Wasted Lives, a Detective Mike Bridger novel (16 page)

The use of his
first name had an effect on him and he sneered.

"Well Coppaa,
there's nothing to hide here, so good luck with your warrant, now
you's can fuck off..."

John was about
to say something but was stopped by the gate swinging open behind
Bazz.

"I'll
take it from here Bazz". Joseph Kingi junior stood just outside the
gate, his bulky frame filling most of the space. His eyes glued to
Jo were red and blood shot, and his pupils looked like
pinpricks.

A couple of
barks sounded from above them, the minions encouraging the
leader.

Jo's stomach
did a cartwheel; she saw the recognition in his eyes.

"If you
want to waste your time come through, ask what ever questions you's
want, but you already know what the answers are going to be", he
said, as he stood aside and gestured to the open gate.

Joseph's tone
of voice had a silky but sleazy nuance. There was also a quiet
menace hidden in his words, something Jo did not fail to notice.
She looked at John for guidance but he had already started to move
towards the gate, then like a moth drawn to flame, she could not
help herself as she followed behind him. The curiosity of what lay
beyond the fence overcoming any misgivings she may have had.

Bazz Ropata
had fallen into step behind them as they entered the cauldron in
case they changed their minds.

As soon as
they were inside both Jo and John realised they had made a serious
mistake underestimating the gang and Joseph's benign invitation.
The gate slammed shut behind them, the minions jumping down from
their parapets behind the fence and surrounding them to the rear.
Hyped up and stoned off their heads, they edged closer and closer
to the two police officers.

"So Coppaa’s
what do you want to ask then?" Joseph was looking at his underlings
spread out around the bare yard. "We are all ears".

Jo spoke up,
looking everywhere but at Joseph.

"As you
know there was a shooting last night, over in the trees beside the
golf course. Tama Wilson was shot to death".

There were a
few murmurs of acknowledgment from within the group.

"I
understand that you all knew him and I am sorry for the loss of
your friend", Jo looked directly at Joseph now, "If you saw
anything, or know anything about who may have shot him, I am sure
you will let us know so we can prosecute whoever did this....". She
looked around at the group again, "You don't have to speak up now.
You can come and see us in private and complete
confidence".

A few stifled
laughs came from the audience before her, but most of the gang
members were looking to Joseph for their direction, quiet in their
loyalty to the leader.

"Well you've
certainly grown a pair of balls since we last met", Joseph said,
watching Jo with amusement. "But you’re still a naive little bitch
who is playing a game she doesn't belong in.... You know nothing
about us do you Girly".

Jo was shocked
with the reaction, to her dismay redness spread up her neck and
into her cheeks.

"What the
fuck.... This girl thinks we are a pack of Narcs," Bazz said loudly
from behind them. "Dogs don't diss their brothers’ bitch", he
whispered in Jo's ear. Barking loudly he made her jump.

More barks
started coming from the crowd, faces twisting, teeth bared, things
were getting ugly.

John was
trying his best to calm things down but was not succeeding. "It's
time we left I think Jo", he said, all the colour had leeched out
of his cheeks.

The dogs were
circling now, almost baying for blood. All around them they could
see only high fences made of wood and tin, crates of empty beer
bottles were stacked against the fence, cans littered the ground
displaying the culture within the cauldron of the gang environment
they were trapped in. The one small gate that promised a safe exit
had shut tightly behind them.

John got his
cell phone out of his pocket, but someone knocked it to the ground
and crushed it under a heavy boot.

Hands grabbed
at Jo from behind, running inside her jacket over her stomach and
under her breasts. Her phone was taken from the inside pocket and
it suffered the same fate as John's.

"You're in our
world now Piggy Piggy's, welcome...."

A fist came
out of nowhere and slammed into Johns face, knocking his head
sideways. Jo felt something wet land on her cheek; wiping it with
her hand, she could see it was blood.

John was
staggering, his eyes starting to glaze over, another fist connected
with his jaw, a sickening crunch. His legs gave way and he dropped
to his knees, blood dripping from his mouth. The pack fell upon him
like ravenous animals, all wanting their share of flesh. The
barking was at frenzy.

Jo's instinct
was to protect John but she felt herself being grabbed roughly from
behind and pulled off her feet. They were dragging her towards the
main building.

"Where gonna
have us some fun bitch", an ugly voice said in her ear.

While being
dragged closer to her own fate, she could see John curled up on the
ground desperately trying to protect his head from the frenzied
attack.

His
assailants were just boys really, probably the young prospects
trying to outdo each other and gain the attention of their elders.
There were two cowards putting in more effort than the rest,
kicking at John's head, really going to town. She took in their
faces while they dragged her roughly up the front stairs. She would
remember those two if she could, they would not get away with it,
whatever the outcome.

John's
helpless pitiful figure lying amidst the howling dogs watched over
by the pack leader disappeared from view as they took her further
into the hallway. They shoved her into a stale smelling room with
only a stinking mattress and a fetid sheet covering it for
furnishing and the realisation hit her like a sledgehammer. She
felt her stomach go weak and she nearly wet herself right there on
the floor. They were going to rape her.

She
turned and lashed out at her captor, running on the instinct for
survival that all living things have in them. Her arms were moving
of their own accord as she scratched and clawed at the tattooed
face in front of her. An evil smile looked back at her from the
blur, a gold tooth glinting from inside Bazz Ropata's mouth.
 A huge fist came out of nowhere and connected squarely with
her forehead, and then everything went black.

