Extract: Prey, by Vanda Symon

Extract from PREY by Vanda Symon, published by Orenda Books, RRP $32.00

Chapter 8

The Johns’ family home wasn’t quite what I’d expected. In my mind I’d assumed a high-powered man with the degree of privilege and entitlement Johns exuded would own a swanky home in one of the posher suburbs, like Roslyn or Māori Hill, so I was a tad surprised when the address I was given was for the not-so-swanky Musselburgh. But when I pulled up outside it became clear their house wasn’t quite as humble as others in the street. One of the welcome quirks of Dunedin was the way you could have a million-dollar new build next to a student hovel next to a grand villa next to a seventies brick eyesore. La Casa Johns was a sizeable two-storey red-brick Edwardian dwelling surrounded by an established and well-tended garden. Despite its size, it sat comfortably with its bungalow neighbours. The front porch was softened by a jasmine vine that had woven itself erratically between the trios of pillars set on plinths that surrounded the portico. A set of shaggy and in-need-of-a haircut ball topiaries bordered the footpath. It was a grand entrance that exuded warmth and charm. Unlike its owner. 

I tugged my top down and brushed my pants flat before reaching up to press the doorbell. Despite being the one whose finger hit the buzzer, I was still startled by the clamour of its ring. It was symptomatic of my nervousness about having to interview The Boss’s wife. I had seen her from afar on the odd occasion when she’d come into the station, but had never been formally introduced. Considering the rather fraught working relationship I had with her husband, I couldn’t help but wonder if he had moaned to her about me as much as I had whinged to Paul about him. Or to anyone else who would listen for that matter. If so, I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a reception I’d get. 

An approaching silhouette appeared in the frosted-glass door panel, slowly expanding to fill the pane. The ghostly figure was accompanied by the tell-tale yapping of a small dog. The door began to swing inward, and a white, furry Westie bullet-shot out before it had a chance to finish opening. The yapping bullet circled around my legs a few times before shooting back inside and taking position at the feet of its owner. 

‘Oh, take no mind of Gemma. She gets a little excitable with visitors, but you don’t need to worry, she’s very old and very sweet, and is more likely to lick you to death than nip you.’ 

‘She certainly is very cute,’ I said. I’d always envisaged DI Johns as a big-dog kind of a guy – German Shepherd, Rottweiler, mastiff, something of that ilk – not a yappy ankle biter. ‘You must be Felicity Johns. I’m Detective Sam Shephard. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me at such short notice, and the invitation to talk at your home.’  

‘That’s quite okay, Detective,’ she said as she extended her hand. I reached out and took it and was pleased to encounter a warm and firm shake. There was nothing worse than a limp fish. ‘I have seen you before at the station, but I don’t believe we’ve had the opportunity to be properly introduced.’ 

Felicity Johns was a striking-looking woman with a set of cheekbones that stood out like small apples. She had closely cropped brown hair, and with her bright-blue eyes the effect was like looking at a pixie. She was tall for a pixie though, towering over me by close to a foot. Not that it was hard, considering I scraped in at just over five foot. Her rich, contralto voice also contrasted with the elfin effect. She was comfortably dressed in jeans and a hoodie, albeit a designer one. Overall, Felicity Johns came across as relaxed and not the tightly wound, prim and proper wife of a superior arsehole that I’d pictured. The butterflies that had been dancing a small fandango in my stomach started to settle down. Even from this brief doorstep encounter I could sense no animosity or guardedness. Maybe she was oblivious to the workplace tension and The Boss hadn’t slagged me off as I had imagined.  

‘I thought we would be a lot more comfortable here than down at the station. That place isn’t exactly welcoming. Come in, and don’t worry about taking your shoes off.’  

She was right, in more ways than one. The station was impersonal at best, and the thought of having DI Johns hovering around us like a blowfly at a barbecue did not appeal. 

I stepped into the wide entranceway and pushed the door closed behind me before Gemma could make a bolt for freedom.  ‘We’ll go through to the kitchen,’ she said, and led me along a passageway that judging by the glimpse of greenery down the end, extended the length of the house. It felt peculiar knowing I was in The Boss’s lair, his inner sanctum. Part of me felt it was intrusive and I shouldn’t be here, but the other part was dying to be nosey and see what his life away from the job looked like. So far it was not what I had imagined. The home might have been grand in scale, but it was in dire need of some TLC. To my right an impressive wooden staircase with ornate balustrades swept up and around to the floor above. In contrast, underfoot a threadbare Axminster carpet looked like it had time warped in from the seventies. Its browns and oranges didn’t quite go with the butter yellow of the walls below the picture rail, the effect just discordant enough to make my eye twitch. Felicity must have read my mind as she piped in, almost apologetic, ‘We’re working our way through the house with renovations. The entrance and hallway are next on the hit list. I don’t know what the previous owners were thinking.’ 

