16. Tangled Triangle
On the trail of a burglary, a policeman uncovers evidence of even more devious goings-on. Analise devises a plan. Kaitlyn is sent to buy an extra bottle of wine, and finds herself distracted.
‘What a dump! A first-class example of an old-school student dive,’ Cole thought pushing open the rusty iron gate and making his way up an overgrown path. Through a half open sash window, he chanced a view of a young woman, curly brown hair tied loosely in a pony-tail, sitting at a kitchen table writing in a big notebook.
Knocking on the door, he waited as the woman called out, ‘just a minute, coming.’ The door opened, revealing a hallway decorated with several vases of flowers and a poster of a waterfall in soft-focus illustrating some sort of Desiderata style of potted wisdom.
The woman answering the door was, like the poster, a pleasant picture, if perhaps a little sweetie-pie for his taste. But pulling his thoughts to professional duty, he said, ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Constable Cole Griffith … ah, calling about a reported burglary?’
Analise looked at the muscle-bound hunk in his policeman’s uniform, taking a few seconds to register what such a man might want with her. ‘Oh,’ she finally responded, ‘Yes, sorry, it was last week… I’d kinda thought you guys had forgotten!’
Cole was used to this; people had such a poor idea of the many demands on the modern police force. ‘Sorry about that ma’am, we’ve been especially busy lately, but anyway can I come in and see the scene and discuss what happened?’ Analise smiled sweetly, told him not to call her ma’am as she ‘wasn’t that old,’ and invited him in.
The crime scene wasn’t much, the burglar having simply forced a half open sash window, grabbed one of Analise’s amber necklaces, a phone and a couple of other small items, then made a run out of the same window when a noise disturbed them. ‘It’s like my necklace wasn’t worth any real money,’ Analise confessed, ‘but my partner was staying over, and he grabbed her phone, which is the biggie – a Samsung GXL310 – she’s pissed as hell, like she had to get it locked up by the phone company, and she spent hours changing passwords and updating security settings and stuff.’
Noting the gender reference, Cole decided this lady may not be as conventional as his first impression. He gave a sympathetic laugh. ‘Yeah, understand that – my girlfriend lost her phone, pretty much the same model as your partner I think, a few days ago as well, and had a total hassle getting everything reset … Anyway, can we have a look around, and I can do some forensics?’
The forensics did not reveal much, but as he passed through the hall, he noticed the words on the waterfall poster, which began ‘Cease the winds from the West, Cease the winds from the South…’, and turning to her said, ‘pretty appropriate for Wellington eh? Is that based on a karakia? Reminds me of one we learnt in Kōhanga reo when I was a kid.’1 Now it was Analise who looked at him harder, realising some of the source of his warm, walnut colouring and the precisely curling tats that enveloped the well-muscled arms revealed by his short-sleeved uniform shirt. ‘Maybe there’s more to this guy than his biceps,’ she decided.
He asked her if he could just confirm a few details about the robbery, and she took him through to the kitchen where, Analise being Analise, she insisted that he share some tea and cookies she’d taken out of the oven a little while ago. Cole like many others, found – although he knew he should get onto his next job – that refusing Analise’s gentle requests seemed akin to sticking a bagful of kittens in the harbour.
‘Wow, these are totally awesome,’ he told her taking a second biscuit. ‘Do I sense a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg?’ Analise smiled, complemented him on his taste buds, and confessed to the additives. Cole, encouraged, moved on to other smells: ‘But, like also that is a super delicious smell coming from your oven … something kind of Middle Eastern?’ Analise smiled, ‘Yeah, I’m trying something a bit special for my partner tonight; it’s got a lot of aubergines and other veges. Like she would live on pasta and dumplings if she could, and I’m trying to wean her onto healthier stuff!’
Cole laughed. ‘Yeah, totally get that. Like, my girlfriend’s a workaholic exec who can’t cook to save herself and just grabs the chips and chocs. So, when she comes around I’m always trying to get something healthy into her!’ They chatted then on the silliness of partners, and the benefits of various fruits and nutritional supplements, before Cole, recollecting he had other duties, said, ‘Well speaking of partners, before I go, I need to clarify a couple of details. You said it was your partner’s phone that got stolen, but the incident report doesn’t seem to have her name and address. Would you mind telling me for the record?’
