The Mangrove Murder (4/4)

When Tessa parked her car at Kenneth Rapp’s house, Skye met her at the top of the drive with a face like thunder. She was glaring at a cop with short red hair standing with his thumbs in his belt chatting to a colleague, a brunette who held an icepack to her cheek. Although he’d adopted a casual stance, his whole body was clearly tense—the two were primed for a stand-off.

“I tried to tell them to wait for you,” Skye said. “They tried to get into the house, I stood in the doorway and that cow tried to manhandle me.”

Tessa groaned inwardly.

“I’ll have a word. You stay here.”

Tessa walked to the policeman, who looked at her doubtfully. She’d thrown a tracksuit on, wore no make up and looked very far from official. She produced her ID and they examined it carefully.

“Hi guys. I’m Detective Sergeant Tessa Dale. I understand that there’s been a burglary here?”

“We got a call an hour ago. This woman has been obstructive and assaulted my colleague. We have warned her that if she continued to resist she will be under arrest.”

“Do you need to see a doctor?” Tessa asked the woman.

The woman shook her head.

“Lucky we had a first-aid kit in the car though.”

“OK. So just FYI, the owner of this house was murdered a couple of days ago. This young lady was the victim’s partner. She’s bereaved and emotional.”

“With respect, ma’am, that’s no excuse for assault,” the red-head said.

“You’re right, but I’m giving you context, right? Mind telling me what led up to the confrontation?”

The man exchanged a doubtful glance with his colleague.

“We responded to the call. The female--”

“Ms. Fainu’u.”

“Ms. Fainu’u said she wanted to see you. We explained that we were the appropriate first responders for this type of incident. She was verbally abusive and attacked my colleague.”

“Is it true that you were trying to enter the house at the time after being asked not to?”

“We were moving in that direction…” the redhead fudged

“Did you have authority to enter without the resident’s permission?” Tessa asked. “I mean, she was the injured party, right?”

Silence.

Tessa smiled apologetically.

“Guys, are you totally sure you want to book her for this one? It sounds like there could have been some de-escalation there…”

“A police officer has been injured,” retorted the redhead.

Tessa drew him aside.

“Look mate, I didn’t want to mention this but Skye Fainu’u has an opinion column in the Sunday paper. Add that to the fact that her partner’s just been violently murdered, and he was a famous columnist himself with some influential friends…If there’s any doubt about correct procedure…All I’m saying is this might not be the hill you want to die on, all right? Unless you want a media shitstorm on your hands? Do you want that?”

The officer scratched the back of his head and shook his head slowly.

“How would it be,” said Tessa, “If Ms. Fainu’u apologized to you both and we’ll leave it at that.”

The two officers exchanged a glance. The redhead nodded. The injured policewoman looked annoyed.

“Yeah, all right.”

Tessa returned to Skye.

“Why are they still here?” Skye scowled.

“Did you punch her?” Tessa asked.

“She was assaulting me!” Skye squealed.

“Shhhh. For god’s sakes. They were going to arrest you and by the looks of it she’s going to have a massive shiner tomorrow, so it doesn’t look great for you, OK? I’ve told them you’ll apologize and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Apologize? Are you serious?”

“Yes Skye, I’m deadly serious. Get it over yourself please.”

Skye folded her arms.

“Fine.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Skye’s apology was brief and insincere, but it did the trick. The cops turned to go but the redhead turned around at the last minute.

“I’ll still have to report the call out,” he said.

“Yep,” said Tessa. “No problem at all. Mention me, obviously. Cheers to Katie. Here’s my card.”

They drove away. Tessa turned to see Skye standing watching the receding vehicle, tears streaming down her face.

Tessa gave her a hug and felt the woman’s shoulders shuddering with the sobs.

“OK. Now, let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me what happened.”

***

Next morning, Tessa was the first one at the briefing meeting. She looked so fresh that no one would have guessed she’d spent her third night in a row on less than four hours’ sleep. In fact, she felt invigorated.

“Morning all,” she said to the room.

“Morning,” they intoned.

