“I don’t know anything about it,” Witkaire replied. “That’s the truth. And I don’t want to know.”
The brotherhood of the barbed-wire fence. The Maoris were prisoners of a world that didn’t belong to them anymore, but they remained united.
Osborne had stopped hearing the chirping of the birds and the insects in the surrounding bush. “What do you know about Zinzan Bee?” he asked.
“The same as you,” Witkaire replied. “A former activist, like me, but one who turned to nativism.”
The rejection of any form of Westernization, as a reaction to globalization. Another kind of racism. This time, Witkaire wasn’t hiding anything.
“A follower of Hauhau?”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about such practices.”
“And do you know where he is?”
“Zinzan Bee? Of course not.”
“Why ‘of course?’”
“You’re not the only one looking for him.”
“Who else?”
“Some police officers.”
Timu. He was the one who had set him on the trail of Zinzan Bee.
“Kirk was part of the sect,” Osborne said, “just like Zinzan Bee. Is Nepia their leader?”
“I don’t know.”
Osborne felt like tearing his head off, but Witkaire turned away and moved his hand over the moss sticking to his wife’s gravestone.
“Is Hana with them?” Osborne asked.
Witkaire turned back to Osborne, every inch the chief again. “What are you talking about?”
“Whakautua mai tenei patai aku.”34
But the old man had clammed up for good. “E noho ra, tama . . . ”35
9.
The bone pierced the skin of her lips, then traced a groove toward the right-hand corner of her mouth. To bear the pain, Hana recited poems to herself, a technique she had read about in accounts of people under torture. She also thought about her rebellion, all the sadness that had led her to this point, Wira’s funeral, and the members of the tribe who had gathered in the marae. It was there that she had learned from a tipsy uncle about the sale of lands that had belonged to the tribe, in the north of the peninsula. Nobody mentioned it, although everyone had witnessed the kuia’s dying days. Sickness was useful for keeping the unity of the group, but the truth was that in learning of the sale of her ancestors’ land her grandmother had died of grief.
The bone was tearing her skin. It hurt—it hurt a lot. Tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the black liquid that would leave an indelible mark on her face. The chisel cut into her flesh and moved toward her chin. She also thought about Paul, the only man who could have and hadn’t, and about the reasons she had ended up in the arms of Nepia, the tribe’s new tohunga. A highly skilled tattooist, theological expert, scholar, shaman, and high-ranking medicine man, Nepia was in truth a complete crank who had supported her in her utu. Nepia had become an adept of Hauhau, the cult of the fanatical prophet Te Ua Haumene, who had used the apocalyptic descriptions of the Bible to indoctrinate his disciples. There were fifty of them in all, all very young, easily influenced and exploited, dropouts most often, abandoned by their families, excluded from a society that didn’t need them anymore, a generation sacrificed on the altar of neoliberalism, men without prospects, without a future. Nepia had offered them one: to take revenge on the pakehas who for too long had flouted their honor.
His aura had done the rest. His recruits now truly worshipped him, and the mokos that adorned their faces gave them a sense of identity and a feeling of power they had never before imagined. They had become tapu, sacred.
Hana didn’t give a damn about their motives, their secret society, their faith, or even their leader. Nepia took himself for a demigod, and his followers’ blind devotion certainly wasn’t going to bring him down to earth anytime soon. Hana had come to him like a wounded dog demanding to be stroked. She had flattered his vanity, his monstrous pride. She had joined the sect with a very specific plan, which she had patiently set out for him, in bed. Infatuated with her, he had ended up believing that her revenge would be his. The fool. It was she who had manipulated him. Right from the start. Her body had done the rest. For once, it had been of some use to her.
The tears spurted in cascades. She dug her nails into her palms, drawing blood, but it wasn’t just the pain that was making her cry. Once she’d had her revenge, what was to become of her? Perhaps she’d swim out to sea, and this time not come back. The sharks would take care of the rest. Her despair was bottomless. Even Pita hadn’t been able to do anything for her. The poor man had hurt her.
“There,” Nepia said. “It’s finished.”
He had straightened up. Hana was still shaking in the chair. The pain was too strong for her to move yet. Nepia took one last look at his work and, clearly satisfied, put down his torture instruments. Then he mopped the dark liquid oozing from the cuts and handed her a mirror.
Hana shuddered when she saw her face. A black line now ran along her upper lip. On her chin, the mark of the Tainui tribe.
Tears clung to her cheeks. Tears of blood.
10.
His leg tilted on the hospital bed, Peter Gallagher was brooding. The pallor of his face was almost synthetic. Although the extraction of the bullet had been done without complications, he wouldn’t be able to walk without extensive physical therapy that could last months—if he ever walked again. The flowers, the gifts, the sympathetic words of his colleagues, the medal he was promised: none of that made any difference. Gallagher was almost certain that Osborne had knowingly shot him in the knee and no decoration was going to lessen his hatred of the human race.
Captain Jon Timu sat facing him, chewing on his extinguished cigarillo.
“Have you had Osborne’s report?”
“No,” Timu replied.
“How come?”
“There won’t be any Osborne report. He hasn’t called in for two days and still hasn’t been back to his hotel.”
Gallagher shifted in the bed. “What does Culhane say?”
“He doesn’t know a thing.”
