Starlight Peninsula (2 page)

On the bus she stood up for an elderly woman whose grateful smile turned to a gasp as they lurched around a corner and she fell. Her bag of shopping crashed down, fruit and tins rolled and scattered. A man, half-risen from his seat, held the woman up, preventing her from subsiding into his lap. Passengers began gathering the groceries as the woman, still hopelessly off-balance, pawed feebly at the man, flecks of spit at the corners of her mouth. Someone shouted at the bus driver. Eloise picked up the shopping bag and collected what people had gathered from the floor. She tried to catch the eye of the man who was now lowering the old woman onto the seat across the aisle from him, but he looked away and brushed the sleeve of his jacket, frowning and annoyed. He was tall, with thick black hair and a hawkish face. Uptight, she thought. But — she looked closer — he had a dragonfly tattooed on the back of his hand.

Now the walk along the peninsula in the hot dry wind. In her shopping this fine Friday evening: a bottle of white wine, a ready meal of vegetable curry and a couple of DVDs.

That afternoon she’d seen herself on camera, talking to Scott in the studio. There was a difference: she’d lost weight. It was exactly a month since Sean had left her, and she’d stopped cooking; what was the point? Now, alone, she ate eccentrically and fast, often standing at the kitchen bench: peas and tomato sauce, sardines on toast, pots of ready-made curry. It was strange, she kept thinking, so strange.

In the stone house on the peninsula, she lived through extraordinarily long silences: a whole day, two days. Silences that lasted through the Carmelite regime of a long weekend …

They’d been married for some years when she got a phone call from a woman telling her Sean was having an affair. The woman said her informant was a secretary at Jaeger’s, the firm where Sean worked as a commercial lawyer. Eloise was very calm, listening. The woman’s tone was weird and rambling, possibly mad, and Eloise thought her spiel about Sean and a young actress might not be true. But when she confronted him there was a terrible pause. He didn’t say anything — and then he confessed. They had a ferocious shouting match — she shouted and he mostly just listened; she threw a coffee cup, smashing it on the wall near his head. She threw another. When she threw the third he packed a bag and left. Now he was holed up at the actress’s house across town. It was as abrupt as that.

There were nights of frantic distress when she demanded explanations, sent furious emails, expected him to come home. One evening he did come home and she angrily told him to leave, thinking she should out of pride and some vague idea of tactics but not actually wanting him to. And then a final message from him saying he wasn’t coming back.

In all the time they’d lived together, they’d spent very few nights apart. Now she was in shock. She’d got lazy about keeping up contact with friends, and she was very alone. The situation seemed so unreal that she hadn’t got around to telling Scott, or any of the people she worked with. It was so strange …

She opened the wine and turned on the TV news. Mariel Hartfield was squeezed into a bright white top, very sexy, and her glossy black fringe was just slightly too long, giving her a sleepy look. Eloise knew that Mariel took a beta-blocker before going on air, more reliable than yoga for keeping you calm if anything went wrong. Eloise had read the
label on the prescription bottle, and had seen Mariel popping the pill while getting her hair done. At the time, she’d congratulated herself for noticing. Because she was observant …

The pill dilated Mariel’s pupils, giving her a benign and distant air. She said, ‘The Minister has declined to comment on the speculation. Political editor Sarah Lane has more.’

They crossed to Sarah Lane, live in front of a flax bush in the grounds of Parliament.

Eloise refilled her glass. Should she get a dog? She imagined it: greeting her at the door, joyfully wagging its tail. Barking at intruders. A companion on her weekend walks …

Sarah Lane said, ‘Mariel, while Minister O’Keefe has now confirmed her due date, she has, until today, declined to comment on persistent rumours surrounding the paternity of her child. Prime Minister Jack Dance has also refused to comment, saying only that he has full confidence in Ms O’Keefe and that her personal life is not a matter for him or anyone else to discuss. However, following publication yesterday of an article by Ian Ramsey in
Witness
magazine, the Minister has released a statement expressing concern at what she calls an unprecedented intrusion into her private life, and reiterating that she is not obliged to discuss the question of paternity with anyone unless she chooses to. She also says she is considering laying some kind of complaint against Mr Ramsey in relation to the
Witness
article.

