Opportunity (13 page)

'Thanks, Mr Carstone.'

'Please. Call me Terry.'

'Terry,' he said, and looked at me with his calm eyes.

In the car I was excited. 'That's a murderer? No way. No
way, Murray. I've been around. I've been in business, sporting
environments. You name it. Terry Carstone knows people.' I
lunged around in my seat. I was energised. 'We're going all the
way with this.'

I called Russell. I told him I was going to use a chunk of our
money. I called Claudine. 'Baby,' I said, 'I'm on to something
meaningful here.'

We went to Murray's office. Over a bottle of wine we talked
practicalities.

I would fund the appeal. I could easily meet Murray's
expenses, which were very modest. To be honest, Russell and
I had more money than we'd ever had. It had been a very
good year, and I took my hat off to my partner's genius. Russell
could make a deal out of thin air, the dear old cowboy.

I would be part of Andrew's defence team and could study
his files at my leisure. I was looking forward to going over
them looking for clues. I would leave no stone unturned, I
told Murray. He sighed and listened. There were purple
shadows under his eyes. He was looking at me the way Jon
Sligo did when I had ideas about our computer case. Just
because I didn't have a law degree, these guys thought I
couldn't be any use. But I had other advantages. I was tenacious
and sharp. I could pick up any subject extremely quickly. I
was intuitive. I'd been a lot of places in my life and, most
important of all, I knew people.

'You want to go to the Privy Council, don't you?' I said
cheerfully.

Something flicked up in his eyes. I could see he wanted it
more than anything.

'It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,' he said. He looked at
his nails. 'You know they're going to stop appeals to the Privy
Council soon?'

'Well. Let's make it happen. Springtime in London.'

He smiled coldly. 'And you?'

'I'm going to help that poor young man fight the state.'

He made a wry face. He waited.

We were sitting in his office. The room was growing dark. I
could see a ferry crossing the harbour, strung with lights.

'I'm a businessman, Murray,' I said. He didn't move. I was
looking at the outline of his body against the window, the
harbour behind him.

'What do you want?' he said.

'As my mother used to say, "Nothing more than my rights".'

'Rights.' He turned his hands, studying them.

'Well. Speaking hypothetically, what if there were books?
Or interviews, magazine articles and so forth?' I paused.

He looked up sharply. 'You want a cut?'

'A cut?' I hesitated. 'You're right. That would seem fair. But
I'm acting on Andrew's behalf.' I thought about Russell, but
dismissed the idea. 'Andrew and I would have to share
equally.'

Murray switched on a lamp. He picked up a pen and pad.
He said, expressionless, 'Let's get it down.'

I sat back and put my feet up on his desk.

We roughed out an agreement and the next day Murray
and I took it to Andrew for him to sign. This meeting and the
ones that followed between Murray, Andrew and myself only
confirmed my first impression. This calm, sensible, nice young
guy was a murderer? No way.

I became a regular visitor to the prison, and each time I
found Andrew the same. He kept his spirits up, and he was
always pleased to see me, in his quiet way. A real bond grew
between us. I was his connection to the world. If I ever had
any doubts going into the prison, when some fact had come
up that I couldn't account for, I always came away refreshed in
my conviction that this young man was the simplest and
gentlest of souls, and that the injustice he had suffered was
enormous.

Murray began his preparations for the Privy Council, and
while I didn't neglect the business hours I kept with Russell,
I kept right on ploughing through the mountain of files. We
spent many hours together in Murray's office as night came
on and the harbour went dark and the ferries made their way
across to the islands. Sometimes I came home at midnight
and Claudine would be letting herself into my house after her
evening at The Land, and we would sit on my deck talking
about the case. I told her about an idea I had. I knew the
Newgate case like the back of my hand now. I didn't know
how it was going to turn out but I'd already consulted a
number of people in the publishing trade. I was going to write
a book.

One night I had that dream again. The endless stuffed toys,
the droning voice telling me I didn't exist. It's always hard to
describe the atmosphere of dreams, but the bad thing about
this one was the horror when I realised that what the voice
was saying was true. I woke up feeling ill, and bloody old. It
was morning; the sun was streaming into the bedroom.
Claudine was sitting up. I reached up and stroked her hair. I
was still blurry and spooked with sleep. She looked at me and
I saw something in her beautiful eyes. What was it? It reminded
me, strangely, of Andrew Newgate. Was it youth, inexperience?
(Claudine was about Andrew's age.) No, more than that, it
was a look that seemed to go beyond me, as if she was searching
for something she couldn't find. Had I seen that look on
Andrew's face? And then she smiled, and I had the strange
impression (I suppose I was still upset by the nightmare) that
her smile wasn't connected to me. That between the smile and
me there was nothing but a terrible void.

