Surrender (4 page)

Chloe counted the facts out on her fingers as if I was a slow learner. ‘And we have to pay Gavin two hundred bucks a week to dance here.’ She lifted her eyebrows at me, possibly as a gesture of bewilderment or perhaps it was the mascara problem.

‘So how do you earn?’ Even as I heard myself ask the question I knew I sounded stupidly naive.

‘Well, the guys buy pussy dollars and they put that money in the dancer’s garter. Well, except Vex. The guys don’t get to touch her when she’s dancing. They have to put the money on the stage and she collects it at the end.’

At the mention of her we both turned back to the dancer now doing up the buttons on her blouse and giggling. Chloe took a sip of her drink and eyed me flatly before continuing.

‘But mostly, you know, we earn our money by lap dancing. Like I said before, there’s the ten, fifteen or twenty-minute no-touch lap dances. Most guys pay upfront for twenty minutes but only last five, if they’re lucky.’ She grinned. ‘Only two minutes if
we’re
lucky. There’s no refunds,’ she added, flicking the fringe from her eyes.
‘And then there’s the VIP lap dances that involve, like, touching, and we charge heaps for those, though Gavin gets a cut too, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I agreed. I was totally out of my depth.

Chloe was warming to her role of teacher as she filled me in on the finer details of the commerce of sex. ‘I can make seven or eight hundred bucks a week, easy. That’s nearly all from lap dances though. The deal is we have to dance on the stage even though it doesn’t earn us much, because it’s kind of what the place is known for, and it brings the paying customers in. Then it’s up to us to get the punters to buy lap dances. It’s mostly regulars here, and they’re, you know, easy, really.’

This burst of animated discourse seemed to take it out of Chloe and she slumped back against the vinyl, peering at a lock of her hair for split ends. I sat back too, feigning casualness. The club was filling up with groups of men dressed in their best, their jaws shiny and abraded from recent shaves. It seemed touching that they wanted to make a good impression on these girls who were working the room now, leaning close, whispering, brushing against the men, touching them, and then withdrawing again.

‘And my sister — did she have regulars?’ I asked.

Seeing the real trade under way, Chloe was losing interest in me. ‘Sure. Like I said, she was real popular.’ She knocked back the last of her drink.

‘And would any of these regulars be pissed off if she told them she wasn’t going to do this any more? Like Gavin, the guy who owns this place. Would he have tried to stop Niki leaving?’

Chloe stood and adjusted her tiny panties with a snap. ‘Gavin? No way. He’s useless.’ She waved dismissively in his direction. ‘There was one guy,’ she added, tapping the nipple ring to bring it back to life. ‘Loads of money but, you know, a bit of an arsewipe,
actually. He got totally obsessed with Bonnie. Wanted her all to himself, that kind of bullshit. She was a bit freaked by him, I think.’

My palms went sweaty and it wasn’t the heat. I stood but even my height was no match for Chloe’s heels.

‘Any idea of his name? How I could find him?’ I asked.

‘Richard … Browning? Brownlee? Something like that. He was into buildings but I don’t know in what way.’ Chloe held out those long, cool fingers for me to squeeze again. ‘He was a nutcase if you want my opinion,’ she said and smiled. I squeezed the offered fingers, resisting the urge to blow warm breath on them.

‘You’ve been a great help, Chloe. Thanks.’ I scrabbled in my wallet and handed her three twenty-dollar notes. She palmed the money and with a little finger wave, tottered off on her heels towards a man who’d just entered. He appeared to be saluting but was more likely shielding his eyes from the riddles of pulsing LED lights.

I made my way past the stage to where the guy Chloe had called Stoke still leaned. I was sure I recognised him, but still couldn’t figure out where from. He had a narrow canine face framed by shaggy auburn hair — maybe it was just his resemblance to Wolf that made him look familiar. He was hunched over, but he straightened as I drew near. I saw his jaw slacken in recognition. So he recognised me too. I was about to speak to him when someone tapped me on the arm. I turned and was handed my coat by a completely naked girl with a radiant smile. I had to fight the urge to wrap the coat around her. By the time I’d turned back, Stoke was gone.

