Surrender (14 page)

It made me feel sick to hear that this kid sitting opposite me twiddling her ponytail had been grateful to Niki for this. I could feel a cold anger towards Niki growing in me. It was bad enough that she had been doing this crap herself, but the idea that she lured other young girls into the business with her made it so much worse.

Yet by far the hardest thing to accept was that Niki had done all this so she could ‘hold her head up’ when going into business with me. I’d suggested the whole business thing one night when Niki had called round, and I told her about a missing persons’ case I’d been working on. I’d managed to track down a woman who’d been ‘missing’ for twenty years, and had put her and her family back in touch. It had been one of the rare win-win results — everyone was happy, including me, particularly when I realised that the client had added a healthy bonus into my overdrawn bank account — and after a wine or two I think I was probably bragging a bit.

Okay, I’m sure I was bragging — I’d suddenly caught myself at it. I’d turned the conversation back round to Niki, and asked what
she was doing. It was then that she’d said how much she’d love to be doing work like I was doing, and I’d said well, why not join me? I remembered how thrilled she’d been at the idea, and we played with it for the next few hours as we polished off two more bottles of wine. It was fun, we had a good night, but the truth is that I’d not really given it much thought after that.

I was so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed Vex watching me.

‘You think Snow killed Niki, don’t you?’ she said. ‘That’s what I heard.’

I dragged my attention back to the present. The very least I owed this girl was honesty.

‘Yeah, I did think that. Now I’m not so sure.’ I watched for a sign from Vex. Any sign that would tell me I was on the right or the wrong track. ‘Now I think that maybe whoever killed Snow also killed Niki.’

She’d gone completely still. When she finally spoke it was so quiet I had to ask her to repeat what she’d said.

‘Snow did kill her,’ she said. ‘He told me he did it.’ A sweat broke out on my forehead. ‘He said Niki told him she wasn’t going to do the blackmailing any more. That she was going into a legit business with her sister.’ Vex threw me an apologetic smile. ‘He tried to get me to do it instead of her, but no way was I going to work for Snow! I mean, it was okay to do it for Niki, but not for that creepstake!’

‘And you think Niki wanting to end the blackmail racket was enough to make Snow decide to kill her?’

She thought about it for a bit, and then nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

I took out the sheet of photos, checked that there was no one directly behind Vex, and handed it to her.

‘Well, I think Snow probably did kill Niki,’ I said quietly. ‘But I think someone put him up to it.’

She showed no emotion as she examined each image. I’d gone this far, so I decided I might as well try out the rest of my theory on her.

‘I think someone offered Snow more money to kill Niki than he got working for her.’

Vex looked up at me. I could see her thinking this through. Saw it make some kind of sense to her. She turned her attention back to the photos.

‘And you think that person might be one of these guys?’

‘Maybe.’

I watched as she studied the last photo on the sheet. She’d already spent more time looking at this one than any of the others. I felt a little shiver of excitement. Vex ran a finger gently over the image of my sister. In this particular photo Niki was dressed in a school pinafore, her hair in high pigtails. She was licking a big swirl of fake lollypop. At least she had some clothes on. Vex stabbed her finger at the face glancing wild-eyed in the direction of the camera.

‘Chris Ross.’ She stabbed at it again. ‘Niki hated him. Said he
deserved
to be blackmailed for the stuff he was into. She said she didn’t have to make anything up with him — he was already way ahead of anything she could think up. Chris Ross was the genuine thing.’ She rolled up the sheet of photos and snapped the elastic band on one end. ‘One totally sick jerk.’

‘Do you know if he paid up?’ I asked.

‘Last I heard, Niki sent Snow around twice to threaten him, but Ross was digging his heels in, refusing to pay up. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have the money. He was loaded.’

‘When was this? When was Ross being blackmailed?’

Vex’s hand suddenly flew to her mouth, and her eyes widened as she put two and two together.

‘It was just before Niki was killed. Oh my God! It was him, wasn’t it? Chris Ross paid Snow to kill Niki!’

