Teeth of the Wolf

Teeth of the Wolf ebook-8

CHAPTER 3

- Pandora -

The Commodore slams into the barrier. Sparks fly and the passenger side airbag bursts, enveloping her. There’s the grinding shriek of metal on metal as Penny’s door scrapes against the barricade. The shrill goes on and on. Still going. The note pulses in the back of her teeth. Penny holds her breath, swathed in the deflating airbag. Clamps her mouth closed. She covers her eyes and waits for the burn.

Matiu brakes hard and she’s thrown forward, then whiplashes back as her seatbelt snaps taut. Cerberus howls, but Penny can do nothing for him.

There’s an awful interminable moment of stillness…

The car jerks to a standstill and they’re engulfed in a swathe of black smoke, the stench of burning rubber hot in her nostrils.

Penny exhales. Inhales again.

It’s OK. I’m OK. We’re not dead. Matiu stopped us. Her heart pounds on her chest wall as if it wants out.

“Matiu—”

But Matiu has flung open the door and is already diving out of the car. A horn blares. Cerberus clambers forward, Penny sandwiched between the airbag and the dog’s flank. Cerberus’ claws scritch on plastic in his scrabble to get over the console. Suddenly, he’s in the driver seat and the lead is trailing past her. She makes a grab for it, but, fighting to get free of the billowing parachute, she clutches at air. “Cerberus, no!”

There’s a thump on the back of the car. Matiu? What’s he doing? The fuel crisis means there are fewer cars nowadays. Once upon a time, cars would be bumper to bumper on this bridge, authorities altering the lane directions over the day just to cope with the traffic flow. But it’s still the motorway, fewer cars doesn’t mean Matiu couldn’t get hit. You’re supposed to move away from a vehicle after an accident in case your car’s rear-ended. Her blood runs cold with suspicion. What’s in the car boot? A gun? Hanson’s gun? No, that can’t be right. Hanson’s gun was bagged up and put in police storage after the ruckus at the museum. Besides, Matiu knows if he’s caught with a firearm he’ll be marched straight back to prison.

But if Kingi’s still after them, and Matiu has a gun…

She has to get out! But this blasted airbag has her cornered. Penny can’t see a thing. Desperate, she fumbles with her seatbelt, her fingers tripping on the clasp. The airbag’s everywhere, in her face, like a cloud of cotton candy.

Come on, come on!

Hands shaking, she grasps blindly. At last, the belt clicks open. Penny gasps in relief. She gives the airbag a final push and clambers over the console, all hands and knees.

Through the angle of the open door, she gets her first look at the accident, at the Mustang. Facing back towards them, it appears untouched, aside from the smashed windscreen. Cerberus is already across the road, snapping at the car door, baring his teeth and growling. A car whooshes by in a streak of colour, blocking the Mustang and the dog from view. Penny cringes. Cerberus! He’s going to get run over. The road clears and the door of the Mustang swings open. Is that Kingi? A foot descends. Cerberus is going berserk, barking and snarling, trying to hurl himself at Kingi. Kingi barely notices him. In a flash, he kicks out, sending Cerberus flying against the barriers. Cerberus bashes the barrier and slumps to the ground in a heap of golden doggy fur, stunned.

No!

But she hasn’t got time to worry about Cerberus because Kingi is coming. He’s crossing the road. Coming for Matiu. For me.

Panic hits. Her heart lurches. Goes into palpitations, shot full of 4,5-β-trihydroxy-N-methylphenethylamine. She can’t get free. Her foot is caught on the console. Penny kicks back to free herself. In the end, she practically falls out of the car. One foot on the tarmac, she puts a hand on the door frame to steady herself and gets a flash of Cerberus, against the barriers and getting to his feet, and of Kingi, still coming.

Black eyes…

Whump! A truck hurtles past and he’s gone. Brakes scream, or maybe it’s her screaming, and all she can think is Cerberus could be under the wheels.

Penny and Matiu wait for the traffic to pass before dashing across the road.

Matiu goes after Cerberus, who has recovered from the kick and is 100 metres down the road, in the direction of the city, rushing back and forth at the railing. Penny can hear him howling from here. The poor baby’s beside himself with fright, but at least he hasn’t been bowled away by a passing vehicle.

