Osborne didn’t get to headquarters until around noon.
“Anything new?” Culhane asked, swiveling on his seat.
“Not much.”
Osborne flopped onto his chair, and lit a cigarette. So far, their partnership had amounted to a few patrols and taking down statements in various trivial, boring cases. Things seemed to be quiet on the gang front. There had even been a certain decrease in the overall crime rate since the Kirk case and the reorganization that had followed the massacre. Timu and Gallagher would continue the crackdown, and Culhane and Osborne would take care of the backlog of ongoing cases, while at the same time gathering information on Zinzan Bee.
Bee was quite a character. A former activist and a figurehead of the community, Zinzan Bee was also known as a shaman. A staunch defender of Maori rights, his activities in the eighties had mostly been focused on the former tribal territories in the south of the island. Following the process of national reconciliation established by the Waitangi Tribunal—any person considering himself a Maori was authorized to present a claim for compensation relating to lands confiscated since 1840—his influence had slowly declined. Now considered too radical, he had faded from view. Police records mentioned a place and date of birth—Masterton, 02/05/1958—but he hadn’t been seen since the beginning of the nineties, and his last known address—Waipawa, a village near Napier—was a false one.
How had Bee’s path crossed Fitzgerald’s, such a long way from his tribal lands? Had someone been protecting him too? The few photographs they had of him must be out of date by now. They showed the face of a man with stern, regular features and an expression of intense pride in his eyes. It was a handsome face, and a terrifying one.
The telephone rang on Culhane’s desk.
“Yes . . . Yes, right away.”
He hung up and turned to Osborne.
“Captain Timu wants to see us.”
* * *
Jon Timu owed his promotion to his abilities, of course, but also to the fact that he was a Maori. Like the United States with the genocide of the Indians, New Zealand had repented the crimes committed by the British soldiers, and solemnly apologized for the land grab that had followed the Maori wars. Faced with the large number of demands for compensation from wronged or dispossessed tribes—you only needed to have 1/32 Maori blood to be considered a Maori—the New Zealand government had put an overall cap on claims: a billion dollars. That was the end of the repentance. With or without compensation, the condition of the Maoris was not exactly satisfactory, especially compared with that of the whites. Underqualified, with a 20% unemployment rate, condemned to live on welfare, dispossessed of lands their ancestors had either sold willingly or had had stolen from them, marginalized, and impoverished, many Maoris were now forced to seek refuge in the cities.
Cut off in this way from their roots, most were even unfamiliar with their own language—a subject some considered one further defeat. The Maoris didn’t belong to a region but to a country, so their language wasn’t a dialect doomed to disappear or be part of folk memory, but a living language, their language.
In the meantime, they were still over-represented in the prison population, which some saw as proving that they were a people under threat, others that they were a threat to society. It all depended on your point of view. For the influential men who had thrust Jon Timu to the top of the Auckland police, the situation was clear, if awkward. As a Maori, he had been chosen to crack down ruthlessly on crime in the city, but in such a way that this crackdown wouldn’t be seen as targeted or biased, but fair. Timu was a kind of smoke screen, intended to deflect any implication that the mayor’s hard-line policies were racist or discriminatory.
All of which worked to Jon Timu’s advantage—not that he had much choice.
“Sit down,” he said to Osborne and Culhane as soon as they entered.
Wearing a mottled suit over his broad frame, Timu was puffing away at a cigarillo. Osborne lit a cigarette with the one he had been smoking—the Captain’s office seemed to be the only place in the building where smoking was permitted.
“Somebody burglarized a private house this morning,” Timu announced, “and stole a hatchet. Not just any hatchet, a Maori relic. A team’s still on the scene. What they’ve ascertained so far is that there are no signs of a break-in. No broken glass, no forced locks. There’s a security guard, but even he didn’t hear a thing. At least that’s what he claims. I’d like you to take a look.”
Osborne looked doubtful. “How about the owners of the house? Didn’t they hear anything either?”
“Mr. Melrose and his daughter were sleeping upstairs,” Timu replied.
“Nick Melrose?”
“That’s right—he’s the owner of the hatchet. I’ve just been speaking to him on the phone. He’s expecting you.”
Osborne threw his cigarette butt in the huge ashtray on the desk. Melrose, that old reactionary. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Not personally,” Timu retorted. “But he’s an important enough figure for us to take this thing seriously. Someone got into his house in the middle of the night to steal a work of art while he and his daughter were asleep, the security system was completely useless, and the girl had a nasty shock. I don’t know why the hatchet was stolen, but there has to be a reason. Find it. And please, I’d like you to be as discreet as possible. The media don’t know about this yet.”
Culhane nodded.
“Why?” Osborne asked.
Timu discharged a cloud of smoke. “Nick Melrose doesn’t want any publicity, and I think he’s right.” He coughed noisily. His little brown eyes had misted over, and he was almost choking, but he didn’t stub out his cigarillo. “Quite apart from the deaths of Fitzgerald and his team,” he continued, “this whole Kirk business has had a real impact on the public. We managed to restrain the press, more or less, but people have started to feel very insecure. Kirk was a Maori, and the victims purebred pakehas. Some have been tempted to generalize from this one case, which makes for an awkward situation. I’m sure you can see why.”
“Because they were seen as racist crimes?”
“Let’s just say people have taken a whole lot of isolated incidents and lumped them together, the press has got in on the act, and now the situation is quite tense.”
Osborne nodded—he had seen the same drift toward xenophobia in Australia in relation to Lebanese immigrants. Except that here the Maoris were in their own country.
“Public opinion, especially white opinion, has been shaken by these events,” Timu went on. “The authorities chose me for this job to show they meant business, and so do I. Anyway, we can talk about all this again at the reception this evening at Sky City, but the point is this: I’m a Maori myself and, as such, I’m anxious not to inflame our two communities. I don’t want any racist crimes in my city, from either side. You have the reputation of being a good mediator, so I’m counting on you.”
Osborne didn’t bat an eyelid.
Timu relit his cigarillo. “Here’s what we know so far about the burglary,” he said, pointing to an ocher-colored folder. “It might help you in your investigation. You’ll report to Lieutenant Gallagher, as his department’s in charge of the case.”
Osborne let Culhane pick up the folder, even though Timu had barely glanced at him.
“How about Zinzan Bee?” Timu asked. “Anything yet?”
“I’ve checked my old contacts,” Osborne replied, evasively.
“And?”
“Nothing.”
