The Murder Suite: Book One - The Audrey Murders (12 page)

The road was so curved and narrow by the caravan it wasn’t safe to do a u- turn so he continued up the road until he reached the Tauranga Bay turnoff.  No one was around.   When he passed the caravan he noticed Bruce was out by the road searching for something.   

Driver stopped the car and called out to him “Lost something”.  

“Yes, said Bruce  “Someone has taken our bloody letterbox.  Pisses me off! I thought maybe you cops had knocked it over when you were doing your search here earlier today.  But it is not here anywhere.”  

“I will check with the others tomorrow and see if they took it for any reason,” said Driver apologetically.   Bruce just cursed and walked inside.  

Driver went back to the station and made a quick report on his evening’s surveillance.  Not that there was much to report.  But it‘s all in the details he reminded himself as he made his way back home for what was left of the evening.

C H A P T E R   4 9

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Swore Audrey under her breath as she saw the police car driving past the Chalets.  “He must have gone to check them out at the caravan. He would have passed here on the way up. I bet he took a good look.” The car was driving very slowly. Audrey was pleased she had turned off all the lights in her suite and in Suite C.  The chalets were in darkness.  Driver would think they had all turned in for the night.  She looked at her watch.  It was eleven fifty five, almost midnight.   She still had a lot of work to do before morning.

              Inside the garage she had Campbell tied to her furniture dolly with bungee cords.   She was operating by torchlight so not to attract any attention from the street below. Not that there was ever much traffic anyway.   She backed her trailer into the garage and put down her makeshift ramp.  She wheeled the comatose Campbell up the ramp on onto the trailer.  She threw a blue plastic tarpaulin over him and tied the load down with heavy straps. In the silence and poorly lit moonlight she crunched down the gravel driveway. It was difficult seeing where she was going but she didn’t dare turn on her headlights.  Smithy’s house was directly across the road and who knows if he was asleep or up drinking at his kitchen table.  As the automatic gates opened she stopped and listened for the sound of any car in the distance.  It was completely silent. She turned and headed down the road to her next entranceway and continued up the steep gravel road to the top of the mountain.  Carefully she drove down the mud track towards the pigpen.   It was clearly visible in the moonlight hidden amongst the trees.   At the pen she removed the straps and the tarpaulin and threw them on the ground.  

              She positioned the ramp and climbed onto the trailer and picked up the dolly.  It was heavy but Audrey was built like a German tank, strong as an ox and fit as a fiddle.   Her adrenalin was pumping.  She felt great! She wheeled the man down the ramp and across to the pen.

              The gate was open so she wheeled him straight in.    Corrugated iron sheets made the walls and chicken netting substituted for a roof - it was rough but effective. 

The pigs would smell him.   She was now deathly afraid of pigs.  She knew what they could do to a human body.  She had witnessed it before and it was both appalling and exciting.   

Audrey felt completely righteous in her actions.   A lifetime of being victimized by men had taken their toll.   Her Father was a cold, bigoted man who she had not seen since she was told to leave home at fifteen years old.  Later he was a suspect in an unsolved murder of a young girl but was never convicted.  Her first boyfriend dumped her at sixteen because he had got someone else pregnant.   Her male bosses expected sex for advancement. Her husbands were unfaithful.  Her lovers used her, cheated on her and left her when she was no longer young enough for their tastes.   And now all the men wanted to do were hire young prostitutes. Women like Audrey with experience, intelligence and good conversation were no longer desired.  “Fucking Men! They are PIGS!” she shouted into the night as she released the bungee cords and watched the man fall face forward into the pen. 

She had left his unconscious body in his swim togs so she didn’t have to deal with looking at his private parts. Private parts she now covered with red raw meat scooped out of a big blue bucket and thrown with deliberate spite.

She wasn’t sure when, or if, the drug would wear off.  She had given him five times more than the usual party dose and had added anti depressant drugs knowing, mixed with wine, the concoction would, most likely, be fatal.

Before she left the pen she felt his pulse.  It was very weak.  She thought he would soon be dead.  Signs of fresh rooting in the pen indicated the pigs had already been.  She had left some meat for them yesterday and knew they would be back for more. Hopefully there would be nothing left by morning. She wheeled the dolly back onto the trailer, removed the ramp and threw the tarpaulins, bungee cords and straps into the trailer and drove back to the chalets where she put away everything into the garage and shut the door.  

She released the trailer from the car pushing it to one side of the driveway and turned on the garden hose to give it a good wash and let it drain dry.

Audrey returned to her suite and set the alarm for four o’clock when she would drive his car down to the dock and leave it there. She had already packed all his belongings into his car.  In the morning when she returned she would clean his suite and do the laundry.

  She reminded herself to give the dolly a good wash with bleach in case there was any DNA left on it.  Audrey loved watching forensic TV shows and knew that traces of DNA could be found on almost anything.  She should really wash off the tarpaulin as well.   They would expect to find his DNA in the suite and in his car. 

  At four in the morning, Audrey got into the driver’s seat and pulled it forward to reach the pedals with a reminder to put the seat back where she found it when she got out. She was completely covered from head to toe, wearing gloves, surgical footies and a baseball cap. There was no way she was going to leave any of her DNA in the car.  That would be a disaster.

She headed off down the driveway disguised in her masculine clothes knowing she would not be recognized in the dark.  She made it down to the dock without passing one car.  It was an hour too early to catch the early morning fishermen.  She quickly parked the car, pushed the seat back to its original position, got out and locked the door with the key and headed back towards the Chalets on foot.  

As she passed Pearl’s place on the corner she noticed a light in her front bedroom. Pearl was a very early riser and Audrey was careful to keep to the shadows as she crept by. Once she turned into Wainui Road she knew she would be safe.  If she heard a car there were many places on the side of the road she could hide.   The road was lined with bushes and trees and ditches. 

