Old Friends

by Angus McLean

  Chapter Seven

  Molly was deep in thought when Dan got back to the office. She looked up and absently said hi, then looked back at the paper in front of her. He crossed to the kitchenette and took their lunch boxes from the fridge. He made tea and brought it all over to the coffee table by the couch.

  He was already halfway through his sandwich before she looked up again.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ she told him, joining him on the couch. ‘It’s Neil.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Dan was hunching over the table to avoid dropping food on himself. He did that a lot.

  ‘I got a cheque payment this morning from Lloyd’s, with a case reference number on it. But it’s not one of our numbers.’

  Dan looked at her.

  ‘Did you check with them to see if they got the right number?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t look anything like one of ours at all. Totally different sequence.’ She bit into her sandwich. ‘Cheese and sultana, yum.’

  ‘We haven’t had any files from Lloyd’s for a while,’ Dan said out loud. He drank some tea.

  Lloyd’s were a firm of solicitors who they did some work for, usually serving Family Court papers and the like. Not a big client, but regular. He couldn’t remember doing any work for them for at least a month, which was unusual.

  ‘And another thing, the cheque was issued to Neil,’ Molly told him, pausing before she continued. ‘In his name.’

  He stared at her now, crumbs hanging in his moustache.

  ‘I think we need to make some enquiries, don’t you?’

  Molly went back to her desk and dialled Lloyds’ office. She got her contact there and asked her to confirm the payment was correct. She asked a couple of questions and made notes as she did so.

  Dan watched as she listened. Her face was serious. She thanked the clerk and hung up, then came back to the couch.

  ‘It was a process for custody and occupancy orders,’ she said. ‘Neil served them last week. She rang him direct like she always does and then posted the cheque once she got the affidavit back.’

  ‘Like she always does?’ Dan cocked an eyebrow. ‘They’re supposed to send them through to us direct and you allocate them. Is that that new girl?’

  ‘Yeah. She said Neil had told her just to call him and he’d pick any up. Told her it was faster and easier, saved on postage. She said they started doing it about six weeks ago, when they got a big influx of papers.’

  Dan’s face darkened. Molly drank some tea.

  ‘How much work has she given him?’

  ‘She’s not sure but she can check. She thinks probably three or four a week. He told her he was in charge of all process serving for us now, and to make the cheques out to him to save mucking around. Said it helped me out at my end.’

  Dan’s face darkened further.

  ‘It may not be how it looks,’ Molly suggested in vain, knowing as she said it that it was hopeless.

  A muscle twitched in his cheek.

  ‘Guess I better cancel that dinner reservation too, then.’

  Mike had left the best till last, and only had three names left on his list. All three were Mangere addresses. Hooch, Gabe and Luther. He made his way from Manukau up the South Western Motorway and turned off at Papatoetoe, threading his way through to Mangere.

  Planes buzzed overhead to and from the nearby Auckland International Airport, and he noticed the change from built-up suburbia to semi-rural suburbia, neighbourhoods flanked by undeveloped areas. He found Luther’s place first. A run down dump with a rusted old Cortina in the drive and a pit bull running loose on the lawn. No garage.

  He moved on to Gabe’s, just round the corner. Same story again. No garage. Hooch’s was last on the list. Mike entered his street and straight away knew where he was going. It was a fortified house at the end of the street, backing onto a gully and with an alleyway directly across from it. The house itself couldn’t be seen aside from a tin roof.

  The fence around it was over regulation height and solid corrugated iron. Barbed wire at the top. Heavy gates. Floodlights on each corner of the fence.

  It didn’t take a genius to work out that Hooch hadn’t left his gang days behind him.

  Mike turned before he got there and went back, satisfied that he now had a solid suspect. He was about to turn out of the street when an approaching car caught his eye. It was a lowered Ford Fairlane with tints and a throaty engine. Black with orange and red flames down the sides. Twin exhausts. He could hear the sub woofers even above the Subaru’s and its own engines. He waited as it approached and slowed for the corner. There were at least four heads in it, sunnies on and arms out the windows. They stared back at him as they cruised round the corner.

  Mike shifted away and they carried on. He braked and ran it back to the corner so he could see down the street. The Fairlane pulled up to the gates and honked its horn. The gates opened and it slid through. A tattooed thug closed the gates again.

  Mike accelerated away again, his mind buzzing with thoughts.

  Monday mornings at Manukau District Court were normally busy, and today was no exception. The steady flow in the morning arrest court had eased and a number of the defendants had been released on bail. Some still hung around outside, waiting for their friends to appear or for a ride home, or just because they had no better place to go.

  Dan brushed past a pair of hoods and took the steps up to the front courtyard around which the two storey courthouse was arranged. In the middle were groups of witnesses and lawyers and cops standing around as well, some smoking, some yakking, some doing both. In the far left was a small café serving hot drinks and junk food. To the right were the main doors. The entire walls facing into the courtyard were floor to ceiling glass.

  The morning session had just broken for lunch and people were starting to trickle out. Dan nodded to a couple of cops he knew. He spotted Neil coming down the stairs from the trial courts with Penny Perry from the Crown Law office. Penny was not only a prosecutor and Molly’s best friend, she was also Mike’s ex-wife.

  Penny saw him coming first and gave him a grin. She was a tall redhead dressed in her usual get-up of a sombre grey suit with her hair pinned back. She liked to present a strong professional image to the jury. Matched with her skill as a litigator it made her a formidable courtroom opponent.