I got up quickly and went to the bathroom. I looked in the
mirror. I shaved and showered. By the time I'd dressed the
spooked feeling had gone. I kissed Claudine, took my briefcase
and went out to the car.

I looked at my diary. I was meeting Russell for a power
breakfast, and a journalist after that. In the afternoon I'd
scheduled Murray Ray and a TV researcher. Our campaign
was gaining momentum. We were going to get Andrew in the
news. I was gaining a media profile myself, something I knew
would be useful for Andrew, and for me when I came to write
my book. In the afternoon I'd agreed to go to a school play
with Adele and the girls. Life was good. Life was full.

I had another idea up my sleeve, one that made me whistle
when I thought about it. I was going to marry Claudine. A girl
as good-looking as that wasn't going to come along every day.
She would be gaining a lot by hooking up with me. After all,
what did she have when she moved in? Nothing but a single
suitcase and an old alarm clock, the poor girl. Life was a series
of chances and it was up to Terry Carstone to grab them when
they came along. To take the life I had, and the breaks that
came my way, and use them, in any way I could.

When I was nineteen, two of my friends went down to
Dunedin to study for a year, and I went with them. We found
a flat in the city, and the three of us got on well and were
happy. I started doing a diploma in tourism and my friends
were enrolled at the university. We used to have fun cooking
dinner together when we got home, doing our shopping in the
weekends, going to the beach in summer. We kept the flat nice
and clean and sometimes we went to cheap furniture places
and bought things to make it look brighter. I could have lived
there forever, except I had in the back of my mind that one
day I'd find a boyfriend and move in with him. On Sundays
I went to church by myself. Up in Auckland I'd usually gone
with my mother. I've always got on well with her. My father
died when I was seventeen, but she and my brothers and
I are a tight family, and when I was living down in Dunedin
I missed going to church with her and helping her in the dairy
she owned with my uncle, her brother, who had come out
from Manchester after her.

One day I came home and found my flatmates sitting in the
kitchen looking at a map of England. I didn't say anything at
first and they went silent and kept looking at each other.
Finally I said, 'What's up?' They told me they'd decided to quit
their studies for a year and go to Europe. I listened and nodded
and said that sounded great. Then I went away into my room
upset, because they hadn't talked about it with me, and hadn't
asked me if I wanted to come, and because I didn't know what
would happen to our flat.

Dee came in and sat on my bed, and I pretended to be
asleep. She told me, 'You'll have lots of time to advertise for
new flatmates.'

I sat up and said, 'No, I won't do that. I'm leaving.' I didn't
say anything more, just packed my things up and left a few
days later. I didn't want new flatmates, because everything
about the house was spoiled for me. I knew my friends were
closer to each other than to me, because they went to university
and I was doing tourism. They used to tease me about going
to church and sometimes they made jokes about God, but I'd
always thought it was in fun. Now I thought perhaps they'd
been snobs all along. I was hurt and I left, but I had a problem
then, because I'd always told my mother how happy I was in
the flat, and I was too proud to tell her it had gone wrong. So
that weekend I answered an ad in the paper and ended up
moving in with Reid and Sean.

Sean was a law student and Reid was a policeman. Sean
had wanted to be a policeman too, but his eyesight was poor.
The first time I met him he showed me his collection of guns.
He was proud of his .303, which had a telescopic sight on it.
He let me hold it. He had a couple of smaller guns, too, but the
.303 was his favourite. He even gave it a name: Melissa. Sean
was thin and white-faced and a chain smoker. He fancied me
at first and kept touching my hands and wanting to put his
arm around me, but I made it clear I wasn't interested. Reid
was dark-haired and unusually good-looking. He was a bodybuilder.
He looked nice in his police uniform. Sometimes he
walked around the flat in shorts and no shirt. He had a little
star tattooed on his shoulder. You could tell he was clever
because he was always reading novels. He said he was going to
be promoted to detective soon. He wanted to do undercover
work. I moved my stuff into the empty room and thought
everything would be fine.

