Bound, page 20
Angela Powell had dropped her laptop in to me first thing that morning. I now stood at the doors of Dunedin North Station, the home of the Electronic Crime Lab. I took a deep breath and walked in. This was going to be my first big test, my first real chance to gauge the feel of public sentiment.
Craig Todd, or Toddy as he was known by the guys – or Hot Toddy as he was known by the girls – was one of the resident computer nerds. He was also the one who I hoped would be able to prove beyond doubt that Gideon Powell was in fact home, bidding up a storm on Free Market the night that John Henderson had been killed, and couldn’t possibly have been out at Seacliff. And if he couldn’t have been there, then it was highly likely that Jacob Sandhurst hadn’t been there either.
I handed over the computer to him and signed the evidence form.
‘So what am I expected to do with this?’ he asked.
‘I need a time log of all the transactions, websites visited, anything at all that says when this computer was used by Gideon Powell.’
‘The cop killer?’
‘Alleged.’ It wasn’t looking good.
‘The one who committed the Seacliff murder?’
‘Allegedly.’ I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be voluntarily using that dreaded word. He looked at me as if appraising something.
‘Is that all you want done? You realise I’ll have to take a good look through everything else too, all the other files and emails,’ he said. To look for evidence to disprove my theory. I supposed it was his job to be thorough.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Do whatever you have to.’
‘And you do realise, even if I produce a timeline that shows it was in use at the time John Henderson was murdered, it only proves that someone used this computer, not Gideon Powell. It could have been his wife, or his kids, a visitor, anyone.’
‘I know that. But I have an affidavit from his wife to say he was using it, and I hope the types of sites looked at would suggest his likes and preferences. I’m hoping Free Market was logged on with his personal ID. The computer has been dusted for his fingerprints. I can’t do much more than that.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, like he was having a good think about it. ‘I’ll see what I can do. There are other things that are first in line though, so it probably won’t be ready till next week.’
‘That’s okay. It’s not urgent.’ And it wasn’t – the dead didn’t have deadlines. ‘I really appreciate your help.’
He looked down at me. A little smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘Did you really pull DI Johns up in front of everyone, over at Central? Call him a bastard to his face?’
News travelled fast. Sometimes I thought the police force was a bigger gossip generator than Aunt Aggie’s knitting circle. Facebook schmacebook, word of mouth ruled.
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘In that case, I’ll have this ready for you by tomorrow.’
64
The air had changed somehow. It wasn’t to do with Dad. He was still the same. Same frown, same little groaning noises. If I had to pinpoint something different about him, though, it would perhaps be that he looked smaller than ever. No, the real change was with Mum. Sheryl had gone home to spend a bit of time with her kids. She and Steve were due back tomorrow morning. Mike had been in and out – he couldn’t stand to just sit and wait – but still, I think his presence had been steadying. Also, I think the extra time alone with Dad had done Mum good. She seemed somehow calmer, less fragile. Perhaps she was coming to terms with this.
‘How are you, Mum?’ I asked after giving her a quick hug.
‘I’m okay. How are you?’ I couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked me that. The answer was way too complex to even consider delivering honestly.
‘I’m fine. Just tired. Work is insane.’
I realised as the words slipped out of my mouth that I had left myself open for a major pinging, and braced myself in anticipation. Much to my surprise, however, it didn’t come. Instead we sat in semi-companionable silence. A silence that was punctuated by Dad’s groans. I could sense Mum flinching with each one.
‘I hope so much that he’s unaware of all this, that he feels nothing. The doctors tell me he can’t, but still,’ Mum said. ‘Because honestly, if he was, he’d be lying there wishing someone would put a bullet between his eyes.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But the simple fact is that they are doing everything they can to make him comfortable. We just have to wait, and it sucks.’
‘You know, Sam,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘Your dad is very proud of you.’
I looked at her in amazement, and, to be honest, confusion. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d given me anything even remotely resembling approval. It was so unexpected I held my breath, waiting for the catch. But it didn’t come.
‘You think so?’ I asked, my voice volume dropping to match hers.
‘I know so,’ she said. ‘He understands why you haven’t been here.’ He understood? Or she understood? That would be typical of Mum, never one to admit outright what she was feeling. But all the same, it was an olive branch, and I clutched at it.
‘Thank you,’ I said, a lump forming in my throat.
‘You should go, go and do what you do best.’
65
I loved Dunedin. How many cities in the world boasted the offer to walk, or, in my case, run, pretty much from one side to the other through a greenbelt of trees? And it wasn’t just the trees, their texture and colour, shape and form, and that wonderful damp, earthy smell of humus that came from the bush that made it special. It wasn’t only the shush and rustle of leaves being caressed by the breeze that sang to my senses. Or the little glimpses you got of the harbour and the ocean. Most of all, I loved the birdsong. From the operatic notes of the bellbirds, the two-tone cries of the tui, to the titters of the pīwakawaka. It made the bush come to life. Just to prove the point, my body ducked instinctively at the low whoosh, whoosh of a kerurū lumbering overhead. I was running along the path that threaded between Maori Road and Serpentine Avenue. When I got to the bottom, I’d just head where my feet took me. I didn’t really care where they went as long as their cadence numbed my hyperactive emotional state into some semblance of manageability. I also hoped the fresh air would clear my headache. So far it wasn’t quite working.
