Traces of Red, page 1
PADDY RICHARDSON
Traces of Red
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
Chapter 21.
Chapter 22.
Chapter 23.
PART TWO
Chapter 24.
Chapter 25.
Chapter 26.
Chapter 27.
Chapter 28.
Chapter 29.
Chapter 30.
Chapter 31.
Chapter 32.
Chapter 33.
Chapter 34.
Chapter 35.
Chapter 36.
Chapter 37.
Chapter 38.
Chapter 39.
Chapter 40.
Chapter 41.
Chapter 42.
Chapter 43.
Chapter 44.
Chapter 45.
Chapter 46.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PENGUIN BOOKS
TRACES OF RED
© Reatha Kenny
Paddy Richardson has written two collections of short stories, Choices and If I Were Lebanese, many of which have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National. Richardson’s work has also been highly commended in the Katherine Mansfield and Sunday Star-Times awards. Her first novel, The Company of a Daughter, was written during her year as the Burns Fellow at Otago University, Dunedin, 1997, and Penguin published her second and third novels: A Year to Learn a Woman in 2008, and Hunting Blind in 2010. Paddy Richardson lives in Dunedin, where she writes and teaches courses in creative writing.
ALSO BY PADDY RICHARDSON
Choices
If I Were Lebanese
The Company of a Daughter
A Year to Learn a Woman
Hunting Blind
To my family, with thanks and love.
PART ONE
1.
I remember the street lamps flickering, then switching on and I remember the pale yellow haze they made against the sky. It was getting darker and I started to run as hard as I could.
I’d been at the Coulters’. Mum hadn’t wanted me to go. She didn’t like Meredith Coulter, said she wasn’t open and friendly like my other friends. But when you’re a kid you think you know everything, don’t you?
Meredith Coulter was new at school. She was from Auckland and I guess I was just excited to have a friend who was clearly much more sophisticated and knowing than I was. I stayed much longer than I should have that Sunday: I let her talk me into watching another DVD. In fact, I was scared of Meredith Coulter. I didn’t want her laughing at me.
Palmerston North is seriously the saddest place I’ve ever been, I’d be out of here tomorrow if I could, how could you guys keep on living here, like forever?
When I saw how late it was I tried to call but all I got was the answer machine. I sent a text. When I didn’t get an answer I thought it was because Mum was angry.
No later than three o’clock. Three o’clock, Katy, and no excuses.
I grabbed my bag and ran.
Mum and I already had had a fight about me going. I knew she was upset with me.
I hate you. It’s not fair. How come you can choose your friends and I can’t?
Right then. If you want to go that much, okay. But, I’m not happy about it and I’m not happy about your behaviour either. I want you home on Sunday afternoon. Three o’clock, Katy. Three o’clock and no later.
She’d turned her back to me and started doing things at the bench. I’d felt bad about it. I’d also felt a sense of victory that I’d got my way. When the weekend didn’t work out the way I’d hoped I knew she’d been right.
The Coulters’ friends came over with their son, Mark. They all drank a lot. Meredith said we should go into her bedroom and watch DVDs. She’d taken gin out of the cupboard. I didn’t want any but she and Mark sat on her bed drinking it and then they started snogging. I pretended I was asleep but I could hear them. I started to cry, it was only for a couple of minutes, but I was worried I’d made marks on Mrs Coulter’s pillow case from the mascara Meredith had put on me. I wanted to go home. I wanted my mother.
I was running as hard as I could but I had my bag with all my things in it from the weekend, and it was slowing me down. There was no one around, no kids playing at the park. It was quite dark by then and the swings and see-saws looked creepy in the shadows. I tried to go faster.
I was almost there but the straps from the bag were cutting into my hand. I had to stop for a moment and flex it, then change to the other one.
Mum would understand, I thought. What I would do was go inside, put my arms around her waist and say I was sorry and when she started growling I wouldn’t talk back, I’d just say I was sorry over and over again. I wouldn’t let her go until she started laughing and things were okay. And I’d make sure my room was really tidy.
I ran down the drive and pushed open the gate. I had to shove at it because there was a pile of leaves caught underneath. Dad had always talked about taking a couple of inches off the bottom of that gate but he never got round to it. The curtains were already pulled across the windows and the lights on. I wondered how long they’d been like that and if Mum had done it earlier than usual to let me know how much trouble I was in. Or if Dad had started going on about wasting electricity again. There’s no point in having a heater on if all the heat is rushing out the windows.
Dad’s a tight-arse. No doubt about it.
Jinny was sitting on the concrete slab beside the door and she ran up to me and started whining and rubbing up against my legs. I crouched down and patted her and she scratched against the sliding door and whimpered. I knew she’d be wanting to see Mum. Jinny was always Mum’s dog through and through.
I slid open the door, held back the thick wad of curtains and stepped into the room.
