All Over Bar the Shouting

28

All Over Bar The Shouting

    Jake knelt in the doorway with the limp figure in his arms. “Polly—God, Polly!”

    Polly opened her eyes, wincing. “I’m okay; got me in the arm. Feel a bit dizzy, Jake.”

    Her left arm was oozing blood, up near the shoulder.

    “All right, sweetheart—hang on.” He fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief and tied it tightly round the arm. Blood oozed through it immediately.

    “Take my scarf, Jake: make a tourniquet!” urged Miss Macdonald.

    A dripping, shuddering Roger and a white-faced but composed Mrs Banks had now reached the trio: Marjory Banks was offering a clean handkerchief as a pad for the wound…

    No-one was taking the least notice of Esmé. She looked at them in disbelief. That rotten, damned—yes, damned Jacob Carrano! He’d won again, hadn’t he? Tears of self-pity sprang to her eyes. So it had all been for nothing: everything she’d been through—and that old sot that she was condemned to live with—he’d never stuck up for her in his life! Gambling all their money away, getting in debt to that man! And then wanting to selling off the very last of what had come to her from her dear father!

    A sob rose in her throat. He didn’t care enough to see what she’d been going through—and all for him, to make a home for him, to keep them safe from the depredations of—of creatures like Don Banks and Jacob Carrano! And now: it was all for nothing—she’d missed: she might have known he’d dodge, he always did have the reactions of a—an eel... No, a snake; that’s what he was, a snake! A shudder shook her. And that slut that he thought he was going to marry—she thought she was smart, didn’t she? Throwing herself in front of him like that! Oh, very smart!

    The pistol wavered in her hand. Well, she’d show them! Then they’d be sorry! She raised the gun.

    “Esmé!” screamed Miss Macdonald.

    With another deafening roar the gun went off.

    Polly’s attendants swung round sharply, mouths agape, as the gun clattered onto the tiling and the figure with the shattered head collapsed heavily onto the pool surround, seemed to hang teetering on the brink for an endless moment, and splashed into the pool. A red stain began to spread in the turquoise water.

    Into the sudden silence came a roar of car engines, and a screech of brakes on the drive at the front of the house.

    “That’ll be the police!” said Miss Macdonald with a hysterical laugh. “Too late—as usual!” She burst into noisy tears.

    Several hours later Jake looked wearily at Roger, and ran a hand through his tousled curls.

    “Well—all over bar the shouting, eh?” He lowered himself heavily onto a black leather couch. “Where is everyone?”

    “Mrs Banks and Jack have gone home. She seemed okay, actually. I think he was more shaken than she was.”

    “Right. Whaddabout, uh, Mrs Whatsername?”

    “Mrs Wiseman?”

    “Yeah—and the kid.”

    “They’ve gone home; they just waited to see that Rod was going to be all right.”

    “He asleep?”

    “Yes.” –Poor Rod had thrown up painfully by the poolside; when he was a little better the damned police had insisted on taking his statement. A fat lot of good they’d turned out to be! Roger himself, what with the worry over Polly and sheer indignation at the inefficiency of the police, hadn’t had much time to think about the shattered thing that had been Esmé Jablonski—just as well, probably.

    Jake had been frantic over Polly when the bleeding refused to stop. He’d got the local doctor up—Polly’s doctor, but not his: he obviously didn’t trust the unfortunate man an inch, and the poor young G.P., a gangly, rather uncoordinated fellow in his early thirties, had got quite flustered. Polly, starting to look a little flushed, had refused point-blank to go to hospital; then Jake had refused to let the doctor give her any drugs...

    It was been, as Jack Banks had said mournfully into Roger’s ear at one stage, “a real shemozzle.” Roger couldn’t have agreed more. What with the police tramping all over the downstairs part of the house, refusing to let anybody go home until they’d taken their endless and quite obviously totally pointless statements...!

    Feeling irritably that he was the only sane person there—even old Violet Macdonald had had hysterics, and had had to be given a strong sedative by the young G.P. and put to bed—Roger himself had finally stood over Jake (crouching over Polly’s recumbent form on a sofa like a dog over a bone) and said: “Look here, Jake! Why on earth don’t you let that poor doctor get on with his job?”

    The bleeding at last seemed to have stopped; the young G.P.’s bandaging seemed to be doing the trick. Jake looked up with a sigh. “Where is he?”

    “Seeing to Miss Macdonald in one of your spare rooms.”

    “Oh.” He smiled sheepishly. “Don’t want Polly to have any drugs. She might be pregnant. Been seedy for days.”

    Polly opened her eyes and said faintly: “Might not, though.”

    Jake took her hand. “How do ya feel now, sweetheart?”

    “Hurts,” she mumbled, screwing up her face and closing her eyes again.

    “For Heaven’s sake,” Roger said weakly. “Let the doctor give her a painkiller, Jake!”

    “No,” said Polly, with her eyes shut. “Jake’s right: mustn’t take drugs, in case.”

    “You’d better tell the doctor. It is natural,” he added feebly.

    “Mm,” said Polly, still with her eyes shut. “Natural but dumb.”

    Jake made a face. “It does take two, will ya stop taking the blame? Ask Rog: it’s social brainwashing!”

    Roger blinked. “Er—well, yes, Polly, I think it is. Social conditioning, at any rate.”

    “Don’t,” she sighed.

    “Sorry,” he muttered, reddening.

    “Um, no, it’s all right: it’s just that Jill rang up last night and ear-bashed me on the same theme.”

    He cleared his throat. “I see. Well, painkillers or not, I think you ought to be in bed, if you won’t go to the hospital.”

    “Yes,” said a grim voice from the doorway. The young doctor came over to her and checked the bandage.

    “It’s not even bleeding, Bruce,” said Polly, suppressing a wince.

    “You ought to be in the hospital where I can keep an eye on you. But if you won’t, you won’t. Well, it does seem to have stopped bleeding, so if you think you can get her upstairs without jolting her too much, Mr Carrano—”

    “The bullet isn’t even in me, I can walk!” said Polly loudly.

    “Bullshit,” replied the G.P. calmly. “And what was that load of crap about painkillers? Are you pregnant?”

    “Dunno.”

    “You would know if you’d come to see me.”

    “I was coming!” she said angrily.

    “Is that what tomorrow’s appointment’s in aid of? Sheila didn’t have a note.”

    “She didn’t have a note because I didn’t want anyone from your flaming surgery to alert the Press to the possible imminence of a flaming Carrano heir!” retorted Polly crossly.

    “You’re right, you don’t need a hospital bed,” he replied drily. “Stop getting yourself worked up. You know bloody well none of us’d alert the Press.”

    “Sheila would’ve told her mum, and she’d have told Pauline, and she’d have told Ted.”

    “Uh—well, all right, maybe they would,” said Dr Smith in a very weak voice.

    “See?”

    “Can you lift her?” he said heavily to Jake.

    “Uh—sure.”

    “I can walk!”

    “Shut up,” he replied, scooping her up. “Is there anything you can give her?” he said to the doctor over her scowling head.

    “Not if she’s pregnant, no. Well, nice cup of herb tea?”

    Jake gave him a filthy look and stalked out with his scowling burden.

    Roger swallowed hard.

    “That’s life,” said the young doctor, giving him a very dry look.

    “Er—yes.”

    “You okay?’

    “I don’t know,” he admitted, suddenly sitting down.

