‘Only because they’re philistines and I doubt they would stop to appreciate the mathematical precision with which they’re planted and the aesthetic placing of the . . . err . . . purple ones and yellow ones?’

  Kitty stares at me, trying to gauge if I’m taking the piss or not.

  ‘Exactly,’ she says slowly, and there are wise nods all round.

  ‘Seriously, though, even if they didn’t kill the flower babies, we don’t need that kind of drama going down. It’s going to put people off coming in,’ says Amelia.

  She’s absolutely right. The thought of gang members turning up at the launch of the century doesn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘Do you need us for muscle or shall we leave you to it?’ Amelia licks sugar dust from her fingers.

  Garth peers into the box. ‘Are there any doughnuts left?’

  ‘Nope. That was the last one.’ Phyllis nods at the golden curve of crispy dough disappearing into Garth’s mouth. He chews, swallows and wipes his hands on his trousers, magical sugar dust falling to the floor.

  ‘Then you may decamp,’ he says.

  The doughnut fairies take their leave, Kitty starts the involved process of inserting a new roll of stickers into the pricing gun, and Garth disappears in the direction of the loo, leaving me to the racing thoughts of a sugar rush.

  How the hell did the Black Dogs get involved? Has someone paid them to rattle us, or were they involved in Tracey’s death? If they came with the intention of putting me off, their visit has only made me more determined to find out what happened. We’re going to have to be a bit more discreet, though. The last thing we want is a bunch of heavies ruining the IFG launch. The question is how, when we don’t know who told them?

  Fetu bowls in the front door, bearing a large box. ‘Talofa, Sherlocks! Just one today!’ I catch a whiff of Lynx Africa in the air and register his beaming smile as the box lands in my arms. It’s heavier than it looked when he was handling it.

  ‘Manuia le aso,’ I wheeze at his retreating back, and am rewarded with a laugh and a ‘Nice one!’

  I hope he sticks around a while, courier turnover being generally high. He’s a breath of fresh, Lynx-scented air, that one.

  ‘It’s extraordinary, the variety in quality of visitor we’ve had in the last twenty-four hours,’ Garth muses as he watches Fetu leave, not thinking to relieve me of the box. He still sees me as the gung-ho twenty-year-old he met at Police College who would have bitten his head off at any suggestion of female inferiority. I am not in a hurry to show any old-ladyness, so take it as a compliment.

  I plonk the box down on the bench where we do the stock, and Kitty gears up to attack it with the box cutter. Garth is running minor repairs, sticking down peeling carpet corners, fixing wobbly card-stand wheels, and I’m in the middle of emailing book club about the next meeting when Tama strolls in. This is unusual; Chloe chooses his books and buys them on book club night roughly twice a year — Christmas and birthday.

  ‘Kia ora e hoa,’ I call. He’s in plain clothes, of course, so I’m not sure whether this is business or pleasure. We didn’t call the police after the Black Dog muppets incident, not seeing how that could move us forward in the investigation that we probably shouldn’t be investigating, but word gets around and he may have got wind of it. ‘Nice to see you again so soon.’

  ‘Mōrena. I’ve come to thank you for my shabby head. It still hasn’t recovered after you plied me with your fancy wine.’

  ‘Hey, you can lead a horse to water and all that,’ I shoot back, not prepared to take responsibility, although I was trying to loosen his tongue so maybe I should.

  ‘I’ve actually come for a browse. I’m sick of reading detective novels that make my job sound exciting. I’m about ready to try something out of my comfort zone. How about fantasy or science fiction or something?’

  I hear the pricing gun clatter to the bench top and Kitty shoots past me.

  ‘Come with me,’ she commands. Tama raises his eyebrows at me, grins, and does as he’s told.

  The daily book review has just aired on RNZ and it was obviously a bloody good one judging by the barely contained excitement of the woman on the phone upon hearing we have it in stock. By the time I’ve grabbed a copy and reserved it for her, Kitty is ringing up Tama’s purchase: Tarquin the Honest, Ocian’s Elven by Gareth Ward, a fantasy heist movie in a book.

  Garth comes up to the counter to exclaim over his excellent choice of book. ‘That’s my favourite fantasy series at the moment. It’s brilliant and funny, I wish I’d written it.’