The first thing was the shock of heat as if someone was blasting a hairdryer up against my face and all the oxygen in the room was being sucked away. The TV was turned up high, the sound roaring out as motorbikes chased each other round and round the screen.
I was beside the door, still with the wad of curtain gripped in my hand. There was a parcel of chips lying open on the coffee table. The thin, crinkle-cut chips we always got with smears of tomato sauce around them. Red all over the table, all over the carpet and splattered on the walls.
Red.
I made this weird, hoarse sound, my voice had got twisted up inside my throat. I couldn’t move just then. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at and my arms and legs froze solid as I stood there trying to make sense of it. Then my heart started beating so hard it felt as if it would burst and I started choking. Choking and retching.
It was the smell.
2.
Friday nights I usually headed around to David and Anna’s. We’d get in takeaways then it was Aunty Rebecca’s turn to put the kids to bed and read the stories. After that we’d drink wine, watch DVDs. Maybe that seems a less than exciting end-of-week activity for a just-past-thirty, not-too-bad-looking woman, but David, Anna, Lily and Ted were the people I loved most.
The night it started the kids were sleeping, David was opening a second bottle of wine and I was having a moan. About the rain which had been constant over the last week even though it was only March. About not being able to use an umbrella in Wellington because every time you put one up the bloody thing blew inside out. About my job.
‘Another one?’ David said, holding out the bottle.
‘Better not,’ I said. ‘I’ve had three already and I’m driving.’
‘Over a few hours, though,’ David said, ‘and with food.’
‘Stay the night,’ Anna said. ‘I’m surprised by what you’re saying about your job, Rebecca. I thought you loved what you’re doing.’
‘Okay, I’ll stay.’ I held out my glass. ‘I suppose it’s mainly that I haven’t had a good story for ages. I feel I’ve lost my edge.’
‘The one you did about that WINZ weekend retreat was good,’ Anna said.
‘I’ve done as many post-election, heads-will-roll stories as I can stomach,’ I said. ‘What I’m itching for is a victim.’
‘That sounds just a trifle callous,’ Anna said.
‘Rebecca Thorne, advocate of the wronged,’ David said, slugging back his pinot. ‘Bring me your down-and-outers and I’ll tell all.’
I held out my glass for another top-up. My head was becoming nicely swimmy. I loved spreading myself out on their gorgeously fat sofas, in their warm, gorgeous house. Gorgeous David and Anna. Gorgeous Lily and Ted. And all that followed by the weekend: meeting friends in a café, taking in a film, a visit to Mum and Dad. A lie-in on Sunday. Back to work Monday.
I had a fantastic life: enough money, a great house, a multitude of people ready to offer me wine, feed me, talk and laugh with me. I had a job most journos would die for. And though it didn’t test me like it used to and my heart didn’t begin to thump as I faced the camera, I was Rebecca Thorne, Saturday Night. I had my place.
‘Turkey farms?’
‘Neglect of turkeys. Okay, I feel sorry turkeys are neglected but it’s hard to feel much passion about them. Let’s face, it turkeys are ugly.’
‘How about passion for how the economic downturn’s affected Fashion Week?’
‘The prevailing theory is that in a depressed economy women still want to look good, proven by the fact that mascara sales have never been so high. A little add-on story is that vintage fashion sales have gone up and women are starting to use their grannies’ recipes to make their own face masks. We’re doing that one in a couple of weeks. Plus providing on-line instructions.’
‘That story you did about the community fixing up that blind guy’s garden was sweet,’ Anna said.
David rolled his eyes. ‘Sweet?’
‘Well it was.’
‘I used to love my job. Couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get to it. Now it seems hard to rack up some interest.’ I shrugged in a way I hoped suggested carefree indifference. ‘Could be it’s time to move on.’
‘Where would you go?’ Anna said.
‘Don’t know.’
I was partly serious but mainly teasing David, who now had his big-brother face on. There she goes, Rebecca tossing in a good, steady job for some new whim.
‘Becks, you’re good at this. You don’t want to throw it away just because you’re going through a dull patch.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but if I don’t care about the stories I’m doing how can I expect anyone else to? I just feel … I don’t know, kind of bored.’
Anna looked pensive. ‘Maybe what you really want is a man.’
We’d had this conversation before. ‘No time,’ I said as lightly as I could manage. ‘No time and no inclination.’
Anna finished the wine in her glass and held it out to David for another. ‘But Rebecca. Lily and Ted need baby cousins. We’re relying on you.’
‘I’m sure they can wait,’ I said. ‘Just like I can.’
‘Don’t wait too long,’ Anna said. ‘There’s a lot to be said for domestic bliss.’
David was sitting beside her on the sofa. He pulled her feet into his lap and began massaging her toes.
‘I’ve got a story for you,’ David said. ‘What do you know about Connor Bligh?
3.