    “Reaction.” They were in the big room that gave onto the patio: the doctor went over to the bar and returned with a glass of Cognac. “Here. Purely medicinal.”

    “Thanks, Dr Smith.”

    “Call me Bruce,” he said mildly. “Whole of Puriri County does. –Don’t think I’ve seen you at the surgery?”

    “Er—no, I’m hardly ever ill,” replied Roger feebly. “Oh—sorry! Roger Browne.”

    “Well, if you are sick, Roger, tell Sheila or whoever you speak to that I said to enrol you with me, okay? –It’s a group practice,” he said to Roger’s blank look.

    “Er—oh, I see. But—er—I’m not private.”

    “Nobody is, this is God’s Own Country!” replied the doctor with a sudden laugh. He went over to the door. “I’d never met Carrano before. Um, doesn’t he want her to have kids, is that the problem?”

    Roger reddened but replied gamely enough: “No, I’m pretty sure he does. In fact I think they both want them. Um, I think she’s just annoyed with herself because it’s unplanned.”

    He sniffed slightly. “Nature tends to be like that. Catches up with you when you’re not looking. Are you driving?”

    “No, I live just up the hill.”

    “In that case finish that brandy, but don’t do anything dumb like taking a sedative on top of it, will you?”

    “I’ve got nothing in the house but aspirin and sticking-plaster!” replied Roger crossly.

    “Then avoid the aspirin,” he replied mildly, going out.

    Feebly Roger finished his Cognac.

    The police interviews weren’t nearly as gruelling as Roger had expected; in fact Collingwood seemed only to be going through the motions. After a while it dawned that the unfortunate man was feeling considerably chastened. This must be a signal failure for him: an attempt at a second murder which had failed only by the grace of God; and the loss of a conviction because of the criminal’s suicide—which was itself a crime—or wasn’t it, any more? Anyway, he would no doubt feel he should have prevented it.

    “Is that the last of the statements, then?” said Roger when the detective seemed to have finished with him.

    Mike sighed. “More or less, yes, for tonight. We’ll get them typed up and you can sign them tomorrow. Someone’ll have to talk to Miss Macdonald tomorrow, too.”

    “What about Polly?”

    Mike suddenly put his elbows on the desk and leant his head on his hands. “Yeah. Her, too.”

    There was a long pause.

    “How is she?” he said dully.

    “Well... she’s in considerable pain, but it’s only a flesh wound,” said Roger expressionlessly.

    Another silence. Roger looked at the neatly barbered brown hair before him without very much sympathy. “She could have died.”

    “Shut UP!” he cried

    Roger bent forward over the desk and hissed viciously: “Why the Hell didn’t you get here sooner?”

    This time the silence seemed to last forever. Finally Collingwood muttered: “Cock-up at the local station.”

    “I see,” said Roger grimly.

    Staring down at Carrano’s pristine blotter in its ruddy chased leather holder on his flaming antique kauri desk, Mike said rapidly: “They get a lot of crank calls from old ladies up here, ya know; the boy on duty thought it was just another nutty old pensioner when Miss Macdonald rang.”

    “I see,” he said, more gently this time.

    Suddenly Mike looked up. “No, it’s my fucking fault: I lost track of the bloody Jablonski woman after the damned tennis semi-finals.”

    “You were watching her, then?” said Roger weakly.

    “God! Of course we were!”

    “I expect,” he said diffidently, “that she deliberately gave you the slip; I imagine she’s—she was—pretty cunning.”

    “Cunning as a waggonload of monkeys,” replied Mike automatically.

    “Mm.”

    The detective looked at him with a bitter twist to his mouth: “Making up your mind whether or not to write to your M.P., are ya?”

    “Yes,” said Roger, looking him in the eye; “also the Minister of Justice; and the papers.”

    “What’s the verdict?” asked Mike without interest.

    “I’ll probably write to my M.P. about the inefficiency of the small local police stations; and possibly to the Minister; but I shan’t write to the papers.”

    Mike was under no illusions: never mind Browne’s bleating, ineffectual manner, he knew damned well that the bloody varsity lot could stir up a hornet’s nest if they tried. He shrugged, and muttered bitterly: “S’pose I’ll have to be thankful for small mercies, then.”

    There was another long silence. Eventually Roger said: “Would you like a drink?”

    “I'm on duty,” he said heavily.

    “Oh, come on, Mike! It’s”—he glanced at his watch—“good Lord! Gone ten. Feels like half-past midnight of next week.”

    “Go on, then,” said Mike weakly.

    Roger went out to the bar and retrieved the bottle of Cognac and two glasses.

    Mike took a swallow. Or two. After the third he produced: “Thanks.”

    “Don’t thank me, I merely read the label on the bottle.” Roger finished his and admitted: “One should probably warm it first in a balloon glass.”

    Mike looked wryly at their whisky tumblers. “Yeah. Too bad, eh?”

    Roger was about to go; only he felt oddly sorry for the man. “Er, Mike—”

    “What?” he said, yawning widely.

    “Well, I just wondered… How will all this affect your career?”

    Mike shrugged. “Before or after you write to your M.P. and the Minister?”

    “I wasn’t intending to mention you.”

    “No—sorry. Well, if you wanna know, it’ll be a set-back. Probably get sent to the backblocks to cool me heels for a while.”

    “Mm.”

    “Eketahuna, probably,” he added wryly.

    “Er—sorry; where?”

    Mike sighed. “Never mind. Back of beyond. I don’t suppose it’ll make that much difference in the long run; not unless Carrano decides to stick his oar in—and God knows,” he added violently, getting up and striding over to the window, “he’s got every right to!”

    Roger said doubtfully: “He’s very fair.”

    “Yeah. Maybe.”

    Another silence. Mike stared unseeingly out at the lighted patio with his hands in his pockets; Roger looked uncertainly at the tall, slim back.

    “Question is,” said Mike suddenly: “do I want to stay on in the bloody Force, after this little do!”

    “Ye-es; when you can’t rely on your subordinates...” agreed Roger slowly.

    Mike swung round at that and said hastily: “I’m not passing the buck, ya know!”

    “No,” agreed Roger simply.

    The detective came slowly back to the desk and sat down again in the big leather chair.

    Roger cleared his throat. “I can see that it must be very difficult for you, when you obviously put so much of yourself into your work, to find that—uh—that you don’t get the back-up at all levels of your, um, hierarchy, that you would expect; but well... don’t you think that you might do more good in the long run if you stayed within the system?”

    Mike didn’t answer directly; he looked at his hands, then said abruptly: “Had an offer just recently from Wallace Briggs.”

    “Oh? That’s right—you’ve got a law degree, haven’t you?” Mike looked at him in some surprise and he explained: “Polly mentioned it.”

    “Oh. –Yeah, that’s right. LL.B.”

    “Would it be an, er, investigatory position or a legal one?”

    Mike shrugged. “Bit of both.”

    “It sounds interesting.”

    “Mm.”

    They were both silent for a moment; then Roger leaned forward earnestly across the desk and said: “Look, Mike, I know I’ve no right to say this, but— It just strikes me that everything in this country is so... well, third-rate; the lowest common denominator seems to rule! And especially in the public services, the police in particular. Don’t you think the police force needs a man like you?” He hesitated. Collingwood said nothing; Roger went on rapidly: “God knows I’d be the first to admit the British police are nothing to write home about, either! But if everyone of above-average intelligence avoids that sort of public service like the plague—well, what sort of guardians of freedom are we going to end up with?”

