I strike nearly every red light on the way into town, people sitting in their cars cooking as the temperature rises. It takes me twenty-five minutes to get to the parking building, having survived all the Christchurch Christmas road rage. I drive up to the eighth floor, negotiating the narrow ramps as they wind upward between floors, some drivers taking them more carefully than I do, others treating it as a racecourse. I take the stairs down, breaking into a sweat, and pass a homeless man named Henry at the base of the stairs who tells me I’m a saint after I give him a couple of bucks. Henry has a Bible in his hand so maybe he really does have a keen eye for that kind of thing, or maybe it’s coming from the bottle of cheap vodka in his other hand. From there it’s only a two-minute walk to work. The sidewalks are full of grim-looking people all resigned to the day ahead, in office buildings, retail outlets, or sleeping under park benches. Some of them are waiting for Christmas, some of them excited, some of them probably not even aware of its approach. The sun keeps climbing. There is blue sky in every direction and the overwhelming sense we won’t be seeing any more clouds this year.
The accountant firm employs almost fifty people, and is one of the bigger and certainly more expensive ones in town—its prestige made obvious by the important-sounding partner names—Goodwin, Devereux & Barclay—and prominent location watching down over the city. It’s in one of the more modern Christchurch buildings, sharing it mostly with lawyers and insurance firms. Our company takes up the top three floors of fifteen—the biggest firm in the building. The foyer is throwing out cold air and people are lining up for the elevator. I take the stairs where the air smells stale and break into even more of a sweat.
I work on the thirteenth floor, where the view isn’t as good as the bosses’ above, but better than the lawyers’ below. I go through the early-morning hellos with a few people once I reach my floor, which takes longer this time of the year because people always seem to want to know what everybody else is doing for Christmas. The ones who ask the most seem to be the people with great plans.
Most of us are lucky enough to have our own office—with a few using cubicles. I’m one of the lucky ones, plus my office is at the end of a corridor that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic. It’s here I deal with taxes and not so much with people. I dump my satchel on my desk and slump in my seat and pull my already damp shirt away from my body. My office is big enough to fit a desk and a person sitting either side of it and not much more. Most spare wall space on the entire floor is covered in school drawings the parents have brought in from their kids—crayon-purple Christmas trees and dogs with seven legs reminding us all we’d rather be somewhere else but here—and my office is the same. I stare at a couple of the drawings Sam has done, taking a few minutes to cool down before throwing myself into the file I’ve been working on—the firm has been hired by a bottled water company, McClintoch Spring Water, searching for tax breaks. It’s a company whose advertising campaign used images of Jesus to make it a lot of money last year.
I meet Jodie for lunch at twelve thirty outside a café down The Strip, a line of café/bars that double as nightclubs at night, with indoor-outdoor flow and tables spilling out onto the sidewalks. I’m called “sir” because I’m almost thirty years old, but if I came here tonight I’d probably get asked to leave for being too old. The cafés are all at about 90 percent full, some people turning red in the sun, others sitting in the shade of giant umbrellas, the smell of food and cologne thickening the air. The waitresses are all wearing tight black T-shirts. Most of them have their hair pulled back in ponytails that bounce as they walk. On the other side of the road the Avon River is almost at a standstill, bugs attracted by the smell of stagnant river weed and a dead eel floating along belly-up.
We talk while we eat, the only subject the new house we’re trying to buy. Jodie picks at a chicken salad which is probably only chicken in name; she can’t seem to find any meat in it. I work at a plate of nachos, the food okay, not great, but priced as if it were the best in the city. Maybe we’re paying a premium to stare at the waitresses in their T-shirts.
The new house will have a spare room big enough for me to put a pool table in, and Jodie wants some aerobic equipment. We’ll probably use neither, but the fun part at this stage is the dreaming. A new house will be exciting for Sam too. But before that we still have to get through the excitement of Christmas. Sam is the perfect age for Christmas—she still believes in Santa.
The waitress comes by when both our mouths are full and asks how the meal is and neither of us can answer. She seems to take that as a good sign and moves on to the next table. It’s probably only a couple of degrees away from hitting thirty-five and the waitress is ready to melt into a fleshy puddle when one o’clock rolls around, the umbrellas in danger of catching alight. We pay the bill, and the waitress gives us the smile of the damned.
It’s only a five-minute walk to the bank. One side of the road is warm in the shade, the other almost white hot. The sidewalks are covered in melted chewing gum and teenagers on skateboards wearing loose clothes with hoodies, perfecting the rapist image kids these days love and clothes designers are making millions off. I wonder how hot it has to get before they take their hoodies off. We get stopped every hundred meters or so by people trying to convince us to sign up to save the whales, save the environment, solve world hunger. There’s tinsel hanging from streetlights and building frontages, decorated trees and fake snow on the window-display floors, plastic Santas and reindeer everywhere. People are rushing about on their lunch breaks trying to squeeze in some shopping, some carrying packages and gifts, others wearing lost looks on their faces.
The bank is pretty much slap bang in the middle of town, a tall building with the ground floor for the public and on the other floors—nobody really knows. It has air-conditioning and about fifty potted plants and a security guard who keeps glancing at his watch. We end up arriving early and are led to a group of comfortable chairs to kill time in. Nobody offers us anything to drink. There are racks full of banking brochures on the wall next to us, plenty of posters advertising interest rates; young families with new homes and new kids and big smiles is the image of choice—which is fine with us. But once you’ve seen one poster there isn’t much more to look at: just more floating and fixed interest rate packages and more smiles from people thrilled to be a slave to their mortgage. There are percentage symbols plastered everywhere.
Then, at thirteen minutes past one—two minutes until our appointment with the mortgage consultant—six men carrying shotguns walk calmly through the door.
chapter two
Crime is escalating. Domestic abuse, adolescent street racers running down innocent pedestrians, people stealing and killing—this is the norm in Christchurch, everyday acts happening in an everyday city. Crime escalates like every other statistic, like inflation, cost of living, it ebbs and flows along with gas prices and the real estate market. Same with the murder rate—it can’t be plotted and predicted on a graph, but it stays in line with other crime, a statistic, a percentage.
But this . . .
He’s not even sure what this is.
Detective Inspector Schroder brings the car to a stop. There are two unmarked patrol cars blocking off the entrance to the alleyway but he can still see the body beyond it. Detective Landry is leaning against one of the cars, jotting down notes and pausing occasionally to cough into his hand as the medical examiner conveys the details with as many hand gestures as he does words. Schroder gets out of the car and walks over.