Surrender (19 page)

‘I thought I had it figured,’ I explained. ‘I thought Ross paid Snow to kill Niki.’

Sean grunted, but kept his eyes on the road. I didn’t know how much he knew of all this, but didn’t see any harm in telling him what I’d learnt. ‘And then when Ross heard that Snow was mouthing off about killing her, maybe even heard about the recording Gemma made, he realised that eventually Snow would lead you guys to him, so he had to kill him.’ Sean was still giving nothing away. ‘But now I’m not so sure,’ I admitted.

Finally he said, ‘I
am
working this case, Di. I wish you’d trust that.’

‘You’re “pursuing active lines of enquiry”, eh?’ I said, but kept it light.

‘Yeah, I am actually,’ he replied, keeping it just as light right back at me.

‘I know.’ I offered this as a kind of ‘I’m sorry’, and he took it and smiled grimly to himself.

‘What happened back there, Diane?’ Sean’s voice was still relaxed and normal, but I saw his Adam’s apple go up and down and knew he was struggling to hold himself together. It dawned on
me that he felt guilty for not finding me sooner. Sean knew me, but I sure as hell knew him too. I shrugged and looked out the window. The ferry was coming in, packed full of laughing, happy, carefree holiday-makers no doubt. My shrug fooled neither of us.

‘Did he rape you?’ Sean asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

I counted to ten before answering. ‘No,’ I lied. ‘He didn’t rape me.’ I didn’t bother to cross my fingers behind my back, and I didn’t expect Sean to believe me, but I knew it would be unfair to tell him the truth. He was my ex-husband and he was a cop. The ex-husband would feel he had to play the role of comforter. The cop would have to report it as a crime. I didn’t want either.

‘Diane. You know …’ He took a breath — but I cut him off.

‘Leave it, Sean. I know what I’m doing. If you catch him, the kidnapping’s enough to put him away for a long, long time.’ I looked at Sean — saw the sweat on his palms, a dribble of it running down his hairline. The temperature in the car was probably really high, but I was still shivering. ‘I’ll testify to him kidnapping me and everything else he did … but not to that.’

He was probably going to argue with me, but we were pulling into the emergency drive-in area of A & E and medics were already waiting. I saw a couple of uniformed cops talking to reporters, pushing them back away from the entrance. My car door was opened, and an orderly leaned in to help me out. There was a flurry as the stretcher was clattered towards the car and I was lifted on to it. At the last minute I turned my head to thank Sean. He was still in the driver’s seat, his body slumped against the door, his head thrown back, cheek against the cool glass, eyes shut. He looked like a man who’d just come last in a marathon.

I insisted on a shower before I’d let them do anything to me. They put up a bit of a fight and I heard murmurs of ‘DNA evidence’ and ‘rape kit’, but after I’d told them emphatically that I had
not
been raped they finally agreed to the shower, on condition a nurse accompanied me. I agreed to it only because I knew I couldn’t do it on my own.

Marcia was professional and matter-of-fact, and I was grateful for that. I sat on a pink plastic chair in the cubicle holding the shower nozzle while she used a flannel to gently wash away the filth. I was still in love with water and luxuriated at the abundance of it, holding the nozzle above my upturned face and letting the water run over my eyelids into my mouth.

Marcie handed me the soapy flannel, and suggested I might like to wash myself. She meant my vulva. From the way she avoided my eyes I was sure she knew.

She found what must have been the only thick, soft towel in the hospital to pat me dry. I’d avoided looking directly at my body, but what I’d glimpsed was diminished, and mottled with colours predominantly in the purple to yellow range.

I tried not to be stroppy with the doctors and nurses who prodded, poked and pricked me. I knew they were just doing their job, but hospitals are no place to be when you’re sick. I even took pity on the young constable who’d been given the job of photographing my injuries for evidential purposes. She was quick about it, probably keen to make her getaway as soon as she could. Marcia stayed with me as I was wheeled to various parts of the hospital where I was X-rayed, had my wrist patched up, and my nose ‘readjusted’.

They smothered my feet in what looked and smelled like engine grease, and then coddled them in thick bandages. I was suspicious they’d done that just to stop me from walking out the door, which I’d threatened to do every fifteen minutes — but the fight was going out of me. Marcia had most likely added a sedative to the saline drip in my arm. By the time the orderly wheeled me up to the ward all I
wanted to do was sleep. Marcia murmured there was a policeman wanting to see me, but I’d had enough. I closed my eyes.