‘Mariel, you could say the Minister’s statement is notable for what it doesn’t say. It obviously doesn’t shed any light on the paternity question, and it doesn’t make any denials in relation to any of the male government ministers and one prominent businessman named in the article, who’ve been the subject of rumours in this matter for the past few months. Those individuals may also want to lay complaints against Mr Ramsey, but so far none is prepared to comment. Look, the government will be wanting to tread very carefully here. There’ll be a
general desire not to let things get out of hand with what ministers are calling everything from a side issue to a distraction to an outrageous intrusion into a member’s private life. Adding to pressure on Minister O’Keefe is the roll-out of her new child poverty initiatives next week, which she won’t want overshadowed, and, even more delicate, her policy outlining new measures for sole parents on benefits. The Opposition will obviously want to proceed carefully here too, but let’s put it this way, Mariel, they won’t be ungrateful that the government’s having to deal with this distraction at this time. I think the only thing we can safely say at this point is: Watch this space. Mariel?’

There was now a shot of Minister Anita O’Keefe walking towards the cameras, elegant in her tight dress and high heels, her hair pulled back, a fixed smile. The microphones appeared in front of her. The questioning wasn’t rough or persistent, she wasn’t mobbed, she passed easily, ignoring, smiling. Did she get behind the door of her office and lean against it with her eyes closed? If Sean had been here Eloise would have said to him, ‘Look at her, that little smile. Mona Lisa. Like she’s hoarding something, like she’s in possession of something.’

Yeah. A baby.

Already slightly drunk, Eloise walked into the kitchen and contemplated the curry. She spooned it into a bowl and shoved it in the microwave. While it heated she went out on the deck and looked across the estuary to the dog park. The tide was on the turn, the banks of the creek glistening with purple mud, and she watched a man and dog playing fetch, the arc of the ball and the mad speed of the dog, and behind them the evening sky crossed with delicate ropes of cloud.

Perhaps she should have got pregnant, not consulted Sean, just let it happen. She thought about Anita O’Keefe, whose refusal to comment had caused speculation about her pregnancy. It was being said (excitedly rumoured, fervently hoped) that the father was a serving politician, and married. A cabinet minister perhaps. Minister O’Keefe,
who was young, unattached and very attractive, had been the subject of gossip since she’d been given a cabinet post. She’d been popular with senior politicians, who squired her about looking modestly proud and discreet, as if they’d invented her themselves. Maybe she’d worked her way through all of them. Secretly slept with all of them, and now the whole male front bench was terrified of the pregnancy — and of their wives. Or maybe there was no father. She’d got herself a sperm donor. Gone down to the lab and ordered a baby off the plans.

A single brown bubble had surfaced in the curry, like a blister. Eloise squeezed rice out of a plastic bag and ate the hot fragrant mess, her eyes on the TV. Mariel turned to Jack Anthony, there was the usual chatty feed into the topic of weather, and they both turned to the weather presenter — the haggard one Eloise called the Sinister Doormat — who now told Eloise that tomorrow would be a continuation of the Big Dry.

All along the peninsula the drought had turned the grass brown. A network of cracks had opened up on Eloise’s lawn. She glanced through the glass ranch slider — out in the gulf the water was like steel — and wondered how much longer it would be her lawn. Sean was going to force the sale of the house. His mother, Lady Cheryl Rodd, had recently visited Eloise. She still felt cold rage at the memory, the tyrannical old bag, barging in and coldly patronising her, like a social worker. ‘Are you sleeping, dear? Keeping your strength up, dear?’ Her beady eye on the chattels, and implacable in defence of her son. The house, Lady Cheryl confirmed, would have to be sold, since Sean had his heart set on what she called ‘his new course’. Eloise would understand this. A tough decision, but someone had to make those.

