'Pomare's gift for complex plots and drum-tight tension shines' BENJAMIN STEVENSON
'Shocking, twisty and impossible to put down - all the things I've come to expect from one of Australia's most talented and prolific authors' CHRISTIAN WHITE WHO REALLY KILLED THE PRIMROSE FAMILY?
The violent slaughter of the Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation.
The family's young live-in chef, Bill Kareama, was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. But the brutal crime scarred the idyllic town of Cambridge forever.
Seventeen years later, true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott tracks down prison psychologist TK Phillips. Once a fierce campaigner for an appeal, TK now lives a quiet life with Bill's case firmly in his past.
As Sloane lures a reluctant TK back into the fight, evidence emerges that casts new light on the Primroses - and who might have wanted them dead.
While the list of suspects grows, Bill's innocence is still far from assured. What will it cost Sloane and TK to uncover the truth?
Praise for internationally bestselling author J. P. Pomare's thrillers including The Wrong Woman:
'A rare talent who continues to turn out crime masterpieces'Herald Sun
'This grabbed me from the opening page and didn't let go' MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
HUMILIATION: THAT WAS one motivation offered by the prosecution. The shame of rejection drove Bill to stab each member of the Primrose family with his chef’s knife. Or wrath: he did it in a fit of rage because Simon and Gwen Primrose fired him and withheld his final paycheque. Lust: Bill’s infatuation with their teenaged daughter grew to an obsession. He’d sent her lewd notes and couldn’t live knowing he would never have her. Or a sort of psychosis: Bill was drunk, unstable.
Endless possible motives, that’s what the prosecution had – and circumstantial evidence for every one of them.
But if you believe Bill’s version of events, he simply found the bodies, heard the sirens and panicked, fleeing from the crime scene. Wrong place, wrong time.
I spent three years of my life trying to figure out what really happened and concluded that two facts should have created reasonable doubt:
One, Bill Kareama has experienced lifelong severe asthma.
Two, Bill Kareama did not have an inhaler on the night of the murders.
But the jury did not agree: when he was on trial, they decided the second fact was a lie, or seemed to believe a young man with severe asthma was capable of running three kilometres in twelve minutes without an inhaler.
It’s true that Bill did not do himself any favours the morning of the murders: at approximately 6 am, he walked 900 metres from his flat, past The Pope sports bar, past the strip of shops and the service station, to the Morning Star bakery on the corner of Pope Terrace. As he made his way there, he placed a shopping bag full of ashes into the skip beside the BP. The ashes were once the clothes he’d worn the night before, when he was at the Primrose house. At the bakery, he sat and ate a mince and cheese pie, staring out into the quiet street. It also didn’t help that he’d cut his nails to the quick, shaved his head, bleach-cleaned the flat he’d recently started renting and destroyed his mobile phone.
These acts alone do not make him a murderer but they sure as shit didn’t help his defence. Because most people don’t really understand what trauma, fatigue and drug-induced chemical imbalances in the brain can do to someone’s behaviour. Behaving strangely after exposure to death and extreme violence should not automatically get a man locked up for twenty-five years.
There were other issues with the original trial too, and if Bill ever got his retrial, it’s likely he’d win for a number of reasons. First, the question of procedural fairness and sub judice. Second, the police failed to consider, let alone investigate, any other potential suspects. Third, the coercive interview techniques used on Bill.
But there would be no retrial. Today I read that he’s now been in prison for seventeen years – it was reported in the Sunday paper, his face on page three, a recent shot from inside. It sucker-punched me, and for a moment, I was back there, meeting Bill. The first thing I noticed about him that day was his size – the photos in the press didn’t seem to capture it. He was big but lean. The second thing I noticed about Bill Kareama was his unusual calmness.
As I drive from my parent’s place in Rotorua back home to Auckland, I feel the pull of Cambridge. Just like before. I can’t shake it. So I take the familiar turn-off and head out toward the house. I park outside a pair of iron gates set within a stone wall bordering the property – the sort you might find in the British countryside. I get out and approach the gates, and feel a funny sort of nostalgia as I look through. I hadn’t exactly forgotten, but it had been a while.
