Only the Dead (8 page)

T
UESDAY
, 14 F
EBRUARY
, 6.18
A.M
.

H
ale had ignored advice and left the gun loaded, propped against the wall beside the headboard. Rowe’s evening visit had put him on edge. He wanted backup close by.

He showered and dressed and went through to the living room. The ceiling fan was still spinning from the day before. Outside on the deck a pigeon toddled, then rose in a snapping flurry. About him the detritus of a lonely evening: a single unwashed plate, an inside-out
Economist
. A congregation of empty beer bottles atop a side table. The cardboard LP sleeve of Patti Smith’s
Horses
.

He sat down on the couch. Alan Rowe’s file awaited him, fat and well thumbed. Charlotte Rowe’s pulped face greeted him at page one. He slipped it free and left it face down on the seat beside him. He flicked through. Paperclipped news articles gave general detail: January third, two armed men robbed an amateur South Auckland cage fighting ring. The club was in a boxing gym off Everitt Road, Otara. Ten dollar entry, the ticket office a caravan parked beside the front door.

The area was low socioeconomic. Crime stats flourished and wealth didn’t. Cage fight fans were secured by word-of-mouth advertising: a promise of cheap liquor and edge-of-seat entertainment. The main event was scheduled for eight p.m.
Doors opened at quarter to, closed at eight sharp. Total turnout was two hundred-plus. The ticket caravan was still on the premises at eight twenty-five when two men wearing balaclavas and carrying cut-down shotguns arrived.

Hale document-skimmed: attending officers’ incident forms, CIB progress reports. Blurred photocopies and hieroglyphic cop scrawl. The two guys had axed the lock of the caravan door to gain access and forced the man and woman inside to the ground. Takings for the night were secured inside a floor-bolted office safe. Punches were thrown until the correct code was ascertained. The safe held an estimated twenty-two hundred dollars. The two men bagged it. They were on the way out the door when the woman got brave and made a lunge for one of the guns. A brief scuffle ensued. A shotgun round was discharged through the roof of the caravan before a blow to the back of the head from the axe handle put her back on the floor.

But firearm action drew a crowd. A gym side door broke and seeped onlookers. Matter of seconds, and a throng of forty people choked the parking lot between the caravan and the road. A second shotgun round from the door of the caravan thinned things out. People scattered for cover. A red ’92 Ford Falcon parked kerbside served as a getaway vehicle. The two guys bludgeoned an escape path across the parking lot towards it: the axe, a hammer, chopped-down shotgun stocks to keep onlookers at bay.

The first emergency calls came in at twenty-nine minutes to nine. Collateral damage totalled the man and woman in the caravan, plus five people caught in the exit panic as the two guys fled across the parking lot. Seven people. A four ambulance roll-out, a frantic police Armed Offenders Squad dispatch.

The Falcon had long since disappeared by the time the first
sirens were audible. Paramedics gave on-site aid. Among the victims: a young woman, presumably Charlotte Rowe, left unconscious from hammer-inflicted head injuries.

Hale browsed. The assumption was that the break-in was linked to the bank and armoured van robberies the previous year. He checked the back half of the file. October eight, two masked men with shotguns had robbed the Mangere branch of the Auckland Savings and Loan. They hit just after nine a.m., four tellers on just-filled cash drawers, three customers. They went in heavy: shoving, screaming, shotguns to shoulder. They put the customers on the floor and promised fatalities if demands weren’t met. The bank staff paid up
tout de suite
: two minutes, and almost thirty-eight and a half thousand dollars. Twelve hundred from the teller drawer floats, a little over thirty-seven thousand from the safe. It could have ended cleanly: forty grand profit and no injuries, but they shot a teller. Her name was Janee Tyler. Fifty-six years old, a bank employee for the past seven. The security glass above her counter wasn’t bulletproof. She took most of a shell’s worth of buckshot to the chest. She died within seconds, just as the heist team departed in a gold Ford Laser.