I wasn't happy for long. For one thing, Reid and Sean kept
the place an absolute pigsty. I used to clean it up, until I
noticed something strange about Sean — my cleaning up
annoyed him. He would go silent and stare around the room
as if I'd messed up some special order of things. Once he said,
out of the blue, 'Remember, .303s go through walls.' I asked
him what he meant. I was angry. He just gave me a funny
smile and walked out of the room. Reid was cheerfully messy.
He was always eating, and his sandwiches spilled out
everywhere and his kebabs exploded and leaked sauce, but he
never noticed. He mixed up health tonics and vitamin drinks
and left the stuff puddled all over the floor. I stopped trying to
clean up after a while. The flat was up on the fifth floor and
sometimes the rubbish wasn't taken out, and it rotted and
maggots got in. When I thought of my old flat with its cheerful
rooms, I felt depressed. I tried not to think about my two
friends, but I was lonely too. I told my mother everything was
going well. She liked it that I was living with a policeman. She
said I would be nice and safe.

I liked Reid but I wasn't so sure about Sean. There was
something about him. The only doubt I had about Reid, apart
from his mess, was that he and Sean had been friends since
they were kids, and this seemed to put a bit of a shadow on his
— Reid's — character.

Sean had a laser fitted to Melissa's telescopic sight. He sat
up late at night pointing the red dot at the buildings opposite.
He had three or four girlfriends and he made sure they never
came to the flat at the same time. They were law students and
they got a thrill out of holding the gun, you could tell. I used
to stay in my room when Sean's friends came around.
Sometimes I came out and sat with the group, but I couldn't
really join in. They talked about law and legal cases and about
politics, and I didn't know much about that stuff. In my family
we talked about who was sick and who was well, who'd lost
money, who had big bills to pay, who'd bought a new car. My
mother could spend a long time talking about a new fridge or
a dishwasher. She and my uncle didn't talk about politics
except to say that politicians were no good. They talked a lot
about the church, because it was a big part of their lives.
Anyway, I felt uncomfortable with the law students, and often
I'd go back into my room and watch TV.

After I'd been there a few months things started going
badly between me and Sean. He paced and slammed doors
when I was vacuuming. He called me into his room and said
I'd got makeup on his towels. A couple of times I got so fed up
with the rubbish that I threw some of it into the lightwell. The
caretaker complained and Sean had me on about that.

One night he came back with one of his girlfriends, and I
don't know how it started, but she and I had an argument
about God. She started off by saying she'd heard I went to
church, and at first I thought she was being friendly. I said did
she want to come along, and she thought that was a huge joke.
She said there was no God and I said that's your opinion. She
said it was a load of bullshit and I said it was a matter of faith.
She was a smartarse cow, and drunk too. I was angry and
tired, and sad and lonely, and disappointed that I couldn't
make any friends in the place. She made a stupid joke about
Jesus Christ on the cross and I lost my temper and tossed a
cushion at her. It landed on the coffee table and all their glasses
and ashtrays went flying, and there was wine and ash all over
the floor. She shrieked, Sean shouted at me and I fled into my
room.

Everything was quiet when I woke up. It was Friday. I went
off to my classes and when I came home there was a note
pinned on my door. It was written in blue pen and it was
headed up with my name, Lisa Green, and the words Eviction
Notice. It said that Sean was giving me notice to quit under
some act or other, and that the reason for this was my 'act of
violence'. I didn't think there was anything particularly violent
about tossing a cushion, but I didn't feel like arguing. I screwed
the notice up and walked into the kitchen. The tap was
dripping onto some plastic bags in the sink. It made a hollow,
empty sound. A trail of brown liquid came out of the bottom
of the fridge. It had been a hot day and the air was stale with
the sickly smell of old food.

I went into Sean's room. There was a life-size picture of a
man on one wall, with a target printed on his chest and
another on his head. There were full ashtrays on the unmade
bed and a pile of cigarette packets on the chest of drawers. The
bed smelled bad. The room was so bleak and ugly I should
have been pleased I was getting away, but I wasn't, I was
crushed.

That weekend Reid and Sean went away somewhere and
the place was empty. I sat out on the balcony in the nights,
looking up at the yellow squares of light around me, all the
empty windows. I was afraid of the silence, of the empty
corridors when I went down through the building, of the
sounds of the city in the night. I was too proud to ring my
mother and tell her what had happened. There was a sensible
voice in my head telling me I needed to try again, to move in
with some women next time, but I was all screwed up with
loneliness, and too uneasy to sleep properly, and by the end of
that weekend I felt fragile, as if something in me had been
broken.