A wide driveway splits the generous garden, leading to the expansive frontage of a stately home that looks more country manor than New Zealand farmhouse. The surrounding grounds have long since been sliced and diced, each portion auctioned off, built on. The density of suburbia has closed in on what was once a small number of properties with serious acreage, the surrounding landscape now blighted with townhouses. All that remains of the Primrose estate is that grand old house. Last time I was here, you could barely see the house through the tall grass and unruly hedges. Now it’s tidy, well maintained, with hedges trimmed tight and lawns buzzed close. The new owners have done a good job.
I promised myself I’d move on, put this place behind me. So why am I here? Promises are funny like that – once you break one, the rest don’t seem to matter.
Tyres on gravel. I turn to see a Mitsubishi Pajero slowing, turning into the driveway. I step away as the gates begin to open and the vehicle pulls in and then stops.
I look in and smile, but the woman behind the wheel isn’t smiling back. The window lowers.
‘Leave us alone.’
Each syllable is bitten off with such rage I’m struck silent for a moment.
‘Sorry?’
‘You heard.’
‘I was just admiring the ho—’
‘I know what you’re doing,’ the woman says. I see the tiny spider veins in her cheeks, she can barely meet my eye. ‘Go on, clear off or I will call the police.’
‘Sure, sorry,’ I say, exhaling. I take one more look up at the house. It’s perfect – you could almost believe nothing bad ever happened here. I take my keys from my pocket and walk back to my car. Why did I come here? I shake my head. I remind myself that I don’t owe Bill Kareama anything. Not a bloody thing.
ONE ALWAYS REACHES a moment during any good hangover when the only thing you feel like doing is eating a plate of greasy carbs: carbonara, French toast, hot chips and gravy, the greasier the better. I think back over the night, count the drinks off. Four champagnes, at least two chardonnays, one end-of-night Ardbeg with the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a friend. Then two self-flagellating glasses of water before bed, as if that was going to prevent the inevitable. It did not. As soon as I’d opened my eyes: a strobe-light, throbbing headache, sawdust throat, nausea.
I reach the greasy carb stage of my hangover around ten. I send a silent thank you to Tara, who booked me a late check-out. She’s a gem. Last night was the first big night I’ve had in God knows how long, probably since we wrapped the last season of Legacy. I never expected to drink so much but, then again, I never expected to win – only once has the Gold Walkley gone to a podcaster.
I was already a couple of glasses deep when the host, firebrand journalist Des Holder, read out my name. I looked around, checking the grinning faces at my table to confirm I’d heard correctly. They rose, clapping at me like trained seals.
‘Me … I won?’
I managed to get through my acceptance speech without tears, thanking my producer, Esteban, my assistant Tara, and expressing my deep sadness for the victims of the case. I only hoped that my podcast, my book and my work had helped to shine a light on domestic violence, I said. After that, the real celebrations commenced. Things get a little fuzzy from there.
I hate that feeling of waking with an undercurrent of anxiety accompanied by an enduring queasiness. Now that I think back over the night, I’m worried that the bright lights only served to highlight the platitudes in my speech, that I spoke too quickly or sounded drunk, that I was incoherent or offensively chatty at the afterparty, still running high on the win. Worried that I’d gaffed and said the wrong thing to the wrong person, burnt a bridge, maybe even burnt a few.
I roll over and stretch my limbs in the hotel sheets, my hand finding my phone. I still have the itch to get straight on the social media treadmill: Instagram, Facebook, X, refresh each, do it all over again, but I’ve been off social media for a few months. We’re all addicts of some sort these days but I’ve managed to kick this particular habit. I have other good old-fashioned vices instead.
But email is harder to avoid – my work depends on it, after all. I open my inbox, contemplating ordering room-service – do they even do breakfast this late? I find a stream of messages: lots of well-wishers, though Tara has likely already filtered out today’s batch of crazies spewing their hate. Who would have thought domestic violence was such a combustible subject in this country? I guess our role in bringing charges to a former rugby league star over the disappearance of his wife didn’t help.
