Might it be motive for murder?
In association with the Dunedin City of Literature Creative Cities Southern Hui, we begin David Loughrey’s new four-part murder mystery, with support from the University Book Shop.
Rene Sturden cursed his new shoes.
Wet from the soaking rain outside they began to squeak as he gingerly descended the dusty staircase under the Athenaeum.
He was aware of a knot in his chest, a hard ball of apprehension that stifled his breath.He had been shown the door that led to the musty halls below by a woman who worked at a small library on the ground floor.
She had heard raised voices, she had told him half whispered and breathless in the building’s entrance, and a crash on the floor below as she opened for the day.
Sturden had been seconds away buying a coffee when the call came through from the station.
It was the silence below that concerned him most, and a feeling that something was very wrong.
At the bottom of the stairwell he fumbled for a light switch, but his hands found nothing on the pitted walls.
He could hear the rain had become heavier; it was spattering on window panes and drumming and pooling on the corrugated iron roofs nearby.
Through the murk of an early morning that shed the barest of light into the space, he edged his way along a wall into a larger room, dank smelling, plaster peeling from brick walls and thick wooden beams supporting the floor above.
It was lighter here, and as his eyes adjusted he sensed rather than saw a presence.
To his left, perhaps 15 metres away by a doorway at the opposite end of the room he perceived what he immediately knew was a prone human form.
He steadied himself, gripping the door frame, momentarily putting off whatever action he must take in this lonely cellar, but his repose was short-lived.
As he became used to the light he made out in the shadows at the other end of the room a dark form backed into the corner, still but poised, staring.
In the shock of realisation he dropped his hand from the door frame, and at that motion the form leapt forward, pivoted to the right with an alarming dexterity and was gone into the darkness.
Sturden stumbled forward into the room and gave chase.
He passed the body on the floor, and for the very briefest moment considered checking its state, but immediately knew there was nothing he could do to help.
He followed the sound of footsteps through a doorway, where he found himself in some sort of storage room full of barely identifiable shapes, boxes, lengths of timber and other building detritus.
In the gloom he glimpsed the figure swerving to the left and heard the sound of its footfall change from the crunch of gravel to a softer sound, then a splash.
Sturden emerged back into the stairwell area, and continued through into a rubble-strewn enclosed yard where it was lighter, where he could see his way more clearly to negotiate old pipes and cables and empty bottles.
The rain had become only more intense, soaking and inescapable.
Past the rubble, he stumbled into a wider space where high brick walls loomed on every side and foliage had made a brave attempt to establish itself.
Bizarrely, in the middle of it all, an historic telephone box stood forlornly in the pouring rain.
Through the downpour, to his right, he saw the figure dragging itself upwards on to a fire escape, gaining a foothold and ascending to the rooftops.
Sturden leapt across the yard and grabbed the rusting bottom rung.
His shoes slipped on the wet bricks as he tried desperately to pull himself on to the ladder, a much harder task than he expected.
By grabbing a railing with his left hand and hauling himself precariously upwards he found purchase and began the climb.
Looking up he saw the figure two storeys above stepping on to the roof of the next door building.
Sturden climbed to the top of the fire escape, took hold of a drainage pipe, and despite a bruised shin and heaving lungs, pulled himself up and over the edge on to the roof.
At the far end of the building he glimpsed a pair of hands momentarily gripping the edge of a facade above the Octagon, then letting go.
He made his way awkwardly, slipping on the corrugated iron that sloped into a gutter carrying a torrent of rainwater, to the facade, half expecting to see a broken body below.
Instead he could only watch as the figure, its identity obscured by a hood pulled over its head and the curtain of driving rain, leapt from the platform of another smaller fire escape on to which it had dropped, to the awning below.
It sat for a moment on the edge, lowered itself into the Octagon, and was gone.
The entrance hall to the Athenaeum was a dirty stream of wet footsteps as uniformed officers and forensic staff traipsed back and forth between the street and the basement below.
Sturden watched them for a moment as they passed to and fro by a display of posters advertising books.
The dead man, it had quickly been ascertained, had died from a single blow to the head from a hammer, his own it appeared, and the murder weapon had been dropped beside the body.
His name was John Edmond, he had been working on a restoration project for the building owner, starting early and working alone most days.
The librarian, despite looking ashen faced after the events that had taken place below, was still going about her business, taking books here and there when Sturden entered the library, a large room with a mezzanine area, the whole lined with books.
Through a window on the far wall he could see the fire escape and the scene of the morning’s action.
Framed in such a way it seemed concocted and unreal.
Propped up in front of an octagonal reception desk were more posters, and he noted with the lightest of irony the titles included The Word is Murder and A Talent for Murder.
Sturden wondered for a moment at the popularity of such subject matter.
"You heard a shout?" he asked the librarian.
"I heard raised voices.
"The builder had been working, he does most mornings, occasionally with labourers who help him out."
"Was he with anyone this morning?"
"I didn’t think so, I heard him working, then I heard a conversation, but it was not like people working together, it was angry."
"What did you hear?"
"Just the voices ... it’s too far away to work out what they were arguing about, but I did hear one thing, a name."
"What name?"
"Rackney. It wasn’t the builder talking, I know his voice. It was whoever he was with, I heard them say it twice, angry, "Rackney, Rackney", angry ... incredulous, like a question, and then I heard a ... fearful ... it was horrible, then a crash ..."
"Does that name mean anything to you?"
"Maybe. Gerard Rackney, Gerald maybe, I’m not sure, owns buildings round town, the builder used to talk about him.
"He said he hated the warehouse precinct developers, said they were taking business from the city centre."
"It’s been in the newspaper, there was some sort of legal action, the builder used to tell me about it.
"There’s a woman from the council, she works with the building owners, she knows all about it."
Sturden fumbled with his coat buttons as he left the library, and the corner of his mouth turned down in a look of vexation.
The events of the morning had left him feeling empty and sick.
He stood for a moment beneath the awning of the Athenaeum building, watching as cars and pedestrians crossed the Octagon, a street cleaner with a large machine vacuumed the paving and workers at nearby bars and cafes placed their tables on the footpath.
There had been violence, and where there was violence there was rage, and it was the reason for that perilous emotion he was about to begin searching for.
He looked beyond the trees that flanked the central carriageway, through to St Paul’s Cathedral, next to it the Municipal Chambers, stolid and substantial, the whole scene a testament to stability.
He pondered for a moment the illusory nature of that perception and the inherent fleeting frailty of mankind and its constructions, pushed his hands deep in his pockets and pulled his coat tight to his shoulders as he set off across the Octagon.
- David Loughrey is a Dunedin writer, columnist and Otago Daily Times city council reporter.This is a work of fiction. It bears no resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead.
