Death on Demand (26 page)

“That friend of yours,” said Ihaka. “The older bloke wouldn't have been Christopher Lilywhite by any chance?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it was. But how…?”

“Which I guess makes the woman Denise Hadlow?”

“My God,” she said. “Ihaka. I was so thrown when you rang I didn't place you. You're the one who gave Chris such a hard time when Joyce was killed. Weren't you packed off to the wop-wops?”

“I'm back.”

“I suppose it's all academic now.”

Oh, no it fucking isn't, thought Ihaka. It's just starting to get real. “Did you get the impression Denise and Arden were an item?”

“I just assumed so. We swapped phone numbers and I rang her the next day, overcompensating, as usual, to congratulate her on a good catch. She said no, he was just a friend, someone she'd known for ages. I said something like ‘He's not gay is he? That would be a waste.' God no, she said, he's straight as a die and, what's more, he's into older women. Every time I think of this conversation, I wish to God I'd ended it right there instead of making some facetious remark along the lines of ‘Too bad I'm married'. She laughed and said that wouldn't bother Arden and, besides, you can still window-shop when you're on a budget, so why don't we meet for coffee at his café in Newmarket? No harm in that, I thought – my second mistake. I turned up – no Denise. Next thing Arden comes over. Denise had texted
to say she'd been held up so he'd keep me company. The rest, as they say, is history.”

 

Denise Hadlow checked Ihaka out through the peephole, which was sensible seeing it was dark and he'd hadn't rung ahead.

She opened the door, striking a pose: head on one side, knee bent, hand on hip. She was barefoot with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing skintight black leggings and a precarious white singlet. He was reminded of the models in those women's health and fitness magazines which tell you how to live to be a hundred and have sensational sex all the way there.

“Excuse the outfit,” she said. “I was exercising.”

“I didn't notice.”

“So much for Pilates then.” She checked her watch. “I guess coffee doesn't keep you awake?”

“It's not a social call.”

“Oh, well, in that case I'll put some clothes on.” She led him through to the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

Hadlow reappeared in an oversized hoodie that ended mid-thigh, shaking out her hair. She sat down opposite him, tucking her legs underneath her. “I'm afraid there's no beer.”

“As I said, this isn't a social call.”

“Fine.” She pulled a cushion onto her lap. “Billy will be sorry he missed you. He's just gone to bed. He took quite a shine to you.”

“He doesn't know me.”

“Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “I get that it's not a social call, but does that mean you actually have to be antisocial?”

“I was surprised I didn't see you at Arden Black's funeral.”

She held his stare. “Is that what this is about? What's the big deal? I'm not that into funerals, okay? One a month is
my limit. And especially with what happened to Arden – that really creeped me out.”

“Why didn't you tell me you knew him?”

“You didn't ask.”

“He was murdered. I'm a cop. Most people would've mentioned it.”

She shrugged, affecting boredom. “I didn't realize you were working on it, and I wouldn't have had anything useful to say.” She disentangled her legs and stood up in one fluid movement. “I'm having a glass of wine. Sure I can't tempt you?”

“I'm okay. I thought you didn't drink at home.”

“I never said never. I never do.”

She returned with a glass of white wine, settling back on the sofa. “Cheers,” she said, laying on the irony.

Ihaka aimed his cellphone camera at her. “Say cheese.”

Instead she said, “What the fuck?”

He put his phone away. “A guy called Glen Smith turned up at the funeral. He grew up with Arden – let's give him his real name, Warren Duckmanton – in Greytown.” Hadlow raised so-what? eyebrows as if she had no idea where this was going. “He told me Warren got hung up on this woman, Donna, who ran a café with her boyfriend. Not long after Donna and the boyfriend skipped town, Warren followed suit. The reason I took your photo is that I have this theory you and Donna are one and the same. Glen can tell me whether I'm right.”