Yep, I thought. It sure sounded like it. What I still couldn’t figure out was why Ross had waited another whole year before killing Snow. Maybe he’d heard that Snow had blabbed to an undercover cop about the killing. Word of Gemma’s attempt to snare Snow would have leaked out through the legal fraternity, and who knows what connections Chris Ross had. He might even be a lawyer or a judge for all I knew. Maybe Ross realised that as long as Snow was alive, he would remain vulnerable.

I pulled up the collar on my too-thin orange jacket and watched Vex hustle her way through the business crowd towards the taxi rank. Seeing her approach, the cab driver leaned across and threw open the front passenger door. I watched his face tilt up hopefully as she leaned in and gave him directions, then slump in disappointment as she opened the back door and climbed in. The driver pulled the front door shut and adjusted his rear-vision mirror so he could glance at Vex as he drove. I didn’t blame him. There was definitely something about Vex that made you want to look at her.

As the taxi passed me Vex raised her hand in a small wave. The driver’s head bobbed as his eyes flicked rapidly from the road to the rear-vision mirror. I watched until the car had passed the police HQ on the corner and exited onto the motorway. I’d parked in the HQ building, so figured I could spend a couple of hours on my John Doe report before going to see Sarah Crossen-Smith and wrapping up the case.

As I stepped out from between two parked cars, another taxi whooshed past. I arched back quickly, feeling like a batsman bowled by a mean bouncer. The taxi changed lanes suddenly, causing a blast of horns, and sped through an orange light onto
the motorway. I stepped back to safety, and stared in the direction the taxis had gone.

I’d glimpsed a man leaning forward from the back seat, pointing out the front window as he urged the driver on. It was Stoke, the guy I’d watched at the club. The guy who was at Snow’s funeral. The guy I’d been told was in love with Niki.

Maybe it was a coincidence that he’d caught the taxi directly behind the one Vex had climbed into. I gave myself a talking to — Molesworth is a one-way street so it was no surprise both cars drove off in the same direction. And taxis cutting lanes? Well, that was hardly an indication of anything suspicious. I told myself Stoke probably wasn’t following Vex at all. I told myself I had an overly fertile imagination. That’s what my father accused me of each time I told him that his live-in girlfriend — numbers three, four and five — didn’t like Niki or me.

And just like back then, when the little voice inside told me I was right about Dad’s girlfriends, that same little voice told me I was right about this. Stoke had been watching while I talked to Vex, and was now following her. I didn’t have Vex’s phone number, and had no idea where she lived. What would I say to her anyway? I had no proof Stoke was following her. All I knew was that he was in a taxi going in the same direction as hers. Hardly enough to warrant an armed offender turn out. There wasn’t anything I could do except feel uneasy. I’d learned a long time ago not to discount feelings of unease, so I nursed them in my gut as I made my way across the road towards police HQ.

Joey was on the front desk security again, placating a man with a face the shape and colour of a beefsteak tomato, who was arguing his right to a just and fair hearing. Why he thought that was on offer at police headquarters was a bit of an enigma. Joey had his hands up, palms out in a calming gesture, but it didn’t seem to be working
on tomato-face. Catching sight of me, Joey called my name, but I scooted past, waving my new security pass in a ‘I can let myself in’ gesture. It was only when I reached the lifts that I realised why Joey had called out to me. It had nothing to do with my security clearance or beefsteak man. It had been a warning.

Sean had one hand on the elevator up button, the other resting protectively in the curve of a woman’s back. He saw me in the same instant I saw him. The woman had her back to me, and only turned when she saw Sean’s sudden change of expression. I had never met Sean’s new partner Sylvie but I was in no doubt this was her. At about five foot five to my five-eight, with styled, short blonde hair framing a bright little made-up pixie face, she exuded a kind of optimistic confidence, as if the world had always been good to her and she expected nothing less from it.

First impressions told me she was everything I wasn’t. In fact, if I was crass enough to think ‘types’ — and crass is something I’ve never baulked at being — then Sylvie and I were definitely at opposite ends of the type spectrum. Where I was tall, she was short. Where I scowled at the world, assuming the worst, she smiled in expectation of good things to come. Where she appeared composed, tidy and guileless, I was jittery, scruffy and suspicious. Sean made the awkward introductions, and Sylvie stepped forward to shake hands. It was yet another indicator of how trusting she was. It obviously didn’t occur to her that I just might deck her. Sean stepped up protectively beside her — I’m fairly sure the possibility had occurred to him.