Not like Kingi.

But where is the man? Where did he go? Penny’s sick with worry. Kingi’s a bad egg, there’s no doubt about that but to have caused his death? Penny doesn’t want to think about it. She scans the roadway. Further along, the truck—Wyatts Couriers, marked on the rear doors—has limped over to the median and out of the way. No sign of Kingi on the road. Could he have gone over the side?

Quickly, Penny leans over the edge. The pedestrian SkyPath is slung under the clip-ons, its transparent ceiling allowing pedestrians to observe panoramic views of the harbour and the city, as well as the bridge’s construction. There’d been talk of removing the Japanese clip-ons, the lack of road user revenue not justifying maintenance of the 1960s relics, but the 2020 SkyPath addition had become a public favourite that, given the cost of scrapping the extra lanes, the Council had voted to leave well enough alone.

Mid-morning and there are several people on the scenic walk. Below Penny, a woman carrying a toddler gazes upwards at the girders supporting the century-old structure. Another day Penny might have waved at the baby, but today she’s intent on scanning the SkyPath for a sprawled body, or a crack or tell-tale splotch of blood which would indicate where Kingi might have bounced off the Perspex before falling 43 metres into the sea. Nothing, and the pedestrians don’t seem perturbed either. Wait! The toddler is grabbing at his mother’s chin, demanding she look. Has he seen something? Penny follows his finger.

He’s pointing at Cerberus. The mother smiles. Penny reads her lips: “Doggie.”

Straightening, Penny turns and looks back the way they came. Kingi isn’t on the SkyPath and he definitely isn’t on the road. Which leaves only one place: he must be plastered to the front of the truck.

Like a fly.

An image flashes into her head, of Kingi’s bones smashed, his organs splattered across the fender, black eyes staring. Penny’s legs sag. She grasps the rail. She isn’t hurt. At least, she doesn’t think so. Just the body’s normal response to shock. And she hasn’t had a chance to look at the front of the truck yet.

The cars have slowed. Rubberneckers hoping to see some blood. A couple of Good Samaritans have pulled over and are erecting orange safety cones—the ones they give away at service stations—around the crash vehicles.

Still grappling with Cerberus, Matiu joins her at the railing. It’s all he can do to hold the Lab in check. Penny sinks her hands into Cerberus’ fur and kneads gently, hoping to calm herself as much as the dog. “Matiu, did you see where he went?” Even to her, her voice sounds thin. “Kingi? After the truck hit him?”

As if she didn’t already know.

“It didn’t hit him.” He gazes out over the ocean.

“What? Matiu, no. It hit him. I saw it.”

“Must have just clipped him,” Matiu says, gazing out to the horizon. “It all happened pretty fast. I saw him run off down the motorway.”

On the road shoulder, the truck driver is approaching, weaving as if he were drunk.

Rushing over to meet him, Penny gives him the once-over as she nears: his overalls—Wyatt Couriers embroidered on the breast patch—are solid red, so any injuries would be hard to pick up. No sign of anything major. Nothing external anyway. “Are you OK?”

“What the hell just happened?” the driver blurts. “Why was that guy on the road? He had…he had…” His face pales. The walk from the truck has been too much for him. He leans heavily against the railing, then plops bodily to the ground, one shoulder jammed against the concrete. He’s about to get up again, but Penny drops to a crouch and puts a hand on his arm. “You know, I think…sorry, what’s your name?”

“Chand.”

“You know, Chand, I think you should stay where you are,” she says. “The ambulance will be here soon and we can get you checked out. Our vehicle has instant HELP.”

Matiu’s head whips around.

“They have to come,” Penny explains. “My airbag deployed.” She turns back to Chand. “Do you remember what happened?” Well, they can hardly leave him. He’s in shock. And since they have to wait for the ambulance, she may as well find out what he knows.

Chand clutches at his knees, rocking gently. “He was in the middle of the road. Just stepped out of nowhere. I…I hit him.”

“I don’t think so. You can’t have. My brother says he ran off.”

“I hit him. There was a thud.” He drops his head into his hands and starts to blubber. “Oh jeez, I’ll lose my job, my licence.”

“Nah, you’re fine, mate,” Matiu says. “The guy took off down the road.”

