“So do I. That’s why we’re going there.”
“Do you know them?”
“Of course.”
“So do I. Do you know Josie?”
“She’s my best friend.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Why not?”
“She takes care of me.”
“I take care of you, too.”
“But she’s my friend.”
“Then I’m your friend, too.”
“You’re not Josie.”
“No, but I know her.”
“You’re not my father either!”
And Mark started laughing. As a result, so did Hana.
It was a hollow laugh—they had reached the site.
* * *
It had been a sticky day, with the fog not lifting until the evening, to be replaced by a night fog that hovered over the hills. Jon Timu looked anxiously at his watch.
The meeting had been arranged for nine-thirty. It was almost nine-twenty, and he was still alone in the villa at Long Bay—a quiet spot, near the national park but out of reach of electronic surveillance. They had already met here twice: the first time a year earlier, to thrash out an agreement, the second time the previous month, to finalize the details of the operation.
Although at first everything had gone according to plan, grains of sand had accumulated in the mechanism: Sam Tukao’s disappearace, the theft of the hatchet from Nick Melrose’s house, Joanne Griffith’s body washed back to shore, then the confirmation that Tukao had been one of the victims found in the mass grave in Waikoukou Valley. Their fine war machine had first spluttered, then seized up. They were meeting this evening to find a solution, and decide on the strategy to adopt. Timu had insisted: they had no choice. And time was pressing.
Nine twenty-three: Phil and Steve O’Brian were the first to arrive. A black sedan dropped them outside the house before parking a little farther along the gravel drive. Apart from the chauffeur, who remained near the car, there was also an armed bodyguard: Mitchell, their right-hand man.
“Where are the others?” Steve O’Brian asked.
“They’ll be here soon,” Timu replied.
Steve O’Brian was trying to be appear nonchalant, a grand old man who’d seen it all before, but his gestures betrayed his nervousness. By his side, his son remained silent. Michael Long arrived in his turn, in a silver-gray BMW coupé that suddenly looked too ostentatious. They greeted each other briefly. In spite of his tan and his Italian suit, Long, too, had his heart in his boots.
“It’ll be better to wait inside,” Timu said.
The four men sat down in the luxurious living room. Michael Long settled on the arm of an English leather armchair, made a few trite remarks, and then, unable to keep still, headed for the bar, where he poured himself a whisky. He offered one to Phil O’Brian, who refused, grim-faced and scratching his palms as if suffering from an attack of eczema. Michael Long poured himself another drink.
Since the death of Ann Brook, he hadn’t pulled his punches. It was one way to keep going, as good as any other. If only he had known what was going to happen! All that for a piece of ass . . . Michael had met Ann two years earlier, an escort girl who had been offered to him after a business dinner, by way of dessert. He had liked her so much, he had made her the icon of his advertising agency. Now the poor girl was dead and buried.
Nine-thirty: Nick Melrose arrived, punctual and alone. He wasn’t afraid and made sure everyone knew it—dressed in casual pants and a singlet, his jacket pocket was weighed down with a .32 caliber. As energetic as ever at nearly sixty, Melrose was finishing his next best seller while also preparing the next step in the development of Karikari Bay—linking the resort with the neighboring golf course and building a road worthy of the name—and the thought of them all meeting here didn’t exactly thrill him.
“I hope you have a good reason to ask us all here,” he said, with no consideration for Timu’s authority.
“Yes, I do.”
Now they were only waiting for Robert Burdett, the press tycoon who, as well as owning pay TV channels and holding the rights to some important sporting events, controlled most of the press in New Zealand. He arrived that night in a limousine, escorted by three icy-faced bodyguards straight out of a TV cop show.
“Well?” he said by way of greeting. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to explain,” Timu replied. “Sit down.”
Burdett had bushy eyebrows and a clock in his head. “I can give you an hour,” he announced. “Not a minute more: I’m due back in Sydney tonight.”
“Sit down.”
The bodyguards had taken up position at the front door and in the grounds. Mitchell was guarding the hall. They were all here now, Steve and Phil O’Brian, his communications adviser Michael Long, Nick Melrose, their main backer thanks to the Karikari Bay project and a few legal somersaults, Jon Timu, the police chief entrusted with the crackdown, and finally Robert Burdett, who had made a special journey here from somewhere or other, and who, through his newspapers and TV channels, helped to create a climate of fear and promoted law-and-order solutions to deal with it.
Uninvolved in the everyday business of the country, Burdett was still not sure what the point of this meeting was. In return for his collaboration, he had obtained the wavelength left vacant after the bankruptcy of Aotearoa Television, the Maori channel—brought about through bad investments, it was said—on which he would soon be starting his famous news channel. That was the only thing that interested him.
“I hope you haven’t made us come all this way to solve a simple management problem,” he said as he took his seat.