My thoughts turned back to work. Maybe work could blot out the mental image of my father fading away before my eyes, and maybe work could overshadow the enormity of that other development I couldn’t quite bring myself to face head on. Work was a balm, albeit a gritty one. I always found running and the thrum of feet on road helped to corral my thoughts, allow my subconscious to process the mass of information we gathered in a case, from the minutiae to the monstrous. It seemed to help solidify the connections, make the pieces relate, weave the threads to create a pattern, a picture.
My memory pulled up the images I’d been looking at this afternoon. I’d been going over the cellphone video Declan had taken at the house before the police arrived. My head still found it hard to accept there was a generation of kids out there who were so au fait with technology and communication they would actually think to record an event like this on a cellphone. But I supposed there was many a YouTube clip that originated from that very fact. It was a new kind of voyeurism and a type of sharing that would never have occurred to me. Look, I saw these girls having a fight at school so I filmed it and I’ll stick it on YouTube. Or, Here’s a photo of so-and-so Hollywood starlet getting out of a car with no knickers on, I’ll share it on Facebook. Well, actually, they’d probably sell that one to the highest, grubbiest bidder and make their fortune. But it was a similar thing. Mind you, I didn’t think that was Declan’s motive. I think he was being damn smart and realised every little thing counted towards finding who did this god-awful thing to his family. Little did he know I had been looking at his pictures and thinking they were perhaps evidence to get two of the biggest scumbags in the country off the hook for killing his father and just falling short of killing his mother. In fact, he’d probably be mortified.
But the simple fact was, no matter how despicable and unlikable they were, Fat Bastard Powell and The Cockroach deserved justice as much as anyone else. Someone had set them up right and proper. Trouble was, I was having a hell of a job convincing anyone else; and ultimately the only way to convince them would be to front up with the real killers.
What was puzzling me the most right now was the real murderers’ treatment of Jill Henderson. She’d been up making a cup of tea when the intruders came door knocking. I recalled the crime-scene photos of two forlorn-looking mugs with the tea bags still stewing in them. They let her live, so clearly they felt she wouldn’t be able to identify them; yet they didn’t speak at all, so they felt there was some possibility that she might. So did they know her, or didn’t they? What got me was why they would have tied her to a chair and left her there, forced to look at her dead husband? If they were ruthless enough to blow a man’s head off, why didn’t they just kill her? Some form of conscience? I doubted it, and what they did damn near killed her anyway. Why didn’t they just hog-tie her and leave her in the kitchen where she’d been assaulted? It would have been far easier.
The other thing that troubled me was why they bothered using rope. Jill had been gagged with wide electrical tape and tied with nylon rope, both of which the killers brought along with them. And, according to the techie guys, they’d bought new stuff for the occasion: they’d started a new roll of tape, and one of the rope ends was the sealed end. It was very much a planned attack. If it was me doing the home invasion thing I’d be bringing along as little as possible. I’d have used tape for the whole lot. A lot simpler and less chance of buggering it up.
My foot slipped on a wet section of moss and I teetered a bit before regaining my balance.
Jill’s legs had been tied individually to the chair legs so she couldn’t try and shuffle herself anywhere. God I hoped she’d given them a good kick where it hurt while they were doing it. Her hands had been tied together around the chair back so she was pretty much immobilised. With her mouth taped shut it was really quite Hollywood, the stereotypical damsel in distress tied to the chair. I wondered if the perpetrators had a thing for old movies, a flair for the dramatic. But why did they want her to look at what they had done? What message were they sending?
I came to a halt, figuratively and literally, standing in the middle of the path, panting, sucking in great mouthfuls of air. Where was my mind going with this?
It swirled and circled but kept coming back to one image. Jill.
Had we been looking at this from the wrong angle? Thinking that John Henderson had been killed because of something he’d done. What if it was his wife who the killers were really targeting? What if they were sending her a message? A particularly nasty message.
Jill had been an utter mess since John’s murder, which was perfectly understandable, given the circumstances. But time was supposed to heal and she seemed to be getting worse, not better. Was this because she was scared? Was she being blackmailed, or threatened? Or worse, was someone else she loved being threatened? Declan?
It was time for us to have a serious chat.
66
The Chinese Scholar’s Garden was an odd little oasis in the city. When they built it the whole thing seemed completely out of place and superfluous to me, an extravagance on the part of the few. But despite that, it was a place I visited often; I had even bought an annual pass. Maybe it was a hark back to youthful martial arts days, or the result of too many wet winter afternoons watching old David Carradine Kung Fu programmes on TV. Whatever the reason, it appealed on some profound level, every part of it. From the hand-pieced Chinese buildings to the fish undulating in the water, to the trees and plants, to the mountain of rocks, I felt oddly earthed here.