‘It’s nice to meet you at last,’ she said, as if she meant it.

‘Nice to meet you, too,’ I lied.

‘Nice’ was probably the very last thing in the world this meeting was. Sean and I shuffled and avoided looking directly at each other. Sylvie beamed her open gaze from one to the other of us as
if amused by our awkwardness, but still neither of us could manage any social chit-chat to help smooth things over. The silence became deafening. In the brief moment before the bell signalled the arrival of the lift, I thought I saw a flicker of doubt on Sylvie’s face.

The lift doors slowly parted, and Sean ushered Sylvie into the lift ahead of him. He was in such a hurry to escape that he almost man-handled her right into the slow opening doors. Even though Sylvie had her back to us, neither Sean nor I took the opportunity to make eye contact. As the lift doors began to close, Sean threw his arm out to hold it for me.

‘Sorry. Are you going up, Di?’ he managed.

The lift door stuttered, then clanged wide open again. I couldn’t have moved my legs even if someone had yelled ‘Fire!’

‘No, I’m good thanks. I’m going down,’ I replied truthfully.

Instead of closing, the lift doors perversely now stayed wide open, framing Sean and Sylvie directly in front of me. I had to do something, frozen as I was with a scowling, sickly grin on my face. I might as well take advantage of the moment.

‘Hey, Sean,’ I said, managing to keep my voice steady. He looked up from studying his shoes. ‘Have you looked at a guy called Chris Ross for Snow’s murder?’

Sean’s lips tightened in a way that I knew so very well.

‘Jesus, Diane,’ he said, and punched the lift button with his index finger. ‘Would you leave it alone!’ The bell pinged in anticipation of the doors closing.

‘You know Niki was blackmailing Chris Ross, don’t you? Well, I think Ross might have paid Snow to kill her.’ The doors began to glide together. ‘Then a year later, when things heated up again, Ross killed Snow.’

I’m not sure if Sean heard the entire last bit before the doors closed. He sure as hell wasn’t looking at me, and I reckoned,
knowing Sean, if Sylvie hadn’t been in the lift, he would’ve put both hands over his ears and sung ‘lalalala’ loudly, just to be sure I got the message. Knowing Sean.

Instead he’d rolled his eyes heavenwards, and pretended to ignore me. I guess that must be the new grown-up Sean. The one I didn’t know. The one who was having a baby with that bright little blonde pixie in the lift. Sylvie and I had looked each other in the eye before the lift door slid shut between us. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we bonded in that look, but there was a definite acknowledgement this had been no fun for either of us.

I watched the numbers light up as their lift rose through the floors. It stopped at the seventh. Legals. Maybe Sean was seeing someone there about the Snow homicide. Or maybe Sylvie had some work there, and Sean had accompanied her for some reason. Maybe they’d just had lunch together.

Maybe they’d gone home to bed for lunch, like
we
used to.

The lift began its descent to the ground floor. As I watched the numbers light up and then extinguish, I was thinking about Sylvie and me. I was wondering why I was comparing us, when after all, I was pretty sure the only thing we had in common was Sean. That was the weird thing — if Sylvie and I were totally different types, as far as Sean was concerned, which of us was the aberration? Sylvie or me?

The doors whooshed open. The lift was empty. What did I expect? Sean coming back down to check I was okay?

I thought about going up to the third floor to start on the John Doe report. I even stepped into the lift, and had my finger poised over the third floor button — but I stepped straight back out again. I’d caught a whiff of perfume. Chanel N°5. I’ve never liked it. Too cloying. Too feminine. Just too bloody … nice.

