They took the Ford, because it was quicker. Culhane drove. Leaving the city, Osborne told him what he knew. Nepia’s men had left Great Barrier by boat, heading due north. That was the direction of Karikari Bay, where Nick Melrose was building the largest resort complex on the peninsula. The hills that were being dynamited for the project had once contained Maori villages. Protesters led by a former tattooist converted to the anti-British cult of Hauhau were trying to block the process by a significant act that would take place today, New Zealand’s national day, which commemorated the Treaty of Waitangi. Both the place and date having a symbolic meaning, Nepia would strike today in order to awaken consciousness of the condition of the native peoples. In his own way: a fanatic’s way.
They were speeding flat out on the deserted motorway. Tom didn’t ask many questions—Osborne had an answer for everything. Samuel Tukao, Joanne Griffith, the removal of the femurs to tattoo the cult members according to the old traditions: Culhane listened to it all, his hands tight on the wheel of the Ford. Melrose’s hatchet had been stolen with the unwitting help of his daughter Melanie, who with Ann Brook would meet the local jet set at the Phoenix, a swingers’ club under police protection. By an ironic twist of fate, Timu had been protecting a place whose doorman was himself a follower of the sect. It was Tagaloa who had made the copy of the house keys. The hatchet itself would be used to cut heads. Amelia Prescott’s had already fallen, and they wouldn’t stop until they had finished.
Culhane was struck dumb. Amelia dead! He barely had time to think about it. Osborne was already continuing his account, stone-faced. Ann Brook hadn’t been murdered by the three Maori ex-cons who’d been passed off as her killers. The mother of one of them hadn’t even known his sentence had been reduced, and the postmortem reports were false, or rather, rigged. On the night of the murder, Ann had consumed several substances that didn’t appear in the tests. Three different sets of sperm had been found in her body but one was missing: his own. He had been with her before the party at Julian Long’s. They had gone to the Phoenix together, but none of that had come out. Nobody had been questioned because the club was frequented by a number of local bigwigs—Michael Long, the O’Brian twins. The media could broadcast the mayor’s campaign on the theme of zero tolerance, but not stick their noses into the affairs of those who were implementing it.
Melrose was financing the reelection campaign with money laundered through the construction site, Long was handling the communications side of things, and the media took care of the rest of the propaganda. Ann Brook’s horrible murder came just at the right time. Everything had been programmed, perfectly organized: Phil O’Brian announced that he was declaring war on a section of the population regarded as a threat, and a few days later the body of a young model was found, raped and murdered, a girl of Maori origin who had been trying to raise herself above that environment, a fine symbol of cultural adaptation, very much in the spirit of those behind the operation. Subsequently, three fall guys had been taken out of prison, purebred Maoris who had been drugged and kept confined for a few days, long enough to create corroborating evidence, before being thrown into the lion’s den.
Gallagher was given the task of eliminating them, but, in intervening, Osborne had managed to save one, Umaga, a poor boy in a state of total panic who hadn’t had time to talk. Gallagher and Timu were in league with the mayor, his communications adviser, and their main financial sponsor, Nick Melrose. The police were out in the frontline, while the others handled the media, public opinion, and finances. Once the climate of terror and insecurity had been established, all that remained was to count the votes—all perfectly democratic, of course.
Culhane was increasingly nervous as they plunged into the countryside. Osborne was smoking cigarette after cigarette, corpselike in the gloom of the driver’s compartment. He continued his story. So they had chosen Ann Brook as a victim. She was Michael Long’s mistress, but she tended to talk too much. Through Long, Melanie Melrose, or the O’Brian twins, Ann had learned things she wasn’t supposed to know. She was becoming dangerous, as well as an ideal target: by eliminating her, they had spread fear in a public already shaken by a series of violent events and at the same time removed a major thorn from their flesh.
Osborne didn’t know who had thought up such a twisted plan, or if Long had had anything to say about it. The fact remained that the whole thing had been carefully organized. Ann Brook had not been the victim of a gang of petty crooks and rapists, but of a combination of political and economic interests, of which the O’Brian family, Melrose and Timu were the thinking heads. In the end, everyone would get his reward: O’Brian by being reelected, Melrose by developing his business while assuaging his hatred of the weak, especially the Maoris, whose relics he collected like so many trophies snatched from the enemy, Long by becoming the undisputed leader of the advertising and communications market. As for Timu and Gallagher, they weren’t only helping their careers, but also their bank accounts.
Culhane was still listening, his heart sinking. Osborne hadn’t said everything he had to say. He lit another cigarette before finishing his story.
Everything might have gone according to plan if he hadn’t run into Ann Brook on the night of the murder. But he had spent much of the night with her, and had even been there in that ditch. What exactly had happened, he couldn’t say. What was certain was that Ann hadn’t been killed in the house where the three ex-cons were squatting, but on a construction site in Ponsonby, after Julian’s party. The killers had probably followed her all the way from the Phoenix, a known haunt of hers, waiting for the right moment. Except that Osborne had showed up unexpectedly on the construction site. The killers were still at the scene of the crime, and so was Ann Brook. They could have settled his hash there and then, but he was armed and they needed him—he was following a lead that had so far been unexplored: Pita Witkaire. So he had been spared, but they had trashed his hotel room in an attempt to sow confusion in his mind and frighten him off the Brook case—in which, as Osborne knew only too well, he might have become a potential suspect.
But he had done exactly the opposite of what had been expected of him. Rather than keep a low profile and mind his own business, he had tried to find out what had really happened that night. As he was getting dangerously close to the Long family and the Phoenix, and hadn’t obtained any concrete result in the investigation for which he had been hired—or, if he had, was hiding his discoveries—they had finally chosen to eliminate him. But he had escaped Gallagher and his henchmen, and found an ally in Amelia. His only ally.
