My Brother’s Keeper (11 page)

T
UESDAY
27 N
OVEMBER
2012

N
eo was playing on the computer in the gym’s reception area. In the fishbowl workout room opposite, three gym bunnies feverishly cycled nowhere. There was no sign of Justin or Salena. No sign of Sunny either. Neo glanced up as I approached the desk but showed no further interest in me.

‘Hi, Neo. Is your sister here?’

He yelled, ‘Sunny!’, without looking away from the computer screen.

Photos of Salena adorned the walls. In most of them her body was wrapped around a pole — not in a ‘car accident’ way and not exactly in a ‘strip club’ way either, more in an ‘old-fashioned circus performer’ way; glittery body suit, arched spine and arm thrown in the air in a theatrical ‘ta-da!’ gesture.
Sunny hadn’t been joking when she’d said Salena taught pole dancing. Neo continued tapping, his fingers tripping expertly over the keyboard. Still no sign of Sunny.

‘What are you playing?’

He hit me with a look. ‘I’m not playing anything,’ he said.

I stopped myself from responding ‘whatever’. He yelled again, this time he stopped tapping the keyboard long enough to turn his head in the direction of the closed door leading to the upstairs offices.

‘Sunny! That lady’s here!’ His job done, he went back to the tapping, his attention riveted. I wandered over to the glass divider and watched the gym bunnies huff and puff for a while. Their desperation was so dispiriting that I decided even a five-year-old uncommunicative brat was preferable.

I leaned on the counter. ‘So what are you doing?’

‘Trade Me,’ he said without lifting his eyes.

I craned around to see the screen. He was on Trade Me. ‘No way!’

A proud little smile tempted his lips. ‘I make way more money than Sunny does.’

‘Seriously?’

Now he was openly smiling, enjoying my surprise. ‘I made two hundred dollars last week.’

‘Wow.’ Actually, I was impressed. ‘What do you sell?’

‘Games and stuff mostly.’ His plump little shoulders lifted and relaxed again. ‘When I get sick of my own things I sell them. I sell stuff for Sunny, too. For a commission.’

I was warming to this kid. With his attention focused on the screen I could study him at leisure. He would become a
beautiful man one day, with those expressive blue eyes and ridiculously long lashes. ‘I have to use Dad’s account because of my age, but he doesn’t mind.’ It was the first time he’d spoken to me unprompted. Having launched himself into conversation, he became downright chatty. ‘I could get into all his online accounts if I wanted. He uses the same password for everything. All dads do that.’

Before I could respond, the inner door opened and Sunny swung into the room. I balked. She was wearing an oversized singlet and shorts. The transparent material adhered to her little breasts, revealing pink juvenile nipples. The singlet ended at her crotch where the words ‘eat me’ were emblazoned.

‘You like?’ she said, pirouetting to show me the back view. The cutaway shorts revealed three-quarters of her little buttocks.

‘Not so much.’ It was all I could manage.

She laughed and pulled a sweater over her head. ‘Salena will totally loathe it!’ Her face emerged, smiling brilliantly. ‘It’s Dad’s latest import.’ Thankfully, the sweater dropped over her buttocks. ‘I think it’s awesome.’

I hoped she was only wearing the gear to get a reaction from her stepmother. If she wore that outfit on the street I was pretty sure she’d get a whole different kind of reaction.

‘You okay, little bro?’ she called, leading me to the two sofas by the entrance windows.

‘Yup,’ Neo replied, clicking away at the keyboard.

‘Don’t worry about Dad turning up,’ she leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. ‘He won’t be here until after eight now.’

I was still recovering from the sight of her pubescent flesh but managed to produce a response. ‘Does he use the gym much?’

‘He’s mostly just into importing this stuff now,’ she said, adjusting what there was of the shorts.

We each claimed a sofa, our knees facing. Sunny looked at me, waiting. I launched right in. ‘When Karen hired me to find you, she gave me a pile of stuff. Her treasures, I think. Things she’d kept. I thought you might like to see some of them.’ I’d put together a selection of photos of Sunny and Karen, the record her mother had kept of her childhood milestones and the lock of hair. The photos of Falcon I’d left in my faux ‘Tax’ file box back at the office. Sunny looked from the envelope to my face and back again, but made no move to open it. My heart gave a lurch. I hoped this wasn’t a mistake.

