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  The New Zealand city of Dunedin is rocked when a wealthy and apparently respectable businessman is murdered in his luxurious home while his wife is bound and gagged, and forced to watch. But when Detective Sam Shephard and her team start investigating the case, they discover that the victim had links with some dubious characters.

  The case seems cut and dried, but Sam has other ideas. Weighed down by her dad’s terminal cancer diagnosis, and by complications in her relationship, she needs a distraction, and launches her own investigation. And when another murder throws the official case into chaos, it’s up to Sam to prove that the killer is someone no one could ever suspect…

  Bound

  Vanda Symon

  For Smooch

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  The image of the clock’s hands burned into her retinas as she stared, willing her eyes to stay focused, there, on that spot. Above the sound of the blood pulsing through her ears, she could just make out the sharp click of its ticks, as the second hand flicked around the circumference of the dial.

  Don’t look, she thought. For Christ’s sake, you can’t look.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on the clock.

  He’ll be home soon, please let him be home soon, she thought. Don’t be late. Not tonight.

  But what her eyes could avoid, her nose could smell; the wet, hot, metallic scent of blood, overpowering the sharp chemical tang of the adhesive on the tape stretched across her mouth. She closed her eyes, the photographic negative of the clock dancing in the darkness, but it was as pointless as resisting gravity.

  They opened, their focus drawn to the inevitable.

  She took in the ruined shell that had been John, the mangled mess that had been his face, now just dripping meat. She felt the spasm clench her stomach at the sight, the smell, and she started repeating the mantra in her head, You vomit, you die, you vomit, you die. She tried to take deep, even breaths.

  Think of Declan, he’s already lost one parent tonight, don’t let it be two.

  She slammed her eyes shut, concentrated on breathing, on forcing away the nausea. But while she could fight that, she couldn’t fight the tears, and as the sobs wracked her body, she began to realise that deep breathing was becoming more difficult. She strained against the ropes that bound her arms and feet to the chair, but nothing could stop the wave of panic that hit as she realised her nose was getting stuffier, and the more she panicked, the more she cried and the more she cried, the less she could breathe, until she couldn’t pull in any air and she felt a band of steel tightening around her chest.

  She pulled against her bonds, but nothing. She twisted. She pushed. Her body fought for air and with desperation she shoved against the floor with her feet. As the chair tipped backwards, the last thing her eyes found was the clock, its second hand ticking away her life, before a white-hot flare of pain, and then darkness.

  1

  Jesus, this place was creepy. I’d been called out at eleven-thirty at night to the scene of a home invasion, and from all accounts a nasty one. A man was dead, his wife in a seriously bad way and the poor son who found them in a state of disbelief. By dint of me being a woman, it had been decided by The Boss that I was the perfect candidate for Officer in Charge of the Victims. It was a given that he’d taken a perverse pleasure in sending me to a crime scene in the middle of nowhere in the dead of the night. He was good like that.

  Seacliff, they’d said. Russell Road. The main route out there, off State Highway One from Dunedin, was bumpy and twisty enough by day let alone at night. I lost count of the number of times the car juddered across the railway lines, which seemed to play a cat and mouse game with the road. I drove between the macrocarpa and hawthorn hedges, looking for the turn-off, and realised I was going to be passing the site of the old Seacliff Mental Hospital. Despite the heater blaring, my body gave an involuntary shudder. Part of it was now the aptly named Asylum Lodge, though who the hell would want to stay there I didn’t know. You’d have to be a slightly demented kind of tourist. The Seacliff Mental Hospital was notorious for all the wrong reasons. Back in the 1940s a fire in a women’s ward resulted in the deaths of thirty-seven patients. Thirty-seven poor souls locked in their rooms, unable to escape the flames. I’d once gone out to the site for a day trip with my flatmate Maggie, who tinkered with photography – one of her many talents. We’d wandered around what was now the Truby King Recreational Reserve on a misty and clagged-in day and it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’d ever had. Despite the fact most of the old buildings had gone, their sorry foundations the only hint of their once grand scale, I swear I could feel the ghosts of inmates past, and I’ve never been one for spooky rubbish. In its heyday they’d incarcerated many a poor soul there, including Janet Frame, our world-famous writer, who was forced there due to the fact she was creative and different. Nowadays they gave you fellowships for that, not lobotomies. The day Maggs and I went it felt like some of those poor souls who had fried and died had never left. There was even a wood called The Enchanted Forest, and what with the mood and the mist there had been no way in hell we were going in there.