The 16 November robbery had occurred on the Mount Wellington Highway, eleven a.m. An Armourguard security van was stopped at a traffic light. A white Toyota Land Cruiser SUV that had been tailing it since Ellerslie pulled out and blocked the road ahead. Two masked men packing sawn-off shotguns got out and commanded the driver of the van and the front seat passenger to remain in their seats and keep their hands on the dash. They used a circular saw to cut the lock on the van’s side door, and transferred cash bags from the rear load space to the back of the SUV. They gunned all four of the van’s tyres, then escaped southbound. Crime scene photographs of buckshot-scarred tarseal
were attached. Sixteen thousand, eight hundred dollars of unmarked non-consecutive bills, gone.

Hale checked the reports. They’d picked a good location. It was a straight, flat section of highway. The driver of the Toyota had an uninterrupted view southbound. The guy guarding the officers in the van would have had a clear line of sight northbound. A two-minute robbery, an easy five-minute run down to State Highway 1, heading away from police deployments out of Panmure and Mount Wellington stations.

All three getaway cars had been found abandoned and torched on rural roads south of Auckland. Heat-stripped to the panelling, windows blown, wheels sunk in claggy whorls of rubber residue. The grand scorecard: one death, seven serious assaults, three burned-out stolen cars, nearly sixty thousand dollars AWOL. Arrests pending.

He got up and set the stereo going: another rendition of
Horses
. He gathered the beer bottles together on the plate and washed everything in the sink and sat down in the living room again with the file. The Rowe girl’s headshot was still face down on the armrest. He pinched a corner and raised it high, held it to the light from the ranch slider, like X-ray inspection. She must have been pretty. Bad luck has no qualms about where it lands.

His cellphone was on the side table beside the couch. He put the photograph down and called a detective he knew at Manukau CIB.

‘Pollard.’

‘It’s John Hale.’

‘Hale. Jesus, how are you?’

‘Moderate.’

‘You’re early. Haven’t even got my toast in.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Nah. I’m messing with you. I’m straight cereal these days.’

‘What do you know about these robberies?’

A yawn. ‘Which ones?’

‘October eight, November sixteen, the fight club.’

‘Oh. The big three.’

‘Yeah, the big three.’

Pollard said, ‘Screwy jobs. I haven’t been in the middle of them for a while.’

‘I’ll pick your brain anyway.’

‘Yeah. Go on.’

Hale said, ‘How did they link them?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How did you conclude it was the same guys on all three?’

‘I didn’t conclude anything. Someone else did.’

‘And what was the logic?’

‘I don’t know. MOs are similar. Two or three guys, shotguns, balaclavas, no mucking about.’

‘That’s a bit of a loose connection.’

‘Maybe. It’s the sort of crime where if you’re getting three of them in three months it’s going to be the same people. I don’t know. There’s some other stuff too. Apparently, a couple of bars have been hit, but it was clean in and out. No real details. Talk to Sean D about it.’

‘I have. Sean D doesn’t know anything about bars being hit.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he didn’t mention anything.’

‘Oh. Shit.’ Pollard spoke through another yawn: ‘The intel sharing’s been shitty. We’ve had some stuff that hasn’t even been forwarded to the task force because nobody thought to pass it on. Fucking useless. I’ve given up on it. I’m slowly but surely backing out.’

Hale didn’t answer.

Pollard said, ‘Lot of blood and trouble for not a lot of money, you know what I mean? Not that more money would justify it. I don’t know. What’s your interest in it?’

‘Someone wants me to do some digging.’

Pollard laughed. ‘Good luck with that. Hey, I heard Sean D shot a guy.’

‘He did.’

‘Sean all right?’

Hale thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Mmm. Yeah, I need to give him a ring. Hey, you got time for a story?’

‘Not really.’

‘It’s quick.’

‘Right. Go on then.’

