Teeth of the Wolf

Teeth of the Wolf ebook-15

CHAPTER 10

- Pandora -

The water runs cold.

Bloody hell, Matiu.

Shivering, Penny turns it off. At least the cold has given her some clarity. Wringing the water from her hair, she steps out from under the shower rose and buries her face in a towel. Enveloped in soothing wafts of 3,7-dimethyl-1,6-octadien-3yl acetate from her lavender laundry detergent, it’s easy to tell herself there’s no such thing as monsters.

That’s because there isn’t. There is no such thing as monsters. There’s always a rational explanation.

She dries herself off and slips on some clean underwear. What Matiu described has no basis in fact. None whatsoever. He must have been hallucinating. Except Penny had looked him straight in the eye and checked his pupils. Neither one had been more dilated than the other. She struggles a moment with the clasp of her bra. Equal-sized pupils doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Like Beaker says, it’s not conclusive. Matiu could still have a concussion. Although, a mild concussion wouldn’t normally cause hallucinations. Shock would, though. And post-traumatic stress disorder. Earlier this afternoon Matiu had witnessed the brutal murder of a friend. He’d even tried to intervene. Under the circumstances, anyone would suffer hallucinations.

The clasp sorted, Penny pulls the hair dryer out of the drawer and turns it on, flipping her hair to dry underneath. Warm air tickling her nape, the hairdryer whirrs in her ear. And what about the sample in the Breadmaker™? it goads.

Penny separates her hair with her fingers, increasing the surface area for drying. “The apparatus must have been faulty. I’ll get the manufacturer to look at it. It should still be covered; I haven’t had it a year yet.”

The hairdryer hums. A shift in pitch.

“OK, OK, so there’s nothing wrong with the machine. But the read-out was…well, there was clearly some sort of error. Most likely the sample was contaminated. I took it from an accident site. Off a broken windscreen. Anything could’ve got in there.”

The whirring escalates. Anything?

“No. I know what you’re suggesting and I’m not even going to entertain the idea. It’s ludicrous. Yes, I concede that the salvaged readout showed the presence of xenonucleic, rather than deoxyribose or ribose sugars, and that corroborates Matiu’s tale of otherworld intruders. Yes, it’s another observation, but even then it’s not conclusive. There’ll be some other less fanciful reason for the machine to have detected unnatural sugars.”

More humming, softer this time. Cerberus didn’t like it either.

“Cerberus is a dog. Dogs are sensitive to smells. Of course he was going to get agitated. That was one unholy stink. What is it with the machines in this lab, anyway? First, it’s the bloody fridge giving me an earful, and now you. Do none of you realise that you are not sentient?”

A whoosh of hot air hits her full in the face.

Enough. Penny pulls the plug on any further conversation. Giving her hair a final fluff, she steps across to her locker and takes out a black wrap dress. Her date dress. From back in the days when she went on dates. Don’t be ridiculous, Penny. This isn’t a date. The man has admitted to spying for your parents. Which is why I have to go.

Slipping the dress on, she cinches it at the waist, double knotting the ties. She gives the skirt a little swish and checks out her reflection. She looks as if she’s been hauled from the grave. Technically speaking, it’s the truth. Happily, she keeps some supermarket makeup rolling around in the top drawer of the vanity for when the landlord drops by. She goes for a smoky effect, a look which blends nicely with the dark smudges under her eyes. Still, there’ll be no need to let the evening drag on. She’d only agreed to the date to get Craig off her back…

Hang on. What if she sends Noah the samples she has already? He doesn’t need the entire cadaver to carry out the carbon dating. Handing Cordell her samples would be like mining leaders giving the buried Chilean miners daily tasks to prevent them from stressing. Performing the analyses should distract his attention from the bog body, giving Penny more time to recover it. Perfect. She’ll get Matiu to run the samples over this evening.

Taking one last look in the mirror, Penny puts the cap back on the eye-liner and throws it in the drawer. Some perfume on her wrists and the towel in the hamper, she slips on her heels and steps out of the wet-room.