“I got most of your updates, thanks for that. We’re making progress. I’ll go through a summary in a moment. Before I begin, though, Detective Constables Meghan Davies and Harjinder Singh: Want to give us a run-down now since I didn’t get your report?”

“Yes ma’am.” Harjinder stood up and moved to the white board. She was a heavily pregnant officer in her mid-twenties, about five-foot three with a long braid down her back. She went to the computer connected to the projector and summoned up a map of Auckland’s CBD. As she described Kenneth Rapp’s movements, she marked the points of interest with a red cross.

“Yesterday we looked into the financial records of Kenneth Rapp in order to help determine his movements on Friday. In total he carried out seven transactions. Early in the morning he visited a petrol station in Remuera and filled the tank. At nine-thirty he visited Mr. Bun and bought a coffee and a muffin. Sergeant Davies talked to the waitress on duty at the time and she said that she remembered him coming in—he’s a regular. He read the paper for a long time—between 30 minutes and an hour. He left some time between ten and ten-thirty.

“At twelve-thirty he bought noodles at a Szechuan place on K-Road. The owner doesn’t remember much about it, though he recognized a photo of Mr. Rapp and made a positive identification. It wasn’t one of Kenneth usual spots. At 2.28 p.m. Mr. Rapp bought a few things at Grayson’s Books on High Street. The owner of the bookshop Greg Fairlie knows him quite well. In fact, he said that Ian Buell and Skye Fainu’u were in the bookshop at the same time. The owner noted it because Ian and Skye were unaware of Kenneth’s presence and were apparently being very affectionate with each other.” Harjinder pursed her lips.

“That’s interesting,” Tessa said. “Did Buell or Fainu’u buy anything, so that we can establish their presence?” Tessa asked.

“Buell did buy a book but he paid cash apparently,” Harjinder said apologetically. “Fainu’u didn’t buy anything. However, there is private security footage and we have obtained a copy of the relevant footage. We’ve viewed it and it confirms his testimony.”

“Did the owner mention any reaction on Rapp’s part?”

“Just one word, apparently. A not super complimentary word for a woman. He was very angry.”

“OK. Four transactions so far. Three more.”

“At three o’clock he went to his bank on Queens Street and made a withdrawal of $3,000 in cash. At three-thirty he went to a key kiosk in the mini mall near they library—he had a key replicated. At five o’clock he paid for two meals at Green Acres café in Gladstone Road.”

“OK, thanks Sergeants Singh and Davies,” said Tessa. “Great work. Could you send me a copy of that summary asap?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Harjinder crisply.

“Right. So, just quickly rounding up the day’s activities then. Myself and Sergant Patel interviewed five people of interest in the case: Theodore Fuller, Kenneth’s daughter Isobel Rapp, Fern Vanier, Rick Slade and Sheryl (name redacted) who is a police informant. We also spoke to Isobel’s mother Marilyn Simms.

“There is some discrepancy in their testimony but the outline is essentially the same. These five people all claim to have been at Isobell Rapp’s studio on the Friday night just before Kenneth was killed. Here’s a summary of their testimony as to their whereabouts on that night.”

She brought up a list of bullet points on the whiteboard.

· Isobell Rapp was at the studio the whole time

· Isobell says that Theodore and her friend stayed at the studio ‘until 10 o’clock’

· Rick Slade says he arrived at 5.30pm he left at 11pm

· Fern Vanier says she arrived at 6.30pm and Rick drove her home

· Theodore Fuller says he arrived at 7.45pm and stayed for the rest of the night

· Sheryl arrived 8pm and left at 9pm

“There was discrepancy in whether or not they had ordered food. Fern Vanier says they ordered pizza, though she couldn’t remember where from. Rick Slade said they ordered Chinese and he couldn’t remember where it came from. Otherwise, there were several points of interest that I think are worth following up on. They are as follows…” She switched to the next page on the computer.

· Sheryl delivered $2,000 worth of heroin and was paid in cash

· Sheryl suggested that Rick Slade was paying Isobel Rapp for sex

· Rick said he believed Kenneth Rapp had abused Isobel

· Isobel said her father had ‘kicked her out’ of his house a year ago

· Rick Slade works for a security firm with a specialty in drug detection

· Marilyn Simms said her daughter came to her a week ago to ask for money for an abortion

“So, quite a lot of interesting information, as you can see.