T
he national library two blocks down the road from police headquarters has a publicly accessible internet system with fast broadband. There’s an okay café, a brilliant newspaper room, comfortable seats, and clean toilets. They even supply, free of charge, scrap paper and HB pencils sharpened to exquisite points. The atmosphere in the huge high-ceilinged research rooms is cool and hushed. No one looks at you. No one speaks. No one points and laughs at your mottled, cried-out face. No one asks about your red-rimmed eyes or the snail tracks down your cheeks. Don’t believe those articles in magazines that tell you to splash cold water on your face to hide the crying blotches — instead of a smoothed, serene, professional look, you could end up with the same swollen red face accessorised with big, wet, mock-turtle teardrop blobs on the front of your T-shirt.

To add to the god-awful picture I presented to the mirror, the bruise from Peaches’ cover drive had spread a jaundiced mottle from my neck to my throat. Sean used to run his fingers along the line of my clavicle. He said it was one of the sexiest things about
me. I wondered if ten minutes ago he’d even noticed that my sexy clavicle had a dirty purple bruise across it. The best thing to do with mirrors is not look at them. It’s the only way to shut them up. Amazingly, Chris Ross’s address was listed in the online white pages: Ambrosia Court, a dodgy apartment block rumoured to hire rooms on a twelve or twenty-four hourly basis. Mostly the place was used by fences shifting hot electronics, and drug dealers needing a discreet place to do business. Its popularity owed a lot to the apartment block’s elaborate security measures. Around the perimeter of the building was a high, mock stucco wall effectively creating a gated community, with security cameras perched at each of the four corners. Cameras also peered down from either side of a set of electronically controlled gates which was the only entry point for vehicles.

The place was a rat-hole because of both its design and the behaviour of its inhabitants. Every apartment had tortuous narrow stairwells for entry and egress. The overall effect was to make the apartments difficult for cops to raid without alerting the occupants in plenty of time for them to make an easy, if admittedly undignified, getaway. Which was why, of course, it was so popular with those people in the melodramatically named ‘criminal underworld’. Ironically, what the occupants of Ambrosia didn’t know was that their every action could be viewed in detail from a run-down penthouse perched at an oblique angle at the top of the office building opposite the apartments.

When I was there, a bit over a year ago, the ‘penthouse’ — little more than a converted shipping container, really — was being used as a photographic studio by a bunch of polytech students. I’d gone there to ask if a young student named Marie Wilson could come down to the station to identify a ring that had turned up in the gut of a small shark caught off Mana Island the previous day. Marie’s
brother had disappeared six months earlier and was presumed drowned. The last sighting of him had been at Plimmerton beach. Marie’s brother suffered from bouts of depression, and he had a history of suicide attempts.

Marie asked for a few minutes to prepare herself before looking at the ring and in that time, while I made small talk and she drew deep breaths, I watched two separate deals go down in one of the Ambrosia apartments opposite. When I couldn’t hide my distraction any longer, I asked Marie if she was aware of what was going down in the apartments across the road. It was no news to her. She explained to me the odd positioning of the apartment — how it was tucked under a low-hanging eave at an oblique angle. Also, her window — the one with the bird’s eye view — had an unusual type of reflective coating to minimise the amount of light getting into the studio. The effect of all this was that, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, from Ambrosia’s point of view, Marie’s place didn’t exist.

The two other students who shared the studio with Marie referred to the one-way viewing window as their ‘entertainment unit’. Marie told me that on Friday nights the three of them would crack open a cask of wine, line up the beanbags, and spend an entertaining couple of hours watching whatever was going down in Ambrosia. They’d witnessed various drug deals — even the occasional orgy.

Trying my best not to sound like a school prefect, I’d asked why they hadn’t told the cops about it. According to Marie they held a vote every month to decide if they should, but so far, the majority had always been in favour of maintaining the status quo. As she explained it, they had to weigh up the entertainment value of one big blockbuster of a police raid versus a nightly crime drama series, and the consensus, up until the time of my visit anyway, had always
been to stay with the nightly event. And, she pointed out, there was always the risk the cops would make the raid when the students were at class, which would mean they’d miss out on the blockbuster
and
have no evening entertainment either.