Still, I didn't give up. I packed up my room, and I started
looking at ads in the paper again. I wanted to move fast,
because my sense of failure had grown and I couldn't shake it
off. When I went to meet my next lot of flatmates I was
ashamed, and felt as if I had to hide my bad history. I was
surprised when they rang me to say I could move in, and that
they'd chosen me from a big group of applicants.

All this time I'd avoided Reid and Sean, which was easy
because we were all busy. If Sean was around he made the odd
caustic comment and I ignored him, but Reid seemed as
careless and happy as ever; I had the feeling he liked me, and
that he thought Sean had been unfair. In my loneliness I'd
done a bit of daydreaming about Reid. I thought about how
he was always reading novels, which was unusual for a
policeman, and about how handsome he was. I imagined him
doing heroic things in his job.

I moved my belongings into the new flat, and one day I
came back to get the last of it. Sean had kept asking for the
key, but I was hanging on to it until I was finished. I had some
kitchen things to get, some bowls, plates and cups. I went up
to the flat and put it all in a box. The kitchen was worse than
ever. I could tell the rubbish hadn't gone out for days.
Everything stank.

The front door opened and Reid came in in his police
uniform. I said hello.

'What are you doing?' he said. He lounged against the
door.

I told him I was getting my stuff.

'You're supposed to be out by now.'

I looked at him. 'I'm getting the last of my things.'

'Are those yours?' he said, looking at the boxes of
crockery.

'Of course they're mine.'

He started opening the lids of the boxes.

'Hey!' I said. I couldn't believe what he was doing. 'Do you
think I'm a thief? Get away.' I was furious. I pushed his hand
off. He straightened up.

'You'd better get out now,' he said.

He picked up the boxes and carried them to the door. 'Now
give me the key.'

I ran to the window and threw the key out. He came at me
and started pushing me to the door. I struggled but he was
very strong. He pushed me out onto the landing. I started to
cry. There was a pause, then he reached his hand towards my
face, and I thought he was sorry, that my tears had brought
him to his senses. But he put his whole hand over my face and
gave a sharp push. I flew back and fell on the floor. He threw
the boxes out after me, and I heard the bowls and cups crash
together inside. He shut the door.

I sat next to my smashed things. I thought: there is something
wrong with me, something bad. The realisation came to me suddenly. My tears
dried up and I got a strange, cold feeling. I got up off the floor and walked
away, leaving the smashed crockery. I took the bus to my new flat.

***

I did my best to fit in with my new flatmates. I went all out to
pretend I was normal. I prayed to God to help me: let them
not know that I am wrong and bad, that I am defective. And
He did help me. I got on with life. I hid my failures and, after a
while, despite my wrongness, I had some successes. I finished
my diploma and moved back to Auckland. I got a good job,
and one night in a pub in Parnell I met my husband.

James was an engineering student back then. My sense of
wrongness was still strong, and I did all I could to cover it up.
I set out to please him. He liked strong, independent women,
so I acted like that. He liked lots of sex, and I was happy to
oblige. I never thought about what I wanted. I wanted my self
to disappear, and in a way it did. I turned myself into a good
person by acting it, and even though I still felt deep down that
I was bad in some way, I started to be happy.

I loved James, but I wasn't comfortable with his family.
With them I had to work hard to hide my flaws. They were
very educated. His mother, Jean, was an English teacher and
his father was a professor at the university. James told me his
mother said I was pretty and charming, but I felt a kind of
chill at that because I knew she'd picked me as someone who
never read books and who wasn't educated enough for her
son. His parents met my mother and uncle and they got on
well, but you could tell there was always going to be a problem
with conversation. Jean wasn't going to talk about fridges and
bills and who was sick and who was well; she wanted to talk
about the situation in Iraq, and American foreign policy and
Maori issues, and books. My mother always rose to the
occasion, because she's no slouch really, and in fact she reads
more books than I do, but I was always glad when they got
onto some topic they could jog along on, like who said what
in the Bible. Jean had read the Bible
as an intellectual exercise
.
They could talk about it for hours, even though my mother
took it seriously and Jean regarded all religion as mumbo
jumbo.

James and I got married. After a couple of years we had our
baby, Michael. James had a job, we had a good flat and Michael was a lovely
baby. I didn't feel flawed any more. I felt free.