Standing this close to the stage, I could see fine blonde hairs on the legs of ponytail girl who was still dancing on the catwalk. Actually she was skipping with a wooden-handled skipping rope. The smell of male sweat and aftershave swamped me and suddenly
I needed to leave. Quickly. I pushed through the stamping, jostling males towards the exit.

At the door I glanced back; the punters all wore the tragic expressions of drowning men surfacing for their final breath. They were real sirens these girls, luring the guys to the depths. I caught one last glimpse of the ponytailed girl on stage. She seemed to be looking in my direction, her lips parted in a china doll’s smile.

T
he cool night air hit me like an avalanche. I hunkered into my coat, grateful for the excuse to hug myself. I’d finally had a glimpse into Niki’s world and what I’d seen didn’t make me feel that great. The Bookends were still there, filling the entranceway, shoulder to shoulder now, stamping their feet and puffing their breaths into the cold air. Separated from the herd, they looked bored and adrift. Politely, they made room for me to pass between them.

Tall though I am, their shared bulk dwarfed me. Feeling dwarfed doesn’t happen to me a lot. Obviously, standing eye to eye with a woman didn’t happen to them a lot either. I plucked out the little notepad I always carry with me and flipped it open.

‘I’m investigating the death of James Patrick Wilson,’ I said, consulting my notepad. ‘Also known as Snow.’ What I read was not Snow’s alias but a shopping list I’d been meaning to do something about for days, but they couldn’t see that. ‘What can you tell me about the guy? He spent a lot of time here?’ I gave the ballpoint an authoritative click, keeping my manner relaxed
and confident, just like every cop I’d ever known. The Bookends glanced their suspicion at each other but my height and demeanour seemed to convince them I was the real thing. Or maybe it was my ballpoint pen action. The bigger of the two hunched his shoulders towards me.

‘Yeah, Snow spent time here. He hung out with the girls a bit.’

‘Any girls in particular?’ I kept my eyes on the pad.

The talkative Bookend shrugged, making his neck disappear like a turtle’s. ‘Vex, maybe,’ he said, his eyes darting to his partner for confirmation. The partner was eyeing me closely. I wrote ‘Snow’ and drew an arrow towards ‘Vex’. From the look of the big guy it was just a matter of time before he told the chatty one to shut up. I got straight to the point.

‘What about …’ I flipped through pages of domestic lists and GST workings, pretending to look for my own sister’s name. ‘Niki … Niki Rowe. Working name Bonnie. You see Snow with her a lot?’

The Bookends looked at each other. The talkative one tapped his forehead and chest in a sketchy attempt at crossing himself. ‘She’s dead. Bonnie died about a year ago.’

‘Yeah, we got that,’ I said, sounding as much like a cynical cop as I could.

‘You look like her,’ the silent one said. ‘Like Bonnie. You’re her sister, eh?’

I smiled weakly, feeling pretty dumb now.

‘She talked about you a lot. She was real proud,’ the quieter one said and he put a hand the size of a dinner plate on my arm. My guess is, in another place, another time, he was one of those guys who could lumber up the sideline with a footy clapped in one hand like it was a tennis ball. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to Bonnie. She was a real nice girl,’ he added. He may have been a well brought
up, polite, Christian boy, but the wet eyes were for real. I felt mine well up in response.

Before I could say anything, the glass doors behind us slid open and the small Asian man, Gavin, the club owner, stepped out, surrounded by a miasma of smoke. I shoved the notepad back in my pocket. The Bookend took his paw from my arm, first giving it a friendly squeeze, increasing the size of the bruise Gemma had inflicted. Gavin walked right up to me, which, given the height difference, wasn’t a good idea on his part.

When he tilted his head to speak, he seemed to recognise his disadvantage and took a step back, flapping his hands in a histrionic gesture.

‘What you want? This business. Dancing business, not talking business. You go away now. I don’t want trouble.’

I would have moved off without a fight but he made a shooing gesture, and being shooed is not something I like. I closed the space between us, towering over him.

‘Well, you’ve got trouble, mate,’ I said, ‘because my little sister worked here and she was murdered by one of your heavies. Now that heavy’s been killed too.’

