Stocky but as gnarled as the creepers in the surrounding bush, Pita Witkaire began speaking. His voice sang: that was the first surprise. He addressed the group, which began laughing. Too far away to understand what was being said, Paul took advantage and moved in closer.
The Maoris soon grabbed hold of traditional pouwhenuas13 or patus14 then, in response to Witkaire’s orders, the women took up position in the middle of the marae, the men behind them.
Witkaire launched into a guttural chant, immediately taken up by the women. Hana was the first to advance, a double-pointed club in her hand. In a shrill but strong voice, she was leading the other women. Singing in perfect unison, the women invoked the earth and skies and the ancestors who had seen their birth, but their chanting soon became angry. Hana was still advancing, weapon in hand, when her eyes rolled up until only the whites were visible, like spectral figures.
Cleaving the air with their clubs, the men walked around the outside of the women. Their tongues sticking out, their pupils dilated, they slapped their thighs and stamped on the earth, stamped until it shook. They twirled their tongues, their eyes seemed about to come out of their sockets, and their raucous cries echoed in the bush. Trembling with anger, fists raised toward the indifferent sky, they brandished their rage as if they could roll back the clouds, they flung their fury and powerlessness in the face of a dead world, in a final act of defiance. The clubs rose in the stifling air. They continued to slam the ground with their bare feet, and their pupils rolled up in a trance, as if trying to tear the whites from their eyes.
Paul retreated farther inside the ferns: their obscene grimaces recalled the figures on the totems.
The women returned to the attack. Hana’s face was twisted, distorted. The sweat streamed down her bare thighs, her dilated eyes blazed with anger, and her whole body advanced in his direction. From the ferns, Paul had eyes only for her, terrifying as she was in her anguished cry. She had a brief convulsion, her chest vibrating in every fiber. The Maoris stamped the ground, as if trying to have done with it once and for all.
Paul held his breath, spellbound by the power of the haka. They were dancing as if discharging all their rage and frustration.
Everything came to a sudden halt: the dance, the invocations, that sense of being possessed. In an instant, peace and silence fell again over the world.
A few seconds passed, while he crouched there, petrified, on a carpet of thorns. Hana was looking in his direction, with her demented eyes.
“Hey, you, what are you doing here?”
Paul jumped—a fierce-looking Maori was towering over him, hands on hips.
“Out of there, now!”
Feeling more embarrassed than afraid, Paul extricated himself as best he could from the vegetation. The Maori pushed him toward the marae. The dancers looked him up and down.
“So,” Pita Witkaire said, “spying on us now?”
A thin smile played over his lined face. Paul tried to say something, anything, in reply, but the others started laughing. Some exchanged comments in their mother tongue, which he couldn’t understand—this time, his books wouldn’t be any help at all.
“Well, young man,” Witkaire resumed. “If that’s the case, then you’re going to join us for the rest of the session. Let’s see how well you cope.”
Paul stood there motionless, surrounded by the Maoris. He heard their voices, but couldn’t grasp what they were saying. A patu was placed in his hands. The crowd hemmed him in, stifling him, he was the little white guy in the middle of a savage tribe, he was a prisoner of the Amazons, and their chieftain, who alone was capable of pardoning him, was looking at him with that accusing gaze of hers. He would have liked to disappear, go back where he had come from, back to the bottom of the garbage can, his mother’s ass, even the ocean bed. He would have liked, not to die, but to be nothing, and to leave that nothing here, like a doormat everyone in the world could wipe their feet on.
One of the Maoris showed him how to hold the weapon, then demonstrated the dance steps that went with it—a series of little jumps, most of them hops. Paul was living through a waking dream, and Hana was doing nothing to help him.
“Go!” Witkaire cried.
