“It fell.”
“What?”
Gingerly, Culhane entered. In the half-light filtering through the blinds, the room didn’t so much look tidy as almost uninhabited: not one thing, one paper, one personal effect left lying around. Only the overnight case, closed, at the foot of the bed. Then he saw the blood on the pillow.
“Lieutenant Gallagher wants to see us,” he said. “About your report on the Melrose case. You hadn’t showed up, so I came to look for you.”
Osborne had slipped into the bathroom. As his injured nose wouldn’t allow him to inhale anything, he took some ephedrine pills. After which, he extricated a huge lump of blood from his nose and met his ravaged face in the mirror. That nose really wasn’t looking too good . . .
Culhane kneeled to stroke the cat, which stretched in response. Through the open door, he noticed the bloodstained compresses overflowing from the basket. Osborne cleaned the cut and put a new Band-Aid on the bump, which was already turning mauve. The nasal septum had probably been knocked out of place, but the bone had withstood the shock. He stuffed everything on the cabinet shelf into his pocket and left the bathroom.
“Let’s go,” he said, pushing the intruder out of his lair. Culhane weighed tons.
“Are you sure your nose is OK?
The wound looked more impressive in daylight.
“Don’t worry about me.”
Toby was waiting in the back of the Ford, his nose stuck right up against the misted-up window. He was yapping his heart out, but the look Osborne gave him soon shut him up. Culhane took the wheel and turned onto Queen Street. My God, he was thinking, Osborne really stank of alcohol!
“Lieutenant Gallagher summoned us for eleven,” he said. “With a bit of luck, we’ll be on time.”
The traffic was flowing well on the sea road. On the landing stage at Queens Wharf, some Japanese were waiting patiently for the next boat that would take them out to sea to swim with the dolphins. Silent behind his dark glasses, Osborne was smoking. Not a good way to look after his sinuses, Culhane thought, but then he wasn’t his mother.
“How’s Rosemary?”
Culhane jumped: behind the mask of his Band-Aid, Osborne had become chatty again.
“Rosemary? Er . . . she’s fine. Right now she’s looking for a part-time job as a teacher.”
Culhane blushed slightly. Why was he telling him about his wife? Why now? They’d had a row the previous evening. The fact was, Rosemary hadn’t been well since the last miscarriage. It had been the third and, at nearly thirty-nine, her hopes of having a child were gradually receding. However often Tom told her that these days even women of forty-five gave birth, she trusted nothing but her own instincts. Maybe, when you came down to it, their move to Auckland had changed nothing: they had brought their problems with them.
But what was all that to Osborne? It was a personal matter, something that was no concern of his. Did he talk to him about his wife?
* * *
It was as hot as a hospital ward in the office. Gallagher took out the match he had been chewing and gave a sardonic smile when he saw Osborne’s ravaged face. It was quite a pleasure to see him looking so bad. Was that a broken nose?
“Well, Osborne? Been doing hongi16 with your little Maori friends?”
Very funny. Osborne lit a cigarette. Culhane, with his freckles and his skin like a corn-fed kiwi, had followed Osborne in.
“No smoking in my office,” Gallagher said.
“All the more reason to keep it short.”
Gallagher spat a piece of match on the carpet. He had never been able to stand Osborne. He even hated the way he smoked.
“I’ve read your report on the theft of the hatchet from Nick Melrose’s house,” he said, in a deceptively detached tone. “Doesn’t add up to much, does it? Apart, of course, from your theory that the burglar got hold of the house keys without the family knowing. Where did you get that idea, Osborne?”
“The security guard didn’t hear anything and there was no break-in,” he replied. “But the burglar must have deactivated the alarm system before entering the house. There’s a fence at the back of the garden. He’d have been watching the security guard on his rounds, he’d have known when to climb over it, cross the grounds, and cut off the alarm. But to do that, he needed a complete set of keys.”
Gallagher didn’t seem convinced. Culhane stood in the background, keeping score.
“The fence you mention adjoins the neighbor’s garden,” Gallagher said. “We didn’t find any footprints, either in the rose bushes next to the fence or anywhere else. Not to mention that if we follow your theory he must have climbed the fence. Which is more than ten feet high, and perfectly smooth. Impossible to climb with your bare hands. And if he’d used some kind of grappling hook, we’d have found marks on the top of the fence.”
“Unless he was good at climbing trees,” Osborne suggested. “There’s a nikau not far from the fence. If he was in the neighbors’ garden, all he’d have to do would be to climb the tree and hang down from the branches to reach the other side. It’d be a tricky operation, but perfectly possible for anyone agile enough.”
Gallagher’s skull was glistening with sweat. “You forget that nobody stole the Melrose family’s keys,” he said. “They’re categorical about that.”
“Someone may have made copies.”
“They would know, wouldn’t they?
“Not necessarily.”
“What are you thinking?
“The same as you.”
Melanie Melrose.
“It doesn’t stand up,” Gallagher said.