“See?” Penny says gently. “No harm was done. If you’d hit him, he’d still be on the road. Take a look. There’s no one.”

Chand lifts his head. Watery eyes stare out over the road.

“His back, there were…tentacles…”

Tentacles? Penny shivers, but, still holding on to Cerberus, and out of Chand’s line of sight, Matiu draws a little circle in the air with his index finger. Mouths the word, “Loco.”

Penny nods. He’s probably right. The man isn’t making any sense. Halloween was months ago. He has to be concussed. Only, he doesn’t look confused. Slumped against the rail, his body crumpled in on itself, the look he gives her is one of pure fear.

“He was there,” Chand babbles, his voice quiet. “I hit him. Smacked right into him. Anyone else would have died. But not him.” He shudders. “Tentacles…he had tentacles. On the road…I swear I saw…a demon!”

Penny glances along the road. Someone’s coming.

Chand’s right. It’s definitely a demon.

Penny stands up to meet him. “Detective Tanner.”

“What are you doing here?” Tanner says, signalling to his off-siders to deal with the traffic.

Penny lifts her chin. “I could ask you the same thing. I didn’t think traffic was your brief.”

Tanner smiles. “Touché, Dr Yee.”

“Matiu and I were first on the scene.”

No one was hurt. That’s the main thing. If Matiu’s being dragged back into a bad scene, Dad will get injunctions slapped everywhere. On everyone. There’s no way Matiu’s going back to prison. So, there’s no reason to tell Tanner any more than necessary.

The detective looks at her shrewdly. “You mean, you caused the accident.”

“We…we…”

Tanner doesn’t wait for an answer. He stalks up the road towards the Mustang. Penny throws Matiu a don’t-you-dare-interfere glance and follows the detective. Tanner doesn’t muck around and Penny’s forced to add in a little run-skip every second or third step to keep pace. “No point denying it,” Tanner declares. “I’ve already viewed the bridge CCTV—saw it on the way here. Looked to me like your brother was playing boy racers with the Mustang. A game of chicken. Seeing who had the biggest balls.”

Penny’s about to protest, but the ambulance passes, the blare of its siren making conversation impossible. When it has pulled in and two paramedics in Hi-Viz yellow are attending to Chand, Tanner continues, “I asked you why you were here. Shouldn’t you still be with Clark at Little Shoal Bay Reserve? Better yet, you could be back in that lab of yours, already analysing the case samples.”

Penny bites her bottom lip. “I’ve had to step away for an hour on a personal matter: my mother’s sister has had a—”

“Mummy called, did she?”

Penny’s face burns.

“Ah. Not Mummy; it was Daddy then.” Tanner has met Penny’s parents, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t; her father’s fleet is well known in the city.

“…medical emergency…” she trails off.

Tanner slows his stride. He fiddles with the button of his shirt pocket. “Sorry,” he says curtly. “I didn’t know.” Penny nods. When he goes on, she imagines his voice is softer. “I expect you’ll want to get away, then. Before you do, can you give me a quick heads up about what happened?” He leans in to look through the Mustang’s shattered windscreen. Tiny blocks of glass litter the seats.

So much for only telling him what’s necessary.

“This vehicle followed us from outside Little Shoal Reserve.”

Tanner circles the vehicle, looking through the windows. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes, I am. Matiu noted the vehicle’s make and colour before we left. He suspected we were being followed and took a convoluted course. They were definitely following us. When they knew they’d been spotted, they tried to run us off the road.”

“They?”

“He. A man.”

“Someone trying to impede the investigation? I’ll have Clark check the Mustang’s plates. Did you see what happened to the driver?”

“The courier truck hit him—just clipped him, Matiu said—and the driver ran off back towards town.”

“Wyatt Couriers.” Tanner cranes his neck to read the back of the truck. “Their guy should be able to fill in the gaps, then.”

Penny shrugs. “Actually, I don’t think he remembers much. Too shocked.” They look over to the rail where, like a couple of Christmas baubles on either side of a candy cane, the two paramedics are helping Chand into the ambulance.

