Chapter Six

Molly had risen early and had the first shower, taking longer than usual to get ready. She had slept better than the night before but still felt like she’d barely hit the pillow when the alarm went at 630.

Now sitting at the dining room table, she sipped her tea and stayed quiet. Dan watched her as he made toast for them both and brought it to the table. He spread his first slice with margarine and Vegemite, took a bite and sipped his own tea.

‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ he suggested, ‘have a lazy day at home?’

Molly didn’t reply, just shook her head.

‘You can go for a walk,’ he continued, ‘watch crappy soap operas, have a Nana nap...’

‘No.’ She looked across the table at him and smiled a weary smile. ‘I’m fine, just tired. I’ve got stuff to do at work anyway.’

‘Up to you.’ He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘The offer’s there. I won’t even dock your pay.’

She grinned at him now. ‘Considering I do the pay, that would be very hard for you to do anyway, sunshine.’

‘Hmmm.’ He steepled his fingers and affected a bad German accent. ‘Ve haf our vays, fraulein.’

‘Whatever.’ She spread homemade blueberry jam on her toast. ‘The place would fall apart without me there. You and Mike would end up running round like headless chooks.’

 

Mike had gone straight from home to an early appointment in Onehunga, where he took a statement from a guy who’d been involved in a car crash a week ago. He had been crashed into by an old lady in a supermarket car park, causing moderate damage to both cars and, he claimed, whiplash and back pain to himself.

As far as Mike could see he was trying to milk some compensation, but he took the statement and committed the guy to a story, then took a couple of photos for the file.

From there he’d taken the Southwestern Motorway south across the Manukau Harbour, getting off at Manukau and dropping the car in the mall carpark. He took a manila folder with him and crossed over to the Manukau District Court, making his way through the usual throngs of criminals and deadbeats hanging around outside-including defence lawyers, who he considered to be worse than most of their clients.

The District Court office was busy as usual and he waited in line for 15 minutes behind lawyers filing legal aid claims, members of the public wanting to know what courtroom they had to go to, and a couple of cops getting search warrants sworn. Finally he got to the counter and told the habitually-disinterested clerk that he had some affidavits to swear.

She sighed heavily and called a number of different extensions, trying to find someone to come and do it.

‘Can’t you do it?’ Mike asked impatiently, and she sighed heavily again.

‘No, I’m not trained.’

‘How much training does it take? It’s just an affidavit.’

‘Look, it’s got to be a deputy registrar or above, okay? I’m only a 1.’

‘A what?’

‘A 1.’

‘What do you have to be?’

She sighed again, as if explaining this to a child.

‘A 2, of course.’

‘Oh.’ Mike shook his head in wonder. ‘Of course, how silly of me.’

He waited another five minutes while she found someone who could actually help, quickly swore four affidavits of service and filed them with their accompanying documents. All related to notices served on debtors in civil claims that he’d served in the last two days.

‘This one was only issued yesterday,’ the deputy registrar noted as she checked one of the affidavits, casting an appraising eye at him over her glasses.

‘And served last night.’ He gave her a big grin. ‘Early bird catches the worm.’

He left her to mull that and went back the way he’d come. As he crossed the front courtyard towards the steps he saw his ex-wife heading towards him, a large coffee in one hand, trailing a trolley bag behind her and chatting to a young guy who was probably a junior at her firm. Penny saw him too and held his gaze as the gap closed.

‘Why the face?’ she asked waspishly, ‘seen a ghost?’

‘No,’ he retorted, ‘just a witch.’

Her jaw dropped and Mike walked past, silently grinning to himself. It was always nice to get one over her, and too rarely did it happen for his liking. If it had been a rugby field, he’d have pumped his fists and let out a whoop, but the Manukau District Court was not the place for whooping.

 

‘He did what?!’ Dan exploded into the phone.

Even across the office, Molly could hear Buck’s voice on the other end, trying to explain. Dan listened for another minute without interrupting and she waited for him to explode again.

When he didn’t, she got more worried. Dan was quick to anger but also quick to come back down, and usually his fits didn’t last too long. However, he also had another side, where a switch tripped somewhere internally and set off a countdown device. He would start what she thought of as a long slow burn until finally he blew.

Molly had only seen it a couple of times, but she was pretty sure she was about to see a repeat performance.

The phone conversation ended abruptly and Dan turned to her. His eyes were dark and focussed, his face pinched with anger.

A stream of vitriol burst forth from beneath the moustache and she waited him out. Eventually he calmed down enough to relay what Buck had just told him.

‘That useless, vindictive mongrel,’ he spat, ‘he’s going to bury the file and nobody’ll even look at it!’

He stood and strode to the kitchenette, returning with a plastic barrel of biscuits. He took the lid off and held them out to Molly. She took a cameo crème and nibbled the end of it tidily. He angrily snapped at one too and dropped crumbs down his front, devouring it and returning for another.

He sat at his desk and fumed, his forehead a mass of lines and his fists clenching subconsciously.

‘You know,’ he finally declared, ‘I knew, I always knew, right from the start, that Kennedy hated me. Even from the first day I had the misfortune of working with him, I could sense he didn’t like me. The longer I worked with him, the more it became apparent. Even after everything went down...’

He trailed off for a moment, flashing back to an episode a few years ago, before snapping back to the present again.

‘Even after all that, I thought I knew how low he would go. Even after he tried to stop me from getting a license, I thought I knew. But now?’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘This is something else. Actively obstructing an investigation?’ He shook his head again. ‘Something else. What a disgrace.’

Molly nibbled some more of her biscuit, nodding in silent agreement.

‘There’s not much we can do about it though, is there?,’ she said, ‘he calls the shots. We’ve passed it on to the Police and it’s up to him what he does with it, isn’t it?’

Dan considered the biscuit barrel long and hard, deciding against another one for now.

‘Unfortunately, yes. He calls the shots, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.’ Molly turned back to her computer, waiting. She could feel Dan’s eyes on her.

‘Except look into it ourselves,’ he said.