Chapter One
It was still dark, but already the road was a movie- reel of headlights. Fortunately for Ramesh, the flow of cars was almost exclusively in the opposite direction — workers from outlying towns making their way into Auckland ahead of the morning congestion.
It had been some time since he’d travelled north, let alone so early, and he felt the same buzz in his belly he used to feel as a kid when his family would head to Tāwharanui for the summer holidays. Leaving while it was still dark was all part of the thrill, as if his family was making a secret Sound- of-Music escape.
He smiled to himself. Back then he used to wish they were escaping the strange new country with its wet weather, pale- faced girls and bullying boys.
Ramesh’s stomach growled, the faint nausea of an early wake- up making way for hunger. Some of the ‘short eats’ his mother used to prepare for the long car journey would have gone down a treat right now — the maalu paans, dal vada, her famous vegetable- stuffed roti.
His boss had called at 5.45 am. ‘A homicide in Mangawhai. Need you to head up the team, Bandara.’
Mangawhai and murder — a contradiction in terms. Even for a seasoned detective like himself, who knew that bad things could happen anywhere, to anyone, the coastal town some eighty minutes north of Auckland felt like an incongruous backdrop for such a serious crime.
The most recent wave of Covid had seen a tranche of officers off sick,so a team was being cobbled together from surrounding districts. Pivoting was something organisations around the country, including the police, were getting used to.
Ramesh had thrown a bunch of clothes and his toothbrush into a bag and was on the road just after six. Timing was everything in a homicide investigation. And if he was to be heading up the team, he wanted to start on the right footing, especially since most of the officers would be new to him.
Seventy- five minutes later a road sign welcomed him to Magical Mangawhai.
Magical Mangawhai. The signage felt fairytalesque, as if commuters were about to pass through some secret curtain, which would filter out the mundanity of household chores, tax returns and political polls.
Fairytales weren’t without their villains though, Ramesh mused. Even if they usually ended with everyone living happily ever after.
7.18 am. He’d made good time.
He slowed as he approached the small bridge taking travellers over the estuary into town, turning just before he reached the crossing, onto Black Swamp Road.
To his left, the dark expanse of water was just beginning to breathe, its shoreline finding hazy definition with the rising sun. To his right, grey- green farmland glittered as sunlight sliced through tiny spheres of frost.
Tarmac quickly gave way to gravel, shaking Ramesh out of his mellow, Coast- FM mood. Fortunately, it was only ten minutes on the rutted road before his GPS announced that he had reached his destination.
The entrance to the driveway was cluttered with a harlequin assortment of signs hammered into the ground.
Eric Stratton Dream Designs.
Lumsden Ltd.
Site Safety: Hard hats to be worn at all times.
No access for unauthorised personnel.
For a fleeting moment, Ramesh wondered whether an overzealous cop had called in a homicide, when perhaps it was nothing more than an unfortunate building accident. Some hard hat negligently left in the ute.
He decided to park on the road, even though the house under construction was perched high on a hill; he didn’t want his tyres confounding other tracks on the dirt driveway.
It was cold out. And quiet. Just the sound of his boots crunching on the frozen grass as he made his way up the steep incline. He’d forgotten how quiet the countryside could be. Or rather, how noisy the city was, with its constant, low- grade cacophony of sirens, leaf blowers, barking dogs and reversing rubbish trucks.
Halfway up the hill he stopped and turned a slow 360 degrees, the elevation already allowing for a view. He breathed in deeply, the cold air stinging his lungs as he took in the colossal beige dune in the distance, the silvering ocean, and the lush apron of farmland scattered with mānuka and kānuka. How he used to hate those trees — their fuzzy shape, dull foliage and sinister black bark. Yet at some point they’d woven themselves with affection into his New Zealandness. It was not the first time an affinity with something in his adopted home had crept up on him unawares.
He took a few moments to appreciate the idyllic spot, knowing that once he reached the crime scene, the place would forever feel different. Murder had a way of staining the landscape. The map of Auckland he held in his head was increasingly marked out by murders.
Chapter Two
Four vehicles were parked in the driveway — two utes, a patrol car and an ambulance.
Ramesh cursed. Building sites were tricky places when it came to gathering evidence. A dirt driveway was a rare bonus in terms of the story it could tell. But only so long as all non- essential vehicles were kept off it.
He lifted the cordon and ducked under the POLICE plastic.
A family of quails scuttled across the sand into the undergrowth like a bustle of high- heeled women, their feathered fascinators quivering.