    Mike was very tempted to tell the Pommy git to put his money where his mouth was; but the bloke was doing his best to offer him some sort of encouragement. So he merely said on a sour note: “Can’t do much good if they’ve put me out to grass, can I?”

    “No, that’s true.”

    Looking down at his hands on the blotter Mike said slowly: “Trouble is, at the best of time’s police work’s a real labour of Sisyphus.”

    At least there was no danger of Roger Browne’s not understanding him: sure enough, he replied: “Yes, I can see that, of course; but there must be some compensations, I imagine? When you’ve brought a case to a successful conclusion, for instance?”

    “Oh, sure; and then the bloody courts get hold of it and you see all your hard work go for nothing—very encouraging, really!”

    “It’s not quite that bad, surely?”

    Mike got up abruptly. “Naturally you’d say that: you ruddy liberal intellectuals are all the same: pat the bloody crims on the heads and tell them not to be such naughty boys—it’s all the fault of the broken homes they come from!”

     Roger stood up and said with considerable dignity: “We don’t all think in clichés, actually.”

    “Look—look, Roger: I’m sorry.”

    “Not at all,” Roger mumbled, making his escape.

Jill’s Narrative

    Yes, well, there you are. Or there it certainly all was, splashed all over the Herald on a lovely fine Monday morning a week before the academic year was due to start. Reading between the lines it apparently took place shortly before sunset the night before; how the Hell did they get hold of it so fast? I seem to remember that “paid informants in the police force” was Browne’s theory back then—and very likely it still is. No, well, they illegally listen in to the chat on the police frequencies, that’s wot. I did try the radio in the very faint hope that the Herald might have imagined it—but no. Cor. Well, at least it was all over, and Carrano presumably wouldn’t be arrested just as he stood up to say “I do.”

    I did rush to the phone after the radio had verified the Herald’s story—yeah. Polly’s bloody machine was on, and oddly enough didn’t give me the gen. Browne’s phone rang out—could have meant anything. Asleep with earplugs in? Trudging up to the highway to catch the red-eye? Bumming a lift off Rod? Er, no, come to think of it: La Folle de Brown’s Bay was his stepma. Well, that was another that wouldn’t be in at work this morning giving La Defarge and Ma Pretty the low-down.

    I’d just hung up and was wondering whether to chicken out on trying Carrano’s number when the bloody thing rang, and if I’m dead at fifty that’ll be why. Thought my heart was gonna— Yeah. Ruddy Gretchen. Yes, funnily enough I had seen the paper!

    “It’s a great relief; now the macho millionaire vill not be arrested just as he takes his—”

    “YES!”

    “Vows,” she said carefully.

    “Fows, right,” I groaned. “No, he won’t, will he?”

    “Have you managed to get hold off Polly?”

    “No,” I admitted.

    “So, are you going in to work today?”

    “I think I’ll have to, or those mountains of tutorial exercises in my office may turn into a landslide that engulfs the entire floor.”

    “Ja. My office iss full off language lab exercises,” she said sadly.

    I didn’t tell her to put them on the famous Van to Puriri Campus, ’cos guess what? The previous year the famous Van lost all her German II language lab material. Rewritten manuals as well as the exercises, too right. –No, nobody sacked the cretin responsible for driving the famous Van, you don’t get sacked for downright incompetence in Godzone.

    “Um, look, you can dump your Puriri Campus stuff in my heap and I’ll take it up there this afternoon.”

    “Thank you, Jill. Possibly if I come vith you ve might see Polly?”

    “I think she may be incarcerated in Carrano’s palace, Gretchen.”

    “Okay, then, ve don’t try.”

     Er—yeah. Okay, then, we wouldn’t.

    I’d only just hung up when it cut another ten years off me natural!

    “What?”

    “Hi, ’s’me,” said a cautious voice.

    Gulp! “Aren’t you at death’s door riddled with bullet holes?”

    “It was one bullet, that grazed my arm,” said Mitchell placidly.

    “In that case the Herald and 1ZB have both got it wrong. How are you, anyway?”

    “My arm’s a bit hot but otherwise I’m fine.”

    “Good. Um, so it was the Jablonski woman after all?”

    “What, that bumped off Don Banks? Put it like this. My theory still is that it was a burglar that snuck up through the so-called garden after some of the consumerist junk he keeps round the place, and poor old Don Banks just stumbled across him at the wrong time.”

    Gulp! Her and the Aryan side? Finally I managed: “Gretchen thinks so, too. No evidence of burglars, though, was there?”

    “I dunno what constitutes evidence in your book, Jill, but Mike actually admitted to Jake that they had a witness to a couple of motorbikes roaring down Reserve Road around nine-thirty!”

    “Shit.”

    “The witness is a batty old dame of about a hundred and two who’s always ringing the police about her milk money being pinched or the neighbour’s cat getting into the milk, but I don’t see why that’d make her imagine a couple of motorbikes, do you? But they’re ignoring me: the Esmé Jablonski theory is so much fancier.”

    “Er, well, yes, but I suppose it does all dovetail…”

    “Uh-huh. Male logic,” said Polly drily. “It makes a lovely complex pattern, never mind if it takes fifteen thousand moves to fit it all together, whereas the simplest solution only takes three.”

    “Polly, if you’re on about that dumb indexing system Bill instituted for the Engineering Library—”

    “It is the same syndrome. Complexity for the sake of it. Just because you can analyse it with a lovely flow diagram doesn’t mean it’s either simple or convenient. Or, in the case of Don Banks, correct.”

    She was right, by gosh and by golly. Gulp!

    “Anyway, the police are closing the case. –You can finish that toast, there’s stacks more bread in the freezer!” she called loudly.

    Ouch. “Um, is Jake there?’

    “No, it’s Mike.”

    What? Cringe!

    “He’s been here since crack of dawn. And Dave,” she said with a smile in her voice. “His sergeant: I don’t know if you met him? –Yes, go on, Dave, that sausage is going begging.”

    “Polly, have you been up since crack of dawn like the standard martyred Kiwi mum, feeding those great fat police faces?”

    “Somebody had to! Actually it’s gone nine-thirty, Jill.”

    “Uh—oh. Must’ve been sitting here brooding over the Herald for longer than what I wot of. Oh—there was that bottle of so-called Cabernet Sauvignon last night, too. Australian, but I thought it was quite drinkable.”

    “Especially after the third glass; I am familiar with that syndrome!” she said with a laugh.

    “Mm. Gretchen and I had some daft idea of coming up this arvo to sit by the bed of sickness, but we’ll drop it.”

    “Yes, do. Actually, it’s Jake that’s still in bed.”

    “Shit, did she get him?’

    “No, you clot! Just worn out by all the emotion, I think.”

    “Er, well, yeah. Can’t have been too enjoyable for him… Um, did the woman deliberately take a pot-shot at you?”

    “No, she aimed at Jake. I just sort of jumped on him to push him out of the way,” she said tranquilly.

    “Bloody idiot!” said an irritable male voice—a tenor, not a bass—from the hinterland.

    “Was that Mike?”

    “Yes, but Dave’s agreeing with him! I didn’t think, I just did it. Well, I just found I’d done it, more accurately.”