‘You’ll love this. Arrested this guy day before yesterday, Class A drug possession, fairly unpleasant sort of bloke. Anyway, he reckoned his favourite activity was to smoke speed and then hop on a bus, get off at a random stop, and then try to sense where murders had happened. Apparently, the speed gives him psychic powers or something, I don’t know. He reckoned he wasn’t having a lot of success so the other day, before he went out on one of his sessions, he Googled this murder out in Henderson. Some guy called Brent had been axed, something like that. So he smokes his speed, hops on the bus, gets off out in Henderson, and he’s wandering round calling “Brent, Brent, what happened, Brent?” And he’s getting absolutely nowhere, no answer from the ghost of Brent. So he goes home, can’t understand why he’s made no progress, fires up Google again, and this is classic, he finds, oh shit, it’s not Brent it’s
Bret
.’

‘You’re killing me.’

‘I know, right?’

Hale ended the call, then dialled Rowe’s landline.

‘Rowe residence.’

Not Alan: probably Beck stuck on morning duty.

Hale said, ‘Morning, Wayne.’

‘Is that Hale?’

‘It is.’

‘Mr Rowe isn’t up yet.’

‘Wake him for me.’

Beck put him on hold. The dial tone claimed the line for a moment, and then Rowe picked up. ‘It’s not even seven o’clock,’ he said.

‘My apologies.’

‘I hope you’re not calling to back out on me.’

‘I’m calling to tell you I’ll take the work.’

Rowe paused. An alarm chirruped and then cut out. ‘You said you’d call today.’

‘I did. This is the call.’

‘All right. Well, thank you.’

Hale didn’t answer. He picked up the photograph again and looked at it.

Rowe said, ‘What’s that you’ve got on in the background?’

‘Patti Smith.’

‘In person or CD?’

‘Vinyl.’ He set the photograph down. ‘I’m sorry about your daughter.’

‘You told me that already.’

‘I only just had a proper look at the photograph.’

Rowe went quiet. ‘You ever had something like that happen to someone you know?’

‘No. But I can understand what it’s like.’

‘Yeah.’ He paused, and Hale caught his breath on the line: soft aborted syllables, like he was struggling to phrase something. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll take your word for it. You going
to check out this guy Earle?’

The name came up blank for a moment, before he recalled Rowe’s claim from that night: inmate Leland Earle, questioned for robbery leads.

‘You still there?’ Rowe said.

‘Where are they keeping him?’ Hale said.

‘Mount Eden Prison.’

Hale didn’t reply.

‘Can you get to him?’ Rowe said.

‘Maybe … I’ll see.’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Yeah. I’ll be in touch.’

T
UESDAY
, 14 F
EBRUARY
, 7.13
A.M
.

D
evereaux woke to bad news: a voicemail message, with Lloyd Bowen’s name attached. The timestamp showed the call had come in at 4.37 a.m. Nothing at that hour was ever going to be cheery. He almost couldn’t bring himself to check it. Something foreboding in that neat glowing text. He could guess the gist of what lay in store.

He dialled his mailbox number and put the thing on speakerphone. Bowen’s clipped tone: ‘Sergeant, Lloyd Bowen. Unfortunately, I have to inform you that as of thirty minutes ago, Michael Porter has passed away—’

Devereaux deleted the message.

Michael Porter: his surveillance target from yesterday. His
victim
.

He dropped the phone on the nightstand and pushed the covers aside, sat on the edge of the bed. The floor yawed. He felt faint.

My victim
.

He repeated it a few times. Maybe the first time he’d coupled those two words aloud. He ran a hand through his hair. The guy was dead. He tried not to think: an influx of pessimism might spark something rash. Let’s not be stupid.

The one thought he couldn’t suppress: marvel at this weirdly
novel horror.
So this is what it’s like
. A vision hit: a brief preview of the remaining forty-odd years he’d have to bear this new hard truth. He considered calling John Hale, but decided not to. He’d killed the guy unaided; he’d endure the guilt of it alone, too.