‘Have they figured out what she died of yet? Sunny obviously didn’t know or suspect her mother had been murdered.

‘They’re still working on it, I think.’

‘She probably OD’d or she was high and did something stupid.’ She threw me an unconvincing sneer. ‘She was always doing stuff like that when I was a kid. It was bad when she had taken something. She’d be all hyper and that. But when she couldn’t get anything, that was far worse. Falcon and me used to try and keep out of her way when she was like that. She used to call it the yips. “I’ve got the yips,” she’d say, and I’d try and clear us both out of her way.’

It was safer not to respond. Feigning a casualness I knew to be false, Sunny slid the contents of the envelope into her lap. Head bent, she studied each item. Her long fine lashes fluttered. I had the creepy feeling I was looking at Karen again, the day I found her dead; head bent and long lashes pencilled against her cheek, the beseeching hands in her lap.

‘I wish Karen had been able to tell you how sorry she was.’

Sunny’s head snapped up. ‘Yeah?’ Her eyes were dry. ‘Go tell Falcon that. He’s buried in the same cemetery as Gran.’

I didn’t respond. I had no right to. Sunny slid the photos back into the envelope. I noted how carefully she did that.

‘Shall I take them back with me or would you like to keep them.’

‘They’re mine, aren’t they?’ she snapped.

‘Sure.’

The booming of the gym music still vibrated but something had changed. The keyboard clicking had stopped. Neo was staring at Sunny wide-eyed.

‘I’m okay, Neo,’ she called across to him, her voice softened. He said nothing but continued to stare at her. ‘Seriously. I’m okay.’ She poked her tongue out at him and laughed at his surprised response. ‘I’ll raise your commission to sixty per cent on that top if you sell it.’ Neo held her look for a long time and then reluctantly went back to his trading.

It was time to come clean. ‘Look, Sunny. I’m not here to defend Karen or put her case to you or anything like that. I hardly knew her.’ She was about to say something but stopped herself. ‘I think Karen did a dreadful thing and maybe you can never forgive her for that.’ Her eyes flashed up at me. ‘That’s none of my business,’ I added quickly, ‘and not why I’m here. The truth is, Karen hired me to check that you were okay. She thought you weren’t safe.’ Sunny had gone very still, very quiet. The keyboard clicking had stopped again. These two were uncannily tuned to each other.

‘What else did she say? About me, I mean.’ She turned her
head away. ‘Did she tell you she hated me?’

‘What? No, of course not. She didn’t hate you, Sunny.’ I stopped myself from reaching a hand out to her. Her head was turned away but her profile was calm. I reminded myself Sunny had lived with these demons for seven years. Almost her entire life. ‘She didn’t think you’d want to see her again but she was really happy when you decided to.’ It was all I could think to say.

She turned back to face me, her eyes still dry. ‘What did she mean I wasn’t safe? What did she think was going to happen to me?’

‘She never said,’ I admitted. ‘It’s possible she just told me that so I’d go all out to find you. Maybe there was no reason at all for her to think something was wrong.’ I waited, giving her the opening. Nothing. Nothing at all. ‘But if she was right and there is something — if you feel you’re not safe — you can tell me. I promise I’ll help.’ Still nothing. That was as far as I was prepared to go. Suspicious as Karen might have been, I wasn’t going to ask Sunny directly if Justin was sexually abusing her. ‘If you don’t need my help, I promise I won’t bother you again.’ She stared across the room for a long time without moving or saying anything. Just when I was about to stand she spoke.

‘Friday night I wanted to hang out with my friends so I wouldn’t have to, you know, think about meeting … think about seeing Mum the next day.’ Apart from the falter over what to call her mother, Sunny’s voice was calm and steady. ‘But Salena said I wasn’t allowed to go out and I wasn’t even allowed to have anyone to stay because I had to look after Neo. She always does that when Dad’s away. When he’s here, she’s all kissy to me like she actually cares. She’s such a selfish moron.’

I waited for more, but that was it. Was this code for something? Or was the concern for her safety, coming as it did from the woman who had tried to kill her, so ludicrous Sunny refused to even acknowledge it? Sunny was looking at me now, her face still and thoughtful. I looked back, willing her to explain. She didn’t.