“Hey sis,” Matiu shouts through the door, “you decent? Got something I need you to see.”

- Matiu -

On his phone is a message, which he swipes open so Penny can see. Good old Scour, always coming through for the boys. Matiu will have to send that man a dozen. Beers, maybe, or strippers. He’ll check the finances first.

“What is it?” Penny says.

“It’s a VamPN link, a sort of backdoor into a network.” Matiu taps the link, and a browser window opens. Instantly, the screen fills with tiny thumbnails, like photos of urban street scenes, except they’re moving. Matiu swipes down a search bar and types in their address. The montage of images filters down to just two. In one of them, the edge of the lab building is visible in the dusky streetlight. Matiu taps it open.

“Are these traffic cameras?”

Matiu shrugs. “More like the safety network. Meant to be there to deter crime but hey, we know how well that works.” He expands the screen and toggles a control bar, starts scrolling. Sure enough, Penny and Beak appear, walking backwards like manic headless chickens, then disappear. A vehicle rolls past, winding back to the spot where it had pulled up while everyone’s back was turned.

Matiu’s gut drops. A black van. One of those electric models that businesses aiming for the corporate responsibility look go for, despite the massive environmental costs that came with trying to supply the whole planet in enough lithium to replace the world’s aging fleet of internal combustion engines. Whole mountain ranges levelled by strip mining and still the batteries needed replacing every five years. What a mess that turned out to be. “s**t,” he mutters, as the images spool back. Two figures load the white bag into the van in reverse. He pauses the playback. No way to know for sure, but it looks a lot like the van that was following them from Charlotte’s place. And what’s that on the roof? A refrigeration unit?

“Who the hell are they?” Penny says. “Can you zoom in?”

Could Penny’s bog body somehow be related to Charlotte’s disappearance? Matiu zooms the image, but in the poor light, through a grimy lens, the picture doesn’t get any better. “I don’t know, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen that van today, I think.”

“What?” Penny stares at him. “What else haven’t you told me?”

Matiu takes a long breath. “OK, so you know how I went to see my probation officer today?”

“Oh god, it’s her isn’t it? You’ve got her pregnant and that’s her vindictive brother in the van and now he’s out to get revenge on you by stealing my work?” Penny shakes her head. “I know that sounds crazy, so tell me something that makes some sense.”

Matiu shrugs. “Erica’s got a sister, Charlotte. She’s gone missing.” Then he runs through everything he saw at Charlotte’s house, and the van that followed them.

Penny looks haunted. “What is it?” Matiu says.

“The bog body, it showed signs of abdominal damage. Like, possibly the victim was pregnant, and the foetus had been cut out.”

Matiu represses a shiver in the suddenly frigid air. “Charlotte was trying to get pregnant, and now she’s disappeared, and the same people who were watching her house just stole your dead body.”

“Our evidence. s**t,” says Penny.

“Yep,” Matiu agrees. “s**t. Look at that though, on top of the van.”

Penny looks closer. “Might be a refrigeration unit. I hope it is, I really do.”

“Someone who knows what they’re doing, then. Narrows down what we have to look for.” Matiu digs his phone out of his pocket again, swipes a call up. Penny goes to speak but he holds up a hand. She glares at him in frustration. “Yo, Scour, it’s Grendel. That’s the s**t, right there. Hey, any of those cameras running IVA?”

“Most the network, bro. Why, whattup?”

“Reckon you can whip up a little tracking algo?”

“Depends what you’re after. The cops have a bunch of templated subroutines that a highly-paid professional like yours truly just might know how to tap into. What’s a brother need?”

“I’ll send you a link. Talk in a bit, bro.” Swiping out of the call, Matiu loses himself in pulling up the video feed properties, timestamp and geolocators, and swiping them all into an email.

“First it’s IVF, now you’ve moved on to IVA? Matiu, what are you up to?”

