Last week, Sturden heard about Dunedin businessman Gerald Rackney, a fellow of ill repute who might have a motive for murder.
This week he interviews his strongest lead as David Loughrey’s short story continues, in association with Dunedin City of Literature Creative Cities Southern Hui, the University Book Shop and Zeal Steel.
Gerald Rackney sat behind his desk in a large office.
He did not get up when Sturden entered.
On the wall to his left was a black-and-white photograph of him as a younger man running on to a field with a rugby ball tucked under his arm, sporting thick sideburns and a moustache, a spiteful look on his face.
It was the look of a man who took pleasure in intimidation.
The version that sat behind the desk had large clumsy hands, stubby fingers curled tight, they gave the impression of meat clubs, but the skin was soft and clean, the whole a rather revolting accumulation of its parts.
He watched with the faintest smirk on his face as Sturden entered, and motioned with his eyes towards a chair that sat against the wall.
"Getting to the bottom of things are we?" he asked mockingly.
He had a broad accent to the point it almost seemed put on.
Sturden felt his anger rise, but knew this was the reaction Rackney hoped for, and suppressed it.
"You know about the killing," he asked.
"I’ve seen it in the media."
"Where were you at 8am yesterday?"
Rackney did not answer immediately; his face seemed just perceptibly to turn a shade darker, and his eyes narrowed in anger.
"And you’ll have been talking to those jumped-up cretins in the warehouse precinct, I suppose.
"They can’t run their businesses without the council paving the way, and they can’t take a little competition from me, so they blame me for murder.
"Are you that stupid you’ll listen to them?"
Sturden let the lack of any answer to his question ride for a moment.
"Have you had any communication with John Edmond recently?"
"Our lawyers have been having regular chats.
"Otherwise I keep away from the heritage scene, it’s a fad, they might be getting some tenants in their run-down bloody sheds at the moment, but it won’t last.
"The city needs new buildings, high rise, some real progress ..."
"You objected to some commercial proposition John Edmond wanted to start in the precinct?"
"He wanted to sell art down there in one of his warehouses, but that’s not allowed in the district plan.
"It was that street art they have, they have to draw on everything, like tattooists, they feel such a need to scribble on walls; they’re like bloody children.
"He likes to think he’s in the art scene and he wanted to start a shop selling it.
"I didn’t really care, I just wanted to teach the prick a lesson.
"It was a shot across the bow, that’s all.
"We can’t go against the district plan, why should they?"
Sturden decided to take a more direct approach.
"Someone heard your name shouted when the killing took place.
"Perhaps you decided to teach him a lesson yesterday.
"Did you hire someone to do that, a gang member maybe, to teach him a lesson?
"It wouldn’t be the first time."
Rackney shook his head and glared at him.
"Yesterday morning at 8am I was eating breakfast with my wife and children, and you can check that.
"And if you think I’d go to the trouble of getting John Edmond killed you’re more of a fool than you look.
"Why don’t you do some real detective work?"
This was a question Sturden had heard before, but it made him angry despite himself.He stood, unwilling to be intimidated by a man he regarded as beneath him, if not physically, most definitely intellectually.
"Did you kill, or did you have someone kill John Edmond?"
Rackney rose, his face red with rage, and used an expletive to urge Sturden to leave.
He did so, seeing no use in extending the interview.
"Don’t come here again; you call my bloody lawyer," Rackney shouted after him.
It was before noon, but Sturden went straight to a nearby bar and ordered beer.His hands were shaking with anger, and he scolded himself for allowing his emotions to hold sway.
There were some in his line of work, he knew, who delighted in such confrontations, and proudly boasted of them back at the station.
But for him they left feelings of rage that took time to dissipate, and his own violent thoughts, though thoughts were as far as they ever went, intruded on his equanimity.
He ordered a second drink, feeling the alcohol calm him, and he let his mind rest as he stared at passers-by on the street outside.
There was a cruise ship in port, and hundreds of older people and families carrying their purchases ambled past at a speed cruise ship passengers were inclined to adopt, a slow perambulation as they took in the streets and buildings they were newly discovering.
Sturden realised a concern rising within him.
It was an unshakeable feeling Rackney was not involved.
He would have his alibi checked out, and more inquiries made of his dispute with John Edmond, but everything about the situation, and his demeanour, suggested those inquiries would come to a dead end.
He was a bully, and no doubt would act both inside and outside the law when he chose, but Sturden saw nothing in him that suggested he had undertaken such an act.
Most certainly he was not the lithe figure at the Athenaeum on the morning of the killing.He was the sort who enjoyed legal action as a sport, and while he was clearly no fan of the victim, he saw no murderous intent.
The realisation left him in the irritating position in which he was bereft of any particular lead, uncertain where the investigation might head.
Whoever had killed John Edmond had a strong, immediate motive.
The librarian had heard a question asked in anger, then whoever asked it attacked him with his own hammer.
It was an attack brought on by rage, most likely unplanned.
The bar owner had said John Edmond could be direct, and said things as he saw them; there was another way of reading such behaviour, it more often meant ill-mannered, and it could provoke a reaction.
Perhaps he had upset someone.
But why had the killer called out the name Rackney?
It didn’t make any sense.The victim owned property in the warehouse precinct.
Officers had already searched his home and office, but Sturden wondered if another visit to the area and a quiet chat with those who worked there might not fill in the blanks that were pestering and vexing him.
He finished his beer, stood up feeling tired and heavy, and set off for the precinct.
Sturden crossed the Queens Gardens, dodging the traffic that ran through them and turned into Vogel St.
He stopped for a moment, watching the bright hues of the early afternoon light settle on a russet brick facade and sharpen the angles of gables and parapets against the sky.
He took in the florid forms of street art on a car park wall.
In the windows of a building, he saw the reflection of the lumbering form of a truck as it strained over the Jetty St overbridge, itself a concrete mass that intruded on the studied elegance of the warehouse precinct with its tasteful paving and exposed brick walls.
Since he had last visited, more eateries and coffee houses had opened, and the once moribund thoroughfare was teeming with life.
He entered a cafe, suppressing an anxious feeling he often had when required to speak to strangers unannounced.
That necessity was obviated when he saw a man he remembered was the owner of the place, someone he had met when looking into an assault nearby.
Donald Reid was behind the bar, polishing a glass in the way bar people stereotypically do in the movies, and Sturden for a moment was struck with the disconcerting feeling the scene was part of an act.
He caught the owner’s eye, and made his way through a line of customers waiting to be served, to speak to him.
"I’ve been half expecting you’d drop in," Reid said.
"There’s only been one subject on anybody’s lips the last couple of days."
"I have to say I’m at a bit of a dead end," Sturden said.
"What are you hearing?"
"Mostly rubbish, conspiracies I suppose."
Reid put his glass and cloth down, and leaned over the bar.
"It affects people, you know, having something like that happen around here.
"We have a waitress here; when some of the bar staff were talking about it earlier she went white.
"I don’t think she even knew the dead man.
"I let her go home.
"It’s a bad business."
"Tell me about her," Sturden said.
Oh, she’s nobody really, her name is Rose, she lives in a studio with one of those street artists, Harold Tapley, I think that’s his name, over in Bond St.
"He’s in the Bond Building, I think his father owns it. It’s his art work on the side, you’ll see it whether you want to or not," Reid said, with more than a touch of derision.
Street art was becoming a recurring motif in the investigation, and without any better ideas to progress his inquiries, Sturden took the waitress’s address and headed for Bond St.
• Next week: Sturden closes in.
