Starlight Peninsula (23 page)

They looked at each other. He raised both palms.
Voilà
.

Eloise frowned, smiled. She looked at him, searchingly. ‘Do you really believe all this?’

‘Sure. I love this kind of shit. I totally believe in it. By the way, do
you play DroidWars? Or Tank Fighter? Not to blow my own horn, but I am world champion in both.’

‘I don’t really play computer games.’

‘What philistinism. I am shocked. Next time you come, I will show you my gaming room, Eloise. I will teach you all you need to know.’

When Eloise dropped the Sparkler at Iris Roysmith’s birthday party she felt a certain familial pride. The Sparkler was not only beautiful, with her smooth brown skin and her dimples, she had, what would you call it, poise? Little Iris, who was in the Sparkler’s class at the poshest state primary in the city, was a magnet for the children in her year, because her father was Roysmith. They all wanted to be friends with Iris, and their mums and dads wanted to be friends with Scott and Thee. It was the power of television. Eloise felt that the Sparkler had something over all the other Western Bay girls, except for Iris herself, who was also impressive: a thin, intensely intelligent child. She was Scott and Thee’s youngest, a late arrival after their much older daughters.

‘Rachel Margery!’ Scott boomed, throwing open the door. ‘And her Aunty Eloise!’

Behind him, the slew and slum of a children’s party; amid the trashed furniture the floor was strewn with balloons, blowing crazily this way and that in the breeze from the deck. From an upstairs window came a series of piercing screams.

Eloise held the box containing the giant Bionicle, allowing her eyes to adjust to the sight of Scott suitless. He was looking, by his standards, super casual, in jeans and a baggy T-shirt with a chocolate stain on the shoulder.

The Sparkler held her present for Iris against her shoulder like a spear. It was, she had explained in the car, a swingball set. She and Iris were interested in sports. They were both sprinters, and tennis players, and swimmers. The Sparkler was a left-hander, like her father Giles, which gave her, in Eloise’s opinion, a different and interesting body language, something to do with having learned to move in a right-handed world. She hunched over the page when she wrote, and her handwriting sloped backwards. She was well co-ordinated, could smash a ball batting left or right, and moved with a kind of angular, boyish grace.

‘How’s it going?’ Eloise said.

Scott had a hand to his forehead. ‘Bedlam. And we’ve got
hours
to go.’

Eloise came in long enough to hand over the present to Iris, and to talk to Thee, who was gamely supervising a violent session of bullrush on the back lawn.

‘I should have bought some damned earplugs,’ Thee said. ‘Oh, did Scott tell you? We found a lovely man for you. You’ll like him. He’s Irish.’

‘Really?’

‘Scott, the Irishman.’

From the deck Scott said, ‘He used to work for the BBC.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘We’ll go on a double date, if you like,’ Thee said. ‘He’s really nice. He’s only got one leg.’

‘One leg.’

‘Yeah. We didn’t ask why, or how. I mean you can’t just come out with it. But he’s very good-looking. Christ, what’s with the screaming? Quiet, kids!’

Scott said, plaintive, ‘E, can you blow up some of these balloons? Before I pass out?’

She blew up a few balloons, greeted Scott’s glamorous older daughters, sardonic Sophie and sharp-eyed Sarah, admired Sarah’s new hair (blonde dreadlocks) and arranged to pick up her niece in a few hours. Then she got out of there.

In the car, Silvio was waiting, his nose pressed to the glass.

Eloise watched Simon Lampton leave the house in his running gear. Silvio had just followed a scent from the crater, over the lip of the hill and down the western side of the mountain. He appeared far below her, running, his nose to the ground, alongside a boundary fence. She hurried after him, calling, shaking the leash. Not looking where she was going, she stuck her foot in a hole and went over sideways into the warm, dry grass.

Klaudia, everything is going wrong today. In the bathroom this morning I dropped the soap dish and it smashed on the floor. In the laundry, the bag of Silvio’s despised dog biscuits slipped from my grasp, and the pungent pellets (no wonder he hates them) shot in all directions. Carina rang to ask if I would take the Sparkler to her party; talking to her while sweeping up dog biscuits I smashed my head on the open cupboard door
.

Where was the dog? They needed to get down the hill, so as not to miss Lampton. But Silvio’s head appeared above her, blocking out the sky. He loomed, panting, threatening to drool on her face.