  ‘Do you write, Garth?’ asks Tama.

  ‘No, no. I mean, I try a bit. I’d like to do more but time is an issue and, well, you know how it is.’

  Tama nods. ‘Looking forward to getting stuck in. Got a couple of rest days coming up and I actually feel like a rest, so . . .’

  He starts to raise his arm in farewell when I have a thought.

  ‘Er, Tama? I’m wondering if you could do me a favour.’ I look over to Kitty but she’s back into the stock, captivated by the blurb of a bright-pink book with a yellow banana on the cover.

  ‘I’d like to say yes but now I know you a little better I’m not sure I should be so quick to commit,’ he says.

  ‘Ha. Fast learner. Hey, back in the day I had a bit of bother with a crim in the UK and, long story short, he ordered a book from a shop in Wellington to be delivered to an address in Waipukurau. It’s a bit close for comfort and I was hoping you might just look up the address for me, off the books, see if it’s got any flags on it.’ I smile my most ingratiating smile, the one that convinces nobody.

  ‘Huh. Unsettling. Like I said, I’m off for a few days, but I could have a look next week unless you think it’s urgent?’

  Is it urgent? I don’t bloody know but I don’t want to make a deal of it and spook anyone, least of all myself. ‘No, next week is fab. It’s 32 Pikitea Street. I owe you more wine.’

  ‘Ah, that can wait until next week, too,’ says Tama. ‘Ka kite,’ and he finishes his wave and heads out, Garth still wittering on in his wake about how cool Tarquin the Wizard is.

  Back behind the counter, I shift the computer mouse, ready to get into the emails, and nudge something metallic.

  ‘Wait up, Tama! You forgot your keys,’ I shout, waving them at him.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ he replies, neither looking back nor breaking the stride that takes him right out of the shop and off in the direction of the library.

  ‘That’s strange,’ I mutter.

  Garth comes to have a look. There’s a generic freebie keyring on a set of two keys: a padlock key and a double-sided key. I hold the fob up to him.

  ‘There’s an address on the plastic label bit, look.’

  Garth narrows his eyes in what I assume he believes to be a Holmesian attitude. He might as well hold forefinger and thumb to chin and say, ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ is what he actually says.

  ‘Yeah. Weird.’

  ‘Is that . . . singing?’ asks Garth.

  ‘Are you gooooing, to Saaaaan Fraaaan-ciscooooo. Dooby doooooo, with flowers in your hair . . .’

  It’s Dafydd, and he’s crooning to Kitty’s flowers.

  Garth: 22 days until Isabella Garrante book launch

  Eloise tugs sharply on the Tomato’s steering wheel, taking the St George’s Road roundabout at what in the police we might have referred to as excessive speed.

  We’ve shut up shop early in an attempt to thwart any further visits from the Black Dogs, and are heading into Hastings and deeper down the rabbit hole.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Tama must have left the keys with us. A Google search of the address on the fob has revealed it to be that of a secure self-storage facility. What we’ll find there we have no idea, but we’re certain it’s Tama’s intention for us to visit. ‘Why a lock-up in Hastings?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he lives in Napier. It makes more sense to use one of the storage places over there.’

  ‘They might not have always been on The Hill.’

  ‘Perhaps. If he was involved in Tracey’s case, he probably would have been working out of Hastings nick back then.’

  ‘It’s only a fifteen-minute drive between Hastings and Napier, anyway.’

  ‘It’s actually twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Eloise frowns and swerves around a parcel courier van that was apparently going too slowly. ‘I expect there’s a fair bit of transfer between the nicks in the two cities.’

  I smile, because neither ‘city’ would be considered anything other than a moderate-sized town in the UK. Northampton had a population approaching a quarter of a million. It’s sobering to think that for a town that size there would sometimes be as few as twenty-five police officers working a night shift, or one officer for every ten thousand people. The thin blue line was often stretched very thin indeed. You only needed for the shift to make a handful of arrests for officers to be so committed in the cells you’d be down to single figures patrolling the streets.

