Teeth of the Wolf

Teeth of the Wolf ebook-10-2

“Ditch the bullshit, Matiu. You’re wasting my time.” She’s right in his face now—or she would be, if she wasn’t a whole foot shorter, craning her neck back to make eye contact. But what she lacks in height, she makes up for in guts.

“Am I late?”

“Not at all.”

“Then how am I wasting your time?”

She waves the tablet under his nose. “Shall we go discuss how you’ve turned my day into a bloody mess, shall we?”

Matiu frowns, avoiding the confused look from the girl behind the counter. “You know, I have a disability. Talking to me like that could be considered abuse, and I have a witness,” he says, utterly deadpan.

Erica takes a step back, folding her arms. “Look. I’ve missed my lunch already. That makes me shitty. Then I get a call about one of my clients being in a high-speed chase with a known reprobate ending in a pile-up on the Harbour Bridge? That makes me even shittier, and leads to questions I don’t have good answers for.”

“Oh,” Matiu says, heat rising in his cheeks. “That.”

“Yes, that.”

He clutches at the only straw in his grasp. “Well, what if I make it up to you by buying you lunch?”

It’s a ploy, of course. A perfunctory distraction that Erica ought to reject, unable to deny he made the offer. But something changes in her face. She looks at him, quirking an eyebrow.

“Fine. I’m starving. Come on.”

She heads for the door. Matiu watches her, mildly stunned. Cerberus regards him, ponderous. “Um, right,” he says, to no-one in particular. For the sake of the girl behind the counter, he lets Cerberus lead the way. From the corner of his eye, he sees her give a little wave, then drops her hand, embarrassed. No point waving to a blind man.

A lunch date with his probation officer was even less on his plan for the day than confronting a tentacled version of Simon Kingi on the Auckland Harbour Bridge. He’s not sure which is more terrifying. He catches her up easy enough, ditching the blind man routine. “How’d you know it was me? I didn’t give the receptionist my name.”

“Cameras, Matiu. There are cameras everywhere.” She turns down a side street and stops at the door to a tiny juice bar squeezed in between a Budget Gift Shop and a place selling cheap knock-off electronics. “You’re not bringing that dog inside.” She pushes through the door, leaving Matiu regarding the frontage of the juice joint, his heart sinking. It’s all fruit-smoothie-this and veggie-juice-that, fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, nut-free, taste-free. Not a burger or chips in sight. What looks like tubs of actual grass are growing on top of the chiller display, like a tiny urban interior lawn in need of mowing. He’s seen places like this but never actually been inside one. Sighing, he loops Cerberus’ leash around a signpost and follows Erica into the store, tucking his sunnies into a pocket.

There’s a throng inside, waiting for their mid-afternoon fibre blast. The air is chill with aircon, reeking of fructose and vegetable scraps, like the inside of a fridge. Blenders screech and whine. Matiu finds Erica at the till. “Large Spirulina-Wheatgrass with blueberries, thanks. And whatever he’s having.” She jerks a thumb at Matiu. “He’s paying.” Erica swans off to a table in the deepest corner of the narrow shop.

The young guy behind the counter, who’s either gone bald early or shaved his head for the sake of hipster fashion, while his beard falls down his chest like a long, plaited rope, nods in the way of übercool baristas everywhere and fixes Matiu with a piercing look.

“Um,” Matiu mumbles, glancing at the menu which looks like a vegetarian shopping list. His gaze drifts to the noticeboard beside the blackboard menu. For Sale notices, rooms for rent, bands looking for new members, missing cats, pharmaceutical bargains. A young woman with sad eyes gazes at him from a sun-bleached photograph, her features faded by time, her message for the world almost buried beneath sedimentary layers of community events and phone numbers. Fragments of lives in inkjet splinters pinned over top of one another, like all the people of this city clamouring to be heard above the noise of everyone else. “Two fish and a scoop?”

The barista smiles a condescending smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, clearly reserved for those few times when the charms and wards on the front door fail to keep out the riff-raff. There’s an awkward moment while the barista waits for Matiu to register that his sense of humour is not appreciated, before he rocks in with a suggestion. “How about a banana milkshake?”

Matiu narrows his eyes. Smart-arse. Like anyone can afford real bananas these days. But whatever it might actually be, a banana milkshake sounds better than the wheatmeal-spirograss-whatever-the-hell-it-is Erica just ordered. “Sure,” he says simply, and digs for his wallet. In the far corner of the back bench, he spies a neglected-looking espresso machine. “And a double shot.”

