My Brother’s Keeper (18 page)

Salena was in the doorway. That was odd. My befuddled head couldn’t compute what the hell she was doing here.

She dropped to her knees in front of Ned. ‘What the fuck? Ned!’ Her arm around his shoulder, she crooned reassurances as she helped him crawl along the floor towards the bathroom. Her phone skidded to a halt beside me. ‘Call an ambulance,’ she yelled. She must have mistaken me for someone who cared if Ned went blind.

He was whimpering. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck …’

While I waited for the phone to be answered, I watched Salena gently brush the shattered glass from Ned’s face. Emergencies create a special kind of closeness between people. But it was obviously more than an accidental closeness with these two. There was familiarity, physical familiarity. I’d even go so far as to call it intimacy. Finally, through the expanding universe of the organ that I had once so casually taken for granted as my working brain, the truth became clear: Ned and Salena were lovers.

Once he knew the ambulance was on its way, Ned’s panic subsided enough for him to let Salena pluck the bigger pieces of glass out of his eyes with a pair of tweezers. He ignored me completely. It was as if after delivering that deadly blow to my temple, as far as he was concerned I no longer existed. I think this was probably how Ned dealt with most things that got in his way; if the charm didn’t work, he switched seamlessly to violence. In contrast, having taken on the role of nurse, Salena became downright chatty and happily babbled on while I leaned
my head against the cool tiled wall and focused on keeping the nausea at bay.

‘Justin comes home and tells me Karen has decided to use her mother’s money to take Sunny away to Europe with her. I know this money is Ned’s money. It is the money we have been waiting for. I ring Ned and I tell him: that bitch isn’t going to give you your money. I say to him, what are we going to do? And Ned says not to worry, he’ll sort it.’

Well, he’d certainly done that. It occurred to me that if I’d slept with Ned that Friday night, as I’d been sorely tempted to, he’d never have taken the phone call from Salena; he wouldn’t have flown to Wellington first thing the next morning to confront Karen; he wouldn’t have killed her. On a bad day I could feel I was responsible for Karen’s death. On a good day … well, I hadn’t had one of those for a while, so I’d just have to wait and see.

‘Why did Justin agree Karen could take Sunny away with her?’ My voice echoed around the room but I couldn’t tell if it was a symptom of the blow to the head or impressive bathroom acoustics. ‘Why did he agree to that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Salena said. ‘That’s the truth!’ she added, as if it was a rarity that surprised even her. She spoke to my disbelieving look in the mirror. ‘It must have been something big Karen had on him because he would never even let her name be spoken in the house. He didn’t want Sunny to have anything to do with her. I don’t know what she said to change his mind.’

We all turned at the sound of a siren. The ambulance was only minutes away. I had it all figured out now anyway, but I wanted confirmation. I was hoping this was the last time I’d
ever have to see them.

‘So Ned caught the red-eye to Wellington on Saturday morning and stuffed up your plans by killing Karen,’ I said.

Salena did that European turned-down mouth thing that indicated agreement. ‘He said it was an accident,’ she said, not even trying to make it sound convincing. She kept her focus on Ned.

‘Karen dead meant all the money would go to Sunny,’ I continued. ‘The only way you two could get your hands on it then was if Justin was out of the way leaving Salena as Sunny’s guardian.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘So which of you two took the photos of Sunny?’

For the first time since he’d hit me Ned acknowledged my existence. ‘What do you take me for?’ he said. I was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that without me having to spell it out for him.

Salena looked away from us both, caught her image in the mirror and adjusted her hair.

T
HURSDAY
29 N
OVEMBER
2012

W
hile the two ambulance men attended to Ned, I wandered onto the street to settle my nerves and to keep an eye out for Sunny and Neo. They’d been gone over an hour and I was starting to worry. The pavement steamed from the heavy downpour. Having dumped their load on the city streets, huge grumbling thunder clouds lumbered off towards the Waitakeres. The street was rich with pohutukawa, decked out in their full crimson garb. Soon it would be Christmas with all its accompanying madness. The expanding balloon sensation in my head had been replaced with a high-pitched whistle, like wind moving across the prairie in an old Western movie. I almost expected a tumbleweed to, well, tumble by.

‘Things settled down a bit in there, have they?’ I’d clocked
the wiry, middle-aged man bent over stroking a ginger cat but didn’t recognise him until he spoke. Manny made room for me on the concrete fence a few doors down and we sat calmly together for a surprisingly long time, the big ginger cat weaving in and out between our legs. Manny was one of those rare breeds of people that you feel comfortable being quiet with.