The phone rang, and he saw Bowen’s name light up again. Devereaux ignored it. He sat there a while, and then he went to take a shower.

The McCarthy meeting was scheduled for nine. Duvall arrived early, combed and squared away in dark attire: his funeral suit, replete with tie.

A constable met him and led him through to a meeting room. It was a small cubicle, equipped with a table and three chairs. A window gave out onto the Cook/Vincent streets intersection. Duvall claimed a chair and sat. The constable promised DI McCarthy’s arrival was imminent. Duvall shifted his chair back and tried for casual: stretched legs and crossed ankles, reminiscent of The Don on High Street.

It was a seventeen-minute wait. The door opened at a minute before nine and McCarthy walked in. He had another, slightly younger, guy in tow. Duvall stood and traded handshakes. The younger guy was a cop called Frank Briar. They had takeaway coffee but no paperwork, which meant they probably had nothing to give him, which meant no file access. Which meant the following tête-à-tête might not be all that useful.

The Don drew his chair close and hunched in over the table. He was a very big guy: a one-hand coffee cup grip took his fingers full circle. He nudged the table a fraction, shunted it towards Duvall, forced him closer to the wall.

‘I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to find any dirt on you,’ McCarthy said. ‘But I did.’

Duvall didn’t answer.

‘You assaulted a suspect back in ’ninety-seven,’ McCarthy said. ‘You want to tell me about that?’

No notepad, no recorder. He wasn’t that interested in the finer points. Or maybe he already had them.

‘I allegedly assaulted a suspect.’

‘You resigned shortly after. Makes me think it was a reasonably credible accusation.’

Duvall kept his arms unfolded for fear of looking cagey. He was backed up in the corner of the room, table inches from his abdomen, forcing him upright. He said, ‘I was at a point in my career where I was ready to move on. I didn’t want to stain my record, so I walked away from it.’

McCarthy said nothing. Briar thumbed his chin stubble. The silence grew. Tried and true cop tactics: wait for the interviewee to fill the silence. Duvall didn’t bow to it.

McCarthy checked his watch, like timing the pause. He said, ‘You’d had enough of everything?’

‘Yeah, I was sick of it.’

‘The people or the work?’

‘The people are the work.’

‘So who was worse: the cops or the criminals?’

‘I’m not sure. Some of them were both.’

McCarthy smiled, stiletto-thin. He said, ‘Ironic you say that, given the circumstances of your resignation.’

‘Not like you to be accused of misconduct, though, is it Don?’

McCarthy laughed. He said, ‘I’m glad we’re on first-name terms.’ He had some coffee. Duvall drank in his body language: relaxed posture, no telltale arterial tick as he tipped the cup back. Morgue-drawer cool. Briar crossed one leg and rocked back in his chair, cup cradled in his lap.

The Don said, ‘Here’s the thing, though, Mitchell. I’ve still got my job, but you don’t. I’m just trying to get a handle on why that might be.’

Duvall smiled. He shunted the desk away a fraction and regained nominal comfort. ‘You told me yesterday if you managed to dig anything up on me, I wouldn’t make it past the front desk. And yet I have. I’m just trying to get a handle on why that might be.’

McCarthy had some coffee, and his gaze came back to Duvall. Sharp enough to pierce lead. He smiled. ‘My tolerance for lip runs pretty low,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to work to endear yourself to me now.’

‘I’m just worried that this meeting is a waste of time.’

‘How could it be a waste of time?’

‘Because you’ve brought me in here just to tell me you’re not prepared to offer up any of the information I’ve been asking for.’

McCarthy shrugged. He prised one edge of his plastic coffee lid, then resealed it. ‘Divulging the contents of official files is a decision we take very seriously,’ he said. ‘Especially when the requester has been accused of assault.’

‘Okay. I understand. Maybe you could stop wasting time and tell me whether you’re going to grant access.’