What did she care, so long as her son was happy?

While Eloise was trying to freeze Lady Cheryl off the property the cleaner backed out of a spare bedroom with his knapsack vacuum cleaner, and Lady Cheryl jerked her thumb at Amigo and whispered
stagily, ‘What about him? I know you’ve got that TV job, but you might have to cut down on a few expenses.’

Well, Lady Cheryl was the little actress’s problem now.

Sean’s family, the Rodds, were so rich he could afford to let her have the house, but Eloise knew some terrifying Tulkinghorn from Sean’s law firm would soon arrive, bringing papers from the Rodd dynasty. She also knew she needed to visit a lawyer herself, but so far she’d lacked the will. All she could manage was to cling onto the routine of work.

And then there were the weekends.

It was very unhealthy and unwise and she deplored it and it was a disgrace and all, but she couldn’t help getting drunk, sitting in front of the big plate-glass window, watching the sky turn red over the estuary and the last figures — small, black, slanted against the wind — making their way across the dog park in the fading light. She tried to watch one of the DVDs but her attention kept wandering, and there were many trips to the fridge for more wine, and then a long session in front of the computer, searching through Facebook and Twitter for electronic traces of Sean, virtual views of Sean — the online version of her weekend wanderings. She also checked the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of Minister Anita O’Keefe and other members of the government. Ms O’Keefe had been in the habit of tweeting about the cities she was visiting, and Eloise, who’d been watching her for a long time, had noticed she’d often been in the same city as the prime minister. Since the minister’s pregnancy had become public, Twitter had never shown Anita O’Keefe and Jack Dance to be in the same place at the same time.

Running out of material on the politicians, she looked at Mariel Hartfield’s Wikipedia page. Mariel was Ngai Tahu, had worked for the
Melbourne Herald
, in Britain for
BBC World
, at Nine in Sydney, as a reporter and sub-editor for
Eyewitness
and
News1
, and was currently co-presenter with Jack Anthony on
Evening News1
.

Later, when Eloise was so tired and tipsy she’d lost the ability to touch type and was reduced to stabbing with two fingers, she wrote Sean an email. In her mind she called it emailing the dead. She was sending words out into the void.
I am in rather a bad way
was her next vague thought, as she rested her forehead for a moment on the desk.

Later she slid off the chair, wandered over to the sofa and lay down. There was a moment when she lucidly, sternly, examined the state of affairs. (And rebuked herself for being drunk.) Sean’s departure was the second loss in her life. Marriage to Sean had been a way of remedying (and perhaps not facing up to) a loss that had occurred before. And now Sean was gone …
That
was why she was in a bad way. You pick yourself up once, but twice? It was too much. Eloise frowned. Now Sean was gone, she thought, all my chickens. All my chickens … they’re coming home to … root? No.

That was it: since Sean had left her, all Eloise Hay’s emotional chickens were coming home to roost.

She slept, she flew into dreams. Scott Roysmith floated in the air upside down, he was a kite, his string held by a lone figure in the dog park — Andrew Newgate. Newgate turned, and his glasses were filled with red light.

When Andrew Newgate smiled his eyes stayed watchful, and his eyes followed you. With Terry Carstone, it was different. Terry’s eyes didn’t follow you. They were looking at something no one else could see: the mind of Terry Carstone. They were always looking inward. And they said,
Watch me. Watch me. Look at me
…

Outside, on the edge of the peninsula, not far from the dog park, shapes were moving in the dark.

I’m not fooled by surface appearance. I read between the lines. I am observant
.

But Andrew Newgate looked at her and his eyes were unreadable. His glasses mirrored the red sky over the park and then a tiny black shape, the reflection of a dog, crossed them, crossed over the arc of the glass and disappeared into space …

This weight on her. It was the weight of the weekend, of loneliness and childlessness, the ticking of the biological clock, of one loss and then another, the second making the first come home to roost. All that weight, but there was something else. As she swam up into consciousness there was matter pressed against her face. Eloise surfaced with a gasp and pushed her way clear of the heavy cushions.

