Fallout Page 25

  Brightside gave Van Roon a nod and eased the door open. They slipped into a high-ceilinged room furnished in the style of a gentlemen’s club: leather sofas and armchairs, heavy silk curtains, a blazing open fire, the walls hung with paintings of naval battle scenes from the age of cannons and grappling hooks. Waitz was sprawled on a sofa with his back to the door. On the large screen against the far wall, a white woman was being roughly used by a quartet of muscular black men.

  Brightside said loudly, ‘Black on white gangbang porn — the last refuge of the sick fuck.’ Waitz’s head whipped around. Van Roon registered orange-tinted glasses, bushy grey hair, a salt-and-pepper beard and a horse-collar double chin. ‘Good to see you’ve stayed classy, Gerry.’

  Waitz zapped off the porn and got to his feet. He was huge, over 1.8 metres tall and at least 120 kilos, dressed in a tent-like white T-shirt, light tracksuit pants and jandals, sensible attire given the heat the fire was throwing out.

  ‘Holy shit, look at the size of him,’ said Brightside. ‘You need to put a padlock on the fridge, pal. Like Marlon Brando.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m a glutton,’ said Waitz, his voice a bass rumble. ‘No two ways about it. But at least it’s all gourmet. Brando ate himself into the grave on hamburgers and ice cream. You want to know what the real problem is? When you’re really fucking loaded, it doesn’t matter what you look like. There’s never a shortage of twenty-five-year-old hotties wanting to keep you warm at night. So after a while you kind of think what the fuck and have that third helping of crêpe Suzette.’

  Brightside scanned the room. ‘I don’t see any twenty-five-year-old hotties. All I see is a fat man getting ready to jerk off.’

  Waitz ducked his head, acknowledging Brightside had a point. ‘Well, here’s the thing about your twenty-five-year-old hottie: after a time, and it’s generally not that long, her conversational limitations combined with the fact she’s incapable of shutting the fuck up — a trying combination, I think you’ll agree — induce a craving for solitude. You called tonight’s sociological study the last refuge of the sick fuck. I prefer to think of it as the last refuge of the solitary man.’ He took off his tinted glasses and picked up his brandy balloon. ‘So, Eddie, where the fuck have you been, amigo? Did it never occur to you that your old buddy might appreciate a lousy fucking postcard every once in a while?’

  ‘I’ve been underground, Gerry,’ said Brightside. ‘Down in the tunnels and the sewers. See, you made one mistake when you decided you’d sleep easier if E. F. Brightside was six feet under: you tapped the wrong guy. Bobby G happened to be beholden to me at the time so he felt kind of obliged to check if I had any objection to going in the hole. But I knew you wouldn’t be deterred by Bobby turning you down, just as I knew there’d be plenty of guys who’d be only too happy to execute the contract. So I ran. And I’ve been channelling Doctor Richard Kimble ever since.’

  ‘Who?’ said Van Roon.

  ‘The Fugitive,’ said Waitz. To Brightside: ‘Who’s the dimwit?’

  ‘My associate.’

  ‘Come on, Eddie,’ said Waitz, ‘I was just covering the bases in case it all turned to shit. It was hypothetical. I never actually authorised anyone to clip you.’

  ‘Now you’re making the same mistake all over again, forgetting I was just as well connected in that world as you were.’

  Waitz threw back some cognac. It seemed to make him angry. ‘Well, so fucking what?’ he boomed. ‘Frankly. You fucked off without a word, leaving an unholy goddamn mess. What was I meant to do?’ He drained his glass, refilled it from a crystal decanter and drank some more. This time it had the opposite effect. ‘But fuck it, man, that was then and this is now. Let’s start over in a spirit of constructive engagement. You want me to make it up to you? You want redress? I can do that. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘OK,’ said Waitz. ‘Let’s have a drink and work something out.’

  ‘Hey, I appreciate the offer, Gerry,’ said Brightside, ‘but I’m going to be driving all night so I need to keep a clear head. As for the redress, I can save you the trouble of arranging a bank transfer or any of that shit. How about we just take what’s in your safe and call it quits? That way, there are no electronic footprints. No one’s any the wiser.’

