Back in the Groove

23

Back In The Groove

    That Saturday Rod slept late. The new holiday job was really taking it out of him: he’d come home exhausted at the end of each long day’s house painting, gobble down a large and unwholesome tea, and after staring vaguely at TV for an hour or so, crawl into bed and sleep like the dead. Steve was self-employed, and none of the blokes belonged to a union, so they more or less worked the hours they needed to—but this weekend Steve’s brother was getting married and he’d given all the blokes a few days off on the strength of it.

    He was only just out of bed, looking gloomily into the almost empty fridge, when Jack turned up in tennis whites. “You forgotten we were going down the Club?”

    Rod looked at him in dismay. “Yeah—sorry.”

    Jack laughed and perched on the edge of the table. “That’s okay—take your time.”

    Rod grabbed a carton of juice. “You booked a court?”

    “Well, yeah. Not to worry, though: old Cyril’ll just give it to somebody else if we don’t turn up.”

    “Yeah—and tear a strip off us!” Cyril Blake was the Puriri & District Lawn Tennis Club’s Secretary, a wiry, energetic fellow who’d taken early retirement and so could devote his time—and devote was the word—to the club. Timetables and tournaments were his twin passions, and anyone who upset his meticulous arrangements would most certainly have a strip torn off them. Rod poured juice down his gullet, said: “Hang on—I’ll get changed!” and bolted for his room.

    Jack grinned, and swung his feet back and forth.

    Rod didn’t have any tennis whites, but he did his best, with his faded denim shorts and a white tee-shirt. It did have an ad for Steinlager on the front of it, but it was very faded. At least his shoes were okay—old Cyril had made sniffy remarks last summer about “the standard of dress the Club likes to see for tournaments”, and Rod, roused out of his normal gentleness, had retorted sharply that what with the cost of the shoes and the sub, it was a wonder he didn’t have to play starkers! Cyril, who was a decent old stick at heart, had thereupon forced through a motion at the next Committee meeting instituting student subs at half the normal adult rate. Rod and Jack had been so grateful they’d volunteered to repaint all the lines on the hard courts for free—and what a job that’d been!

    Roaring down Pohutukawa Bay Road in Jack’s Mum’s Mini, Rod asked: “How’s your Mum getting on?”

    Jack grinned. “Bit better, I reckon—she had old Fatso put down the other day!”

    “Fatso” was the boys’ disrespectful name for Don Banks’s adored dog Fritzie, a very elderly, very fat, and very, very incontinent dachshund. He was the worst-natured dog either of them had ever known: tried to bite everyone but his master—even Marjory, in spite of the fact that she was the one who fed him, half the time. There’d been innumerable complaints from parents of local children about Fatso’s attacks on their offspring, and the paperboys refused to go anywhere near the Banks house—but of course Don Banks, in his impregnable position as Councillor, had merely countered by accusing the kids and the paperboys of provoking his poor little dog.

    “Good on ’er!” cried Rod, laughing. “’Bout time, too!”

    “Yeah,” said Jack, as they paused at the top of the rise, waiting to swing across the main highway and enter the stream of traffic heading for the supermarkets down at Puriri: “He widdled on the carpet once too often, the little bastard. The vet said he should’ve been put to sleep years ago!”

    Of course when they got to the club they couldn’t just go and grab their court: you always had to do things properly under Cyril’s régime, so they trotted along to his office to sign on.

    “Ah, there you are, boys! Now, are you all set for next weekend?” The club was having one of Cyril’s interminable tournaments next weekend: mixed doubles—knock-out; no cup, only the honour and glory of it. It was one of the less grimly serious tournaments (not that Cyril’s tournaments didn’t always have to be taken seriously, mind you!), where Cyril had carefully balanced old and young, good and not-so-good players. Rod, who was very good, was partnered with one of the club’s rabbits, a pleasant, plumpish woman in her late thirties, who admitted cheerfully that she only played for fun. Jack, who wasn’t bad but not nearly up to Rod’s standard, was playing with the elderly but slashing Mrs Ngaio Higginbotham: the club’s answer to Billie Jean King.

    “Yes, fine, thanks, Cyril,” they chorused.

    Cyril hauled out one of his eternal timetables. “Now—let’s see... Ah, yes—here we are!” He began anxiously making sure that they knew exactly when, where and against whom their first matches would be.