Matiu waves vaguely. “Intelligent Video Analytics. Smart cameras. You can tell them to look for things for you, they do the hard work. If Scour is as s**t-hot as he claims, he should be able to get the camera network to track that van, and if it goes through a set of lights with a plate-reader, then the network can find it again even if it disappears for a while, then tell us where it pops up again.”

Penny stares, dumbfounded. “Our public safety CCTV system can do all that?”

He looks at her as he hits send. “Only for important people, like the cops, and the SIS, and people with friends like Scour.”

Watching her face crumple in disappointment is almost hilarious, if it wasn’t so tragic. “It’s totally illegal, isn’t it?”

Matiu shrugs. “Your taxpayer dollars at work, sis.” He knocks back the dregs of his coffee.

Penny turns away, throwing up her hands. “I’d rather not know. Anyway, can you take these samples over to Cordell’s for me? That way he can’t accuse me of total incompetence.”

Matiu c***s an eyebrow at her retreating back. “But, aren’t I driving you…?”

“No, Matiu, you’re not. Craig is picking me up. You just go do whatever criminal little things you need to do, and keep telling yourself that you’re not mixed up in that world anymore, and I’ll keep pretending like I can’t see.” She disappears into the cool room, emerging a moment later with a sample bag. She drops it in his lap. “And the dog needs to pee.”

“Sure,” he grumbles, as Penny strides purposefully towards the door. “Course I’ll run your errands and hunt down your thieves for you while you swan off and have dinner with Greasy Tong.” The door snicks shut behind her. Matiu gives her a few moments, then calls a whining Cerberus to heel. “Like I’m going to let her go off alone into the night, at a time like this, eh boy? Come on.” Not with Makere out there, biding his time. Waiting for the shadows to lay thick and heavy across the city, for the eyelids to droop. Tensing to pounce. Yeah, f**k that. Dog at his heel, he heads out into the soupy warm evening.

- Pandora -

Hairs prickle at her nape as if there’s a breeze blowing off the ocean, a glorious breath of cool air, a gift from the sea gods to calm the stifling city. Chance would be a fine thing. Already eight and it’s still hotter than a witch’s cauldron here on the waterfront. Penny raises her hand to her neck, lifting her hair away from her skin. No, not even a whiff of a breeze. This prickly feeling has nothing to do with the heat. It’s been with her ever since she left the lab, a sense of foreboding, forcing her parasympathetic nerve receptors on alert and making her jumpy. It’s got to the point she’s seeing black vans on every corner.

Still a better theory than otherworld invaders.

There it is again. That creepy-crawly sensation down her back, as if she’s stepped into a cobweb and released a nest of spiders. Someone behind her? Penny glances back, but there’s only Craig in his perfectly pressed vintage Armani dress suit complete with lilac tie, pungent cologne, and a vaguely feline smile.

Nothing creepy there.

The building’s air conditioning gives them a frosty welcome. Penny shivers, hugging her bare arms as they cross the lobby to the lift.

“Too cold?” Craig asks, while they wait for the car.

“It won’t take long to adjust,” she replies.

When the lift arrives, Craig places his hand on the small of her back to guide her in. The doors close behind them.

“Penthouse, ninth floor. The Sedge, please,” Craig says, and the lift moves off. “I think you’re going to love this place. They say the chef is hors pair. A pioneer of micro-fusion cuisine—the flagship. Rave reviews everywhere. I had to pull a few strings to get us a table. Having Ministry connections helps…”

Penny nods. The cloying dread has followed them, the lift’s too-bright light and mirrored walls making her queasy, although that could be the multiple Craigs confronting her from every angle.

Fourth floor… More likely it’s just the worry of today piling up. Along with the pile of bodies. And finding out that Matiu-dearest has been clinging to his underbelly connections. Didn’t he learn anything the last time? That stint inside nearly killed him: his sanity flying perilously close to the wind, as brittle and fragile as Mārama’s…

Sixth floor… Penny could be in that opening scene from Macbeth, the one with the witches—fair is foul and foul is fair—her Spidey senses telling her that trouble’s bubbling and nothing good can come from it.

