All Saints: Love and Intrigue in the Stunning New Zealand Wilderness (The New Zealand Soccer Referee Series Book 1) (20 page)

“Tell me about the day your uncle
slapped you,” Odering said. “Why didn’t you report it?”

I shrugged. “My cousin did, but
nobody came to speak to me. I wanted to forget about it.”

Odering glanced at his notes.
“Officers went to your home twice, but you were out both times. They would’ve
followed it up.”

“It’s over now.” I sipped my
water thinking of Teina. “I’m not going back to the club so I won’t see him again.”

“You can see my problem over all
this, can’t you?” Odering leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his
close cropped hair, linking his fingers in a tight stretch. The rumpled shirt
betrayed one of those never ending days I often had at work as it untucked
itself from his trousers. “Your husband approached us with this information and
we launched an enquiry with New Zealand Football and fraud squad members. We
know the fraud’s happening, but not who’s orchestrating it. Peter Saint was prepared
to tell me everything and then unfortunately, he died. Was your husband ever
violent towards you?”

“No.” I thought of the one time
and knew Odering saw it in my face. Pete liked rough sex and I kept my bedroom
door locked after that.

“Did you never wonder if his
death was suspicious?” I leaned forward in my seat and waited for Odering to
take a slug of his cold coffee before answering. He pulled a face and nodded. I
rewarded myself for the clever distraction.

“We checked everything. My first
thought was that someone wanted to shut him up, but we found no evidence of
that. It looked like he’d overdosed on valium and then his vehicle went out of
control on a greasy bend in the rain and hit a tree. He shouldn’t have got
behind the wheel but the suicide note he left gave us reason to assume that was
the point.”

“He wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” I
said, closing my eyes and reading the coroner’s report in my head. “But he
always put his seat belt on. He said this stupid rhyme when he did it and drove
me mad.” For the first time in a long time, I missed my husband. It wasn’t a
passionate relationship for either of us but after the horror of his bungled
visit to the public toilets, at least I knew everything. We rubbed along just
fine and found a level of companionship outside of his sexual exploits. I let
his handsome face waft across my inner vision; dirty blonde hair and blue eyes
which sparkled in the sunshine. Athletic and vain, Peter Saint was a natural
head turner and knew it. His loss hit me like a knife wound to the chest and I
doubled over in pain as real grief bubbled out. Not the blank numbness of those
first weeks or the anger when his solicitor informed me of my impoverished
state, but a jaw aching grief at the loss of a close friend. I’d spent the last
six months reeling from his betrayals and lost sight of who he really was. As
the tears came and I used up most of the box of tissues Odering found, I
realised I’d loved him despite everything. I’d loved him and he never knew. Now
someone had taken his life as though he never mattered to anyone and I’d never
got the chance to tell him.

“What’s the password for the
laptop, love?” Odering looked at me with fondness in his eyes, perhaps sorry
for my hitching chest and puffy eyes. “The techs will get into it anyway and do
a forensic recovery of anything deleted. But you could save us some time and
you’ve already been helpful.”

“What about the money?” I asked,
reluctant to give any more without some concession. “I know nothing about any
betting scam and my uncle paid off the rest of the loan and bought me the car
in good faith.” I jerked my head towards him. “If the money’s stolen, I lose
everything all over again.”

He tutted and reached to stroke
my hand, thinking better of it. It made me wonder if he’d lied about Jack not
being able to see or hear my interview. “I’ll talk to someone,” he promised.
“But let’s see what happens first.”

I wiped my nose with the last
tissue. “What about Pete’s sexuality?” I gave a disgusting sniff but didn’t
have the energy to feel ashamed. “He didn’t want people to know.”

“Why?” Odering asked and I
dropped the tissue on the table and stared at him in surprise.

“Because he was a Saint! There
are some rules we just don’t break.”