Penny searches the road for Matiu, finds him back on the far side of the bridge, changing the tyre on the Commodore. Cerberus is in the front seat, his paws on the dash. He pushes his muzzle into the windscreen, as if trying to tell Penny something. Probably ‘get a hurry on’. At least he doesn’t appear to have suffered too much from the kick. What kind of a monster kicks a dog anyway?

“I’ll have uniforms look at the CCTV again,” Tanner says, pulling Penny back to the moment. She has something else to ask him.

“Detective? Our John Doe, and now this. Is there a chance the death could be gang-related?”

“It’s possible. Most serious crime in the city is. The gangs have their fingers in a few pies.”

“Hmmm.”

Tanner kicks at the Mustang’s crumpled registration plate with the toe of his boot. “Why? You have some special reason to think a gang might be involved?” His phone rings. He turns away from Penny while he answers it. Runs a hand through his hair. “Tanner. f**k. Another one?”

While he’s speaking, Penny hunts out the image of the tattoo on her phone. She waves it in front of his face. Still on his call, Tanner holds her hand steady a second, then shakes his head. She puts the phone back in her pocket.

Waiting on Tanner, Penny walks the length of the Mustang again, taking care not to step in the glass on the roadway. Most of the windshield is gone, but the circumference is still rimmed in shattered glass, like salt crystals on a margarita glass. She peers into the car, careful not to cut herself on the jagged edges. That’s when she sees the dark smudge, a tiny smear on a diamond of glass. Blood? Looks that way. It has to be Kingi’s. A scrape caused when he pushed out the windscreen. If it is, and the Little Shoal samples include similar DNA, that would put Kingi at the scene and not simply loitering in the carpark. It would put Matiu in the clear.

She looks over at Tanner. Facing away, towards the ambulance, the detective is still on the phone. Quickly, slipping the spare piece of sampling tape out of her shirt pocket, she dabs it on the edge of the glass, folding the tape over to ensure its integrity. Then she tucks it back in her pocket.

Tanner’s winding up his conversation. “Where? Nah, nah, tell him I’ll meet him there,” he bellows. “Send the co-ordinates to my vehicle. Yeah, I’m leaving now.” He rings off, sliding the device into his pocket, then points to Penny’s phone. “That design’s new to me. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a gang patch.” He grunts. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we ask your brother? He’s better connected than both of us.”

“This has nothing to do with Matiu.”

But Tanner is already striding away towards his vehicle. “Let’s hope not, Dr Yee.”

- Matiu -

Matiu cinches the last wheelnut tight, and whistles quietly. Took him almost four minutes to change the tyre. Was a time when he could jack, block and strip all four tyres off a car in two minutes flat. Sort of s**t him and Kingi used to pull, in fact. Two guys, a ute, a couple of jacks and a hand-compressor. But to be fair, he never used to put the tyres back on. That’s the bit that takes the time.

Sweat runs down his back, drips off his forehead. Looks like Penny’s got the cops tied up for the moment, and Cerberus is safely out of the way in the car, with the windows cracked so he doesn’t parboil in the heat. Tossing the jack and the tyre iron into the boot with the shredded tyre, he crosses to the rail, casts his eye over the harbour. More bloody police tape, stretched out around the Mustang and the truck. Damn it. Matiu sure would like to get a closer look at the safety rail, where he saw Kingi go over the side. Did he go into the harbour? Smash apart when he hit the water?

Matiu glances down. There’s a Chinese kid in the covered walkway, staring back up. Not at him, not quite. Eyes wide, mouth open. His olds are ignoring him, lost in whatever it is wealthy Asian tourists talk about while they take photos of the slush we call Waitemata Harbour. The kid’s looking at the underside of the bridge.

Despite the heat, a chill goes through Matiu. He saw Kingi go over that rail, he knows he did, those black tentacles whirling about him as he tumbled through the air. Tentacles. Like a f*****g octopus. What’s the chance those things on his back whipped out and snatched at the rail, caught him before he fell, lowered him down, and he’s still there, hanging, lurking. Waiting for s**t to go quiet so he can take his shattered ribcage somewhere to get stitched up. Matiu can picture him there, broken limbs hanging useless, blood leaking from torn skin, and those appendages, something other, sprouted from him like tumours, like…parasites. Clinging to him. Keeping him alive.