Martin
was walking again; the temperature had started to climb as the
morning had worn on, a northeasterly breeze bringing the warm air
making it harder to breath. He had taken his t-shirt off and
wrapped it around his head making him look like the pictures of the
crop pickers he had seen in his mother's glory box, pictures taken
in the late 1970's. The grainy black and white images were of her
family working the fields up in Pukekohe, back then it was only a
small rural settlement south of Auckland. They showed her father
and brothers, his grandfather and uncles. They were people he had
never met. He always remembered the pictures, it promised another
life was possible, that he did not need to live in his
existence.

His mother had
not spoken much of her family in the years he was growing up but
they looked so happy in the pictures, they looked like they
belonged somewhere, they were hard workers. They were working, not
like his loser stepfather; he had not seen him work a day in his
life. He was a lazy self-indulgent abusive predator. He deserved to
die, not Tama.

As he walked,
his mind was turning repeatedly with hatred and disbelief. With all
that had happened in the last two days, he felt more than capable
of taking care of business, dealing with the issue of Tama's death
had cemented that into his being.

He wanted what
his mother's family had; he wanted a family, somewhere to belong.
He wanted to be happy.

He had not met
his own father; he only knew what little his mother had told him.
His mother and father had met in Pukekohe, she was only nineteen
and he was twenty-two. His father was apparently a big man in their
circles. He was someone all the girls had wanted to be with, but he
chose his Mother.

They had given
his father a job to do in Dunedin and so they had moved south. She
never told him what that job was or who ‘they’ were, only that he
was also a big man in Dunedin as well. His mother had told him he
died three months before Martin was born.

He always
wondered what it would be like for him if his father were still
alive, would he have a good life like the people he saw walking
around Dunedin. One thing he did know was that he would not have
had his life touched by another man's sickness. He hated this life.
He wanted a new one.

He got
closer to town the more he walked, the new houses overlooking the
ocean were off to his right housing the rich parents and their
privileged children, the older houses indicating the start of his
world were in front. Up here, the line between civilisation and the
empty fields of the windswept coast stood out starkly against its
backdrop. The town seemed to just end, as if the people had chosen
not to go any further.

That could be
true of many of the inhabitants around his life, he thought, they
had not found any reason to strive for anything different.

He walked on
in a daze; his thoughts were tumbling around inside his head, no
clear direction.

The new
cemetery came into view, glimpses of polished headstones through
the trees to his left. They would have one more tenant now that
Tama was dead; they were slowly building a population of people who
would make nothing of the rest of eternity. He wondered if Tama's
mother would even bother to claim him or just leave him rotting in
the fridge at the hospital. She was such a useless bitch. Tama had
practically raised himself.

A new wave of
loneliness washed over him, he had no one else. He had not been
close with his own mother now for a long time. She was always at
work, blindly trusting in her family at home but never really
seeing, left to the mercy of the predators amongst the pack.

He hated
himself for what he had done but it was too late to change
anything. Tama was dead.

Images of a
destroyed face flashed through his mind, surrounded in a red mist.
The look of a little boy lost, of a life wasted.

A seed
germinated in the pit of his stomach, a crazy idea but he did not
have anything to lose. He just had to take care of the loose ends
first.

He continued
to walk with renewed purpose.

The sound of
an engine drifted towards him on the breeze, a car approached from
in front, it had the unmistakable shape of an unmarked police car.
Martin ducked into the small bush to his left and crouched
down.

The car
slowed but did not stop, the driver looking down at something on
the seat, a driver with a heavily tattooed face and dreadlocked
hair.

Martin watched
the car disappear the way he had walked from, wondering why Baz
Ropata would be driving a police car.

"The sample
has been sent up to Christchurch for the priority casework team to
analyse" Grant said looking at his watch. "It should almost be
there by now; we managed to get someone on a plane with it last
minute".

"Good", Brian
replied, "The last thing we need is delays, the quicker we get the
evidence, the quicker we can go through the gate at the pad, we
need to stop this before anyone else gets killed".

"Let's just
hope it belongs to Joseph Kingi and not an unknown who hasn't got a
sample on our DNA database", Becky said, hanging up the phone she
was using. "I have the team leader's word that once the sample
arrives they will get on to it. Unfortunately, he said that it
would take a while, there are five processes they need to complete
to obtain the profile from the sample and they each take time.
That's even before they can analyse the result then match it to a
sample on the database."

"Not like CSI
then is it", Grant said.

"They will
work around the clock on this one but his best case scenario was
later tonight if not tomorrow". Becky said

The
office went quiet, each of them contemplating the news, positive
that it was that they had a DNA sample; processes would slow them
down again. Investigations in the real world were slow painstaking
processes that took time and a lot of labour. It involved the
gathering and collating of information, no matter how small, to
build a picture of the crime that would hopefully point very
clearly at whom was responsible.

DNA was just
the start, a small but vital piece in the puzzle, somewhere to
start, a reason to ask someone to account for why it was present at
the scene and in this case on a corpse.

"Let's just
hope Mike comes back with something from his visit, or John and Jo
turn something up with the door to door enquiries. It may give us a
head start", Brian said.

"Has anyone
heard from them this morning?” Becky queried.

Both Brain and
Grant shook their heads.

"It will be
lunchtime soon, John wouldn't miss that", Grant said smiling, "He's
probably taking his time, giving Jo the benefit of his experience;
he never misses a chance that man. I'll give it a couple of hours
then give John a call; I wouldn't want to cramp his style".

"In the mean
time we can get on with cataloguing all these exhibits", Brian
said, indicating the large pile of items stacked inside evidence
bags which were placed against one wall. Bags that contained
everything that the two corpses had on them at the time of their
demise that were not required for forensic testing.