‘Sure,’ Analise said cooperatively. ‘Her name is Kaitlyn McIntosh, and she lives at…’, but before she could provide any more details, she looked up. Cole suddenly seemed less Polynesian, having gone as pale as the snow that covers the Southern Alps. He dropped his cup of tea, still half full, onto its saucer, caused both to shatter and tea to pour over the table. But instead of apologising for this gaffe, he just looked at her in horror. ‘Kaitlyn McIntosh? Did you say Kaitlyn McIntosh?’ he asked in a quiet, ghost-like voice.
Analise was puzzled and shocked. What had her wild Kaitlyn done for her name to arouse such a reaction in an agent of the law? But before she could say anything, Cole asked ‘ah, is she into board games?’ Analise hesitated, worried she was incriminating her lover in some way, ‘oh, yes, sort of, I guess, a bit …,’ she said deliberately underrating Kaitlyn’s addiction to the activity. But Cole hardly waited for her nervous answer; he looked upset and angry as he pulled out his phone, quickly searching out some photo. ‘Is this her?’ he demanded, shoving the phone towards Analise. The picture in question revealed our miscreant redhead in some downtown dive, sitting atop Cole’s shoulders, her hair wildly askew, her arms waving in the air, her shirt half-unbuttoned. She was laughing in that extravagant, joyous way that Analise loved. And he, the muscle-ripped dude now sitting in front of her, looked in that frozen moment, happy and in love.
Luckily Analise had already put her mug of tea down, or it would have added to the broken crockery collection. Stunned, she took several seconds to move. Then, picking up her own device, she looked at her lockscreen photo, which featured a slightly sweeter and more soft-focus Kaitlyn framed by a heart shape. Holding the two phones together as if hoping to discover some discrepancy that might disprove the obvious, in a quiet voice, and pointing at her picture; ‘You, your girlfriend, Kaitlyn is this one, my Kaitlyn…’ Her voice trailed off as the enormity of the betrayal began to bite.
The big guy sat down now, looking down at the remains of the teacup, his eyes narrowed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if trying to restrain an imminent flow of tears. ‘Yeah, her … Christ, I feel so fucking stupid, like I didn’t even guess she was a lesbo … ah I mean, into other women, I really fucking thought she loved me … I guess I was just a change of pace …’
Irritation at the ‘lesbo’ remark, and angry at the situation, Analise for once became annoyed. ‘Well, you don’t think I knew anything about her wanting to spend time bouncing around with a bloody Mr New Zealand bodybuilder did you! Jesus, I thought she had taste – had me fooled, totally!’
That cut Cole where it hurt; he’d thought Kaitlyn was different, someone who’d seen something in him beyond his body. ‘Yes, OK, I was naive I guess,’ he replied in a hurt voice. ‘I guess for her it was just the sex, it wasn’t for me ... Oh shit!’
‘Hey! Are you implying that we women have such inadequate sex that Kaitlyn had to go off and start playing around with you! Bloody male arrogance!’ Analise was now almost incandescent.
‘Shit! That’s not what I meant, I just…’, then realising he’d come here on a professional mission and should not be sat arguing with a burglary victim about his girlfriend’s sexuality, ‘Oh, forget it… look I should go, this is awful and I am so sorry… like it’s a total mess of a situation.’ Then looking down as the pool of tea and crockery he’d created really registered for the first time, he added, ‘and I’ve totally made a mess of your kitchen too… Christ, you’d be within your rights to make a complaint to the Police Commissioner about such a disaster of a visit…!’
Despite everything, this drew a small smile from Analise, and as he started to get up to leave, she reached across and gave his arm a small tug. ‘No, please don’t go. Not quite yet. I’m sorry about the muscle-man thing, like I totally get that it isn’t your fault … Seems she was playing both of us for fools. Now sit and tell me a bit more, like how you met her, how long this was going on…’ He looked reluctant, but she turned her warm, brown eyes upon him and as they began to water a little, she said, ‘please, I think we both need to know, don’t you?’