He fights the urge to duck under the tape and go look closer. Nope. Best thing he can do is get the hell away. He turns and strides back towards the car. “Penny, come on. We’re out of here.” Cerberus turns around twice and settles in the back as Matiu throws himself into the driver’s seat and guns the engine. Pulling away from the barrier slowly, with a shriek of metal on metal, he noses the car around the edge of the police cordon. Penny hurries over, waving at him, and he slows down almost to a stop. Almost. Penny grabs the door handle and jerks at it, but the door catches, bent panels jamming against each other. Matiu jerks a finger over his shoulder. “Hop in the back.”

“What? Have you seen how much room that dog takes up?”

“Can’t sit in the front ‘til we’ve cleaned up the airbag anyway.”

Glowering, Penny yanks open the back door and slides in, squeezing alongside the Labrador who doesn’t seem inclined to make any extra room for her. “Don’t you think the police might want to inspect our vehicle before we leave the scene?” she asks, fumbling to clip her seatbelt around the dog’s bulk.

“No-one’s telling us to stay, sister, so we ain’t staying. We’re not inside the police tape.”

“We were involved in an incident!”

“And the sooner the cops get the road cleared, the happier everyone’ll be. If anyone wants to check out the car, they’ve got your number.” Waving to the uniform assigned to manage traffic flow, Matiu eases out into the fourth lane, the only one still clear for vehicles.

“Matiu—”

“Pandora. We’ve got places to be.”

A hundred metres down the road, the other lanes open up. Matiu veers left and accelerates, putting the bridge behind them. It recedes in the rear view, like a taniwha sinking into the harbour.

“Seriously, Matiu. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why was your old mate Simon Kingi waiting for us in the car park? Why did he try to run us off the road?”

Matiu stares straight ahead, chewing the inside of his cheek. “You need to find out who your dead guy was mixed up with.”

“Really? That’s your answer? You think it’s more likely that some random guy lying dead in a park on the North Shore—a guy who wears three-thousand dollar Saveas—has gang connections, than the guy Simon Kingi was chasing?”

“Look, I don’t f*****g know, all right. I swear I’ve had nothing to do with Kingi for years. Thought he was still inside. Really, I got nothing.” He’s quiet for a minute as the Auckland CBD scrapes across the horizon, layers of fluted needles of glass and steel. “OK, I got two things. You listening?”

Penny sits forward, her face in the rear-view mirror crinkling in unexpected anticipation. “I’m all ears.”

“First thing. Something’s changed, maybe Hanson being taken off the scene. Guy like that kicks it, leaves a hell of a void in the power structure. Could be any number of people making moves to fill his shoes, and maybe some crazy fucker like Simon Kingi, or someone who’s got something over Simon Kingi, has a reason to come after me. I’ll have to make some enquiries.”

“OK,” Penny presses. “What’s the second thing?”

Matiu watches the skyline slide by, all those towers reaching for the clouds. All that real estate, all those people. So much going on, a million tiny struggles to survive in a city slipping into the sea. “Your stiff. What sort of s**t can a guy like that be mixed up in? Guys like that don’t just end up dead in a park wearing shoes worth three grand. Maybe he went on a bender, drank himself stupid, got into a fight he couldn’t win, but if he did he walked a f**k of a long way even from the Devonport bars before he keeled over. Something about it stinks, right? All I’m saying is, before you write off the idea that a guy like that couldn’t be mixed up in some nasty s**t, it might be worth considering all the bad s**t he could be mixed up in. Look at this place. Lot of desperate people out there. Lot of predators.”

Penny shakes her head. “He’s a victim, we know that. I’m not sure—”

“Nor am I. I don’t know what else is out there, under the surface, but you don’t have to scratch very deep to find the rot.”

She sighs. “Let’s just swing by the lab on the way to the hospital so I can get Beaker to start processing the evidence. You know, the stuff the science is based on? And leave the speculation to the police, OK?”

It’s Matiu’s turn to shake his head as he veers towards the offramp, the descent into the guts of the beast. “Just saying it might be a good idea to keep an open mind, eh. Evidence is fine, but someone has to interpret it.”

“Yes. The police. We just deliver the facts.”

“Facts,” he repeats, and laughs. The f**k do the facts have to do with anything?