Red Herring (6 page)

Bastion Point was the site of Fort Bastion, one of sixteen coastal defence installations built in response to emanations from the Panjdeh Incident in 1885, when Tsarist forces seized disputed territory south of the Oxus River in Afghanistan. It was the height of the Great Game and New Zealand played its part. Russian scares of one sort or another have been a consistent theme in New Zealand political life, one not easily explained in geographic terms. The installation was never completed. Changes in artillery
elevations made it redundant. Savage’s successor as prime minister, Peter Fraser, announced a competition for a suitable memorial to be erected on the site. The winning design was an obelisk and a mausoleum with a sunken garden and a reflective pool, designed by architects from the Auckland City Council, and built by the Fletcher Construction Company.

David Henderson was standing in front of the obelisk, hat tilted back, hands on his hips, suit coat in the crook of his arm, looking at a portrait of Savage, a cameo rendered in greening copper, the late prime minister’s gentle face ringed by a wreath of concrete flowers, when Walsh joined him.

“Critiquing the stonework?” said Walsh.

“I was thinking about his state housing scheme,” said Henderson. “Made us a fortune before the war.”

“I bet.”

“Quite the pantheon,” said Henderson, gesturing. “For such a modest little fella.”

“Fraser’s idea,” said Walsh. “He was a strange bugger, Peter. Loved funerals. Loved organising them, loved going to them. Pity his own was so damn long in coming.”

“‘There is no fame to rise above the crowning honour of a People’s love’,” Henderson read the inscription below the cameo. “My God.”

“You’d find the next couplet more to your liking,” said Walsh. “‘So leave him to his rest who toiled for all, nor gave his life to pile ill-gotten gains’.”

“You’re quite the literary fella, aren’t you?” said Henderson, after a moment. “All that time on boats, I suppose.”

David Henderson had started his working life as a stonemason in Dunedin. He served as a transport officer with the New Zealand
Division in France. In 1919 a senior deacon at his lodge made sure he got the commission to build a war memorial at Kapanui on the West Coast. Soon he had four gangs of returned men on the go across the South Island. No New Zealand country town considered itself complete without a bespoke venue for the dawn parade. In 1922 he won a South Otago tender to build houses for the Railways Department and set up D.A. Henderson & Co, Building & Construction. With cheap housing loans the 1920s were boom years. The Depression hardly touched him. He took leave from the company in 1940 to help with the war effort, becoming chairman of the Supply Board. Soon Henderson & Co was turning out army huts by the thousand, built with Henderson lumber transported on Henderson trucks. Conflicts of interest were subsumed to the demands of central planning. In 1946, when the War Department disposed of surplus bulldozers and machinery from the Pacific theatre, Henderson & Co had the inside running. New Zealand is a small place and it pays to know people.

Henderson’s car, a dark-green Rover, was parked in the shade of a line of pohutukawa up from the reflecting pool. Walsh’s Plymouth was nearby. Sunny Day, Walsh’s driver, was leaning against the side of the car, arms folded, smoking. Henderson’s man, a wiry, fit-looking fellow in his mid-thirties, with curly red hair cut short at the back and sides, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black tie, got out of the Rover and opened the back door.

“Give us a few minutes, Bill, will you?” said Henderson.

“Good as gold, Mr Henderson,” said the chauffeur, jutting his chin at Walsh, his eyes flat.

“Did those chooks settle down after I left?” said Walsh, easing into the back seat.

“They’re not used to direct action.”

“Best way,” said Walsh. “We’d still be there.”

“Agreed,” said Henderson. “But don’t worry. They may look like the Drones, but they’re tough, successful, largely self-made fellas, fully aware of which way’s up. We’ll have no problems with them, don’t you worry.”

Walsh patted his pockets. A box of matches made a rattling sound. He took out a cigarette packet. It was empty.

“Have one of mine,” said Henderson, opening his cigarette case.

Walsh took one of Henderson’s smokes. He savoured the taste. “Not bad. I don’t like filter tips as a rule.”

“I’d have thought you would have been more of a loose tobacco type,” said Henderson. “Out of solidarity with the working man.”

Walsh tapped ash onto the floor. “You’d have thought that, would you?” He pointed to a leather satchel at Henderson’s feet. “Is that for me?”

Henderson nodded. He lifted the satchel and passed it to Walsh.

“Quick work,” said Walsh, opening the clips.

“Hall arranged it,” said Henderson. “Bank of New South Wales.”