Matiu taps his card to pay the bill. “Cheers,” he says, ignoring the barista’s slick grin that might just as well be a sneer as he turns to work the espresso machine. Until recently, this particular situation might’ve gone downhill quickly. Those thoughts would’ve been taken by Makere, amplified, twisted, thrown back at him like so much meat on a butcher’s block, hammering at his senses until he snapped. Matiu can see the tips jar beside the till, see himself grabbing it and swinging it, the glass smashing and coinage flying across the room as the barista goes down in a cloud of bloody splinters. That was the Matiu who found himself landed in a ten-foot cell, staring at the wall, with no company but the demon on his back. This Matiu can restrain himself from breaking glass jars on arrogant wankers’ skulls, at least when he’s on a lunch date with his probation officer, anyway.

The barista slides a thin paper cup across the counter, black and steaming. Matiu grabs it, then recoils from the heat.

“Here,” says the barista, grabbing a cup sleeve from behind the till. Matiu barely notices it, except that it’s all green and blue and looking healthy enough to eat, like everything in this place. He slides the cup into the sleeve and retreats to the corner table with Erica. She’s watching him, like a hawk watches a mouse in a field before diving in, talons outstretched. Matiu feigns oblivion as he drops into a seat, tries to look past her sharp edges, into the Erica Langley that would let a bad day twist her up so bad she’d take it out on her client.

“Client.” He chuckles, watching her eyes. “You called me a client.”

She flinches. “What?”

“You’re my case manager, right? But earlier you said I was your client. That’s like a customer. If I’m a customer, then you ought to be selling me something. When did I become a client? When did the whole f*****g world become…clients? Can’t I just be your ex-con?”

“Shut up, Matiu.”

And there it is, that shift behind her eyes. A deep lurking worry, waiting to spill over, or drag her down. Then it’s gone as she slaps the folder on the table. “Care to tell me what this is all about?” She swipes her tablet open, revealing a photo of a Ford Mustang with a smashed bonnet splayed across two lanes of the Harbour Bridge, a truck to one side of the picture. “This is all over the newsfeeds. I got a report on the plates, and that’s Simon Kingi’s car. Guess who paid the registration for the last three years while Kingi was inside? Russell Hanson. The same Russell Hanson that was found dead on his farm, ripped apart by dogs, not very long ago.” Suddenly having Cerberus in tow doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Matiu had hoped having a dog would make Erica see he was taking some responsibility, looking after an animal and whatnot. But all she saw was a weapon. “Hanson who you used to work for. What’s the connection, Matiu? If I dig into this, am I going to find out you had something to do with Hanson’s death?”

Matiu shakes his head slowly. Snakes coil and writhe in his belly. “No, nothing. Penny was meant to go up there and run forensics on the scene—”

“But she couldn’t because you somehow got yourselves involved in a shoot-out in the basement of the Museum instead.” She skewers him with her glare. An uncomfortable silence stretches between them, mercifully broken by Mr Bald-and-Beard arriving and depositing their drinks on the table. Matiu’s is a suspiciously orange shade of yellow for something purporting to be banana, while Erica’s is a tall, green monstrosity flecked with purple.

“Enjoy,” Bald-and-Beard quips, before disappearing.

“He was mocking me,” Matiu says, glaring after the barista. “I’m not sure how, but he was. Swear it.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Matiu? Would you, and the rest of New Zealand, be safer if I was to advise the Board that you’re a danger, and you need to go back inside?”

He sips his drink. It tastes of carrot, yams, kumara, and possibly capsicum. What a d**k. “People drink this s**t?” He pushes the glass aside and slides his coffee closer. “Erica, I’m working for my sister, who’s working for the cops. OK? Means I find myself in some unexpected situations. Doesn’t mean I’m responsible for them. Now, what aren’t you telling me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re worried about something and it’s eating you up inside.”

She stares at him open-mouthed, then leans in and sucks on her blitzed compost. “My worries are none of your business,” she says around her straw.

Matiu glances about, taking in the juice joint. “Bullshit. If you’d just wanted to ream me out, you could’ve back at the office. Look at that crap you’re drinking, it’s not even lunch.”

“It’s highly nutritious—”

“Don’t change the subject. You came here because you’ve got s**t you need to say away from all those cameras and voice recorders. I’m a violent criminal, so why go outside the safety of the office and risk being alone with me?”

Colour flushes her pale cheeks, and she suddenly seems smaller but only for a second. She sits up straighter, shoulders ramrod straight, and Matiu has to glance away before he’s caught admiring the sudden, distracting thrust of her breasts beneath her blouse. She blanks her tablet and pushes it aside.

“My sister has disappeared.”

Matiu blinks. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but this isn’t it. “That sucks. Not sure how it involves me.”