Odering’s nod seemed slowed down
for effect and he stood and offered me his hand. “I’ll stay in touch, Mrs
Saint,” he said, clasping my fingers in his. “But that password would be great.
Your search history will be recovered by the techs, so it’s best you tell me
now, seeing as you’ve admitted logging into it. You have my word that nothing
will go any further than it needs to, but it’s possible the person in the chat
room is connected to the scam.”

“I don’t think so,” I replied
with a sigh, pulling my cardigan across my body and stretching the seams too
tight. “But the password’s a swear word. Pete said it a lot.” I leaned forward
and whispered the two words which summed up my husband’s life, embarrassed
about saying them out loud.

Odering wrinkled his nose. “Yep.
Wouldn’t have guessed that,” he said, dragging a pen from his shirt pocket to
write on his hand. It looked incongruous, the awful words written on the back
of the hairy flesh. He stared at it and I read it upside down, remembering how
easy the password came to me as I sat in my classroom with the laptop on my
knee. The detective’s writing resembled his appearance; rushed and messy. I
read the upside down capital ‘F’ and he moved his hand to reveal the second
word. ‘Up’ ‘Effed Up.’ I couldn’t repeat it again, not even in my own head. My
mother detested swearing, especially the ‘F’ word but Aunty Margaret spent a
lot of time using it. It showed in our respective usage as adults.

“Thanks, Ursula,” he said with
warmth, using my first name as though we’d become friends. My smile didn’t
reach my eyes and he jerked his head towards the door. “And thanks for signing
that other thing. It will save us a lot of time.”

“Please may I have my phone call
now?”

I called Aunty Pam and she
fetched me, fussing over me in the car and in her kitchen. “This is awful!” she
said after I’d told her everything. Larry stared at me in disbelief, swallowing
as though saliva entered his mouth on a conveyor belt. “Do you know who the
other man in the chat room is?” she asked, lowering her voice to a hush.

“You mustn’t repeat any of this,”
I begged. “The cops asked me not to.”

“We won’t, I promise,” Pam
gushed, her cheeks flushed from my chaotic confession. “Who is it?”

“I can’t tell you.” I’d decided I
wouldn’t. I’d gone over and over the conversation in my head and felt sure I
knew who it was. It could only be one person and I needed to speak to him
myself.

“They’re really gonna exhume
Pete’s body?” she whispered and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’m so sorry.
That’s awful.”

“He didn’t kill himself,” I
stated, surer than I’d ever been. “Mark Lambie behaved as though he’d been
drugged. They’ll check Pete’s body for other drugs and signs of injury too,
which they might have missed first time around.”

Larry looked sick at the thought
of samples being taken from a decomposed body and I watched as his colour moved
from pink to grey and back again.

“It’s bad about Mark,” Pam
sighed. “Dora’s not good at all.”

I sipped my strong tea and looked
at my aunt through narrowed eyes. “Did you know about Dad and May-Ling?”

She quailed and Larry looked
away, their faces shrouded in guilt. “Sorry, love,” she said, chewing her
bottom lip. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Yeah, well I walked in on them.”
I shuddered at the memory.

“Not doing it?” Pam’s eyes
widened in horror. “I thought it was just for her visa.”

Larry sniggered. “Geez, she’s
earning that then.”

Pam kicked him under the table
and the movement slopped hot tea over my fingers. I stood and reached for a
cloth. “Why would Dora think May-Ling was Mark’s mistress?”

“Because she was.” Pam lowered
her voice and glanced towards the lounge where Alysha’s son played in front of
the TV. “He bought her on the internet because Dora wasn’t supposed to survive
the last round of chemo. Then she rallied and he’d already got May-Ling ready
to be the next Mrs Lambie. Jordan agreed to let her live at his place and act
as his carer, which gave her a legitimate reason for being in the country.” She
frowned, her face disapproving. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Larry?”

“Do what?” Poor Larry looked shocked.

“Get someone ready to replace me
if I got sick.”

