Usual Suspects

6

Usual Suspects

    “This is his place,” said Mike Collingwood without enthusiasm.

    It was a glorious day and the grass wasn’t wet: nevertheless D.S. Short hadn’t fancied the hike across the field to get to the Browne type’s place from the flaming turning circle. “What’s stopping him putting a front path in?” he said sourly.

    “You met him last night, Dave,” replied Mike sourly. “You tell me.”

    “Useless Pom,” replied the D.S. immediately. “Doesn’t look as if he ever mows it, even!”

    How true. Mike rang the bell. Then he rang it again. Then he let Dave hammer on the door.

    Browne greeted them with a bleat of: “Surely you don’t want to interview me again?”

    “No, of course not, that’s why I’m here,” agreed Mike.

    Dave sniggered slightly and put his hand over his mouth.

    “You can push off, Dave. This’ll only be background stuff. And I’ve got the recorder.”

    “Righto. Um—shall I see if I can hurry the forensic boys up over the clothes and that?”

    “A man might try,” he replied drily.

    “Uh—yeah. Righto, then, I will! I’ll give you a bell if get any results!” he said eagerly.

    “Mm. Do that.”

    The D.S. went off across the field. There was a bit of muttering as he did so but frankly, Mike didn’t care if Browne did hear it: Dave was right, the bloke had been here for almost a year to the day and he’d never even got a load of gravel in? Christ!

    “Come in. Would you like a coffee?” he offered on an uneasy note.

    “Thanks,” agreed the detective, coming in. He followed him into the kitchen, eyeing its polyurethaned knotty-pine trendiness with a certain dryness: there was a firm that specialised in putting up semi-kitset houses in this stuff. Quite well designed, mind you. He didn’t think it was one of the Carrano Group’s firms, though. Maybe these so-called chalets were an experiment, maybe the Group was thinking of expanding into kitset homes. Though as to whether they’d include the sort of appliances that Browne had been favoured with—! They were all huge and pale green. And don’t ask why a single bloke needed a dishwasher. “Carrano put this lot in for you?”

    Roger reddened. “Yes.” He opened the door of the giant green fridge-freezer. “He is my landlord,” he said in a muffled voice.

    “Yeah.” Mike waited until he’d got the milk out. Then he said: “Though probably not for much longer?”

    “What?”

    Mike eyed him blandly. “I understand that Mr Banks was the main impediment to Carrano putting in a road and completing this row of chalets. Or holiday homes—whatever you like to call them.”

    Roger ground coffee with concentration. “You’ve been remarkably quick off the mark.”

    “Or the locals have been only too anxious to tell us—yeah. One or the other.”

    “What locals?” he replied on a sulky note.

    “Everyone we’ve spoken to,” said Mike simply. He paused. “Except you, of course. In fact, on going over your interview, Browne, I found that you were quite noticeably close-mouthed about Banks, Carrano, and all their doings.”

    Glaring, Roger retorted: “Perhaps because I don’t actually know anything of my own knowledge! Possibly not unlike the rest of your interviewees!”

    “Quite,” said the detective drily.

    Silence fell in the trendy modern kitchen.

    Eventually, when the coffee-pot had started to hiss on the heat, Mike said: “Italian, eh?”

    “Er—I suppose it was made in Italy, yes. I bought it in France; they’re very cheap there.”

    “Cost the earth here. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to get a replacement for the flaming rubber seal.”

    “Oh.” Roger glanced at him warily.

    “S’pose you just used to pop over the Channel and buy a new one when yours wore out.” The coffee came through with a muffled roar and Mike admitted: “Smells good! –Same type of pot as Polly’s, eh?”

    “Yes,” he said shortly, flushing.

    “Never met her when she was in France, did you? Though I should think the two of you must have been studying there about the same time.”

    “She was at Strasbourg and I was at—in Paris. It’s hardly surprising we didn’t meet: there were fifty million or so other people in the country at the same time.”

    Mike had noticed the correction. At what? The Sorbonne? Did he think the dumb cop wouldn’t know what he meant? “Yeah. –Uh, no milk, thanks.” He watched as he put it back in the fridge. “You never bumped into her at this Cazzy-whatsit’s place in Paris, then?”

    “I was never the sort of brilliant student that Jean-Jacques Casassus favoured with an invitation to his home, if that’s what you mean.”

    “The sort of brilliant female student, wasn’t it?” he drawled.

    Reddening, Roger replied: “I dare say. She met him at a damned conference, what do you expect? And that’s all I know about it, apart from the fact that he edits the series in which her book came out! And what in God’s name has Polly’s time in France got to do with Don Banks’s death?”

    “Maybe nothing. –Just one sugar, ta.”

    Roger spooned sugar into their mugs, scowling.

    “Maybe everything, who knows? Maybe everything is related to everything else, in the great flux of life.”

    Roger stared at him.

    Mike was dying to tell him to shut it, he was catching flies, but nobly refrained. Could be drummed out of the Force for something like that! –Be a damn good thing, too, now he came to think of it… He passed a hand wearily across his face and said: “Sorry. Been up all night. No, well, what I was wondering was whether there might have been a little something in Polly’s past that none of us back home ever got to hear about.”

    “What? That’s ridiculous!”

    “No, it isn’t. Lots of girls’d go off the rails in Paris—all right, Strasbourg, with side trips to Paris to see this Cazzy bloke. And with her looks— Well, drugs, sex—don’t ask me, I’m only a simple Kiwi.”

    “That’s the most fantastically absurd suggestion I’ve ever heard! And if, as I presume you are, you’re hinting at blackmail, how in God’s name could Mr Banks have got to know something like that?”