    Well, thought Rod in relief, it could be worse! Ngaio and Jack would probably do quite well—they were pretty certain to win their first match, anyway. He wasn’t so sure about his—but there was one good thing: at least neither of them had been landed with his step-ma. Trust old Cyril for that: he wasn’t about to repeat last year’s boo-boo, when he’d thought (poor old joker!) it’d be “nice” to have Rod partnering Esmé when she hadn’t been with the club that long. Suppressing a shudder at the memory, Rod peered at the timetable. Oh, Christ! The old geezer had got her with Jimmy Tamehana! Jesus, the fur’d fly! Jimmy was the most good-natured bloke imaginable, but about as serious about tennis as Rod’s partner—although his backhand wasn’t bad. Esmé, who of course had once been very good indeed, was now a bit erratic at the best of times, and far too inclined to lose her temper, with the result that she either hit her balls wildly all over the place, or marched off the court altogether. Playing with Jimmy, she probably wouldn’t get past the second set!

    They were about to make their escape when Cyril pounced again: “By the way, Rod, you know Polly Mitchell, don’t you?”

    Rod paused in the doorway. “Yeah—why?”

    “I haven’t been able to get in touch with her about the tournament; she’s supposed to be playing with Jack Hanly and he hasn’t managed to get hold of her, either.”

    Yeah, right. Getting engaged would tend to take your mind off flaming Cyril’s tennis tournament. And anyone’d want to forget about being Jack Hanly’s partner: he was one of Cyril’s bosom buddies, a fussy old coot in his sixties, notorious for his cries of “Mine!” as he raced after impossible balls that his partner could have reached easily.

    “Ya wouldn’t have: her and Jake are in at the penthouse.” He gave Cyril the central city number and the old boy hesitated, blushed again, and stuttered : “Ah—”

    He took pity on him. “Want me to try?”

    “Oh, ah—would you, Rod?”

    “No sweat!” He grabbed the receiver and dialled.

    “Carrano,” said the familiar deep voice.

    “Gidday, Jake—Rod here. How’s tricks?”

    Jake chuckled. “Couldn’t be better! How ’bout you—how’s the new holiday job going?”

    “Aw, not bad—using muscles I never knew I had,” Rod admitted ruefully.

    “I bet! Well—what can I do yer for?”

    “I wanted a word with Polly, actually, about the tennis tournament.”

    Oops, Jake didn’t know a thing about it. She came on the line. Right, she’d forgotten all about it. Oh, and Jake had been thinking of a quick trip to Tokyo next weekend, had he? Hah, hah. Rod’s money’d be on old Cyril, any day of the week. He handed him the receiver, grinning.

    The Greens were up at Carter’s Bay for the day: Uncle Ben and Aunty Kathleen, childless themselves, adored playing surrogate grandparents to the children; and as they never allowed Daphne or Tim to raise a hand around the place it was a chance for the pair of them to relax a bit. Uncle Ben had taken the two older kids off for an ice cream and a swim, and Aunty Kathleen, driving Daphne ruthlessly out of the kitchen, was keeping an ear out for Harry, who’d been put down for a nap. So Daphne and Tim had nothing to do but relax in the saggy old deckchairs under the big old plum tree. Aunty Kathleen was rustling up a batch of scones for morning tea: if they came up here much more she’d have to watch her weight, Daphne reflected sleepily.

    “Hey, Daph, do ya reckon Aunty Kath and Uncle Ben’d take the kids for a weekend?”

    She blinked, swallowing a yawn. “Eh?”

    “Give us a bit of a break. Have the house to ourselves. Um, think they might be too much for them?”

    “’Course not!” She leapt up. “I’ll go and ask Aunty Kath right now!”

    Soon she was back, dancing across the lawn like a kid, laughing as she ducked under the low branches of the old tree. “She says they’ll take them next Friday—for a whole week, if we like!” She bent over his chair, laughing and panting.

    “Great!” He grabbed for her, pulling her down onto his lap while she gasped and laughed and protested. “Shuddup! Cummere!” He kissed her heartily. “Jeez, I can’t wait!” he said with a laugh.

    “Me too!” she agreed with a smothered giggle.

