Soon (17 page)

‘I'm grateful for the insight you've given me,' Ford said. ‘They're even more frivolous than I'd imagined.'

Simon scowled. Ford had a tiny pearl of spit in the corner of his mouth. Pompous prick. Ford and Claire: the bitter ones. Never impressed, always negative. Always looking for the bad. Ford didn't mind hanging around Roza, though, did he . . .

Now across the table the Cock and Gibson were leaning close together, Gibson writing something on a table napkin, the Cock nodding with a faint curl of the lip. Gibson showed his too-white, too-even teeth, waving the bit of paper, blurred with booze as usual. The Cock sat back.

‘Maybe,' he said coldly and stretched out his long arm to receive more wine from the hovering Troy without looking at the young man, who was looking down the front of Sharon Cahane's low top, she clad in a kind of black catsuit that showed off her stunning figure, as tall and shapely as Roza's although she was not quite beautiful, her features skewed at the corner of her mouth by a scar from a car crash. Having exhausted the topic of Brad and Angelina she had now begun to talk about
her
workouts, the thrill she got from being pummelled and told off and manipulated by someone as sexy as Garth.

‘Ooh, call me a cougar,' she said, ‘an old cougar. Tell me you don't love it, Roza, those long runs along the beach with Garth, the way he orders you about, the warm-downs.'

‘Mmm,' Roza said, and Karen laughed like a good sport, and Roza turned to her, benevolently smiling, and signalled to Troy. Her sweet voice, honey-coated, but what did the coating conceal? ‘Karen, you look like you need more wine.'

Simon's elbow slid off the table. Steady. Was he overdramatising? Looking around the laden table at the complacent faces, it seemed unbelievable that his secret could damage, even derail, something as solid as the government of a small, peaceful country.

But think. They would call it ‘The Weeks Affair'. It would be noted that he'd left the Prime Minister's summer residence, killed Weeks and driven straight back to Rotokauri. ‘Taken refuge' there. Lived with the secret there, disposed of evidence there, he who was a member of the Prime Minister's extended family, his close, even his best, friend, and part of a group that included Ed Miles, the Minister of Police. The taint would spread and billow like black ink.

Should he kill himself? But the children.

David lit the Cock's cigar, their faces illuminated red as they leaned together. A look passed between them.

Roza had moved to a soft chair at the edge of the deck. Elke came out of the house and sat down next to her, leaning close, and Roza put her arm around the girl and started pointing out the stars. The pot. The Southern Cross. The Cock watching them, Sharon's harsh voice: ‘I said to him, don't fuss. And you know what he does? He bins the whole suit. Because it's got this teensy little mark you can't even see.'

Juliet Miles laughed, glanced nervously at the Cock, red flaming in her cheeks.

The Cock looked levelly at them.

Sharon: ‘He's listening. Don't give me the evil eye, darling. You know you're unbelievable.'

‘My wife is astonished again. My wife finds the extraordinary in everyday things.'

‘And then the other day, he—'

‘No, it's not difficult to keep my wife diverted. There's so much for her lively mind to take in.'

Ed said to Karen, ‘Enjoying the workouts? Losing weight?'

Karen gave him a wide-eyed look and moved away.

‘In fact, if my wife encounters more than one idea at once, she's left reeling.'

Screech of laughter from Sharon Cahane.

Ford had fallen silent. He was staring at everyone grimly, as though making a final tally of the failings of each.

Simon went over. He said, quiet, ‘You're looking left-wing.'

‘Feeling left-wing.'

They watched Elke and Roza.

Ford said in an undertone, ‘How can they not look alike and yet
be
so alike?'

‘Body language,' Simon said. Sadness weighed him down. ‘We've lost her.'

‘No. You don't lose people.'

‘But she wasn't ours to begin with. We got her late, eight years old.'

‘Karen,' Ford said.

‘Yeah, she's . . .' She was standing at the rail now, facing the sea, her arms crossed over her chest. A forlorn pose.

‘Life. Nothing's fair.'

‘Thanks. That's very comforting.' Simon frowned, trying to hold on to a thought. His poor brain, marinated in Trent's gins. ‘So if nothing's fair, Ford, what's the point of your politics? Why not just let nature take its course, let the poor die; that's survival of the fittest.'

‘Some of us see human nature for what it is. But we still have a duty to elevate ourselves.'

Simon snorted. ‘Self-righteous bastard.'

Ford turned to him. ‘What do you actually care about, Simon? No, seriously.'

Care about? Family. David. Yes, he did love David. And Roza. His patients. In a different way.

‘I'd do anything to protect them,' he said.

Ford looked at him, curious. ‘Protect? Who, Simon?'

Anything.