A journalist friend has emailed me, with the subject line, ‘Remember this case?’ There’s a link to an article in the body of the email. I scan the article – it’s familiar. In fact, I remember the crime from when it happened. It was in the media in Australia too. A private chef stabbed each member of the family he had worked for. Now, the article says, seventeen years of the chef’s prison sentence have been served and there have been calls over the years for a retrial. He’s not once acknowledged his guilt and the kicker is: if he had, he would be eligible for parole and probably be a free man now.
This could be something. But not for us. There’s a lot of story here, lots to investigate, but it doesn’t have the feel of a Legacy case. I close the window and open another email, this time from my producer. He wants me to look at the case of a family who disappeared without a trace in Adelaide in the late nineties. After reading for five minutes, I put my phone down, reminding myself that today is not a work day. Today is a recovery day, a day of gratitude. Which is hard when your brain is in a bench vice as it slowly tightens. The next project can wait.
‘Room service,’ the voice comes down the phone line.
‘Hi, yes, can I get the eggs benedict and a double espresso to room 903?’
‘Sure. It won’t be too long.’
‘And can I add a hash brown and a Bloody Mary?’ Somewhere in Melbourne my PT is cringing.
‘Of course.’
I drag myself to the bathroom, where the mirror kindly reminds me I forgot to remove my make-up before I fell asleep. I slurp a few mouthfuls of water straight from the tap and splash my face, before grabbing my laptop from the chair, and falling back between the sheets.
I pick up where I left off, partway through a trashy dating show, ice-cream for the brain, on Netflix. Only half-watching, I grab my phone, and begin to double-screen, vanity-searching my own name on Google. Call me a masochist but I can’t help seeking out the worst things people have said about me online. I am not disappointed.
For instance, did you know that Sloane Abbott is the rancid afterbirth stain of gender studies bullshit and millennial self-obsession? Did you also know that Sloane Abbott reeks of low IQ Reddit leftard hypocrisy? Did you know that, despite assorted MRA rape fantasies, I’m actually mid, a low-quality woman, without make-up a five at best? I’m a grifter who appeals only to middle-class white feminist guilt, but another poster insists I’m not evil, actually cute despite the woke posturing. What a charmer.
No one took issue with my podcasts until I made the fatal error of pointing out the domestic abuse rates in this country, until I pointed out the failure of police to protect women from ex-partners – that was the catalyst for the violent sexual fantasies and harassment. It didn’t help when I spoke out against rape culture in Canberra, our nation’s proud capital.
One hit a bit further down the list is a link to a popular feminist forum. My people, I think, at least some have positive things to say about me.
SLOANE ABBOTT, THE QUEEN OF PERFORMATIVE WHITE FEMINISM
Shit. Don’t click, don’t click, don’t click. I click, of course I click, despite the acid filling my chest.
So here’s why we need to stop supporting this ‘trojan horse’ feminist:
1. She has recorded four of the biggest podcast series in Australia’s history, has won journalism awards and written countless articles commenting on criminal cases. How many of these various journalistic endeavours have focused on a crime with a non-white victim? You guessed it: 0. Google: Missing White Woman Syndrome.
A pang of anger. Who the fuck is this person?
2. She is the definition of privilege. Her father was a famous photojournalist (nepo baby), she grew up in Kew (white, privileged, elite), attended private school and received a scholarship (that could have gone to a more needy/disadvantaged/ marginalised student) to Monash University. She is white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive, wealthy and does nothing to lift up less advantaged people.
3. Look at the company she keeps. See links for photos with any number of prominent right-wing voices. Extra points for spotting the anti-trans activist.
4. Dating history. I couldn’t find much, but on her socials and anecdotally, she has only ever dated white men. No women, no BIPOC. It’s fine to be straight, babe, but try harder next time to hide your racial bias. She probably believes she’s a good little intersectional feminist because the cognitive dissonance would be crushing, but the fact is she doesn’t find black or brown men attractive enough to date.