    It was agony, so in a way it was quite a relief when he spotted Aunty Kathleen heading across the lawn towards them. Naturally she wanted to talk to Daph about the Carrano engagement; Tim absorbed a great quantity of jammy hot scones and leant back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting the women rattle on. He didn’t know Polly that well, but she seemed a nice young woman. Jake Carrano was okay, too—but a Helluva lot older than her... Wonder if she knows what she’s letting herself in for? he thought. Carrano keeps himself pretty fit, but he must be fifty if he’s a day. He wondered vaguely if a bloke of fifty could get it up when he needed to—Polly was only about the same age as Daph, for Chrissakes!—and drifted off into a doze.

    “Hullo!” said a bright young voice.

    Mike repressed a groan. They’d met before. One of the kids belonging to the good-looking red-headed woman who’d had Rod Jablonski’s car on the night of the murder. About twelve, rather rotund, figure hadn’t really started to develop yet, with long red plaits. And unless you were Jim Baxter in person, with an unstoppable flow. “Hullo, Anne.”

    Jigging up and down a bit, Anne Wiseman replied: “Are you going to the Pleece Station now?”

    “Yes—” Mike began but her mother, coming up in her wake with a load of shopping, interrupted crossly: “That’ll do, Anne, the Chief Inspector doesn’t want to be bothered with nosy little girls!”

    Anne went very red; but to Felicity Wiseman’s surprise the Chief Inspector also went rather red and said weakly: “That’s all right, she can come and have a look round if she likes. God knows there’s nothing much to see.”

    “Can I see the cells?” Anne asked breathlessly, jigging up and down.

    “I suppose so. Both of them,” he added drily.

    Anne’s excitement didn’t appear to abate but her mother bit her lip.

    “Let me give you a hand, Mrs Wiseman,” Mike said, trying to take a couple of heavy bags out of her right hand.

    “Thanks—be careful: that’s the bag with the eggs in it!” she gasped.

    Anne began: “Last weekend Jenny dropped a bag of—” but her mother said loudly: “Any silly tales, Anne, and you can forget about going to the Police Station! And before you start, if you tell me I’m mean again you certainly won’t go!”

    Anne looked sulky. After a minute she said uncertainly: “It wasn’t really a tale.”

    “No, more a tale told out of school,” murmured Mike.

    The two redheads looked uncertainly at him, with their heads on one side. Although Felicity was a maturely handsome woman and Anne was only a round-faced, freckly little sprat they suddenly looked amazingly alike. Mike was taken aback to find a flood of simple envy sweep over him. Whoever the father was, he found himself thinking, he was a bloody fool to have dumped a family like that one!

    “Uh—where’s your car?” he said feebly.

    “It’s just near the Pleece Station!” said Anne eagerly. “We didn’t park it in the carpark, because the free one’s always full on Saturdays and you have to pay in the other one!”

    “I see,” he said, staggering on with their shopping. “Uh—where’s your sister and brothers today?”

    Anne made a face. “Jenny’s playing tennis, she thinks she’s that Steffi Thing, or something!”

    “She is very good,” said her mother pacifically.

    “Yes, but why do I always have to help with the shopping? It isn’t fair, she’s always up the club and I—”

    “You don’t like tennis. And you had an ice cream.”

    Sulkily Anne retorted: “I bet she’s having all sorts of nice things up the club!”

    “Well, she does help Mrs Blake with the food, dear. There’s nothing stopping you from getting up at seven o’clock on a Saturday and going up there with her.”

    Anne made a sick noise. “Yes, there is!”

    “That’ll do.”

    “That Spotty Blake’s always there, Mum!”

    “She’s lost me, there,” Mike observed.

    “Spotty—His name isn’t Spotty at all, poor boy! He’s the Blakes’ grandson, he’s about Anne’s age, I suppose. He often spends the weekends with them.”

    “He’s always there,” repeated Anne, pouting.

    Felicity explained mildly: “He’s got a crush on Anne.”

    “He has not! And anyway he’s horrible! And anyway you’re mean, Mum!” cried Anne, turning puce. Although she was carrying two enormous plastic bags of shopping, she rushed on ahead.

    “She’s at the awkward age,” explained Felicity mildly.

    “Mm,” Mike agreed, smiling at her.

    Flushing slightly, she added: “And of course she’s jealous because Jenny’s so absorbed in her tennis, and the boys are off at computer camp.”

    “Computer camp?” said Mike in a voice that was weaker than he’d intended it to be.

    “Yes. –You haven’t got kids, have you?”—Mike shook his head.—“No, I didn’t think so. Well, it’s just a camp, you know: like a holiday camp, only they learn about computers.”