  Waitz and Brightside eyed each other through a silence filled by the crackling of logs on the fire. Eventually Waitz said, ‘What safe?’

  ‘The one in the library,’ said Brightside. ‘Behind the bookshelf that swings out from the wall when you press the button behind the Dostoevsky section. That safe.’

  Waitz looked into his glass. ‘Assuming there is such a safe, how do you propose to get into it?’

  ‘Well, we’re not going to chop off your fingers, starting with this little piggy’ — Brightside waggled a little finger — ‘and working our way up till you spill the combination. We’re not that sort of people.’

  Waitz jerked his chins at Van Roon. ‘Does that go for him?’

  Brightside smiled thinly. ‘More or less.’

  ‘So what exactly is he doing here?’

  ‘Think of us as a mutual admiration society,’ said Brightside.

  Van Roon said, ‘Can we just get on with it?’

  ‘But if he has a fault,’ said Brightside to Waitz, ‘it’s impatience. He couldn’t give a shit that we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. To answer your question: one night, back in the day when I was a frequent guest in this house, I heard noises from downstairs as I was drifting off to sleep. I felt obliged to investigate. It was coming from the library so I stuck my head around the door and saw you pull out the Dostoevskys, press the button and open sesame. You were pissed to beat the band, Gerry, all thumbs, so it took you a few goes to get the safe open. And as you fumbled away, you were talking to yourself, repeating the numbers out loud. There was a pen and paper on the sideboard just inside the door so I took dictation. When you finally opened the safe and I got a look at what was in there, I thought, there’s my superannuation, right there. I would’ve helped myself years ago, but circumstances didn’t permit. Now they do. So let us go then, you and I, and see what we’ve got.’

  The library, which was also off the entrance hall, continued the gentlemen’s club theme. There was more leather seating, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a full-size billiards table and paraphernalia, and an even bigger fireplace but no fire. Waitz hugged himself, slapping his arms. ‘Son of a bitch, it’s freezing in here. Let’s hurry this up.’

  ‘It’ll be over soon enough,’ said Brightside. ‘Gerry, why don’t you do the honours?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Waitz. ‘This is your show.’

  Brightside shrugged. ‘If you insist.’

  He went to the bookshelf furthest from the door, pulled out several books and reached into the gap. After a series of clicks and accompanied by whirring noises, the bookshelf slowly came away from the wall, like a door opening. Van Roon glanced at Waitz. He’d dropped a buttock on the arm of a sofa, trying to look bored.

  The bookshelf swung through 180 degrees revealing a wall safe that to Van’s Roon’s untrained eye looked as old as everything else in the room. Brightside produced a sheet of paper, Blu-tacked it to the wall above the safe and went to work. After ninety seconds or so, he gave the others an over-the-shoulder wink, turned the dial one more click and pulled the safe door open.

  Brightside was blocking Van Roon’s view. ‘Well?’

  Without turning his head Brightside said, ‘Welcome to El Dorado, baby.’

  After half a minute’s silent contemplation, Brightside was all business. ‘We need a receptacle.’ To Van Roon: ‘As you might expect, this place has a room whose sole purpose is storing Gerry’s Louis Vuitton suitcases, which come in all shapes and sizes. I’ll pop upstairs and grab one.’ To Waitz: ‘Don’t do anything silly, Gerry. My associate came prepared for that even
tuality. Besides, you’d probably just do yourself an injury.’

  As soon as Brightside was out of the room, Waitz said, ‘Two things. Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll treble it. And if you stick with him, he’ll double-cross you. Eddie can’t help himself. Even if there was nothing to be gained by it, he’d double-cross you. It’s just the way he is.’

  ‘You on the other hand,’ said Van Roon, ‘are Mr Integrity, right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Waitz, ‘but I’m rich enough not to have to scoop the pool every time. Eddie doesn’t have that luxury.’

  Van Roon pointed at the safe. ‘If money’s no object, why do you care?’

  ‘It’s the principle of the thing.’

