“I don’t know,” Osborne said. “That’s for her to say.”
“Well, I’m telling you this has nothing to with Melanie,” Melrose retorted. “She’s taken a tranquillizer and is resting in her room. And I’d rather you didn’t smoke.”
His voice had turned harsh. Osborne stubbed out his cigarette in a porcelain dish.
“I don’t think much of your manners,” Melrose hissed.
“And I don’t think much of your books. But that’s not going to stop me finding the burglar.”
By now, Melrose was making no attempt to hide his irritation. “I shan’t see you out,” he said, with a venomous look. “You know the way.”
Osborne left the library without a word.
Culhane was on the terrace, his ear glued to his cell phone. “Okay, we’ll be right there.”
Heavy clouds had appeared in the sky. Culhane’s face too had darkened.
“A dead woman’s body has washed up on the beach at Karekare,” he said, seeing Osborne. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
* * *
A fierce wind was battering Karekare Beach. Situated on the edge of Centennial Memorial Park, about twenty miles from Auckland, the area was home to many artists and a summer population mainly composed of surfers and holiday-makers. Piha was the nearest village, and could be reached along hiking trails that crisscrossed the bush in the Waitakere Ranges.
Karekare itself was relatively wild and stretched at the foot of an impressive rocky coast, prolonged by a tropical rain forest that gave some color to the black sand of the beach. Huge waves crashed on the shore with a sound like falling bodies.
The sky had turned squirrel gray, and a storm was raging out at sea—you could see the lightning in the distance. The wind was squally, and Amelia Prescott was having great difficulty withstanding it. Osborne and Culhane were standing near her, in silence.
A woman was lying on the shore, lapped by foam from the raging waves. Just a trunk and a head, apparently washed ashore.
It was a strange sight, that mutilated trunk buffeted by the foam. Carried by the currents, which were always dangerous here, the waves seemed to be shaking the body as if trying to wake it. The face, white and swollen, was particularly painful to see. Culhane was screwing up his eyes. It might have been the salt in the wind . . .
“A car has just been found abandoned at the edge of the campsite,” he said, “with a pocketbook in the trunk. According to the papers in it, the car belonged to a Joanne Griffith.”
Osborne had not moved. The tattered remains of a swimsuit clung to the trunk. The woman must have been between thirty and forty. Blonde. Pretty, maybe—the fish had partly eaten her eyes. He looked at the photograph on the driving license Culhane handed him. The dead woman’s body was in a terrible state, but it might be her.
He crouched beside Amelia. “What do you think?”
Amelia was swaying on the wet sand. Her candy pink streaks looked out of place, Culhane thought, feeling nauseous. He had never seen a corpse in such a state. She had.
“She’s been dead several days,” she said softly. “Probably drowned, but given the state of it . . . The body was severed at the hips. To be precise, the legs were torn off.” She pointed. “Look at these lesions. The flesh is in shreds.”
Mirages in his head, Osborne stared at this fragment of a woman. There was always something unreal about an unknown corpse, something that made you fantasize. The waves rolled in, crashing in cold rhymes on the foam-wet beach. Amelia felt very small.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Sharks.”
They looked at each other as they crouched in the foam. Amelia’s eyes were grave, almost petroleum blue under the changing sky.
“There aren’t any sharks in Karekare,” he said.
“Not here, but out at sea.”
“Harmless ones.”
“Except if you’re bleeding. You know a shark can smell a tiny amount of blood from miles away. The body may have drifted.”
A few drops of rain were falling on the beach, a further provocation to a sea already swollen with rage.
“She may also have fallen from the rocks,” he said.
“It’s possible.”
“Any signs of head injuries?”
“None visible. The postmortem should tell us.”
Bloodless angels were rising from the ocean, carried in on the wind as if unwanted. The dead woman seemed to be staring at them from her empty eye sockets. Osborne placed his hand on her sticky hair.
Growing in strength, the wind made them sway. Their bodies were drawn together, until finally they touched. Amelia received a kind of electric shock but Osborne continued stroking the dead woman’s hair, as if trying to console her for the blackness that had claimed her.
The paramedics waiting behind Culhane stood aside: Peter Gallagher had appeared on the windswept beach. Tall, chalky-faced, Gallagher walked past Culhane without seeing him. The wind beat against his white shirt and lifted the sides of his jacket, affording a glimpse of his service weapon, a Glock, the latest model. He looked briefly at Osborne, then at Amelia Prescott, who had stood up as he approached.
“What are you doing here, Osborne?”