It took Audrey an hour to make the three mile walk back to the chalets.  It was five o’clock when she returned and it was getting light.  She had not walked up her path but taken the route up the other driveway and crossed across the paddocks to the chalets. She didn’t want to be seen entering her driveway and, if seen on the hill, anyone would just think she was checking her cattle. 

Audrey spent the next two hours scrubbing and cleaning Suite C and everything she used the night before.   When the laundry was in the washing machine she collapsed on her bed and passed out in a dreamless sleep.

C H A P T E R   5 0

Pearl awoke early on Thursday morning.  She looked at the clock, four twenty. It was too early to get up but she had to go to the bathroom so she may as well make a nice cup of tea and take it back to bed.    Pearl’s bedroom looked out onto the street.  She pulled back one curtain and looked out into the darkness.  In an hour it would be getting light.  With her tea made she piled a couple of cushions behind her and sat up in bed thinking about her plans for the day.   She had heard a car earlier going down to the harbor and wondered who would be up and about at that time of the morning.  It was too early for the oyster farmers.  They started around five o’clock on a Saturday, earlier during the weekdays.  The first fishing boats didn’t take off until seven o’clock.  Must be a local coming home after a night on the booze, she thought.  

She heard a noise outside.  Sounded like footsteps on the footpath.  She listened carefully.  The noise stopped.   She turned on the radio by the bed and tuned it to her favorite country station.

When the sun came up Pearl got dressed and went into the kitchen.  Her little dog was still asleep in his bed beside the fireplace.  He didn’t even look up when she walked past. “Great watchdog you are,” said Audrey. “You are as deaf as a doorpost.”  She picked up her knitting, sat at the kitchen table and opened the local newspaper. There was a picture of the truck upside down in the harbor and Pearl hungrily read the article. It was disappointing there was no mention of the bones.  She presumed the paper had gone to press before the bones were found.  It didn’t even mention the missing man’s name.   She started knitting. Knitting helped her think and think is what she did.  Pearl sat at her kitchen table for most of the morning, knitting and thinking.  By mid day she had decided what she must do.  She knew almost everyone in town.  It was just a matter of elimination.  Constable Driver was new to town.  It would be a huge learning curve for him to know the ins and outs of the local residents’ lives. Pearl, on the other hand, knew pretty much anything anyone would need to know about anyone.

She decided she would start with Smithy.  He was the one who found the first bone.   Then Audrey - she was the last one to see the missing man alive. Finally she would have a word with Dolly and Bruce.  She would bring them all some of her home baked afghan biscuits.  Pearl put down her knitting and picked up a pen and paper and started making two lists. She wrote two headings: “opportunity” and  “motive”.   She figured the culprit had to have both of these in order to carry out the murder.  And if there one thing Pearl was sure of, it was a murder and she was going to find who did it.

C H A P T E R   5 1

The captain of the Seawalker looked at his watch for the tenth time that morning. He had called the chalets but there was only an answerphone.  He cursed himself for not getting the man’s cell phone number.   It was seven thirty and he couldn’t wait any longer. The other two guys on board were getting restless. They had paid good money for the day trip and were eager to get out into the ocean and start fishing.   Captain Todd called the Chalets for the last time and left the message they were sailing without him and he could rebook for another day.  He added he would lose his deposit, as it was too late to replace him on the boat.  Not a good start to the day, he thought. “We’re taking off!” he shouted to the guys already downing their second beer. “Won’t be long and we can catch you a fair beauty”. 

They left the dock and headed across the still waters of the harbor and out towards the mouth. Captain Todd liked to talk about the history of the harbor.  He was proud of the area and was a third generation resident of Whangaroa.

“Whangaroa means long or wide harbor” he began. “And, despite its enormous size, Whangaroa Harbor’s narrow entrance is obscured by Stephenson’s Island and was not discovered by European sailors until twenty-two years after Captain Cook’s first voyage. Captain Cook had passed the opening to the harbor three times and never saw the opening even though he stayed at the Cavalli Islands close by.”

As the boat headed out to sea the passengers looked at the two huge rock faces that towered over the harbor.  St Paul and its twin pinnacle, St Peter, faced each other across the water.   Maori legend has many stories relating to the dominant structures.  “Whangaroa was called ‘a singular and beautifully romantic place’ by Captain Cruise whose ship HMS Dromedary sailed into the harbor in 1820.” The Captain went on to inform.  However, his passengers were not interested in the harbor’s history they just wanted to know what fish they were likely to catch.    Thirty years running charter boats, the Captain knew what they were likely to catch.   In the deep water, hapuka, bass and bluenose.  Big game fishing during the summer months offered marlin, tuna shark and mahi-mahi – which were what the guys were after and why they were here.

Captain Todd was puzzled by the absence of Campbell.  He had asked the lady at the Chalets to confirm the meeting time of quarter to seven.  Maybe he didn’t get the message.  Oh well.  That’s life.   The day was going to great.  The weather was good He just hoped the fish were biting.

C H A P T E R   5 2

Audrey awoke to the sun streaming in the windows.  “Shit!” she cursed as she looked at the time.   It was eleven thirty.  She hadn’t gone to sleep until almost seven am. Audrey needed her sleep and four and half hours was definitely not enough.   She knew she had to go up to the pigpen and check if the pigs had been.   She didn’t want any bits and pieces disappearing down the hill again.  

Audrey wondered why this morning she didn’t feel the same elation as she did last time. The excitement and satisfaction didn’t last as long this time.  She felt confident Campbell wouldn’t be missed for a day or so.   She may even move the car late tonight.  If the car was seen during the day it would fit in with his scheduled boat trip.  Even if the Captain said he didn’t make the trip he might have just gone out on his own somewhere.