The satchel was filled with bank notes rolled up and tied with rubber bands. Walsh reached in and took out a bundle. He thumbed the money.

“Hard to believe there’s a thousand guineas in here,” he said. “It’s always disappointing. You think you’ll need a wheelbarrow.”

“Count it, if you like.”

“No need. Crikey. If you can’t take a Grand Sword Bearer’s word, whose word can you take?”

Henderson looked at him for a moment. “How did you know my title?”

Walsh blew smoke towards the roof. “Oh, I imagine there’s a few things you know about me too.”

Henderson tapped a cigarette on the case and thumbed his lighter. “There is, as a matter of fact,” he said, taking his time, drawing on the flame.

“Well?” said Walsh.

“Well, I know you shot a man in America in 1917,” said Henderson, his lighter closing with a click. “An operative from the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”

Walsh laughed. “Christ, I hope you didn’t pay too much for that hoary chestnut.”

“And I know you had to get out of Ireland in a hurry in 1920,” said Henderson, as if Walsh hadn’t spoken. “And with a different name. Landed as Pat Tuohy, left as Pat Walsh. Not sure why yet, but I’m led to believe it was connected to the murder of a British secret agent in the toilet of a Dublin boarding house. Member of the Cairo Gang.”

“The
Cairo Gang
!” said Walsh. “My God, sounds like J.C. Williamson’s latest, whatchamacall, West End sensation.” He blew a smoke ring. It hung in the air between them. “You shouldn’t poke around in areas that don’t concern you, my friend. Violence is a last recourse for me, but I’m no angel. This talk of a Pinkerton man, now. I did kill a fella in America, but I didn’t shoot him and he wasn’t a detective. He was an enforcer for Anaconda Mining. Him and his cobbers seized a mate of mine, Frank Little — Wobbly organiser, Red Indian of some kind, as a matter of fact, good bloke — seized him from his room in a boarding house in this godforsaken copper town in Montana first thing, Frank wearing only his drawers, allowed the poor man no dignity, tied him to the bumper of a motorcar, dragged him down the main street, shot him in the back of the head and hung him dead from a railway trestle in broad daylight, a placard strung around his neck.” Walsh drew a sign in the air. “‘Others Take Notice! First and Last Warning! 3—7—77.’ Know what those numbers mean?”

“Wouldn’t have a clue.”

“Size of a grave,” said Walsh. “Three feet wide, seven feet long, seventy-seven inches deep. It’s a vigilante warning from the Wild West. I found the stooge in a saloon that very night, laughing with his blackleg cronies, followed him into the dunny, garrotted him with my tie till his face turned blue and he voided himself.”

Walsh pulled his fists apart in a sharp, demonstrative jerk, his eyes black.

“Now you know something that no one else alive knows. No one else
alive,
you foller?” He pointed at Henderson, his fingers forming the shape of a pistol. “What’s that warning you blokes give to blabbermouths there at the lodge? ‘Your left breast torn open, your heart plucked out and given to the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of the air’?”

“Are you threatening me, Walsh?” said Henderson. He turned and pointed out the window. “See him?” He indicated his driver, who was leaning into the Plymouth’s now-open gullwing bonnet and explaining to Sunny how they’d got round the Chrysler’s vapour lock problem in Libya by flipping the fuel pump and moving the bowl away from the heat of the exhaust manifold. “Long Range Desert Group. Chestful of gongs. Killed more Germans with his bare hands than Charlie Upham.”

“Woo woo!” said Walsh, wiggling his fingers in the style of the Three Stooges. He pointed to Sunny. “See him? Unofficial heavyweight champion, Mount Crawford Prison, 1944 to 1946. Bare-knuckle scrappers those fellas, of course. Twenty-two bouts, twenty-one knockouts — knockouts, mind — one death. Burst some poor devil’s kidney with a low blow. Apparently the blood just” — Walsh made a slow, unfolding gesture with his hand —
“pooof.”

Henderson turned and made a point of staring. “Really?” he said. “That little bloke?”

Walsh snorted, not long, not loud, but with the hint of a smile, a concession to Henderson’s concession. Henderson wound down his window, letting fresh air in and tension out.

“Look, it’s nothing to me what you may or may not have done, Walsh,” said Henderson. “Hell’s bells, I’ve cut a few corners myself. I just want you to be clear with whom you’re dealing.”

“‘With whom you’re dealing’,” said Walsh. He closed the satchel with a solid click and put it on the floor between his feet. “Right-o, my pellucid friend, I need some gelly. Two crates.”