“No!” Her husband’s expression
was hurt mixed with fear. “Don’t talk about dying, please?”

I patted Larry’s hand, watching
the horror in his face at the thought of Pam not being around to iron his underwear
or fluff up his delicate ego. “It won’t happen, Uncle Larry.” I offered
reassurance which wasn’t mine to give, hearing the futility of the words even
as I said them.

“Jordan got attached to her,
anyway,” Pam finished. “And she threatened to leave if Mark didn’t marry her
before her holiday visa ran out.”

“So Dad put a ring on her
finger?” I crinkled my nose, comparing the lazy Asian woman to my saintly
mother. “That’s gonna bite his bum.” The memory surfaced of May-Ling’s lithe
bottom going up and down in my father’s lap and I wondered who’d got the worse
end of the deal. It wouldn’t end well. “Could Mark have gone off in a strop
because he lost May-Ling?” I asked, trying to fit the jolly man with that image
and failing. We’d taken him home and he looked fine, apart from being drunk as
a lord.

Larry shook his head but Pam
answered. “Na. He was fine about it. I think he came to his senses and realised
it wasn’t fair on poor Dora.”

“And now she’s all alone,” I
mused. “She’s lost out either way.”

“A bit like you, sweetie,” Aunty
Pam said, caressing my hand. “What will you do now?”

I shrugged and thought of Teina’s
soft lips on mine. I ached for contact with him, realising once again that I’d
failed to get a number for him. “No idea,” I sighed. “Live my life, I guess.”

“I still can’t believe Pete was
gay,” Pam said, lowering her voice. “We always thought he was a womaniser,
didn’t we Larry?”

Larry nodded but didn’t commit
fully to the movement. I saw his awkwardness and felt bad for him. Most men
reacted with distaste as though homosexuality threatened who they were in their
own skin. I gave him a comforting smile and squeezed his fingers, confused when
he dragged his hand away.

“Do you want to stay here
tonight?” Pam asked, her expression of maternal kindness reminding me of Mum.

“Na. I’ve got work tomorrow.” I
punctuated my sentence with a yawn and stretched. My dress felt dirty after a
day’s wear and the black sand had left dirty streaks ingrained in the fabric.
“Could I please borrow a laptop? The cops took mine and I want to do some
research about soccer match fixing.”

“Why?” Pam pulled a face. “The
cops will work it out.”

“I’ve been at every single local
game since the age of four,” I said, standing. “If something’s going on, I’d
like to think I’ve tried to find out exactly what before the cops do. All
Saints means everything to this family; if someone’s cheating them, I’d like to
work out how.” I didn’t add that I’d like to know who, convinced I already knew
the ringmaster.

“Larry, give her Alysha’s old
one. It’s in the spare bedroom. The charger’s in the top drawer.”

Pam’s husband trooped off to the
bedroom and returned empty handed. “Can’t find it,” he said. “I’ll drop you
home, Ursula. Don’t get a taxi.”

Pam groaned. “Men! You don’t look
properly for anything, do you? I’ll get it.”

I raised my hand. “It’s ok. I’ll
do it tomorrow at work. Probably best if I just go to sleep tonight. I feel
exhausted.”

Larry nodded and fetched his
jacket from the hook behind the front door and kissed his wife on her cheek. “I
won’t be long,” he said with a smile.

“You always say that,” she sighed.
“I’ll be asleep by the time you crawl into bed.”

I’d been
in Larry’s car a million times over the years and settled back into the
passenger seat. We didn’t speak on the journey back to my apartment but there
was nothing unusual about that. Larry shared my introverted nature and we got
along well in companionable silence. “I’ll come up,” he said, glancing up at my
darkened windows and I smiled with gratitude.

“Thanks. I’m a bit nervous about
going home at the moment. If Jack’s there, would you throw him out for me?”

“Yeah. Course,” he replied with a
reassuring grin.