    “Under canvas?” he said feebly.

    “No, of course not: how could you plug a computer in, in a tent?” she replied, quite seriously. “It’s somewhere up near Carter’s Inlet. Not in the Reserve, but quite near there. It’s cabins, I think it’s run by—um—the YMCA or something... No, maybe it’s the Scouts. Anyway, whoever it is that runs it lets the cabins out to schools and clubs and so on. There’s electricity and everything, it’s quite civilised, really. But they always let them have one night in tents, and there’s canoeing, and so on, as well as the computer stuff.”

    “Civilised... Baths?”

    Smiling suddenly, she admitted: “Not actually, no! They’ve got a shower block but according to my boys it’s the manly thing to rush down to the creek before breakfast.”

    Mike blenched. “Would this be a brackish, salt-water, mangrovey creek?”

    “No,” said Felicity with a laugh, “that’s the one they go for proper swims in! This one’s fresh water!”

    “That’ll be what they drink, then.”

    Biting her lip, she said weakly: “I think they do make them boil it... Well, the boys always rave on about billy tea when they come home.”

    Mike was about to favour her with his opinion of billy tea, but at that moment Anne reappeared at their sides, jigging. “Come ON!”

    “Where are your shopping bags?” asked her mother.

    “On the bonnet. Come ON!”

    “Anne, there’s a cheesecake in one of those bags and the bonnet’ll be boiling hot, it must be pushing thirty today, you’re an absolute idiot!” cried Felicity, forging ahead. “Hurry UP, go and get it off the bonnet!”

    Anne ran off, crying: “It’ll be okay, Mum; anyway, we’re only going to eat it, it won’t matter if it thaws out a wee bit—”

    Rolling his eyes a bit, Mike followed.

    Naturally Rod gave Jack a proper thrashing; but as they’d both known he would they were, respectively, neither elated nor disturbed by this; they’d both had a good work-out, and Rod had loosened up the muscles that were stiff from his painting.

    Afterwards they strolled into the battered old wooden clubhouse. Cyril had a plan for members to paint it this year in the off-season: bit tricky, that, you got so much rain here in winter. As usual on a Saturday, there were sandwiches and salads available, along with plenty of soft drinks and (in spite of Cyril‘s often-voiced disapproval) beer. The boys had hardly ever been able to treat themselves in the past; now that Jack was flush, however, they piled plates with huge amounts of cold chicken, sliced ham, potato salad, coleslaw, and two sorts of lettuce salad.

    The beaming, motherly woman who took Jack’s money was Mrs Cyril—she didn’t play, herself, but her devotion to the Club was as absolute as his. They’d never thought about it much until a pink and indignant Polly had given them an earful about how Cyril had poor June up at five o’clock every Saturday morning, making cakes and scones, and hard-boiling eggs for the salads. “Oh, well,” they’d muttered weakly: “she must like it, or she wouldn’t do it.” Polly had withered them with a glance. Now they gave June guilty, grateful smiles and slid off with their laden plates before she could start telling them the latest gossip, or urging them to have some of her special jellied beetroot, which they both loathed.

    There was quite a good crowd in today: mostly seniors—the married couples with kids usually couldn’t make it for Saturday lunch—and a sprinkling of younger people. All the little tables were occupied, so Rod and Jack grabbed a couple of battered cane armchairs over by the window, and plonked their beer cans on a wobbly little coffee table.—The clubhouse was furnished with odd bits and pieces, members’ cast-offs.—They’d finished their salads and were sipping the last of their beers, trying to decide whether to go for more beer, or settle for cake and coffee, when there was a sudden hubbub over by the door. A hoarse female voice was raised in righteous indignation: “That ball was definitely OUT! That young man isn’t fit to umpire! I shall complain to the Committee!”

    “Shit,” muttered Rod; simultaneously Jack hissed: “Look out, it’s your step-ma!”

    Esmé had evidently been practising for the tournament: she was with Jimmy and Eloise Tamehana, and Eloise’s partner, Richpal Singh, the club’s top seed (Eloise, correspondingly, being the club’s greatest rabbit). Richpal and the Tamehanas were trying to calm her down, to no avail. She swung round on poor Jimmy.

    “You saw that ball, Jimmy! It was out, wasn’t it?”

    His brown, amiable face wrinkled in distress. “Well—couldn’t really see it from where I was,” he mumbled.

    “Nonsense!” she retorted with a snort.