They’ve almost reached the eighth floor when Penny glimpses someone in the mirrored angle at the corner of the lift. There. The flash is so fast she almost misses it. But he was there. Solid and undeniable. A man’s back. Penny squeezes her eyes tight and opens them again. The angle is empty.

“Did you see that?” Her voice is shaky.

“See what?” Of course Craig hasn’t seen anything other than his own reflection; too busy perfecting his already perfect Hanover knot.

“I don’t know,” Penny says quietly. “For a moment, I thought there was someone else in the lift with us. It was quick, though. I wondered if maybe it was one of those holograms.”

“Could be,” Craig muses, still fiddling with that knot. “I wouldn’t rule it out. The Sedge is pretty avant garde: stands to reason they’d have some progressive marketing on the go.”

“But why so quick? It couldn’t have lasted more than a micro-second.”

Adjusting his cuffs, Craig shrugs. “Subliminal programming. Tapping into your subconscious. It’s a common enough marketing technique…”

But in the lift on the way up to the restaurant? Surely, that’s just preaching to the converted?

The light flickers and Penny spies the figure again. It’s a man, a moko on his face like Matiu’s. This time he’s looking at her, his smile cruel and calculating.

Like a r****t’s.

She blinks and he’s vanished.

Penny draws in a breath and closes her eyes again, searching for his imprint on the back of her eyelids, but the flash had been too quick, too fleeting. Even so, she hadn’t missed everything: there was no mistaking the burning mockery in his eyes or the nonchalance of his stance, as if their meeting was inevitable.

Get a grip, Penny. You sucked up some of that gas that spewed out of the Breadmaker™ earlier and it’s fogging up your brain.

“Penny? You’ve gone a bit pale.”

See? Even Craig’s noticed.

Penny gives him a wide smile. “It’s nothing. I think it’s this lift—all these mirrors are creeping me out.”

Ninth floor. The lift pings for the penthouse. “Welcome to The Sedge,” declares the sultry voiceover.

“Let’s get you out of here, then,” Craig says. “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.” Turning to leave, he checks his reflection one last time before they step into the restaurant.

Whoever owns The Sedge has spent a fortune on outfitting. The restaurant is a temple of glass and chrome. The entire back wall houses a ceiling-to-floor wine display, while at the front, panoramic picture windows offer an unobstructed vista of the Hauraki Gulf.

“Mr Tong. Good evening. This way, please. Your table is ready.”

They follow the hostess to their seats by the window, Penny catching sight of what looks like Patisepa Taylor’s blonde bouffant at a secluded booth. When they’re seated, the hostess lights the candle—a real one—then scurries away to see to their drinks order.

Penny gazes out the window, across the bay, where the suburbs are winking to life, a string of golden fairy lights against a soft rose twilight. All at once, the foreboding she felt in the lift melts away. “Craig, this is lovely.”

Craig straightens his tie. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I do.” She means it. It’s been so long since she’s had an evening out.

Even more of a surprise is The Sedge’s menu. She’d expected Craig to go for a restaurant where the options were heavy on rib-eye and peppercorn sauce. Instead, the dishes appear fresh and original, all comprising micro-greens in some form or other. Penny orders a salad of char-roasted beets and pistachio, garnished with Swiss chard, topped with pomegranate foam, and served on a rustic rye biscuit. “What’s this about a sensory cushion?”

“They bring your meal to you on a sage infused pillow, so when you cut into it, a puff of sage accompanies every bite.”

Penny arches an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Like I said, the chef’s an artist. It’s all about creating a full sensory experience for his diners.”

For the second time today, Penny wonders if she’s misjudged Craig Tong. Perhaps Mum and Dad’s instincts are better than she’d thought?

“The business model is innovative, too. My counterpart in the Business Ministry was telling me that all the produce served here is sourced from local micro-producers,” Craig goes on. “And the restaurant has its own rooftop garden, where the sous chefs grow some of their own ingredients. It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it’s really rather nice up there. We can take our wine and have a look while we’re waiting on our meals, if you like?”