Upstairs, my apartment looked
just as the cops left it. I straightened the items they’d fingered in the
lounge and stripped the spare bed of Jack’s sheets, dumping them in a pile in
the laundry. Larry wandered around checking and rechecking windows before
meeting me by the front door. “Thanks for everything, Uncle Larry.” I stood on
tiptoes to kiss his rough cheek.

His lips parted and his hooded
eyes narrowed to slits, his face expression perplexed. “I thought you wanted to
talk,” he said, tilting his head.

“We have talked.” I sent my brain
spinning through the conversation at my aunt’s place, confused. “I’m tired
now.”

Larry’s face took on an
uncharacteristic hardness. “You said you wanted to talk to me. Here I am.”

I floundered, drowning in
confusion as the atmosphere took on a strange and frightening tinge. I shook my
head. “I’m good, Uncle Larry. Just knackered. We can talk tomorrow if you
like.” I put my hand on the front door handle and he squeezed my fingers hard,
taking me by surprise.

“You can’t leave it hanging over
me. What do you intend to do?”

“What?” I shook my head, wishing
to dislodge myself from the bizarre day and fall into bed.

“I didn’t want it to be like this
with you.” Larry’s voice lowered to a hush and fear prickled my insides as
instinct got there ahead of me. I swallowed, not sure what he meant by the
peculiar statement.

“Like what?” The fine hairs on
the back of my neck created a crawling sensation and I wanted to put my hand up
to touch it. “Be like what with me?”

“I thought we understood each
other.” Larry’s gentle face morphed into hard, desperate lines and the patch of
baldness on his crown glowed red as his blood pressure hiked. “I’ve been good
to you.”

“I know.” I pulled my hand from
beneath his and forced a wooden smile onto my face. “You have. Aunty Pam and
you have been like parents to me. I couldn’t manage without you.”

“So why?” Larry took a step
towards me and I pressed my back against the wall. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what? You’re scaring me,
Uncle Larry.” My chest tightened in anxiety and his breath caused my fringe to
shift as he closed in.

“Why would you let them exhume
Pete? Why would you do that?”

“I don’t have a choice.” A badly
timed swallow cut off the rest of my sentence. An air of madness surrounded us
like sulfuric fog. “The cops would’ve done it anyway.”

“Geez, Ursula!” Larry turned and
ran a shaking hand over his face. He’d always seemed so small and meek but his
broad back eclipsed my view of the door and the only available escape route.
The sinking feeling in my gut told me I should fear a friend and it hurt with a
physical ache. I pushed myself against the wall and closed my eyes to stem the
terror.

“I need to find out how Pete
died.” My voice wavered, a remote communication from my trembling knees. “I
don’t want to live the rest of my life believing it was my fault.”

“It was your bloody fault!” Larry
bellowed. “It’s all your fault. Things were fine until he married you; he took
the money and scored the goals but the guilt got to him. Because of you! Karen
raised you honest, Ursula! Too bloody honest!”

“We were fine after I knew the
truth,” I stammered. “I thought he was my friend. We would’ve been ok.”

The futility of my words sickened
me. Teina’s face flashed before my inner vision and stripped bare the lie. He’d
opened my world to a greater love than my crush on Jack Saint and my passion
for him slammed the door behind me so I couldn’t go backwards. I might have
been content with Pete but a whole big world out there would’ve threatened it
eventually, dousing me with the cold water of sexual fulfillment and snuffing
out my cozy, fraternal marriage.

“The truth about what?” Larry
demanded, his grey eyes as hard as grit. “About the gambling or his
preferences?”

“About him being gay,” I replied,
appalled by the whine in my voice. “It would’ve been ok.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Larry
dislodged the fine hairs attempting to cover his bald spot and turned to face
me. They hung down beside his left ear like a curtain, drawing my attention
away from his eyes. “Give her babies and she’ll be fine.”