‘Okay,’ I said, even though it wasn’t. ‘I’ll go away.’

I gave it a moment, but she didn’t try to stop me. Didn’t say anything to make me stay. Enough. What the hell was I doing with this girl, chasing her around, insisting something was wrong. Sunny was as okay as any fourteen-year-old girl; in fact, she was more than okay, given her history. I was behaving like a stalker and worse still I’d been using her as an excuse to avoid facing my own life. Shame rose in me and I blushed. It pushed me up from the sofa.

‘Can I use your computer? I want to book a flight back to Wellington.’

Sunny retreated to the upstairs room and Neo slumped on the sofa with his iPad. Using the computer at reception I checked both airlines. Same-day flights back to Wellington were too expensive but I found a cheapish Air New Zealand flight leaving at one o’clock the next day. It would have to do. I clicked on it and scrabbled in my bag for a credit card. What was Sunny’s rant about? Was there some deeper meaning to it? Was there something I was missing? I copied the credit card details into the box and clicked confirm, then I clicked through to obtain a boarding pass. So she was home Friday night by herself — big deal. Sure, I could see why she was pissed off about that, but I didn’t understand why she would bring
it up in response to my question about her safety. What was that all about? Was I carrying any dangerous goods? Only my smart-arse mouth. I clicked no and waited while the website uploaded the information. Suddenly, a thought hit me. It was so clear I hoped one of those lightbulbs wasn’t beaming above my head. Neo’s attention was on his iPad. The door to the room Sunny had retreated into was shut. I flicked across to the main computer screen. It listed two hard drives and a backup. I clicked onto the main A: Drive. Folders scrolled onto the screen. This was obviously the company drive. I clicked on the Finder icon, narrowed the search parameter to folder name and typed in ‘travel’. Nothing. I stared at the blinking icon some more and then typed ‘flights’. I blinked as a folder labelled ‘Flights’ appeared. Too easy. Before I could question if what I was doing was ethical, let alone legal, I clicked it open and typed November 2012 into the search box. And there it was: a flight to Wellington on Friday 23 November 2012 for Justin Alexander Bachelor.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Shit!’ I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Anton, all two hundred-odd pounds of him. Instinctively, I flicked out of the A: Drive before he got too close to the desk.

‘Does Justin know you’re here?’

‘I left my jacket here the other day,’ I lied, indicating the one I was wearing. Neo stared at me, his jaw slack. His obvious fear of Anton helped improve my usually useless lying skills. ‘There was no one behind the desk so I was just calling myself a cab.’

Anton was still looking at me suspiciously as Sunny swung back into the foyer. She froze at the sight of him. I couldn’t tell
if this was her usual response or if it was because his arrival was unexpected.

‘Thanks for the jacket, Sunny. I’m always leaving it.’

‘No problem,’ she said, circling around behind Anton. His body swivelled in my direction and his eyes never left my face as I made my way out from behind reception. Sunny held the entrance door open for me but avoided my eyes.

Once outside I thought over the significance of what I’d learned. As much as I loathed to have a conversation with Detective Inspector Aaron Fanshaw and loathed even more to tell him how I had unearthed the information, this was too important not to pass on. Justin had flown to Wellington on Friday night. This put him right in the middle of the frame as Karen’s killer.

Back at the townhouse, I left a long rambling message on Aaron Fanshaw’s voicemail. There was no sign of Ned; I could have done with company to take my mind off what I’d discovered. I opened the fridge. I closed the fridge. Anton would no doubt tell Justin I had been at the gym. I hoped it wouldn’t get Sunny into trouble. Neo’s fear and Sunny freezing in her tracks at the sight of Anton worried me. Failing to contain my nervous energy I put on my sweat pants and sneakers and headed out for a run.