    Mike shrugged. “Dunno. Had his methods, by all accounts.”

    “Er—yes,” said Roger on a weak note. “Did he? –Shall we sit on the verandah?”

    The verandah faced due east and the sun was already half off it, which meant it was about half as late as it ruddy well felt. Mike sat down on one of the canvas chairs with a sigh and put his sunglasses on. Browne bleated: “Oh—I’ll just get my sunglasses, too, if you’ll excuse me—” and shot off. Probably to have a leak, too, he’d be too bloody coy to mention that in mixed company. Mike sighed again and sipped the coffee cautiously. Hot. Ambrosial, though. Mmm…

    Well, Carrano reckoned that Banks was a ruddy blackmailer, and you didn’t pass over Jake Carrano’s evidence with a laugh and a merry shrug. Not if you wanted your career to go any further in God’s Own Country, that was. Not that Mike was all that damned sure he did want it to, any more… But Carrano obviously had a point: who else might Banks have been blackmailing besides this Prior type that most unfortunately had a cast-iron alibi? Well, practically cast-iron. Mind you, they’d go over the times with a fine-tooth comb, but… Sodding doctors. “Any time between nine and midnight. Approximately.” Oh, ta very much: we know he was alive and kicking at nine o’clock, he was getting out of his ruddy taxi and telling poor old Sid Pakiri that was driving it not to do a racing turn on Carrano’s flaming front sweep or some such crap, and was that fare exactly correct, my good fellow. Something like that. Old Sid had been driving taxis on the Coast for over forty years: he was due to retire any day now, and he’d been pretty steamed about it. Well, that was one that wouldn’t miss Don Banks.

    Mike sniffed slightly and shifted in his chair. He stared at the blue, blue sea. Perfect day… Not too humid, yet, this time of year…

    All right, so Prior was more or less out of it. Well, having Jake Carrano as your alibi was about as cast-iron as an alibi could get, here in Godzone. Pity: talk about the ideal suspect! We-ell… Carrano coulda paid him to tell the tale, mind you. If they both had good reason to want to get shut of the little sod. Which unfortunately didn’t seem to be exactly so, in Jake Carrano’s case, never mind what the locals might say about the bad blood between Carrano and Banks over the bloody cliff road up here and the new senior citizens’ village that the Carrano Group was involved in—only financially, Carrano Development wasn’t building it, that was Carewe Construction, owned by, coincidentally, Carrano’s old mate, Ron Carewe. The two things might have loomed large here in Puriri County, where the main hobby, certainly amongst the retirees the place had been filling up with these last few years, was spying on your neighbours in case they dared to let a single blade of grass poke its head up without whacking it off with the whipper-snipper—but the Carrano Group had interests all over the world, it managed giant international projects, for Chrissakes! The cliff road thing was trivial! …Shit, what a row there’d be if it was Carrano, though! Wal Briggs’d be defending him, of course: probably claim he was driven out of his mind: Briggs was good at that. The media would have a field day—no, correction: they were having a field day already. They’d be raving delirious, that was what. It’d probably even push the cricket off the front page and he, Mike, could retire and sell his memoirs for a fortune on the strength of it! …Pity about the alibi, take it for all in all.

    Mike sighed and drank coffee. Browne reappeared: he had been to the bog, Mike had heard it flush. He eyed him sardonically but didn’t comment. The bloke sat down and asked him what he wanted to know.

    Actually Mike didn’t know what he wanted to know. He replied airily: “Oh—impressions, really; background. You’re sort of the outsider in this lot, aren’t you? Fresh view, free of the local prejudices?” With an effort he refrained from mentioning whipper-snippers.

    “Um—yes. Only I never knew Don Banks, really.”

    “All the better. Tell us about the other—uh—participants.”

    “Suspects, you mean!” said Roger bitterly. He paused. “Was it murder, then?” he demanded loudly and aggressively.

    “Yes.” That took the wind out of his sails: all he managed was a feeble “Oh.” Mike added kindly: “Between nine and twelve last night, as far as the medicos can make out. Looks like someone held him under the water.”

    Browne recoiled and gasped. After a moment he said faintly: “Good Christ.” Well, that was genuine, or Mike Collingwood hadn’t been investigating domestic bashings of the loved one in the season of peace on earth, good will to all men since Adam was a lad.

    “Nasty, eh?” he said, very mildly.

    “Yes,” Browne agreed, swallowing.

    “Murder tends to be,” said Mike without emphasis.

    “He couldn’t swim,” he said hoarsely.

    Yes, well, thanks for that morsel, Browne, thought Mike grimly. Actually he already knew that: he’d interviewed—though possibly interrogated would have been a better word—Don Banks’s only son earlier that morning. “That right?” he replied mildly.

    “Yes, um, Jack once mentioned it.” He swallowed. “His son. God knows why I’ve retained it.”

    “Mm… We might chat later about Master Banks, I think. Once I’ve found out a bit more about his movements at the time.” He paused. “And once the medicos are able to tell us for sure whether or not old Banks was stuffed full of some drug.”

    “Yes, or if he’d been bashed on the head, or something!” said Roger eagerly.

    “They already know that: he wasn’t.” He eyed him drily. “They’ve been up all night, too.”

    “I see,” said Roger humbly.

    Mike drank coffee, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. “At this juncture, I’d like to get your impressions of the cast of characters.” Browne was looking helpless so he said: “Cast your mind back to the first time you met, good a place to start as any.”

    “Fuh-first… You mean Jake?” he croaked.

    “Him amongst others—yeah. How did he strike you, in a few words?”