“Actually, I would like that.”

Craig pulls out her chair for her, and they take the stairs to the rooftop where the entire surface area is a quilt-work of raised beds, all brimming with fragrant micro-produce, holographic labels proclaiming the name of each crop. There’s amaranth, red vein sorrel, gold endame shoots, garlic chive sprouts with their tiny black nodules…

The only guests on the roof, they amble among the raised beds, Penny running her fingers over the tiny fronds, stopping here and there to inhale the peppery scent. Beyond the rooftop, on the horizon, the ocean and the sky have fused to a warm indigo, the bridge spanning the bay like a sparkly tiara. Penny can’t believe it. She’s having fun. With Craig Tong.

Suddenly, her phone rings, the sound brash in the stillness of the roof.

Cordell.

Penny’s heart lurches. “I’m so sorry, Craig. I have to take this. Work. It’s…um…confidential.”

“Of course.” Taking her glass from her, he steps to the edge of the rooftop, giving her some privacy.

“What’s this about, Noah?”

“Good evening to you, too.”

“What do you want? I’m on a date.”

There’s a pause. Oh, for goodness’ sake. Why is it so hard to believe she has a life? Switching her phone to FaceFlix, Penny angles the screen to include Craig, so there’s no doubt she’s on a date.

Noah’s eyebrows twitch. “The rooftop at The Sedge. Very nice.”

“Can you hurry up? Our meals are about to arrive.”

“It’s these samples the courier dropped off this evening.”

“What about them?”

“They’re just samples, Pandora. It isn’t what we arranged.”

Does he know? Penny’s palms go clammy. No, how can he know? Unless he’s the one who sent the black van? No, he wouldn’t. No. Even Noah wouldn’t stoop that far.

She lifts her chin. “I think you’ll find Tanner said ‘samples’.”

“Pandora, really.” He rolls his eyes as if he’s the parent of an unruly teen out past curfew. “You do know how petty and obstructive you’re being, don’t you? Whatever it was Tanner said, we both know what he meant. It’s imperative that LysisCo is provided—”

“Are you telling me your company isn’t able to conduct the analyses?” she says, stopping his advertorial midstream.

“Of course, not. That would be ridiculous. LysisCo is the country’s foremost—”

“Great. Let me know when they’re done.”

Before she can slip the phone back into her purse, it rings again.

Mum.

Penny groans inwardly. She doesn’t dare ignore it. What if Mārama’s had another turn? Mouthing ‘sorry’ to Craig, she swipes it on. “Mum, is everything OK? How’s Whaea Mārama?”

“She’s fine, dear. She was sleeping when your father and I left the hospital, although she worked herself into a bit of a state this afternoon. Kept tossing and turning and shouting for Matiu. Pulling at her hair. The backs of her hands are covered in scratches where she’s raked them with her fingernails. In the end, the doctors had to give her a sedative in case she hurt herself. I was hoping to talk to Matiu about it. Is he there with you?”

“No, he’s not with me.”

“Well, where is he? He’s not answering his phone.”

“I don’t know, Mum.”

What am I? My brother’s keeper?

“He didn’t return the fleet car for refuelling this evening,” Mum says. “He’s only gone and taken it off the grid again. You know how your father gets when Matiu does that. If you see him, tell him he’s not to do it anymore, will you? It puts your father’s blood pressure through the roof, and right now I have quite enough on my plate with your aunt’s histrionics. You’re sure Matiu’s not there at the lab?”

“I’m not at the lab, Mum. I’m on a date.”

Mum falls silent.

Honestly, why does everyone insist on doing this? I have a life!

The hostess appears at the top of the stairs. “Mr Tong? If you and your partner would come this way please, your meals are ready now.”

Penny’s heart sinks like a stiletto heel in sand. On the other end of the phone, Mum coos. “Pandora!”