They’d obviously discussed the pros and cons in some detail. Up to their necks in student loans, they couldn’t afford anything like concerts or big screen televisions, and were keen to hang on to their free entertainment for as long as it lasted. I remembered Marie referred to it quite accurately as ‘good value’. I’m sure on some level her parents, who I knew were both accountants, would have been proud of her budgeting skills. She asked me not to tell anyone at work about it. Since ‘work’ was police HQ, and since I was, at that stage, married to a cop, and since I was at the studio on police business, I’d struggled with the ethics of my silence for a full ten seconds. At nine seconds I went with ‘a girl has to get her entertainment where she can’ and agreed to keep quiet about it. What was the harm?

That had been over a year ago and I hadn’t thought about Ambrosia or the studio’s little ‘window of opportunity’ since then. There was always the chance that the students had voted for the blockbuster option over the nightly crime drama, and the place had been raided and dealings shut down.

It seemed unlikely that Marie and her two student buddies would still even be there. A lot had happened to me in that year since we’d met. My sister had been murdered, my husband had left me and gone and gotten a pixie pregnant, I’d lost and subsequently semi-regained my job, and my sister’s killer had been murdered.

Maybe I lead a particularly full and busy life. Maybe the three girls were still there and had changed little more in their lives than their brand of shampoo. There was only one way to find out. I still had an hour and a half to fill before meeting Sarah Crossen-Smith
and putting my John Doe case to bed. I decided I might as well go and check out if Marie was still in residence at the studio, and if her entertainment unit was still functioning. I just might be able to catch a glimpse of Chris Ross in his apartment, or better still, Marie might be able to fill me in on any extra-curricular activities Ross had going on.

Access to Marie’s studio was via the next-door building which housed seven floors of car parking. Car park buildings are creepy places. I hate them and do my best to avoid using them. It’s nothing to do with a fear of being attacked. I never believe those movies. In my experience car park buildings are too well monitored, too busy and too bloody cold for anything much at all to happen in them, even crimes. Criminals feel the cold too, you know. The occasional skateboarder sneaking in to have a smoke and ride down seven floors of ramps is about the most heinous crime committed in them.

The reason car park buildings creep me out is because, as a Wellingtonian, I’ve always got my antennae out for the next big shake — there’s nowhere worse to be in an earthquake. Seven floors of concrete slabs neatly arranged one on top of the other — well, as soon as I drive up the first ramp I break into a sweat imagining how the floors would squash down one on top of the other at the first shudder. Give me an attacker any day.

Despite the stink of piss and petrol and the smattering of condoms, I walked up the entire seven flights of stairs. Being in a car park building when an earthquake hit would be the pits, but being in a coffin-sized elevator in one would be even worse.

At the top of the final flight of steps were two doors. One led to the rooftop, the other, lurid with DayGlo graffiti, sported a keypad but no handle. Unless you knew it led to the studio, it looked like the door to a storeroom or utilities cupboard.

The doorbell screamed like a fire alarm. In fact, I’m pretty sure
it
was
a fire alarm rigged to the little plastic button by the keypad. A tall, bearded guy in his early twenties wearing leprechaun-green skinny jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘art sucks’ opened the door. I figured the studio was still occupied by students. When I asked if Marie was there he blinked myopically at me through tortoise-shell framed ’50s-style glasses, then turned and walked back into the gloom. I took that as an invitation and followed his hunched shoulders and flapping canvas camouflage boots through the plywood anteroom. I tried and failed to forget that this was the bridge between two seven-storeyed buildings.

I explained to the guy’s back that I’d met Marie a year ago and wanted to ask her about the Ambrosia Court apartments across the road. Without turning, he nodded enthusiastically as he led me into her room. Well, what used to be her room. Now, there was nothing in it except a row of three factory-clean La-Z-Boys facing the windows. Leprechaun-pants continued nodding as he lowered his frame into one of them, and levered himself back. It was only then that I saw the earphones and realised he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. And the reason for the fire-alarm doorbell. I leaned over and yanked the plug out of his ear. He let out a yelp as if I’d unplugged his life-support, which perhaps I had.

‘What’s your problem?’ he said, blinking rapidly at me.

‘My problem,’ I said, pushing his chair further into its reclining position, ‘is that I’d like to talk to Marie.’