I heard the click of claws on linoleum and the stifled whine of yearning, and by the time I’d opened my eyes his huge paws landing on the bed threatened to capsize it, and his massive bony head thumped down on my chest. It hurt but it was a good hurt. I cupped my palm over his intelligence bump and told him I was okay. Told him I was fine. I felt his warm dry fingers brush the hair from my face, felt his lips on my forehead. He smelled divine. He was warm. Warm and alive. My hand stroked the silky warmth of him. I felt the tears come. There was no crying sound, no hiccup or groan, just the steady run of tears. They pooled in the hollow of my throat. It was as if, now that I had some water in me, it was all going to leak out again. He licked the tears up, whimpering. He told me to sleep now. Said they’d both be here when I woke. That I was safe and they wouldn’t leave. And with that I breathed in the warm, sweet, biscuit aroma of him, and slept.

When I woke they were both still there, Robbie slumped in the chair pulled up close against the bed, his hand holding mine; Wolf lying across his feet, alert, watching me. Wolf saw me wake and leapt to his feet, dancing from paw to paw and whining in excitement. He lifted his huge front feet on to the bed again, and gave in to the temptation to give me a good licking. The smell of the graze on my face worried him, and I had to do a fair bit of reassuring before he agreed to drop back on his four paws. Robbie’s greeting was a little more restrained but just as heartfelt.

He leaned in and kissed my forehead. ‘Welcome home.’

I hummed something, not able to speak yet. The curtain had been pulled around the bed, and I had no idea of the time of day or night. It was good being in this little enclosed world with just the three of us. Robbie poured me a drink of water, helped me into
a half-sitting position, and held it to my lips, all the time chatting quietly to me and giving the occasional instruction to Wolf.

Although he never changed his tone, I was amazed at how Wolf knew when the words were for him, and even more amazed that he immediately did as he was told. Then I realised I had too. Done what I was told, that is. I’d done exactly as Robbie had asked — sipped my drink, leaned forward so he could put a pillow at my back, even responded to his questions about pain level without biting his head off. What was it about this guy that made both Wolf and me acquiesce so readily? I warned myself to look out for that.

There was a pause, a silence, and I realised Robbie was giving me time to speak if I wanted to.

‘I don’t want to talk about it yet.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and waited some more.

‘Any update on our John Doe?’ I asked, thinking that was as good a subject as any.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, and flashed his grin at me. It made my heart lurch, and with the lurch came the realisation that my heart still worked. ‘I called in a favour from a dog handler mate of mine from Police College. I sent him back into the bush with our surly ranger to look for John Doe’s skull.’

I reached for my drink but was snagged — I was still tethered to the saline drip. Robbie held the paper cup to my mouth, and I sipped tentatively while he continued updating me. It was good thinking about something other than me.

‘That first night you …’ He paused, then picked it up again. ‘The night you went missing, I stayed up all night drawing up a topographical grid, going over the changes in watercourses and how they most likely would have shifted over the years. It, you know, it took my mind off …’ He trailed off and then made a big deal of throwing the cup in the rubbish and replacing it with
another one, all the time with his back to me. Wolf was watching him intently, so he knew too.

‘When did you know something had happened to me?’ I waited until he turned back to face me. ‘It’s not like I have a great record of punctuality with you.’

‘This time was different,’ he said, and took my good hand in his again. ‘When you didn’t turn up at Kazu I tried ringing your mobile and got your voice mail. I was worried pretty much straight away. I mean, we’d had such a great day together, and I thought, I can’t be
that
wrong.’

I squeezed his hand, not trusting myself to speak.

‘So I drove to your house. There was no answer and the place was all locked up. Wolf had barked so much he’d pretty much lost his voice, but he was still bashing at the window.’ Wolf’s head swivelled round at the sound of his name. ‘Platz,’ Robbie said to him, and Wolf obediently subsided with his head between his paws. When I looked the question, Robbie bobbed his head apologetically. ‘Sorry. I train all my dogs in German.’

I let the ‘
my
dog’ go. For now.

‘I talked to your next door neighbour who said Wolf had been barking non-stop for an hour, and I knew then that something was badly wrong.’

He poured himself a glass of water and held it clutched between his two hands. I could see he was reliving it — could see, too, that the poor guy hadn’t had a decent sleep in a long time. Probably not since I’d gone missing.