She hurried him down the hillside, through the pedestrian path
that led between the gardens. The fences sagged in places under the weight of milkweed and bougainvillea, the gardens were lush and silent under the sun, vegetable patches laid out in the black soil, divided by bamboo markers. The cicadas sawed and the bougainvillea petals made a red carpet along the path.

Slow down, Klaudia said. Be mindful. Breathe.

Savour beautiful things.

Eloise and Silvio took a short-cut across a lawn, and crossed a concrete driveway. Now they were on the road, where they could intercept Simon when he came back from the run.

Silvio lay down in the shade of a stone wall. Eloise waited, her mind on Klaudia and the outrage she’d committed. The betrayal. Oh yes. Klaudia had, at the end of their last session, smoothly announced that she couldn’t see Eloise next time because she was going to attend a ‘yoga retreat’.

Just like that. Bare-faced. Cool as a cucumber.

Eloise thought about it now, with bitterness. Klaudia was going to laze around with massages and yoga and a ‘juice detox diet’ for days,
days
, while Eloise could go off and die for all she cared. It had taken great self-control not to storm from the room, hotly denouncing Klaudia’s monstrousness. She’d had to pretend she was having a panic attack about something else.

Not that she was getting dependent. God forbid.

The cicadas made their wall of sound, the clack and shimmer of the summer air. Silvio burrowed himself down in the cool grass, in the shade of the dry stone wall. Near Simon Lampton’s gate, a cat leapt onto the fence and watched.

She heard the slow thump of his feet on the pavement. Towing Silvio, she stepped out from the shadow of the wall.

His voice was guarded, not warm. ‘Eloise. I was wondering when I’d …’

‘I’ve got my car,’ she said. ‘Can we talk?’

He bent over, his hands on his knees, breathing hard. He wiped his face on the bottom of his T-shirt, glanced up at the house.

‘Okay.’

She led him to the car.

‘You want me to get in?’ He was going to refuse.

‘Yes. Please, Simon.’ She got Silvio to jump in the back seat.

He hesitated, shrugged. When he folded himself into the passenger seat, his knees pressed against the glovebox. He felt around under the seat for the lever and the seat shot backwards.

Eloise started the engine.

‘Are we going somewhere?’

‘It won’t take long,’ she said. ‘Please?’

He pulled his sweaty T-shirt away from his chest. ‘Where?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you. And I’ll show you something.’

They drove in silence. She could feel the heat coming off him.

‘Don’t you have air-con?’ he said.

‘It doesn’t work.’

He wound down the window, wiping sweat off his face with his forearm. He sat very still as they drove along Mountain Road, and, as they were approaching Mt Eden, he asked again, sharply, ‘Where are we going?’

The little car bounced over the cattle stop and began chugging up the hill road. Simon didn’t say anything.

‘I want to show you Arthur’s flat,’ Eloise said.

‘No.’ He looked at his watch.

‘Why not?’

‘I haven’t got time. Karen, my wife, will miss me.’

‘It’s a private place, good for talking. It won’t take long.’

She parked in the shade. ‘Why don’t we talk here?’ he said. She insisted, and he got out finally, reluctant. They left Silvio in the car
with the windows wound down, and she led him to the path below the crater, across the hillside and over the walking track, to the back of Arthur’s flat.

‘Here,’ she said.

He glanced around. ‘What are we looking at?’

They sat down in the grass above the concrete deck with its wooden trellis, the flowering wisteria vine, the silver water bowl set there for a dog or cat, a single deckchair, on which hung a coloured swimming towel and a bathing suit. The back door was closed; there was no sign of anyone at home.

She said, ‘This was Arthur’s flat.’

‘Oh. Did he own it?’ Simon’s voice was toneless.

‘No, rented it.’

‘It’s a lovely spot,’ he said.

She caught the polite, artificial note in his voice. He didn’t see what she was seeing: the beautiful, lost past. Their bolt-hole on the edge of the mountain. Summer evenings ranging on the hillside above the city, watching the sun go down over the Waitakere Ranges. Winter mornings with the huge rain roaring on the corrugated-iron roof, the melancholy singing of a thrush on the wet fence, the walking track turned into a brown water race, streaming down the hill.

Simon sat in the grass, his arms folded across his chest. There was such a stillness about him. His arms and legs were wiry and muscular; you could tell he was super fit for his age.

Now was the moment to explain, but she’d forgotten the lines she’d rehearsed, the approach she’d decided on. How had she meant to put it? Just give him an outline, don’t tell him too much. Keep your cards close to your chest. Even though that means facing everything alone …

‘You know I told you I didn’t ask enough questions. I accepted what they told me about Arthur’s death, and that was it.’