Bile builds in my gut. This is not how feminism works. You shouldn’t need to be perfect to help. I hate this person, their all-or-nothing view of the world. Combing through my entire life, dating history and career for imperfections. They’re painting me to be something I’m not – frankly, the diversity of my dating history would put the UN general assembly to shame.
I let my breath out, close my eyes for a moment and force big gulps of air into my lungs.
This is, in the face of some stiff competition, the most crushing thing I’ve ever read about myself. Not because it’s all true – it’s not – but because it has revealed a blind spot that’s so obvious now. Point number 1: I’ve never written about or investigated any crimes against non-white victims. But I have a producer and editors, and we have a media company funding our endeavours. I’m directed by other people. I’ve never chosen my subjects in isolation, it’s a collective decision … but there’s still a nagging voice inside. I can’t ignore it. Plugging my eye sockets with the heels of my palms, I let the thought emerge: White crime sells, you’ve always known that.
Ambition, I think. That’s my sin here. Knowing it would help my career, my subconscious has leaned toward the stories that are ‘podworthy’; a tidy euphemism, I suppose, for ‘white’. It’s never been about justice or feminism – it’s always been about me.
I close my laptop. The anxiety rolls me back into a ball on the bed. It warms my eyes, closes my throat. The anger cools, sharpens, cuts open a cold cavity in my gut. I do what I always do when I have strong feelings: I welcome the anaesthetic distraction of work. I reopen my emails, go into the folder named ‘Leads’. Time to block out the noise and find the next project.
EVERYONE KNOWS HOW it ends: my chef’s knife snapped in Simon’s chest. Each member of the family stabbed. The police had an eyewitness who saw me departing the house. My bloody boot prints led between the rooms then out the back door, over the pavers and down to the gates. I was arrested within hours and haven’t been free since. That is where the story most people know ends, but few people know where it truly begins.
All I ever really wanted to do was cook. There is something about the fizz of salt in hot oil, the moment when you press a knife into a ripe peach and it weeps over the blade. Something about the crackle of breaking open the perfect meringue, the hiss of a lamb chop hitting a smoking grill.
At the time, cooking for the Primrose family felt like my destiny, but it started with a simple phone call. I wish I hadn’t bothered getting up to take that call. I could have stayed in bed, called back later. By then, my uncle might have already passed and maybe I’d have decided to stay in Australia. But that’s not how life is. There are no do-overs in history. There only is what was.
The call came at five in the morning and I’d arrived home from work at one. The landline never rang that early, especially on a Saturday. So I knew it was something serious. My housemate banged on my door. I forget his name but he didn’t get much sleep either. A DJ and club rat who wore sprayed-on black jeans and believed all the world’s problems could be solved with MDMA.
‘Someone’s on the phone,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Your aunt or someone. Reckons it’s important.’
And it turned out it was. My uncle, the man who’d raised me after my mother died, had collapsed from a heart attack in the night. He was on the third step of the staircase at the time and he’d clutched his chest as he fell back, hitting his head on the tiles. Now he was on life support.
The news shook the sleep from my mind. I made a coffee with trembling hands then walked to the travel agent on Chapel Street and waited until it opened at 9 am. I booked a flight for that afternoon. I called my boss, who told me to take all the time that I needed. I wept on the plane and drank four tiny bottles of Jim Beam with Diet Coke. I must have known in my bones I wouldn’t be returning to Melbourne. Why else did I book only one way? Why else did I pack my chef’s knives?
My uncle died while I was soaring over the unbroken blue of the Tasman Sea. The funeral was to be held three days later, but I knew I’d be needed there longer. I was back where I started, sleeping on a single bed in my aunty and uncle’s flat in Rotorua. There were bills to pay for the funeral, my aunty needed support. I helped with what little money I had saved and tried to do what I could. Family gathered around, and while it was good to see them all, the sadness of my uncle’s death overshadowed that first week. I was just taking it one day at a time.
I saw Maia at the funeral, and the week after texted her. Grief is more potent than Cupid’s arrow. I wanted company and Maia wanted me. We picked up where we’d left off, before I moved to Australia, spending all our time together, mostly at her place. We lay in bed for hours, just talking, just being.
