My Brother's Keeper

Chapter 18



TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2012

There is a perfect loop along Jervois Road, down the steps past the scout hall into Cox’s Bay, through the park and then up Richmond Road into Ponsonby Road and back along the home straight to Three Lamps. I reckoned I could run it in forty minutes. Not that, strictly speaking — or any other way of speaking, in fact — I could call what I do running. With my technique and fitness level it would better be described as an out of sync slow lurch. When I was a kid living in Herne Bay I dawdled this loop on my way home from school, greeting all the resident animals on the way. Those long walks home were the forever of my childhood. Niki was with me, of course. Niki was always with me — she still is. What I had told Sunny was true; I had loved my little sister right from the start. Even though her birth heralded the death of my mother — our mother — I’d loved Niki right to the end. Dad had never been a major figure in my life before her death and he became even less of one after Mum died. It seemed to me he set about replacing her with a series of good-time women, none of who were interested in taking the time to win over a couple of needy motherless girls. No doubt I’m being unfair. No doubt I made it difficult for them. I let the memory of those walks home with Niki drift away. I’m careful with memories of Niki. I don’t want to wear them out with overuse. I take them out like treasures, touch them gently with the tips of my consciousness, then wrap them in tissue and put them away again.

I don’t run often enough to learn the tricks seasoned runners have been taught that enable them to keep going, but even with my stop and start method, it still works for dissipating nerves. After twenty minutes or so, red-faced and panting, it’ll even quieten, if not completely mute my chattering inner voice. Personality disorders that include voices must be the pits. I have trouble enough with my so-called normal mental narration. Plugging into music helps to both quieten that chattering brain talk and to help keep me moving.

By the time I’d tried to get hold of Fanshaw, failed, left a message, lost my key, found my key, lost my phone, found my phone, opened the fridge door several times to eye up that bottle of wine, admonished myself and closed the fridge door an equal number of times and then finally changed into my running gear, it was coming up to eight-thirty when I left Norma’s place and started on my run. The traffic had thinned out again after rush hour on the Jervois Road stretch, leading to the harbour bridge on-ramp. I plugged in my headphones and started at little more than a walk while I warmed up, and k.d. lang singing ‘A Case of You’ was well under way by the time I passed the street Justin and Sunny lived on. About an hour had passed since I’d left the message for Fanshaw. I glanced along the street, half expecting to see police cars parked outside the house, but all was quiet. No cops; in fact, no people at all. All those big empty mansions; in the wealthy suburbs no one is ever home.

The steps leading down to Cox’s Bay were slimy and I had to watch my footing. A spring dusk was looming and the temperature would drop dramatically as soon as the sun dipped behind the hills. The tide was well out in Cox’s Bay, leaving nothing more than a shimmering snake of water to reflect the last of the blue sky. The beached yachts tipped sideways in the mud exposed their rudders like sea lions displaying rotund underbellies to their harem. A heron high-stepped through the mud, pausing occasionally to prod the glutinous swamp, but it was just going through the motions, unconvinced. It would have to wait for the tide to turn to deliver up a quivering morsel. By the time I crossed the road into Cox’s Bay Reserve a heavy purple cloud hovered directly above me. Like a cartoon depression cloud, it followed me through the park. I’d got my second wind slowing for the traffic on West End Road and ran easily now past kids playing soccer, a young boy checking the paw of his muddied terrier. The Dusty Springfield song ‘The Look of Love’ started up at the exact moment the terrier held up its paw and turned a beseeching look on its young owner. The appropriateness of the song and the pathetic look from the canine made me laugh out loud. The emptied culvert waited patiently for the tide to return, mangroves on tiptoes, roots exposed. The soft warm breeze accompanied by the scatter of leaves above was a reminder that summer was close by. Such a time of promise is spring. It was all beautiful in the way a previously ordinary place and time can suddenly seem to have meaning; can seem to be packed full of fragile life. Maybe it was the endorphins kicking in from the run. As I hit the boardwalk leading through the mangrove swamp I caught sight of a small plane banking into the curdled rain clouds, its tilted wing catching the last of the day’s slanting sunlight. The voice in my head was drowned by the music and the harsh sound of my laboured breathing. I’d reached that stage of exhaustion when I was thinking about nothing; aware of the pain and exhilaration, conscious of the way the light hit the wing of the titling plane as it circled above, my thoughts freewheeling with it as I left the last of the light and dropped into the dense shadows of the manuka scrub, canopied over the mangroves. The walkway had been built on stilts to accommodate the stinky swamp below and the breathing tide. It vibrated and shuddered with each pounding footstep. A white-faced heron prodded optimistically around the mangrove roots. Coldplay’s melancholic ‘Fix You’ was filling my head as I neared the bridge at the Richmond Road park end of the walkway. A red jacket hung on the bridge pole. Someone must have come across it and hung it there for the owner to find. Under the bridge, the deserting tide had exposed a rusting supermarket trolley, drowning in the mud.

