Osborne nodded his agreement. From that point on, Timu kept things brief. Osborne would stay at a hotel until they found him official accommodation. Sergeant Culhane would partner him: he was a conscientious man who would familiarize Osborne with the new department. They would share an office on the third floor, working under Lieutenant Gallagher, the new head of the Criminal Investigation Department.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked by way of conclusion.
Osborne shook his head, then changed his mind. “Why do you think Fitzgerald killed himself?”
“His methods were being called into question,” Timu replied. “And you know as well as I do that Fitzgerald couldn’t have stood early retirement. We all agreed about that.”
Osborne was wandering in the corridor when a voice hailed him. Looking cramped in his beige suit, Sergeant Culhane was standing by the drinks machine, waving.
“Lieutenant! Lieutenant! Come here, let me introduce you!”
Osborne approached the group that had formed by the machine, tall young men with biceps bursting out of their shirtsleeves. Culhane introduced Osborne as the “new officer just back from Australia,” but everyone knew about him already. There was Ronny and his Quaker face, Percy and his blond quiff, a guy called James—he couldn’t remember the names of the others anymore. They were Gallagher’s men, and they all shook his hand ingratiatingly by way of greeting.
“Ah!” Tom said with a laugh. “And here’s Amelia Prescott, our young biological genius!”
A blonde with candy-pink streaks peered out of a gap between all those well-built men. “Hello!”
She was so slight, Gallagher’s men had to move aside so that she could be seen, but Amelia Prescott asserted her presence with a kind of feline grace. She was barely five and a half feet tall, with short hair, a complexion like a flower covered in dew, and two round blue eyes that looked Osborne up and down.
“Amelia has only just arrived here, but I know her work from when we were both in Christchurch.” The paternalism in Culhane’s tone seemed all too typical of him. “She’s a real champion! I heard she even takes her work home with her!”
The “champion” smiled sweetly. “Don’t listen to Sergeant Culhane. He believes whatever he’s told.”
Still staring at Osborne, she shook his hand, but withdrew it quickly, as if it was burning hot.
“Amelia works at the Medico-Legal Institute in Devonport,” Culhane went on. “For the moment she’s one of the Chief Medical Examiner’s assistants, but it won’t be long before she’s doing her own reports!”
The others nodded approval, although they weren’t really listening.
“Where are you from?” Osborne asked.
“Oh, did you recognize my accent?”
“England, right?”
“The south of England. Brighton.”
“Nice place.”
“Do you know it?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
They looked at each other, neither turning their eyes away.
Culhane created a diversion. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the building,” he said, pulling Osborne away.
Their office was bright and clean, with enough high-tech gadgetry to make them forget they’d been relegated to the end of the corridor, near the drinks machine. According to Culhane, only current cases were dealt with here, the others being reserved for the floor above them, where Captain Timu and Gallagher had their offices.
“We’ll just be getting the humdrum stuff!” Culhane said, with a touch of irony.
Ignoring him, Osborne switched on his computer. Nobody knew what had happened to Fitzgerald and there wasn’t much available on the lead he had been following. Four bodies had been recovered from the mass grave in Waikoukou Valley, the place where Kirk took his victims. Kathy Larsen, roommate of another girl who had died ten days previously, Kirsty Burrell, a prostitute—and, Osborne knew, one of their best informants—and Officer Wilson. The fourth body, which was “older,” still awaited identification. Of Zinzan Bee, there was no trace.
According to the report, there was a gap of thirty-six hours between Fitzgerald’s last radio contact with headquarters and his suicide. Jack had tracked down the killer and taken him out, but what had happened after that? What had he seen or found out to make him want to blow his brains out?
Among Fitzgerald’s colleagues who had died in the course of the case, Osborne found the names of his half brother, John, and Chief Medical Examiner McCleary.
He turned to Culhane, who was folding papers and whistling a Sinatra song. “Who’s Chief Medical Examiner now?”
“Moore,” Culhane said.
Grant Moore, former head of the lab. A crony of Gallagher’s.
“Why?”
Osborne didn’t reply. He was thinking of his old friend Jack McCleary, and the postmortem reports he used to send him in private.
* * *
Situated on the corner of Shortland Street, in the center of town, the hotel had two bars. One was clearly reserved for idiots, with a TV, video games, and neon advertising signs. The other was full of girls, chattering away in groups of two and three, putting on airs, but also, in the best British manner, getting systematically drunk on the local white wine, which was fully the equal of their bigger neighbor’s Cabernet Sauvignon. The music was loud enough to attract punters out for a good time, so around five o’clock there was an influx of lawyers from the Central Business District.