T
UESDAY
27 N
OVEMBER
2012

T
here is a perfect loop along Jervois Road, down the steps past the scout hall into Cox’s Bay, through the park and then up Richmond Road into Ponsonby Road and back along the home straight to Three Lamps. I reckoned I could run it in forty minutes. Not that, strictly speaking — or any other way of speaking, in fact — I could call what I do running. With my technique and fitness level it would better be described as an out of sync slow lurch. When I was a kid living in Herne Bay I dawdled this loop on my way home from school, greeting all the resident animals on the way. Those long walks home were the forever of my childhood. Niki was with me, of course. Niki was always with me — she still is. What I had told Sunny was true; I had loved my little sister right from the start. Even though
her birth heralded the death of my mother — our mother — I’d loved Niki right to the end. Dad had never been a major figure in my life before her death and he became even less of one after Mum died. It seemed to me he set about replacing her with a series of good-time women, none of who were interested in taking the time to win over a couple of needy motherless girls. No doubt I’m being unfair. No doubt I made it difficult for them. I let the memory of those walks home with Niki drift away. I’m careful with memories of Niki. I don’t want to wear them out with overuse. I take them out like treasures, touch them gently with the tips of my consciousness, then wrap them in tissue and put them away again.

I don’t run often enough to learn the tricks seasoned runners have been taught that enable them to keep going, but even with my stop and start method, it still works for dissipating nerves. After twenty minutes or so, red-faced and panting, it’ll even quieten, if not completely mute my chattering inner voice. Personality disorders that include voices must be the pits. I have trouble enough with my so-called normal mental narration. Plugging into music helps to both quieten that chattering brain talk and to help keep me moving.

By the time I’d tried to get hold of Fanshaw, failed, left a message, lost my key, found my key, lost my phone, found my phone, opened the fridge door several times to eye up that bottle of wine, admonished myself and closed the fridge door an equal number of times and then finally changed into my running gear, it was coming up to eight-thirty when I left Norma’s place and started on my run. The traffic had thinned out again after rush hour on the Jervois Road stretch, leading to the harbour bridge
on-ramp. I plugged in my headphones and started at little more than a walk while I warmed up, and k.d. lang singing ‘A Case of You’ was well under way by the time I passed the street Justin and Sunny lived on. About an hour had passed since I’d left the message for Fanshaw. I glanced along the street, half expecting to see police cars parked outside the house, but all was quiet. No cops; in fact, no people at all. All those big empty mansions; in the wealthy suburbs no one is ever home.

The steps leading down to Cox’s Bay were slimy and I had to watch my footing. A spring dusk was looming and the temperature would drop dramatically as soon as the sun dipped behind the hills. The tide was well out in Cox’s Bay, leaving nothing more than a shimmering snake of water to reflect the last of the blue sky. The beached yachts tipped sideways in the mud exposed their rudders like sea lions displaying rotund underbellies to their harem. A heron high-stepped through the mud, pausing occasionally to prod the glutinous swamp, but it was just going through the motions, unconvinced. It would have to wait for the tide to turn to deliver up a quivering morsel. By the time I crossed the road into Cox’s Bay Reserve a heavy purple cloud hovered directly above me. Like a cartoon depression cloud, it followed me through the park. I’d got my second wind slowing for the traffic on West End Road and ran easily now past kids playing soccer, a young boy checking the paw of his muddied terrier. The Dusty Springfield song ‘The Look of Love’ started up at the exact moment the terrier held up its paw and turned a beseeching look on its young owner. The appropriateness of the song and the pathetic look from the canine made me laugh out loud. The emptied culvert waited
patiently for the tide to return, mangroves on tiptoes, roots exposed. The soft warm breeze accompanied by the scatter of leaves above was a reminder that summer was close by. Such a time of promise is spring. It was all beautiful in the way a previously ordinary place and time can suddenly seem to have meaning; can seem to be packed full of fragile life. Maybe it was the endorphins kicking in from the run. As I hit the boardwalk leading through the mangrove swamp I caught sight of a small plane banking into the curdled rain clouds, its tilted wing catching the last of the day’s slanting sunlight. The voice in my head was drowned by the music and the harsh sound of my laboured breathing. I’d reached that stage of exhaustion when I was thinking about nothing; aware of the pain and exhilaration, conscious of the way the light hit the wing of the titling plane as it circled above, my thoughts freewheeling with it as I left the last of the light and dropped into the dense shadows of the manuka scrub, canopied over the mangroves. The walkway had been built on stilts to accommodate the stinky swamp below and the breathing tide. It vibrated and shuddered with each pounding footstep. A white-faced heron prodded optimistically around the mangrove roots. Coldplay’s melancholic ‘Fix You’ was filling my head as I neared the bridge at the Richmond Road park end of the walkway. A red jacket hung on the bridge pole. Someone must have come across it and hung it there for the owner to find. Under the bridge, the deserting tide had exposed a rusting supermarket trolley, drowning in the mud.