‘Not
my
heavy. Snow not my heavy. I only hire Asian heavy,’ he informed me with surprising candour. He indicated the Bookends who had resumed their default positions either side of the door. ‘These guys big. They look good to punters. They stop fight before it happen.’ The Bookends straightened their shoulders in pride. ‘But they’re no good for real jobs. I use Asian heavies for real jobs.’

I may not be a fabulous judge of character, but I was pretty sure Gavin was telling me the truth.

‘Snow not Asian,’ he added helpfully and then made that shooing gesture again. ‘You go away now. You’re
no
good for business. You scare off punters.’

With that he turned, the doors slid open, and like a magician in a tacky stage show he disappeared into the smoke. Despite him, despite the place, despite the realisation that this had been Niki’s life, I laughed.

So, I scare off the punters, eh? Yeah, well, ain’t that the truth!

Wolf was waiting at the door, toenails clicking as he danced from paw to paw in delight. I have a theory that if lovers greeted each other the way dogs do, there would be no such thing as divorce. The only downside I could think of was how long you’d have to grow your toenails.

I showered in the hottest water I could stand, letting the hard pellets pound into my skull. Eyes closed, I replayed the scene at the club. It was obvious Niki had been selling sex. I hadn’t realised how much I’d hoped she was just dancing like she claimed she was.

Then I remembered the ponytailed girl’s dance routine. In some ways, maybe selling sex was cleaner, more honest, somehow. A straight forward commercial transaction. Sex. In theory I had no problem with the buying or selling of it. I had no religious or other belief system that instructed me to object to it. Prostitution was a win-win, I reasoned. The girls got money, the guys got … actually I wasn’t sure what they got from the deal. An orgasm, obviously. Well — you’d hope.

I lathered my shoulders and neck with coconut soap, mixing the steam with its sweet, cloying tropical perfume. I remembered asking Sean if guys told their mates they’d had sex with a prostitute. I assumed they’d be embarrassed, almost ashamed — that it was a kind of admission they couldn’t get it for free so had to buy it. But Sean had laughed. I smiled, remembering how his hair fell across his forehead when he laughed like that. Sean said that men boasted
of using prostitutes and that other guys were impressed. I didn’t understand that.

I lathered my breasts, feeling the nipples harden. Six months without sex was the longest I’d been celibate since I was a virgin. I was beginning to suspect there’s truth in the warning ‘use it or lose it’. Even masturbation was becoming a bore. I was going to have to do something about that. But where does a girl go for sex? If there was the equivalent for women, like a strip joint where women paid men to lap dance, would I use it? I doubt it, but who knows? Maybe paying for it is like ‘Sex, Jim, but not as we know it’. Separating the lips of my own sex, I spent some time not thinking about anything much at all. And it wasn’t too boring either.

I have a recurring dream. I’m in my house. Not the one from my waking life, but a special dream house. I’m always walking through it, locating new rooms that I didn’t know existed. Sometimes I wander through luxurious, well-lit, big, open rooms and I have a real sense of liking this place. Other times the dream turns nightmarish and I come across dark, dank cellars or dusty mote-filled attics that I’m afraid to enter. Someone told me once that the house was my unconscious. Yeah, well, maybe. I don’t go in for that stuff.

Whatever it is, no sooner had Wolf curled into his bed beside mine than I plummeted into a dream of the house. This time I was searching, running from room to room in a slow-mo dream run. I was looking for Niki. I started to panic. Where was she? I went through room after room, dragging my paralysed sleep legs, forcing them to move. Snow was in one room, his head in his hands. He seemed to be crying. In another room were the dancers I had seen earlier, huddled in a corner of the room like frightened chooks. But no Niki. I went on, room by room, searching. Then suddenly
I stopped. Something was behind me. Some
one
was behind me.

No sooner had I thought this than whoever it was jumped me and I landed hard on the floor, the weight of my assailant pinning me to the ground. I twisted my head, trying to see who it was. Fear hit me: he was going to stab me in the back the way he had stabbed Niki. I struggled. I was hot with the effort, sweating, but still I couldn’t get him off me. It was all in slow-mo, my attempts weighed down by sleep.

And then with a huge effort, I twisted hard and finally I glimpsed my assailant. It was me. The shock of it startled me awake. Wolf had crept on to my bed during the night and, not content to take Sean’s side — I mean the side formerly known as Sean’s — had spread himself across the bed, pinning my legs. So that explained my nightmare.