‘What are you doing here, Manny?’

‘I hear that everyone does these slide shows at funerals now,’ he said. ‘No reason I could think of why Karen shouldn’t have one of them as well. I came up to collect some photos.’ His eyes slid in my direction without making purchase. ‘It’s her funeral on Saturday.’ The cat leaned itself against his leg, head stretched up in invitation, its eyes narrowed with pleasure. Manny responded with a luxurious stroke of his hand down the length of its body.

‘I’ll let you into Norma’s place when the ambulance is gone, if you like,’ I said.

Manny smiled and again ran his hand confidently down the cat’s back, fingers expertly massaging the muscular shoulders. It arched its back with pleasure, tail rising like a pump lever. Though he still avoided any eye contact with me, Manny studied the cat with direct and unmistakable liking. It did the same in return.

‘No need,’ he said. ‘I can let myself in.’ Somehow he caught my expression. ‘I warned Karen about keeping her key under the welcome mat, but she wouldn’t be swayed by me. She said she wanted to keep her trust in some things.’ He smiled to himself at the memory of their conversation. ‘I’ll come back for the photos later.’ He stood, keeping his eyes averted but otherwise at ease.
‘There’s no hurry.’ He brushed some golden cat hairs off his pants but then bent again to give the insistent cat another full body stroke. Something occurred to me.

‘Manny.’ I waited until his head tilted in my direction. ‘Did Sunny come back? While you were here?’

‘Aye,’ he said, amiably. ‘She turned up here with the wee boy about the same time I did. And if you’re going to ask me if I spoke to her, yes, I did. I managed to say what I needed to say to her out of hearing of the lad.’ He threw a fleeting glance in my general direct. ‘I had a message for Sunny, you see, from Karen. That’s what I needed to give her. That’s why it had to be me who gave it to her.’ I followed the direction of his glance. Salena’s car was gone. Manny smiled shyly. ‘She needed some time to think.’

The cat startled as my feet hit the gravel. ‘You let Sunny drive off in the car? With a six-year-old!’

For the first time he looked ill at ease. ‘She didn’t steal it, did she? She told me it was her mother’s car. She had the keys.’

He’d missed my point entirely. ‘Manny, she’s fourteen years old, for God’s sake!’

‘Is that a fact?’ he said, unconcerned. ‘Well, it’s true that I didn’t look at her all that closely.’ Manny didn’t look closely at anything. He didn’t look at anything. ‘She drove off well enough,’ he said. ‘It looked to me like she knew what she was doing. She seemed a very capable sort of girl,’ he declared confidently.

Clearly, in Manny’s world, fourteen-year-old girls driving off with their six-year-old brother in the back seat wasn’t something to be too worried about.

‘What did you say to her, Manny?’

He waited for the cat to return and worm around his legs again before he answered. ‘I didn’t know Sunny would be here at her gran’s house,’ he said, blunt tattooed fingers massaging the cat’s neck. ‘God must have planned that I’d come across her this way and I’m glad he did.’ He gave the cat’s back a final stroke. ‘I find He usually knows what He’s doing,’ he added with a shy smile. And then to my surprise, he stretched his hand out and squeezed me reassuringly on the shoulder as if I was just another feline in need of a good stroke. His touch surprised me. ‘I’ll come back for the photos later. I’ll let myself in and be gone before you know it.’

Suddenly he turned and strode quickly off down the road. I was about to call out to him but just then the front door opened. He must have heard them before I did and wanted to make himself scarce. First an ambulance attendant emerged and then Ned on a stretcher. Salena hovered next to him, his hand squeezed tightly in hers.

When I looked back up the road, Manny was gone.

A pad of wet gauze covered Ned’s eyes. I gave him a poke so he’d know it was me. ‘Just so we’re clear, I’m telling the cops what you told me.’ His mouth turned down at the sound of my voice but other than that he didn’t respond. ‘If you want to make it easier on yourself you should give them your version firsthand. It’ll go better for you, if you do.’ He turned his head away without saying anything and the attendants slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Salena held out her hand for one of the attendants to help her climb in the back. They ignored her.

She turned her attention to me. ‘Where’s Neo?’ she asked, looking me up and down as if I might have him hidden in my clothes somewhere.

‘He’s with Sunny,’ I answered evasively.

Satisfied with that answer, she removed her impossibly high heels and hauled herself up into the back of the ambulance.

