The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Read online

  Being clever and studying hard at University brought Nigel excellent qualifications and fast promotion in his chosen field, local body administration. He worked in Dunedin and in Hamilton before becoming Chief Planning Officer for Wahanui. He had a business relationship with both Frank Copperfield and Stuart Larcombe, a relationship that had developed into a financially rewarding but rather shady enterprise. Nigel pushed Copperfield Building and Larcombe Enterprises paperwork through approval and inspection processes and was richly rewarded with bonus payments, euphemistically called ‘consultation fees’.

  Stuart Larcombe was planning a party to thank the people who had made the current project possible: the architect, the contractors they would be using, the Mayor and Council Officers, bank manager, the Rugby Club management because their support was essential for the acquisition of a sports field at the foot of a hill, and various hangers-on. Frank seldom took Louise to such functions. She did not enjoy them and with Louise present he could not let his hair down with ‘the boys’, as he called the men friends with whom he had gone to school and played cricket and rugby. But Larcombe had insisted Louise be present.

  “She won’t come, Stuart,” Frank had said. She doesn’t like this sort of thing.”

  “I think she should be with you, Frank. I really want her to come,” Stuart had replied, leering meaningfully as he said the word ‘come’, a look not noticed by Frank. “How about I ask her myself? Will that help?”

  Frank knew it would have the opposite effect; if Larcombe asked her to go Louise would run a mile. She was a very uptight lady

  “Why the heavy trip?” he asked.

  “Because I’ve got a wager to win,” Larcombe replied with another leer.

  Frank was alarmed. Stuart had taken the drunken wager seriously. This was Frank’s chance to pull out. But Louise was never going to fall for Larcombe. She was man-shy, saw menace in every approach by a male. And to pull out of a bet meant social exclusion in the circles in which he moved.

  “I’ll ask her,” he said. “Better coming from me.”

  Frank thought back to a month ago and the drunken bet he had made when Frank was feeling frustrated and bitter. They had been at the pub, drinking together in a corner. It had been a stupid bet where his business partner Stuart Larcombe had exploited Frank’s sense of frustration and his state of near inebriation.

  “Had a great one last night,” said Larcombe. “Just a young kid really but boy did she know how.”

  Frank remained silent. He always felt a little uncomfortable when Larcombe crowed about his sex life.

  “Are you getting any?” asked Larcombe.

  “No,” Frank had said. “She’s absolutely frigid. Can’t stand being touched. I’d give a thousand bucks to anyone who managed to get my wife to have sex.”

  “You’re on,” said Larcombe, holding out his hand.

  Frank was surprised. He thought for a second then shook the hand. “But no drugs and no secret potions, legal or not. Just persh... just pershway ”

  “Persuade her. Don’t worry, Frank. No dirty tricks,” Larcombe said. “Just the old Larcombe charm. She will get a thrill, and you might get lucky from then on. I’ll organise a party and do it then, when everyone is relaxed and happy. A party will give her an excuse.”

  Later, Frank had been agitated and very concerned. What had he done? He had been drunk, it was true, but you don’t gamble with your wife as the stake. That guy in the book he had to read at school did, the one that became the mayor of wherever it was. So, was Louise worth only a thousand dollars to him?

  He had loved Louise but recently they seemed to have grown apart. On the other hand, truth will out when you are drunk. Had they passed the point of no return in their marriage?

  But it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘She’s too upright and too uptight,’ he thought. He liked the phrase and rolled it around in his head. ‘Too upright and too uptight.’

  He thought that summed up Louise in a nutshell; her upbringing had given her very old-fashioned values and she was a nervous wreck all the time. There was no way Larcombe could win the wager. Louise need never know about it. And if she did, Frank was certain she would keep the experience as a deep dark secret, so he would be safe.

  Louise had been delighted when Frank asked her to the party, which was just after the New Year. She had a pretty blue outfit that was too much for ‘ordinary’ social events but just right for the wife of the businessman at a thank you social.

  “Wake up you dozy so-and-so,” said Larcombe. “Where have you been for the last five minutes?”

  “Thinking,” said Frank as he came back to the present. “Thinking what I’m going to spend my thousand bucks on when I win,”

  Larcombe read Frank’s expression.

  ‘He regrets the wager, thinks it will never happen,’ he thought. ‘He’ll have to learn to play games with the big boys. I’ll have to sideline him or he’ll be like the shepherd looking for the wolf all night.’

  Larcombe had played this trick several times in the past. Each time he set someone up, the husband was certain the wife would never come across, but Larcombe had not failed yet. He got a thrill out of the conquest and a thrill out of watching the man squirm. Even though the men thought they could safeguard their wives, there was always a way of separating the ram from the ewe no matter how vigilant the shepherd. At the thought of a shepherd looking after his sheep, Nigel Jones sprang to mind. It would be better to sideline him as well.

