him.

‘It’s cheaper to upgrade,’ he says, ‘than get this thing fixed. Plus it’ll be away for a few weeks. What did you do to it, anyway?’

‘It fell in the bath.’

‘Yeah — that’ll do it. Anyway, this thing is obsolete.’

“I bought it eighteen months ago.’

‘Yeah, like I said, it’s obsolete.’

He shows me a range of cellphones and I pick out one that

looks like it shouldn’t confuse me too much. He sets it up so my old number will work on it, and warns me it could take between one and two hours to become active.

‘Where do I recognise you from?’ he asks, handing back my

credit card.

I shrug. ‘Beats me.’

He slowly shakes his head. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you,’ he says.

I’m sure he has too — probably on TV yesterday when I was

sitting in the back of an ambulance. We finish up and I let him get back to watching the hairdresser’s.

The police station is ten storeys of concrete block and glass

that was out of date around the same time it was built. I park out on the street and feed the meter before walking up the steps to the foyer. There isn’t much going on at ground-floor level, just a few people waiting in a queue to make complaints. I sign in at a desk; the process is simple enough since I’m expected upstairs.

I press the up button and a moment later the elevator arrives. I hit the button for the fourth floor, and the elevator comes to a stop on the first floor and I have company. A guy in overalls, thirtyish, carrying a bucket and mop.

‘I’m the cleaner,’ he says, and he grins at me, showing me all his teeth. I smile back at him, and the elevator hits the fourth floor and the doors open. I step out, and the janitor follows. We walk a few paces before Carl Schroder sees us and comes over.

‘Can I get you a coffee, Detective Schroder?’ the janitor asks him.

‘I’m fine, Joe. Thanks, though.’

The cleaner walks away and I watch him go before turning

back to Schroder. I’ve known Carl for many years. In another

lifetime we worked the same cases, dealt with the same problems.

We used to be pretty good friends, but it’s obvious he doesn’t really want me here. He leads me over to a table to a bunch of forms and asks me to sign them. He tells me the crime scene has been released, and I ask him how the investigation is going, and he says it’s going okay. He doesn’t elaborate on that. Just says it’s okay and nothing else, which means he either doesn’t want to tell me or things are going badly.

‘Sorry, Tate, I just don’t have the time to give you any

information. Finding those bodies, Jesus, you couldn’t have

picked a worse time.’

‘Who for? Them or you?’

He exhales heavily. ‘It’s this fucking Carver case. Man, it’s like every step we take this guy is taking two steps. I don’t know what the hell it is, but we’re struggling. Christ, we’re so understaffed, I don’t know, we just need more manpower. It’s that simple.’

‘You offering me a job?’

‘Good one, Tate. You’re even funnier than I remember.

Especially after last night’s performance.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re slipping. It looked bad, man, really bad. Friends in the department? Jesus, why’d you say that?’

‘What are you …’ But then it comes to me. I run my hand

over my face and pinch my chin. ‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah. You got that right.’

‘She stitched me up, huh?’

‘There’s a copy if you wanna take a look. Media room’s free.’

The media room is big enough to hold four people if none of

them is overweight, and its walls are lined with computers and monitors. News reports are kept as part of the database involved in ongoing cases; those that go to air are stored on hard drives.

Schroder cues it up.

‘It was on this morning,’ he says. ‘They played it at seven

o’clock, eight and nine. They’re probably waiting till twelve to play it again if they don’t have anything more.’

I’m standing next to my car, coming forward to meet the

reporters. From their perspective, they couldn’t have picked a better time to film me. From mine, they couldn’t have picked

a worse one. There is blood on my shirt and on my face, and

pieces of what I guess might be bone or brain matter in my hair.

My skin is pale and sallow and there are dark smudges beneath my eyes. I look like I might have been one of the finds in the coffins, and now I know where the Telecom guy recognised me from.

The reporter is talking to me, and I’m talking back, but you

can’t hear any of what I’m saying because the conversation has been muted. All you can hear is Casey Horwell’s voiceover as

they move from a shot of me outside my house to scenes of the

graveyard. The shots go back and forth as she talks.

… used to be a detective for the Christchurch police, but for the last two years has been struggling as a private investigator. He offered to speak to us outside his house where he filled us in on some aspects to the case, but when we asked him why he was coming home and not being held in custody until the killing of Bruce Alderman was further investigated, he was unsure how to answer.

The interview is still showing me talking. But there are no

words. Just the chitchat of me asking them to move their van,

telling them I have no comments, and whatever else I said to get rid of them, but it looks like we’re sharing an in-depth discussion.

Then I disappear from the frame, and Casey Horwell is standing there, the only background is her van, and I bet they pulled over the moment they got around the next corner to film her.

Two years ago the man linked to killing Theodore Tate’s

daughter disappeared and has never been seen again, and though the investigation is still open it appears nobody is making any effort to learn what really happened. The man’s disappearance led to Detective Tate being dismissed from the police. Last night Bruce Alderman was violently killed inside Theodore Tate’s office and again it looks like he is being dismissed. One can’t help but wonder what forces are in place to allow a man like this to still be out on the streets instead of being held accountable for his actions…

The segment cuts back to me, still standing in front of my car.

I know what’s coming up before I hear it. It’s the line. My line.

And she has placed it perfectly.

I still have friends in the department, they do what they can.

The segment stops and Schroder turns off the monitor.

‘That was bullshit, Carl.’

‘You don’t think I know that? Horwell’s a classic case of

somebody who fucked a promising career and is grabbing at

straws trying to get it back. But you’re slipping, Tate. Two years ago you’d never have made that mistake. And it doesn’t matter

what you said, she made you look guilty, man, just getting out of your car with all that blood on you — you looked like a monster.

Can you imagine the shit that’d be raining down right now if you were still a cop?’

I can feel the anger building up inside. “I know, I know,’ I say, and Carl is the wrong person to be angry at. I’m the one who

messed up. ‘But what was I to do? Just drive past and not even go home?’

He walks me back to the elevator. ‘That’s exactly what you

could have done. Did you even think of that?’

‘You still on the case?’ I ask.

‘Landry’s taking over. I’m still on the Carver.’

‘Has he identified the woman who was in the water?’

‘Yeah. An elderly woman who died and was buried last week.’

‘And the coffin? When you identified her, you pulled up the

corresponding coffin, right? What was inside?’

‘Why do I think you already know the answer to this?’

‘Something Bruce Alderman said.’

‘Yeah. We got a girl who went missing six days ago.’