Almost.

D
espite my dream I woke refreshed, and while I brushed my teeth I went over what I’d figured so far. Niki wanted out of the sex business and someone had paid Snow to kill her rather than let her go. The obvious suspect was the club owner Gavin, who last night had given me a succinct lesson on his selection criteria for employing security guards. I needed to find out more about this guy but at first meeting he seemed way too pragmatic to have ordered a hit on Niki just because she’d decided to quit working for him. I figured girls must come and go in that place with inevitable regularity.

I’d just spat out my toothpaste when the phone rang.

‘Diane? It’s Inspector Frank McFay,’ he said, giving me his full title as if we didn’t already know each other. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

McFay hadn’t spoken to me since the day he’d thrown me out of his office after our little set-to. Ringing in person to propose work was probably his version of a peace offering. I made a noise to suggest he should continue but I knew from experience that once McFay was in full flight he would keep going whether I joined in or not.

‘A body’s turned up in the Rimutakas. The local boys reckon it’s been there for a couple of decades at least. We don’t have the manpower to waste trying to find out who this joker is, so I thought of you.’

This was classic McFay. Definitely old school, was Frank.

‘Gee thanks, Frank,’ I said, confident the sarcasm would fly right past him.

‘I told the Wainuiomata boys you’ll be out there by ten this morning. It’s no use asking me about it,’ he continued, as if I’d assailed him with questions. ‘The boys out there know all there is to know, though I gather there’s not much to go on.’

I walked the phone through to my office and reached for a pad and pen.

‘Who do I see out there?’

McFay continued crankily as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I don’t want you racking up too many hours on this. The boys did a cursory check on persons reported missing in the area over the last couple of decades, but they came up with zip in the way of a match, so it might just remain a John Doe. Any questions?’

‘Is this a peace offering?’ I asked.

‘What kind of guy would offer you a rotting corpse as a peace offering?’ he shot back, though I thought I could detect a grin. ‘Listen here, Diane. If I get word you’ve been sniffing around for information about the Snow homicide, I’ll pull you off this missing persons like a shot. You hear me?’

His voice was so loud I suspected my neighbour could hear him. I lowered myself on to Wolf’s sofa.

‘Any leads, Frank?’

‘I told you. There’s not much to go on. Been a bit of flooding up there recently and looks like the body got washed down from further up in the forest. Could be twenty, thirty years ago.’

‘I’m talking about Snow’s case,’ I said. ‘Are you looking at anybody for it? Because, you know, whoever knifed Snow knew exactly how he had killed Niki.’

‘I warned you, Diane!’

‘Yeah, okay. I’m just saying.’

Before Frank could start in on his lecture I told him my mobile was ringing and I had to go. I told him I appreciated the job and that I’d be in Wainuiomata in an hour. I told him I’d leave Snow’s case to the cops and not sniff around getting in anyone’s way. Since I promised him all that, I thought I should make at least one of those promises true. I’d have to dress and drive fast to get across the hill by ten.

I hated leaving Wolf at home, especially as I was heading to his favourite walking track, but it was risky to take a dog when checking out a skeleton. In his days as a cop Wolf wouldn’t have misbehaved but in his retirement years he’d let himself go a bit on the discipline front. Wolf is keen on bones and I could imagine him embarrassing me in the worst possible way. I did my best to ignore his reproachful look when I left.

I drove out of Wellington along SH2. The harbour was white-capped, the sky prison-grey. A few dog walkers on the Petone beach leaned into the gale, their puffed-up jackets making Michelin Men of them all. Their dogs squinted into the wind-blown sand, ears pressed back against their skulls.

I swung the car through the roundabout and accelerated past the Gracefield ESR laboratories and on up the Wainui hill. The odd camber of the road created a tilted facsimile in my parking mirror of the wide, pale Hutt River snaking its way towards the larger basin of the harbour. Peppermint-green willows dotted the valley. The harbour was an expanse of indigo; the fingernail settlement of Petone appeared almost pretty. I could just make out those little
marshmallow walkers and their dogs on the beach below. From this distance the whole scene looked idyllic. I guess everything’s about perspective.