Henderson rested his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.

“Gelly?” he said. “Do you mean dynamite?”

“No, I mean gelignite,” said Walsh. “Dynamite is unstable. It sweats. Gelly doesn’t. Gelly needs a detonator. It can be stored safely. It—”

“I won’t allow killing.”

“Don’t worry,” said Walsh, reaching over and squeezing Henderson’s knee hard. “This isn’t Chicago. I want to wake people up, not kill them.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Molloy went into the Public Bar of the Occidental Hotel in Vulcan Lane and made his way through the heaving crowd, the clock inching towards six, men drinking, smoking, talking at the tops of their voices. He bought a jug and looked through the fog for Tom O’Driscoll.

“Johnny!” O’Driscoll shouted. “Over here.”

O’Driscoll was standing at a crowded leaner, its surface covered in jugs and glasses and spilled beer, the metal ashtray in the centre overflowing. He was a short man with stiff curly hair shooting up at an angle. He wore a sports coat and a striped tie that stopped halfway down his shirtfront. He was the
Auckland Star’s
police roundsman. “You know these blokes?”

“How are you, boys?” said Molloy. The men at the leaner said “g’day” and went back to yelling at each other about the difference the Northland centre J.B. Smith would have made in South Africa in 1949.

O’Driscoll eased himself out of the pack. “How are you, cob?” he said.

“I’m good,” said Molloy. “You all right?”

“I’m all right,” said O’Driscoll. “Just got back from Matamata. Family funeral yesterday. Eileen? My sister-in-law? Bruce’s missus?”

“Eileen died?” said Molloy.

“Polio,” said O’Driscoll.

“Jeez, that’s no good,” said Molloy.

“It bloody isn’t. Out of the blue, pretty much. Haymaking. Felt crook that night. Thought it was sunburn. Took the next day off. Out of character right there. Worked like a Trojan as a rule that woman, dawn to dusk. First she lost the feeling in her legs. Then her whole body seized up, apparently. Contractor called the doctor. Bruce was shearing in Waipuk. Doctor got hold of him. Bruce raced back quick as he could, but” — he shook his head — “kaputski.”

This was more detail than Molloy needed, but even so.

“And four kids. Poor old Bruce. Mum’s gone down to give him a hand. Tough on her, though. She’s no spring chicken.” He threw back the last of his beer. “So, yeah, bastard of a thing. Anyway, how can I help?”

“Oh, hell. Look, give my best to Bruce next time you see him.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Knocks you for six, that sort of news.” Molloy looked at O’Driscoll’s beer. “You right there?”

“Could go another.”

Molloy topped up O’Driscoll’s glass. “Here’s to Eileen,” he said.

“Too right,” said O’Driscoll. “May she rest in peace.”

Molloy looked round. “I was just wondering if you’d ever come across a wharfie called Frank O’Flynn in your travels?”

“Irishman? On the WWU exec?”

“That’s the one. You know him? Under your hat?”

“I don’t
know
him. Know
of
him, sort of thing.”

“What sort of things?”

“Ah, let me see,” said O’Driscoll, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offering one to Molloy. “He had to get out of Ireland in a hurry before the war, not sure why. He was in Spain,
those battles round Madrid in ’36, early ’37.” He pointed with his cigarette. “Your old stamping ground, wasn’t it?”

“Not Madrid,” said Molloy. “How long’s he been here?”

“Year or two? He was good mates with Barnes and them but they’ve had a parting of the ways, I heard.” He drank the top inch, and lowered his voice. “There’s a rumour he was caught with his hand in the till, but—”

He saw something over Molloy’s shoulder. “Hey!” He waved. “Cait! Miss O’Carolan! Over here!”

Molloy turned. A young woman was standing in the entrance to the bar. There weren’t many girls in the Occidental, and none of them looked like this one.

“Christ, would you look at her,” said O’Driscoll, out of the side of his mouth.

“Who is she?”

“New cadet on the Women’s Page. Came here from nursing. Imagine her giving you a sponge bath.” He turned to Molloy. “She wants to be Martha Gellhorn, filing dispatches in the heat of battle sorta thing.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “I encourage this ambition in the hope that she’ll let me unfasten her stays.”

“How’s married life?” said Molloy. “Marge well?”

“The woman’s a saint,” said O’Driscoll, straightening his tie. “But still.”

The crowd seemed to part as the young woman weaved her way towards them. “Hello, O’Driscoll,” she said. She undid her scarf and shook her hair loose.