“She was distant. We were never close, but we were friends, generally speaking. You know how siblings are.”

Matiu nods.

“Then, she just started, I don’t know, slipping away. We used to talk every couple of weeks, dinner or lunch together at least once a month. Then that stopped. She stopped calling. When I called her, she sounded…far away. Sad. Like she was losing hope. And then, it was weird. She just bounced back. For a little while, she was suddenly full of life again. Kept going on about this thing she was in, this food thing. Had changed her life. I only saw her once more after that, and then…it stopped. Didn’t hear from her for ages, but I was so caught up in cases and correspondence and getting to the gym after work that I didn’t think about it. When I finally did…” She pauses, sipping more of her drink. Matiu lets the silence stretch out, pretending not to notice the shimmer in her eyes. They’re in a dark corner, after all. Hiding from the world.

“Her house was empty. Not empty, not moved out, just…she wasn’t there. Hadn’t been for ages. Her cat was around, but thin and ragged, and so happy to see me. Dishes in the sink. Laundry in the machine, still wet. The house smelled of rotting clothes. But her car was gone, and she didn’t answer her phone. It’d been weeks since I saw her.”

Matiu nods. “Let me guess. The cops have been no help at all. Too snowed under with actual murders to worry about another missing person.”

“She went out with laundry running in the machine. She intended to come home. Charlotte wasn’t the sort to just abandon her cat, leave the house in a mess. Something happened to her.”

“OK,” Matiu says. “So, why me?”

“Because you know people I don’t.” She reaches across the table and lifts his coffee up to eye level for him to look at more closely. He reads the looping text printed on the sleeve.

Touching the Sun

Micro-gardening for a Healthier You!

“So?”

Erica turns the cup around. Surrounded by blue and green swirls, an eye stares back at him. The same eye that he had seen tattooed on the dead man’s wrist, back at the park.

This is why she brought him here.

“This eye symbol. See it?”

“What about it?” He keeps his voice steady, reluctant to reveal any hint of recognition, or weakness. He takes the cup from her, brings the coffee to his lips. Still too hot to drink, and probably too bitter.

“I told you that I saw Charlotte one last time before she disappeared.” She stabs a finger at the photo. “She had this symbol tattooed on her arm. Exactly the same eye. And she’d never had a tattoo before in her life.”

Matiu pushes the cup away. The eye looks up at him, and blinks. He barely manages to keep his s**t together. “I—”

But Erica’s all about knowing people’s tells, reading a face like a book, and Matiu has never been good at hiding emotion. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” She leans in closer, lowering her voice. “Does this joint have something to do with that tattoo?”

Matiu grits his teeth, scratches at the sudden itch under his bandage. This was not how his afternoon was meant to go. “Did she have a new boyfriend?”

Erica glowers, settling back. “Like I said, we weren’t that close. If she did, she didn’t tell me. Why?”

Matiu shrugs. “Sudden erratic highs and lows, sounds like romance. Always a chance she had a new man, and he might’ve—”

“Swept her away on an impromptu romantic tour of the country? Maybe they’re doing a vineyard a day, all the way down to Otago and back?” Erica looks hopeful.

Matiu’s brow furrows. “You read too many cheap novels. I was going to say maybe they had a falling out, an argument that went bad. But that’s wild speculation on my part, only because I know people who would do that.”

Erica sighs. “She was never a particularly romantic sort anyway. But she only had to meet the right person, eh?”

“Or the wrong person. Where does she live?” Matiu asks, gingerly turning the coffee cup so he can see the eye motif again. Little as he wants to look at it, it keeps drawing his gaze, like someone—or something—trying to make eye contact from across a room.

“Mt Albert. Why?”

“Is the house locked? Alarmed?”

“Both, of course, but—”

“Give me a key and the codes if you don’t want me breaking any laws to get in, and I’ll go take a look around. See if I can find any clues.”

Erica considers this. “Why would I trust you to go snooping round her flat? I thought maybe you could just make some phone calls. For all I know, you’ll just rob the copper out of the walls.”

Matiu doesn’t flinch. “Yes. I’m so smart that when my probation officer threatens me with more time in jail if I don’t help find her missing sister, I would go and rob said sister’s house. I’m that dumb, and that’s why you asked for my help.” He gives her a withering look. “f**k’s sake, Erica. If you don’t trust me, call in sick for the afternoon and come with me. I won’t bite.”

She stares at him hard, sucking intently on her smoothie. Matiu looks down, only to find the eye looking back up at him. He shivers. Erica pushes her glass away, half-empty, and stands. “Let’s go.”

“Great,” Matiu says. “Any chance we can grab a burger on the way?”