    Eloise was the next victim, being incautious enough to say doubtfully: “I really think it was just in, Esmé.”

    “You would say that! It was your partner’s ball!”

    Richpal, unlike certain tennis stars, was extremely even-tempered; he put in pacifically: “I think it might’ve been just out; but we’ve got to accept the umpire’s decision, haven’t we?”

    With awful irony Mrs Jablonski rejoined: “Of course we do—since it was in your favour!”

    Cyril came fussing in, accompanied by a tall, blond young man with a large elastic bandage round his right knee. “Now, now, what’s all this? Mustn’t question Chris’s decisions, now; after all, he is our guest!”

    “Jesus!” muttered Jack, staring. “It is him!” There was a stir in the clubroom; heads turned in the direction of the blond young man. Since the middle-class population of Puriri was, by and large, fairly good-mannered, they all turned back to their lunches as soon as they’d ascertained that it was him.

    Esmé said firmly to Cyril: “Guest or not, that last ball was out!”

    He made his distressed tutting noise; the blond Chris, smiling, said: “It really did look in from where I was sitting.”

    She replied with disastrous clarity: “Did it, indeed? Well, all I can say is, if you place them as badly as you call them, it’s just as well that knee’s going to keep you out of Wimbledon this year, or you’d be disgracing the country again like you did last year!”

    There was a concerted gasp of horror from the lunchers; the poor young tennis star’s jaw dropped; Rod was as red as June’s jellied beetroot.

    Esmé ignored all this, marched firmly up to the lunch counter, and told June to give her some ham. “And don’t try and fob me off with a lot of fat and gristle like you did last time!”

    It was now glaringly obvious to all her hearers, if it hadn’t been before, just why Mrs Jablonski was no longer a member of the Brown’s Bay Tennis Club, which, after all, had its courts just down the road from her place. Several people silently told themselves that they should’ve believed Richpal when he said that his brother, who lived down at Brown’s Bay, had said she hadn’t resigned voluntarily: she’d been asked to. It hadn’t, at the time, seemed at all likely that the Brown’s Bay club would want to lose a player who in her day had been one of the country’s top women seeds.

    Poor old Cyril was stammering an apology; but the young man replied with a pleasant laugh: “Oh, well—these temperamental tennis stars, you know!”

    Quite a few people thought it a pity that his reward for this remarkable piece of forbearance should be to be led by old Cyril over to the Committee’s table, where no-one except Richpal was under the age of fifty. The young man was observed, during his meal, to cast several wistful glances at a nearby group of four pretty, giggling girls—and who could blame him?

    Rod and Jack cringed in dismay as Esmé spotted them in their quiet little pozzie by the window and marched over to join them, visibly still simmering. Between—and sometimes during—vicious forkfuls of ham and salad, she favoured them with a blow-by-blow account of her recent match, larding it with such choice observations as: “Of course, you can’t expect them to take a sport seriously!” (not the Tamehanas in particular but Maoris in general) and: “Naturally he’d agree to anything the umpire said: all Indians are like that!” The boys were writhing in excruciating embarrassment, as of course she didn’t bother to lower her voice. The people at the table next to them bolted their meal and disappeared in record time. Fortunately, however, she seemed to have diverted herself by this last remark: she went off at a tangent about her local greengrocer, also an Indian, and his iniquitous attempts to sell her underripe or overripe fruit and wilted vegetables.

    At last Jack, shuffling his feet, looked at his watch and muttered: “Uh—better be going; Mum’s expecting me...”

    But she looked up sharply and said through a mouthful of jellied beetroot: “You stop where you are, young man! I want a word with you! Rod: go and get me a cup of tea and a piece of cake!”

    As he rose miserably to his feet, not daring to ask her for the money, she added loudly: “And mind it isn’t banana cake! Don’t know what that woman puts in her banana cake—it tastes like fly spray!”

    He was not altogether comforted when plump Mrs Cyril, patting his hand, whispered: “Never mind, dear—we understand!” and refused to take his money, on the grounds that “You poor dear students: you all work so hard during your holidays; it’s a wicked shame the way the Government treats you!”

    He didn’t attempt to explain the difference between a Postgrad. Scholarship and the Standard Tertiary Bursary, but stumbled back to his seat in blushing silence, wondering whether to resign from the bloody club.

    Ruddy Esmé was now off on another tack, haranguing poor old Jack about some scheme of his father’s.