  If I admitted to being wimpy, the effect it all had on Maggie was even more interesting. For a while, she kept up the pretence of enjoying herself, taking photographs of the old foundations and derelict walls, before admitting defeat, turning and pretty much hightailing it out of there. When we were looking through her images later, I half expected to see ghostly forms rising from the earth or faces in the trees. Instead all she had taken were some innocuous-looking pictures of a fairly bland, mist-shrouded and depressing landscape.

  The headlights of my car illuminated the tree-lined avenue, but the fingers of light that reached in between their trunks didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness. The sealed road turned to gravel, and I trundled along, getting a momentary scare when the ghostly eyes of a partly obscured horse reflected eerily in the lights, giving the effect of some disembodied ghoul staring back at me. It was with relief that I rounded a bend and glimpsed the strobing f
lashes of red and blue in the distance. Since when had I turned into such a sook?

  I pulled up alongside the police officer stationed on point duty outside the property, his fluorescent vest lit up in my headlights with a radioactive glow.

  ‘Drive on up, Detective Shephard,’ he said, recognising me. ‘There’s plenty of room up there.’ I still got a kick out of being called ‘Detective’. I had only recently lost the baby ‘Detective Constable’ title. It had been a long time coming.

  ‘Thanks, Chris.’

  The house was situated at the end of a hundred-and-fifty-metre driveway and was partially surrounded by strategically placed trees. They hid it from the road, not that privacy would be an issue way out here. There was an impressive set of gates that probably cost more than my flat. I’d driven past another driveway on my way up here, about a couple of hundred metres before, also with flash gates, but it was too dark to see how close the next neighbour was on the far side. It looked pretty isolated though. Apart from the bevy of houses at Seacliff township, most of the properties around here were farming or lifestyle. I’d guess this one was lifestyle – farmers wouldn’t bother with gates like that. Farmers also wouldn’t bother to asphalt one-hundred-and-fifty metres of driveway, especially when you’d travelled on a gravel road to get there – they had more sense. It wasn’t too hard a stretch of the imagination to think that the home-invaders had recognised the trappings of wealth.

  I pulled up and parked behind a vehicle I recognised; he’d been called out too – how strange. Go figure. There were four squad cars, a dog unit, two mufti-cars and an ambulance in attendance, as well as a few strays. Even with that many vehicles there was still plenty of room to spare on the paved forecourt. There would be no hope of seeing tyre treads on this surface, and even less now with vehicles all over it, but everyone would have seen that as a lost cause.

  I hopped out of the car, my body hunching inwards, reacting to the night chill after the blare of the heater. The first face I came across was adorned with a rather sheepish smile. That might have been because I had been busy shagging his brains out a couple of hours before.

  ‘Paul, fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Yes, fancy. You got the call too?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably The Boss trying to catch us out. He’s worse than my mother.’

  Paul Frost was my colleague and my lover, so, in the eyes of many, we were committing a cardinal sin. In all honesty, I was definitely in the ‘don’t screw the crew’ camp until recently. Amazing how your standards could slip from black and white to an elegant shade of grey given enough provocation. Still, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the powers that be made an intervention sometime soon and we found ourselves in different squads.

  ‘So what’s happening here?’

  ‘It’s pretty ugly, I’m afraid. The couple are Jill and John Henderson; their son is Declan. The boy came home at ten-thirty to find the father dead, shotgun to the head, made a hell of a mess, and his mother bound to a chair, semi-conscious. She’s in the ambulance now. I think they’re about ready to take her in. You’ll need to go too. She’s conscious now, but not very coherent. She said there were two masked intruders, and that’s about all we could get out of her.’

  ‘Did the dogs pick up on anything?’

  ‘No, which most likely means they were in a vehicle rather than on foot.’

  I could see the arc of torchlight in the paddocks around the house as officers did a preliminary sweep of the area. You couldn’t make assumptions. I could also see the ambulance crew looking like they were ready to move off.

  ‘I’ll let you know of any further information I get from her during the night,’ I said. It was going to be a long one. ‘You’ve been into the house?’

  ‘Yes, we had to get her out, but it’s sealed off now. I’m just waiting for the scene-of-crime officers to get here, and the photographer. There’s nothing we can do for John Henderson, he’s well beyond help. We did have to quarantine the cat, though. Let’s just say Kitty got hungry and found a ready food source.’

  I felt my stomach lurch at the thought. ‘That’s revolting. I hope you didn’t tell the boy.’

  ‘No, I’m not that stupid. Last thing he needs. Speaking of the boy, he’s over there ready to go in the ambulance with the mother. You’d better go and work your magic.’ I turned to see the figure of a young man hunched over, arms wrapped around himself, rocking. ‘Just watch him too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Having talked with him, I don’t believe it for a second, but until we corroborate his story, we have to look at him as a potential suspect.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I said.