Hadlow shook her head slowly, eyes wide. “This is all based on me not telling you I knew Arden, even though I had no reason to?”

“Not quite. You're the right age and you fit the bill. Glen thinks Warren shot through and never came back because his mates gave him such a hard time over this Donna, but I reckon he knew where she was and went
after her. See, I doubt the Warren-Donna thing was all one-way traffic.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact that Warren couldn't stand cricket.”

Hadlow put her glass down and plonked her chin on the heel of her hand. “Right,” she said, drawing the word out. “You know, it's a real privilege watching a master detective at work.”

“I spoke to Margie Brackstone today. Ring a bell?”

Something stirred in Hadlow's eyes. She shifted on the sofa, ironic detachment giving way to fidgety distraction. “You introduced her to Arden, as he'd become, at Billy's cricket. I was wondering why a guy with zero interest in cricket would watch a kid's game, and I came up with another theory: Arden's the daddy.”

Hadlow threw the cushion aside and swung her legs out from under her, sitting up straight. “Well, whoop-de-do, you win a set of steak knives and your choice of soft toy. Would you like the bunny rabbit or the teddy bear? So you've found out I went by another name in a former life and made up a story to fob off those nosey pricks who thought it was their business who Billy's father was. Correct me if I'm wrong, but neither of those things are against the law, are they? Which makes me wonder, why exactly are you here?”

“I'm coming to that. Arden fucked older women for money. You obviously knew that. In fact, I reckon you were in on it. That's my third theory: you were the finder. You got him together with bored women looking for excitement and prepared to pay for it; he provided the excitement, you took a cut. Everyone's a winner, baby.”

“You have a very low opinion of me, don't you?”

“Convince me otherwise.”

“Do you really want to be convinced?”

“I want the truth.”

“Okay. Have a glass of wine, take a chill pill and I'll tell you the truth.”

“Got any red?”

 

Denise was a country girl, believe it or not. Grew up on a farm in South Canterbury, just outside Pleasant Point. When she was thirteen, her parents sent her to an Anglican boarding school in Timaru. She went in an ardent believer who said her prayers every night, kneeling by her bed talking to God for ten minutes, halting, one-sided conversations a bit like the phone calls to her remote, uncommunicative grandfather up in the Mackenzie Country. Even when her parents no longer hung around to make sure she didn't just pay lip service or bug God with frivolous requests; even in the middle of winter, with her arms and legs cobbled with goosebumps and hot-water bottle cosiness two seconds away.

She came out an atheist who knew whole chunks of the Book of Common Prayer by heart and could recite them while imagining herself in a very different setting, or thinking about things good little Christian misses weren't supposed to think about, least of all in church.

The summer she left school she and two friends chipped in to buy an old bomb and toured the North Island party venues – Gisborne, Mount Maunganui, Waihi Beach, Whangamata – cancelling out five years of moral force-feeding in five weeks of stoned abandon.

Everyone said Dunedin was Fun City so she went down to Otago University, even though she had no great urge to do an arts degree, nor much idea of what she'd do with it. After waking up in another freezing student hovel next to another guy whose name she couldn't remember and whose attraction, in the cold light of day, wasn't evident, she decided life was too short to waste three years living like this. She borrowed a friend's car, saying her mother was
sick, drove to Christchurch and bought a one-way ticket to Sydney. She arrived with an overnight bag, a few hundred dollars and the names and addresses of two friends of friends who possibly wouldn't mind her crashing on their couch for a few nights.

She tried pretending to be a secretary, but couldn't keep up the pretence for long enough to cut it as a temp. She waitressed, she pole-danced and eventually she stripped. That was where she drew the line, although there were various incentives to proceed further down that track. She often thanked the God she no longer believed in that there was at least one temptation she could resist: hard drugs.

