Bound, page 8
‘Perhaps his involvement is relatively new,’ I said. ‘Astrid Allen had only been working for Henderson for eight months or so. You could check with Blair Harvey-Boyd if the visits had been going on for longer than that.’
‘People in that industry are naturally suspicious of newcomers, and from your description of what Astrid said, they had been on pretty friendly terms.’
‘Can’t have been that friendly – one of them is dead.’
‘True. I guess that’s a pretty obvious sign you’re no longer popular. Perhaps he became a risk, or did something to offend them, which I’m certain wouldn’t be difficult to do. It would be a bit like living with a pit bull, or your mother. You never know when they’re going to turn and rip your throat out.’
I pretended indignation at the aspersions he cast on my mother, but couldn’t keep it up, because they were true. The comment did cause a little pang though. After this, we were heading on down to the hospital to visit Dad. Paul sensed the change and gave me a pat on the knee.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘That’s okay, and anyway, you’re absolutely right, on both counts. There is an element of danger in dealing with these kinds of men that I’m sure John Henderson would have been aware of. I just wish we knew how deep that connection went.’
‘Well, it’s our job to find out.’
24
The extras were filing into our squadroom for the morning’s briefing. Smithy limped past me on the way to his desk. He was moving slowly, even for him, and his face was looking a bit pale.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Just the old war wounds giving me gyp today.’ He made a half-hearted attempt at a smile. The shadows of his craggy face contrasted with the pallor of his skin, making him look at least ten years older. Courtesy of the potshots taken at him by the minions of Fat Bastard Powell, Smithy had a nice, new artificial kneecap and a seriously munted shoulder. The patch-up job on both injuries hadn’t returned him to one hundred per cent fitness, or anything even near it.
‘You know, you can stay at home if it’s that bad. The last thing we need is a flaming hero pretending to be stoic.’ Why was it guys seemed to go to extremes when it came to illness or injury? Either they were complete wimps, like when they got man flu, or they soldiered on regardless of the fact they were bleeding internally, missing a limb, or had an axe sticking out of the back of their head.
‘Never give in, never surrender,’ he whispered as DI Johns entered the room.
It amazed me how the entrance of DI Johns could silence a room and ratchet up the tension. I imagined Darth Vader had a similar effect when he arrived somewhere. I half expected someone to start clutching their throat, wrestling with the invisible vice grip. I had to suppress a chortle when he strode to the centre of the room and spun around theatrically. All he needed was the cape. Unfortunately that thought arrived just as he turned to look at me, and it must have manifested on my face.
‘What’s so funny, Detective Shephard?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ I said. All eyes turned to me. ‘Just something I had been talking about with Detective Smith.’
His eyes flicked to Smithy, who just shrugged.
Bugger. I cursed myself for sticking my head above radar level. Paul gave me a cross-eyed look from the other side of the room and I almost laughed again.
‘Right,’ said the DI. ‘Down to business. Best news of the day: we have confirmation from ESR that the blood found on the gloves and protective clothing recovered from the wheelie bin at Seacliff was of the same type as that of John Henderson. The same blood type and antigens, so as close as we can get until the DNA test results come in.’ A collective murmur rippled around the room. I couldn’t help but turn and look at Smithy, and neither could half the squad. This time he was sporting a proper smile. ‘Likewise, the blood found on the shotgun recovered from the culvert on Coast Road was also confirmed to be the same type as that of John Henderson. The fingerprint and blood evidence is conclusive enough to keep the lawyers happy.’
He held his hand up to quieten the room. ‘When we have the required warrant we will be sending out a party to arrest Gideon Powell and Jacob Sandhurst for the murder of John Henderson. I have requested that the Armed Offenders Squad back us up for this as we all know what these men are capable of. We will be making an arrest in this case, but…’ he paused for effect; ‘…this is not the time to get complacent. We still have plenty of work to do. We need to gather further supporting evidence of their involvement in the murder for their day in court. We can assume they will plead “not guilty”. At this point we have compelling forensic evidence, but we need to establish the whys. The biggest hole we have is motive. We know Henderson had some dealings with Powell and Sandhurst, but we do not know their exact nature. All of you will be aware what is at stake here. In the past we have thought we had Powell nailed, only to have him slip away. He is well resourced and will have the best legal advice his money can afford.’ He turned his head to look at me. ‘Therefore, we cannot afford any mistakes.’ Naturally other people’s gazes followed suit.
I looked down at the floor. My little good-news high plummeted. What always made him pick me out for special attention when making comments like that? I had enough trouble being Miss Unpopular around here, without him adding to it. I had been bumped up the detective training ladder a few years back ahead of some police officers who thought they were more deserving. It hadn’t gone down too well. Was Dickhead Johns ever going to let me forget it? Probably not. The man sure as hell knew how to hold a grudge. It also appeared he’d taken it upon himself to be chairman of the Anti-Sam Uncharitable Trust.
‘We want to see these men behind bars, where they belong, and for a very long time. I am aware one or two here have a very personal stake in this.’ I sensed Smithy tense up. ‘So don’t take offence if you are excluded from elements of the investigation. We have to get this right.’ Okay, that was different, he was on a charm offensive, then. He never apologised in advance, which could only mean one thing. I was going to get the shit jobs again.