    “Um… very vigorous, I suppose,” he said reluctantly. Mike was silent. “Vital,” said Roger sourly. “It was a foully humid day—well, it was to me, I’d come straight from an English winter—and he seemed full of driving force and energy.”

    “Mm… Cheerful?”

    “Cheerful?” he said loudly. “He was having a torrid affaire with Polly, so yes, the man was cheerful!”

    “Uh-huh. He changed since then?”

    Scowling, Roger replied: “I suppose most relationships have their minor ups and downs, don’t they? But fundamentally I’d say not. And I don’t know if you’re interested in his business concerns—and frankly I’d doubt if even the top inspectors from the tax office could make sense of them—but he seemed to me to spend just as much of his time and energy on business as he does now. In fact he had a business dinner in town the very evening we met, so Polly and I went to the Chez Basil in Puriri for dinner. Er—as a matter of fact Don and Marjory Banks were there—though of course I didn’t know who they were, at that stage…”

    “Go on,” said Mike, leaning back in his chair. He didn’t know what the Hell he was listening for, amongst the verbal garbage—and Jesus, the type couldn’t half talk the hind leg off a donkey when he got going—and ten to one it’d turn out there’d been some nutter roaming the hillside with a fixation about middle-aged gents in grey business suits: hadda drown them in poncy turquoise patio pools, ya see… He listened, all the same.

    At about the time that Mike Collingwood was gearing himself up to tell the verbose Pommy tit to cut the cackle, Jake said with a rich chuckle: “He done it!”

    “Bullshit, Jake!” cried Polly, going very red.

    Jake reached over with his fork and speared a large chunk of grilled pineapple. He shoved a goodly portion of it in his mouth and chewed vigorously. “Yesh, ’e did,” he said thickly, swallowing. “Thought it was me, ya see. Driven mad with jealousy—shoved me in the pool.”

    Polly had been eating grilled ham steak with a look on her face as of one pretending that they weren’t hearing what an idiot was saying to them. At this she swallowed her mouthful and said acidly: “And then you just lay there and drowned, resistless. I see.”

    “No, because it wasn’t me, it was ole Don, geddit? He can’t swim. –Couldn’t.”

    Polly’s fork remained suspended in mid-air. After a moment she said: “And Roger never noticed it wasn’t you.”

    Jake shrugged. “It was dark.”

    She looked at him uncertainly. “Weren’t the pool lights on?”

    “Nah. Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone to go out there, was I? The patio lights were off, too. Unless Don— No, he wouldn’t have know where the switch is.”

    “I get it: he strolled out there in the pitch dark so as Rog could come along, mistake him for you—I mean, you were just so alike!—and drown him. Highly logical.”

    “You got a better theory?” He added a chunk of grilled ham to the remains of his piece of pineapple and ate them up hungrily.

    “No, but I jolly well haven’t got a worse one, either!”

    Jake choked. “No, all right. Only it coulda been like that. Well, not young Rog, necessarily. But it was pretty dark, and say the person was in a kind of—uh—frenzy.”

    Polly made a sickened face and stopped eating.

    “Sorry. We won’t talk about it, if you’d rather not.”

    “Don’t be silly,” she said tiredly. “What’d be the point of us both sitting here not talking about it when we can’t think of anything else?”

    “Mm.”

    They were lunching out on the terrace instead of the patio. The terrace was more formal and less sheltered: it faced south and west. Fortunately today there was very little wind. Polly stared out over the view of Jake’s west lawn and the rose beds. There were no other houses in sight from here, just the belt of scrubby bush that ran all along the western border of the property, and beyond that a vista of the shallow little valley known as Pohutukawa Bay. It was really quite isolated: it had never struck her before just how isolated they were at this end of the Bay: just the three chalets and Jake’s big house… If she’d built a house here she’d have put it higher up, with a sea view, but then when he first built here Jake hadn’t owned the land along the cliff top, had he?

    “What?” she said, jumping slightly.

    “I said, what do we really know about Rog, anyway? He comes out here, we don’t know a thing about ’is background, could be anyone—”

    “Bu’shi’!” said Polly with her mouth full. She swallowed hurriedly. “Of course we know who he is! I’ve read his work!”

    “Ooh, yeah, that’ll make ’im a goodie!” he sneered.

    “You’re mad,” she said definitely.

    “Well, all I know is, Collingwood was up here at crack of dawn giving me the third degree, and he seemed mighty interested in Dr Roger Browne.”

    “Oh,” said Polly weakly.

    “’E’s gone up there to give him the third degree, now.”

    “Well, it’ll be a waste of time! Only an idiot could possibly imagine Roger in a—a frenzy of jealousy, drowning a person! That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Jake!”

    “All right,” he said amiably. “Say it wasn’t that—say he didn’t mistake Don for me. Say—uh—he had a bloody good reason to do him in on ’is own account.”

    “What reason?” she asked scornfully.

    “I dunno. But that’s the point I’m trying to make: what do we know about him, really? Could be anything in his past. –Or his present, come to that.”

    “His present’s an open book.”

    “Is it? You’ve seen his bank statements, I suppose?”

    “His—No! Honestly, Jake!”

    “Yeah, all right: the cash nexus,” he said, grinning. “Only he could be in debt. Banks could have driven him into a corner—well, the little shit was capable of anything, let’s face it!”

    “Yes,” said Polly in a low voice. “I sort of wish you hadn’t told me all that about him and Derek Prior, Jake… Oh, well.”

    Jake replied grimly: “Gotta grow up and start facing reality some time.”

    “Mm.”

    “Uh—sorry. Didn’t mean that.”