‘Yes.’ He put a hand to his neck and rubbed it, as if at a sudden pain.

‘So, I’ve asked some. Questions.’

He looked at his watch again, and she understood: he was busy, things to do. There was only so much of her antics he would put up with.

‘Asked who?’ he said, wiping his forehead. She caught the sharp smell of his sweat.

‘I spoke to Detective Da Silva again. You don’t remember her.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe I do. Vaguely.’

But he had turned, his eyes fixed on her. She hesitated.

‘So,’ he said. ‘What did you and the detective talk about?’

‘About Arthur.’

‘And?’

‘That’s it.’

She waited. Silence.

His expression had changed. He was patient, but she was pushing it. He looked hard at her and said, ‘Eloise, I’ve tried to explain to you that I think you’re getting carried away. I’ve told you: there’s nothing to see here. But if you’re going to keep approaching me and dragging me places, and talking to the police, and somehow involving me, I think you need to tell me exactly what you’re doing.’

‘Sorry. It’s just, I’m trying to think it out by myself and …’

He thought for a moment. ‘Look Eloise, I told you, politics in this country is boring, right? No conspiracies, just committees. Maybe … maybe I wasn’t being entirely open with you, and that wasn’t fair. I’ll tell you one thing, if you keep it to yourself. All right? Ed Miles gives me the creeps. If anyone’s up to anything, it’s him. Now even just saying that aloud sounds fanciful to me. Because I’m a doctor. I treat patients — women. My life is very what you’d call down to earth. No glamour, no conspiracies, no politics. I’m just a doctor.’

‘Okay.’

‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but I have a huge, successful practice, and you know why that is? Because women trust me. They come to me
with their incredibly sensitive issues, and I help them. They trust me more than their husbands. They say to me, If you run into my husband in the ward, don’t tell him what we talked about. As if I would. I’m there to help them. And to keep their secrets.’ He touched her arm lightly. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been feeling very alone lately,’ he said.

She lay back in the grass. The clouds were edged with bright seams. ‘Yes.’

‘I thought so.’

Eloise sat up. ‘Okay. This is just between us, right?’

‘Yes. Definitely.’

‘The detective said someone made an inquiry about Arthur, from the outside. Maybe someone high up. She thought it might have been about his post-mortem.’

Simon was expressionless. ‘So?’

‘She got the sense she was being told not to investigate any further. And she thought maybe this was because they’d been getting a bit too close to the people at Rotokauri.’

Eloise paused, frowned. Had Da Silva actually said that? Yes. Well, near enough. She went on, ‘So, I got an idea. Roysmith and I have just done a piece on the internet mogul Kurt Hartmann, right? Whom the Americans are trying to extradite. We interviewed him. I got the idea to ask Hartmann about Ed Miles.’

Silence.

Finally, Simon spoke. His tone was incredulous. ‘But
I
was at Rotokauri, too.’

‘Exactly. You said Ed Miles gives you the creeps. If there was something funny about Arthur’s death, wouldn’t you like to know?’

He let out a short laugh. ‘Not specially.’

Eloise winced. He didn’t have to sound so brutal.

Simon squeezed his hands together; he turned to her and said, ‘Okay. Okay.’

Silence.

He started again, ‘The people you’re talking about. They’re my friends.’

‘I didn’t get the impression Ed Miles is your friend.’

‘The Hallwrights are more than friends; they’re family.’

‘I know. I wanted to tell you what I’d done because I thought you’d like to know.’

Again he looked incredulous. ‘Thanks. You could have checked with me first.’

‘Simon, you told me you’d think about it, and that you might even look into it. I thought you wanted to find out as much as I did.’

‘Christ. You go off and unleash that giant ogre …’

‘I haven’t unleashed him. He’s not an ogre actually, he’s very nice. I just asked him if he knew anything about Ed Miles.’

Eloise looked at the red iron roof of Arthur’s flat. She said in a slow, intent voice, ‘A layer of the world has been hidden from me.’

‘You didn’t tell the policewoman about talking to Hartmann?’

‘No. I won’t. It’s a secret.’ She turned to him. ‘I’m serious about this, Simon. I let Arthur down. I’m trying to make up for that. Even if there’s nothing to find out, I’ll know I’ve asked.’

Simon looked away, distracted. Birds rose from the trees along the walking track, flapping wings.