I dragged my gaze back to his
face, realisation dawning and a lump forming in my throat. “You’re the man in
the chat room. You’re Plus One!” I hissed the words, the remaining colour
draining from my face. “I thought it was Uncle Terry.”

Defeat etched itself over Larry’s
face and he groaned out loud. “So I’ve jumped the gun again.” He shook his
head. “It seems to be my specialty.”

“Why did you tell Pete not to do
something stupid?” I begged, my voice a whisper. “You were the last person to
speak to him before he died.”

“He didn’t see that message,”
Larry replied, leaning with his back against the front door. “He turned up at
my office. Decided he couldn’t do it anymore. New Zealand Football were onto
us. The cup final was one step too far. We got greedy and the payout was
awesome. Pete was going under financially and it stood to pay everything off
for all of us.”

“What happened to the money?” I
asked. “Pete died a bankrupt.”

Larry laughed, a cruel, bitter
sound. “We weren’t supposed to win, you stupid girl!” he yelled. “They paid us
to lose!” Blue veins stood out on his neck.

My jaw dropped and I remembered
my father’s elation at Pete’s goal in the dying minutes of the game. My husband
had looked across at me and smiled, kissing his fingers and raising them to me.
He’d dedicated the goal to me and destroyed everything. “Oh, Pete!” I put my
hands over my eyes and accepted his final gift; honesty.

Larry lurched and slapped my
hands away from my face. “I just needed to calm him down,” he said, his eyes
wild and channelling dangerous recklessness. “He wasn’t mean to die. I only
wanted him to chill and not go to the cops.”

I slid sideways, moving towards
the kitchen using the wall against my back to bolster my spine and my courage.
“He’d already gone, Larry. He didn’t tell you, did he?”

Larry shook his head and curled
his upper lip back in a snarl. “How could he do that to me? After everything
we’d been through.” He swallowed and white spit speckled the corners of his
mouth like a frothing, rabid dog. Another head shake dislodged more victims of
his complicated comb over and soon he carried a ribbon of hair down one side of
his head. His sad smile made him look helpless. “You never score in the first
ten minutes.” He looked at me as though I should understand and I nodded,
faking it. “The first thirty seconds or the first three minutes; it’s like a
red rag to a bull.” He swallowed and licked his lips. “But he couldn’t help
himself. It didn’t matter what we agreed with the other team, he had to do it.
I think he wanted us to be investigated. He wanted to be found out.”

I nodded and backed away,
reaching the corner and readying myself to run. The phone handset sat near the
microwave and I measured my steps, counting them out in my head while facing
Larry as he ranted. “What about the suicide note? It looked like Pete’s
writing.”

Larry grimaced. “I stopped him
doing it once before. I found him in time. He bought painkillers and drank
straight whiskey. I saw him at the liquor store and followed him up to the
cliff top at Mangawhai Heads.” Larry ran a hand through his strings of hair and
seated them back on his head like a haphazard web. “Stupid bugger. The suicide
note got shoved in the glove box and I guess he forgot about it.”

“The cops found it.” I remembered
the coroner’s confusion about its almost secretive placement in the vehicle,
but it only seemed to compound Pete’s desperation as he drove off the road into
the tree, mangling himself, the car and the glove box.

I put my hands over my eyes and
felt my heart labour under the burden of knowledge. “What did you do to him?”

“Pete? I drugged his drink. He
said he wasn’t going back to work and we planned to talk tactics after his
bloody stupid stuff up of the cup game. I thought he’d be with me for longer
and give the valium time to wear off, but we fell out and he got in the car. I sent
the message on my phone but he never saw it.”

“What did you fall out over?”

Larry rolled his eyes. “The
syndicate went crazy after what he did. He took out loans to pay them off, but
I was already maxed out.”

“You’re not even on the club’s
executive,” I breathed. “How could you organise all this?”

I swallowed, waiting for the
names of people I loved and respected to be dragged through the mud. My body
tensed and I balled my fists in anticipation.

