousin and that he would not shy away from death when his turn came.

  With no one to witness Robert shouted aloud, “Allah u Akbar,” – Allah is the greatest; “Subhana rabbiya al azeem,” – Glorified is my Lord, the Great.”

  ***

  As Lisa trudged up the stairs, she heard a friendly voice from the landing in front of her.

  “Hi Lisa, how are you coping?” It was Alex MacLean, in the process of unlocking the door to his apartment.

  “OK, I suppose. Now Scott’s arrived I’m a lot better.”

  “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee? You haven’t met my wife Leanne yet. She’d like to meet you.”

  “Yes, that’d be nice,” she smiled, “Scott’s beavering away upstairs, working on his laptop. Work, I think, it’ll be good not to distract him.”

  “What kind of work does he do?” asked Alex, holding the door open for Lisa.

  “He’s an architect, in Nelson. We live there now.”

  “Ah, Nelson, such a great place to live. All that sunshine and just next door to the Abel Tasman National Park. Leanne and I would love to live there, if we could afford it. Please, go through to the living room. Leanne?” Alex shouted to his wife. “We have a visitor.”

  Leanne MacLean was very blonde, very tall, and very good looking. Even in her stocking feet she was markedly taller than Lisa. Her blue eyes were full of compassion for her guest.

  “Hello Lisa, I’m so sorry about your sister. Please come through to the lounge. Excuse the mess we’re still moving in and haven’t unpacked all our gear properly yet. Sit down please.”

  “How do you like your coffee, Lisa?” enquired Alex

  “Strong, white and no sugar please.”

  “Shall I make a cup for you Leanne?”

  “Yes love, the same for me as well.”

  “How are you feeling Lisa?” enquired Leanne.

  Lisa thought it was a dumb question, the same one that everyone asked. She had just endured organising the funeral, registering the death, and answering the same stupid question many times over. She wanted to scream her reply to Leanne, but didn’t. Lisa was going through the angry phase of grief, the stage where you analyse the waste of a life. Part of that anger was directed at herself. She was sinking into a morass of “what ifs,” that stemmed from her own stupidity, her own weakness in becoming a meth addict and for not being there for her sister when she needed her most. Why had she gone to live in Nelson? Sunny bloody Nelson, while her little sister was snorting death in Auckland. If only...

  “Today’s been harrowing, registering the death and meeting the undertaker. Collapsing into tears is always just a breath away.”

  “Then cry it’s very therapeutic. I found when my Gran died, I was so intent on binding up all my hurt that it was as if I had steel bands around my heart. Trying not to cry in front of my friends and relatives just tightened those bands. When they snapped, I plunged into a state of deep depression, something that might not have happened if I’d released the tension by crying.”

  Lisa smiled at Leanne to thank her for her thoughts, but inside she felt her steel bands tighten. The last thing she needed was some amateur psychologist’s analysis of how to deal with grief. Leanne meant well, but it wasn’t what Lisa wanted to hear at that moment.

  “Here you go ladies, strong white and no sugar. Help yourself, they’re all the same. A few “Tim Tams” too if you want a sugar fix. Oh shit, what did I say that for...”

  “It’s OK Alex, I think at this moment I need a laugh more than a hug.”

  “So, when is the funeral?” asked Leanne.

  “Next Wednesday. The police were pretty good about that, they released the body much quicker than I thought they would. Then it’s off back to Nelson to try and come to terms with all this.”

  “Did you know that your sister was taking drugs?”

  Glaring at her husband, Leanne interrupted. “Alex! show a bit of sensitivity, please.”

  Lisa forced a smile. “It’s OK, all my tears have been drained away these last few days.” She paused, staring into space. “I don’t know how long she’d been an addict. When I remember what she used to look like, she must have been using for a couple of years. Sharon was at one time an international model. She used to be beautiful, made nearly a million dollars in one year, before she started using meth.” As the final syllable passed her lips, she was barely audible.

  “Do you know much about meth then, Lisa?” As Alex spoke Leanne was still glaring at him.

  “I was a user myself a few years ago. I might have ended up like her if I’d gone on much longer,” Lisa whispered.

  Alex pressed on with his questioning. “Were you able to help the police with who was supplying her?”

  “Alex!”