As we approached the back of the house, it became apparent where the money had been spent. The entire space had been opened up and modernised like those kitchen-diners I drooled over when watching Location, Location, Location or Grand Designs. It had large French doors opening onto a patio big enough to hold an impressive outdoor table and chairs before it transitioned into the garden. A pyramid skylight in what must have been an extension bathed the room in sunlight. Sometimes those modern additions jarred and felt out of place, but in this instance the Johns had managed to retain the charm and warmth of the era yet still create a kitchen to die for. I was suffering major envy. 

‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ 

It was very kind of her to offer, and when people did I seldom declined. It was amazing how the simple act of polite acceptance and chatting over a cup of tea could break down some of the apprehensions people might have when talking with the police. Tea was the great leveller. 

‘That would be lovely, thanks.’ 

While she filled the kettle I hiked myself up onto a pedestal bar stool on the opposite side of the marble-topped island. The moulded shape of the black vinyl top brought back memories of the rather less comfortable tractor seat from the farm. I couldn’t help but swivel on it a few times to settle in. The kettle was one of those space-agey, stainless-steel designer-looking things with a bird whistle that I’d lusted after in design stores but whose price was way out of my league. 

She got straight to the point as she set about getting the mugs ready. ‘So I understand you’re reopening my father’s case?’ No need for me to find an opening, then. 

‘Yes, that’s right. As I said when I rang earlier, I’ve been asked to look into the case to see if we can make some progress on it and find out what happened. To try and give your family some answers after all this time.’ 

She gave a small sigh and reached over to rearrange some vibrant coloured gerberas artfully homed in a jug to the side of the countertop. ‘Greg told me he’d asked you to do that.’ 

The way she worded that sentence implied that she had been informed rather than consulted. 

‘So it wasn’t your family wanting to reopen the case? It was DI Johns’ initiative?’ I couldn’t bring myself to call him Greg, even to his wife, but still it felt a little awkward referring to him by his professional title.  

‘It was. I was really quite surprised when he told me.’ There was a slight undertone to her voice that I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. 

‘So it wasn’t a good surprise?’ I asked with a hint of hesitancy. She laughed lightly and looked at me with a surprising openness. ‘Yes and no. Don’t get me wrong, we would all dearly love to know who killed my father and get some justice for him, but it’s been twenty-five years. It’s taken a long time to come to terms with what happened and find some kind of peace with it. I worry that it’s going to open up all of that trauma, all of that grief, especially for my mum. And what if there’s still no outcome?’ 

I felt a real pang for her then. This was the first time I had been involved in a historical case, and in her shoes I’d be worried too about the emotional toll examining the past would take on myself and my loved ones. Dealing with grief was hard enough under what we’d consider normal circumstances – illness, accident, old age. Layer over that the knowledge someone had murdered your loved one, and the intrusiveness of an investigation and its effects could be devastating. 

‘It’s perfectly understandable for you to be worried, and unfortunately it’s inevitable in a situation like this that it will bring back old hurts. But we’ve got support services available if you need to talk with someone, and I really encourage you to make use of them.’  

The whistle bird started to warble before working its way up to full song. Felicity lifted the kettle off the hob, plucked out the bird and poured the water over the teabags in the mugs. 

‘And we will be as sensitive as we can,’ I went on. ‘We understand it’s going to be difficult on you all.’ 

‘Thank you, I appreciate that,’ she said. She pulled open the refrigerator door. ‘Milk?’ 

‘Yes, please.’ 

She finished making the teas and brought them around to my side of the island. 

‘Come sit over here where it’s more comfortable.’ I followed her over to a pair of bold geometric-print armchairs, nestled into a corner. Along with a small circular coffee table sporting a ‘string of turtles’ pot plant, they created a cosy wee nook. Gemma took up her station, almost disappearing into a white, fuzzy and very comfortable-looking dog cushion. It was the perfect camouflage for her. 