Today I was strolling along the zigzag bridge towards the little pavilion in the middle of the lake. Ahead of me were the stooped shoulders of Jill Henderson. We sat down on the seats and shared a few moments of silence.
‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ I said, at last. If there was any basis to my suspicions and someone was keeping an eye on her, then I didn’t think they’d be concerned by her taking a leisurely stroll around a garden with a friend. In an attempt at a disguise I’d worn a hat and brought along Maggie’s camera, to take a few snaps of the exquisite latticed-wood buildings. It was about as close to deep cover as I got. Considering my recent brush with the media, I hoped it would work.
‘That’s okay. It’s nice to get some fresh air.’
It seemed to have put some colour into her face, but she still looked haggard and tired. The way her clothes now hung was a testament to the kilos she’d lost since this all happened. I got the feeling eating hadn’t been a priority.
How was I going to pitch this one? With my usual subtlety?
‘Jill, has someone been threatening you?’
To say she looked surprised would be to understate it. She had a worse poker face than I did, which was quite an achievement.
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
‘I need to know if someone has been threatening you.’
‘Why would you think that?’ Why indeed.
I struggled with the words. ‘You know we are working hard to find John’s killers, but some things are just not making sense.’
‘But I thought you had found John’s killers, that it was those men, the ones who died. You told me you had warrants out for them, that they were the men you were looking for, that they were the ones who attacked us … that they killed John.’
God, she made me feel guilty for even suggesting there had been a different story behind that night.
‘Yes, well, that’s what we thought. All the evidence pointed to those men, but we are starting to have our doubts.’ That wasn’t entirely accurate. I was having my doubts. My colleagues had no such misgivings, but at this stage I wanted to instil confidence in Jill, not mistrust, so I’d resorted to using the royal ‘we’.
‘But how could that be?’
‘We are beginning to wonder if it was an elaborate setup, that someone wanted us to think it was Gideon Powell and Jacob Sandhurst who killed John. They were men who had a lot of enemies.’
‘But who, then?’
‘If we could answer that, we’d have this all solved. It’s not that straightforward. Whoever they were, they went to a lot of trouble to hide themselves, and they may have even gone on to kill Powell. We don’t know for sure. But they must have had some close connection with the men they set up, or else why would they bother going to so much trouble? And we still think they must have had something to do with John, because, as you know, John was involved in some pretty serious things.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’
‘But what has troubled me most is the way they treated you.’ She looked at me, a fresh frown barely discernible among the new creases that now seemed permanently etched on her forehead. ‘The way they tied you up and left you like that, to look at John, it’s as if they were sending someone a message.’ I let it hang in the air for a moment. ‘And I think that message was directed at you.’
She looked away, but not before I noticed the wide-eyed look of shock on her face. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘What I’m asking is: do you know of any reason why someone would have killed John to get at you?’ I could think of a few classic reasons. Spurned jealous lover, her own illegal enterprises, or an opportunistic blackmailer. Stranger things had happened.
She swung her head back then, and she looked up at the rafters above, hurt and confusion on her face. ‘You think his death might have been my fault? Because of something I might have done?’ She clapped her hand across her mouth and started to sob.
‘Of course not.’ This wasn’t going the way I had planned, my questions kept coming out all wrong, and I seemed to be making things worse, not better. ‘I’m sorry that this is causing you more pain. I only ask because the case is making less and less sense and I have to look at every possibility, no matter how strange. Jill, believe me when I say I’m only wanting to do what’s best for you and Declan here. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, ‘you’re only trying to help.’
‘So honestly, has anyone been blackmailing you, making demands for money or personal threats? Or has anyone threatened Declan?’
‘No, there’s been nothing.’ The way she said it, haunted almost, made me almost believe her. I wasn’t entirely convinced, though. Perhaps it was yet to come? Perhaps they were waiting until the dust had settled and the police had lost interest. There was still the alternative question.
‘And there’s nothing you have been involved with? Something you haven’t told me about? You don’t need to be afraid of repercussions if there’s anything you’ve gotten yourself into that isn’t quite legal. We’re interested in the big picture here.’
I didn’t know how to read the look on her face. Was she about to admit to something?
‘I’m overdue on paying a parking ticket,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile. It gave me a glimpse of the beautiful woman she had been before all of this took its toll. I laughed, glad for the break in intensity.
‘Last I heard, Dunedin City Council don’t send out the hit squad for late fines.’ If they did, my recidivist late-library-book habit would have made me toast.
She lapsed back into her serious demeanour. ‘I was always very careful to keep out of John’s extra business things. I was brought up very straight and narrow, very black and white. I still am. I was always afraid that something he did would hurt us somehow, and when it happened it would be like all my worst fears had come true. I thought it was all to do with John; it never occurred to me it could have been otherwise. Honestly, I can’t think of anything I could have done that would have caused this.’
