A naked male riding his bike on High St at 3.30pm was ticketed for not wearing a bicycle helmet.
One of the great appeals of practising journalism is that you’re constantly writing sentences no one has ever written before. It barely seems credible that this should be so, because journalists are among the least creative and original people in modern society. They’re taught to write like each other. If you picked up the paper and someone had snipped out the bylines, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. The identity of the author is an irrelevance. And yet the least talented of journalists routinely write the most amazing sentences; sentences that have never occurred to the poetic sensibilities of Shakespeare, Nabokov, Austen, Kafka, Larkin, even Ayers.
The naked cyclist sentence (‘Police Notebook’, 2014) contains the essence and mystery of journalism. It’s only 21 words, and yet its arrangement is unique in the annals of world literature. Incredible that these works in miniature, which make up journalism, should be unique. Fantastic that the infinite variety of human experience, which journalism reports, should form sentences that no one had ever thought of writing before.
The thing that makes these sentences unique is the existence and order of facts. Bores of all ages say to journalists, ‘Don’t let the facts spoil a good story.’ It’s a nonsense, because a good story demands the facts; the accumulation of facts is the story. The job of the journalist is to carry the facts in a pleasing and possibly even artful manner — or simply to get out of the way, and tip the facts out onto the road.
A male riding his bike on High St at 3.30pm would have been given a ticket for not wearing a bicycle helmet if he was naked.
Who was he? Part of the Notebook’s elliptical charm is its namelessness — it records the actions of phantoms, and is light on clues. Thus: ‘There was an attempted burglary at an Oxford St address. An occupant made the discovery after finding a shoe print on the toilet cistern.’ At most, we learn of gender, age and residence. And: ‘A Temuka man, 18, was warned for setting fire to a paper cup outside a fast food restaurant in Theodosia St.’
On and on it goes, the Notebook noting all. Greed and probably poverty: ‘A woman was arrested after stealing oysters and lollies from Countdown.’ Bored youth and broken glass: ‘A front bedroom window in a Selwyn St house was smashed when a water balloon was thrown at it.’ Odd that a water balloon would prove more effective than a wooden rolling pin. We cross live to St Andrews: ‘A car was found on fire in St Andrews. A 35-year-old Tinwald man was located nearby. It appeared he had accidentally set the vehicle on fire.’ What?
A kind of melancholy sets in when you read older entries in the Notebook. This, from May 2011: ‘A boy, aged about 15, stole two pouches of tobacco from a dairy in North St. The owner chased the boy but lost him when he turned into an alleyway.’ The thief will be 19 this year. Is he okay? Or is he further along the road to ruin? October 2009: ‘A 29-year-old Timaru man was arrested for offensive behaviour after he was found urinating outside Cheng’s Restaurant.’ Six years on, what does he feel whenever he walks past Cheng’s on Stafford St? Shame? The urge to piddle? March 2009: ‘A dining table was stolen from a Browne St address.’ Six years on, did they ever replace the table, or do they just walk around the corner to Cheng’s and take advantage of its marvellous $5 lunch special with free soup?
The online archive only goes back as far as 2009. But a version of the Notebook existed in the very first edition of the Timaru Herald, in 1864. A court report includes a single-sentence entry that records the name of the ancestor of everyone who breaches the liquor ban on Stafford St: ‘William Young was fined for being drunk and incapable in Timaru on Saturday evening.’ A paper cup in flames, a hat full of sick, the incapable William Young — misdemeanour and literature, riding naked through Timaru for over 150 merry years.
Chapter 8
Mark Lundy: Killing Christine and Amber
1
She phoned for the driver to pick her up. He said he wasn’t far away, probably five minutes.
‘Any problems?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Okay. Bye.’
She picked up her handbag, checked the $140 was inside. The client got off the bed and put on his green tracksuit pants. He said his name was Mark.
She said, ‘So, what do you do, Mark?’
He said, ‘Sell kitchen sinks and taps.’
She said, ‘Really.’
He said, ‘I fax the orders to my wife, and she does all the paperwork. It’s a very successful business — I’m the number-one salesman in the Lower North Island!’
She said, ‘Uh-huh.’
It was nearly 1am. She looked around the small motel room. There wasn’t much to look at — a photo of the Petone wharf on the wall, a 1.125-litre bottle of rum on the kitchen table. He’d polished off most of it. In fact, he stank of booze, but she didn’t think he was drunk, although her heart nearly sank when she met him an hour ago. She was small, and delicate; he was huge, his stomach rolling out of his XXL polo shirt. Well, she thought, she’d seen worse. Some of them were pigs, no better than animals. This guy was actually quite pleasant.
The driver from the nearby Quarry Inn escort agency in Seaview finally arrived. ‘Well, good night,’ she said at the door.
‘Good night,’ he said.
After she left, he got ready. The hooker had cleared his mind. He could focus on the job at hand. It was going to be a long night, and required courage, audacity, nerve. Above all, it demanded careful planning. He moved around the small room.