    Yeah, well. Must be love, was what I thought at the time. Can’t remember what else we said but she did confirm the arrangements were all gonna go ahead as planned: kitchen evening, engagement party, the wedding itself… I do remember thinking that that organdie dress she’d shown me the pic of—in a ruddy Lord & Taylor’s catalogue, if you please, Jake had got the von Trotte woman on the job, since Joanie’s idea seemed to be yer Princess Di look or smothering in white lace or both—as I was saying, thinking that the dress was gonna look really good with a whacking great bandage under its gauzy sleeve.

    And as those ruddy tutorial exercises were at risk of falling all over my office floor, I did go in to work, in the very faint hope of getting some official storage space out of bloody Ma Pretty. Looking back, dunno if it was the right move or not. Well, our minds were taken off The Pohutukawa Bay Suicide-Attempted Murder, that was for sure.

    Possibly it was a pity, depending on one’s point of view, that Bill Michaels should have been infesting our faculty staffroom when Ma Pretty shot in waving the piece of paper.

    Who else was there? Gretchen—we’d been going to grab a quiet cup of coffee, ill-timed, because Kevin McCaffery in person was in there when we got there and although as a member of his very own Department I was allowed to use the sacred French Departmental coffee-pot, not to mention the sacred coffee, Huns and other lesser breeds without the law weren’t. Yes, he was Dean of the Faculty as well as Professor of French, but so what? Um… oh, yeah, his bird-witted secretary tottered in on her four-inch heels in Maisie’s wake, that didn’t help. And little Dawn, that’s right, very bulgy-eyed, looking as if she was gonna burst.

    We’d got to the point where Ma Pretty had spilled her guts, Kevin had done the first round of shouting and Michaels had broken down in the first lot of sniggers, I think, when Browne came in. –Was it? Think so. Well, immaterial. Anyway, Gretchen had suddenly lost it—no, well, she knew why that bastard Schmidt had gone off to France in the first place, of course—and was shouting, approximately:

    “This iss oud-ratcheous! You cannot let this pass, Keffin! He must be an example made off!” –Got it wrong, yeah, but you try putting it forcefully in a foreign lingo when you’re worked up.

    Kevin McCaffery, as he was wont to inform mystified New Chums like Browne, was a fourth-generation New Zealander, but he certainly had an Irish temper.

    “Keep out of this, Gretchen! This is a departmental affair!” he yelled.

    At which bloody Bill Michaels chimed in gleefully: “That’s right, Kev: you make an example of the bugger!”

    Kevin rounded on him: “Look: get the Hell out of here, Michaels! And keep your bloody mouth shut, if you possibly can!”

    Unfortunately his effect was somewhat spoiled in that Gretchen yelled at the same time: “This iss not a departmental affair! This iss a university affair! I shall report it myself, if you vill not!”

    Then there was a sudden silence. So I shoved my oar in.

    “I think Gretchen’s right, Kevin; it’ll probably have to be dealt with at Senate level.”

    Oops, wrong move, he spat back: “You would agree with that German bitch—all you dykes stick together!”

    The ladies duly gasped in horror—very possibly because they agreed with him, mind. Ma Pretty then commanded Dawn, in a trembling voice, to run along. Dawn attempted to argue, on the grounds that she wasn’t a kid, but was overborne.

    And bloody Bill, on the broad grin, seized the moment to grab Ma Pretty’s piece of paper and, spreading the joy, wave it at Browne with the colloquial advice: “Take a gawk at this, Rog. It’s a cable from Schmidt.”

    The bastard had addressed it to “Languages Faculty”, knowing that Maisie wouldn’t open anything addressed to Kevin personally, except accidentally-on-purpose, and as she’d done that once too often—

    I’m not claiming I can remember the exact wording, but this’d be close:

“Unable work any longer under inefficient, semi-qualified Irish imbecile whose French is that of Auckland-atte-Bow stop. Kindly accept resignation effective immediately stop. Recommend also accept resignation entire French Department on grounds total neglect all scholarly responsibilities coupled total ineptitude all pedagogical ditto stop. Only exceptions Davis and Browne both capable scholars whose promotion strongly recommend stop. Also suggest urgent investigation faculty funds scandal hushed up two years ago stop.

    “Leopoldus Pierre-Marie Schmidt.”

    Roger broke down in a mad fit of high-pitched giggles, at which point Kevin came to.

    “GIVE me that!” He snatched it away and glared round him. “I want total silence on this matter; do you understand? TOTAL SILENCE!” On which he stalked out, presumably sure that his word was law.

    His secretary looked about her blankly, uttered one last nervous giggle, and scurried after him, wobbling in her bloody high-heeled sandals.

    Bill was grinning from ear to ear. “Self-righteous tit! Serve ’im bloody well right!”

    “Oh, dear!” wailed Ma Pretty distressfully.

    Oh, well, the universal panacea. “Come and sit down, Maisie,” I said heavily. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

    “Coffee!” decided the macho Michaels unilaterally, striding over to the sink-bench.

    Ma Pretty allowed me to lead her to the old couch, where, guess what? She burst into tears.

    Gretchen had more or less calmed down. “Vell! I would say, Kevin McCaffery iss the limit, but nothing could be worse than Leo.”

    Put it well. I tried to give her a warning look whilst not making it apparent I was doing so. Well, Browne wouldn’t have noticed anything less than a Highland Fling, but Michaels, sniggers or not, was a different kettle of fish. “Don’t cry, Maisie, it’s a storm in a teacup.”

    “Kev had provocation, though, didn’t ’e?” noted Bill gleefully, tipping our sacred ground coffee into our sacred pot.

    Browne agreed, of course, caught Michaels’s eye—which was trying to catch his, of course—and they both duly exploded in howls of male peer group laughter.

    No-one thought Bill was gonna let it drop, just as well, ’cos he didn't.

    “Whadda turn-up for the books, eh? Thought Schmidt was a fixture here; wonder what the Hell came over ’im? Mid-life crisis?”

    Oh, fuck. I avoided Gretchen’s eye. “Something like that, I expect, Bill. Is that coffee ready?”

    “Eh? No. Basic laws of physics. The electricity has to come through the wires and heat the hot plate, Jill, before heat transfer can take place and produce steam and yer actual coffee.” His own brilliance hadn’t entirely distracted him, though at least he didn’t pursue the reasons for Leo’s fugue. “What was that he said about McCaffery, again? ‘Under-qualified Irish twit’?”

    “‘Inefficient, semi-qualified, Irish imbecile,’” offered Browne with a loud snigger.

    “‘Whose French is that of Auckland-atte-Bow!’” concluded Bill triumphantly. “Is it?”

    “Yes: his spoken French is awful!” More male sniggers. No, well, Browne’s were more like high-pitched hysterics, but none of the distaff side was joining in, that was for sure.

    “I’m glad someone thinks it’s funny,” said Gretchen acidly.

    “Aw, come on Gretchen, ’tis!” said Bill. “Hey, what was all that about a scandal over faculty funds, Jill? I never heard a whisper about that!”

    That did it: Ma Pretty gave a wail, and burst into sobs.

    Bill stared. “What the Hell’s up with her? She been embezzling the tea money, or what?”

    “For God’s sake!” I cried. “Can’t you shut up?”

    Poor Ma Pretty was wailing: “It was all a mistake in the accounts, in dear old Professor White’s day! You know that, Jill!”

    “Yes; hush, Maisie. We all know there was nothing in it: don’t cry.”