    “He had no right to plan that development—no right at all—ruining the environment—bringing in a lot of flashy, big-money types! We don’t want their sort up there, with their horrible speedboats and their drunken parties! Don’t you know there’s a bird sanctuary up there?”

    Poor Jack shifted and mumbled unhappily. Rod slid into his seat, trying not to draw attention to himself. He did his best not to listen as the hoarse voice went on and on.

    Finally Jack said miserably: “Of course Mum and me don’t want to buy your land if you don’t want to sell it, Mrs Jablonski.”

    “Don’t want to?” she cried. “It isn’t a case of what I want or don’t want! More a case of being blackmailed into it!”

    The two young men gaped at her; she gobbled a chunk of cake and, pointing a bony finger at Rod, added thickly: “Ask him what his father’s done! Go on, ask him!”

    “I dunno what you mean,” said Rod weakly.

    “Of course you do!” she cried. “You’re as spineless as your father! Tell him! Go on—tell him about his rotten gambling debts and how he’s doing his best to ruin the both of us! Tell him how he’s blackmailing me into selling the last thing I own!” She choked, gulped down a swallow of tea and, lapsing into a lachrymose mood, added: “The only thing left from my dear father’s estate—what would he say if he could see what I’ve come down to?” She pulled a grubby man’s handkerchief from the pocket of her greyish tennis shorts and blew her nose violently.

    Rod and Jack looked at each other helplessly.

    “You don’t have to sell—Dad can’t make you sell,” Rod muttered.

    Unfortunately this roused her again; she cried sharply: “Can’t he, just! Him and that selfish beast Jacob Carrano between them! They’ve got me over a barrel!”

    This last phrase was so horribly reminiscent of Don Banks’s well-publicized practically last-known words that they both blenched.

    Not noticing, Mrs Jablonski swept on, rapidly working herself up into a passion: “If Jacob Carrano thinks he’s going to force me to sell he’s got another think coming! He’s taken everything else I’ve ever had—taken my money—my dear father’s property—taken my youth—the best years of my life...” She was rapidly becoming incoherent, her gasping words interspersed with loud sobs. “What I’ve sacrificed for that man... everything, everything... Nobody knows... Blackmailing us! I won’t give in to blackmail—I told your father—”

    Rod tried unavailingly to stem the flow with: “Jake isn’t going to foreclose, Esmé: he told me, he doesn’t want you and Dad to pay him back—Dad knows that,” but it had no effect.

    “Nobody knows... all for nothing! ...Won’t be beholden... dirty blackmailer!” The voice got louder.

    Rod rose unsteadily and put his hand on the heaving, bony shoulder. “Come on, Esmé, let’s go home.”

    “Home!” she cried bitterly “Home to that old sot! Nobody knows what I’ve done for him—what I’ve sacrificed!” She collapsed in noisy sobs.

    Help was suddenly at hand. “There, there, Esmé—there, dear! Come and have a nice lie-down!” Plump Mrs Cyril bent over her solicitously, adding cheerfully: “Run along, boys—I’ll take care of Esmé!”

    They hovered uncertainly as she helped Mrs Jablonski to her feet and urged her sobbing form in the direction of the Ladies’.

    “She’ll be all right, dears,” said Mrs Cyril briskly. “I’ll get her calmed down and see she gets home safely.”

    “Well—if you’re sure,” they mumbled, and slunk thankfully away.

    “Jesus!” said Rod violently as they collapsed into the Mini. “I’m gonna resign from the bloody club!”

    “I wouldn’t do that,” Jack muttered. “You’re not responsible for what she does, after all.” He started the little car up with a jerk and headed back to the main road.

    There was the usual interminable wait to get through the stream of traffic coming the other way.

    “God,” Rod muttered. “I reckon she’s even worse than your dad, Jack!”

    “Yes,” Jack agreed simply. “Still, at least you’re not actually related to her.”

    Rod grunted.

    They shot across the near lane and edged into the stream of traffic heading south. At the top of the rise Rod mumbled: “Sorry, Jack.”

    “Eh?”

    “Shouldn’t’ve said that about your dad, now he’s dead.”

    “That’s okay. I hated him when he was alive—and he was a bastard to Mum. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

    They were on Pohutukawa Bay Road, trundling gently through the grove of pohutukawas, when he added thoughtfully: “I don’t reckon even Mum’s sorry he’s dead.”

