“Too bad, then.”
“That’s no answer,” Gallagher hissed. “We put you on this case because of your supposed knowledge of Maori affairs. So tell me this. There were other valuable objects in Melrose’s house, including other native relics. Why was the hatchet the only thing stolen?”
Osborne belched smoke across the desk. “For its symbolic value, I assume. The hatchet once belonged to a chief of the Ngati Kahungunu tribe. Someone may have been trying to get it back, on the grounds that an object like that shouldn’t have been in the house of someone like Melrose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Melrose isn’t exactly an admirer of Maori culture.”
“But he collects Maori artworks.”
“The way a hunter collects trophies.”
Gallagher sat back in his chair. “So somebody wanted to recover an ancestral weapon with the sole aim of getting it out of the hands of an inappropriate collector?”
“Maybe.”
But Gallagher didn’t like ifs and maybes. “So who did this? A Maori activist or a lunatic?”
“Maybe both,” Osborne replied.
“Do you have a lead?”
“The Ngati Kahungunu tribe, maybe. There are details that don’t quite amount to clues yet, but need checking out.”
Gallagher’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of details?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve talked to the community. For the moment, I’m groping a bit in the dark.”
Gallagher’s smell impregnated the room, a mixture of menthol and cheap aftershave. He swiveled in his chair, like a salesman giving a sales pitch. “As I said, Osborne, your report doesn’t add up to much. In addition, Nick Melrose isn’t at all happy with your methods, and I don’t want the reputation of my department brought into question.”
“The reputation of your department?”
“Yes,” Gallagher retorted. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but I’m in charge of this damned department now and I’m not going to let anyone spoil things. You’ve been put on this case to look for leads, and maybe actually recover Nick Melrose’s hatchet, not to harass his daughter.” He wagged a threatening finger. “Let’s be clear about this. The next false move you make, and you’ll be sent back where you came from. Is that understood? You’re not the star here anymore, all that’s over!”
Gallagher was waiting for a response from his sworn enemy, but it didn’t come—Osborne had enough on his plate, dealing with himself.
* * *
The harbor of Freemans Bay had grown considerably since Peter Blake’s first victory in the America’s Cup. A whole commercial complex had been created around the so far unbeatable New Zealanders. There were landing stages, but also bars, trendy world-food restaurants, and a promenade where jazz bands played. At the far end of the quays, boathouses in the colors of the sponsors housed next year’s outsiders, well protected under canvas.
Osborne drank a glass of cold water to get the benzodiazepine down and ordered a coffee from the girl in a miniskirt who was ambling between the still empty tables. They had just sat down on one of the terraces overlooking the harbor, in search of a coffee worthy of the name. With Toby lying at his feet, Culhane was talking about the Melrose case, but Osborne wasn’t listening. Wild horses were pounding in his head. He lit a cigarette.
“What about the drowned woman?” he asked after a while. “Any news?”
Culhane opened his notebook. “They found a plane ticket for Tahiti in her apartment,” he said, turning the pages. “She was due to leave last Sunday, which fits with the date of her death. Joanne Griffith was last seen on Saturday evening, at a dinner with friends, where she talked about her coming holiday. According to them, Joanna was a good swimmer and liked to swim on the West Coast: Piha, Karekare, and so on. The flight to Tahiti was at seven in the evening. I assume she wanted to take advantage of the Sunday to go for a swim before leaving, and didn’t take any notice of the fact that there were strong currents that day. I checked the weather reports. The weather was unsettled on the coast, and it was very windy. As for the blood that could have attracted the sharks, she might well have scratched herself on a rock before she was carried out to sea.”
Culhane had clearly done his job. What he’d found out corroborated the theory of a drowning.
“We’ve started reconstructing her movements on the day of the drowning,” he went on. “Apparently Griffith left early by car to get to Karekare. When her neighbors woke up on Sunday morning, around nine, the Volvo wasn’t in the drive. Which fits in with the fact that it was found on the edge of the campsite near the beach. With the holiday crowds, nobody had noticed how long it had been parked there.”
Osborne was coming back to life, like an animal emerging from winter. “Was the plane ticket found in her apartment?
“Yes. It was in her pocketbook.”
“What about her suitcase?
“In her bedroom. Packed and ready to go.”
Osborne took off his glasses and massaged his sinuses, but a pain he’d never felt before knocked him back. “How do you explain why, after a dinner with friends, where presumably she drinks a bit, a woman who’s about to leave for Tahiti gets up at the crack of dawn to go for a swim twenty-five miles from where she lives, at a spot with a reputation for being dangerous, and in bad weather?”
“The weather wasn’t bad at sunrise,” Tom replied. “Joanne Griffith got caught out, the way a lot of surfers do. In fact, two guys had a narrow escape that same day. As for the fact that she got up early, she probably needed to sober up a bit before she left.”
“Sober up?”
The thought seemed to amuse him. Not Culhane.
“I also checked with her friends and family,” he went on. “Joanne Griffith had been divorced for eight years, no regular boyfriends. Her ex-husband lives on South Island and hasn’t been in touch with her for years. In short, no one had such a grudge against her that they’d kill her and disguise the murder as a drowning. The witnesses are unanimous: Joanne Griffith was a discreet woman, hard working, ambi—”
“Where did she work?” Osborne cut in.
“Century. A construction firm.”
The largest in the country.