  Brightside reappeared with a mid-sized suitcase. He looked from Waitz to Van Roon. ‘Let me guess. He said I’ll double- cross you.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And offered to quadruple whatever I’m offering?’

  ‘Treble.’

  ‘Jesus, Gerry,’ said Brightside, ‘you’ve turned into a tightwad.’

  Waitz said, ‘It’s all coming back to me why I went off you. Take it and fuck off. It’s only been half an hour and I’m sick to death of you already.’

  ‘That’s an unfortunate choice of words,’ said Brightside.

  Waitz stood up. ‘What do you mean by that? You’re not going to kill me, are you?’ When he thought it was just a shake-down, Waitz had alternated between man-of-the-world nonchalance and bluster. Now that it was dawning on him that maybe the money wasn’t the only thing they’d come for, all he could do was plead. ‘Eddie, please, don’t do that. There’s no need.’

  ‘Beg to differ, Gerry,’ said Brightside. ‘Whichever way you look at it, it’s the sensible thing to do.’

  Van Roon pulled the Colt Woodsman .22 from his overcoat pocket, extended his arm and shot Waitz in the chest. He staggered back, collided with a chair and toppled over.

  ‘Put one in his head,’ said Brightside. ‘That’s what the pros do.’

  Van Roon stood astride Waitz and shot him in the back of the head. When he looked up, Brightside was already filling the suitcase.

  ‘You had me lined up for this all along,’ said Van Roon. ‘That’s why you got me up to Fiji.’

  Brightside closed the suitcase and the safe and pushed the bookcase back into position. As he walked past Van Roon, he tossed him a thick bundle of notes. ‘A bit of pocket money to tide you over.’ He stopped at the doorway, waiting for Van Roon. ‘Based on what Ann told me, I was pretty sure you were the one, but I needed to see you up close. You’re a man who appreciates irony, Johan, so get a load of this: Waitz’s proxies found you for me. When they hired you to track me down, they sent me the killer I’d been looking for.’

  Epilogue

  A year or so after Polly Stenson’s death, her parents moved to the Bay of Plenty where they’d thrived, getting into and out of the kiwifruit industry at the right times. They’d retired to Mount Maunganui, an apartment on Marine Parade. Cross the road and you were on the beach, looking straight out to Mayor Island.

  When Finbar McGrail rang to say he was coming down to update them, Gordon Stenson was understandably surprised to hear from him and, less understandably, not particularly keen to see him. ‘Can’t you just tell me over the phone?’ he asked.

  ‘I really think it should be done face to face,’ said McGrail. ‘I can assure you I’m not proposing to come down just to tell you there’ve been no developments.’

  ‘I see,’ said Stenson. ‘That sounds like it could be upsetting.’

  ‘I don’t imagine there’s anything very much I could tell you that wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s why I’d rather you do it over the phone,’ said Stenson. ‘That way I can filter it for my wife. I don’t want to make it sound as if we’re past caring, because that’s certainly not the case, but it’s been a long time — years in fact — since we’ve heard from you people. I suppose we’d reached the point of accepting we were never going to have closure. That’s hard to live with but you find a way. So for it to come up out of the blue like this, well, I just don’t think it’ll do my wife any good to have to go through it all over again.’

  ‘This will be the last time you hear from us,’ said McGrail. ‘We’re closing the file.’

  The conversation went on like this for a few more minutes, Stenson putting up barriers, McGrail bypassing them. Eventually Stenson got the message that McGrail wasn’t going to deliver the update over the phone and wasn’t getting off the phone till he received an invitation.

  McGrail drove to Mount Maunganui and found Marine Parade. The Stensons received him in their front room, a sunny spot where you could sit and gaze at the Pacific Ocean and empty your mind of dark memories. They’d aged better than McGrail had expected, but that might have had something to do with their tans. When he declined the offer of tea or coffee, they sat down, their silence his cue to say what he’d come to say, their expressions an indication they didn’t expect much good to come of it.