    “Yes, you did. It’s all right. Um… I suppose we don’t know all that much about Rog. I mean—well, his life, and so forth. Only what he’s let drop. But we do know his personality, surely? I mean, doesn’t that count for something, Jake?” She looked at him pleadingly.

    Sighing, he said: “Yes, a bit, only— Well, you tend to get used to people, eh? Not you personally, I don’t mean: everyone. We get used to people and we stop looking at them—stop really seeing them. Cast your mind back to when you first met him: how did he strike you?”

    Polly frowned over it. Jake ate the last piece of pineapple and just waited. Though he wasn’t too sure that if she did remember anything odd, she’d let on.

    “Does Carrano come into this narrative at all?” asked Mike crossly:

    “Yes! You told me to start at the beginning! Of course back then I’d never heard of him.”

    No, ’course not. The Carrano Group owned a flaming great office building in London but if Browne was the sort that read the financial news, he, Mike Collingwood, was a Dutchman in ’is clogs. “Well, all right. What else?”

    “Um, well— Oh, I forgot. I met Rod Jablonski back then, too: he came into the staffroom while we were chatting, but I hardly think that’s relevant.”

    Under other circs Mike would’ve agreed and told him to cut the cackle, but just coincidentally young Jablonski was currently sharing Carrano’s third cabin, just up at the head of the cliff top track, with Jack Banks, the heir to the Banks fortune that the late Donald had been about to dissipate on his cracked leisure development scheme. “Never mind. How did he strike you?”

    Roger passed his hand through his hair, and sighed. “Like a cross between Michelangelo’s David and David Attenborough, if you must have it.”

    “Uh—yeah. That funny voice, eh?” said Mike weakly. “Struck me, too. Apart from that.”

    “Um, well, I’d say he’s reasonably bright but not brilliant, the sort that at home would probably get a Second if he worked, and concerned to hide the intelligence under some strange sort of macho front.”

    There was a short silence.

    “It struck me as strange at the time,” said Roger defiantly.

    Mike cleared his throat. “Yeah. All right, that’s him. Uh—well-meaning, would you say?”

    “Yes: I’d say he’s entirely well-meaning, has a sense of honour, and in spite of all that sporting stuff he does so well, is quite a gentle boy.”

    “Yeah, well, he’s not a boy, must be at least twenty-three. Um—young for his age?”

    To his irritation the Pom shrugged and said: “I can’t say, I don’t know the local norms well enough.”

    “Yeah. Well, anything more you can remember about what Polly said about her time in France? Not the linguistics stuff this time, ta. Anything personal?”

     “Er… not very much, then or later. She doesn’t talk about the past, much; I think she’s the sort of person who tends to live very much in the present,” he discovered.

    Yes, thought Mike acidly, and the present includes the possibility that that macho tit of a multi-millionaire down the hill might marry her, I suppose that hasn’t occurred to you, you Pommy git? Nor that being blackmailed because of something disreputable in your past that’d put a macho tit of a multi-millionaire off marrying you constitutes a pretty bloody good reason for disposing of said blackmailer! Looked at objectively. Not that he really thought that little Polly Mitchell, whom he’d known all her life… She had a sweetness about her that— No. She was a strong, healthy young woman, physically more than capable of holding a little elderly man like Banks underwater until he drowned. Never eliminate any possibility until you’re ruddy sure it’s an impossibility, thought Mike, well-shaped mouth tightening.

    “Yes, I dare say she is that type. Get on with it, Browne, couldja?”

    “Um, well, she seemed to have made plenty of friends in Strasbourg…”

    Cripes, that was fascinating. Pretty much a waste of time, in fact. Either he didn’t know or he wasn’t letting on, or there wasn’t anything to know. And verbose was not half the word for it! Added to which, all those ruddy French names were so much Greek. Mike looked at his watch, and got up. “Thanks. I’d better get back to it. Don’t go away, will you?” His even white teeth flashed in a not altogether nice smile.

    Roger stood up, his thin cheeks flushing. “I’ve no intention of going anywhere. Should I experience a sudden urge to go to the university library, however, whom should I notify?”

    “Me. Leave a message at the local station. Po-lice Station,” he explained kindly. “It’s in the book. Don’t ring—” His lips twitched. “Nine-nine-nine.”

   “Very funny!” Roger knew it was one-one-one, out here.

    Mike went slowly down the verandah steps. “Oh—and just in case it needs saying, I’d advise you not to speak to the Press. There’s a clutch of them lurking up at the head of your track; Carrano’s got some blokes from the security firm up there holding them off.” He went off, to the sound of Browne’s annoyed: “I’ve no intention of speaking to the Press!”

    We-ell… He didn’t have an alibi, had only been home watching TV, apart from a chat on the phone to Mrs Prior around tennish, and it was only two minutes from his place down to Carrano’s if you went down the slope to the pool gate, but… They’d investigate his finances and his background, just in case. But in his opinion Browne wasn’t in the running. Not the type, and he’d been genuinely shocked when he learned how Banks had died. Mike had known types that’d bawl on your shoulder for hours over the dear departed, not to say go on nationwide TV appealing tearfully for someone with any knowledge of the dreadful crime to come forward, and then it turned out they did it. But that sort of sly liar in the first place usually had a sly look on their face beyond the tears, if you knew how to look for it, and in the second place was usually—no, always, in his experience—always in a considerably lower IQ bracket than Dr Roger Browne. That sort of downright cunning and ability to tell a convincing bare-faced lie often went with low intelligence, in fact.