  David Bannister was pleased with himself. David was square faced with dark curls hanging over his brow, a tall Lord Byron. He was a teacher, had been all of his life, a job that gave him access to clubs and sports groups. He enjoyed a strong social life and had been President of the Wahanui Rugby Club. He had supported Frank Copperfield’s plan to turn a rugby field into a shopping mall. The field was at the foot of a hill, shaded and damp and cold to play on. The Council had been willing to create another rugby field for junior players further out of town. It was a win-win situation, a no-brainer, even though it was strongly opposed by Club members. Bannister pushed a deal through, the Club was richly rewarded, and so was Bannister. Opposition soon faded away as the new sports field was developed and turned out to be a far better venue.

  Life was good for Bannister. He had worked his way through Wahanui High School from being a classroom teacher, to Head of Physical Education and part time maths teacher. He was now the school’s Deputy Principal. Both he and the Principal, Ray Jackson, had been invited to a celebration party in the New Year. Ray Jackson would be cruising at that time and was not able to attend, happily leaving David to represent the school and the youth of the district.

  Bannister’s wife had left him, taking the children, Roland and Amber, with her. Although there had been speculation that David had been caught having an affair, his reputation carried him through a difficult social time. He had been on his own for some years now and in his fifties was seen as a senior by younger associates. As a coach of sports and gymnastics he earned a well-deserved reputation for developing the sporting skills of both boys and girls. He gave much individual attention to students in his normal classes but especially so to the students in his sports teams and individual endeavours. He had assistants who taught some physical education classes as well as other subjects so there always competition among students to get into Mr Bannister’s teams and coaching schools.

  Wahanui High School students were formidable competitors in the Inter-School Tournaments. They won far more than any other school throughout the South Island, including the much vaunted Wahanui Boys and Girls Colleges. Bannister was highly regarded by all.

  CHAPTER 3.

  Wahanui was a town of some fifty thousand, not big enough to be a proper city, but granted the title of Cathedral City by Queen Victoria in the early days of New Zealand’s colonisation. Originally known as Royston, the town had been renamed Wahanui after the famous chief of the Maniopoto tribe, the giant soldier-politician Wahanui Te
Huatare It was a pretty town, nestled on the edge of a bay with rivers to the east and west. Between the rivers was a flat area, Huatere, that slowly rose to nestle against the hilly ridges to the east and west, that was Huatere Valley. Locals used the terms Huatere, the open flat area, and Huatere Valley the area where the hills narrowed the flat land, indiscriminately, having no difficulty understanding what part of the geography they meant, but some feared confusion and wanted the higher land to return to its previous name of Copenhagen.

  The Temaraire River ran through the eastern suburb of Nile, a pretty tree lined river running down from the mountains to the south east. Houses along the river bank were expensive and sought after. The Hairini River was to the west of the town. This river gathered water from the plains inland and fed it into the bay. Industrial development had made the river ugly with a freezing works and abattoir, wharves and some rather dilapidated warehouses at the outlet to the bay with a series of offices, shops and small workshops and factories lining both banks. The two rivers formed a V shape with a flat bottom instead of a point, or perhaps a truncated capital A shape as there was a distance of three kilometres between the outlets at the sea and a distance of seven kilometres where the rivers entered the valley.

  Between the mouths of the rivers was what had been a swamp, a low lying wetland that had been drained and filled with cheap houses that sat closely side by side. This area was known as Huatere, huw-ar-tae-rae, which pakeha pronounced as hoo-ar-tree. Reclamation from the sharp end of the A-shape into the sea was still proceeding to meet the ever growing demand for industrial land. The main electrical supply for the town was here, receiving power from dams in the mountains to the west to be distributed through a spider’s web of cables on poles throughout the town.

  The Wahanui Fisheries had a processing plant just up from the wharves where the company’s fishing boats tied up. School children fished from the wharves in their school holidays in expectation that the effluent from the plant would bring big fish to their hooks. Apart from the rusting corrugated iron on the roofs and walls of the cargo sheds, it was a pleasant scene that attracted walkers and cyclists of an evening.

  The Wahanui City Council was at pains to keep the scene pleasant. The town needed industry and tourists so that business could prosper. The Council was pragmatic about the effluent from the fisheries, about construction bylaws and about camper vans. The full Council met on a Friday. There was no meeting on Thursday to allow papers to be prepared by paid staff, in preparation for Friday’s meeting. On Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday, subcommittees of the Council met to discuss issues related to their portfolios: Planning and Town Development, Finance and Policies, and General.

  One Saturday afternoon in early November the Council papers containing the minutes of the previous full Council meeting and the agendas of the various subcommittees that would meet during the week were sent to each elected Councillor’s house. As usual, those on the Council phoned their colleagues and allies to discuss any issues. In this way, negotiations could take place that could shorten lengthy meetings and provide an indication of where other Councillors stood over issues, especially controversial issues such as planning and town development.

  Stan Rivers and Joe Hamilton, who were both on the Planning and Town Development subcommittee, had decided to vote ‘No’ to an application for a residential development in the Huatere area where the hills grew up out of the swamp flats and reclaimed land.

  “That land will slip,” said Joe, who was in his seventies. “The houses that are on the left hand side should be okay. That side of the valley has very little overlay. The problem is the right hand side. It is not safe to build there. Never has been.”