Someone grabbed at my shoulder. I hadn’t heard or sensed anyone. I tried to pull away but the shock of it made me twist awkwardly. I tripped and fell heavily onto the bridge pole. It knocked the air completely out of me and I went straight down onto my knees, dragging the red jacket with me. The thin sound of vocals reached me from the headphones, dangling in the blood, blooming warm and sticky around my kneecap. A menacing form loomed over me but all that mattered was getting air into my lungs. It was like they’d been squeezed tightly closed and held there, unable to re-inflate. Bright sparks drifted in front of my eyes. The pain in my solar plexus was excruciating. Anatomy was never my best subject but it felt like I’d ruptured one of those soft, red bloody organs I’d never quite got my head around the purpose of — spleen? Liver? Gall bladder? Whichever it was, I was about to find out if it was possible to survive a ruptured one. One little gasp in … and out. Better. Another one in … out. The sparkly stars were disappearing. My assailant was leaning over me, yelling. Justin. It was Justin. I made a desperate grab for my phone but he kicked it out of reach and it skidded along the planks of the bridge. Only now did I realise he’d been yelling at me the whole time, spit flying.

‘F*cking bitch! You had no f*cking right to see her without my permission!’ The pain was receding enough for me to know I was in big trouble. Justin’s eyes were red, his skin mottled, his breathing almost as ragged as mine. ‘You think you can just do what you like? She’s my daughter, you hear me? My daughter. And you will stay the f*ck away from her! You hear me?’

There wasn’t enough air in my lungs to say anything. The boardwalk was empty. The park at the far side of the bridge was in darkness. No park lights. Night had suddenly fallen. Where the hell was everyone?



‘F*cking bitch!’ he repeated, unnecessarily, I thought.

He’d run out of things to yell at me and I could see the heat in him was cooling. That made him all the more dangerous. Slowly, carefully, I repositioned my body against the railing. Blood dribbled down my shin, pooled in my sneaker.

‘Take it easy, Justin,’ I said and raised my hand in a peace-making gesture. It was a mistake.

‘Don’t f*cking tell me what to do! I tell you what to do. And I tell you to stay the f*ck away from my kids.’

‘Okay, okay, I get it.’ His teeth were bared in a strange animal expression. ‘I heard you,’ I said, using the bridge railing to pull myself to my feet. My knee stung like a bugger as the leg straightened. My sweat pants were ripped, my hands and jaw slimy with mud.

‘You don’t tell me anything, you hear me? You stay away from Sunny or else.’ He walked a couple of steps away from me, hands pumping.

Unexpectedly, anger flooded through me like a much-needed shot of whisky. ‘Is this what happened with Karen? Is this what you did to her? I know you killed her, Justin.’

He stopped and turned to face me, his fists clenched. It should have been enough to shut me up.

‘You flew to Wellington Friday night. You went to Karen’s house and you killed her.’ He took a step towards me. ‘It’s too late to shut me up, Justin. The cops already know. I told them.’ He opened his mouth and closed it again. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘You knew Karen wouldn’t show on Saturday. You knew she was dead. But you let Sunny think she was going to meet her mother. You put Sunny through that.’



He looked at me for a long time and then slowly shook his head. ‘You stay away from her.’ And with that he turned and walked off into the park. I watched his back until he disappeared into the darkness of the trees, then I knelt and scrabbled around for my phone. The screen was shattered and there was no light behind it but I held down the on button and waited, hoping it would come back to life. To calm myself I listed all the rubbish below the bridge: red ballpoint pen, lime-green ice cream wrapper, bottle without its label, plastic milk cartoon, blue bottle cap, inner sole of a sneaker, dog collar. Right now, bloody, ripped and broken, I felt I was just one more object among all this discarded human waste. Life’s like that. One minute it’s all beautiful — the dog with the beseeching look being attended to by its young owner, the sunlight reflecting on the tilting wing of the plane, the poignant spring breeze — then the next minute some bastard attacks you and suddenly all you can see is the rubbish.

F*ck him.

I did my best to swipe the mud off my grazed palms and peeled back the ripped trackies to check out the cut in my knee. I’d live. The unnamed internal organ still reminded me it was there and hurting, and there was a loud ringing in my ears that I was pretty sure, though wouldn’t swear, wasn’t a police siren, announcing the arrival of the cavalry. I dragged myself off the bridge into the park and kept up a speedy limp until I was out of the gloom of the trees and onto the safety of Richmond Road. Once more in the comfort of traffic and people, I perched my arse on the fence and did my best to wipe the shattered phone clean. Blood poured from my knee and though the enigmatic organ probably wasn’t ruptured after all, it was definitely bruised. Or whatever the equivalent of bruised is for an internal organ. I’d have to ask Smithy one day. The screen of my phone was cobwebbed with shattered glass, a pathetic visual reminder that there was no one in Auckland I could think of to call for help. I was still staring at it and feeling mighty sorry for myself when it rang. I didn’t recognise the number. Tentatively, I held the shattered glass to my ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Diane? It’s Inspector Aaron Fanshaw.’ I immediately teared up with a ridiculous surge of relief. It was short-lived.