    Unfortunately nobody that had the opportunity to nip down to Carrano’s unseen seemed to have much of a motive. Young Jack Banks? He was on the spot, all right, sharing that fancy cabin at the head of the track with Jablonski... Unfortunately he hadn’t struck Mike as a possible murderer, at all. Ordinary student, he was gay but didn’t seem warped on account of it, ordinary home life up until he left school. Just an ordinary kid, interested in his studies, did a bit of surfing… Admittedly he’d had a row with his dad because he didn’t want to go into business with him, but that wasn’t uncommon. He’d been very shocked by his father’s death—genuinely shocked. Old Banks had had a fair bit to leave, true, and they’d check Jack’s finances out thoroughly, but the kid had got Bursary, he was pretty bright, and he had a couple of part-time jobs; unless he’d started playing the horses or was on drugs he wasn’t in need of money. And as a matter of fact Mike didn’t think for an instant he was on drugs. Bit of pot—no doubt; they all did, stupid little idiots. Anyway, as soon as the varsity results came out they’d see whether his mind had been on his swot or clouded by the hard stuff, wouldn’t they? Um, when was that? January some time? Mike couldn’t remember, though he could see those results sheets in his mind clear as day, pinned up in the old stone cloisters…

    He walked on, frowning. In most cases of murder you had a bloody good idea right from the off of who was responsible and it was usually a close relative. In fact always a close associate, except in the cases of bikie gang violence or the barneys between different Pacific Island racial groups, or one of them and a Maori gang, in the city. Well—do the thing that was nearest. He headed up the track.

    On the door of the cliff-top cottage nearest the end of Pohutukawa Bay Road was pinned a crumpled note. Mike didn’t know whether to lose his temper or to give in and laugh, when he read it. It said: “To the cops. Jack’s at his Mum’s and I’m down the beach.” There was no signature.

    Did the bloody kid mean down below, on the beach here, or had he pushed off to Puriri Beach? Mike hesitated, then went back along the track a bit and over to the cliff top where you could see down below. Yeah. Surfing. Little sod. He hesitated once more, then went along the dusty track to the head of the cliff path. He clambered down it carefully: it was bloody steep, and there were no refinements like handrails. Here and there steps had been cut into it, but they didn’t help much. Fit for kids and goats, really.

    Away at the end of the little beach there was a clutch of little boys fooling about but that was all, besides the solitary surfer. Mike went down to the hard wet sand below the tide mark and waved at him. When that didn’t work he both waved and bellowed: “OY!” He was pretty sure the kid was deliberately pretending he hadn’t seen him, little bleeder.

    Finally Rod came in, panting, with his board under his arm. Mike had barely opened his mouth before the little boys appeared, begging to use the board. Rod refused, quite amiably but firmly. After the expected protestations they pushed off again.

    “You wanna interrogate me down here?” said Rod amiably.

    “No, it’s too bloody hot,” replied Mike irritably.

    “Borrow some Zinc,” the little sod replied, poker-face.

    Mike looked with disfavour at his bright yellow nose and strawberry pink chin, and said sourly: “No, thanks, one painted jerk’s enough for a beach this size. You can bloody well come up aloft.”

    “Rather be a painted jerk than a jerk dead of skin cancer,” he replied mildly.

    Mike ignored this and led the way to the cliff path.

    At the top, trying not to pant—flaming young Jablonski was barely breathing harder, must run up and down the bloody thing every day like a flaming goat—he sat down under a pohutukawa tree. Rod dropped down beside him, looking mild.

    Mike wasn’t fooled for a minute. Flaming students—especially flaming arts students—were all the same. Raving lefties, all convinced that the odd joint never did anyone any harm, never mind if the dough for the odd joint went straight into the pockets of the drug traffickers, never mind if their weaker brethren went on from the odd joint to the hard stuff.

    “You can tell me what you know about Browne,” he said without preamble.

    “Uh—yeah. All right,” agreed Rod weakly.

    Mike didn’t get much joy out of him. Though he did seem positive that Browne was “a decent joker.” Then he got him onto Jake Carrano, but it was pretty clear that Jablonski was a Carrano fan from way back. At one point he got him to admit the bloke had a temper, but as this was common knowledge it couldn’t have been said to get them much forrarder. It didn’t much help the frame of mind he was in when Rod said at the end of the interrogation: “I suppose the fact Jake’s got a hair-trigger temper proves he musta shoved ole Don Banks in the flaming patio pool. Just when ole Don was gonna pay him a fortune for that dump up Carter’s Inlet and get his Council mates to let the road up here go through. Logical, that. Still, never can tell with these hair-trigger tempers.”

    Mike switched the recorder off, looking sour.

    “That It, then?”

    “Yeah. Go back to your bloody beach games,” he returned sourly.

    Rod stood up, stretching. “No, I better go down to Brown’s Bay, check up on Dad,” he said glumly.

    Mike got up, looking dry. “I wouldn’t bother.”

    The young man eyed him warily. “Why not?”

    “We were down there early this morning, trying to get some sense out of your stepmother about what she might have seen or heard on Tuesday night at Carrano’s. She was so busy doing the vacuuming that she barely listened to us, and your dad looked like he was pretty well half-cut already. Well, when she did turn off the bloody vacuum-cleaner she started screaming at him that he was a drunken old sot, and where had he hidden it this time, so—” He shrugged.

    “Shit,” muttered Rod.

    “Yeah. Well, if ya do go down there, ya might do us a favour and suggest to your stepmother that there’d be no actual harm in cooperating with the police to the extent of telling us what time she might have got to Carrano’s and what time she might have got home.” He paused. “Just approximately,” he said sourly.

    Rod licked his lips. “So she did come up here?”

    “Apparently. For what, she wasn’t letting on.”