  Lisa waved Leanne’s indignation away. “No, it’s alright, I’m fine. No, I wasn’t I told them who supplied me, but they already knew that, and they knew about the house in Papakura too. They said that Sharon had popped up on their “radar screens” a couple of times recently, so her death wasn’t such a surprise as it might have been. They didn’t tell me what she’d done to alert them, “part of an ongoing operation” was all they said.”

  “What about the guy who was with her just before she died?”

  “Pete Rupene? I only had to mention that there was a nasty bloke with her when I turned up at the flat and they knew who it was immediately. When I told them that he had threatened me, they said that he’d gone to ground in Glendowie somewhere and that he wouldn’t reappear for a while. They told me I wasn’t to worry.”

  “Have they searched the apartment for leads?”

  Leanne got up and offered the plate of Tim Tams to Lisa. As she did so she trod on Alex’s foot. The message he got was loud and clear – he was going to suffer as soon as Lisa had left.

  “Yes, they did, but I don’t think that they found much because they didn’t take much away, just an address book, as far as I know. There wasn’t a stash of drugs, only what the paramedics had collected.
”

  “So, what are you going to do with the apartment and all her things?”

  “Oh, I’ll sell it I suppose.” She said softly. “Scott checked her bank for me, she didn’t have any money left, though she didn’t have many debts either, thank goodness. So, I’ll pay someone to clear the place and then put it with a real estate agent. There are few items of sentimental value that I’ll take, but that’s about it really.”

  “When will you go back to Nelson?”

  “The day after the funeral, I know you didn’t know her very much, but you’re welcome to come.”

  “We didn’t know her at all, which is a shame,” replied Leanne warmly. An embarrassed silence followed before Lisa spoke again.

  “Well, I don’t think you would have liked her very much, with what she was into.” Lisa stood up. “I’d better get back; Scott will be sending out a search party. Thanks for the coffee.”

  Leanne stood up and gave her a hug. As Lisa moved around the coffee table, she took Alex’s proffered hand and kissed him on the cheek. When he turned slightly red, she said:

  “Thanks for trying to save her, I’m very grateful.”

  “That’s OK, I’m just very sorry that it didn’t turn out any better than it did.” He smiled. “Look after yourself Lisa.”

  Leanne showed Lisa to the door, before hugging her again. This time it was Leanne who shed a tear.

  ***

  At his desk in Customs House, on Anzac Avenue the following morning, Alex MacLean spread the New Zealand Herald flat on his desk. With the funeral of Daniel Tua just a few days away the Herald had published a double page investigative summary of the murder. There were tidbits of information that Alex hadn’t known before. The police, it said, were looking for Andrew Kuri, who had been living at the house in Tui Glen Road before the murders. He hadn’t been seen, the article added, since the night before the crime. The next sentence of the story left Alex incredulous.

  ‘A frequent visitor to the address had been Sharon Davis, the ex-international model who was found dead in her Eden Terrace apartment yesterday. A spokesman for the police, Senior Detective Sergeant Mike Moore, said that Sharon Davis had died as a result of a drug overdose and that they were not looking for anyone else in connection with her death. Sharon Davis had been found by her sister, Lisa, another former model who had recently been released from Arohata Women’s Prison for possessing crystal methamphetamine with intent to supply. Lisa Davis, who had been sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for her crime, was treated in the Te Araroa Unit for the rehabilitation of drug users. Lisa Davis is now working as a nanny, and living with her long-time boyfriend, Scott Pearson, in Nelson.’

  Alex wondered how Lisa would cope with her sad and sordid life story being made so public. If she was a nanny in Nelson he wondered if she would still have a job when she returned home. There were early pictures of Sharon and Lisa looking beautiful as models and then a horrific photo of Lisa in court just before her sentencing when she was at her worst. Thankfully though now, she resembled neither, she was somewhere between the two. Alex didn’t know what to feel about Lisa. Should he feel sorry for her, a victim of crystal ice, or was she just another pathetic drug addict? She had been in prison so she was a criminal. But life wasn’t about absolutes, it was about people and feelings and trying to find the goodness in whoever you meet. “A stranger is just a friend you do not know,” that’s what Phil had said. Phillip Noyce was the pastor of the ‘Christian City Centre’ the church that Alex and Leanne attended, and although Alex didn’t agree with everything that Phil said, he had taught him a lot about those grey areas of life that Alex found so hard to deal with. Behind the newspaper story was a real person, Lisa was warm and gentle not the stereotypical drug addict portrayed in the newspaper article.