In the warm dark, fumbling with his suitcase, he pulled out the DVD in its plastic cover. It was turning into a big night over at the main house, they had the stereo cranked up loud. David must have got his second wind and no one would dare to go to bed before him.

The sound of the bass drifted over the compound. At a party he'd once seen Sharon and the Cock, drunk, get up and head for the dance floor. Expecting middle-aged ineptitude they'd all been transfixed by the Cock's dancing. His thin, sinister face expressionless, he'd danced with the smoothness of a pro. He was fit, no move he made was out of rhythm. His wife wasn't bad either. ‘White men
can
dance,' some wit had shouted but the Cock and Sharon just danced on, impassive, tranced, in their own world.

Unnatural that an uptight middle-aged man, a government minister, could move like that. Karen said that after she'd seen the Cock dancing she was even more scared of him than ever.

He shivered. Something walking over his grave. What to do with the DVD? Another swim? But the weather had turned in the late afternoon, the wind had got up and the sea was messy, running with currents, uneven waves rolling across the shorebreak and seaweed tossing in the hubble and bubble. White foam flying in the air, the gulls riding the currents. There was another big summer cyclone out in the Pacific Islands; they would be brushed by the edge of it. It had got hotter all evening. A suffocating humidity had crept over the settlement, until you felt you had to suck the air hard to get anything from it. The air was laden with moisture, everyone sweating. One minute Roza was pointing out the stars to Elke, the next they were snuffed out, the whole sky black and pressing down like a blanket.

For a moment he considered putting the DVD in the machine and watching it again. The story of Hamish and Anahera. Instead he went out the back and broke the disk and its cover into pieces. He had a sense of sacrilege, as if he was breaking Mereana's bones, crack crack. There was an outside light faintly pulsing, moths and insects bombing into it. Mosquitoes settled on him, he slapped them away. Somewhere out beyond the light he heard rustling. He stopped and listened to the harsh chatter and purr of a possum, and in the distance a morepork crying. The sea was making a low roar, stirred up by a weather monster far away.

Forward Slash

His consulting rooms. Clarice had an unflattering new haircut, cropped short and dyed. The back of her neck looked sore and chafed. She'd put on even more weight over the summer; loneliness, he thought, nights in front of the TV with the wine and potato chips.

‘Nice hairdo.'

Red crept into her jowly cheeks and she looked so brave and
triste
he wanted to make some gesture, squeeze her arm, but that would never do, to show he felt sorry for her.

‘The Robinson woman called.' She rolled her eyes. In her role as dragon and gatekeeper she enjoyed dealing with the few patients who were difficult. There was a tone she used with all the patients; it was borderline offensive and often irritated him. Her policy was to treat all as insane until proven rational.

He'd referred the Robinson woman to a colleague, but she kept coming back, kept calling in tears. She believed that he loved her. Previously she'd believed that a local GP loved her, but he'd emigrated to Australia.

‘I saw her walk past the building yesterday. Twice. Slowly.' Clarice dumped a pile of files on his desk.

The clinic began. His first patient told him, ‘I had a breast cancer scare.'

‘Just a scare?'

‘I found one lump, the GP found another. I was terrified. They got me an urgent appointment for a mammogram. You know what I found out? That you really do wring your hands. I had to drive across town to have a scan and I was thinking
this is it
. Two lumps, I'm going to die. There was this nurse, she goes, “Do you want to read some literature about cancer?” I said, “No I do not, thank you very much.”'

Simon, continuing his examination, said, ‘OK, give me a cough.'

‘So I go in, and the doctor finds
eight
lumps. Literally. I was having an absolute meltdown. But when they scanned them, they were all cysts.'

‘Ah, so no problem. Breathe in.'

‘They were fine. The funny thing is, I turned to the nurse, right, and there was something in her face. Disappointment. As if I was a big let-down. After that she was grumpy with me. Isn't that strange?'

Simon thought, There are things I could tell you about nurses. The few who liked to menace and bully. One trick was to tell patients they shouldn't be in pain after an operation, to hint that something must be seriously wrong. You'd come in on your patient in tears because a malevolent nurse had made her beg for pain relief and then said, ‘You shouldn't be asking for painkillers. You'd better ask your doctor exactly what he's
done
.'

He sent out for a sandwich, ate lunch in his office. Anxiety made him tired. This humidity. After weeks of cloudless blue, the sky had turned woolly grey. Lightning flared occasionally, thunder cracked far away, the clouds swirled and boiled but there was no rain, not yet, only hot mist. How brown the park had got, the grass positively scorched. It must have been a record summer. Was it global warming? The Hallwright government didn't believe in climate change. They were hoping to boost the economy by mining fossil fuels, by drilling for oil in the Raukumara Basin. Caring about the environment was a luxury; that was what Ed Miles and the Cock said. Cue Ford and his whispered condemnations about short-sighted fools and locusts squandering all the good we have.