‘Salena, listen,’ I said. ‘Ring Justin and tell him to meet me here as soon as possible. It’s important.’ She hesitated and then reluctantly reached for her phone. The driver closed one of the back doors. I leaned in before the other door was closed. ‘And while you’re at it, you might want to tell him who took the photos of Sunny.’

The attendant closed the other door before she could respond.

I only had enough time to grab my jacket, splash cold water on my face and take a couple of paracetamol to quieten my whistling-kettle head problem before Justin burst in the door.

‘What the fuck’s going on? Salena said there’s an emergency and then she just hung up on me. Where’s the kids?’

I thought it would be wise to start with some good news. ‘Justin, you’ve been cleared of taking the photos of Sunny.’

He stared at me. ‘What the fuck?’ I saw the hope ignite. ‘For real?’

‘Yep. The person who took the photos has confessed.’

‘You’re shitting me.’ He lowered himself into a chair, a smile tempting his lips as he processed this piece of information.

‘That’s the good news,’ I added and then mentally started counting to ten.

At the count of five he suddenly shot to his feet. ‘Who did it?’ Bingo. ‘Who took those photos of Sunny? I’ll fucking kill him!’

I took a deep breath. ‘Salena.’

‘What?’ It made no sense to him. ‘Salena?’

I nodded.

‘Bullshit. Why would Salena take dirty photos of Sunny?’

I took an even deeper breath. ‘Okay. Well, that’s more bad news.’ He waited. There was only one way to do this — quickly. ‘Salena and Ned have been having an affair. I don’t know for how long, but long enough for them to decide to set you up so that you’d be out of the way and they’d have access to Sunny’s inheritance.’

‘What?’ he said again. I didn’t think I could repeat it. I was about to say I was sorry but then that unidentifiable bruised organ of mine reminded me it hadn’t yet forgiven him for being rammed against the bridge post.

Justin was looking at me like I was some kind of dangerous nutcase, which, given the strange whistling brain event I was still experiencing, might have been a reasonable assessment. ‘What have you done with my kids?’

I swallowed. ‘Sunny drove off in Salena’s car. She has Neo with her.’ His face drained of colour. ‘But I’m sure she won’t have gone far.’

Justin sank to his knees. ‘No, no, no!’ He rocked back and forth, hands holding his head in an eerie mirror image of me earlier. I knew this was definitely in the bad news category, but his reaction was worse than I had expected.

‘She can drive, right? She’s a smart girl. She’s driven Salena’s car before?’

He just stared at me, his face fallen in ashen folds, his mouth open.

‘It’s an automatic,’ I added weakly.

I hadn’t been all that worried about Sunny until confronted by her father’s all too real panic. He was staring at his mobile.

‘Does she know?’ He looked up at me. I saw the hope in his eyes. ‘Does she know it wasn’t me took the photos?’

I shook my head. ‘Not yet. But you can tell her.’

‘I can’t ring her,’ he said. ‘Not until she knows. She won’t answer if she sees it’s me’

He was right, of course, but I couldn’t help. A good percentage of my mobile was presently speeding towards Auckland Hospital embedded in Ned’s face, and Norma’s land phone was on Fanshaw’s desk in Wellington. Or more likely in Fanshaw’s rubbish bin.

‘Ring Neo.’

He pressed Neo’s speed-dial number and waited. I could hear the ring tone from where I was standing. After just three rings Justin looked close to breaking down. Then he let out a yelp of relief.

‘Neo! It’s Dad. Where are you? Neo? Neo!’ He brought the phone round close to his face, and stared at it. ‘She cut me off. She grabbed the phone off him and cut me off.’ He dialled again but we both knew it would go to voicemail.

‘It’s okay, Justin. They’ll be okay. We’ll find them.’ His reaction still seemed disproportionate to me but his fear was infectious.

He turned his face to me. It was bleak and grey. ‘We’ve got to ring the cops,’ he said.

‘Okay. We can do that.’ I took the phone from his hand and prepared to ring them. He seemed to be paralysed, in shock, incapable of doing anything. ‘Do you have any idea where they might be?’

He didn’t answer. His head dropped into his hands and his body folded in half until his forehead rested on the floor. I didn’t know if he was praying or if he’d collapsed. A terrible sob racked his body. His reaction seemed way over the top. Okay, Sunny was only fourteen but heaps of fourteen-year-olds can drive as well as anybody. And then, looking at him, a whole heap of things suddenly became clear.

I knew why Justin was so devastated. And finally, I knew what Karen had told him the night before she died.