    “Puh-Professor McCaffery was so angry!” she sobbed.

    “It iss just his Irish temper,” said Gretchen neutrally. “He’ll calm down.”

    “I wuh-would never have opened it if I’d guh-guessed!”

    “No, off course you wouldn’t,” she agreed soothingly, if mendaciously.

    “He suh-said I was a gug-gossiping, interfering old huh-hag!”

    Browne coughed suddenly.

    “Never mind, he didn’t mean it,” I offered weakly, as Bill dumped two cups of coffee on the scarred and stained table in front of us. Yes, he had used the sacred departmental white cups. Genuine French cups of the cheapest kind—right. Cost practically nothing in France but you can’t get them here for love or— Sorry. Bad as McCaffery.

    “I wuh-wouldn’t— I didn’t realise there’d be all these people... I was so upset!” She raised a pink, swollen and unattractive face.

    “Come on, Mrs P.: get it down yer,” said Bill, colloquially bracing, or possibly bracingly colloquial. “Do ya good!”

    I’d have found this approach entirely offensive, but it went over really big with Maisie. She gave him a big goo-goo-eyed look and bleated: “It’s awfully strong.”

    I was driven to take a very deep breath. “There’s some milk in the fridge, Bill: get it for her, for God’s sake!”

    “How long has it been in the fridge?” he replied suspiciously.

    “Twenty-two minutes: I bought it on my way in, and GET IT!”

    We were finishing the coffee when young Dawn appeared in the doorway in the rôle of lifesaver: give the girl a medal. “Mrs Pretty, it’s the Vice-Chancellor on the phone, and I can’t find Professor McCaffery anywhere—”

    Ma Pretty shot to her feet. “All right, dear—I’m coming!” She bustled out.

    I put my cup down and flopped back on the couch. “Flaming ruddy Norah!”

    “Silly cow,” said Bill unemotionally.

    “Yes, but did you need to let it show quite so much, Bill?”

    Astoundingly enough the macho engineer went red and muttered: “Sorry.”

    “Ve all find her extremely hard to cope vith, Bill,” said Gretchen heavily. “And do not ask her for storage space, Jill, she’s giffen it all to Hans and Nevil.”

    “Males,” said Bill neutrally.

    “And professors,” she agreed.

    “If it’s only a few shelves, I could knock them up for you,” he offered mildly. “Or Patrick could, he’s finished putting up the Roman Forum in the quad.”

    I just groaned, but Gretchen replied conscientiously: “That’s very kind, Bill, but I’m afraid they would only last until the morons from Registry who won’t okay any extra official cupboard space did their next round off stocktaking.”

    “Right. –Can’t be the loadings, this building’s like the traditional brick shit-house,” he said thoughtfully to himself. “Could bring it up in the Senate?”

    “The inter-departmental ramifications don’t bear thinking about,” I sighed. “Please don’t. Kindly meant though it was.”

    “Well, not entirely kindly, I’m not averse to getting up Kev’s nose.” He winked at Gretchen. “Your efforts earlier were appreciated, by the way. Think he might’ve forgotten I’m on the Senate.”

    “I think she had, too!” I admitted, suddenly feeling better. “Well, go on, Bill: Rog was an eye-witness, ask him, the suspense is killing me.”

    “Eh? Oh! Nah, Polly rang Angie at breakfast time!” he said with a grin. “Didn’t expect to see you in today, actually, Rog.”

    “I gave my statement to the police last night,” he explained. Bill merely looked mild. “Um, no, well, I woke up early and I suddenly felt I couldn’t face one more police interview, so I got the workers’ bus in.”

    “Uh-huh. Pretty horrible, was it?”

    “Well, yes, it was frightful, but somehow I seem to have shaken it off.”

    “Right. Who’d the cow aim at, Jake or Polly? Before she shot herself, I mean.”

    “Jake. But Polly threw herself in front of him.”

    “Right. So then she turned the gun on herself, eh?” Michaels pursued.

    Gretchen and I were now glaring at him, but the engineer appeared not even to see us. I was just opening my mouth to blast him when Roger gave a violent shudder, gasped: “The water was all red!” and burst into tears, shaking like a leaf.

    Bill got up, kindly awarding me a pat on the shoulder as he did so, and opened the capacious bag which he’d dumped on a chair. “Don’t shout, Jill, better us than Defarge,” he said mildly, producing a flask from the bag. He poured a belt into Roger’s coffee cup, and pulling up a chair, sat down and forced him to drink, then simply putting his arms right round him until the shuddering stopped.

    After quite some time I was able to croak: “Did you provoke that outburst on purpose?”

    “Uh-huh. Feel better now, do ya, Rog?’

    “Yes,” he said weakly, sitting up and mopping his eyes with Bill’s handkerchief. “Much.” He put his hand on his forehead and said: “I think I might have had a temperature. Anyway, it seems to have gone, now.”

    “Good. Not gonna up-chuck?”

    “No. Thanks, Bill.”

    “That’s all right. My Col’s the same type. Not to mention all those nervy M.E. students I’ve had through me hands over the last twenty years or so.”

    “Those clods farting about with that travesty of a Roman Forum in the quad?” I croaked. “I’d have said there wasn’t a nerve in their combined horrible bodies!”

    “You’d be wrong, then.”

    Gretchen got up, heading for the sink-bench, but stopped to look interestedly into his bag. “I see you vith this bag in the qvad vheneffer you and your engineering boys build the sets for the play, but I think it iss just for tools. Vhat iss is this hypodermic?”

    “Don’t touch it, Gretchen,” said Roger.

    “Vhy not?”

    “Strychnine,” said Roger, sniffing and blowing his nose hard.

    Eh? We wee feminine things just gaped at him.

    “Bill told me,” he said mildly. “One evening when he and Angie kindly had me to dinner. It’s said to restart the heart after an electric shock.” His eyes twinkled. “Angie doesn’t know. Male mystery.”

    “Iss it legal?” asked Gretchen weakly.

    Bill shrugged. “Who cares? If you’re making some more coffee, I’ll have one, ta.”

    “I am not authorised to use the French Department’s coffee-pot, Bill, but since it’s you—!” she said with a sudden laugh.

    “Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ll pass round those bikkies I was hiding from Kevin and Ma Pretty, too.”

    The macho Michaels smiled. “Ta.” He sat back and launched into happy chat about Angie’s search for a wedding outfit that’d knock out the eye of all the fancy dieted dames that the Carrano wedding was bound to feature. I have to admit I can’t recall a word of it, not even the colour, because I was just bloody stunned, and by the look on her face Gretchen was, too.

    “I told you!” panted Kay. “I knew the Jablonski woman was mad! Why on earth didn’t you ring me, Maureen?”

    “What? Oh—well, dear Jake rang us very late last night...”

    “You could have rung me! Over something like that?”

    “Um—yes. Well, Polly was perfectly all right,” said Maureen uncomfortably.

    “Yes, but really, Maureen! Letting me hear it on the radio! It gave me a real turn!”

    “I’m sorry,” said Maureen weakly. “I was going to ring you—only—well, we were up till all hours, last night.”

    Kay sniffed. There was a short silence. Then she said: “Well?”

    “Well, what?” faltered Maureen.

    “Are you going up there?” demanded her twin loudly.

    “Um—well, no. Well, David thinks... Well, I mean, the wedding’s so soon, we’ll be going up anyway...”

    “Maureen Mitchell! She’s your only daughter!” cried Kay.