What do you actually care about, Simon
?

Oh, fuck Ford. Fuck him.

Across the way, in an upstairs window, the two small dogs, side by side, had their identical hairy white faces pressed up against the glass, moving slightly when something caught their eye, two uncanny masks, watching.

He sat listening to a blonde woman.

‘Simon, my allergies also cause me to put on weight. I'm allergic to gluten and dairy, both of which cause me bloating.'

‘Ah. Bloating.'

‘I'm on the blood-group diet. My naturopath recommended it. She's an amazing woman. Just amazing. I had no idea there was so much wrong with me until I found her. And I see a homeopath and an osteopath, and I've got onto crystal therapy.'

‘I see.' He looked at his notes.

‘I take a lot of supplements. I have to, Simon. If I don't, my immune system crashes. Even though I flush out my system constantly, I have a lot of toxic build-up. You've got to flush out the toxins, or it's just crazy.'

He said, ‘I'll have to do a quick examination.'

She continued, from the bed. ‘My daughter's a Taurus, so she's amazingly strong-willed. She's had a lot of problems. What I found really useful was . . .'

‘Breathe in,' he said.

‘St John's wort, charcoal patches, a list of homeopathic remedies and a strict diet. Dukan. But she relies on the crystals. If she's separated from the crystals it's just crazy.'

‘And breathe out.'

‘Simon, I've realised that the thing about maintaining my immune system is . . .'

He dipped his head and thought, Her body is a temple. Yeah, a beautiful temple, festooned with tributes to the Great Wedgie.

Smiling, he said, ‘You can get up now.'

She came around the curtain, pulling her bright blonde hair back into a ponytail. He said, ‘I'm going to recommend some minor surgery,' and then sat there, gently nodding and smiling and repeating himself while she sternly put him through his paces, making sure he was as well qualified as the witch doctors and quacks and bullshit artists who presided over her everyday care.

Two elderly patients followed, one sternly pragmatic, the next hor­rified by his intimate questions: a small, vulnerable woman, squeezing her hands drily together.

Running late now, he ushered in the next woman, apologising for the wait. They knew each other: over the years he'd delivered her twins and another child. She sat down and said flatly, ‘You'll see I got the GP to do all those tests for STDs.'

He sifted through them.

‘I found out that my husband was having an affair. I was worried I might have caught something. It's not because
I
was, you know, going round town catching things.'

He said, polite, ‘The tests are all negative.'

‘Yes. I just had to explain.'

‘I understand.'

She smiled and looked away. ‘The bastard.'

‘Yes. I mean, no. Sorry to hear that.'

A bit later he said, ‘Just describe exactly where the pain is?'

‘He had an affair at work. I was furious with the woman. I wanted to hunt her down and kill her. But then I was lonely and hurt and stuck with three kids and no husband and what did I do? I fell in love with a married man. And when I thought about how that would hurt
his
wife, I didn't care.'

Simon knew what Ford would say to that: We're all animals.

‘Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you. Well, I had to explain the STD tests.'

‘Yes, of course. Now when you say you've had this pain . . .'

‘I suppose you hear some weird things in here.'

‘Sometimes.' He paused. She was looking upset. He touched her arm very lightly. ‘Not weird. Everyone's pretty much the same, really. Everyone wants the same things.'

She looked at him intently.

‘The pain?' she said. ‘The pain is
everywhere
.'

Afternoon, all patients dispatched, he was turning his mind to the drive back to Rotokauri. Just a few more days of the holiday left.

The phone shrilled. Clarice said, ‘Someone to see you.'

He was clearing his desk, gathering up his gear, keen to get off, beat the traffic on the bridge. ‘Not the Robinson woman?'

‘A detective.'

He sat, winded, the silence a fraction too long. ‘A what?'

‘Detective.'

He said hectically, ‘The Robinson woman's killed someone.'

Clarice let out a dry little chuckle. She'd be enjoying making the guy wait.

‘OK. Coming,' he said.

It wasn't a man.

She said, ‘Hi Dr Lampton, or should that be Mister, since you're a surgeon? My name's Detective Marie Da Silva.' She offered her hand, he shook.

‘And this is my colleague, Detective Philip O'Kelly. Show your ID, Philip.'

O'Kelly was a young man with a long face and keen eyes. He produced his ID and the woman said, ‘Can we go in your office?'