25
‘You can’t take it personally, Smithy.’
‘That’s great coming from you,’ he said.
Considering how much I’d been pouting, he had a point. Smithy had been left out of the arrest party. As a matter of fact, we’d both been sidelined by DI Johns. Perhaps he was worried Smithy’s elbow might just come into contact with the suspects’ faces and my pepper spray might accidentally deploy. Whatever his reasoning, even I had to admit there may have been a rather enormous conflict of interest on Smithy’s part, and – just for a change – I’d drawn the short straw and had to babysit him.
‘Hey, you were warned, remember. Surely you can’t say you’re surprised?’
He muttered something very rude about the parentage of the DI that I couldn’t argue with. But I suspected that what grated the most for him was that Paul had been included. His whole Paul-hating routine was starting to get a bit tired.
We had pulled up outside the house of some two-bit thug who had poked his head above radar level by allegedly – God I hated that politically correct, lawyer-pandering word – breaking into a pharmacy to steal pseudoephedrine, used for making P, aka Crystal Meth. Unfortunately for our rocket scientist here, he’d hit two problems. Firstly, security systems are there for a reason, and if you’re going to hit a business only five hundred metres from the alarm-monitoring centre, people are going to be on the scene pretty damn fast. And – probably more annoying for him – like most places, the pharmacy didn’t stock products containing pseudoephedrine anyway, because they were sick of their staff being hassled by druggie scum trying to acquire it, and sick of having dumb-nuts smash their windows to get to it. So he got caught for nothing. Real bright. He was, by all accounts, trying to wiggle into the drug scene, although from outside the gangs. More by luck than design, he hadn’t actually done anything to end up in clink for the past few years. That was about to change shortly, courtesy of his latest display of poor job planning.
For the purposes of DI Johns’ current agenda, we’d been loaned to the drug squad for the morning. Whoop-de-doo.
‘Why are we here again?’ Smithy asked.
‘Because the Dickhead hates us,’ I replied.
‘Oh, that’s right. Thanks for reminding me.’
The moment we stepped onto the property, some scungy-looking, underfed excuse for a dog came charging around the corner. It looked like the usual pit bull-Staffordshire terrier cross kept by people who wanted a friendly family pet but with an intimidation factor and a mad-as-a-meat-axe mentality. It came bounding up to Smithy, snarling and barking, saliva dripping off of its canines. I hovered back by the gate, figuring out where I was going to run. Smithy looked unmoved and responded by giving it a swift kick right on the chest bone. The thing yelped and scuttled back around the house. So much for the big scary guard dog.
The house was your classic wooden state house, the two-storeyed type they generously described as an English bungalow. The lawns had been mowed recently, well within the last few months, because the grass under the festering car body was a foot tall, as opposed to the rest of the place where it was only three or four inches high. There was some washing on the line, hanging limp. It was one of those Dunedin days where the laundry would be as wet when you brought it in as it was when you hung it out.
Smithy strode up and banged on the front door. He chose the frosted-glass panel that wasn’t already cracked.
The figure that came to the door picked us for cops immediately. I could see his posture change from ‘yeah, what?’ to ‘what the fuck do you want?’. He was a very fit-looking man in his forties, as evidenced by the muscular body underneath the tight, white singlet top. He also wore blue jeans and boots, and with his clean-shaven face and slicked-back black hair, looked like a man who cared about his grooming. He was a cowboy minus the Stetson.
‘Jimmy Clarke?’
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘Detectives Smith and Shephard.’
His eyes narrowed and his lip curled up a fraction.
‘What do you want? I’ve already made my statement to the cops and got my court date. I’ve got nothing else to say.’
‘Oh, I would have thought that a guy with a court case looming and jail term inevitable would be a little more polite than that.’
Smithy was going in a bit hard. The guy hadn’t sworn at us yet, so I was thinking he’d been perfectly well mannered.
‘Well what do you want, then?’
‘We want to know what you can tell us about Mikey Chadwick’s activities?’
‘Who’s Mikey Chadwick when he’s at home?’
‘Who’s Mikey Chadwick? You’re funny. Now, don’t mess with me, you know bloody well who Mikey Chadwick is. Don’t even consider fucking me around.’
Jesus, Smithy was playing it tough. I was dying to give him a sideways look, but I didn’t dare. You never undermined your colleague’s authority by questioning their business practice. Well, not in front of the thugs, anyway.
‘Hey, there’s no need to speak to me like that, bro. Like I said, I have no idea who you are talking about.’
‘You’re lying. I don’t appreciate being lied to. So I’m going to ask you again, and if you aren’t going to cooperate, I’ll haul your sorry arse down to the station and then we’ll see how good your bloody memory is.’ Smithy had stepped forward and pretty much filled the doorway.
To his credit, Mr Muscles stood his ground, and stayed civil, although that was looking like it might well change.
