Ngaire had thought that traveling up and down the country alone was bad. Going side by side with her superior officer was far worse. Now that a resolution seemed possible, DSS Harmond had plonked herself front and center of the Sam Andie murder investigation. Ngaire was still spinning from being sucked into Harmond’s wake turbulence.
The flights were taking a toll physically, as well. Even though the turboprops couldn’t get as high in the air as a jet, Ngaire’s ankles still protested the change in atmosphere by swelling. The edema made her feel clumsy like she was walking around on someone else’s legs.
“You’ve met this guy before,” the DSS said in the long taxi ride to the station. “Tell me what your impressions were.”
Ngaire stared out the car window at the fields rich with grass and dotted with animals. Her ears still buzzed from the plane ride, hearing engines that had ceased to thunder an hour before.
“Matthew Jamieson is conservative and confident,” she said. “He’s…” Ngaire faltered to a stop and tried to mimic the lost words, folding her arms around her shoulders and pulling herself into a stiff, tight knot.
“Contained?”
“Yes. And detached. Matthew talked about the troubles some of the men he ministers to experienced, but there was no sign of empathy, no emotion in his voice. He was robotic.” Ngaire paused and shook her head. “Or maybe just going through the motions long after he gave up caring.”
“What about Sam Andie? Did he say anything about knowing him?”
“He denied it, if that counts,” Ngaire said. “Otherwise, there wasn’t much reaction at all.”
“What are your feelings about the interview? Where would you like to focus your questions?”
Ngaire knew the focus would be beneficial in an hour or so but her mind was currently too tired to take advantage. To her credit, Harmond recognized the signs and backed off. Instead of seeking further advice, the DSS made notes to herself.
No matter that she wanted to veg out and think of nothing, after a few more minutes, Ngaire’s mind wandered back to the case and Matthew. Bob’s adamant statement that Matthew knew more than he’d admitted so far meshed so completely with her own thoughts, that Ngaire hadn’t questioned him too closely. Now, miles from the pressure of staring at Mr. Rickards across a narrow table, she wondered if the entire outburst wasn’t too easy. Lots of showmanship and little substance.
Pick, pick, pick. As though Ngaire’s brain was made of fingernails and Matthew’s potential guilt was a hardened scab. Each time she told herself firmly to push it aside, it would steal back to pursue its guilty pleasure. Pick, pick, pick.
At the base of her doubt was Shannon’s confession. To take on jail time for her father was an incredible sacrifice but in the framework of tightly knit families it made a horrible type of sense. To insist that she be put away for a crime that a teenage boy committed? Ngaire couldn’t understand the impetus required to make that decision.
They hit the sharp angles of the hills circling Dunedin and descended the steep old roads until the car coasted around a bend to the police station. Ngaire’s adrenal system suddenly sped into overdrive, pumping out so much adrenaline that she had to hold onto the door handle to stop herself from taking off in a run.
She closed her eyes, breathed in slowly and deeply through her nose, and reminded herself that there were times and places and this situation met none of those. Using the willpower born of long practice, she thrust the fears back into the hiding hole where they belonged.
“Ready?” DSS Harmond’s eyebrows were cocked in a quizzical expression.
“Yes,” Ngaire lied, “I’m ready.”
“Tell us about the night of August 18, 1981,” DSS Harmond said.
They’d moved quickly through the introductory part of Matthew’s interview. A good thing, Ngaire thought, judging by the pallor of the man’s cheeks. That he looked even worse than she felt, cheered her up enough to keep her buoyed through the initial questions. Reaching the meat of it early, she tensed, each muscle hardening into rock-hard stillness as she tried to catch every trace of expression, every nuance, every word.
Matthew Jamieson sighed and bent his head forward, rubbing his fingers lightly over his temples. A headache or stalling for time? If it was the latter, his acting skills had been honed up since she’d last laid eyes on him.
“It was a long time ago,” he hedged. “My memories of that day are hazy.”
“Try the best you can,” Harmond said, her tone encouraging. “If we need clarification, we’ll ask.”
