Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Fourteen

Ponsonby Road at night was alive with music and movement and girls in short dresses and heels that could be used as weapons. It was a warm, dry night, and the young and beautiful had come out to play. I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets as I strolled down the footpath, breathing in the mix of cigarette smoke and booze fumes. A taxi pulled up beside me, vomiting a handful of spray-tanned party boys in five hundred dollar suits onto the footpath. The party boys laughed riotously over some apparently hilarious joke and strutted into the nearest bar. None of them looked my way. I walked on.

I was wearing one of the two collared shirts I owned, a dark blue number with sleeves a couple of centimetres too long. I’d borrowed a pair of good shoes from Dad, since my sneakers were so worn they were nearly sandals. Everything felt uncomfortable, strange. This wasn’t my scene, and I couldn’t figure out why the hell everyone looked so happy to be here. If the music was this loud out here on the footpath, I hated to think what kind of hearing damage was going on inside the bar. I could barely even hear the saxophone-playing busker as I walked past him.

It’d been hell sneaking out of home. Leanne had grilled me again about my swollen cheek—for some reason she didn’t accept my explanation that I fell into a door. I’d exchanged a few words with Dad while he shovelled down dinner before heading off to work. I’d swallowed down the lump in my chest and tried not to look too guilty. But if he’d noticed the four hundred dollars missing, he never mentioned it. After he left, I played sick, went to bed early, and waited for Leanne to head to bed. I waited a long time. There was some sappy movie about dying children on TV, so she’d stayed up late to watch it and fallen asleep on the couch. Unlike Dad, Leanne wakes at the sound of a fly’s fart three hundred kilometres away, so getting out the front door without waking her resembled a scene out of Mission: Impossible. I took everything I thought I might need—phone, a copy of the phone number I’d found in Ella’s room, a pen and pad to write down anything Malcolm Barker said—and then I caught a late bus going down Dominion Road and walked the rest of the way.

It was nearly midnight, so according to Raj, my friend Malcolm Barker would be at the bar by now. I didn’t know how long he’d stick around, so I didn’t have time to waste. I dodged the swaying stride of a drunk girl who didn’t look any older than me and quickened my pace.

I’d looked up the Longhouse on the net before I left, and the bar was right where it was supposed to be. A handful of people were milling around outside in front of the low stone walls that surrounded the bar’s front courtyard. The courtyard led into the bar itself, a single long room with booths and tables along the side. A big Maori guy was on the door, checking IDs as people moved into the courtyard. From the street I could hear the DJ’s blaring dance music and the yelling of people trying vainly to communicate with their friends. I joined the short queue to get in and waited while everyone slowly shuffled forward.

The bouncer gave me the hard stare as my turn came around. “You got some ID, mate?”

I pulled the fake ID out of my wallet and handed it to him. My heart was pounding louder than the music.

He bent it back and forth so the light caught it. He studied the picture for a few moments, stared hard at me, then went back to looking at the picture. I wished I could grow proper facial hair like Jeremy, not the patchy fuzz I had to put up with whenever I went a few days without shaving. Life could only get easier with a nice moustache/beard combo. The bouncer stared at me once more, and I prayed he blamed the sweat coating my forehead on the warm night.

“Sweet,” he said, nodding and handing me back the driver’s licence. I tried not to look too pleased with myself as I returned the ID to my wallet and slipped past him into the courtyard.

I immediately found myself fighting through a crushing press of people that smelled of sweat and too much perfume. I tucked my elbows in and forced my way through, studying each face as I passed and comparing it to the image of Malcolm Barker I’d seared into my brain. The lighting wasn’t fantastic, and it was difficult to focus with all the movement. By the time I’d left the courtyard and made my way into the bar itself I’d had my feet stood on twice and I was regretting not bringing ear plugs. My first proper experience of a nightclub, and I was not impressed.