Leaning over him made me feel like a dentist. The sensation wasn’t as bad as being a dentist’s patient, but it still wasn’t pleasant. What I’d thought at first sight were whisker bristles, I could now see, from this uncomfortably close surveillance, was a small but well-stocked forest of blackheads.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ he said, levering his chair back into a sitting position. ‘I paid her twenty bucks for an hour’s viewing,
and she gave me the door code.’ His attention shifted from the window to me long enough for him to appraise and dismiss me as unworthy of attention. ‘She didn’t tell me there was going to be anyone else here.’

‘You paid Marie twenty bucks to view the apartments?’ Clearly Marie’s entrepreneurial skills had developed since I last saw her.

‘Yeah. I always do Thursdays,’ he grinned and added in explanation, ‘Benefit day. It’s when most of the deals go down.’

‘Right. Of course,’ I said, failing to sound cool and in-the-know.

‘P’s the drug
du jour
,’ he explained, ‘but sales for weed are still strong for the ACC guys with
actual
pain.’ He checked the time on his phone. ‘That’s not for another hour yet, though.’ His attention went back to the window. ‘Meantime, I’m watching the cartoons,’ he said, grinning. Leprechaun-pants darted a suspicious look at me. ‘Is Marie giving you a freebie?’

It was easier just to play it out. ‘Nah,’ I said, lowering myself into the adjacent chair, ‘I’m paying. I just didn’t know I’d have company.’

‘Same,’ he said, and stuck his earphones back in.

I watched him settle his chair back into a viewing position, all attention now on his ‘cartoons’ across the road. The La-Z-Boy was extremely comfortable and, apart from the farting sound it made every time I moved, made for perfect drama-viewing. I had direct sight into three separate Ambrosia apartments. They were identical in layout: an open plan living area next to a bedroom, and ceiling-to-floor glass doors across both rooms opening out on to a small deck area. The three decks were separated by concrete partitions so that no apartment could see what was going on in either of the others — the irony being that from my personal ‘gold lounge experience’, I had prime viewing of the interiors and the decks of all three.

There was nothing going on at the southernmost apartment —
the one furthest from my sight line. My fellow voyeur’s attention was focused on the middle apartment. At first shocked glimpse, I thought he was watching a middle-aged man attacking a young woman. She was clutching the back of a sofa to stop herself being dragged backwards by the man pressed up to her. He had her long hair wound around his fist, and had wrenched her head so far back I thought her neck would snap. His other hand was on her throat. I was about to leap out of my La-Z-Boy — never an easy task — but the little pleasure grin on the leprechaun’s face made me look again. The man released his hold on the woman’s hair and fell forward. He stayed like that, resting his forehead between her shoulder blades as he slid out of her. The woman wriggled her skirt back down over her hips and straightened her back.

The leprechaun, not surprisingly, hadn’t registered my mistake, but I still felt myself blush. I had a sudden flash memory of the first time I ever saw the sexual act. I hadn’t recognised it for what it was then, either, but I was probably only about seven at the time, so had total lack of experience as an excuse. I’d stumbled upon a couple of dogs going for it on the back veranda of the house. I thought the male was attacking the bitch — she seemed so helpless and resigned to the male’s grinning, slobbering violence. Well, that’s how it seemed to me at the time. Needless to say, my attitude changed once puberty hit.

The woman stretched the kink out of her neck, and secured her hair back into a clasp. The man turned away and lit a cigarette. The dogs I’d watched when I was a kid had shown more affection afterwards. At least they’d licked each other’s face.

Despite the cold, the glass doors of the third apartment, the northernmost one directly in front of me, gaped wide open. The living area was such a total mess I decided it had either been ransacked or been the setting for one hell of a fight. The sofa
cushions had been ripped open, and the stuffing spread around the room. A glass-topped coffee table had been tipped on its side, and bottles and glasses scattered everywhere. Stains formed continents on the beige carpet. A hole, suspiciously the size and shape of a head, had been punched in the wall. In the bedroom, the mattress had been half dragged off the bed, and a fully clothed man lay face up, spreadeagled across it. Another was slumped in a corner of the room. Both were asleep, dead, or unconscious. Since I’d nearly made an embarrassing mistake about what was going down in the middle apartment, I decided to play it cool with this one and not jump to any hasty assumptions.