  “Have you been approached by Larcombe’s lawyer?” asked Stan, a retired police officer.

  “Yes. I told him to go to Hell,” said Joe. “I said ‘we’ll make the decision on the facts given’. He never offered me money, though.”

  “I think Stevenson has been,” said Stan. “I spoke to him earlier. He told me not to ruin things for everyone. Now there’s an interesting comment.”

  “You think promises were made?” asked Joe.

  “Everyone has their price,” said Stan.

  “Not me,” said Joe.

  The Planning and Town Development Subcommittee met on the Wednesday, two days before the full Council Meeting. Both Stan and Joe were on that committee, with the Mayor, Charles Cameron, Nigel Jones the Chief Planning Officer who did not get a vote, Errol Stevenson, Annette Grieve and Michael Morrison. Councillor Sid Struthers was absent.

  Their task was to make recommendations to the full Council which would meet on Friday, when proposals would be put to a vote.

  The first issue was about a request for a letter box to be placed within a hundred metres of a retirement village.

  “Well, we can certainly ask the Postal Service for a letter box to be installed, but don’t hold your breath,” said Charles Cameron. “New Zealand Post is running its business into the ground, trying to save money instead of trying to earn it.”

  Charles Cameron loved talking. Allowed to go on, he could talk for an hour or longer on the failings of private enterprise attempting to provide services best left to Local Authorities like the Wahanui City Council or Central Government.

  “There are some services best left to Local Authorities or Central Government,” continued Charles. “Rubbish collection, mail services, land development... “

  “Thank you, Mayor,” Errol Stevenson interrupted. “Land development. It is an interesting proposal.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Mayor, gathering his thoughts. He had not read the proposal to build a new housing development in Huatere Valley; he had just skimmed the headlines, knowing that he would catch the gist of matters as the Planning Committee conducted its normal laborious procedures. “What do people think?”

  “There are issues,” said Stan. “That land slips.”

  “No evidence,” said Stevenson.

  “Well, the surveys show it’s greasy-back,” said Joe.

  “The survey was made in the 1890s,” said Stevenson. “It is no longer relevant. Any further discussion? If not I’ll move that the Chief Planning Officer’s recommendations to approve the plan be accepted.”

  “What are the recommendations?” asked the Mayor, having lost control of the meeting to Stevenson. “Nigel?”

  Nigel Jones was a small man with a big voice when it was needed. Otherwise he was soft spoken and polite.

  He answered carefully, “That we accept the development plans subject to conditions that initially only ten houses are to be built, followed by a period of checking for earth movement and subsidence, and the proviso that pilings had to be sunk to bedrock.”

  “Seems fair enough,” said Stevenson.

  “You’ll kill someone if you approve this scheme,” said Joe Hamilton. “You know very well that land will slip as soon as the vegetation is cleared and access roads put in. It will slip down the valley to the sports fields below.”

  “Too late for discussion,” said Stevenson. “We discussed all that before I put the motion. All those in favour?”

  “Aye, Aye, No, No, No.”

  “I vote for, so that’s three for and three against,” said the Mayor. “I’ll take a recommendation to give approval to full Council on Friday, using my casting vote.”

  “Mr Mayor, that is quite out of order,” said Stan Rivers. “Under our rules, we need a clear majority, not a casting vote, which operates only during full Council meetings. I would ask you to delay the decision until the next Planning Council meeting, giving us an opportunity to have a more recent survey done.”

  “My decision is final,” said Charles. “Let’s move on.”

  “No,” said Joe Hamilton. “I agree with Mr Rivers. In fact, I don’t see why the newspapers have been excluded from this meeting. We are not meeting in camera, are we?”

  In camera meant the meeting would be held behind closed doors, with only a general summary of
business transacted being given in a Press Release. It also meant that what happened in the room was confidential and not for publication or comment to outsiders.

  “No,” said the Mayor, who was under the pump for his habit of running private and in camera meetings for important decisions. “I don’t want the papers here because this proposal is commercially sensitive.”

  “I move we go into Committee and the matter before us be taken in camera,” said Stevenson. “I thought we were in a closed meeting.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Joe Hamilton. “You can’t hold a public session and then call it private. I think this should all be in the newspaper. The public have a right to know.”

  “I agree,” said Stan Rivers. “Mr Jones, will you write a Press Release?”

  “No,” said Nigel Jones, the Chief Planning Officer. “All that has happened is we are going to take a proposal to a full Council meeting.”

  “Not quite all,” said Joe Hamilton. “By doing that we are recommending the proposal. If we didn’t support it, we would not take to full Council. I still think it should be in the papers.”

  “On your head be it,” said Stevenson.

  “Gentlemen, let’s move on. Mr Hamilton, I can’t stop you going to the Press but I would strongly advise against it. You will lose my support for one thing, and the businesses involved in this plan could sue you if premature release of their intentions resulted in financial loss. Let us look at Dog Control. You see on the agenda the question of a park for dog walkers? Let’s deal with that.”