‘Do you know what police officers do, Diane?’ I took a breath but he continued before I had a chance to answer. ‘They investigate and, sometimes when they’re left to do their work un-interfered with, they solve crimes. That’s their job. Some even call it their profession. In short, it’s what we do.’ If tears could harden, mine would have. ‘I know you have done some work for the police department and I know you’re involved with police on a personal basis, but you are a civilian.’ Right now I was feeling more like a wounded pit bull, but I bit my tongue, rolled my eyes and heard him out. ‘Listen to me, Diane. I don’t want you interfering in this case any more than you already have. You can take this as a formal warning.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I left a message for you with some information about Justin that is obviously relevant to the case. I didn’t go to bloody Campbell Live with it. That’s what civilians are meant to do, isn’t it? They pass on information to the police?’ There was no way now I was going to tell him what Justin had just done to me.



‘You told Sunny her mother had been killed.’ It was a statement, not a question. Shit. I knew this was going to come back to bite me in the arse.

‘I told Sunny that Karen was dead. I didn’t say she’d been killed.’ He wasn’t going to catch me out on it a second time. ‘Sunny rang me because she knew I had gone back to Wellington and would see Karen and I … I felt I had to tell her.’ I listened to his breathing.

‘You had no right to do that and you know it. Given your special relationship with police, I assumed you knew not to speak to anyone about Karen’s death or I would have formally warned you not to at the time.’

I was suitably chastened but with it went a feeling of righteousness. Special relationship indeed — prick. I don’t like being told off no matter how justified it is. He probably thought it was time for me to say I’m sorry. I didn’t say it.

‘You didn’t mention your phone call with Sunny during our talk at the station on Monday.’

‘Our talk, as you describe it, wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be,’ I responded, feeling ridiculously close to tears. The delayed shock and the cold were taking effect; I wasn’t sure if I was shaking or shivering, or both. I wanted to finish the call, go home and clean myself up, get some antiseptic onto my knee and spend some time feeling sorry for myself. I hadn’t done quite enough of that yet. ‘Okay, fine. I’m …’ I tried to say the sorry word but my mouth just wouldn’t do it. ‘I’m admonished.’ There was the distinct sound of a guffaw on the other end of the phone, which I ignored. ‘But I hope you’ll follow up on the information despite it having come from me.’ I heard the long sigh. No doubt I was meant to hear it.

‘We already know Justin saw Karen on Friday night.’ I stopped breathing. I think I even stopped shaking. ‘He went down to talk her out of meeting Sunny. He thought it would be bad for his daughter, that she was too young. He wanted Karen to wait a couple of years.’ The photo on the mantelpiece, it must have come from Justin. ‘He brought a photo of Sunny to give her.’ I wondered if I’d spoken aloud. ‘Bit of a peace offering, I think. He hoped it would hold her off for a while.’ Fanshaw’s tone had become downright chatty.

I risked a question. ‘How did you find this out?’

‘Like I said, it’s our job to investigate and solve crimes.’

I breathed through my teeth and tried counting to ten. By the time I got to six he relented, realising, I think, how prissy he sounded. ‘In this case it was easy. He told us.’

‘Justin told you this? When?’

‘He rang us as soon as he heard Karen was dead.’ Fanshaw jumped at the opportunity to remind me of my transgression. ‘Thanks to you, he heard that from his daughter on Saturday night. Ideally, we should have given him that information and been there to witness his response first hand.’

Of course he was right and I knew it. He definitely knew it, too. ‘Okay,’ I said defensively. ‘So he’s a suspect?’

‘Everyone connected to Karen is of interest to the enquiry.’ Meaning, he was including me in that everyone. ‘But we don’t believe Justin was responsible for his ex-wife’s death.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Because Justin returned home to Auckland on Friday night.’ I opened my mouth to speak but he answered my question before I had a chance to ask it. ‘We checked.’ I opened my mouth again. ‘Thoroughly,’ he answered. This guy was uncanny. I decided to keep my mouth shut. ‘As far as we’re concerned,’ he said, spelling it out for the thick but thankfully now silent person on the other end of the phone, ‘we have eliminated Justin from our enquiries.’

‘So it is a homicide?’ It wasn’t much but it was the only point I could score.

‘We are treating the death as suspicious, yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I have already informed the family of this so there’s no need for you to tell them.’

Touché.

Bastard.