‘OK’, he said at last. ‘Yeah, I do want to know what went down, and I guess I should say sorry for the lesbo stuff – like it’s not that she maybe prefers woman that gets me, but that she could have told me earlier…’ He paused and went on. ‘Anyway, let me go call in and see if I can get released an hour early… have to tell them my Mum’s dying or something!’ Taking out his Comms unit, he went to the other side of the room and after a long conversation, came back. ‘Right. I’m officially off duty. Ignore the uniform! So, where do we start?’
They rapidly discovered that Kaitlyn had met Cole only days after her first date with Analise. As they worked out days and events, they also figured out she’d been moving between them and work with amazing regularity and planning. It’s the sort of thing that makes even a gentle giant and a sweet as flowers in spring lassie a touch pissed off. And as they shared the emerging story of deceit and deception, and why they had each been attracted to the red-haired one, why she meant so much to each of them, they felt not just bitter and angry, but also a touch of sympathy for their ‘rival’.
After a while there was a pause and Analise noticed that Cole’s eyes, when he could lift his head up enough to face her, were red. ‘You know, I’m kinda used to some women thinking that ‘cos I look a bit of a big dumb-arse that I don’t have any deep feelings, like I can’t be hurt … you know they think I’ll go and play rugby and forget all about it … but I think Kaitlyn has been just so, so mean treating you like this, you’re, such a nice person.’
‘Sometimes too nice for my own good it seems,’ Analise responded. ‘but you’re no dumb arse either bro, don’t put yourself down…’, then something he’d said struck her, ‘but like, yeah, she has been uncaring and mean hasn’t she? I sometimes imagined Kaitlyn breaking up with me, like maybe I’m a bit boring for her, and more into gardening and romance novels and stuff… but I never, ever thought she’d be mean. That’s the oddest part of this for me.’
‘Yeah. Gotcha,’ Cole agreed. ‘I was worried she might think I was too conservative, me wanting to have kids and stuff – like I think losing her mum like she did made her a bit worried about long-term commitments like being a mum herself — but hell, I thought she’d talk about it if she didn’t fancy staying with me, not just go out and mess up another person’s life as well.’ Then the big man’s eyes began to run, and he seemed to tremble.
Suddenly, despite size and muscle, he seemed fragile, in danger of shattering with sadness. And Analise, a woman with more warmth and love in her heart than most of us have blood, found herself reaching out delicately towards his face and saying, ‘Hey, no Cole, it’ll be alright; it’s about Kaitlyn, not about you.’ And suddenly she was crying too as they fell instinctively into each other’s arms, not in love, but for the comfort of shared heartache.
Which was exactly when Kaitlyn, complete with a bottle of wine for the night’s dinner, entered the room.
She said ‘OH!’, which given that Kaitlyn usually has a lot to say, is surprising, but that was all that came out. She was suffering, she felt, some sort of hallucinogenic episode because there in front of her in Analise’s kitchen was not only the expected lover of lesbian persuasion, but also the other large-bodied one, complete with police uniform, tears running down his face, and an equally tearful Analise in his arms. ‘Oh. My. God. Cole … ah you … you’re here …’, she added after a second, at least expanding on the first ‘oh’, and getting to the nub of the situation.
Analise extracted herself from Cole’s comforting embrace, and in a tone more bitter than Kaitlyn had ever heard from her: ‘Oh!’, is that it, Kaitlyn? Anything else to say? Yes, Cole IS here and I’m glad, because if he hadn’t come you might have gone on tricking both of us like, forever or something … I can’t believe you’d be so callous, so hurtful …’, then before she could add to this, Cole jumped in, ‘Yeah Kaitlyn, fuck I just cannot, cannot believe you’ve turned out to be such a two-timing bitch … I loved you and totally trusted you …’
Now, unless you are a criminal fleeing a crime scene, you will find Cole one of the most tolerant and kind chaps you could hope to meet, and as for Analise, she regularly won ‘employee of the month’ award at the TJK insurance company for her patient, sympathetic attitude in dealing with customers. Yet, none of their more usual demeanour was on display now, as, for the next twenty minutes, the pair subjected Kaitlyn to a torrent of accusation, an emotional onslaught that swept over her like a tsunami over a defenceless island.
Normally, too, Kaitlyn reacts to such attacks in the same way as the Japanese defended Iwo Jima, defiant to the death. But this time, even she had to acknowledge the hopelessness of her situation, the justness of the attackers. In all her life, through parental tellings-off, when boys tried to bully her, or school friends betrayed her, she had never been known to cry. The only times were when her mother was dying. But now she cried again, and as her tears began to creep down her cheeks, she managed to interrupt her angry lovers.