Someone grabbed at my shoulder. I hadn’t heard or sensed anyone. I tried to pull away but the shock of it made me twist
awkwardly. I tripped and fell heavily onto the bridge pole. It knocked the air completely out of me and I went straight down onto my knees, dragging the red jacket with me. The thin sound of vocals reached me from the headphones, dangling in the blood, blooming warm and sticky around my kneecap. A menacing form loomed over me but all that mattered was getting air into my lungs. It was like they’d been squeezed tightly closed and held there, unable to re-inflate. Bright sparks drifted in front of my eyes. The pain in my solar plexus was excruciating. Anatomy was never my best subject but it felt like I’d ruptured one of those soft, red bloody organs I’d never quite got my head around the purpose of — spleen? Liver? Gall bladder? Whichever it was, I was about to find out if it was possible to survive a ruptured one. One little gasp in … and out. Better. Another one in … out. The sparkly stars were disappearing. My assailant was leaning over me, yelling. Justin. It was Justin. I made a desperate grab for my phone but he kicked it out of reach and it skidded along the planks of the bridge. Only now did I realise he’d been yelling at me the whole time, spit flying.

‘Fucking bitch! You had no fucking right to see her without my permission!’ The pain was receding enough for me to know I was in big trouble. Justin’s eyes were red, his skin mottled, his breathing almost as ragged as mine. ‘You think you can just do what you like? She’s my daughter, you hear me?
My
daughter. And you will stay the fuck away from her! You hear me?’

There wasn’t enough air in my lungs to say anything. The boardwalk was empty. The park at the far side of the bridge was in darkness. No park lights. Night had suddenly fallen. Where the hell was everyone?

‘Fucking bitch!’ he repeated, unnecessarily, I thought.

He’d run out of things to yell at me and I could see the heat in him was cooling. That made him all the more dangerous. Slowly, carefully, I repositioned my body against the railing. Blood dribbled down my shin, pooled in my sneaker.

‘Take it easy, Justin,’ I said and raised my hand in a peace-making gesture. It was a mistake.

‘Don’t fucking tell me what to do! I tell you what to do. And I tell you to stay the fuck away from my kids.’

‘Okay, okay, I get it.’ His teeth were bared in a strange animal expression. ‘I heard you,’ I said, using the bridge railing to pull myself to my feet. My knee stung like a bugger as the leg straightened. My sweat pants were ripped, my hands and jaw slimy with mud.

‘You don’t tell me anything, you hear me? You stay away from Sunny or else.’ He walked a couple of steps away from me, hands pumping.

Unexpectedly, anger flooded through me like a much-needed shot of whisky. ‘Is this what happened with Karen? Is this what you did to her? I know you killed her, Justin.’

He stopped and turned to face me, his fists clenched. It should have been enough to shut me up.

‘You flew to Wellington Friday night. You went to Karen’s house and you killed her.’ He took a step towards me. ‘It’s too late to shut me up, Justin. The cops already know. I told them.’ He opened his mouth and closed it again. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘You knew Karen wouldn’t show on Saturday. You knew she was dead. But you let Sunny think she was going to meet her mother. You put Sunny through that.’

He looked at me for a long time and then slowly shook his head. ‘You stay away from her.’ And with that he turned and walked off into the park. I watched his back until he disappeared into the darkness of the trees, then I knelt and scrabbled around for my phone. The screen was shattered and there was no light behind it but I held down the on button and waited, hoping it would come back to life. To calm myself I listed all the rubbish below the bridge: red ballpoint pen, lime-green ice cream wrapper, bottle without its label, plastic milk cartoon, blue bottle cap, inner sole of a sneaker, dog collar. Right now, bloody, ripped and broken, I felt I was just one more object among all this discarded human waste. Life’s like that. One minute it’s all beautiful — the dog with the beseeching look being attended to by its young owner, the sunlight reflecting on the tilting wing of the plane, the poignant spring breeze — then the next minute some bastard attacks you and suddenly all you can see is the rubbish.