  McGrail told them who killed their daughter and why. Barbara Stenson watched him intently, imploring him, he felt, to invest her daughter’s death with a meaning that set it apart from the random erasures that lead the nightly news. When he’d finished she said, ‘So you’ve come down from Auckland to tell us Polly was murdered because she got dragged into these high-and-mighty people’s disgusting games?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her eyes burned through welling tears. ‘How do you think that makes us feel?’

  ‘You can’t blame the Superintendent, dear,’ said her husband. ‘He’s just doing his job.’

  ‘Now there’ll be a trial,’ she groaned. ‘We’ll have to relive the whole —.’

  ‘There won’t be a trial,’ said McGrail. ‘When James Best realised we were on to him, he took his own life. As I told your husband, we’ve closed the file. There’s nothing more to be said or done.’

  Anguish wrenched Barbara Stenson’s face. She muttered something McGrail didn’t pick up and hurried out of the room.

  ‘This is exactly what I was afraid of,’ said Stenson. ‘You reach a stage of thinking, it’s not going to bring Polly back so what’s the point?’

  ‘Nothing was ever going to bring her back to this world,’ said McGrail. ‘All we could do was keep her in our hearts and refuse to let whoever took her from us get away with it.’

  Stenson insisted on accompanying McGrail to his car. As they left the apartment building, McGrail handed him the photograph of Polly taken on the day of her death. ‘Your wife gave me this when she asked me not to forget Polly. It certainly helped in that regard.’

  Stenson stared at the photograph. When he looked up, McGrail’s car was pulling away from the kerb.

  Icy rain fell on Lake Taupo that night. When Johan Van Roon got back to his car at 4.30 am after disposing of the Colt Woodsman .22, his teeth were chattering and he couldn’t feel his hands or feet. He sat in the car with the heater on full bore for five minutes, then rolled slowly out of Hatepe. When he hit State Highway 1, he switched the headlights on, turned left and headed for Auckland.

  When Ihaka showed up at Central on Wednesday morning to resume normal duties, she was waiting for him: tiny, sombre, silent, a fish out of water but a resolute one. Willie Smaile’s widow.

  ‘She came in first thing Monday morning, Sarge,’ said Detective Constable Joel Pringle. ‘Once we got it through to her that you were having a couple of days off, she was out of here. Wasn’t interested in talking to anyone else. When I got in this morning, she was already here.’

  Ihaka went over to her. As he was asking what he could do for her, she stood up, pulled an unaddressed padded envelope from her handbag and thrust it at him.

  ‘For me?’ he asked.

  She nodded vigorously.

  ‘From your husband?’


  Another flurry of nods.

  The envelope contained a folded sheet of paper and an audio cassette tape. She gestured at the sheet of paper, indicating that he should open it. It was a letter.

  To whom it may concern

  The fact that you are reading this means I’m dead, but not of natural causes. That being the case, the enclosed audio tape is almost certainly pertinent.

  It records a conversation which took place on June 19th 1987 concerning the death, a few hours earlier, of Ethan Stern, an American academic who worked in the University of Auckland’s Political Studies Department. Stern’s death was found to be an accident: he’d slipped while jogging in the Waitakeres and died of injuries sustained as a result of falling down a steep slope.

  The participants are myself (New Zealand accent) and Tom Murray (Scottish accent; these days a well-known businessman) in our respective capacities of General Secretary and member of the Workers’ Vanguard Party.

  My wife is entrusting you with this tape in the hope and expectation you will appreciate its significance and act accordingly.

  And below, an almost childishly legible signature:

  W.R. Smaile

  Browns Bay

  January 1st, 2010.

  Ihaka slipped the letter back into the envelope. ‘Your husband told you to give this to me?’

  Her head shakes were as brisk as her nods. ‘No. I decide that.’ She pointed at the envelope: ‘You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ihaka. ‘Completely.’

  Her business concluded, she gave Ihaka one last nod and headed for the lifts.

  He found a tape deck, inserted the tape and pressed play.

  There’s a knock on a door.

  Smaile: Enter. Ah, Comrade Murray. Bearing good news, I trust.

  Murray: Yeah, it all went as planned, Comrade Secretary. Stern’s dead.