    “Um, that deal. Wouldn’t she explain?” he said weakly.

    “No: she asked us if we had a warrant. Though as Carrano had already told us about it, we weren’t entirely at a loss,” returned Mike coldly. “Someone seems to have done your parents out of a fairly hefty sum by shoving Mr Banks in the swimming-pool.”

    “Don’t call them my parents: she’s not my mother, thank Christ,” the young man said, scowling. “And it mighta seemed hefty in isolation, but—” He broke off.

    “What?” said Mike.

    “All right, if ya must have it, the stupid old tit’s in debt up to the eyeballs!” he said loudly.

    Mike switched the tape-recorder on again. “Go on: this is your father? Who’s he in debt to? The banks?”

    Rod gave a scornful laugh. “And the rest!”

    “Loan sharks?”—Rod merely looked sulky.—“Don Banks?” suggested Mike in a hard voice.

    “Not any more. –Look, it’s nothing to do with me, and I don’t know any of it of my own knowledge, either!” he said loudly. “As far as I know he wasn’t, as of yesterday!”

    It would need to be looked into; but Mike couldn’t actually see old Count Jablonski roaring up to Pohutukawa Bay in a frenzy and shoving Don Banks in Carrano’s patio pool over some bloody loan. For one thing, he was clearly the type that drank themselves into a stupor instead of rushing round in a frenzy. For another, he was a pretty frail old gent: not that Don Banks had been the Sylvester Stallone of Puriri County, either, but he’d have been a match for old Jablonski.

    “How do you pronounce your father’s first name?” he asked abruptly.

    “Eh? ‘Yairzshuh’: more or less,” said Rod weakly, goggling at him.

    “Thought Dave had it wrong,” admitted Mike.

    “Dad goes spare if anyone pronounces it ‘Jersey’,” said Rod limply.

    “Don’t worry, none of us mere coppers’d dare to address him by his first name.”

    Rod looked at him uncertainly but the lean, handsome face was expressionless. “Did he do his ‘last of the true Polish aristocracy’ bit?” he said weakly.

    “Mm. Went over with a bang with my sergeant.”

    “He’ll do that,” he muttered, wincing.

    “Yeah. –Who does know first-hand about your father’s debts? Apart from your stepmother, presumably.”

    “You’d better ask Jake,” he said with a sigh.

    “All right, Jablonski, I’ll do that,” replied Mike grimly, switching the recorder off and this time shoving it in his trouser pocket. “And then I’ll come back to you for a bit of confirmation—see? Second-hand or not. And you’d better bloody be ready to give it, I’m not joking when I say I’d happily haul half a dozen snot-nosed students like you in for obstruction at the drop of a hat.” He strode off without waiting to see how the young man had taken this.

    He wasn’t too sure that behind him he didn’t hear a sour mutter of “Better not drop any bloody hats, then, had I?”, but he walked steadily away.

    Back at Puriri Police Station—they hadn’t yet finished setting up the Murder HQ, they were going to use the little Pohutukawa Bay Community Hall, but the gear hadn’t all arrived yet—Mike engulfed a large number of very indifferent sandwiches very rapidly.

    “Well?” said Dave Short, perched on the edge of the desk.

    “I don’t reckon Browne did it,” said Mike shortly.

    “No evidence yet, one way or the other,” replied the D.S. calmly. “You want that Coke?”

    “YES!” Mike opened the can, glaring at him. He drank some quickly. “Got my germs in it, now,” he pointed out sourly.

    His sergeant merely grinned, and said: “He is the man who found the body.”

    “Yes, well, let’s arrest him on the strength of it, Dave!” suggested Mike irritably.

    “Coulda been him. If this Banks type was a blackmailer like Carrano reckons, then he could of been blackmailing this Browne type.”

    “Could’ve been blackmailing half the Coast. And probably was.” Mike screwed up his sandwich bag and hurled it at the wastepaper basket. It missed. He stood up with his can. “Come on.”

    “Where to?” asked Dave, not moving.

    “To see this Derek Prior type that we know for certain Banks was blackmailing,” replied Mike grimly.

    Dave scrambled up, his boiled-lolly blue eyes brightening. “Now ya talking! Hey, woulden it be great if we could break his alibi? Hey, I tell ya what: if we’ve broken his, then we’ll of broken Carrano’s, too! Whaddaya reckon?”

    Mike took a deep breath. “Go to the top of the class, Dave,” he said with immense restraint.

    Dave thought this was a compliment. He duly smirked.

    Mike didn’t even bother to take another deep breath. He’d been working with Dave Short for some time, now.

    Did I imagine Jake wasn’t gonna return relentlessly to his subject? Not really, no.

    “That first time ya met Rog: didn’t mention any girls in his life, did he, Polly?”

    “No. Not then or later. Possibly because there weren’t any.”

    “Boys?”

    “Don’t be silly. He’s entirely hetero. Can’t you tell?”

    “No, but I’m willing to believe that you can. Hetero but pretty much a no-hoper, eh?”

    “That’s your impression, Jake.”

    “Okay, then, how did he strike you?”

    “Sad. And rather sweet. And very disoriented. And… a bit afraid of it all, I think.”

    “Just things? Or afraid of you because you’re a female?”

    “Um... Definitely that, I’d say—yes.”

    “Mm. Mass of insecurities, in other words.”

    “Ye-es. But we know that, Jake. And he is very competent at his work, he’s not totally insecure.”

    “Maybe not. But it’s interesting that that was your first impression of him.”

    Oh, dear. “It wasn’t him, Jake, the whole idea’s absurd!”