‘Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry … I’m an idiot … so bloody stupid! Jesus, you’ll never, never believe me, but I love you two so much it really aches, but I’m so dumb I couldn’t decide, like who I should let down … it was, like I couldn’t hurt you Cole, or you Analise, you’re so much better than me, both so good … oh and I’m a fool so I … fuck! I made that stupid EmpathyEngine programme to help me see who I was most in love with, but it didn’t, even it couldn’t choose … And now, I’ve lost you both … please, I’m so sorry …’
Neither of them had seen their cocky, self-assured girlfriend so distraught before – it gave them some pause. But more, the reference to her software was downright weird. They both knew that it had been making AMG a lot of money, and that their Kaitlyn was the author. Moreover, each of them had quietly tried it out, entering Kaitlyn’s picture and profile alongside their own, and being pleasantly surprised at the results. But that they seemingly had a role in its creation was a shock.
Cole was a bit offended. ‘Hell, are you saying you needed to make a bloody software programme to make your mind up for you?’, he asked accusingly. But Analise heard things differently; she knew how seriously Kaitlyn treated software development, and how much it must have mattered for her to create a whole application to solve her dilemma. Reaching up, she put her finger gently on Cole’s lips: ‘Hold on Cole, I’d like to know more – tell us about this, tell us what happened, Kaitlyn.’
So, she did. And when she was finished, they both looked at her as if she was truly bizarre, but they also saw she was honest, not mean. Merely, for a woman who had so many firm views on so many things, surprisingly indecisive about the issue that mattered most. Cole felt stunned, out of his depth in an emotional whirlpool. But Analise wasn’t.
So far, our tale may have painted Analise as a sweet, mushy neo-hippy, all emotion and no brain. But that’s deeply unfair; when it comes to the intricacies of social relationships Analise is laser-sharp, and equally firm on what she believes constitutes the good life.
That the latter comprises a big, warm house with a large kitchen, a lot of garden, chickens and a large, warm, supportive family comes as a surprise to some of her friends, but fair dos, Analise knows what she wants. And it definitely did not entail staying a receptionist at TJK or continuing to live in a cold, draughty flat. Now, suddenly, she saw a path.
With sudden decision she took charge. ‘Right Kaitlyn. I hear you. I almost believe you. But now Cole and I need time to talk, and also, we need some extra food because Cole is staying for dinner. Could you go out and get some nibbles and an entrée and another bottle of wine, please? Give us maybe at least an hour before you come back.’
Cole let a confused, worried Kaitlyn depart before turning to Analise: ‘Look, I know you mean well, but I’m not sure much can be achieved by me staying to dinner.’ ‘Yes it can,’ she replied with alarming certainty. ‘Totally in fact, like it literally could be the most important meal any of us ever has. I have a plan.’
So, over the next hours, she first cajoled Cole into playing along with her scheming, then the two of them browbeat Kaitlyn into compliance. The outcome, viewed from a more distant time, is a rather large house with big grounds and a huge garden occupied by the trio and four children. Kaitlyn never ceases to be amazed that she has invested her earnings in quite such a rambling old villa, and finds herself the mother of twins, while Cole has confessed to me that he never could have believed that he’d be spending quite so much time clearing gutters and repairing chicken coops. But they seem happy enough, and in her quiet, sweet but determined way, Analise rules their lives.
More immediately though, in the weeks after the momentous dinner, Kaitlyn was naturally distracted, visiting open homes, negotiating with the bank, being dragged along to choose furniture with Analise and generally adjusting to going from the life solo, to being a third of an unusual trio.
Which may, perhaps, have contributed to her not noticing some of the weirdness that was creeping into AMG’s computing systems.
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Aleksandr returned to his seat, still shaking. Unlike Dmitri and Sergei, he had no interest in the kinds of ladies whose visits Uncle Petya sometimes arranged, and even less in the poor girls that had featured in Sergei’s porn.
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Karakia refers to a wide variety of Māori incantations, chants, and prayers. Kōhanga reo are kind of “full immersion” kindergartens for 0-6 year olds emphasising Māori language and culture.