‘So I rang it in. By the time the car arrived I’d found your bag in the bushes. Then it was all on. Sean was great. He had Ross pegged as the guy even on that first night.’

‘Oh, super,’ I thought. ‘He’s bonded with my ex-husband. That’s all I need.’

I watched Robbie take a sip of water.

‘The guys, everyone, went all-out to find you, Diane.’ He hung his head, and I could see him struggle to get his voice steady before he spoke again. For the first time he looked directly at me and held my look. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and his voice broke.

I felt my lip split painfully as I tried to smile at him. ‘What are you sorry for?’

‘That we didn’t find you. We should have found you.’

I patted him. It works for Wolf, and they seem to be pretty simpatico, so I hoped it would work for him. After a couple of minutes he cleared his throat and we half grinned at each other.

‘So you sent this guy in with a sniffer dog to look for the skull and told him where you thought it might be?’ I said, picking up the John Doe story where he’d left off. ‘How did he go?’

‘It’s in my car,’ he said, sliding me the proud grin of a new father.

‘You’re kidding me! He found John Doe’s skull?’

He lifted one shoulder. ‘I’d been thinking about what you said about the guy’s soul not resting until his body had been claimed,’ he said, and was about to go on but then just shrugged again.

‘Why haven’t you taken it to Smithy?’ I asked, unreasonably.

‘That little job was next on my list,’ he said, giving it right back at me.

‘Go. Go now and give him the skull. The sooner he gets it …’ I said, leaving the sentence unfinished. I saw him hesitate. ‘Hey, I’m fine. Really. And anyway,’ I added, when he still didn’t look like moving, ‘I want to pee. And I need help to do that.’ I hoped that was the final impetus he needed.

It took a bit more pushing, but eventually they were gone with only one backward glance and a tail wag as they went.

T
he worst part was having the thick bandages peeled off my feet, but after what I’d been through with Ross, normal, smarting, everyday pain somehow seemed okay. It wasn’t easy to convince them to take the drip out of my hand. The doctor insisted I needed at least another twenty-four hours of rehydration, and that it was the best way to get the antibiotics into my system; but when she saw that I was determined to pull the needle out myself she agreed, on condition I sipped a full glass of water every half hour and took my drugs in pill form like a good girl.

I knew the hospital staff thought I was difficult. What they didn’t know was that the tethering of my undamaged hand to the metal drip stand was sickeningly reminiscent of being shackled to the iron ring in the bunker. The wrist wound was already beginning to heal, but I was going to be left with a scar that would resemble a botched suicide attempt.

Detective Alex Bower came to take a full statement from me, and he introduced himself as the detective in charge of my case. It was a
good move to give it to someone who didn’t know me; it was easier for me to go over everything that had happened with a stranger than it would have been to tell someone I knew.

I started from the time Ross had punched me in the gut, and kept going until I got to when the hunters found me on the track. There were quite a few blanks I couldn’t fill in, but I managed to give him more details than I’d thought I’d be able to. There’s a real art to taking a statement from a victim or witness, and Alex was good at it — opening doors, asking questions without leading me to assumed answers; methodical without getting bogged down in useless details.

He used a Pitman’s style shorthand which allowed me to talk at my usual pace, and that helped too. I didn’t want to linger on any of it. When I’d described being tied up in the bunker, he asked straight forwardly if Ross had raped me. There were no piercing looks, no lowering of voice, just the question. I’d prepared myself for it, and answered just as straight forwardly that no, Ross hadn’t raped me.

Detective Bower drew the little saucer-shaped hieroglyphic for ‘no’, and continued with his next question. He did spend some time encouraging me to remember the details of what Ross was wearing the last time I saw him. Of course, I realised with a jolt, they were still hunting for him. No doubt the media had been given the ‘armed and dangerous and not to be approached’ warning to print alongside his photo.

I did my best to picture Ross for young Alex Bower. There was an image burnt into my retina of him sitting opposite me on the road, the gun resting in his lap. I remembered green trackies, camouflage green maybe, and fawn-coloured, thick, rubber-tread boots, but I couldn’t be certain of any of it. All I could picture with any real clarity was the Browning A5 semi-auto and the bottle of water.