    “I’m eliminating possibilities. –Don’t you think it was a bit suspicious, the way he came bounding down for an early swim the very day old Don was here to be found?”

    “Don’t be an idiot, it’s part of his new get-fit plan to impress Debbie Cohen.”

    Hah, hah, he has to admit that the mighty J. Carrano brain had forgotten about that! Yes, and maybe now I’ve reminded him he’ll stop being jealous of poor old Rog—if it is jealousy.

    “Yes, hadn't you? And forget about the rest of it, it wasn’t him.” Can I stand up without being asked where I’m— No.

    “Where are you off to?”

    “To the loo. If you must fill me up with fizz, what can you expect?”

    I actually reach the sliding glass door before he yells: “An invite to WATCH!”

    Hah, hah. Um, would he? Yes, on the whole, I rather think. Well, if anything he seems to enjoy having a piss in front of me, he never closes the bathroom door, and he thinks nothing of walking in and having one when I’m in the shower. Men are hopelessly phallic-fixated, of course.

    Of course when I come back he says kindly: “Better?”

    I’m ignoring that. “I’ve been thinking. You’re totally wrong about Roger, he’s far too gentle. A person like that couldn’t possibly have drowned anyone deliberately, Jake: not even a creep like Don Banks.”

    “Anybody can do anything. –No, I mean it: in extremis, a mouse’ll turn and bite.”

    “A civilized English mouse?”

    “No such thing as civilization, it’s a veneer: thought you educated types realized that?”

    That’s horrid. “Is that really true, do you think?”

    He reaches over a large brown paw and gives my hand a little squeeze. “I know it, sweetheart. We’ll drop it, Polly.”

     No.”—Take a deep breath.—“I’m convinced Roger doesn’t have it in him.”

    He sighs but says: “Well, all right: who else could it have been? Who’s a more likely suspect?”

    Thank you, Mr Cold Business Logic—and he goes on about me being logical! “Nobody. Only Roger’s about as likely as Marjory Banks!” That’s got him! He’s looking really sheepish. “See? You claim that Marjory couldn’t kill anybody and I claim that Roger couldn’t! It’s just the same!”

    “There is the fact that Marjory grew up in Taka’ and I’ve known her since we were tots in Primer One. No, well, Rog struck me as bloody feeble on first meeting and I must say he hasn’t done anything since to correct the impression.”

    “No-o… He’s an upright sort of person, though.”

    He gives a strangled cough—a fake cough.

    “Don’t be so relentlessly phallic! I mean he’s got principles!”

    “Yeah. –Am I?”

    “Yes. You never close the bathroom door when you have a pee!” –Why on earth did I say that?

    “Eh?” the poor man croaks.

    “Well, you don’t.”

    “And Rog Browne is the sort that would. And probably lock it after ’im, too. So what?”

    “Nothing.” And stop looking at me like that!

    “That Halliday bloke…”

    “What about him?”

    “Well, did he let you look?”

    “N—Let me?”

    “Yeah, let ya. Didn’t, did ’e?”

    All right, he’s right. “No. He said it had nothing to do with sex.” Why has my voice gone stupid and small? We are two adults, drat it, and Mannie Halliday’s the dead and gone past!

    “There you are, then. ’E was a bit perverted, eh? Always reckoned that!” he says smugly.

    “Ye-es… Do you mean you leave the door open on purpose so as I… I don’t understand.”

    Now he’s groaning—genuine, I think.

    “Is it because you want me to watch? Or because you think I want to watch, or because you… Do you feel you have to share it with me? And if so, why?”

    “Look, I won’t, in future! And I’ll only do you under the bedclothes, ya won’t have to see me prick at all!”

    “No, but I don’t understand, Jake, and I want to.”

    “Look,” he says, running a hand through his curls, “I can’t explain it, Pol. It’s just something a bloke does.”

    “Yes, but not all of them do do it, so it can’t be.”

    Now he’s giving me a hunted look—that’s certainly genuine.

    “Anyway, I like it.”

    “Thank God for that!” Now he’s avoiding my eye, so what’s coming can’t be good. “Ya felt ’e was sad, that first day, and insecure, right? Anything else?”

    “What? Not Roger again! Look, I felt he was harmless and I still do!”

    “No, you didn’t, you’re making that up.”

    “I am n— Are you trying to get me to admit I fancied him? Is that what this whole thing’s been about?” Blast, I'm gonna bawl!

    Jake comes and kneels by my chair, and takes my sunglasses off. “No. Don’t cry, sweetheart.” He get his hanky out and dries my eyes. On the one hand I’m grateful, and I’m actually enjoying it, it gives you a warm feeling of being taken care of, ya know? But on the other hand, is he treating me like a kid and is that how he really sees me? And, by the way, how long does poor Daph Green spend slaving over ironing his ruddy hankies? “I wasn’t thinking that, Polly, but I don’t care if you did fancy him: I know you can’t look at a bloke without wondering what he’d be like in bed— Now what have I said?”

    Blast! I’m bawling harder than ever! “Noth-ing! You’re too nice, Jake!”

    So he gets his arms round my waist and says into my boobs: “I’m not nice: you know bloody well I’m a bit of a crook, in me own quiet way. Do anything I think I can get away with. And if I can take advantage of the bloody unions, you know I fucking well will. I’m not nice and I’m not a liberated varsity-lecturer leftie, and since we’re on the subject, I’ve got a fair bit stashed away in Zurich for a rainy day that the fucking EnZed Tax Department is never gonna get wind— Don’t bawl, sweetheart!”

    “Don’t tell me things like that, Jake!”

    “Are you running away from reality again, Polly?”