    Felicity Wiseman had made the great mistake of leaving Anne at the police station while she dumped the shopping at home, and coming back to collect her instead of making her walk home. Well, the man would never have got rid of her, of course, if she’d told her to stay no more than half an hour and then come home.

    “Why does he have to work tonight? Pleecemen don’t have to work all night as well as all day, do—”

    “Be QUIET, Anne!” shouted Felicity, gripping the steering wheel fiercely. “Or you can get out and walk!”

    “Anyway, it’s Saturday, you’d think he could take Saturday off!” said Anne scornfully. “Or at least stop for tea like a normal human bean!”

    Chief Inspector Collingwood had turned down a very casual invitation to tea tonight. Felicity’s mouth trembled but she managed to say: “Be quiet, Anne, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

    “Yes, I do: we did it at school in Social Studies, they have unions, see, they stop the gover’ment from making the workers work too much!”

    “Anne, that’s—”

    “And I know pleecemen have unions, see, because I asked Mr Forsyth!”

    “That’s for—for the uniformed ones, Anne,” said Felicity drearily. She braked at those blasted new lights on Riverside Drive.

    “Hasn’t Mike got a uniform?”

    “I’ve no idea. –And don’t call him Mike.”

    “He said I could!”

    Felicity went very red. He hadn’t said she could. “When?”

    “When he showed me the cells, see!”

    Felicity sighed.

    “Mum! MUM! The lights have changed!” shouted Anne.

    Starting, Felicity put the car into motion with a jerk.

    “Ooh, it’s making that funny rattling noise again,” noticed Anne.

    “I can hear that, thank you.”

    “Maybe Rod can fix it.”

    Felicity sighed.

    Anne stared out at the flash new dark brick houses on Riverside Drive. “I wish we lived in one of those... Don’t you think they’re ace, Mum?”

    “No.”

    “Oh. –Jenny reckons Rod’s awfully handsome. Do you think he’s the handsomest, or Mike is, Mum?”

    Sighing heavily, Felicity said: “Rod is only a boy.”

    “No, he’s not, he’s got whiskers and everything!”

    Especially everything, Felicity thought drily. She replied firmly: “He’s a boy to me. I’m old enough to be his mother.”

    Anne’s lips moved silently.

    “I don’t want to hear the arithmetic, thank you, Anne.”

    Pouting, Anne said: “Well, I don’t reckon you are. Well, heck, he’s pretty ancient, I reckon he’s, um...”

    “Twenty-three at the most,” said Felicity coldly.

    Not noticing the coldness, her incorrigible offspring replied: “You could of been his mother, then. If you’d of had him when you were—”

    “That’ll DO!” shouted Felicity, braking savagely.

    Grabbing the door, Anne gasped: “Why have you stopped?”

    “To warn you that if I hear a single syllable more of that garbage, you can get out and walk the rest of the way!”

    “But I wasn’t saying anything!” cried Anne, very red.

    “I don’t want to hear a silly little girl’s opinion of either Rod Jablonski’s looks or Mi—Mr Collingwood’s looks! Did you HEAR ME?” she shouted.

    “Can’t I even talk?” screamed Anne, bursting into tears.

    “NO!” shouted Felicity. “And GET OUT OF THE CAR!”

    Sobbing, Anne got out. “You’re mean and horrible and I HATE YOU!” she screamed through her tears.

    “That makes two of us!” cried Felicity. She drove off with a frightful jerk and an awful graunching of gears.

    It was at least thirty seconds before the sobbing Anne remembered she had twenty cents in her shorts pocket and that Mr Tonks’s dairy was only just round the corner. She made a bee-line for it, forgetting to sob and starting to whistle instead.

    At around three o’clock Jim Baxter, who was officially off duty today, rang from the tennis club, where he and Moana had had lunch—tennis wasn’t really his game, he was more of a bowls man, himself, but they’d had a family membership ever since the kids were old enough to handle a racquet. Mike listened with interest to his description of the scene-at lunchtime.

    “Oh—he was there, was he?” and: “Did she say that?” and: “Yes; very interesting,” he said. The young duty constable, listening at the switchboard, couldn’t make head or tail of it.

    Finally the D.C.I. said: “Well, thanks, Jim—all grist to the mill, eh?” and the Sarge replied: “Yeah; thought so meself. Well—I’m off to Brown’s Bay; Moana thought we might suss out the Chinese takeaway down there, for a change.”