“I don’t know what I was doing for most of the day,” Matthew said. “Hanging around home, most likely. It was just before school holidays, so I didn’t feel the need to fill up every day.”
Ngaire understood immediately. The holidays always offered such endless hours of fun and frivolity, that it seemed a waste to do anything leading up to them. Any small jobs or activities that would more usually be done after school or on the weekend could be stored up for the expanse of free time ahead.
Matthew leaned forward, elbows on the table, hand clasped in front of him. He stared at his interweaving fingers with a frown of concentration.
“It’s no use telling you about that day. Not until I tell you what happened two days earlier.” He looked up at Ngaire with eyes as sad as a basset hound and lips twisted in dismay. “First, I need to tell you about the night that George Kenton and Jessie Collingwood murdered Sam Andie.”
They caught up with him and Sam just as they drew close to the old warehouse. Jessie smashed a hand into Matthew’s right shoulder blade by way of greeting, then followed along with a knuckle punch to his left kidney.
“What are you doing out in public with a girl, fagboy?” Jessie said.
George popped his head between Sam and Matthew, armed with a grotesque smile that sent Matthew jerking to the side. Jessie slung his arm around Matthew’s neck and for two steps forward, they walked four abreast.
It was George that spotted it. Perhaps it was just the close proximity, or maybe he recognized Sam from back at school. Either way, his eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. He pushed back from the two of them, retching—either in pretense or in real distress—then ran two steps and flicked Jessie on the side of his head.
“What?”
“His girlfriend is a boy!” George cackled with falsetto delight while Jessie wrenched his arm back from Matthew’s neck and shoved him aside.
“Who’s a pretty boy, then?” Jessie cooed, sticking his face so close to Sam’s that he turned away with a flinch of disgust.
Matthew could understand, Jessie’s breath was rank. It smelled like his toothbrush was only use for cleaning the grouting. If he’d been in a cartoon, the sink lines would have wriggled like wavy snakes into a cloud bigger than his head.
“Oh, did we interrupt something, precious?” Jessie asked. He turned to look back at Matthew and then grabbed Sam’s arm to stop him walking forward. “Were the two of you on a date?”
His voice climbed through the registers, cracking on a high note for the final word. Matthew felt his heart starting to pump at double-time. He’d heard the same false interrogation masking the real disgust before. In the playground before a fist drove into his face and a boot drove into his knee. On the pavement, walking home, just before a textbook whacked him in the face from Jessie, merrily cycling past.
Where Matthew would have retreated, looking to save himself as much pain as possible, Sam turned and got in Jessie’s face. He had three inches on the boy, most of those heels, but still offering enough of a physical intimidation that Jessie took a step back. Matthew went to Sam’s side, joining him in a united front. A thrill of the unexpected ran in a quick shudder through his body. Perhaps, this time, he would reign supreme.
Jessie’s leading foot moved back to join its partner--a simple sign of retreat. Matthew felt the strength of victory surge through his body. It was possible! They could intimidate the bully boys into leaving them alone.
Then George giggled.
Jessie’s face twisted into a slew of rage, and he powered forward. Like a full back in a rugby scrum, he drove from the thighs and toppled Matthew to the ground.
As fist after fist crunched into his face, breaking his nose, crushing his lips against his teeth until they burst like rain-fattened worms under a shoe on the unyielding pavement, Matthew’s sense of victory faded into resigned defeat.
Take your beating, he thought as another impact burst his vision into a blur of white light.
Then Jessie was being pulled off Matthew. Sam stood in front of him, pushing a solid hand into Jessie’s chest. “You get the fuck away from here,” he said, his voice a low growl that was completely at odds with his feminine dress. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave this kid alone.”
Desire and shame fought a path through Matthew’s body. Someone he admired was sticking up for him but also revealing that they thought of him as a child. He dragged himself into a sitting position, then used the wall of the warehouse entrance door to pull himself to his feet. If he wanted to be thought of as a man he should act like one.
“Where do you think you’re going?” George said, advancing. Like a true bully, he dismissed Sam as too large a target and zeroed in on the weedy runt instead.
