Timu was still standing in the middle of the room. Making sure the French windows were closed, he opened the package that lay on the coffee table.
Burdett, the only man there who didn’t know the contents of the package, gave a disgusted snarl. “What’s that?”
“The femur of a young accountant,” Timu replied. “I received it in the mail yesterday.”
“An accountant!”
“Joanne Griffith, murdered about ten days ago. She was working on the Karikari Bay project.”
The others were silent, stifled in their anger, but Robert Burdett wanted to be sure he understood. “Meaning what?”
“That the people who killed Tukao haven’t finished yet. Not only do they know what we’re up to, they’re actually mocking us.”
Burdett took his eyes off the half-opened package. “Does the independent press know?”
“No,” Timu replied. “But they’ve got us by the balls.”
A shadow passed over the mayor’s face. He regretted this whole business. His father made the first move: he turned to Timu, the instigator of this nocturnal escapade.
“I assume you’ve gathered us here tonight because you have a proposition to make.”
“Yes,” Melrose cut in. “This situation can’t continue much longer. Well?”
Timu lit a cigarillo. Sweat was running down his neck. An owl hooted somewhere in the grounds. Night had fallen over the isolated house, but there were no owls in the grounds. Two shots rang out in the distance. They came from the entrance to the grounds. The five men leaped to their feet.
“What was that?”
A touch of panic hit them.
“Sit down,” Timu ordered. He had a revolver in his hand.
“But—”
“Don’t make me shoot,” Timu said in a loud voice. “I told you to sit down.”
The men were distinctly nervous now. Timu was holding a gun over them and Mitchell hadn’t come back. Melrose was the first to react: he rushed to the French windows, which shattered before him.
“Next time, I won’t miss,” Timu said.
Melrose froze, enraged.
“Throw your gun on the floor. Now!”
“If this is a joke,” Robert Burdett said, “I—”
“It’s no joke,” Timu growled. “Throw your gun down, Melrose, I won’t say it again!”
Reluctantly, Melrose did as he was told. “You’re crazy,” he said, sitting down on the couch.
None of the others was armed, and for all intents and purposes they had never fought in their lives. There were five of them, true, but how could they escape? And what were their bodyguards doing?
From the leather armchair where Timu had confined him, Phil O’Brian was getting his color back. “How dare you?” he cried. “You owe me everything. How could you betray us?”
Timu didn’t reply. He was under no illusion about his career—it was already over. His life would soon be over, too. In the meantime, he would save Mark.
Burdett was furious. He had been lured into a trap. Only Michael Long seemed to keep his composure: since Ann Brook had been eliminated, he had been prepared for anything. But surely not for what happened next. Emerging from all sides, a group of a dozen men rushed into the living room.
Wearing dark coveralls and hoods and holding submachine guns, the members of the commando gathered them together, then disarmed Timu who, head bowed, gave up his service revolver. More shots shattered the peace of the night. A corpulent man planted his submachine gun in the small of the mayor’s back.
“Tell your bodyguards to cease fire. Now!”
With the grip of his weapon, he shoved him into the hall. Phil O’Brian limped to the front door, his back screaming with pain. He saw Mitchell and one of Burdett’s men running back toward the steps, their guns in their hands, clearly in a panic. They stopped when they saw the mayor with a submachine gun held at his throat.
“Put down your weapons,” he said. “It’s pointless to resist.”
The bodyguards hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. When O’Brian went back inside the living room, he saw that the others hadn’t moved an inch. The atmosphere was one of mistrust and everyone’s eyes were on Timu, who had aged ten years.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Melrose said.
A shorter Maori appeared: Joseph Nepia. He had plaited his long gray beard for the occasion, and there was an air of triumph on his bare face.
Jon Timu had imagined an old crank with shriveled skin and fading blue mokos. The man who took up position in front of them had surprisingly smooth, regular features, and an ageless face that seemed to emerge out of a distant past.
Zinzan Bee had been his first disciple, a somewhat overzealous disciple, reckless by nature and in too much of a hurry to have done with the pakehas once and for all. Obsessed with ideas of vengeance, he had almost spoiled everything. Fitzgerald had discovered them, setting in train the massacre that followed. Fortunately, Nepia had recovered his disciple’s body, particularly his head, in the forest where he had been initiating him into his rituals.
“Who are you?” Melrose was the first to ask.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re all dead already.”