    “Yes; but she’s all right, it’s only a scratch. Jake says the bandage’ll hardly show under the sleeve of her dress,” said Maureen timidly.

    Kay snorted.

    “Um—well, I really must go, Kay, David’ll be coming in any minute for his morning tea.”

    So would Harry, but that wasn’t going to stop Kay. “Hang on!”

    “What?” said Maureen nervously.

    “Have you rung Vi?” said Kay, unable to keep the jealous note out of her voice.

    Maureen replied in amazement: “No, of course not, she’s there!”

    “What?” said Kay feebly.

    “She’s there; I thought— Oh, no, I suppose you... Um, well, yes, she’s there.”

    “Stop wittering, Maureen!” shouted her twin.

    “She’s at Jake’s. Esmé rang her up.”

    “WHAT?” shouted Kay.

    “Um, yes. I don’t know why, exactly. But she’s there. Jake said Polly’s doctor came, he’s very nice, he gave Vi something to make her go to sleep.”

    “What?” she croaked incredulously.

    “Yes; well, she was upset; she is getting on, Kay.”

    “Are you telling me that Vi—Vi!—accepted a tranquilliser?” shouted Kay.

    “Ye-es... Well, one of those sleeping-pill things, Jake said.”

    “I’m going up there!” said Kay with great determination.

    “Um—no, don’t do that, Kay, I’m sure that they’re both all right.”

    “All right? Vi can’t be all right if she let some young pill-pusher give her tranquillisers!”

    “Sleeping-pills. I expect she’s herself again this morning, Kay.”

    Kay took a deep breath. “What about her cat?”

    “What?”

    “Her CAT!” shouted Kay. “Are you DEAF, Maureen?”

    “Oh, dear old Grey! No, he’ll be all right, that nice Roger always feeds him if Polly’s—”

    “NO!” shouted Kay. “Wake UP, Maureen! Vi’s blasted animal!”

    “Oh. Well, I don’t know... That nice Julie from next-door—”

    “You’re hopeless, Maureen! If Vi’s under the influence of tranquillisers, and Polly’s got a bullet in her arm”—she ignored Maureen’s murmur of “It’s only a scratch,”—“who is going to think of Vi’s dratted cat?”

    “Um—I don’t know.”

    Kay took a deep breath. “What’s Jake Carrano’s number?”

    “It’s a toll-call,” said Maureen faintly.

    “I know that, Maureen,” said Kay in a steely voice. “What—is—it?”

    Polly had enjoined her not to give Jake’s number to anyone, it was unlisted, but Maureen gave it to her as a matter of course.

    “Right!” she said with great determination. “I’ll give them a ring. And if necessary, Mirry can go down to Vi’s for a few days and look after the house and the cat.”

    “What about her varsity work?” faltered Maureen. “Doesn’t term start in a few days?”

    ”What about it? Half her classes’ll be in the city anyway, this year. Besides, they never do anything in the first week of term anyway. Orientation!” She sniffed.

    “What?”

    Kay told Maureen a lot about what Mirry had told her about Orientation Week, and rang off with a promise to ring her back as soon as she’d fixed up about Vi’s house and cat.

    “Kay?” asked Dave Mitchell neutrally.

    “Yes: she heard it on the News. She was wild because I didn’t ring her last night. She was on about orienteering, or something,” said Maureen vaguely.

    “Eh?”

    “They do it at varsity.”

    “Oh. –Where’s that cuppa?”

    “What? Oh, heck: I’m sorry, dear!” Maureen began to bustle about the kitchen.

    Dave sat down in his big old chair and watched her. When the tea was brewed he said in a neutral voice: “Rung yer other sisters yet?”

    “Um—no,” said Maureen guiltily.

    Dave sniffed, ever so faintly. “Ta,” he said as she passed him a plate of Vegemite sandwiches. He took two together, took a huge bite out of them and said something in a muffled voice.

    “What?” said Maureen, sitting down in her rocker.

    Dave swallowed. He washed the swallow down with a swig of tea. He winked at her. “I said, Now ya won’t have to: Kay’ll do it for ya!” He winked again.

    “Um—yes,” said Maureen, biting her lip. She met his eye, and gave a naughty giggle. “That’s just what I was thinking!”

    Mike finally got to talk to old Miss Macdonald two days after the event, but it scarcely mattered, the answer was a lemon anyway. He and Jim got into the little red Mazda and buckled themselves in without a word. In the baking heat of a late summer morning at Pohutukawa Bay they just sat there on the broad concrete driveway of the Carrano place.

    Finally Mike said hoarsely: “Thanks for coming along, Jim.”

    Jim grunted.

    “God!” said Mike violently, and thumped the steering wheel with his clenched fist.

    Jim sighed heavily. “Well—that’s the way it goes, eh?”

    Mike returned bitterly: “Why couldn’t Ma Jablonski’ve said something to the old duck about Banks?”

    “She seemed pretty sure of her facts, the old girl, didn’t she?” said Jim cautiously.

    “Yeah; sharp as a tack: no flies on Miss Macdonald.” He stared unseeingly at Jake’s well cared for garden, and added: “Never think she was over seventy, would you?”

    “No,” murmured Jim, trying not to laugh at the memory of how the elderly Miss Macdonald, who had apparently known the D.C.I. from his cradle, if not longer, had hauled poor old Mike over the coals for not getting up here in time to stop Esmé Jablonski from doing her thing. The laugh bubbled up inside him and he coughed suddenly, covering his mouth with his hand.

    They’d got as far as the turnoff from the Bay Road onto the highway, Jim, as usual, cringing inwardly at the way Mike murdered the gears, when the sergeant ventured: “Whadd’ll happen now—think they’ll agree to close the Banks case?”

    Mike scowled at the traffic streaming down into Puriri—where the Hell were they all going at lunchtime, anyway?—and replied drearily: “Yeah; I suppose so.”

     He shot across the road far too close in front of a large lorry and a Subaru that was trying to pass it and added: “That nut more or less proves it.”

    “Mm.”

    They were down on the waterfront before Jim added: “Just as well it never had to go before a jury, really; I mean—the thought of the forensic jokers arguing about whether those scratches match or not—!”

    “Too right,” agreed Mike with a shudder. They had now ascertained that the fault in the bolt’s screw thread had been common to what must have been a whole batch of cars. No thanks to the boffins, either, it had been ordinary hard grind that had enabled them to find enough copies of that make and model to make a few comparisons. However, what with wear and tear over the years all the nuts had worn slightly differently. The boffins wouldn’t swear that only the bolt on Count Jablonski’s battered dirty-white car could have produced the exact set of scratches that had been found on the nut discovered down Old Reserve Road, but they’d gone so far as to say it could’ve been it. Well, as Jim said, try getting a jury to take that in, with the defence’s experts producing one set of photographic blow-ups and their man producing another—both of which looked totally meaningless anyway to a layman’s eye!

    They drew up with a lurch outside the police station. Jim looked at Mike cautiously. “You gonna make any statement on the Banks thing to the Press, Mike?”

    Mike scowled. “Gotta talk to the Chief Super first.”

    “McElroy? That’s pally with Carrano?”

    Mike grunted.

    “S’pose he’ll want it as low-key as possible,” ventured Jim.

    “Yeah.”

    “Feel like lunch?” suggested Jim, thinking he’d better change the subject.