I located the Wainuiomata Police Station at the rural end of the town, squatting between the local bowling club and a run-down outdoor swimming pool where chipped dolphins leapt at faded concrete beach balls. The community cop shop was a no-nonsense state-house-designed brick bungalow. A butterfly or garden gnome decoration wouldn’t have looked out of place.

Work boots, their tongues hanging out in apparent exhaustion, were lined up in the porch, giving the place a homely touch. The hardboard tacked over the bottom section of the glass door made it identical to the suburban front doors I grew up alongside. It was probably the etched stag at bay that had been kicked out. Personally, I’d always had a hankering to do that.

In the waiting area, four enormous Maori guys balanced on the tiny wooden chairs provided. They were all reading
Woman’s Weekly
s, their legs stretched out in identical postures of relaxation. Seven entirely different coloured socks were on display. One naked foot sat proud in this company. None of the men looked up when I entered.

Directly in front of me was a chest-high counter where a uniformed cop leaned, reading the paper, a lock of sandy hair falling over his forehead. His finger traced a line of text, lips moving as he silently read. He straightened as I approached, flicked the hair back, and looked directly at me. He kept his finger planted on the paper.

‘Hi. I’m Diane Rowe. Inspector McFay said you’d be expecting me,’ I said, noting his eyes were the warm, deep brown of bush honey. He held my look for a moment and then his free hand disappeared below the counter.

‘Yeah, sure.’

A loud buzzer sounded and a light went on above the door next to the counter, indicating it was now unlocked. It always surprises me how easy it is to get into a police station, but I guess it’s the getting out that’s meant to be difficult. I stepped into an empty office. A couple of desks were piled with report forms, ring-binder case files and dirty coffee mugs. On the wall was the ubiquitous girlie calendar alongside a whiteboard listing the station’s jobs for the day. According to the ‘Urgent’ list, Lou should ring his mum ASAP.

The cop from behind the counter was right behind me.

‘I’m on my own here, sorry. Pat and Lou are out doing warrants, so I’m going to have to juggle you with the desk.’ He hesitated, and then held his hand out. ‘Rob. Robbie. Robert. Take your pick.’ He bobbed his head shyly towards an invisible crowd of people clamouring to pin a name on him.

Robbie wore his good looks as casually as a favourite T-shirt. He must have been at least six foot three or four but hunched his height down into his shoulders with a slight stoop. Very broad shoulders they were too, but he didn’t seem the gym bunny type, so my guess was he played a bit of sport.

I shook his hand. Firm. Warm. Dry. A lot of men have trouble shaking hands with women. Some make their hand go all limp and take yours in their fingers like it’s a half-dismembered rat the cat has presented them with. Others crunch your knuckles in an attempt to make some point or other. But Rob, Robbie, Robert’s handshake was plain … nice. I let him go. Reluctantly.

‘You can use my desk if you like.’ He smiled.

‘Thanks. That’d be great. But listen,’ I said as he stacked papers and cleared an area for me. ‘You don’t have to babysit me. I know my way around a case file.’

‘It’s not exactly what I’d call a case file,’ he said, tapping a slim manila folder. ‘This is it, I’m afraid. A couple of report sheets and some snapshots of the remains.’

I picked up the folder. ‘Okay. Well, I’ll have a read and then maybe you could take me out there to look at the body
in situ
.’

I looked at the half dozen photos paper-clipped to the inside. The first photo is always a shock, but then it gets easier. This one was a close-up of what I recognised as a femur. The bone was bleached white, with what remained of the muscle stretched the length of the bone and attached tenuously at each end. It resembled an overcooked leg of roast mutton.

Robbie screwed up his face. ‘Can’t do that, sorry.’

I slid the photo out to reveal the next one. ‘I don’t mean now,’ I said. ‘I can come back when it suits.’

The next photo was a close-up of the ribcage. There was no flesh on the bones but patches of what looked like fine mesh or filament adhered and draped into the chest cavity.

Robbie shifted his weight. ‘It’s not that. I can take you out there but it wouldn’t be any use.’ He scratched his upper arm in a nervous gesture.

‘Actually, Robbie, seeing the body is a lot of use to me,’ I said.