  The awning on a wire-mesh security fence surrounding a patch of waste ground catches my attention: ‘Franklin White Construction’. They’ve been threatening to build a new supermarket on this site for years, but today the gate is unchained and partially open. Parked inside is a menacing black SUV with the personalised plate FWC. Alongside it are two meaty motorcycles. I think they might be Harleys, but I’ve never been into bikes and wouldn’t really know a HOG from a Honda.

  ‘Seen something?’ asks Eloise.

  ‘I’d never noticed that Franklin White owns that land where Fresh World want to build.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. He seems to own bloody everything around here.’

  I grab the car door’s handle as Eloise slings the Tomato down a side street and into a small industrial estate surrounded by houses. We zip past an auto shop, a plumber’s merchant and an electrical wholesaler’s before a bright-yellow warehouse surrounded by substantial razor-wire-topped fences looms ahead of us.

  Eloise screeches the Tomato to a halt. A high, steel-barred gate topped with rotating anti-climb spikes prevents entry. A pair of huge halogen spotlights burn to life, casting us in a dazzling pool of illumination. Alongside Eloise’s car door stands an RFID entry post with a red-blinking LED. Perhaps the security here is the reason Tama chose it: many secure storage facilities really aren’t that secure. This place certainly seems to be taking its responsibilities seriously.

  Eloise winds down the car window.

  She reaches her arm out and waves the dongle attached to Tama’s key at the RFID sensor that will open the gate. Thanks to what some might describe as a rather cavalier attitude towards parking, Eloise’s hand is a considerable distance from the device and the LED continues to blink red.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve parked close enough,’ I say, helpfully.

  ‘I have parked close enough.’ Eloise unclips her seatbelt and leans half out of the window, her baggy pants, which to my mind resemble a tie-dye potato sack, snagging on the buckle. Stretching to her full reach, she manages to brush the dongle against the reader and the LED flashes green. With a clunk the gate begins to slide open.

  ‘See,’ says Eloise smugly, manoeuvring her torso back into the Tomato.

  ‘Yes, elegantly done. Although if you’d parked closer—’

  Eloise puts the Tomato into drive and with a squeal of tyres we lurch through the open gateway.

  There are no other vehicles in the eight allocated customer parking spaces, which is fortunate as Eloise manages to abandon the Tomato over two of them; I consider it wise not to mention this. She yanks the handbrake on and slaps me on the leg. ‘Time to rock and roll.’

  The entry to the warehouse has another RFID scanner which allows us into a security airlock, the doors behind us closing before the ones in front open. Ahead is a long concrete-floored corridor lined with yellow Colorsteel roller-shutter doors with a large black number painted on each. As we step from the airlock sensor, lights flick on one after the other along the corridor’s length like a scene from The X-Files.

  ‘What’s the number on the fob?’ I ask, trying to push down a rising fear.

  ‘Thirty-nine,’ says Eloise without looking at the keys.

  ‘That’s an unlucky number in Afghanistan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something to do with cows, I think.’

  ‘You’d have thought they had bigger things to worry about.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’ My uneasiness only increases as we walk. ‘Is it just me, or does this remind you of that bit in The Silence of the Lambs?’

  ‘Do you really think we’re going to find a head in a jar in Tama’s lock-up?’

  ‘It just seems a bit odd. Why’d he give us his key? Why didn’t he come with us?’

  Eloise strides on, activating more sensor lights. ‘Perhaps he’s busy. He is a DCI.’

  ‘Or perhaps he’s involved.’ For some reason I check over my shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t be the first bent copper we’ve come across.’

  ‘What’s brought this on?’

  ‘Those thugs only visited after we’d been to Tama’s.’ I know I’m probably being unfair, but I’m a naturally suspicious person, a characteristic which was useful in the cops and often a hindrance in civvy street. ‘Also, at dinner the other night, he seemed as keen to know what we’d found out as we were keen to pick his brain about the case.’

  ‘So, this is a set-up?’

  ‘I’m just saying if we open the unit and the floor’s covered in plastic sheeting we need to run.’

  Eloise shakes her head. ‘You have an overactive imagination.’