    Mike sighed. “Not really hungry, to tell you the truth, Jim.”

    “Well, look,” said Jim cautiously: “I don’t usually—but what say we nip up to The Tavern? Have a couple of beers and uh—then think about lunch?”

    “Good idea.” He let in the clutch, and they were off, with a terrific jerk and a ghastly graunching noise.

    Wiping froth from his upper lip after his first swallow of his second beer, Jim grinned suddenly.

    “When ya come to think of it, Mike, Ma Jablonski’s saved us a Helluva lot of aggro! I mean—no saying who was driving that old clunker when the nut fell off it—or even when it happened!”

    Relaxed by the beer, Mike agreed: “Yeah; could’ve happened at any time, really. I mean—well, obviously it musta been that night; but—” He grimaced, laughed, and admitted: “Can’t see us ever managing to prove it, actually!”

    Jim nodded. He gave the younger man a cautious sideways glance and murmured: “S’pose you’ll be off back to the Big Smoke, now.”

    “Mm.”

    So how was that nice Molly Pettigrew from The Blue Heron gonna take that? You could’ve knocked him and Moana down with a feather when Mike turned up at the Chez Basil the other evening with her on his arm. He wouldn’t have said she was at all Collingwood’s type. Him and Moana had had quite an argument about it, actually, when they got home. “Seems a nice little woman—hope he isn’t just—well—you know!” he’d said; and Moana had replied: “I don’t think it’s like that at all, Jim; you can see he’s head over heels about her!” Jim had scowled; what he’d been thinking wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you said to the wife. Finally he’d come out with: “Bit of a ladies’ man in his way, Mike, if you ask me; wouldn’t think he’d be serious about her; wouldn’t think she’d be his normal type at all.” But according to her he had it all wrong and anyone could see he was serious and you only had to see the way he looked at her, unquote. Oh, sure! Jim reckoned after twenty-odd years on the Force he knew a bit more about human nature than she did. “Sex,” he’d said shortly. It was bloody obvious that Collingwood had it bad for her in that way—yeah. But anything more than that—! Moana had then informed him that it was just his dirty mind, and he had no idea at all, and would he please turn off the bedroom light and let her get some sleep.

    He would of liked to ask him about it, but a bloke couldn’t ask another bloke something like that. So he was astonished—and hugely relieved—when Mike suddenly smiled at him, and said: “Won’t be losing touch altogether, Jim; I’ll be coming up to The Blue Heron in the weekends; hope to see something of you and Moana then.”

    Cripes! Was Moana right, then? He hoped to God she was, for that nice little Molly’s sake. What with being a widow, and obviously—not that she’d said much about it, but from a few hints Mike had dropped—having difficulty making ends meet at the motel: well, looked as if she’d been through more than enough already, didn’t it? He looked at the regular features before him and thought, quite clearly: I’ll bloody thump you myself if you hurt that poor little woman!

    Aloud he said hurriedly: “Good one, Mike! Uh—whaddabout a bite to eat, eh?” and got up to go to the servery.

    “It must have been so thrilling!” shivered Madeleine Depardieu.

    Roger didn’t reply, the more so as he’d come over to the S.C.R. in the hope of escaping the woman.

    “Didn’t it give you a—a frisson, mon cher Roger?” she pursued.

    “No. I felt numb throughout the entire episode, if you must have  it,” he replied sourly.

    “Oh, dear: shock,” she decided in a terribly sympathetic voice. She put a hot, plump hand on his knee. “And are you still suffering the after-effects of shock, mon cher?”

    “Uh—no, I don’t think so.” Rallying slightly, he added in a nasty tone: “Should I be?”

    “But of course!” she purred. She patted his knee firmly. “Now, you take it easy, mon chou!” She heaved herself up. “I must go, my dear little First-Years are waiting for me! And give dear Polly my love, won’t you? –By the way, what is her phone number, now?”

    Roger was almost caught. He opened his mouth, gulped, shut it again, and finally said weakly: “The same as it’s always been.”

    “Kidder!” she replied with a coy giggle. “Take care, now! Ciao!” She swam ponderously off.

    “Kidder!” said a high, silly voice from behind Roger.

    Jumping, he replied sourly: “Go away, if you can’t be civil, Davis.”

    Grinning, Jill emerged from behind a potted palm. “This bloody greenery has its uses,” she noted, sitting down in the chair Madeleine had just vacated. “I can’t stay long, my dear little First-Years are waiting for me!”

    “Why is it,” he returned thoughtfully: “that everyone else’s First-Year tutorials are up at Puriri Campus, but Madeleine’s are down here in comfort?”

    “Uh... Written into her contract? Sleeping with the Registrar? Sleeping with Kevin McCaffery?” Jill suggested wildly.

    Choking slightly, Roger replied: “If you can’t be sensible, go away.”

    “I can’t go away, I came over here to find out the dirt!” She put a hand on his knee. “Pauvre Roger, are you still suffering from shock?”

    “Cut that out,” said Roger, trying not to laugh.

    “Bugger, that was my line!” grumbled Bill. “Here.” He handed Roger a beer.

    “Thanks, Bill,” he said with a sigh.

    Bill pulled up a heavy armchair and sat down. “It’s a bribe,” he explained. “And you could give me Jake Carrano’s private number while you’re at it, not to mention an invite to the wedding.”

    “Her only consolation is, Kevin hasn’t had one, either,” Jill informed the engineer kindly.

    “Ya don’t say!” he replied, grinning from ear to ear.

    “Mm. Which, considering he claims to be a very old friend of Jake Carrano’s, is ra-ather surprising, n’est-ce pas?”

    Bill got up, sniggering gently. “Gotta go: me dear little First-Years are waiting for me!” he leered.

    They choked, and he ambled away, grinning.

    “Do you want that beer?” asked Jill with a twinkle in her eye.

    “Not really. I’ve got a lot of work to do this afternoon.”

    Kindly Jill took it off him and watered that invaluable potted plant with it.

   “Going to the wedding?” enquired Jock McElroy in a remarkably nasty voice.

    Mike replied wearily: “Aren’t you?”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, Lucille woulda half killed me if— Yeah, all right, cut that out!” he hollered.

    Mike stopped sniggering. “I admit it’ll look good in the papers, before you point it out.”

    McElroy grunted sourly and added: “Jake reckons the Press aren’t gonna be there.”

    “Huh!”

    “Yeah. Just don’t turn up in your best uniform with your silver buttons all sparkly and photogenic,” he added nastily.

    Mike sighed. “I’ve got no intention of it. And while we’re on the subject, I might as well tell you now: I’m handing in my uniform.”

    Even though he’d just more or less hauled him over the coals for not getting something good and solid on Esmé Jablonski in time, Jock McElroy turned a strange, mottled maroon and howled: “What the fuck are you talking about, Mike?”

    Mike shrugged. “I’ve had it. Sorry, Jock. But—I dunno, I don’t think I can explain it—”

    “Drop the sensitive milksop intellectual act, Collingwood!” howled the Old Man.

    He hadn’t known at least two of those words were in the Old Man’s vocabulary. Swallowing, Mike managed: “Sorry. But it isn’t a cut-and-dried sort of thing. I’ve just reached the point where I don’t care enough to go on.”

    “Ya heart isn’t in it,” sneered McElroy.

    “No,” he agreed.

    “Look, if you take up bloody Briggs’s offer, don’t kid yaself, matey: he’ll work you into the ground and give you no thanks for it!” the Chief Superintendent said loudly.

