Sunny stared dry-eyed at his departing back. Then she turned her gaze to where a satisfied duck squatted beneath the pohutukawa. It was the same place she had been sat, seven years old, bedraggled, half-drowned, to wait for her brother’s body to be lifted to the surface. I put my hands on her arms and pulled her little body towards me. She was even lighter than I imagined. I drew her into my arms and she stayed there. Over her shoulder I could see Neo watching. Justin had his back turned, mobile phone to his ear.
He was calling the police.
Chapter 28
SATURDAY 1 DECEMBER 2012
Robbie put his arm around Sunny’s gaunt shoulders. He’s the kind of guy who can do that without thinking too much about it. It was good of him to be there and, even though she’d only met him an hour before, Sunny leaned into his shoulder. I took that as a good omen. Being able to take comfort from someone is a good place to start when it comes to relationships. Sunny hadn’t had a great start in life but little signs like this made me optimistic for her.
There were just three of us in the front pew on the family side of the church. Justin had agreed to Sunny attending her mother’s funeral, which was something, I guess. Sunny didn’t want Neo there and I’m pretty sure Justin wouldn’t have let him come anyway. Both Ned and Salena, though nominally family, were otherwise engaged, aka in prison awaiting bail hearings. Ned continued to claim his innocence. He was sticking to his story that Karen’s death had been an accident; in the midst of their argument she had fallen down the stairs and had hit her head. Seven years earlier Karen had accepted her penance and served a prison sentence for a crime she hadn’t committed. To be killed only hours before she was to begin a new life both for herself and Sunny … well, that was a crime I hoped wouldn’t go unpunished. It would be up to a jury to decide if Ned was telling the truth — or not. As for me, I was in no doubt he had killed her. Whether he had done it hot-bloodedly or in cold-blood made no difference really. Karen was still dead.
Manny was the only occupant of the front row on the friends side of the church. Aaron Fanshaw was sitting in a back pew, probably hoping to make a quiet getaway part-way through proceedings. I counted ten other people in the congregation of mourners but I was pretty sure most of them were ring-ins from the minister or habitual funeral-goers who weren’t fussy about whose big day it was. If I’d known there would be so few people I’d have hauled in a few ring-ins of my own, Gemma certainly, and maybe even Smithy, though he may have a code about going to funerals of people he has autopsied. Hard to know with Smithy.
The police were still ‘looking into’ what they would do with Sunny’s confession for Falcon’s death seven years earlier. No one wanted to reopen the case. No one wanted to admit they’d been wrong in sending Karen to prison, particularly now that she was dead. As for Sunny, once the truth had surfaced she had refused to back away from it. She’d insisted on giving a straight-up factual statement to the police. Justin had talked her into waiting until he engaged a lawyer for her but, despite the lawyer’s advice, Sunny stated categorically that she had known what she was doing when she took the handbrake off: she had intended both her and Falcon to die, but had succeeded in killing only her little brother. No one wanted to prosecute a fourteen-year-old girl for something she did when she was only seven. The criminal age of responsibility being ten, she was too young at the time of the offence to be now charged with murder or homicide, but the authorities were still arguing among themselves over whether she should be punished for not admitting her guilt sooner. And it would involve different authorities to decide whether she comprehended her guilt even now. The arguments would go on for a very long time and without doubt none of those arguments would go to the heart of what Falcon’s death had really been about. Things would take their course now but the process would be slow. In the