“There were two other important developments that came to light yesterday.

“In the first place, Sergeants Gray and Tomlinson located Kenneth Rapp’s Aston Martin in Panmure outside Whelkins Pub. Interestingly, there was an exterior-mounted GPS unit attached to the car’s bumper. The barmaid at Whelkins recognized a photograph of Kenneth and said that he’d got very intoxicated and a sober guy who said he was the guy’s son-in-law had offered to drive the man home.

“The second development is that two men went into Kenneth Rapp’s house and removed his artwork, to the tune of three-million dollars. Skye had been away staying with friends. She returned to the house at 11pm in order to get a few things, which was when she discovered the theft. She called the police in order to report the crime, I arrived there at about 12.15am.

“I talked to the neighbour, who’d seen the artwork being removed that afternoon. A white van had came at 3 o’clock in the afternoon—broad daylight—and two men in pale blue uniforms had taken about an hour to shift all the art. The neighbour was initially suspicious but after chatting to the driver he learned that Kenneth Rapp’s estate had ordered the art to be removed for safekeeping. It sounded plausible, he said. What’s more, they had a key. So he ended up helping them.”

There were a few muffled guffaws in the audience.

“I assume the artwork was insured?” Sergeant Gray asked.

“We’ll need to establish that, for sure,” said Tessa. “In fact I’ve put you and Sergeant McGinnis onto that.”

Tessa handed out task sheets for the day.

“So,” he said.

“So!” she smiled at him.

“What are we going to do?” Derek said.

“We’re going for a trip to Massey,” she smiled.

***

“So I had another look at that list of license plates—you know, the cars that crossed over to Rosemount on the Friday night?” Tessa said as Derek took the turn off for the Northwestern Motorway.

“Yeah.”

“And saw that one of them is registered to a security firm in Massey.”

“…And?” said Derek.

“Never mind, it’ll get a lot clearer in a hurry.”

“Do you know what happened?” Derek said suspiciously.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I have an inkling.”

Derek drove to the industrial outskirts of Massey and they stopped outside a low pre-fab office building with a sign saying ‘Direct Detection’ propped up in the window. There was a high fence behind the building from which they heard a sudden explosion of barking.

Tessa strode over to the wire fence, looked in at a row of five white vans parked in the lot.

“That’s the one,” she said and made a quick phone call.

“What’s what one?” Derek said, mystified.

“It’s the one we want,” Tessa said.

A grizzled man in rugby shorts and a singlet opened the door. He looked as if he had been interrupted in the process of sleeping off a hangover.

“Yes?” he said haughtily.

“Good morning,” said Tessa. “I’m Detective Inspector Dale and this is Detective Sergeant Patel. How are you?”

The man didn’t answer but stared with his mouth open.

“Can I ask your name?”

“Jim. Jim Upton.”

“Jim, we’re investigating a homicide. We have a warrant to search the premises. I’m afraid we’re going to need to confiscate one of your vehicles.”

“Eh?” He said, dazed.

“We also need to obtain fur samples from each of the dogs in your kennels. You will please assist Sergeant Patel with this.”

“What the bloody hell is this?” spluttered the man.

“As I said,” Tessa explained patiently, “We’re investigating a homicide. We want to establish whether or not one of your vehicles was at the crime scene.”

“Sorry lady but there’s been some mistake. I’ve been holiday for a week! I was down in Tauranga, you can ask my brother. I’ll give you his number.”

With a shaking hand, he took his phone out of his shorts’ pocket.

Tessa smiled regretfully.

“If you’re willing, I will take a statement from you as to your whereabouts. Don’t worry, we don’t want to inconvenience you more than absolutely necessary but, again, we willneed to remove one of your vehicles and get those samples.”

“Like hell! I want to speak to a lawyer about this.”

“Of course you’re well within your rights to speak to a lawyer but I want to tell you that you personally are not under suspicion Mr. Upton—we don’t want to arrest you and you are obviously free to withhold a statement if you wish. This is merely a matter of investigating objects that we believe were used in the prosecution of a crime.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“I’m sorry for that. I don’t think I can make it any clearer. I would greatly appreciate it if you would assist my colleague here.”