Fuck him.

I did my best to swipe the mud off my grazed palms and peeled back the ripped trackies to check out the cut in my knee. I’d live. The unnamed internal organ still reminded me it was there and hurting, and there was a loud ringing in my ears that I was pretty sure, though wouldn’t swear, wasn’t a police siren, announcing the arrival of the cavalry. I dragged myself off the bridge into the park and kept up a speedy limp until I was out of the gloom of the trees and onto the safety of Richmond Road. Once more in the comfort of traffic and people, I perched my arse on the fence and did my best to wipe the shattered phone clean. Blood poured from my knee and though the enigmatic
organ probably wasn’t ruptured after all, it was definitely bruised. Or whatever the equivalent of bruised is for an internal organ. I’d have to ask Smithy one day. The screen of my phone was cobwebbed with shattered glass, a pathetic visual reminder that there was no one in Auckland I could think of to call for help. I was still staring at it and feeling mighty sorry for myself when it rang. I didn’t recognise the number. Tentatively, I held the shattered glass to my ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Diane? It’s Inspector Aaron Fanshaw.’ I immediately teared up with a ridiculous surge of relief. It was short-lived.

‘Do you know what police officers do, Diane?’ I took a breath but he continued before I had a chance to answer. ‘They investigate and, sometimes when they’re left to do their work un-interfered with, they solve crimes. That’s their job. Some even call it their profession. In short, it’s what we do.’ If tears could harden, mine would have. ‘I know you have done some work for the police department and I know you’re involved with police on a personal basis, but you are a civilian.’ Right now I was feeling more like a wounded pit bull, but I bit my tongue, rolled my eyes and heard him out. ‘Listen to me, Diane. I don’t want you interfering in this case any more than you already have. You can take this as a formal warning.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I left a message for you with some information about Justin that is obviously relevant to the case. I didn’t go to bloody
Campbell Live
with it. That’s what civilians are meant to do, isn’t it? They pass on information to the police?’ There was no way now I was going to tell him what Justin had just done to me.

‘You told Sunny her mother had been killed.’ It was a statement, not a question. Shit. I knew this was going to come back to bite me in the arse.

‘I told Sunny that Karen was dead. I didn’t say she’d been killed.’ He wasn’t going to catch me out on it a second time. ‘Sunny rang me because she knew I had gone back to Wellington and would see Karen and I … I felt I had to tell her.’ I listened to his breathing.

‘You had no right to do that and you know it. Given your special relationship with police, I assumed you knew not to speak to anyone about Karen’s death or I would have formally warned you not to at the time.’

I was suitably chastened but with it went a feeling of righteousness. Special relationship indeed — prick. I don’t like being told off no matter how justified it is. He probably thought it was time for me to say I’m sorry. I didn’t say it.

‘You didn’t mention your phone call with Sunny during our talk at the station on Monday.’

‘Our talk, as you describe it, wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be,’ I responded, feeling ridiculously close to tears. The delayed shock and the cold were taking effect; I wasn’t sure if I was shaking or shivering, or both. I wanted to finish the call, go home and clean myself up, get some antiseptic onto my knee and spend some time feeling sorry for myself. I hadn’t done quite enough of that yet. ‘Okay, fine. I’m …’ I tried to say the sorry word but my mouth just wouldn’t do it. ‘I’m admonished.’ There was the distinct sound of a guffaw on the other end of the phone, which I ignored. ‘But I hope you’ll follow up on the information despite it having come from me.’
I heard the long sigh. No doubt I was meant to hear it.

‘We already know Justin saw Karen on Friday night.’ I stopped breathing. I think I even stopped shaking. ‘He went down to talk her out of meeting Sunny. He thought it would be bad for his daughter, that she was too young. He wanted Karen to wait a couple of years.’ The photo on the mantelpiece, it must have come from Justin. ‘He brought a photo of Sunny to give her.’ I wondered if I’d spoken aloud. ‘Bit of a peace offering, I think. He hoped it would hold her off for a while.’ Fanshaw’s tone had become downright chatty.