  Every Thursday night Alex and three old school mates went ten pin bowling. The group was Doug Asher, a community police constable in Papakura, Andy Williamson, a salesman for Hewlett-Packard, and Tony Boucher an insurance claim investigator who worked for State Insurance. Whenever Alex needed information quickly, Doug Asher was the man, and he was always just a phone call away. Whenever they went bowling, they would all share what had happened to them during the week. Doug could always be counted upon to come up with a funny or gory story about incidents that had occurred in the very busy Manukau City police district. Even the tragic ones always had a funny side to them, which was how Doug kept sane.

  When Alex shared with the others what had happened in his apartment block, everyone had an opinion on drug use and drug addicts. Tony told them of a meth lab near Kaitaia that had recently caught fire and the ‘cook,’ – as the meth manufacturers were called – had had the audacity to claim on his insurance for the damage. Needless to say, the claim was declined. Doug mentioned that they knew who ‘Pete-the-prick’ was and that they would get him soon. When Alex mentioned that Sharon Davis was linked to 43 Tui Glen Road, Papakura, Doug was intrigued and shared with them some of the details of Tua’s killing that had not appeared in the papers. Though the police hadn’t officially confirmed any of the details, the ‘necktie’ had been leaked to the press. The press knew that the police were looking for Andrew Kuri, but the fact that they were also looking for a girl who had perhaps witnessed the crime was still unknown to them. The Tui Glen property was well known to the police as a distribution centre for cannabis, though it was not known for the distribution of crystal meth. Alex’s fact about the plastic baggies was an important link to the much more serious ‘class A’ drug.

  Recalling what Doug had said, Alex searched the Customs database for the report about Sharon’s importation of the plastic bags. By chance another fact about the dead girl came to light. The previous month another Customs Intelligence Analyst, Alan Foster, had written the summary for AKP053645 that involved Brian Rupene. There was nothing unusual about that, but the phone number that had been memorised and reported by Grant Richards at the airport now linked Sharon Davis with a known Skorpion drug dealer. The phone number was hers, and ‘Pete-the-prick’ was Brian Rupene’s brother, Peter Rupene.

  11.

  Tangihanga

  Māori believe that once dead, the tupapaku*, (the body of the dead), is in a state similar to sleep and should not be left alone until it is buried. However, the tupapaku of Daniel Tua did not have that rite. It had been weeks before the coroner released the body, and even then Ngaire Rakena, Danny’s defacto wife, had been powerless to prevent an autopsy being performed. Even though Danny had sustained massive trauma at the hands of his killers, the undertakers used by Rakena had done an amazing job preparing the body for the traditional open coffin tangihanga, (Māori mourning). When Ngaire got Danny back to the gang headquarters in Jewson Street, Otara, both she and her sister had prepared his body according to Māori custom. With his body perfumed and dressed in the finest traditional garments, the sisters carefully combed and oiled his hair before decorating it with feathers and kawakawa leaves. With makeup skilfully applied by the undertakers to hide the white waxy pallor of his skin, and his wounds carefully concealed, Daniel Tua looked resplendent in his rimu coffin. No hint of his gory demise could be detected and Tua really did look as if he were sleeping peacefully.

  It was a bleak Thursday afternoon when the hearse carrying Danny’s body made the thirty-minute drive from Otara to the Umupuia Marae, the traditional meeting place of the Māori people. Daniel Tua belonged to Tainui, the great Waikato tribe. The tangata whenua, (home people), who had prepared the marae and the manuhiri, (guests), waited respectfully in the rain to welcome the tupapaku back to its homeland. Wearing taua, (mourning wreaths) on their heads, the women standing at the sides waved kawakawa leaves to indicate the pathway along which the spirits leave this world and enter the one beyond. The powhiri was heralded by the karanga (call of welcome) performed by the women. In this way they welcomed the body and wairua, (spirit), to the marae and acknowledged Danny’s spiritual journey to his tupuna, (ancestors). The cries of the greeting party
echoed off the wharenui, (meeting house) and out across the wind troubled waters of the Tamaki Strait. Tears merged with the rivulets of rain on the faces of the mourners, making a depressingly miserable afternoon for the beginning of Daniel Tua’s tangihanga.