Robbie cleared his throat and shuffled again. He didn’t seem the sort of cop who would stonewall me just because I was a civilian, but he was definitely holding something back. I put the folder on the desk.

‘If you can’t take me, fine. Just give me directions and tell whoever’s up there keeping an eye on the body that I’ll whistle as I approach. That way I won’t catch them having a pee or whatever.’

Robbie looked at me silently, then crossed to the back door, pulled back the bolts and indicated that I should follow him.

The backyard was like any small-town, suburban backyard,
complete with rotary clothesline set in a leaning square of concrete, and a garden shed at the end of the recently mown lawn. A neat line of tea towels was pegged alongside a plastic, purse-shaped peg basket. Intrigued though I was by this, I didn’t know Robbie well enough yet to ask him about it. He led the way to the garden shed and opened the padlock.

‘You might wanna …’ He indicated his nose as he pushed the door open.

I took a step into the shed, breathing through my mouth. Draped nonchalantly in a wheelbarrow was what was left of John Doe.

Robbie shrugged apologetically. ‘The ranger was a long way into the valley laying possum traps when he found him. He went back to the hut, got the wheelbarrow, loaded the body, then went on laying his traps. He didn’t bother to bring him in until the following day. I guess he reckoned that after a couple of decades another day wouldn’t bring him any closer to being alive again.’

My knee clicked loudly as I bent to get a closer look. It was more a skeleton than a body, though some muscle, a tendon, and dried skin the colour of kauri gum linked the bones together. There was no skull. To me, a body doesn’t look human without a head, but maybe that’s my prejudice.

I peered at the collarbone and ribcage, noting the patches of adherent filigree that I’d seen in the photos. Robbie bent over beside me. I could feel the heat of his body and we weren’t even touching. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.

‘I reckon that’s his undershirt or singlet. There might have been some kind of synthetic thread in it and that’s why it lasted. It might help date him, eh?’

He was right. The lace filament was all that remained of the fabric after exposure to the elements for who knows how long. I stepped around the wheelbarrow, partly to move away from
Robbie’s distracting body heat, but also to see the back of the John Doe’s neck. I was hoping for the remains of a shirt label but no such luck.

Breathing through my mouth I could almost taste the sickly, sweet odour of decay. I circled the body, ending up at the right foot. Only a few shreds of the sock remained, but the boot itself was in relatively good condition, though it gaped at the toes in a smiling, Chaplinesque way. The bootlace was tied in a perfect double bow. A couple of the fingers that had tied the bow were gone.

‘Lots of pigs in the Rimutakas. They go for the stomach first, then they start in on the digits and … things.’

‘And no sign of the head, huh?’

Robbie’s shoulders went up then down again. I was close enough to smell his aftershave: ck one, if I wasn’t mistaken. It was a relief from the smell of the John Doe. I wondered if Robbie was staying close to me for the same reason. Ironically, I was wearing Eternity.

‘I went up there yesterday and had a good hunt around, but it could be anywhere. The body was washed downstream — that much we know. But the stream has changed course so many times even over the last ten years, and this guy might have been up there much longer than that.’

We squatted together in the dark, silent, but companionable as a couple of kids having found an old uncle drunk in charge of a wheelbarrow.

‘In the end, we don’t know who he is, where he died, when, or how.’ Robbie summed up for us both.

‘So you’ve nearly got the case solved then?’

He threw me a grin that hitched up one corner of his mouth with quotation mark creases. Then he turned his attention back to the body. I watched that grin until the lines dissolved. When he spoke again his voice was a whisper.

‘If we had a head, it might have a hole which would tell us one story. But right now we don’t know if it’s a suicide, an accidental, or a murder.’

I was still looking at him when he turned towards me.

‘I guess that’s where you come in.’

He gave me the full smile this time, maybe a bit embarrassed because he’d caught me checking him out. This smile hijacked his entire face and made it impossible not to smile right back. Actually, it wasn’t just my face that responded to Robbie.

I stretched to my full height and, hands on hips, surveyed the room in a purposeful fashion as if my intention was other than breaking the eye contact between us.

‘Was there anything else near the body? Backpack? Anything that might suggest he’d been tramping or hunting up there?’