‘Look, mate,’ he said, crossing his arms, ‘I know my rights, and you can’t just come around here and talk to me like that. So you get yourself off my property before I ring your superiors and complain about harassment, because this is not on. I do not know who Mikey Chadwick is. Good day, officers.’ With that he calmly swung the door closed, an inch from Smithy’s nose.
‘That fucking piece of shit,’ Smithy said, and banged his fist hard against the door frame. I saw a crack in the window pane snake a little further up the glass.
‘Smithy, come away.’ I pulled his arm, and it was a few seconds before he budged.
When I thought we were well out of earshot I said my piece. ‘What is wrong with you? There was no need to talk to him like that. Any chance we had of him talking went out the window when you went in hard.’
‘He knew damn well who Mikey Chadwick was.’
‘Probably, but you didn’t help matters any. You’re so grumpy.’ I looked at the sheen of sweat across his forehead and the ginger way he was walking. ‘If you’re that flaming sore, you should have stayed at home instead of coming in and taking it out on everyone. At least go take a pill or something.’
It was a very frosty drive back to the station.
26
It was a relief to get away from the walking storm cloud that was Smithy, even if it meant doing something I didn’t exactly relish. The Boss had sent me back along to the hospital to harangue our witness. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she hated the sight of me by now. Still, it was better than the alternative with grumpy-guts.
Jill Henderson was, to be honest, looking worse than the last time I’d visited. She’d had her shoulder surgery, which had gone well, and her bruises were starting to yellow and fade, but I couldn’t help but think she seemed more fragile than ever. The emotional wounds were taking their toll. I hoped the hospital had arranged some sort of counselling for her, because she looked like she needed it.
‘I’m sorry to be back here again with some more questions, Jill,’ I said, as I lowered myself onto the chair next to her bed. ‘But I can tell you we are making great progress on John’s case. In fact, they are making arrests as we speak.’
Her face brightened at the same time as two big tears tracked down her face. I reached behind the bouquet of flowers on her bedside table to the tissue box and passed it over to her.
‘Thank you, that’s great news,’ she said as she dabbed at her eyes, and then blew her nose.
‘I need to ask you a few questions about the men we are arresting.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
I could see her visibly steel herself for the questions and felt a momentary pang of guilt for putting her through this again, but in the long term the goal was to see justice done and to help her come to terms with the death of her husband.
‘Did you or John know of a Gideon Powell or a Jacob Sandhurst?’
I could see a frown dart across her face. ‘Are they the men you have arrested for John’s murder?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.
I nodded. ‘We need to figure out what their connection was with John. Had you met them before, or had John mentioned them?’
‘Their names seem familiar, but I don’t think I have met them. Perhaps John had talked about them. Were they something to do with his business?’ She shook her head, and looked even more miserable, if that was possible. ‘I’m not entirely sure. I’m sorry, I’m not much help to you, am I?’ She started quietly weeping again. I seemed to specialise in setting her off. I think I was as much over this whole questioning business as she was. Boy, those bastards had a lot to answer for. Them and Dickhead Johns.
‘Look, Jill, you’re doing fine. You’ve survived a horrendous experience, so don’t expect too much of yourself. Let me show you some pictures of them, see if it jogs your memory.’
If she was already crying, what was a bit more? I placed the pictures down on the tray table, next to her cup of tea. They weren’t particularly flattering shots – police mugshots never were. Like passport photos; no one ever smiled in mugshots. In fact, most of the time people were pretty much pissed off with requiring a new and special portrait. In this case, the sheer malevolence on their faces, combined with a good amount of five o’clock shadow, made the two men look like gangsters or terrorists – take your pick. She glanced at them, then looked quickly away, her eyes scrunching closed.
‘You recognise them?’ I asked
‘I have seen them before.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t be sure, just somewhere. I can’t think.’ Her voice cracked and she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the pictures. I could see watery rivulets wend their way below her fingers. I picked the photos up, slid them back into my folder and put the whole thing beneath the bed, out of her view.
‘I know this is really difficult for you, and I’m very sorry to have to keep asking you questions, but in order to ensure justice for John and for you we need information, as much information as we can get. Can you recall where you might have seen these men? And when? Was it at your home, at John’s work, socially?’
She looked back around at me, her face haggard, eyes puffy and red. She looked like she’d aged ten years in the last few days. ‘It must have been at John’s work. They haven’t been to the house, I’m sure of that. I’d remember if they had. I don’t think we would have been out anywhere socially with them, not with men who could do a thing like that.’
She had no idea exactly what kind of men they were. If she had known she would have been appalled to think her husband had anything to do with them. But the fact remained that he did; he was doing some kind of business with them and it got him killed, and almost killed his wife. I just wished I knew what it was.
27
Paul strode into the office and threw his keys at his desk. It wasn’t an underarm toss, it was a full-throttle, overarm pitch. The sharp clatter of metal on wood jolted all my senses. The keys ricocheted off the surface and then continued on their journey through the air and to the floor, via a big clunk against the wall. He’d got our attention. Smithy stared at where the keys landed, then slowly turned his gaze to the source.
‘That was real grown-up. I take it things didn’t go well?’ I said.