    “Ndo.”—Sniff. Snuffle.—“I don’t as much as you think. I can’t help it if I don’t see things like other people do. –And I do know what you’re like, Jake, I’m not a baby! And I don’t approve of the capitalist ethic, but I do want people to have jobs.”

    “Can’t have one without the other.”

    Blow my nose hard. “I just don’t want to hear about things like numbered accounts in Zurich, because what if the Tax Department got hold of me and asked me?”

    “I should hope you’d lie like a trooper.”

    Sniff. Blow nose again. “This is like that Forster thing: your friend or your country. Isn’t it harming the country’s economy, taking money overseas?”

    “Yeah. Name one thing the country’s fucking economy ever did for me,” he says in a hard voice.

    Oh dear, is he thinking about being an orphan and then those really hard years, that he hasn’t told me much about, before he started to make money with his junk yard and then his used cars? “Um—I don’t know.”

    He gets up and pulls up his chair very close. “No.”—Takes my hand tightly.—“I’ve got where I am in spite of the buggers, not because of them, National, Labour or in-between, so don’t try telling me I owe them anything.”

    “No, I won’t. I’m not criticising you, Jake, I can see there are points on both sides. Only I don’t think I could hold out if a horrible tax inspector got hold of me.”

    “Probably wouldn’t be horrible: be some smooth-faced jerk like your mate Collingwood.”

    “Well, that’d be worse! I never could hide anything from Mike!”

    “Mm. Well, it isn’t gonna happen, they know what side their bread’s buttered on.”—Do they?—“Take my word for it. And no more crap about me being ‘nice’, eh? We both know I’m only as nice as I need to be to keep this side of Mt Eden Gaol.”

    “You’ve side-tracked me. I didn’t mean business or that sort of thing at all. I meant, compared to me… I’m amoral, I suppose.”

    “Fair bit of it about. Not condemning you for that.”

    Most men would. He is unique, you know. Jill won't believe me when I say he's capable of thinking like that, but see? He is! “I have tried, Jake, this last year.”

    He scratches his jaw a bit, oops, bad sign! “Yeah, I know that. I think I’ve been overseas a bit much for you, haven’t I?”

    “Yes. Don’t be hurt, Jake. But when you’re not here it all doesn’t seem so real to me.”

    He puts his hand over both of mine and squeezes hard. After quite a long time he says: “Has that been the problem all year?”

    “Um—I don’t know. I mean, if you were here more— I mean, maybe I do resent you having to be away, though I do recognise you can’t neglect the business…”

    “God Almighty.” He lets go of my hands, looks away, and rubs his face. Help, I shouldn’t have said it!

    “I—I’m sorry. I was only trying to be honest.” Shit, I've mucked it up, and I was trying to be honest, ’cos I thought, well, what sort of relationship is it if you can’t be, and if you can’t, I don’t want that sort of relationship at all! And blimming Jill isn’t right when she says hypocrisy makes the world go round and if I was truly being honest I’d tell him the sordid details about all the little bits on the side. Isn’t it more important to be honest about how you feel?

    Maybe I oughta go home, he’s just staring blankly over the lawn...

    After absolutely ages he looks round—he looks terrible, shit, what I have done?—and says: “Look, if I can’t be real for ya, there doesn’t seem much point in it, does there?”

    “No! You don’t understand! It’s not you, it’s everything! I’m like that with everything—and everyone, of course!”

    “Your work?”

    “In a way. I’m fine once I sit down to it. Only sometimes… Well, there were quite a few times when I knew I had a lecture to give on the Monday and I knew I ought to be writing it up and I’d keep putting it off and putting it off… Do you remember that time you came round on a Sunday about eleven o’clock and I’d only just started?”

    “Yeah—well, more than once. Isn’t that just procrastination, though?”

    “You can give it a facile label if you like, but it isn’t just that. Or maybe that’s what procrastination is, and other people are just glossing over it when they dismiss it like that. I’m trying to tell you how I feel, not fall back on easy clichés. You were going on about me running away from reality, before: I think maybe that’s what you might have meant. It isn’t running away from it, it’s an insufficient grasp of it.”

    I think I'm talking too much. Swallow.

    “I see,” he says grimly.

    Now there’s a frowning silence. Finally he says: “That’s your lectures, right? What about your own stuff: your research?”

    “Um—I think that’s different. I never—I never—”

     “No. It’s all right: I see.”

    “I’ve never liked any man as much as I like you. And I never want anyone else when I’m with you, or—or if I know you’re here and I’ll be seeing you.”

    “No.”

    “I wish I hadn’t told you, now. Jill said you’d never understand.”

    “Have you told that Lezzie hag about this?”

    “She isn’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if she is. Well, she never asked me about my work, only I’ve told her how I feel about you. I had to talk to someone, and Joanie’s hopeless, she’s got an utterly conventional mind.”

    “Yeah. I see.”

    “Um, I did discuss the—the general topic once, with Rod. He sort of feels the same.”

    “Balls! He’s a half-baked kid!”

    “Well, perhaps I’m a half-baked kid. Perhaps I’m not capable of an adult relationship—whatever that is. Only at least I’ve been honest with you about how I really am!”

    “Mm.” He stares blankly in front of him. Finally he says slowly: “I’m glad you’ve told me. I think I need to think about it. I’ll get one of the security blokes to drive you home.”

    “It’s all right, I can walk.”

    “It isn’t all right, you idiot, a bloke’s been bumped off in my pool!”

    “Oh. Yes. I forgot for a moment.”

    Right, that’s pretty much her trouble: forgot for a moment. Not to say can’t bloody remember for more than a minute at a time!

    Okay, she better had go home, I need to think about this...