“Fuck off, Kenton,” Matthew said. The thrill of the swear word puffed out his chest in pride. At his side, his fingers curled into a fist. “Run on home to your fat momma.”
When George aimed a punch at his face, Matthew sidestepped—his body following the command too slowly to entirely escape the blow, but enough to lessen the impact. While George was still off-balance from the swing, Matthew threw his own punch into the side of the boy’s face. A blast of pain from protesting knuckles lit his hand up as though on fire but he ignored it to draw back and throw another.
George staggered back, holding his hands to his bleeding nose, his eyes wide with surprise and pain. “You little shit,” he said, pulling one hand away long enough to spit blood onto the pavement. “You’ll pay for that.”
It looked like his payment might be a way off, though, as George backed up another step. Matthew swung his body in beside Sam again, facing down the real threat, side-by-side.
“It’s nice that you found someone as faggy as you,” Jessie sneered. Sam stepped forward and pushed a hand flat against his chest, walking him back two paces.
“You need to get out of here,” Sam warned. Jessie looked down at the concrete path, then ducked down and threw a swift punch at Sam’s crotch.
Maybe it was an off-center shot, or maybe the strapping the Sam wore to smooth out his panty line held off the impact of the blow. Whatever the cause, he didn’t crumple into a ball as Jessie expected, instead leaning forward to grab the boy by the throat.
“Don’t you know,” Sam whispered, his lips brushing against Jessie’s ear, “that doesn’t work so well on girls?”
He pulled Jessie’s head down toward one stocking-cladded knee, busting his nose open so that blood sprayed in a gruesome crimson cloud. Sam mimicked pushing up sleeves, then crouched lower into a fighter’s stance.
“Come on, then,” he said, ducking his face lower to make sure he caught Jessie’s eye. Matthew stepped forward beside Sam, forming the same gesture but feeling like a child copying his dad.
Then George rushed up behind them, having circled back unnoticed. He had half a cinder block in his hand, broken lengthwise in some previous battle or game.
Sam turned toward the new threat just as George whacked down the concrete block with his full body weight behind it. The edge crunched into the side of Sam’s head and caught the side of his jaw.
Sam dropped like a ragdoll, contemptuously discarded by its owner.
George stared with horrified fascination until Jessie smacked him on the shoulder to draw his attention, and then the two of them turned and sprinted away. Matthew knelt beside his friend, his mentor, until a wave of nausea had him turning away to vomit.
When he twisted back, relief flooded through his body. Sam was pushing himself up from the hard ground with his arms, a trickle of blood flowing down the side of his face. Matthew held out a hand to help him, then Sam’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped down again.
Matthew reached out a shaking hand, pressing it to Sam’s neck. He kept it there while the evening sky turned dark, waiting for what seemed like hours—never feeling the thump of a pulse.
“What did you do?” Ngaire asked when Matthew had fallen silent for so many minutes that he needed prompting to start again. “What happened next?”
“I got the car home so that Dad wouldn’t be angry,” Matthew said. He swiped angrily at a tear that trailed down the side of his face. “I was scared that if he saw it was missing, I’d get another hiding on top of the beating I already had.”
Ngaire grimaced and ducked her head down, trying too late to hide it. The amount of effort that the team had expended since the grisly discovery on the hills, all sorted in seconds from the secrets hidden away in Matthew’s memory.
Instead of feeling vindicated or pleased, Ngaire just felt tiredness pulling at her bones. A half-hearted confession against two teenage boys who couldn’t be cross-examined? The case might rest, but it wouldn’t be resolved.
As the silence stretched out again, DSS Harmond snipped it short. “But Matthew, Sam Andie wasn’t found in a warehouse. His body was dug up in the Cashmere Hills. How did it get from one place to the other?”
“I don’t know.”
Harmond exchanged a glance with Ngaire who took the baton she’d been passed.
“Matthew, you said that you couldn’t explain what happened on the night that George and Jessie died without telling what happened to Sam Andie.” She waited for a beat. “Can you tell us about that day now?”
“I think they’d moved the body,” Matthew said, answering the earlier question as though Ngaire hadn’t spoken at all. “They must have, mustn’t they?”