‘Do you mind if I ask: why do you think DI Johns decided to reopen the case at this particular point in time? Why now rather than, say, ten years ago?’  

‘He didn’t say, but I suspect it was because my mother has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, it’s quite advanced and the prognosis isn’t very good.’ 

‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘I hope she’s comfortable and they’re keeping on top of any pain.’ 

‘She’s doing alright, considering, thanks. Greg adores her – they get on like a house on fire – so I think this is his way of trying to do something when we all feel so helpless.’  

I could certainly relate to that sense of helplessness. My mind couldn’t help but drift to thoughts of my dad. I looked down to the floor to prevent her from seeing my eyes welling up. 

The portrait being painted of The Boss as loving son-in-law was in stark contrast to the malevolent force that haunted the corridors of our institution. I was pretty confident my work colleagues would be struggling to get their heads around it too. By Felicity’s description our workplace bully was a pussy cat at home, displaying an empathy we sure as hell had never seen. You’d think having worked in law enforcement for so long I would have learned people could be two-faced, but my encounters had always been along ‘nice to your face but awful behind your back’ lines, rather than the vice versa situation I was seeing here.  

‘Is your mother aware that we’re going to reinvestigate the case?’

‘I don’t think so. Not at the moment, no. But I will talk with her about it, because I’m sure you’ll be wanting to interview her as well.’

‘Yes, it would be very helpful if you could give her some warning. Especially as it’s likely to upset her.’  

I wanted to ask Felicity about the night her father was killed, but where was the best place to start? What would be the most comfortable way into the conversation? I went for an opener that didn’t require any thought. 

‘How old were you when your father was killed?’  

‘I was young, only fifteen years old at the time, and my brother Callum was seventeen. I can tell you it was a tough age to lose your dad, especially in such a dreadful, dreadful way. And it wasn’t just about getting my head around the fact he was gone, that I’d never see him ever again. We had to come to grips with the knowledge he’d been murdered and deal with everything that went with that. There was so much attention. From the police, from the media, people wanting to know what happened, the church, kids at school. It was everywhere. There was no way to escape from it.’

Teenage years were turbulent enough at the best of times. Mine were a time of brilliant highs and not-so brilliant lows, a time for figuring out who I was and where I fit in the world, all the while dealing with the weirdness of the physical changes involved in growing up and the hormones that drove them. Most of the time I was trying to avoid attention. It must have been horrific for Felicity to find herself at the centre of a case like that.  

‘That must have been so hard for you all. That level of scrutiny is difficult. And as I said earlier, I am sorry to make you revisit an awful time. But hopefully this time we will see justice served for your father.’  

I took a sip of tea before pressing on and taking her back to that fateful day.  

‘No doubt we’ll have a few conversations in the weeks ahead, but for now it would be helpful for me if you could talk through the day he died. Had anything out of the ordinary happened?’  

She shook her head. ‘No, it was a stock-standard Sunday. We went along as a family to the ten o’clock choral mass. One of the other priests took the earlier eucharist, so it was a later start for us. After church, we had the Nicholson family for lunch.’ 

‘Did you often have guests?’ I asked. 

‘Reasonably often. Mum enjoyed entertaining, and opening up our home to others was part and parcel of being a priest’s family. We’d have people around for lunch or dinner at least once a week. On that day it was the Nicholsons. They had kids of a similar age to us so I liked it when they visited, I could escape with Becky to another room after eating rather than endure the long-winded adult conversations. Dad did like talking.’ 

That seemed a universal trait, along with bad jokes. In my family it was farm talk. My father could wax lyrical about soil composition or the intestinal parasites of sheep and cattle all day, and I could imagine church talk was just as stimulating for a long-suffering teenager. 

‘And that meal was all friendly with the Nicholsons? You weren’t aware of any issues there?’ 

‘No, not at all. It was all relaxed and good. They left mid-afternoon. Dad went back into his study to prepare for the evening service like he usually did. It was a very wet day so we all stayed at home, didn’t go out to do anything special. We had early dinner so we’d be ready for church at seven. It was all very normal.’ 

‘So what time would you have left the house to go to the service?’

‘The vicarage was very close to the cathedral, literally up the hill and around the corner on Smith Street. We walked down together in the rain that night. Dad would never let us drive that distance. It didn’t matter how filthy the weather was – rain, hail, snow. He and Mum disagreed on that front.’ 