  Neil was wheezing and trying to talk at the same time. He saw Dan approaching and gave him a friendly wave. Dan nodded and met them at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, ‘are you onto a winner, Pen?’

  ‘They’re eating out of my hand,’ she replied. ‘The defence counsel’s an idiot and should have pleaded out.’ She shook her head in mock sadness. ‘It’s so hard to get good opposition these days.’

  ‘Are you all finished?’ Dan asked Neil, who nodded.

  ‘Yep. The final curtain has fallen on my illustrious career and it’s off to the retirement beach I go. I didn’t give too bad a performance in the witness box either, if I do say so myself.’

  He looked to Penny for confirmation and she smiled obligingly.

  ‘Not champagne,’ she replied coolly, ‘but better than a shandy.’

  ‘Good,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll walk with you back to your car then, Neil.’

  ‘Righto then, boss.’ Neil laughed at his own joke and gave Penny a cheery wave. ‘Toodaloo, Penelope. It’s been a pleasure working with you.’

  ‘You too, good luck for the retirement.’ She waved goodbye and watched as they turned away and headed back to the steps. She didn’t like the look on Dan’s face, but Neil seemed oblivious to it. She watched till they were out of sight then headed back inside. She would call Molly later on, but right now she had lunch to eat and the afternoon session to prepare for.

  Dan and Neil left the courthouse and crossed the road to the big car park at Manukau mall, where you weren’t supposed to park when you went to court but where everybody did.

  ‘So what
’s up?’ Neil asked as they threaded their way towards his car. ‘You’ve gone very quiet, and I don’t think it’s because you’re all choked up with emotion.’

  He stopped by his car and looked at the younger man. Dan had tried to prepare for it on the way there, but no matter what he practised saying it had just sounded pathetic.

  ‘Mate, we found out about the Lloyd’s work.’ He met Neil’s gaze evenly. ‘I don’t know exactly how much you scammed out of it, but I can find out.’

  There was silence for a moment. Neil seemed to be absorbing the news. Dan looked at the car they stood beside. It was a ten year old Toyota station wagon with a few nicks and scratches and it needed a clean. It had seen better days but, he figured, so had its owner.

  ‘So that’s what this is about?’ Neil finally said. ‘Me doing you out of a few bucks?’

  ‘Yeah, it is.’ Dan didn’t like the tone of his voice.

  ‘Pahh!’ Neil turned away in disgust. ‘What’re you gunna do, Dan? Beat me up? Gimme a hiding for poaching some work from you?’

  ‘No-’

  ‘So I miss out on the gold watch now?’

  ‘Look bud,’ Dan snapped, stepping up and pointing his finger in the other man’s face, ‘I’m trying to run a business here and all the while my employee’s ripping me off! I thought I could trust you man, we’re supposed to be friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ Neil looked incredulous. ‘Look here, son, you wouldn’t know the meaning of friendship! Where I come from, friends don’t treat you like dirt. They don’t talk down to you just because you do things different to them. And they don’t slag you off behind your back!’

  He was mad now too, and they were face to face, both flushed and tense. A lady walking past with a pram stared at them.

  ‘I heard you this morning, Daniel. Just before I came in, you were talking about me. ‘Old Neil’, ‘slow as a wet week.’ That’s not respectful.’

  ‘That was a private conversation,’ Dan retorted hotly.

  Neil eyeballed him and shook his head slowly.

  ‘Son, I was locking up scumbags and cracking heads when you were still a gleam in your old man’s eye. I deserve better than that.’

  ‘Does that justify you stealing from us?’ Dan was incredulous now.

  ‘No, probably not. I admit it, I was wrong to do that.’ Neil held his hands up in surrender.

  ‘You have to earn my respect, bud. You don’t get it for stealing from me.’

  ‘So you never overcharged a client, you never added on an hour or two or rounded it up rather than down? I bet those lady-boys at the suit shop are paying top dollar for a bread and butter job! It’s the same difference.’

  ‘Business is business, Neil. Don’t tell me how to run mine. At least I had the guts to give it a crack, rather than sitting on the fence and being someone else’s employee all my life.’

  ‘You think that makes you a big man, Daniel? You didn’t even give your company your own name, just in case you had to sell it on. You doubted yourself that much.’ He sneered at Dan now. ‘Yes I’ve been an employee my whole life, and yes I did something I shouldn’t have. I can admit that. But you wanna take a look in the mirror some day, young fulla. You think you’re a hotshot, but you’re no angel.’

  Dan felt the sting of his words like a slap in the face. No response came to him, and instead he stared mutely back at the older man.

  ‘You know it,’ Neil told him, softer now, ‘and I know it. Hell, even sweet little Molly probably knows it.’

  He unlocked his door. Dan stepped back to let him get in. The exhaust coughed out blue smoke as Neil turned the engine over. He wound his window down.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I did, Daniel,’ he said, genuine sadness in his face, ‘and I’m sorry it had to end like this.’ He paused as if waiting for a reciprocal statement, but Dan stayed silent. ‘I really am. Say goodbye to Molly for me.’

  With that he backed out of the space, carefully manoeuvred round to straighten up, and in a cloud of blue fumes he rolled away.

  Dan watched him go. He turned to go and saw the lady with the pram staring at him.

  ‘Did ya get eyes for Christmas, lady?’ he snarled.

  She flicked her head and walked off haughtily.