    Mysteriously, the D.C.I. replied to that: “Good one, Jim,” and hung up.

    Julie Henare said breathlessly: “Um, there’s this great disco tonight, ya see, Mrs Pettigrew, all the girls are going and—”

    “Yes, all right, Julie, dear: I can manage this evening,” said Molly Pettigrew listlessly. “It’s only keeping an eye on the office, really...”

    “Mum said I hadda let you know,” explained Julie.

    “Yes. That was very kind of her.”

    “And she sent ya these!” said Julie, suddenly beaming all over her face and dumping her huge plastic carrier bag into the startled Molly’s arms.

    “Oh—um—thank you, Julie!”

    “Some of them are a bit hard,” explained Julie, going outside onto the step, “but Mum says they’ll cook up okay. Or make good jam. Or chutney, eh? You can make good chutney with peaches, my Gran makes great chutney. –Hey, DANNY! –Hey, see ya, Mrs Pettigrew, eh?” She rushed off, waving at the boy in the old black Cortina.

    “Thank your mother for the peaches, Julie!” Molly called after her, not at all sure that Julie was listening, and pretty sure that Mrs Henare would never get the message even if she was: Julie was tremendously good-hearted, but very—very casual. But then, so was Mrs Henare. And it wasn’t just peaches in this enormous bag, it was feijoas, too: Molly could smell them, she hated feijoas, they made her feel— Suddenly, what with the blinding glare coming off the motel’s concrete forecourt and the sicky sweet smell of the feijoas, she felt all peculiar and had to put the bag down. She leant dizzily in the office doorway.

    The noise of Danny’s Cortina died away. It was utterly still at the far end of Pukeko Drive. There were certainly no pukekos in sight, nor any ducks, they had more sense than to go wandering round on blistering concrete on blazing hot afternoons… Oh, dear, why was she thinking about the birds like this: it wasn’t sense, it was instincts, or something.

    The Council had mown the grass of the verges yesterday morning: Molly got up early anyway for the motel breakfasts, so she’d been awake when the mower started up, but it had given her an awful fright all the same. Yesterday the grass had smelled wonderful but now all you could smell was a faint scent of hay overlaid with the fei— Molly swallowed hard.

    The hard, bright day dazzled off the concrete: little twinkly bits sparkled all over it. Alan had known the name of that stuff, he said they didn’t put it in it on purpose, it was in the gravel and stuff that concrete was made of... Molly’s ears were buzzing but it was only the cicadas, the patch of bush on the hillside was full of them. There was one, now, actually, on the side of the office wall, just above the petunias. They looked hot and droopy, too, poor things, this weather was too hot for them...

    There were only two cars on The Blue Heron’s forecourt: that very smart grey one, it belonged to the man who had asked for the end unit, Number Seven, the one furthest away from the office. Molly hadn’t really got a good look at the lady who was with him, but she had a sort of feeling that maybe they weren’t married to each other... The man was middle-aged, so— The other car was the white one that belonged to that young couple: they were from some tiny place up north and had come down on their honeymoon. They’d been to the beach earlier but had come back and— Well, they were young and in love. Why not?

    Molly stared out over the dazzling concrete at the field opposite. Sometimes there was a big brown horse in that field: it belonged to a nice girl who came up from the city every weekend to ride it. Only it wasn’t there today, maybe the girl had taken it for a ride... Occasionally Mr Peters brought his goat to graze on the verges, he had asked if she minded and she’d said of course not. It was quite a friendly goat. But it wasn’t there today, either...

    Not for the first time Molly found she was wishing that Alan hadn’t picked such an isolated spot for the motel. It was true that people tended to buy more from their little shop, she supposed, but—

    Molly’s eyes dazzled. She found she was staring at the slot where Chief Inspector Collingwood usually parked his red Mazda. He’d gone out very early... He hadn’t come back for lunch, she didn’t think he was eating properly. He hadn’t ordered any breakfast for this morning and when she’d rung to check on it had been... Well, quite rude, really. Well, not rude, exactly. Abrupt. Then he’d said did they have any mineral water in stock and by that time Molly had been feeling so depressed that she’d said no without even looking, though there might have been a bottle at the back of the fridge, she’d had some at one stage and people hardly ever asked for it...

    Swallowing hard and blinking, she heaved up the bag of fruit and went back into the stuffy little office.