“Lambie wanted out this year. He
couldn’t take the pressure. Terry stayed in but that’s because Margaret forced
him to and they don’t have two cents to rub together. There’s a few players who
do as they’re told for a few hundred bucks a time and we’ve got other teams on
the payroll. It wasn’t a problem when we stuck to the low key games but we got
greedy.” Larry chewed his lip in frustration. “It would’ve been fine if Pete
stuck to the plan.” His eyes flashed and he turned towards me, his irises grey
pits of smoke. “He wanted to go straight because of you. Your honesty shamed
him out.”

“He told you that?”

Larry smoothed his hand over a
bristly chin. “Yeah. Said he loved you. Did you even notice he’d stopped the
nights out after the games? We all got together at Lambie’s house for beers and
a yarn instead.”

I shook my head. Out was out, but
he’d returned home earlier and not so drunk. We hadn’t shared a bedroom, so it
never mattered. “Where’s Mark?” I held my breath as I asked the question,
figuring Pete’s death was accidental but drug induced and Mark appeared
suddenly wasted and ill in a short amount of time. “You and Pam were at the
wedding. Did you drug him?”

“I just needed to talk to him.”
Larry licked his lips. “But I didn’t leave the wedding reception. I heard you’d
taken him home, you and that cop, but the syndicate boys got to him before I
could. He’s in the Manukau Harbour somewhere. Shark food.”

My brain ducked Mark Lambie’s
fate and amplified the word ‘cop’ and I shook my head. “Jack wasn’t there.”

“The other one, the referee. I
knew the game was up then. The syndicate wanted a referee on side but we
couldn’t risk it, not with him on the circuit.”

“Teina’s a cop?” I choked on the
sentence, betrayal and heartache flooding in to overtake the shock. My legs buckled
and I struggled to stay upright, sickness flooding through my body like acid. I
pushed on the wall as my mind turned back to my own plight.

“You know him?” Larry’s eyes
narrowed and his grin spread from ear to ear. “Awesome! There’s money in it for
him and I can tell you what to say.”

“No!” I raised my voice into a
strangled yell. “You killed my husband but you’re still not finished? What’s
wrong with you?”

I lurched for the front door but
hit the wall of Larry’s body and found myself tumbling sideways. My cheek
struck the tiny hall table and I grunted with the impact, lying dazed on the
cold tiles. I tasted blood in my mouth where I bit my tongue.

“Sorry, sorry!” Larry raised his
hands up to the sides of his head, his face ashen. “I can’t do it, Ursula. I
can’t hurt you but the syndicate guys will. You need to help us.” He bent and
tried to gather me to him and I smelled the fear oozing from his pores. Pulling
my arm, he got me to a sitting position and ran to the kitchen for a tea towel
to stem the blood dripping from my lip and coating my chin. “The minute I make
that call, you’re dead,” he said as I heard him yanking open drawers to find
one. “They know I’m here,” he called, his voice husky as he settled on a roll
of paper towel. I heard the paper tearing as he balled up more than he needed.
“I called them from the spare room when I couldn’t find the damn laptop. Told
them you knew everything.”

The door buzzer sounded and I
hauled myself upright, my head beating a bass note in a protracted throb. My
addled brain screamed danger but temper superseded it. I wanted to see these
big syndicate names. They took my husband, sullied the legacy of five
generations of Saints and pitched me into poverty through greed. I wanted to
look them in the eye and knew it would probably kill me.

My hand touched the receiver as
Larry pounded across my kitchen and into the hall. “No!” he shouted as the
handset fell, dangling from the curly cord and bumping against the wall. I
reached for the door release switch next to it but he rugby tackled me and
crushed me beneath his weight, winding me and knocking an ear-splitting scream
from my lungs. A painful pop issued from somewhere in my back and the locking
of the surrounding muscles informed me it was serious. Breathing in hurt like a
firebrand in my chest and breathing out stopped being a viable option.