Nobody spoke. Duvall read it as a ‘no’. Briar and McCarthy settled into an easy stare. He figured if they weren’t going to give him access, they’d either brought him in for a scaring, or to gauge how much he knew.

Duvall took a breath and theorised, off the cuff. He said, ‘October eight was an inside job.’

McCarthy clicked out of his flat gaze. ‘Why?’

‘It was neat, in and out, which means they knew what they were doing, but for some reason they didn’t do a prior stakeout.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The area around the bank is commercial, it’s under camera surveillance. If you’d found anything, you would have made an arrest. But we’re four months down the track and there’s been nothing. So there was no visible preparation on their part.’

McCarthy said, ‘Maybe they did slick recon.’

‘Nobody’s that good.’

‘A bank’s a bank; you know what you’re getting in to. You don’t need that much preparation.’

‘They hit at a time when it was quiet and the safe was loaded.’

‘You can make an educated guess about when it’s quiet. And the safe could have just been luck.’

Duvall said, ‘They used different getaway cars each time; the bank and the armoured van jobs were three minutes, maximum.’

‘So?’

‘So they’re smart, they’ve worked with each other before; there’s some sort of strong past association, they’re comfortable with using force.’

‘But they burned the cars. That strike you as a smart move?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Maybe there was no way of making certain they could eradicate forensic evidence. Which suggests they’d had the vehicles a while, or used them a number of times, something like that.’

‘So then, who are we looking for?’

‘Three, moderately clued-up guys between the ages of twenty-five and forty, either with prison, military or police backgrounds.’

‘Prison, military or police. That’s quite a moral swing.’

‘Maybe. They knew what they were doing.’

‘Albeit only moderately clued-up.’

‘At least two of them. The driver isn’t necessarily a bright spark.’

‘Maybe they rotate roles; three jobs, they all get a turn driving.’

‘I doubt it. Well-oiled machine; they go with a proven system.’

Nobody replied. Briar finished his coffee, set it down and adjusted the edge flush with the side of the table.

Duvall said, ‘At least one of them has ties with the Otara community. The fight club thing in January was publicised word of mouth, so that was the only way they could have known about it.’

Nobody replied. The Don had some coffee and let the pause drag on. At length he said, ‘Coming back to your original question, no, we’re not actually prepared to grant you access to police information.’

‘Right. So this was a waste of time.’

The Don laughed. Mercury fillings nesting way back. ‘It’s not a waste of time,’ he said. ‘By no means a waste of time.’

He leaned in over the table again. The hunch hiked his shoulders to ear level. ‘Here’s the official line,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s letting you anywhere near this thing. Nobody’s answering questions; nobody’s granting you file access. Nobody gives a shit about what you’ve dreamed up from reading the
Herald
online.’

Duvall didn’t answer. The Don spread his hands on the table. ‘There’s a point,’ he said, ‘when offers for help sort of drift into time-wasting. I’m sorry to say we are well past that point. We passed it a while back. Think of this morning as a sort of ‘eye for an eye’ type thing: you wasted my time, I just wasted yours.’ He saw a reply coming and raised a finger to cut it off. ‘I’ve got filing cabinets’ worth of opened, unsolved
serious crime,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to stop me from taking your assault case from back whenever it was and paying it some real close attention. You know? I don’t give a shit what sort of arrangement you came to that let you resign with a clean slate; if you keep getting in my face, I’m going to go digging. All right? You wouldn’t believe the sort of stuff I can dredge up. I’m a bit of a magician really. I can make credible evidence and witness testimony just spring up out of thin air.’

He clucked his tongue and sat straight and glanced down at Briar’s coffee cup. ‘You finished with that, Frank?’

‘Yes, thank you, Don.’

McCarthy stacked the two cups neatly in front of him. He smiled. ‘I’m glad we managed to clear that up,’ he said. ‘Frank will show you out.’