“Getting some fresh air.”
Since his homecoming, the two men had carefully avoided each other.
“I called Sergeant Culhane,” Amelia said, as if coming to Osborne’s defense. “I was asked to take a look at the body, but there were a few details that bothered me, like these bites for example.”
Gallagher’s jaws tensed as he turned to the body. Without legs, it made a strange impression. “How long do you reckon she’s been dead?”
“At least a week,” Amelia replied. “The body must have been carried out to sea, then swept back by the current. The legs have been torn off. Sharks, judging from the bites.”
Gallagher looked at the trunk, the shreds of skin. There wasn’t a trace of emotion on his smooth face. “Who found the body?”
“A guy over there,” Osborne replied, indicating one of the men whose job it was to keep an eye on the site.
“Have you questioned him?”
“Sergeant Culhane has.”
Gallagher looked around. Karekare Beach was as dangerous as it was beautiful: the currents were strong, the seabed was treacherous, and the waves so insidious that bathing was only allowed in the area between two measly buoys, and never in rough weather. The boldest visitors surfed on the breakers, the others were content to fish from the end of a natural seawall on the right that jutted out above the waves—in spite of the gathering storm, three figures were there now, casting their lines.
“All right,” Gallagher said, turning to his men. “Comb the area, the rocks, the beach, the dunes, everything.”
Having given his orders, he leaned toward Osborne, who was still crouching and staring at the corpse. “What are you waiting for? The flood?”
A flash of lightning streaked across the sky. It was raining heavily now. Osborne stood up without a word. The corpse was put in a plastic body bag, zipped up, and carried away. With wet feet, Osborne took a few steps on the black sand.
Amelia was waiting in the dry, huddled under Culhane’s jacket. Culhane was also hanging about in the driving rain. Gallagher muttered something to Amelia about the evening’s reception, but she only had eyes for Osborne.
“Are you coming tonight?” she asked, in a lighthearted tone.
“Where?”
“Sky City. The mayor’s holding some kind of press conference.”
The wind kept pushing her toward him, and she offered no resistance.
“Are you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Amelia said, with a slight smile. “Everyone’s been invited, even me.”
He hadn’t.
In a blinding flash, lightning rent the world apart.
3.
At school, they called him a bastard, and it was true. His father had run out on them soon after he was born. All Paul knew about him was his name—Todd Preston—so he’d had to invent him. In the schoolyard, he would say that his father had died in the Nefud desert in Arabia, killed by a scorpion while carrying out an anthropometric survey. Paul wasn’t too sure what anthropometric meant, but it was such a long word, nobody was likely to doubt his veracity. To the smaller kids, he would tell stories of motorcycle accidents on the road to Tijuana, Mexico, and they would respond with colorful expletives. At least when Paul was around, you got to do some traveling. Added to which, he almost believed it himself.
The reality was that for a long time he had lived alone with his mother, Mary, a nurse in the neighborhood health center. Unemployment was rife, people like her were afraid of young people like him, the Labor Party was dismantling the welfare state, and widespread privatization was putting paid to the myth of a prosperous egalitarian society. Mary lost her job, and with it most of her hopes. She often sat in the kitchen, sobbing. Paul did nothing to console her—it wasn’t a son she needed, but a man.
Thomas Osborne was no worse than any other: a gruff, bearded Scotsman, who worked as a foreman in a company making frameworks for buildings. He may not have been the brightest card in the pack, but he had enough sense never to cross swords with this not-quite-son of his, this unsettlingly silent teenager he had ended up adopting when John was born.
Paul had never communicated much with the members of his family. Since Hana had left, it had gotten worse. He paid little attention in class, never brought a friend home, let alone a girlfriend, borrowed lots of books from the local library and locked himself in his room to devour them until late at night. Mary worried about him, but Thomas said that at least it kept him out of trouble.
Ten months had passed since Hana had left for the kohanga reo. She had indeed come back for a few weekends as she had said, but she didn’t mix with most of the local youngsters anymore and only went out in the company of the Douglas sisters. Of course, she had never come to see him. She had quite simply abandoned him.
And then one morning in January, in the middle of the vacation, Paul saw her waiting at the bus stop, hair pulled back in an overly ornate bun, face turned toward a row of run-down houses. She was alone.
“Tena koe,”1 he said, approaching her, slightly unsure of the pronunciation.
Hana was wearing tight pants and a Chinese tunic buttoned up to the neck. “E korero maori ana koe?”2 she said, a slight smile hovering over her brown lips.
“He iti iti noa iho taku mohio,”3 he replied, hesitantly.
Hana was looking him up and down. “Ka pai. E noho ki raro,”4 she said, with a hint of irony in her voice, and put her hand on the bench.
Paul remained standing. There was a knot in his stomach. He had never practiced the rudimentary Maori he had learned in his room.
She was still sitting on the bench and her green eyes were bright in the summer heat. “Tena koe, kei te pehea koe?”5
“E ke pai,”6 he replied, nervously. He didn’t know what else to say.
She gave him a sidelong glance. “He puku mate, nei?”7
He didn’t understand. “I think I’ve exhausted my repertoire,” he admitted.
She laughed softly. “Where did you learn?”
“From library books.”