He glanced across the table, and when Ngaire nodded he mimicked her gesture. “Yeah, they must have.”
“So you didn’t know that Sam had been moved?”
Matthew shook his head. “Not until—” He broke off to clear his throat, growing thick with mucus. “Not until I went back there and saw he was gone. I guess they were covering their tracks.”
“Did you ask them where they’d taken him?”
“No. I never got the chance.”
After another gap of silence, Ngaire tapped on the table to draw Matthew’s attention back. “Matthew, did it ever occur to you to call an ambulance?”
A long, slow shake of the head. The despair on the man’s face made Ngaire’s compassion flare up until it became overwhelming. She stretched a hand across the table to him but his lip curled, and he snatched his away.
“It was evident that Sam was dead. An ambulance wouldn’t do any good.”
“But he was your friend, Matthew. How could you leave his body in that warehouse? Laying out in the open, like trash?”
The shades came down across his face again, shop window closed, no emotional response. “I needed to get the car back home. If I called the ambulance, it would have turned into a big saga. Better to pretend that it never happened at all.”
“But you couldn’t pretend that, could you?” Harmond said, her voice so soft Ngaire had to look to reassure herself it came from the same woman. “That’s why you went back.”
Matthew wiped his runny nose with the back of his sleeve, reverting to a child’s gesture. “I wanted to make sure that someone had found him,” he said. “I watched the news for signs of him every time it came on. I couldn’t leave him out there forever.”
“When you went to check, you bumped into George and Jessie again?” Ngaire asked.
With a curl of his lip, Matthew said, “Yes. They were there. I think they may have gone back the day before to move him because there was no trace of Sam in the car.”
“Their parent’s car, or did one of the boys have his own?”
“It was Jessie’s mom’s car.” Matthew gave a quick, ruthless grin. “He said that automatically when people asked. I don’t think he understood how much that told us.”
“What do you mean?”
Matthew ducked his head down, so his fringe formed a shield to hide his eyes. “His dad was unemployed. When he said his mom’s car instead of his parents, it showed everyone exactly who had the pants in that family.”
Ngaire shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. What he said echoed the power play between her own parents, growing up.
“They were looking around the floor, inside and outside the entrance where we’d been standing. George had an old plastic Coke bottle full of soap and water while Jessie had a scrubbing brush.” Matthew tilted his head back and pushed his fringe back from his forehead with elegant fingers. “I could see the spots where they’d scrubbed. Some of it was my blood, though they wouldn’t have known that.”
Another lengthy silence followed. Where the words had gushed forth at first, now they were nearing the apex of the events, they’d dried to a faltering trickle.
“Who was there?” Ngaire tried. She wanted to ask about Bob and Shannon but couldn’t afford to place words into his mouth.
“George Kenton and Jessie Collingwood,” Matthew answered before drifting off into another dream. DSS Harmon slammed her hand, palm down on the table and he jumped, then rubbed at his temples.
“Do you need a doctor?” Ngaire asked. “We can postpone the remainder of the interview if you’re in pain.”
She judged from the quick poke in her thigh that Harmond wasn’t in agreement. Never was Matthew—he shook his head.
“I’d rather get this over with and go home,” he said. “Emilia will be getting worried.”
Matthew pulled his hand back down from his face and stared at the back of it as though it were a foreign species. “Did you hear that campaign they had a few years back?” He looked up to see Ngaire and Harmond staring blankly back at him. “They said It gets better.”
Ngaire nodded as the memory slotted into place. “Sure, for LGBT teens.”
“It gets better,” Matthew repeated with bitterness oozing from every pore. “What a crock that was. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever will.”
Harmond frowned and looked from Ngaire to Matthew, puzzled. She bit the corner of her lip and then pulled the interview back onto the rails. “Just walk us step-by-step through the events of that day. You said that George and Jessie were scrubbing the bloodstains off the concrete floor.”
“That’s what they were finishing up doing when I arrived,” Matthew agreed. “I don’t know how long they’d been there. The piece of cinder block that George had used on Sam was nowhere I could see.”