Her head was pounding and her mouth was dry, and she had the
beginnings of a searing hangover — hypersensitivity, suicidal ideation,
tristesse
— but now there was something else again. A rhythmic thumping. She stood up, and her heart, already racing, sped with alarm as the thumping turned into battering and there was a crash, followed by shouts and then, terrifyingly, actual screams. Her hands flew to her ears.

She was standing with fists clenched and pressed against the sides of her head when she saw, beyond the ranch slider, a torch beam crossing the bottom of the garden. The beam played on her lawn, then disappeared as it reached the spill of light from the deck. She’d fallen asleep with the living room lamps on. Beyond the deck, all was black.

Eloise crossed the room and turned off the lights. There was another scream followed by a man’s shout. The torch beam crossed the lawn again, falling briefly on the creek, the water glittering. Eloise dug among the sofa cushions for her phone. She found it, looked up, and saw the shape of a man against the glass.

She heard him knock. He waved. As she was grappling with her phone he found the handle, slid open the unlocked glass door and stepped into the room. Eloise backed away, putting furniture between them.

There was another loud bang outside, a dog barking. She said, ‘What is it? Oh, what is it?’

He felt around on the wall and turned on the lights.

‘It’s okay. Sorry,’ he said, and then, ‘I hope you’re not going to hit me with that.’

She was holding a heavy book at shoulder height.

He walked to the window and looked out. ‘I knocked on your front door but you didn’t answer, and then I came around on the deck and saw you. I thought I’d better explain.’

‘What’s going on? The
noise
.’

‘Come and see. It’s the police. They’re doing some kind of raid over there. They actually broke the door down, I saw them, and then the girl,
the one with the tattoos, was in the upstairs window screaming her head off, going nuts. I ran into the police about half an hour ago, they were sneaking around outside my place. I thought they were prowlers so I went out, and they grabbed me and told me to keep quiet. Then they went in. Dogs and all. I’ve been watching from the edge of your property.’

He beckoned her forward and she looked out at the big stucco rental next door. There were figures moving in the windows upstairs and the garden was lit up with spotlights, a man in a white boiler suit bending to look at something in the grass.

‘I feel … slightly sick.’

‘Oh look, sit down. You got a fright.’

He steered her over to a chair and she sank down.

‘I could make us a cup of tea?’

She nodded, watched him moving around in the kitchen, opening drawers, finding things, filling the kettle and switching it on. She rode out another wave of nausea and said, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t remember your name?’

‘It’s Nick Oppenheimer. I remember yours. Eloise. I had no idea this was such an exciting neighbourhood.’

‘Is it just you at 27?’

‘Yeah. I’ve just moved in. Love the peninsula, the dog park.’

‘Do you have a dog?’

‘No.’

‘I thought of getting one.’ She added stupidly, ‘I’m trying out living by myself at the moment.’

‘Dogs are good company,’ Nick said.

The shouting had stopped; there was the sound of voices, the slam of car doors and the crunch of boots on gravel. A dog let out a series of deep barks.

They listened. Eloise said to fill the silence, ‘Dogs. Um, there’s a
man who parks his Jeep outside the supermarket up the road, and twice when I’ve passed it I’ve heard the most eerie sound. Howling. I looked in, into the Jeep, and what he’s got in there is a wolf. It’s huge, twice the size of an Alsatian. I went home and Googled pictures of wolves — and it’s a wolf. It doesn’t bark, it howls.’

He was studying her face.

‘It must be illegal,’ she said.

‘To own a wolf, I’m sure.’

‘It really
is
a wolf. It can’t be anything else.’

‘Yes, I believe you.’

‘It’s a mystery. How did he bring it into the country? How does he keep it without people complaining?’

‘I’ll look out for it.’

‘God …’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Nerves a bit shot, that’s all. The woman screaming.’

