Only the Dead (26 page)

W
EDNESDAY
, 15 F
EBRUARY
, 9.28
P.M.

T
he bleeding didn’t stop.

Hale relented and visited an Accident and Emergency. The nurse joked it looked like he’d been shot. Hale told her he’d fallen against something. He tried to look abashed. Prayed it seemed plausible.

A brisk and over-taxed doctor applied sutures and admonished him to avoid heavy lifting. Hale left and drove home, one shoulder hunched to alleviate stitch strain.

A Fiat Punto hatch was parked at the top of his driveway when he got back to the house on Scenic Drive. He pulled in beside it. The driver waved at him through the glass, then slid out. He smiled back and climbed out, motion rendered awkward by bandaging.

‘Hello, Ellen.’

‘How you doing, John?’

He read it immediately: boyfriend trouble. Give me some Sean Devereaux insight. He wondered how long she’d been out here. A chance visit from his friend Douglas would not have played well.

‘Moderate,’ he said. ‘You want to come in?’

‘You want to stand out here in the cold?’

She said it with a grin, and he smiled again. He retrieved the
shotgun from the back of the car, and she followed him up the stairs to the front door. Locks undisturbed: he stood aside and let her enter first. She found the light switch by trial and error: third swipe lucky. The entry hall and kitchen blinked awake in weary succession.

‘You want a drink?’ he said.

‘What have we got on offer?’

‘Tea, coffee. Maybe even something a little firmer.’

‘Maybe just tea. I’ve got to drive.’

They went through to the kitchen. Hale leaned the gun beside the fridge and set the jug going. Ellen scraped a chair back from the table and sat down.

‘You carry that thing round with you all the time?’

‘Only when things are a little edgier than normal.’

‘What DEFCON level are we on at the moment?’

He laughed. ‘I just like to be cautious.’

‘So is my car going to be safe out front?’

‘Should be. My aim from the front deck is normally pretty good.’

He checked the fridge. Beer predominated by an order of magnitude. He took the milk bottle from its slot in the door and set it on the bench.

‘Is that blood?’

She pointed out a lone scarlet speck on the table top.

‘Probably.’

‘There was some on the stairs outside, too.’

‘Yeah. I injured myself.’

Headlights strafed the window, whorls of grime sharply white and then invisible as the car passed. His breath caught until dark returned.

‘How?’ she said.

He made a face. ‘Being careless.’ He indicated his newly
repaired torso. ‘I got stitches, though.’

She didn’t push him further. She folded her legs and smoothed her skirt and leaned forward onto folded arms. Steam from the kettle plumed and beaded against the window.

‘I thought Sean would be here,’ she said.

He settled himself in the crook where the bench turned a corner. ‘No. Just me.’

‘It smells like cigarettes.’

‘Yeah. He was here this afternoon.’

Her nails clicked a shy rhythm on the table top.

‘Do you ever worry about him?’ she said.

‘Sean?’

She nodded.

He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’

She waited for further exposition.

He said, ‘I never have. I’ve known him a long time. It’s just the way he is.’

‘What way is that?’

He shrugged, and the stitches made him regret it. ‘I don’t know. Whatever way that’s concerning you enough to ask if I worry about him.’

She passed a hand through her hair. Surprised strands sat up loosely and then eased back into place. ‘Well. The current concern is that he’s got no peripheral vision.’

‘In what sense?’

She turned and placed both hands knife edge on the table, palms parallel. ‘He’s got a narrow focus. He can see work. And that’s it.’

‘I don’t know whether it’s narrow focus or an addictive personality.’

‘Hence the smoking?’

‘Yeah … I suppose.’

‘You ever try to get him to quit?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t worry about him getting lung cancer?’

‘He’s intelligent enough to have balanced the risk of early death against whatever satisfaction he gets from working through a pack of Marlboros every day.’

‘Nice way of looking at it.’

He shrugged, good side only. ‘He’s reconciled the decision quite happily; I’m not going to be able to undermine whatever rationale he’s gone with.’ He paused and considered it. ‘Telling him to quit would be selfish because ultimately I’d miss him if it killed him. Also, it’s none of my business.’