Ngaire wondered if that had been recovered with Sam’s body, or even if it was still in a dirt hole on the side of the hill. Dr. Gangarry’s voice whispered in her ear: it’ll be a bitch to sort out the evidence from the detritus. Not that it would matter. This many years down the track they wouldn’t be able to DNA-type the blood let alone recover fingerprints. If there’d been any, to begin with. A long shot, given the porous nature of cement.
“I wasn’t sure they’d seen me when I first walked in. The two of them were huddled on the floor, George down on his knees scrubbing. I got such a shock when I first saw them that I hurried over to the center lift well and hid around the corner. It took me a while to work out what they were doing when I looked back.”
The DSS leaned forward, eyes alight with interest. “What were they doing?”
“Just moving random shit around.” Matthew shrugged. “They were swapping out the blocks and dirt that had been on top of the piles along the wall and shoving them further down. I guessed they weren’t certain what had blood or fingerprints on or not, so were moving everything that had been on the surface, out of the way.”
“Wouldn’t that put more fingerprints back on them?”
Matthew smiled at Harmond. “They were wearing driving gloves in the middle of summer. I guessed it wasn’t because they were cold.” He leaned to one side suddenly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with urgent swallowing. When his apparent bout of sickness passed, he straightened up and continued.
“I leaned back against the wall to wait it out. I figured if I walked past George and Jessie again they had a good chance of spotting me, whereas if I sat back, they’d eventually finish and bugger off.”
Matthew wiped his lip with the edge of his forefinger, as though ridding himself of the taste of something nasty.
“Then Shannon walked in. She looked surprised as hell to see anybody there and tried to run back out. George and Jessie saw her, though.” He paused, once again wiping his lip with the side of his finger. “I don’t know what it was about her that signaled she was linked with Sam.”
Matthew looked up, his eyes glistening with unshed tears and the tendons on his neck tensed, popping out in stark relief against the pale flesh. “They knew, though, I could tell that at once. They chased her down like she was a dog, slamming into the back of her and dropping her to the ground. Her head hit the concrete with a wet smash.”
Once again, Matthew’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, up and down. He held a shaking hand up to his head like a shield against a bright sun.
“I thought they’d killed her, too, with that sound. I thought her head must have smashed into pieces on the ground. I couldn’t—”
Matthew started rocking back and forth, wrapping his arms around his chest and digging each tensed fingertip into the opposite upper arm. As Ngaire watched, the skin turned bright crimson from the force, the short nails punching into his skin.
“I couldn’t let them get away with it. Not again.” Matthew’s whole body started shaking while he kept rocking, back and forth. Back and forth.
“I ran across to the piles of rubbish and grabbed up the first thing my hands found. It was a lid to an old drum, I think. A metal plate flaking with rust. I ran up to them and slammed it first into Jessie’s head, then into George’s. Before Jessie could recover, I smashed it into his face again. It was still bruised and swollen from the other night…”
Matthew suddenly unlocked his arms and leaned to the side, throwing up with one hand braced against the table and the other clinging to the back of his chair. He spat afterward and turned back with a sweating sickly look on his face, then immediately turned to throw up again.
“We’ll get you the doctor,” Ngaire said, but the DSS put a restraining hand on her arm.
“Matthew? What did you do?”
“I kept hitting them until I couldn’t hold the metal anymore. George and Jessie were both down on the ground by then, so I kicked them in the guts a few times to keep them there.”
“Ma’am, I really think we should call a doctor,” Ngaire said, the sweet and sour tang of vomit rising into the air. “He’s not well.”
Harmond didn’t even turn to look at her. She’d half-risen over the table, palms flat down, supporting her upper body to lean closer and closer to Matthew. He flinched back, his forehead slick with sweat, a line of spit strung from the edge of his lip down to the back of his hand.
“Tell me what you did.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Matthew cried out. The force of the call used up the last of his energy, and he slumped forward onto the table, as dirty and disheveled as a used cleaning rag.
“I didn’t kill them,” he repeated as he cried into the table. “But I did tell Shannon what they’d done.”