  2

  There was something about the unrelenting glare of hospital rooms that made me want to shrink away from the light like some vampire. That and the smell. That unpleasant fug of disinfectant overlaced with a chemical aftertaste. The last time I’d been in a hospital I’d been on the receiving end of the staff’s attentions. This time I was the support mechanism. Jill Henderson’s shoulder had been manoeuvred back into the correct position. It was a severe dislocation, so they weren’t optimistic it would stay there, and it was a good bet she’d need surgery. For now, though, she’d been cleaned up, sedated and was benefiting from the respite of oblivion. Despite being asleep, however, her brow was furrowed with a frown that no amount of pain relief would erase.

  The ambulance trip had been hard. She’d cried the whole way, and it was impossible to get any further information from her. I imagined I’d have been like that too, in her situation. How could anyone cope with seeing their husband’s face shot off? And on top of everything else, it must have been awful for Declan to see her like that, bereft and in pain, but he had held her good hand the whole way in.

  ‘How are you going there, Declan?’ I asked the pale, subdued seventeen-year-old. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. Even in the face of tragedy he was impeccably polite.

  Everything I’d seen of this boy in the previous two hours had impressed me. He was clearly shocked and burst into tears frequently, but he’d remained calm, given the circumstances, and was really stepping up to the plate. He’d been asking the hospital staff about the care of his mother, questioning what they were doing, but always politely. It was as if he’d assumed the role of head of the family, which was a lot to ask of any adult who’d lost a father so recently and in such a violent fashion, let alone a teenager. I thought back to Paul’s comment about him being a suspect and there was no way I could imagine this boy being responsible for the night’s hideous crimes. There was no doubt in my mind that he was an innocent party here.

  ‘Do you think you’re ready to tell me what happened?’ We were seated out in the corridor, out of earshot of his mum. Even though she was sedated I didn’t want to risk her subconscious picking up any of our conversation.

  He looked at me with his red-rimmed, pale-blue eyes and nodded. ‘Actually, I think I’d better get some water. Would you like one?’

  I thanked him when he handed over the flimsy, ribbed, white plastic cup. He took a gulp, then a large breath and started talking.

  ‘I’d been at band practice at my mate Stuey’s house in Dunedin. I play bass guitar. We were practising for the school rock challenge, which is in a month. Our band’s called Munted. We’re at Logan Park High School.’

  Logan Park? With his parents being so well-to-do, I would have thought they’d have sent him to one of the flash, private boys’ schools. They must have thought Logan Park filled his needs best, or perhaps they actually gave him a choice in the matter. Mind you, he had that muso look about him, with the shoulder-length blond hair swept to one side, Huffer T-shirt and skinny, drop-crotch black jeans. He also had that gangly look kids get when they’ve just grown half a metre and their bodies and neurones hadn’t caught up with the fact.

  ‘I came home from practice, opened the front door and, and…’ he took a pause and
a sip of water before continuing ‘…there they were. Dad was near the door, he’d been shot, his face was gone, I could see his bones and his brains.’ Tears started to overflow and trickle from the corners of his eyes. He leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. ‘The only way I knew for sure it was him was from his clothes, it was that bad. I ran to find Mum, and she was on the floor. I thought at first they’d killed her too, because she had blood coming out of her head, but then she moaned. They’d tied her to a chair but it was on its back so I suppose she must have accidentally tipped it over. When I ripped the tape off her mouth she gasped like she could finally breathe properly, like they had just about suffocated her. What if she’d died too?’ He paused before asking me, in a quiet and tremulous voice, ‘I didn’t do that to her shoulder when I was trying to free her, did I? I tried to get her from the chair but it seemed to take forever and I had to tip it on the side to undo her.’ His face was crumpled with anguish.

  ‘No, you don’t need to worry about that. It most likely happened when the chair tipped back.’ He didn’t look that relieved. ‘Did you ring the police straight away?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I rang the ambulance, as soon as I realised Mum was alive. I guess they sent the police.’

  ‘And when you were driving home from practice in town, you came back via State Highway One and turned off at Warrington?’ He nodded. ‘Did you notice any other vehicles travelling on the back road?’

  ‘There probably were some, I couldn’t say.’

  I could see he was exhausted. There was no point in pressing him further tonight. He’d had enough to deal with.

  ‘In the morning I’ll need to go over everything with you again in order to make a statement, but for now, we need to find you somewhere to stay tonight and to contact your relatives. Who will be the best person to get in touch with first?’

  ‘Grandad. He lives in Dunedin.’

  ‘Is that your mum’s or your dad’s dad?’

  ‘Mum’s. Dad’s parents died when I was a little kid.’