‘Tell me your biggest fear,’ I said one night a few weeks after I’d got back.
She looked up, surprised. ‘Where’s this come from?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What are you most afraid of?’
‘Probably dying. Or something happening to people I love,’ she said. ‘Whenever Teimana gets in a fight or disappears for days, I get anxious something really bad has happened to him.’
Her brother had been arrested a dozen times – nothing serious, not at that stage anyway.
‘What about me?’ I asked her. ‘Ever worry something might happen to me?’
‘Nah,’ she said, with laughter in her voice. She placed her hand on my cheek. ‘You? Not scared of dying, eh? Too tough for that?’
I shrugged. ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘But right now I’m more scared of not ever really living than of dying. Scared of always being stuck in this place,’ I said. ‘In this town, forever.’
‘Too good for your home, eh?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean that.’
‘Is that why you up and left me the first time? Off to the big smoke in Aussie.’
I shook my head, my nose rubbing hers. She was still sore about it, even after all this time. ‘I just want more.’
‘Yeah, me too. I’ve always known you’d get out of here … and actually do something with your life. You were never that much of a talker, but even back at school you were saying that. Do you remember we used to talk about it?’ she said.
‘I remember the other stuff more than the talking.’
She play-punched me in the chest. ‘It’s weird to think about now. Pashing at the back of the rugby field.’
I laughed, pulling her body closer, soft against mine.
If I’d known what was to come, I would have never let go.
ABOUT A MONTH after the funeral, my aunty was doing a lot better, but I knew I wouldn’t be going back to Melbourne. Things with Maia were serious, I was even starting to think about a future together. But I’d burnt through my savings and was back where I started. I needed to get a job. That’s when Uncle Mooks called me. Mooks had been in Rotorua for the funeral and stayed a week or so before he returned to Cambridge where he was living then.
‘I was gardening for this family. They’ve got a bloody mansion, boy, out there in Cambridge. They’re looking for a chef.’
‘I’m not a private chef,’ I told him.
‘They don’t know that. Worth a try. They’ve had trouble finding someone.’
‘Won’t they want a resumé or CV or something?’
‘I’m tossing you a big juicy bone here, Bill. You decide if you want to chew it.’
I’d already dropped into a few restaurants in Rotorua to see if I could pick up any shifts, but work was thin on the ground. And even if an opening did come up, I’d be starting on half of what I’d been making at Noir.
I asked Mooks how I should apply.
‘Email a CV – just tell them you saw the job in the paper.’ He texted me the email address,
I sent through my CV and before long I was on the bus to Cambridge for an interview. Mooks met me at the bus stop. It was good to see him, he was a mess at the funeral but now he was back in high spirits.
‘I think it’s best they don’t know we’re related,’ he said as we drove off.
‘What? Why not?’
‘I don’t work there anymore, nephew. They didn’t like how I tended the plants. British. They’re all funny about their gardens, you know. I’m only good for mowing lawns, pulling weeds, bit of maintenance. I don’t know how to prune a rose bush properly.’
‘They fired you?’
He just smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that. I got plenty of work, starting at the high school next week.’
‘Jeez, Mooks, I wish you’d said that. Now I feel like I’m lying from the start.’
‘Nah, it’ll be fine, trust me. They’re going to like you and it’s a good job. Sort of money that could really set you up.’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Go on, just have a chat. See what they’re offering and then decide. No harm in having an interview.’
Eventually I agreed. But still, it felt a bit dishonest.
About twenty minutes later, Mooks pulled the car up across the road from a set of ornate iron gates set into high stone walls. Looking through the gates, I could see a driveway and manicured garden. The house brought goosebumps out on my arms – it was huge, and old-fashioned looking. I’d never been inside a place like that. And now maybe I was going to live there, cook there.
I looked back at Mooks and let out a low whistle.
‘Not bad, eh, neph?’ he said. ‘See you in a bit.’