She didn’t answer. The jug clicked. Hale added tea bags and boiling water to two mugs, levelled them up with milk.

‘I’ve got scones as well,’ he said. ‘If you’re that way inclined.’

Her eyebrows rose approvingly. ‘You cook scones?’

He smiled. ‘I’ve never had an offer of food met with such incredulity.’

‘No. I just can’t picture you as a baker.’

‘Trick is to pop in a bit of lemonade. Helps aerate the mixture.’

She shook her head. ‘Jesus. No, I think the tea will do me. But thanks.’

He nodded towards the door. ‘Come sit in the living room. More comfortable.’

She followed him through, eyes on the wavering liquid line in the mug. She sat down slowly on the low couch, mug cantilevered awkwardly in cupped hands. Hale took an armchair opposite.

‘He was meant to come to this thing tonight at my parents’ place,’ she said.

‘Yeah. He told me.’

‘He only managed to stay for about twenty minutes.’

Hale didn’t answer. Another car passed. He tensed until the light through the ranch slider had vanished.

‘It was just one dinner,’ she said.

Hale nodded. ‘He doesn’t like dinners very much.’

‘He never answers my calls.’

‘He never answers mine either. Trick is to not answer his.’

‘He doesn’t tend to ring me in the first place.’

Hale tried to stretch his legs. The stitches wouldn’t comply. He settled for a hunch. She nodded at his vinyl music collection, arranged neatly on a bookshelf.

‘You can get those on cassette tapes now,’ she said. ‘In fact the really progressive folk buy what’re called CDs.’

He feigned offence. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

She laughed: a flash of even teeth. ‘No, you’re right. I’ve got a box of old LPs buried somewhere in the garage. Somehow I managed to keep the music and give away the record player.’

‘Well. If you’re polite, and don’t condescend to my scones, you can borrow mine and relive your distant youth.’

She took a sip, smiled eyes only across the top of the mug.

Hale said, ‘Were you hoping for advice on Mr Devereaux, or were you wanting to intercept him?’

‘I thought I might get both. With a bit of luck.’

‘Why did you think he’d be here?’

‘I called him earlier and he was at the station. I thought he’d probably guess that I might try to reach him at home, and come here first. So I just gambled and came straight to your place.’

Hale laughed. ‘I think you give his little brain too much credit.’

She smiled weakly, and they were quiet for a spell. She said, ‘Do you think he’ll lose his job for killing that guy?’

‘No. I don’t think he will.’

‘Honest opinion, or are you just being reassuring?’

‘Honest opinion.’

She nodded slowly. Hale considered bringing the shotgun through from the kitchen. He chose not to, in the interests of living room etiquette.

‘You think he’s all right at the moment?’ she said.

The tea was substandard: too milky. He hoped she found hers acceptable. He said, ‘I suspect he’s probably feeling a little stretched. But he’s used to that. It comes with the territory.’

‘Is he stretched because of actual workload, or because he’s obsessed?’

‘Sort of question you’d need to ask him.’

‘You think he’s obsessive?’

Hale nodded. ‘I guess. Probably his best and worst quality, depending on perspective.’

‘You consider it a virtue?’

He nodded. ‘Then again, I’m not his girlfriend.’

They sipped some tea.

She said, ‘Every time a car goes past, your hackles go up.’

He smiled wearily. ‘I’m a little stretched too.’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘If not now, then eventually.’

‘What happened?’

He looked at the window while he thought about what to censor. Beyond the reflected room, trees swayed under the weight of darkness. He said, ‘I was searching a house, and the owner found me.’

She didn’t show any surprise. She reached and set the mug down on a table beside the couch. ‘And you’re carting the gun round in case he manages to find you again?’

‘Yeah. Essentially.’

‘Is that how you got hurt?’

He nodded. ‘He had a shotgun with him. I got a pellet lodged in my side.’

Something doubtful about his frankness: ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I took it out. And I got stitches.’

‘Does Sean know?’

‘He doesn’t know about the stitches.’

‘Does he know you got shot?’

‘Yeah, I told him. I haven’t told anyone else yet. Except you.’