“How about I don’t assist your colleague and the two of you get off my property.” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.

“Look mate,” said Tessa. “I understand that this is a pain for you but I’ve got a job to do. I’m not interested in you personally right now, but if you stop me doing my job I will get interested in you very quickly. Obstructing police in the course of their duties is an arrestable offense and potentially carries a three-month jail term. So,” she shrugged. “It’s up to you. You can get back to bed In an hour or you can spend three months in jail.”

They glared at one another for a few moments before he spat and grumbled.

“I’ll get my keys.”

“Great stuff,” said Tessa. “Derek, you’ll find the DNA kits in the boot. Grab them and get a fur sample from each dog, OK?”

“OK,” said Derek reluctantly. He was afraid of dogs.

***

Once the kits were done, the van towed and Mr. Upton mollified as far as possible, Tessa and Derek headed back into town.

“We’ll drop the kits at the lab, and then how about a bite to eat?” Tessa suggested.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” said Derek, who was irritable after having to spend half an hour in the malodorous kennels with Mr. Upton.

“Yep, over lunch.”

They dropped the kits at the lab and the two of them pulled into Kiwiburger, a fastfood place with seaviews in Point Chevalier.

“So?” Derek said.

“So!” Tessa grinned.

“Care to spill the beans?”

She shrugged.

“It’s pretty obvious if you think about it.”

“Yeah, nah,” argued Derek, annoyed. He bit into his dahl burger with unwonted savagery.

“So. Basically, this is how it played out. Isobel needed cash. She was tired of living in an art studio, she was furious with her dad. An easy way to get cash was to get at the money her dad intended to leave her.”

“But Isobel didn’t leave the apartment all night?” Derek pointed out.

“Yep, Derek. That’s true. Good detecting.”

“All right, no need for sarcasm.”

“Let’s try the Socratic method. Isobel told Rick Slade her father was abusing her. Why?”

“To make him angry with Kenneth?”

“Exactly. As Sheryl said, Rick was clearly besotted with Isobel. He already has a vigilante mentality and in those conditions it would not be terribly hard for him to view the summary murder of a rapist as justice.”

“So he decided to kill the guy?”

“Yes. Not on the spur of the moment, mind you. This was planned. He or Isobel attached the GPS locator to Kenneth’s car. It may have been the Friday morning, which might explain why she went to visit Kenneth at the office. That way Rick could track Kenneth’s movements using his cellphone. Late on Friday night Rick would have seen that Kenneth had driven to a pub. I guess he decided to make his move then. He was driving his work van that night. He dropped Fern off and went straight to the pub to meet Kenneth. According to the barmaid, Kenneth was very drunk that night and a nice young man with big muscles told her he was the sober driver. He said Kenneth would came and get his car the next morning. We showed her a photo of Rick and she identified it positively.”

“Bloody hell. So most probably he strangled Kenneth in the van, then dumped him on the way to work at Massey?”

“Exactly.”

Derek shook his head.

“But what about the artwork? Did Rick do that too?”

“He helped with it. Pretty sure he was the one who sweet-talked the neighbor. But no, the burglary was an inside job.”

“How do you mean?”

“Think about it! Kenneth had drawn up a will leaving one of his most treasured possessions to his best mate Ian Buell. After finding out Buell had betrayed him, he was blowed if he was going to let Buell get his mitts on everything. He paid Theodore $2,000.00 to ‘steal’ the paintings, giving him a key and everything. Rick supplied the van too. The neighbor had a good memory for license plates, you see, so we could match it with the list of cars that went through to Rosemount on Friday night.”

“Where did they put the paintings?”

“Well, my best guess is the gallery. There are a couple of officers there now so we’ll know soon. The thing about Theodore’s employer, you see, is that he has connections to the black market and there is a billionaire in Malaysia who will pay top dollar for stolen art. I suspect Theodore was interested in taking advantage of that.”

“Wow,” said Derek. “So what now?”

“Wait for the evidence, make arrests.”

The evidence came through and the arrests were made.