The statement took about an hour, and when we finished I felt oddly elated, as if by telling it all from beginning to end like a story I’d made it something that had happened to someone else. Purged myself of it somehow. It was a bit like confession. Maybe if I said three
Hail Mary
s and an
Our Father
it would all disappear forever.

If Alex hadn’t still been there I might even have tried it. Instead, I sipped my water and asked him if there’d been any sightings of Ross. He answered matter-of-factly that I was the last one to see him. AOS were still searching the peninsula, and both Eastbourne and Palliser Bay had extra cops on duty around the clock looking out for him, but by far the most likely scenario was that Ross had shot himself. According to Alex, ‘the boys’ were pretty hopeful of finding Ross’s body out there in the hills somewhere.

He locked eyes with me before adding that there was always the possibility the body would never be found, and warned me I should prepare myself for this. He left me with that thought after assuring me everyone was doing the best they could to find Ross, and my job was to rest and get better. Right. Got it.

The exhilaration I felt after giving my statement was short-lived. In fact I was feeling pretty low and sorry for myself half an hour later when Gemma turned up. I knew how much she hated hospitals, so it was really big of her to come and check up on me, but no sooner had she appeared at the foot of the bed than she was eyeing the exit.

‘Pure cotton. None of your winceyette shit,’ she said, reaching into a Country Road bag and slapping a pair of eggshell-blue pyjamas on the bed. ‘I didn’t imagine you as a nightie girl,’ she added, glaring so effectively at an approaching nurse that the poor girl did a U-turn and left without a word. ‘Bad enough being in this place without having to walk around with your arse sticking out the back of a hospital gown for everyone to perve at.’

It was good to see her and I said so, and then noticed something odd about her.

‘Are you wearing make-up?’ I asked, and even I heard it sounding like an accusation.

‘No,’ she shot back, glancing at the corridor as if she was about to make a run for it. ‘Well, you know, just a bit of mascara.’

In all the years I’d known her, Gemma had never worn make-up. Gemma wearing mascara was as incongruous as an All Black wearing lipstick, and then I remembered Ma’a Nonu’s penchant for eyeliner and softened my tone.

‘It looks good on you,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.

Gemma shot me a look to make sure I wasn’t winding her up.

‘Yeah, well, you know,’ she mumbled. She stepped around to the side of the bed, making sure the exit was still in her sight. ‘You sure as hell gave us a fright.’ She looked me over like I was a rusty second-hand car someone was trying to palm off on her. ‘You’re going to come through this okay.’

I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. ‘Yeah,’ I responded, just as ambiguously. ‘I’m fine. It’s all superficial.’

I watched as she glared at the chair before cautiously lowering herself on to it. Any germs would have been frightened off by that look. She was breathing through her mouth to avoid smelling any stray hospital smells.

‘I hate hospitals,’ she muttered.

‘No kidding?’

She laughed, and with that laugh all the tension went out of her.

Though she claimed to have asked nicely, I suspect Gemma had bullied the nurses into letting her make me a real cup of coffee, but however she achieved it, I was grateful. For a while there, sipping scalding black coffee and chatting to Gemma, it was almost like nothing had happened. It felt like a long time since she and I had
just hung out and talked bullshit to each other. Actually, it had only been a few days, but everything that had happened to me before Ross felt like a lifetime ago. The ghost of Niki was still there between Gemma and me but it wasn’t blocking our communication with each other. After a while, when I knew her guard was down, I brought up the mascara again.

Gemma coloured slightly. ‘I’m meeting Wayne later for a drink.’

It took me a minute to remember who Wayne was. ‘Robbie’s friend? The guy you were such a bitch to that night in The Tasting Room?’

‘I can’t have been that much of a bitch,’ she said. ‘He’s asked me out three times already. This is the first time I’ve agreed.’

I tried to remember how long it had been since Gemma had spent a night with someone, and as if reading my thoughts she admitted, ‘I’ve almost forgotten what they look like without clothes on.’ She grinned. ‘Almost, but not quite.’ And this time she really coloured up, as if she’d been caught in the act of imagining it. Maybe she had.

‘Good for you, Gem,’ I said, and meant it.

I asked her if there’d been any sightings of Ross, and I must’ve sounded okay because she answered matter-of-factly that there’d been no sightings yet, but no body found either, so until he was confirmed dead they were still working on the assumption he was alive.

We rabbited on for a bit and I basked in the lovely, warm, safe feeling of friendship. At some point I must have fallen asleep.