They formed a guard of honor for him. Urged on by the crowd, Paul complied, launching into this incomprehensible game of hopscotch with all the awkwardness of a beginner, feeling stupid and ridiculous. He gave a jump, then another one, both greeted with laughter. Hana was standing facing him, dripping with sweat, laughing like the others at his congenital clumsiness, his mongrel clumsiness. She alone could save him, but she did nothing, preferring to let him die of shame among her people rather than help him. The bitch had really fooled him. Her innuendoes, her urging him to leave Red Hill, the Maori school where he could join her, none of that had ever been real. She had spun him a yarn, made him believe in mirages, made him believe they were in love.
As soon as the dance was over, Paul ran away. This time, the humiliation was total.
The morning coffee scraped the muddy taste from his mouth.
“Sleep well?” the barman asked.
“Don’t remember.”
“Ha ha!”
“Just give me another coffee.”
The barman, a young man named Kieren who was studying Chinese on the side, made him another espresso. The bar of the Debrett Hotel had only just opened, and the stools were still stacked on the counter. Osborne was reading the report in the New Zealand Herald on the launch of the mayoral campaign. There was a photograph of Phil O’Brian smiling for the cameras, one arm raised triumphantly by his father. If he was reelected, Phil, who was forty-seven, could look forward to a brilliant future—minister, even Prime Minister. His father, Steve, didn’t say as much, but he was full of praise for a son who, as he put it, was “better equipped than I was at the same age.”
Osborne flung the paper across the counter.
“I guess you’re not crazy about O’Brian,” Kieren commented, amused.
“I don’t mind the mayor, just his policies.”
Kieren shrugged. “Same thing, isn’t it?”
Probably. It didn’t matter. Osborne had knots in his stomach—Hana, or what was left of her. A volley of coffees later, he was outside.
It was the morning rush hour, and the employees of the Central Business District were hurrying to count their money. The Chevrolet was parked on Vulcan Street, a little side street filled with the smell of mass-produced croissants. Lost in thought, Osborne opened the door.
In spite of his little performance in the toilets at Sky City, he hadn’t learned much from Melanie Melrose. Yet someone had entered her father’s property to steal the old chief’s hatchet. Osborne didn’t believe in people who could walk through walls. As there hadn’t been any forced entry, that could only mean that the burglar had had the keys—Melanie’s keys, or rather, copies of them, made without her knowledge. Nick Melrose’s daughter was more accessible than her father, and clearly disturbed enough to be taken advantage of. She was his lead. Anorexic, with hysterical tendencies, probably a nymphomaniac, Melanie seemed to live under her father’s thumb, but Osborne had sensed a mystery about her, a secret the girl kept well hidden, but which, given the state of her body, would be better divulged. Melrose’s unexpected arrival had unfortunately put paid to further questioning. Had someone informed him about their trip to the toilets?
The thing that particularly preoccupied him at the moment was something he had read in the postmortem reports the night before. Not only had Kirk’s victims been deprived of their femurs, but those femurs had disappeared. Had Kirk been hiding them? For what purpose? Did he have an accomplice? Was it Zinzan Bee? Was he the guardian of the bones? And why was Moore keeping information like that to himself? There was also the fourth body, which had finally been identified: Samuel Tukao, according to his photograph. The news hadn’t been made public. Had Gallagher given orders to keep it quiet?
Everything concerning Fitzgerald’s death, however remotely, seemed to have been watered down, as if there was a fear of too much coming out into the light of day. Yet Fitzgerald had killed himself: the ballistics report was categorical. Osborne remembered the digital photographs in the file, all those scattered bits of him, and however much he racked his brains, his friend’s suicide was still a mystery. Even if he’d been thrown off the force, Fitzgerald would have continued to search for his family. That was his hope, his abiding passion. Had he found them? It had been a long time since that had last seemed possible. No, something had happened, something unexpected. This was his obsession now. It had to be something to do with Zinzan Bee.
Osborne had returned to New Zealand in order to shed light on the case, but he didn’t feel as if he was getting anywhere. Too many obstacles were being placed in his path.
* * *
