“Not bad.”
“Meaning?”
“They don’t pick quarrels with each other.”
“Did Will play big brother?”
“He is the oldest.”
“That’s true. So did he?”
“Yeah. He was kind of the leader.”
“What about their tattoos?”
“What tattoos?” Mike said in a surly tone.
“The last time I saw them, their arms and necks were covered in tattoos.”
“Don’t know anything about that. But if that’s how they like to go about, I don’t see anything wrong with it.”
Osborne sighed. It was like talking to a wall.
“Any idea why they haven’t been home?” he asked.
“How should I know?”
“Last I heard, you were still their father.”
“Yeah.” The idea didn’t seem to thrill him very much.
“What bar do they hang out in?
“How should I know? Maybe the Beverly. It’s not far from here.”
“All right.” Osborne was starting to get tired of these evasive answers. “Do you have a photo of them? It’d be nice to see their handsome faces.”
“No.”
They were the same height but not at all the same build. Mike Tagaloa, who thought he was standing firmly on his two legs, suddenly felt himself coming off the ground. Osborne had grabbed him by the neck and thrown him down the steps with such speed that he demolished the shrub that constituted the whole of his little garden before rolling across the dry ground. Furious, he got up again and climbed back up the steps, determined on revenge.
He found the intruder in Will’s room, leaning over the desk. Two words stopped him in his tracks. “What’s this?”
Osborne was holding a little sachet in his hand. Grass. Mike shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Osborne put the sachet of datura from Ann Brook’s house back in his pocket. The physical effort he’d just made had brought on another dizzy spell. He started searching the room while Mike looked on in exasperation. The room had clearly not been in use for a long time. All he found was a bag of dirty linen, a few knickknacks, and an old guitar with loose strings. Mike Tagaloa was still waiting in the doorway.
“Don’t you find it strange that your sons have all disappeared overnight? Osborne said.
“No.”
It was normal for everything to disappear.
Osborne tore off the only photograph from the wall, which showed the three brothers together, and left the place without another glance at Mike—a man who’d clearly written his family off a long time ago.
He had just got back to the Chevrolet when the radio, tuned to the police frequency, crackled. It was a call for backup on Massey Road, Otahuhu, in the south of the city. Three men had barricaded themselves in a house after an identity check that had turned nasty. Two patrols were already on the spot. Nobody would go in without orders from Lieutenant Gallagher, who was on his way. The three men were armed.
* * *
Taking shelter behind the hood of a police car, Peter Gallagher was sizing up the house where the criminals had taken refuge. There was really no way out of this. There were men everywhere ready to go in, two plainclothes officers crouching behind the low garden wall, in the front line, and a row of marksmen to cover them. All they had to do now was dislodge those three scumbags.
Gallagher turned to the elite units who were waiting behind him. “Tell your men at the back of the house to hold themselves in readiness to go in . . . ”—he looked at his watch—“exactly two minutes.”
The officer nodded. Another officer offered Gallagher a bulletproof vest.
“No thanks, I won’t need it.”
The sun was at its height. From the house, the criminals waited for the attack. Gallagher emerged from behind the hood. He zigzagged across the empty street and reached the two officers squatting behind the garden wall, both young cops from his team.
“What’s the situation?”
“There are two snipers at the first floor windows and another upstairs,” Officer Percy said. “What do we do?”
“We go in.”