I was back there in the bunker on the hill, my wrist still tethered, the cold leeching into my bones. Ross squatted on his haunches close by, hunched over with his back to me, head bowed. There was something odd about the way he was crouched, and then I realised
he was cosseting something in his lap. I strained to reach him but the handcuff snagged me back.

And then I heard it: a faint mewling sound, a tiny cry. Suddenly my heart swelled, then faltered in fear. What was he holding in his lap? What was it he was huddled over so possessively, so guiltily? What was making that sound?

Ross turned his face towards me but kept his body bent over his catch. He wore a shamefaced smirk. He lifted one hand and sniffed it. He seemed confused by the amount of blood sticking his fingers together. Now there was only the faintest mewling from his lap. I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know what he had there. But he showed me anyway. A small cat, a kitten really, barely alive. He held it up by the scruff of its neck, and it hung there, limp, blood still dripping from its torn mouth, drooling on to its pale, exposed underbelly, the little pink teats stained a lurid red.

Now it was me doing the mewling. I tried to grab it off him. Snatched and snatched at it, but each time I lurched for it he swung his prize out of my reach. Although Ross’s mouth wasn’t moving I could hear him repeating over and over, ‘I had to do it. It wasn’t my fault. You made me do it.’

I jolted awake, knowing exactly what the dream meant. If Ross was still alive, Vex was in serious danger. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Vex would be next on his list.

I was already halfway out of bed, but my next thought froze me to the spot. Maybe he already had her when he had me. Maybe he’d kept us both captive at the same time. I remembered Ross’s absence when I was up on the hill. He could already have had her tied up somewhere too — could have gone from one of us to the other. He was a lot of things, Ross, but he wasn’t stupid, and he’d
have known it was Vex who’d told me about him. He knew she was involved in Niki’s scam. If he was hell-bent on punishing me, he’d want her to pay too.

I counted the days since I was abducted, and my heart sank. She couldn’t have survived this long. I’d been close to death when I was found, and that was thirty-six hours ago.

My first thought was to ring Sean and tell him to go to Vex’s place and make sure she was safe. If she wasn’t there, he should check if anyone had seen her in the last few days. If the gods were on our side and she was okay, then someone needed to keep an eye on her until Ross, or Ross’s body, was found.

I found my shoulder bag slung over the back of the armchair, and to my relief my phone was in it, fully charged. I tapped on contacts and then double-clicked favourites. There he was, still saved as X. It really was time I did something about that.

I was about to press the call icon, but paused. Sean was always my first thought and it was a habit I needed to break, for both our sakes. Seeing him slumped in the car, eyes closed, head against the window when I was being wheeled into the hospital — I’d known then that it was time to let him go. Let him get on with his life. Whether it was with the pixie or with someone else wasn’t any of my business. I’d blown it with him. I’d thought what Sean and I had was unbreakable, and then when Niki died I’d recklessly thrown our love around the room, expecting it to hold together no matter what.

And it didn’t. It shattered into a thousand pieces. I
could
drag Sean back into my world — I’d realised that when I saw him slumped against the car window — but I had no right to drag him anywhere. I let the image of Sean fade away, and with the fade it was almost as if I did let him go — as if I felt him slip out of me and away.

When Robbie’s voice message kicked in, I almost expected to
hear, ‘Leave a message for Robbie or Wolf,’ since those two were hitting it off so well together. I didn’t want to leave a message. I thought about ringing Gemma, but then remembered the mascara. There was no way I could bring myself to interrupt her date with Wayne. Bugger it, I thought. I’ll just have to go check on Vex myself.

It’s almost as hard to get out of a hospital as it is to get in these days. My pleading and cajoling of the formidable ward sister did me no good at all. But then I remembered I wasn’t in prison, they couldn’t
make
me stay. In the end it was a simple matter of signing a form saying I was responsible for my own wellbeing and confirming that they’d advised me against leaving but that I was out of there anyway — or words to that effect.

Marcia called out to me as I waited for the lift and for a minute I thought I’d have to make a run for it, but all she did was hand me a paper bag of dressings and bottles of antibiotics and painkillers, and kiss me on the cheek. If she’d taken my arm and led me back to the nice, safe, white bed I think I’d have gone without a struggle, but she just wished me well, turned on her squeaky-soled shoes, and walked away.

I had no idea where Vex lived, but I knew someone who did.