I stepped out of the car and watched Mooks drive off before I crossed the road. I took a breath and pressed the intercom button at the gate.
‘Yes, hello? May I help you?’
It was not the British I was expecting, but the long throaty consonants and puckered vowels of French.
‘Hi, I’m, ah, here for the interview.’
‘The chef, yes?’
‘Ah, yeah, for the private chef role.’
‘Okay, one moment please. I’ll get the gate.’
The gears ground as the huge gates began to swing inward.
I walked through and up the wide driveway to the front of the house. A great wooden door with a brass knocker swung in as I raised my hand. A woman, standing barely five feet tall, had opened it. She was older than me – late twenties, with very dark hair, pale skin and fire-hydrant-red lips.
‘So,’ she said, looking past me and out to the street. ‘No car?’
‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘I got a ride with a friend.’
She arched a manicured eyebrow. ‘Well, you better come in.’
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her as she led me through the oversized foyer. She was exotic, sophisticated, like someone out of a foreign film. I followed her to a loungeroom and lowered myself into the leather chesterfield that she gestured to. She gave me a bit of a once over and then left, without saying anything more.
As I waited, I looked around and recognised something on the mantel in a glass box. A white comb with three prongs, intricately designed and patterned, made of bone. I noticed other things too: art, hardwood furniture, other markers of wealth. And weird taste, too – like the taxidermy fox mounted and hung on one of the walls. That’s something you don’t see every day, I remember thinking.
Ten minutes later, the door from the foyer opened and an elegant older woman with a chestnut bob came in.
‘Bill?’ she said.
‘That’s me.’ I stood up.
She reached out her hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you. I’m Gwen. Gwen Primrose.’ She gave a tiny nose-wrinkle smile. ‘Come on through.’
I followed her into an expansive office overlooking the garden. The walls were lined with books. She sat down behind the desk.
‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘This is my husband’s office but I thought it’s the best place to talk. Official business, this.’ She smiled again but, despite the warmth of it, her gaze seemed to trap me. ‘So,’ she said, without glancing down at my CV. ‘You’ve never worked as a private chef?’
I swallowed. ‘Umm. No. Most of my work has been for one of the top chefs in Melbourne. Noir is the only Australian restaurant ranked in the top one hundred in the world. It has three chef’s ha—’
‘Is that so?’ she said, cutting me off. ‘Impressive.’
‘Yes. And I’ve also helped a catering company to cater events.’ I don’t mention it was for a marae up north, and the ‘events’ were tangi. I also don’t mention it was unpaid and that I was a teenager making sandwiches. ‘I can cook anything you like.’
‘Anything?’ she said.
I wanted to say that I’d cooked for my family for years even before I became a chef. Would it be clichéd or silly to tell her I’ve always been a student of the kitchen, endlessly seeking new recipes, trying new combinations of ingredients, new techniques?
The words wouldn’t leave my mouth, trapped by nerves. I just nodded instead. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘And, you are, ah …’ She moved her hand in front of her face. ‘What’s your heritage, Bill?’
‘My heritage?’
‘You’re not white, are you. So, what’s your ethnicity?’
Heat at the back of my neck. ‘Oh.’ From the moment I saw the house, I knew I wanted the job. Maybe if I hadn’t wanted it so badly I would have asked why it was important to know my ethnicity. Her gaze narrowed. ‘My mum, she was Māori. And apparently my dad was or is Pākehā, or European.’
‘Apparently? You didn’t know your father?’
I shook my head. The corners of her mouth lifted and her head tilted. There was something a bit like joy in her eyes.
‘Nah, I don’t know him. I’ve not had anything to do with him.’
‘How terrible. That must have been hard?’
‘It wasn’t so bad.’
‘So you must be very good with the local cuisine?’
‘We don’t have too much of our own cuisine, really. We mostly inherited the British diet, I think.’
‘Well, we love traditional British fare in this household, there’s no doubt about that. But there must be some local specialities as well?’
Pork bones and pūhā, fry bread, hāngi. ‘Yeah, I suppose there are a few things.’
‘Well, I’d be eager to lea. . .
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