Initial Crime Scene Report
15 May 2002
Detective R. McDermid, Lead Investigator
Summons: phone call from Robert Struthers 22 Lincoln Court, May 15, 6:48 p.m. reporting possible homicide, police cars and ambulance services dispatched immediately.
Victim One
Angela Ruth Dickson (39 yrs) dark hair, medium build, found in living room, lying face down beside west window, multiple wounds inflicted with sharp instrument to chest, face, throat and abdomen, possible dislocation of right jaw.
Victim Two
Rowan Kennedy Dickson (46 yrs) light hair, medium build, found in living room, sitting position on sofa, slumped forward, cut to throat severing the main arteries and windpipe.
Victim Three
Samuel Kennedy Dickson (10 yrs) brown hair, light build, found in bedroom, lying face down on the floor, wire around neck suggesting strangulation, deep wound to back penetrating into the chest area.
4.
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Isn’t there some talk of a retrial?’
‘I’ve had letters from his supporters. It’s an intriguing case and, from what I’ve heard, Bligh’s an interesting character.’
‘Sue Cathall’s been involved in his defence,’ Anna said. ‘I had lunch with her last week. She’s Joe Fahey’s associate.’
‘And?’
‘Her take on it is that it’s possible he may not be guilty.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘She said he’s absolutely unbending about his innocence.’
‘Yeah right. Aren’t they all?’
‘She thinks this one could be telling the truth.’
‘Didn’t he kill his sister?’
‘His sister and her husband and son. That is, if he did it. The daughter was staying with a friend for the weekend and she found them when she got home. They’d already been dead forty-eight hours by then.’
‘God. Poor kid. Why did they accuse Bligh?’
‘He seemed to be the most likely suspect. He was at the house a lot and he used to live with them before he got his own place. He knew the place inside out, knew their routines.’
5.
Nine times out of ten their routine was the same on Friday evenings. After closing up the shop, Angela Dickson went to the supermarket and then picked Katy up from outside the studio where she walked after school for modern dance lessons.
Rowan Dickson always had a staff meeting last thing Friday. He’d stay afterwards for a cup of tea, then drive over to Sam’s school, watch the end of his soccer practice and take him home. On the way they’d stop at Lenny’s, the takeaway shop nearest their house (Voted the best fish ’n’ chips in the region) and buy four pieces of crumbed blue cod, a bacon and egg burger, three scoops of chips.
Angela would already be home by the time he got there with Sam and have plates, paper napkins, buttered bread and tomato sauce ready on the coffee table. The living room only got morning sun and was cold by late afternoon so she always turned the heaters on when she first got inside. Rowan would open a bottle of wine for him and Angela, and get Coke out of the fridge for the kids and, while Sam opened up the paper parcel of takeaways, Rowan would fill glasses and turn on the television. They’d load their plates then he’d sit on the sofa, Katy beside him, their backs to the sliding doors. Angela sat on the La-Z-Boy and Sam usually took his plate into his bedroom where he played computer games.
They never locked the doors until everyone went to bed.
Friday was the only night they ate in the living room in front of TV. Every other meal was in the dining room at the table with knives, forks, plates, a clean tablecloth and everything nicely set out. Angela had standards.
The night they died, other than Katy going to the Coulters’ after her dancing class and Rowan buying only three pieces of fish from Lenny’s, the routine was the same. The police believed that whoever did it must have known the family’s habits and the layout of the house, must have known Friday night was the best night to make a visit.
This was not some random attack. The killer came equipped with a razor-sharp knife and a length of strong yet supple wire.
The killer knew to wait until the family was settled and then come through the back door. He knew he must move silently along the hallway to where Sam was peering into the computer screen and, afterwards, go back to the door, lock it from the outside and then slip around to the front of the house. He knew he must come swiftly through the sliding doors, take Rowan by surprise and then take Angela.
The bloody footprints in every room suggest he was searching for someone else.
He knew Katy should be home.
6.
Connor Bligh. Connor Bligh. The name ran through my head. A melodious name more suited, I thought, to a poet than a murderer. I didn’t sleep much that night.
I waited until Lily and Ted had finished their Puffy Pops and were outside on the trampoline. I made a fresh plunger of coffee and handed a mug to Anna.
‘So they charged Connor Bligh because he was in and out of the house and knew the family routine?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘So you are interested in this one? Okay, these are the facts as I know them. Bligh didn’t have a sound alibi for the time they were killed. He said he’d gone driving that night to clear his head after work and ended up going into a pub and having a meal but no one remembered seeing him. He had feet the same size as the footprints found in the house, though the shoes which matched them were never found. He’s left-handed, which fits with the way the wounds were inflicted. Whoever did it used gloves so there were no fingerprints with blood on them, but his were all over the house. There was a trace of blood in his car which had a ninety per cent probability match to Angela’s.’