He ushered them in, shut the door, pointed to the chair, sat down behind his desk. The man sat down. The woman went to the window and looked out at the park, not obedient like a patient; patients did what you told them; you pointed to a chair, they sat. She was slim, dressed in a short jacket and trousers with a hint of combat about them, as if they'd have tools jinking from them, probably did: handcuffs, pepper spray, telescoped baton.

Holding a big black notebook under one arm, she turned to face him. She had a sharp, pale face, slightly pointy teeth, freckles on the bridge of her nose and thick wiry hair so blonde it was almost white, the hair falling thickly to her shoulders but standing up on her crown in unruly gold-white strands that caught the light, a real mane, and there was something leonine, or at least feline, about the sloping contours of her cheeks and the strong, straight nose. Those wiry strands of hair standing up on her head made him think of a cloud of bright insects around her, a nimbus.

Silence.

‘OK,' she said. ‘You're looking at my eyes.'

‘No. Well, since you mention it. One blue and one brown. That's rare.'

‘So I'm told. Frequently. And yes, before you ask, they're real.'

‘Heterochromia iridum.'

‘Yeah. I've got in the habit of mentioning it first. What happens is, people look at my eyes, and don't actually look at me. They get distracted.'

‘Well. What can I do for you?'

She had very small hands. He imagined twining his fingers in that bright hair. If he came near, she would probably punch his lights out.

Cops. Could they tell what you were thinking?

A pause. She had a little frown mark between her pale eyebrows. How old was she — say, twenty-eight? The same age Mereana was when she . . .

‘We're investigating the death of Arthur Weeks.'

‘Who?'

‘Arthur Weeks. Do you know him? He's fallen, he's also possibly been hit by something, maybe a car.'

‘Hit and run?'

‘We're not calling it that yet.'

What else would you call it
?

She smiled, ‘We like to keep an open mind.'

‘Always good to have one of those.'
Oh, shut up, fool
.

‘Anyway, we've noticed he's called your cell phone a couple of times. We're just wondering why he'd call an obstetrician and gynaecologist.'

She laughed and he joined in. How funny, a man calling him, the women's doctor. Yes, it was inexplicable, wasn't it.

Silence. Why had he not prepared for this?

‘He called your cell phone,' she repeated.

‘My cell phone. Did he? I've just had to get a new phone actually. I jumped in the pool with the old one.'

The little frown deepened. She leaned forward, her tone sharp. ‘You've just got a new phone.'

He suddenly realised: they had the record from Weeks's phone. There'd been no point getting rid of his. It just drew attention, made him look guilty. Destroying evidence.

‘I've upgraded to this new thing. An iPhone. The latest model apparently.' He pushed it across the desk. His tongue had stopped working properly.

‘Why did Arthur Weeks call you?'

‘I'm sorry I don't . . . Who is this Weeks?'

‘He's a sort of journalist, film, arts person. Done a bit of work for TV, comedy shows. Young man, aged in his twenties, found dead outside his flat.'

Simon paused, pretended to think. No, don't scratch your head, ham actor. ‘Never heard of him.'

‘He
rang
you.'

‘Maybe . . . I had a caller not long ago, probably a journalist, I can't remember his name. He said he wanted to ask some questions, but the questions turned out to be about my family so I cut him off.'

‘Your family.'

‘I have an association with the Prime Minister. My adopted daughter . . .'

‘Yes. I know about that. OK, so assuming that was Weeks, he wanted to know what?'

‘I can't remember. The caller asked me about being on holiday at the Hallwrights' summer place and I realised he was just prying and I said, “Can't help you, sorry”, and hung up. My wife and I do get questioned; we've learned to be a bit careful. There's interest in our lives, in our younger daughter, because of the Hallwrights. She, our girl Elke, is Roza Hallwright's . . .'

‘Weeks rang you
twice
.'

He looked at the fine gold strands of hair at her temples. She shuffled pages in her big black book, checking something. Those eyes. One in a million, genetically. What had she said, that people looked at her eyes instead of looking at her. What did she mean? Surely she
was
her eyes. She must mean they looked without seeing beyond the colour, to what lay behind the blue and the brown.

From the window across the car park the two white dogs were watching. Motionless white dogfaces. The male detective was content to sit in silence; he looked almost sleepy, watching from under half-closed lids.

‘Dr Lampton?'

‘Sorry. Twice? I can't remember, but I would have done the same, cut him off. Journalists are a hazard, a minor one. When my wife goes out with Roza Hallwright they're followed and photographed sometimes. Every now and then someone rings the house.'

His confidence rose. It sounded convincing, and it was true after all. She'd stopped frowning.

‘Weeks wasn't that kind of journalist.'

‘What was he then?'

‘He had a mix of interests. He did have a preoccupation with politicians.'

‘There you go.'