    “I know that. Thanks for the warning, though.”

    McElroy glared.

    “I am taking him up on it, but I’ll do it for as long as it suits me.”

    “And then what?” the Old Man retorted nastily.

    “Uh—well... It’s all a bit up in the air.”

    “Oh, thanks very much!” he roared.

    “I’m sorry, Jock, but— Well, I know what I’d like to do, but… Well, look, there’s someone I know who owns a motel: it’s not doing all that well at the moment, but—”

    Eyes bolting from his head, McElroy interrupted: “A bloke could work himself to death in that game and end up with nothing to show for it! Have your wits gone begging, or what?”

    “No—hang on. There’s a lot of vacant land on both sides of it, and I thought— Well, we haven’t talked it over, yet, but I thought we might build on a restaurant. A decent sort of a place, but not too fancy. Little courtyard, do nice lunches—you know, quiche and salad sort of thing—and something a bit more solid for dinner.”

    After a moment McElroy said weakly: “Bit of a middle-class-trendy fantasy, isn’t it?”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, I suppose it is, yeah. Only—well, the area’s right for it, I think.”

    “Where is it?”

    “Puriri. They haven’t got anything like that up there. There’s that poncy restaurant run by Chief Fairy and Second Fairy, but they don’t do lunches, and they charge through the nose for the muck they serve for dinner.” –Mike hadn’t been impressed by Gary’s specialité du jour: it had been called “Hawaiian Dream”, and had featured a very odd mixture of chunks of pork fillet, chunks of white fish (unidentified and unidentifiable), chunks of pineapple and chunks of banana, all grilled on skewers, slathered in a sauce of coconut cream and other unidentifiable substances enlivened with a dash of rum, and sprinkled with chopped peanuts. Molly and Moana had both been foolish enough to order it.

    McElroy grunted. After a bit he admitted: “Could do quite well, I suppose. Providing you’ve got the capital to see you through the first year or so.”

    “Mm. Well, I’ve had nothing much to spend my salary on, these last few years. I reckon I could swing it.”

    “What about your ex? Aren’t you paying maintenance, or alimony, or something?”

    Flushing a little, Mike said: “No: no kids, ya see. Mind you, she got more than her fair share of the house... Anyway, she got married again, about six months back.”

    Of course, he’d never let on to a soul at work! Goggling, McElroy passed a hand over his forehead. “I see,” he said weakly.

    There was a short silence.

    “I’m sorry, Jock,” said Mike. “I really have had it, with the Force.”

    “Look, everyone loses a case or two!” McElroy said energetically. “And it’s not as if— Well, we’ve closed the books, Ma Jablonski’s death ended it.”

    “Yes. It’s not that.”

    McElroy glared. After a moment he said uncertainly: “I know those jokers up Puriri acted like a pack of tits—”

    “No. Small-town coppers—and that boy on the phones was only a kid. Anyway, it’s not that. Nothing to do with it, really.”

    Glaring like a baffled bull, McElroy shouted: “Well, what the fuck IS it to do with? Flaming mid-life crisis? Aren’t you a bit bloody young for that?”

    “No. I mean—” He shrugged. “You can call it that, if it makes you happy.”

    “Makes—” The Chief Super choked.

    Mike wandered over to the window and stared out at the view of grubby city on a hot blue day. If this weather kept up—and the first weeks of March were frequently stifling, no reason to think it wouldn’t—it was gonna be a scorcher for the ruddy wedding.

    “I’ve just got no impulse to go on, Jock,” he said finally, not looking at the older man.

    There was a short silence.

    “Look, take some leave! How long is it since you had a decent holiday, anyway?” Not waiting for a reply, McElroy added: “That’s the ticket! Have a break, get away from it all—get some clean air into your lungs—do a bit of fishing, or something! You’ll feel a new man when ya get back!”

    Mike turned from the window. There was an odd little smile on his face. “I feel a new man, now, actually. It’s good of you to offer me the chance to change my mind, Jock, but it wouldn’t work. I—” He hesitated. “I’ve got other goals, I suppose,” he said in a low voice.

    “Other goals!” spluttered the unfortunate McElroy, turning maroon all over again.

    Mike went over to the door. “Yes. –I’ll send you up my formal resignation this arvo.”

    He went out.

    McElroy bounded across the room, wrenched the door open and bellowed down the corridor: “You’re a bloody fool, Collingwood! You’re throwing away a decent career and a pension! And with your brains, ya coulda gone right to the top in the Force!”

    Mike was about to go down the stairs. He paused, turned and said, not loudly but quite clearly enough for everyone in the offices on McElroy’s corridor to have heard him, should they have chanced to be listening—and who wouldn’t be, after McElroy’s performance: “I don’t wanna go to the top, Jock. Look at the type of person ya meet there!”

    He turned away and went quickly down the stairs.

     McElroy had about five seconds’ grace before Ben Pemberton from the next office came in, grinning.

    “Ooh, look at the type of person ya meet in this office!” he squeaked.

    “Fuck off.”

    “Whassup with him?” asked Pemberton, perching a hip on McElroy’s desk. “Mid-life crisis?”

    “How the ruddy Hell should I know?” he growled.

    Pemberton sniffed a bit. “Noddas if— Well, that Jablonski dame’s no loss. And he’d made his report before she topped herself, he’s pretty much in the clear so far as the Banks case goes.”

    “Push—OFF!”

    Pemberton stood up slowly. “He’s just got the blues.” He went over to the door and sniggered slightly. “Lot of the brighter ones get ’em after a case is closed. You know:”—he winked—“postpartum, and all that.”

    “GEDDOUTA HERE BEFORE I BLOODY DO YA!” roared McElroy.

    Ben raised his eyebrows. But he saw the Old Man was really pissed off, so he wandered out. “It is, ya know,” he said from the corridor. “He’ll get over it. Needs a holiday.”

    “SHUT MY FLAMING DOOR!” roared the Old Man. “WERE YOU BORN IN A CAVE?”

    Pemberton raised his eyebrows again and pursed his lips. But he shut the door—quite quietly, too. Then, grinning, he went over to the lifts and pressed the button that would take him down to the considerably less distinguished floor that housed the likes of D.C.I.s and sergeants. First he was gonna have a good go at Mike Collingwood. And once he’d got him really riled up, he was gonna go and drag young Dave Short off to the pub. And get the good gen off him. Because you could bet your bottom dollar, the D.S.’d know all there was to know about whatever it was that was eating Collingwood. Because sergeants always did.

    About half an hour later, therefore, Ben Pemberton choked over his pint and gasped: “Crap!”

     Looking sulky, the D.S. replied: “Well, I dunno. You can ask ole Jim Baxter yaself, if ya like. But that’s what he reckons: he reckons he’s fallen for some dame up there.”

    “Not the Mitchell dame?” said Pemberton feebly.

    “Nah!” returned Dave with scorn.

    “Well, who?”

    “Dunno.”

    Pemberton got up. “Well, if that’s all you can say, why the fuck did you accept that beer?”

    Dave replied with considerable satisfaction: “Because you offered it to me. Sir.”

    Glaring, Superintendent Pemberton strode out of the pub.

    Dave sniggered slightly. He felt quite a lot better. Even though he didn’t understand what had made Mike Collingwood suddenly go off his rocker and decide to chuck away a decent career, either.