She bummed around Asia, sleeping on beaches, getting really skinny and so bronzed people assumed she was Latin, living on her wits and looks, flitting from guy to guy. The trick was to pick the ones with a financial lifeline back to mom and pop in San Diego or Düsseldorf or Stockholm. She didn't overdo it, always being the one to pull the plug, always leaving them wanting more of her. That way she felt less of a user. You had to have rules: don't get emotionally involved; don't stay in one place or with one guy for more than a month; don't look back.

There was bad news from home: some glib little shit from the bank had talked her parents into getting a foreign-exchange loan to buy those paddocks down the road her father had always coveted. There'd never be a better time, he said, so max out – do up the house, upgrade the farm equipment, take that European holiday you've been promising yourselves.

The exchange rate flipped and suddenly they owed a lot more than they'd signed up for. Her father had health issues: he wasn't up to the years of hard slog needed to get out of hock. They sold the farm in a buyer's market and
moved into Timaru. Now her father felt like a failure, on top of everything else.

She came home, moved in with her parents and took a waitressing job. Within three months she was managing the place. She was efficient, a hard worker when she put her mind to it, and could read situations and manage/ manipulate people. And it was Timaru, after all.

One night Craig came into the restaurant. Halfway through his meal, he left the table and his date and came over to ask her out. A cool operator. They took off together, working their way north – Christchurch, Kaikoura, Blenheim, Nelson, Wellington. Craig had a cavalier attitude to money, especially other people's: run up debt, run out on debt, change towns, change names, do it all over again. If you keep moving, they'll never catch up with you.

The good folk of Greytown were suckers for Donna's and Craig's ingratiating liveliness – we like this place, we like you guys, we like to have fun. There was just one complication when it was time to go. Warren, this cute young guy who worked at the café and had a heavy crush on her, even though the local schoolies were queuing up to spread for him.

They'd had enough of small towns, so they bypassed the heartland. After they'd been in Auckland a few weeks, she wrote to Warren encouraging him to come up. She didn't mention it to Craig. In Greytown he'd had this running joke – although they both knew it wasn't entirely a joke – about her relationship with “the toyboy”.

To tell the truth, she was a bit thrown when Warren turned up so soon and adamant there was no going back. It made her responsible. Having enticed him to run away, she couldn't let him become another of the lost angels, the dreamy kids who flock to the big smoke entranced by a glossy magazine narrative of instant acceptance and
overnight success. You saw them sometimes teetering along Karangahape Road on hookers' heels late at night, or glassy-eyed in the needle parks.

She'd hoped Craig would put up with Warren, that they could be a couple plus one, but the way he carried on, veering from sullen withdrawal to simmering aggression, knocked that on the head. So she compartmentalized, seeing Warren on her own and not telling Craig. What was the point? He'd only get shitty. Besides, she didn't tell him who he could and couldn't hang out with.

Lying beside Craig after yet another row, face turned to the wall, the atmosphere too toxic to permit an exchange of good-nights, she'd sometimes think about Warren. The boy was becoming a man; he just needed someone to provide the finishing touches.

Inevitably someone saw them together and told tales, putting a suggestive slant on their flirtatious interaction. It wouldn't have been too hard for Craig to have believed her when she insisted nothing had changed, because he'd seen it with his own eyes often enough. But he'd reached the point of wanting to believe the worst because it provided a convenient explanation for the unravelling of their relationship. His parting words were, “Now you can fuck the little faggot to your heart's content.”

“Maybe I will,” she said. “No reason not to any more.”

On Warren's nineteenth birthday she took him to bed. Next morning she told him it wouldn't happen again. They could be friends or lovers but not both, and friendships lasted.

But when she hit thirty and decided she wanted a child, Warren was the obvious sperm donor. He was the nicest man she knew and the best-looking, so genes-wise he had a lot going for him. He wouldn't complicate things; he'd let her decide how much or how little contact he had with the child. Plus, getting started would be fun. What she'd discovered,
on the long night of his nineteenth birthday, was that he wasn't too far off being the finished article.