  I suppose she’s right, although that doesn’t stop the prickle at the back of my neck spreading across my shoulders and down my spine as we come to a halt outside unit 39. It’s the same feeling I used to get in the police when I had to break into the house of someone who hadn’t been seen for some time. If you were lucky, or unlucky depending on how you viewed it, the smell once you’d put in the door would tell you that you had a body to deal with. However, if the occupant was recently deceased, or it was freezing cold and the heating hadn’t been on, you’d get no such warning. Then you’d cautiously wander from room to room, expecting to stumble across a corpse but still not be prepared for it when you did.

  Eloise unlocks the padlocks either side of the unit and places them on the ground. ‘After you.’

  ‘Why do I have to open it?’

  ‘Because you were rude about my driving.’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as factually accurate.’ I bend down and grab the rust-flecked handle at the bottom of the roller door, then pause, glancing back at her. ‘Ready?’

  ‘I really don’t understand what you’re expecting to find.’

  The door clatters as I heave it up, the harsh rattle of the metal bouncing from the concrete floor and along the corridor. I stare inside.

  ‘Well, not that,’ I eventually manage to say.

  Eloise: 22 days until Isabella Garrante book launch

  I’m standing in front of another entrance to a room long ago and far away. Pinter didn’t have a storage unit; he had a locked door in his mother’s Victorian house: classic horror-movie stuff.

  Mother Pinter is out at Bridge, closely surveilled by a member of our team with enough grey hair to pass as a geriatric player. Pinter himself is at a bar on the other side of town; he’s at a writers’ meeting, the participants of which we are also closely watching for their own safety.

  Paula and I have poked around most of the house. It’s old money: large rooms, high ceilings, ancient dusty furniture. A closed door sends the hairs on the back of my neck upright. With expert finesse and a handy bunch of skeleton keys, Paula ‘picks’ the lock, and the door swings open.

  The room is a large library, bookcases on each wall organised alphabetically, by subject. It’s beautiful and immaculately clean; sliding sash windows covered in gauze cast a honeyed flush across a chaise longue upholstered in a glorious amethyst velvet. If I didn’t know the room belonged to a psychopathic killer, I would be enamoured enough to linger. The large, leather-topped desk is covered in stacked piles of paper and neatly labelled box files of manuscripts. Closer inspection reveals angry slashes of red over split infinitives and random apostrophes, and frustrated notations of ‘No, No, No!’

  Then the absolute kicker. A tap on my shoulder from my DS.

  ‘Look.’

  I look.

  Paula has drawn back a railed tapestry to reveal an incident board not dissimilar to the one back at the nick, and I realise just how good at my job I am. It’s an obsessive shrine paying unsolicited homage through a carefully curated dossier on one person. Me. Or the me Pinter believes me to be. I’ve hooked him. Now to reel him in . . .

  ‘Eloise.’ Garth’s voice penetrates the fog and I see his hazel eyes puckered in concern.

  I’m crouched, hands on knees, breathing raggedly. Get a grip, woman. ‘Bloody hell.’ I straighten up and step inside the unit. ‘Quick, get the lights on and shut the door.’

  Garth follows me, flicking on the overhead strip light before pulling the roller door nearly to the ground.

  ‘What just happened?’ he asks.

  ‘Just felt a bit winded all of a sudden,’ I offer, not meeting his eye. ‘What the actual fuck is this?’

  His attention turns to the scene before us. Fortunately, he’s easily distracted.

  The whole space is set up like a police incident room. There’s a functional desk towards the back wall, with an overhead lamp beside neat piles of papers. The chair is between the back wall and the desk, offering the seated person a view out over the unit. I wander over to the desk, edge myself around to the chair and plonk myself down. The walls to the left and the right are covered in papers, drawings, maps, arrows. I can make out at least three distinct cases on the left-hand wall, but the right-hand wall appears to be dedicated to one, lone mystery. Garth wanders over, and my initial thought is confirmed.

  ‘Tracey.’

  I can see why the desk is positioned this way — I wouldn’t want my back to the door either. The rear wall has a kitchen bench on which sit a kettle and the makings for hot drinks next to a sink. A mini fridge hums beneath and I can’t help but look inside: a couple of beers, a hardened nub of cheese and half a litre of milk, but thankfully no head in a jar. I reach in, unscrew the milk container and sniff. Still fresh. The incident room’s usual occupant, presumably Tama, has been here recently.

 

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