‘It was unnerving. And me creeping about on your lawn. Sorry.’

He waited, then said, ‘This is an interesting house. So much glass. It must have incredible views.’

‘We had an architect. I don’t know how long I’ve got here. I’ll be moving out soon.’

She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Can you actually
see
my head throbbing?’

He laughed.

Eloise said, ‘I’ve always thought of myself as observant. I thought I was the one who noticed what was going on, while everyone else was in a fog.’

‘Oh. Right …?’

‘And it was a complete delusion. I didn’t notice anything going on over there. Drug dealing or whatever.’

‘I doubt anyone knew.’

She went on, ‘I didn’t notice my husband was about to leave me. Never saw it coming. Yesterday at work I saw something happen between two people I thought hated each other. And I had it completely wrong. Instead of hating each other they’re probably having an affair. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

Nick handed her a cup of tea. He was tall, thin and athletic, with even features, almost handsome although skin slightly rough. Blue eyes.

‘Oh thanks. You’ve put sugar in it. What I need to do,’ she said, ‘is get some fresh air. I think I’ll just walk around to the dog park.’ Her voice quavered. She sounded mad and proud and unwell.

‘By yourself? In the dark?’

‘It’s fine. I do it all the time,’ she lied.

‘How about I come with you, Eloise,’ he said.

The lawn next door was harshly lit, with a group of police conferring on the porch. The scene, figures in white boiler suits moving in white light, stirred a memory in Eloise, a feeling of dread that passed and was replaced by a kind of doomed brightness, as if all was lost and any feeling futile. They followed the path along the edge of the creek, where Starlight Peninsula broadened and joined the land, and a bridge led across to the dog park. There was a dull orange glow in the sky over the city, the warm air smelled of dried grass, and tiny sounds came from the estuary, little clickings and rustlings, small creatures maybe, crabs or water rats, scuttling through the mangroves.

‘Looks like a spaceship’s landed.’

Two figures in white shower caps moved silently across the grass. The darkness curved over the bubble of light.

‘I saw them arresting the girl, the one who was screaming. She made such a fuss they actually picked her up and carried her.’

Eloise saw it: the struggling girl, a dynamic, furious thing amid the black-and-white strangeness of the spotlit garden. She remembered
her dream, the shadow of a dog crossing her vision.

Looking back at her own house she saw that the lighted interior was visible from the park. During the day the glass was opaque, but at night she would be seen clearly as she moved around the sitting room.

‘I’ll have to start closing the curtains.’

‘But there’s no one in the dog park at night.’

She said, ‘This area used to be much rougher. It was a bit of a slum apparently. Up the top was the worst pub in Auckland — the Starlight Hotel. There was a murder there. The peninsula only started getting respectable after they demolished the Starlight.’

They walked to the edge, where the land ended in the estuary and the water lay still and calm, giving off stray flashes of light. Something rose and disturbed the surface, a splash, bubbles. A car alarm started up far away.

He said, ‘Do you really come out here often? At night?’

‘Oh sure. Why not?’

They headed back across the park, walking slowly.

Nick said, ‘So, tell me about your job. It must be interesting working for Roysmith.’

‘Did I tell you my job? When?’

‘At the gate when we first met.’

‘Oh? We’ve just done a piece on Andrew Newgate. About Ed Miles turning down his compensation claim.’

‘Do you think Newgate’s innocent?’

‘Roysmith thinks he is.’

‘So you don’t think so?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Most people think he’s guilty as sin. That he’s only got off because of Carstone’s campaign.’

‘Not most. Fifty per cent.’

‘Anyway. What are you working on now?’

‘Well, just between us, we might do the internet mogul, Kurt Hartmann.’

‘Isn’t he about to be shipped off to the US?’

‘He’s fighting extradition.’

Nick said, ‘It all seems rather complicated.’

Eloise stopped and pointed. ‘Did you see that flash? A fish jumping. Quite a big one.’