She didn’t answer. Another car passed. He tried to maintain indifference.

At length she said, ‘So was this a work-related break-in, or purely recreational?’

‘Work-related.’ He smiled. ‘Although I do enjoy a good house prowl.’

‘Are you allowed to tell me the details, or is it covered by investigator-client privilege?’

He laughed. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

She zipped her lips, mimed a locking motion, flicked away the key.

He said, ‘You remember the fight club robbery back in early January?’

She nodded.

‘My client’s daughter was injured. He wants me to find who did it.’

‘Are the police still working on it?’

He nodded. ‘They haven’t had much luck.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I’ve been shot. So I must be getting somewhere.’

She tried to laugh, but it didn’t really make it off the mark.
‘What happened to the daughter?’ she said.

‘She got hurt during the getaway. The money was in a caravan towards the rear of the site. A crowd formed around it during the robbery.’

‘So they had to beat their way out.’

‘Yeah. More or less.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘She wasn’t at the time. Multiple head injuries.’

She drew her legs up beside her on the cushion, rested her cheek against a fist. ‘How many is multiple?’

‘Three.’

She was quiet a while. ‘Have you got a file or something?’

‘It’s at the office. You want to see the pictures?’

‘Not really. I’m just thinking.’

He didn’t reply.

She said, ‘They had to fight through a crowd to get to the road.’

He nodded. ‘They had a car waiting.’

‘So it’s frantic. They want to leave in a hurry. Why’d they take the time to hit her three times?’

The question hadn’t occurred to him before. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

She said, ‘I would have thought if you wanted to get away in a hurry, you wouldn’t stop to hit someone more than once.’

‘Bit of a half-hearted escape, you think?’

She made a face, shrugged as if dismissing the idea. ‘I think the psychology seems a bit off. You want someone out of your way, you hit them once. I don’t know. Hitting someone two or three times implies a greater level of aggression.’

It made sense. He saw theories ease out of the shade. That cool internal rush that heralded progress.

‘Earth to John.’

He looked back at her. ‘You could work in forensics,’ he said.

She laughed and stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

‘You don’t want to stay and see if he shows up?’

‘No.’ She arched her back, spoke through a yawn: ‘The Boyfriend Game gets old quite quickly.’

Hale stood up. ‘I’d better walk you out.’

‘Yeah. Go and get your gun.’

Progress. Devereaux felt poised to announce ‘case closed’.
A bit longer and you might actually crack this
.

He background-checked Douglas Allen. A troubled history unfurled. Adolescent drug possession flourished into more serious offending: Douglas had done time for fraud, and injuring with intent. As such, his January third robbery attendance served as strong cause for suspicion.

If only it had been picked up
.

He ran some checks on the fictional Douglas Haines. Nothing: police, driver-licence and credit-rating databases returned zero hits. Land Information indicated nobody by the name Doug or Douglas Haines owned Auckland property. A Securities Register check came back empty. To be anticipated, when hunting someone non-existent.

So why did nobody click that this was the case
?

He trawled incident room filing cabinets and accrued some fight club robbery paperwork. Attending officers’ reports, follow-up documents from CIB, witness lists and statements. It took him three trips to get everything back to his desk.

He scanned the witness lists first. Doug Haines had made page one. An address was noted, but no driver’s licence number. Devereaux wondered how he’d picked the name: he’d encountered a few pseudonymous Smiths, but this was his first Haines. He flipped through another folder: crime scene
photographs, additional shots that established wider physical context. Twenty minutes in: an image of a neighbouring property showed a Haines Haulage truck, backed into a driveway. Dougie was clearly quite blasé with regards to fake name selection.

He progressed to the next ream of paper: CIB progress reports. The witness lists would have been checked for prior offending. He wanted to know who’d signed off on them.

There were about five separate copies of the actual list, eighty names total. Extra sheets were appended, further information on those with a criminal history. Douglas Haines/Allen was not included. Devereaux re-read the lists. No indication of who’d performed the vetting. He appraised the stacks of paperwork. He could read ceaselessly all night and achieve nothing but blindness.