‘She sounded the more sensible of the two,’ I said.  That elicited a smile. I would normally never have quipped like that on a first interview, but there was something about Felicity that put me at ease, and fortunately she didn’t take offence. ‘And the service. Did anything eventful happen? Anyone unexpected there?’ 

‘No, just the usual. It was a choral evensong, and they are lovely, one of my favourite services. The numbers were perhaps a bit lower than usual, probably because the weather was so awful.’ She sipped on her tea before returning to the second half of my question. ‘There may well have been visitors there. Being the cathedral and right on The Octagon, tourists or out-of-towners would often attend. But to be honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to who came and went each week.’ 

The next question was a little more sensitive. 

‘Were you aware of anyone who had anything against your father, who may have had a dispute with him or any reason to want to cause him harm?’ 

She shook her head and reached down to give Gemma a scritch on her now-exposed belly. 

‘No, I wasn’t aware of anything like that. Like I said, I was only fifteen at the time, and to be honest, I think if there had been any issues like that going on in the background, Mum and Dad would have been careful not to talk about them in front of us. They liked to cotton-wool us in a way. I think the term nowadays would be “helicopter parents”?’ She said the words with a hint of eye-roll. 

‘Was that something you resented?’ 

‘Yes and no. In some ways I think it was good not to know every thing that was going on. But on the other hand, being brought up in the Church like we were, I think we had a pretty strict, black and-white upbringing, yet also had a rose-tinted view of the world, so when harsh reality hit, like when Dad was killed, we weren’t that well equipped to cope with it.’ 

Would I fall into that trap as a parent? Be so busy trying to protect my child from the harshness of the world that they didn’t learn to negotiate it safely and on their own terms. I had always scoffed at helicopter parents, especially having had my family up ringing, where we were basically left to our own devices on the farm and if we hurt ourselves it was our own damned fault. Dishing out sympathy was not one of my mother’s strong points. Criticism yes, sympathy no. However, now I had a baby of my own, I could understand the temptation to overprotect because it broke my heart to hear Amelia cry from a minor scrape, let alone a major catastrophe. And catastrophising was something my brain had been very guilty of. I wondered if Felicity had also experienced that insight when she had children?  

‘What about after the service was over? How long did you stay on?’ 

‘I didn’t stay that long. People left pretty quickly because the weather was appalling and they wanted to get home. Mum had left pretty much straight away because she wasn’t feeling well. She had migraine zigzags and wanted to get home and take something before the headache kicked in. There were a few others around. Mel Smythe, the youth leader, some other regular congregation people Dad was talking with. I didn’t pay that much attention to be honest.’ ‘Was your brother still there then?’ 

‘He left just before me.’ 

‘He didn’t wait so you could walk together, considering it was dark?’ 

‘No, he was in a hurry to get home to some game on his PlayStation. He was a bit obsessed. Let’s just say he was a typical teenage boy and wasn’t too good at thinking of things like that. I didn’t mind walking by myself though. Home was close and there were lots of street lights along the way. I felt safe.’ 

Well, she did at that point. I bet that changed overnight. ‘And you didn’t wait to walk home with your father?’ A frown creased her face then, her lips pursed and I detected a quiver in her chin. 

‘No, I didn’t. He told me to go ahead.’ When she continued her voice carried that thickness of someone trying to hold it together. ‘I’ve wondered every day since then whether, if I had stayed, if I’d waited, things would have been different… ’ 

Although it hadn’t offered any revelations into the death of the Reverend Mark Freeman, talking with his daughter had been valuable. 

It had given me a sense of connection to the victim and his family, and to why we were doing this in the first place. The pain was still deep and would probably never go away. I felt sad for the woman I’d just talked with, and ached for fifteen-year-old Felicity, who after all these years still harboured guilt. The murder of her father would have effectively robbed her of her childhood. 

It was good to feel that, yes, things were under way though. Often the hardest thing about a new case or project was starting, setting out, overcoming that inertia and not being daunted by the enormity of the task ahead. Today’s progress was good, but I had to remind myself to remain impartial and not be influenced by how I connected with people. Because there was something between Felicity Johns and me that had simply clicked. I knew I would have to be careful, because as I walked back down the path, reviewing our conversation in my head, something was bugging me, and when I opened the car door and took a final look back towards the house it dawned on me what it was. The question that had been floating around in the back of my brain from the moment I met Felicity Johns.  

How could someone so nice be married to such an arsehole?