They looked out at the estuary, brimming at high tide. A line zigzagged across the water, then the surface went calm, a dull silver, like mercury.

She said, ‘Kurt Hartmann owned websites where people could store data. He says he was — effectively — operating a big electronic warehouse and it wasn’t his business if people were storing material in it that breached copyright. He didn’t know what was in there and he didn’t care. But the Hollywood studios and the US Government say he knew he was storing copyrighted material, that he’s a pirate and that he’s ripped off the movie and music industries five hundred million US dollars.’

‘Right.’

‘And then it was discovered — actually it was leaked by someone — that he’d been spied on here illegally, also at the behest of the US. Illegally because he’s a New Zealand citizen and the GCSB can only spy on foreign nationals. Although Ed Miles is working to change that rule. Scott wants to find out who leaked it that Hartmann was spied on illegally. The word is there’s a faction in the PM’s own party who are leaking against him. An Ed Miles faction, probably backed by the old guard, by people loyal to Sir David Hallwright.’

‘Hallwright’s in the South of France. I read an article about his house,’ Nick said.

‘That’s right. Lounging around the Med. In St Tropez or whatever. On his millions.’

‘Are you going to the Hartmann mansion?’

‘I hope so. It’s meant to be unbelievable. Anyway, what do you do, Nick?’

‘I used to be a teacher. Then I started working for NGOs. Aid work. Save the Children.’

‘That sounds very worthy.’

‘I grew up in Cape Town. My father’s South African, he’s a newspaper editor, and my mother was a Kiwi. They split up and she came back here. I’d been working in Africa, various countries, and my expartner and I decided to try Auckland. My ex is a New Zealander. I like Auckland, less crime. You don’t have to live in a fortress.’

‘Carjackings,’ Eloise said vaguely.

‘Places over there, you need to own a gun. Although, I’m a black belt in karate.’

‘Really.’

‘It’s a discipline. It’s a
way
.’

Eloise looked sideways.

‘I inherited the house from my mother when she died, some other property, too, so now I’m a landlord. At this point I’m not sure whether to sell up and go back to Cape Town, or stay here.’

They crossed the bridge and followed the path back to the sections. A man in white overalls was kneeling on the lawn in front of the stucco house, photographing something.

She watched Nick leap neatly over a low fence. A ‘way’. He was good-looking. Was he slightly weird?

He said, ‘I do volunteer work, for search and rescue. I used to do it in Cape Town, so I signed up here. We look for demented old people, kids gone missing, trampers lost in the bush. Also corpses. Last week they rang me — did you hear about the woman’s body found in a drain in West Auckland?’

‘Yes.’

‘Actually they only found half of her in the drain. It had washed in
there from a stream. I got the call, they wanted us to come out and help find the other half.’

She stopped walking. ‘Did you find it?’

‘No. We were looking for bones. Clothes. Got nothing.’

‘Had she been sawn up?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘Look for people? I enjoy it. I love tramping, going up in the helicopter, scouring coastlines. Slogging through the bush. And to give back, obviously.’

They walked on. Eloise hesitated at her gate.

He said, ‘I’ve got some brandy at my place.’

She followed him round the side of his house and in through the back door. They entered a hall smelling of floor polish and then a spacious room with glass doors opening onto a deck, a view of the estuary and the city beyond. There was a sofa, one armchair, a glass coffee table, a flat-screen TV and a couple of prints on the walls.

‘All my books are in boxes still. I need shelves.’

Eloise sat on the sofa and looked at the city buildings against the night sky. He handed her a glass and she drank, the alcohol hit her, waves travelling down her body.

‘Want to know something funny?’ she said. ‘On the subject of looking for people.’

He sat down beside her.

‘Ever since my husband left, there’s something I can’t stop doing. I go looking for him. It’s some primitive impulse, like a panic — he’s gone so I have to find him. I walk for hours. I’m not sure where he’s living; I haven’t found out and he won’t tell me. I just walk and walk, looking in places where he might be.’

‘What would you do if you found him?’