Death on Demand by Paul Thomas

Author:Paul Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: NZ, Crime, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9781869712730
Publisher: Hodder Moa
Published: 2012-02-29T11:00:00+00:00

There was a driver waiting for him. Ihaka dropped him off in town and headed out along the foreshore motorway.

To Ihaka Wellington meant sagging skies the colour of birdshit and pedestrians leaning into the wind as if they were entering a ruck. People were always saying you can’t beat Wellington on a good day, and this was obviously what they meant: a perfect sky, the harbour as flat and inviting as the crema on an espresso, dry warmth, crisp light. Too nice a day to be working, he thought. He should be in a restaurant down on the waterfront, or a little café out Eastbourne way, having lunch with Miriam Lovell instead of heading over the hill to see a mother whose kids had been clubbed to death like seals.

He liked the way Wellington branched out from the scraps of flat land between the hills and the sea, snaking up the gullies and along the ridges, pushing into the elements. It must have taken cussedness and vision to impose a city on this unruly geography. Auckland looked as if it just grew, like weeds.

He went past Petone and through the Hutt, following the river like the joggers and dog-walkers. A few years ago a woman went for a walk along this stretch of river. She had people coming for lunch so her family knew something was wrong when she wasn’t back in good time. They found her under a tree, strangled – another pathetic sex crime. The guy who did it claimed he’d blacked out. It was amazing how many murders have been committed by people who claimed to have been unconscious at the time. In the midst of life, there is death. Even here, on the riverbank where mothers push their prams.

He drove over the Rimutakas to Greytown, aka Gaytown. It had been just another zombified little country town until a few gays from Wellington jazzed it up. Now people came up from Wellington for brunch at the cafés and restaurants along the main drag or a bed and breakfast stay-over.

Sheila Duckmanton ran a B and B in what used to be the family home, a pleasant villa in half an acre of lawn and flowerbeds backing onto a sports ground. It was business as usual, although to look at her you wouldn’t have thought she’d pick herself up from one death blow, let alone a combination. She was petite and fine-featured – the children had inherited her looks – with prematurely white hair scraped back into a little old lady bun. It didn’t take Ihaka long to realize that appearances were deceptive.

She offered him a cup of tea. He said he was fine, but she made him one anyway. They sat out on the veranda, him in a wicker chair that was more comfortable than it looked, her in a swing seat. Ihaka suspected she was going to spend a lot of time out there, swinging to and fro, tracking the disintegration of her simple dream of home and family.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.