‘Morning,’ he said, stretching out a hand to an acne- scarred constable positioned just inside the cordon.
The young man hesitated; Ramesh was not in uniform.
‘DS Ramesh Bandara from Auckland.’
The fellow’s face relaxed. ‘Constable Chris Hōhepa.’
He tossed his head towards the house. ‘Boss is inside, sir, with the ambos.’
‘Could you do me a favour please, Chris?’ Ramesh said, looking around for a coverall. ‘Push the red zone out further. At least to include the pad where people have parked. I don’t want additional vehicles compromising the existing treads.’
‘Should I get him to move, too?’ the young constable said, already untying one end of the cordon.
Ramesh glanced across at the silver Toyota Hilux, Raven Electricals printed on the side in black Gothic lettering. He could just make out the silhouette of someone sitting inside.
‘The dude who discovered the body,’ the constable said, answering Ramesh’s gaze. ‘He’s waiting to be interviewed.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Pretty shaken up.’
‘Leave him be,’ Ramesh said. ‘I’ll get to him soon as I can.’
Ramesh grabbed a sealed protective suit from the pile he’d spied on a metal drum, donned the onesie and blue booties, and headed up a plank of wood into the house.
The huge shell of a home was nowhere near completion, yet already it had the hallmarks of an expensive build — chunky masonry, high studs, wide hallway.
Glancing down the concrete corridor, his eye was led to a million- dollar- view over the estuary. No doubt a floor- to-ceiling window featured on the plans.
He followed the sound of voices to a room coming off the corridor; however, it was an odour that greeted him first. The bold tang of human excrement mixed with the smell of freshly hewn timber, concrete and clay. No suggestion of blood, mind you, or gunpowder. Nor the unmistakable stench of decomposition.
Ramesh had an acute sense of smell, his nose frequently making a preliminary assessment before his conscious brain had had a chance to kick in. It was a sense he never took for granted. Especially since doctors had warned his parents that their infant son might suffer from a poor sense of smell. Common, by all accounts, in those with a repaired cleft lip and palate. That this had not been the case for Ramesh was no minor mercy.
As he entered the room, two ambulance officers, kneeling with their backs to him, stood up, revealing a body slumped on the floor beside an overturned chair and spilt bottle of beer. At first glance it looked as if the big, bearded fellow had simply been enjoying a smoko when he keeled over.
‘Ten hours, at least,’ the first ambulance officer said as she picked her way across the room, footplate by footplate. ‘Body’s stiff as a tailor’s dummy.’
A broad- shouldered officer in his forties with a mass of freckles and a head of spiky ginger hair stepped out of the shadows. ‘Cheers, guys.’
Ramesh stretched out a hand in greeting. ‘Ramesh Bandara, Auckland CIB. Here to head up the inves—’
‘Yup. Yup. Welcome and all that jazz,’ the guy said, shaking Ramesh’s hand. ‘Terry Miller.’ He turned to the ambulance crew. ‘No need for you guys to hang around.’
‘Any idea on cause of death?’ Ramesh asked quickly.
‘With those conjunctival haemorrhages and facial congestion,’ one of the ambulance officers said, ‘I’d put my money on asphyxia. But that’s for the pathologist to say.’ She snorted. ‘Above my paygrade.’
‘Too right, Rachel,’ Miller said.
First name terms. So, everyone in the room was local. Ramesh felt his Aucklandness keenly.
‘It would’ve taken some strength to overpower him,’ he said, eyeing the chunky corpse.
Toddy Lumsden’s body had collapsed in such a way that it looked as if his head was joined directly to his torso. And quite a torso it was. Rugby- player solid.
The guy’s thick thighs were bound by khaki shorts, and his lower legs clad in three- quarter socks which drove into steel- capped boots without any discernible narrowing of his legs.
‘He is a big unit,’ Ramesh said, kneeling down beside the corpse.
‘I think you might be onto something,’ Miller said, his cheek twitching. ‘No wonder they sent you.’
Ramesh tossed his head back with good humour, though Miller’s narrative was not hard to interpret. Just another fucking Aucklander swanning into my territory.
‘Jokes aside,’ Miller said, pulling out his ringing phone. ‘I’d agree. Our murderer is unlikely to be some spindly computer geek. Unless they possess hypnotic powers or something.’
As Ramesh’s nose had already determined, no blood had been spilt. None that was obvious to the human eye anyway. Of course, Forensics would do their bit with luminol.
Actually, the victim’s soiled shorts were almost more confronting than any blood and gore. For this very macho- looking man, soiled undies would have been the ultimate indignity.
