Night was falling over the bay by the time Amelia Prescott’s Honda pulled up beneath the flowering kamashis. Spotting Osborne’s figure near the rocks, she walked to the guardrail.
Hanging on by invisible threads, he was caressing the world and its lights from a distance.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m tired.”
A bird was chirping in a nearby tree. Amelia leaned with her elbows on the guardrail beside him. She had worked like a dog to catch up on her work, and she, too, was tired but her blue eyes were smiling under the stars.
“I think you should go to hospital and have an X-ray,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
A cloak of melancholy had fallen over him. He weighed tons. She saw his pale face in the moonlight, his eyes shiny with fever. A moment of weakness. She took advantage of it to ask, “Are you like this because of Fitzgerald?”
“What do you mean, like this?”
“Was that why you came back to New Zealand? To avenge him?”
“Someone killed him,” he said between clenched teeth.
“No, Paul, he killed himself. I checked at the Institute. There’s no doubt about it. Nobody killed him.”
“Then something killed him,” he replied.
Amelia sighed. You might as well try to reason with a tree. A salt smell rose languidly from the ocean. Feeling dizzy again, Osborne gripped the guardrail. Amelia was aware of his body close to hers, felt the attraction drawing them together. Turning her mind off, she put her hand around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. They stood like that for a moment, motionless, facing the sea. Through his shirt, Osborne was burning with fever. Amelia hugged him tighter.
Foam crashed on the shore, and nobody tried to save it.
Amelia lifted her head, dying to kiss him, but the man she loved could barely stand.
“I need drugs,” he said.
P
ART
T
HREE
THE GUARDIAN OF THE BONES
1.
Jon Timu was driving along Tamaki Drive, the sea road that led to the fashionable suburb of Mission Bay, which was something like a local version of Santa Monica. Inlet followed inlet in the shelter of the rocks. From the top of the hill, the view of the Hauraki Gulf was spectacular.
Timu drove in through the gates of the school and parked his old BMW in the visitors’ parking lot. There was a problem with the fuel injection. The garage man kept telling him he ought to consider changing his car, because the spare parts cost an arm and a leg, and he always replied that he would think about it. Changing cars—he might as well start jogging.
Dragging his feet, Timu climbed the steps to the lobby.
The receptionist, whom he knew well, gave him the usual smile.
“Hello, Captain! Have you come to see Mark? He’s in the pool!”
Timu muttered a thank you. In the eyes of the staff he would never be anything other than a cop, not a father. He relieved his bladder in the first floor toilet, gritting his teeth as he watched the brackish liquid emerge from his urethra, then walked along the corridor to the indoor pool.
A smell of bleach filled his nostrils. The floor was slippery. The swimming instructor was supervising the boys jumping noisily off the diving board. Mark was playing with his friends, and they were clearly all having a whale of a time. Each had his own handicap, but in the water they all became magically equal.
Josie, loyal and devoted as ever, was encouraging them. She was dressed in a one-piece swimsuit that emphasized her big breasts. With her simian nose and pimply skin, she was no beauty, but there were other ways of being beautiful. She was the one who would soon be taking over, once and for all. Fighting back the tears, Timu approached.
Mark was splashing one of his friends when he saw his father, and he immediately turned away and began wading toward him, the idiot, almost immersing his whole body. By the time he came level with the diving board, he was exhausted. The swimming instructor had been on the verge of jumping in to save him.
But Timu had already rushed forward. Mark had reached the edge of the pool, beaming, his eyes red with chlorine, so obviously overjoyed that it made his father want to blubber.
Good God, was he a man or not? Timu caught his son under the shoulders—he weighed a ton, the little pig—and lifted him out of the pool. The others had already forgotten all about him, and were laughing at other games now.
“Dad!” Mark cried.
There was laughter in his slanted eyes, as if he was opening a present. Timu gave his son a big hug. Soaked as he was, Mark didn’t feel the tears dripping onto his shoulders.
2.
With great difficulty, Osborne managed to extricate himself from the Honda. He had slept a leaden sleep on Amelia’s couch, and was only just emerging from it. The codeine pills he had taken were drilling into his head. Amelia had insisted they eat a substantial breakfast of bacon and beans, and now she was dropping him outside the Debrett on her way to work. He felt as if he was on automatic pilot.
“Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” he said, taking a few steps away from the door. “Thanks again for the repair job.”