He blew cigarette smoke in Culhane’s face. “It was you, Tom, wasn’t it?” he said. “It was you who trashed my hotel room that night. It was you who broke the cat’s neck and cut her up in the bath. There’s no night porter at the Debrett, you knew that and you knew the entry code. You were supposed to be helping me in my research, but you were mainly there to keep an eye on me and report back to Gallagher. You were with him and the others on the construction site the night Ann Brook was killed, weren’t you? It was your job to make the death look like something else.”
Culhane’s hands were damp, but at eighty miles an hour on the deserted road, what could he do? On the next seat, Osborne had his gun in his hand and was looking at him with a sinister gleam in his eye. Pointless to deny it, he knew everything.
“I did it for Rosemary,” he said, his throat suddenly dry. “She couldn’t have a child and, with the cost of health insurance, plus the mortgage payments on the house, there was no way we could have paid for the best specialist in the country. I . . . ” His voice was shaking. “I’m sorry . . . ”
Sorry. Tom Culhane was sorry.
At that moment, a voice crackled over the radio. The night switchboard operator at headquarters was informing all patrols that Captain Timu had disappeared. In accordance with a clearly established code, all teams were urged to go to Long Bay, a property near the national park. If a plan had been drawn up, it had clearly failed.
Osborne and Culhane were nearing Whangaroa, about thirty-five miles from the peninsula. A long, long way from Long Bay.
The night was black, and they had covered a good part of the way. Osborne aimed his revolver at Culhane’s temple. “Stop,” he said.
Culhane shuddered at the touch of the steel. “W—what?”
“I said, stop.”
The sergeant’s hands were shaking on the wheel. He slowed down but didn’t stop. “No,” he said, shaking his head, pale-faced. “Rosemary’s going to have a baby: you surely can’t . . . Paul . . . ”
His voice sounded thin and weak. Osborne laughed in spite of himself. They were driving really slowly now. Poor Tom.
“Don’t worry, old man,” he hissed wickedly. “I’m not going to shoot you like a dog at the side of the road. I said stop!”
Culhane jammed on the brakes. The Ford made a brief swerve before stopping on the shoulder. Open country. Outside all was calm, almost too calm.
“Put your gun down on the side pocket,” Osborne said. “With two fingers, nice and slowly.”
Culhane obeyed, knots in his stomach. Osborne was aiming his gun at him, two icy gleams deep in those damned yellow eyes of his. The engine was still running. Culhane waited, his hands on the wheel, like a defendant awaiting a verdict.
“Karikari Bay isn’t too far now,” Osborne saw. “I’m almost sure that Nepia and his people are there. Probably a lot of them, and armed. You have your cell phone. You have time to round up the special units and join me in two or three hours. Leave your cell phone on, I’ll send a message to confirm.” He paused. “Now get out.”
Culhane expelled the air compressing his chest: Osborne was letting him live.
He opened the door and extricated himself from his seat, which was sticky with his fear. He wasn’t thinking about the gang of Maoris in Karikari Bay, only about saving his own skin.
Outside, the wind was blowing in gusts. He retreated along the deserted road as Osborne took his place at the wheel. A rabbit crossed the asphalt, heedless of any danger. Culhane waited for Osborne to leave, his legs like jelly in the middle of the road. Osborne threw him a last look, like a stone.
“I slept with your Rosemary the other night,” he said suddenly. “In the kitchen, while you were asleep. The child she’s expecting isn’t yours, it’s mine.”
“What?”
“You’ll be able to see for yourself in nine months, if all goes well,” he said, putting the car into first gear. “A little souvenir of our partnership, asshole!”
15.
Night birds were hopping on the gulf of Karikari Bay. A few swish vehicles were cruising in front of the lounge and restaurant beside the impeccable lawns of the very select sports complex. After midnight: Osborne massaged the nerves in his head. He had unfolded a survey map on the side pocket of the Ford and, the small of his back aching from the journey, was checking the distance from here to the Maori pas.
Nepia’s men must be guarding the dirt road leading to the site, the only way in, but if he went along the coast it was barely half an hour’s walk. He checked that his two guns, both .38 Specials, were in good working order, and left the Ford where he had parked it. A path snaked between the greens. Stomach cramps accompanied him as far as the sea.
Osborne walked for a moment along the beach, waking dozing birds and a few old pains. He was thinking about Amelia, about her head, the missing part of her he would return to the monster. Charcoal-gray clouds scudded across the moon. Since nightfall, the wind had risen, raising smells of seweed and salt. He stumbled over obstacles on his path, barely able to see in the darkness. The waves struck the coast, and returned all white. He had run out of amphetamines but the endorphines released in his body were making him just as high. The lay of the land changed abruptly: the bush had swallowed the beach and was now climbing the side of the hill. Osborne had to clamber over rocks, still heading north, tangling with lianas and branches that stung his face. Clinging to his jacket, the brambles made the bullets in his pockets jingle. He advanced with difficulty through the shrubs, and came out scratched and covered in splinters. But the coast was there, quite close, he could hear the noise of the surf and the night birds beating their wings at his approach. Suddenly, a murmur of voices stopped him dead.
He stood stock still. Sounds were borne to him on the wind, voices in the distance over the the crash of waves on the beach.
A black cloud covered the moon. Crouching, taking care to avoid the dead branches like mines under his feet, Osborne slipped toward the shore. The voices became more distinct. He had finally reached the site.
Lifting his head, he soon saw the huts, and the group of men who had gathered at the foot of the hill. A dense mass stood out against the angry sky. In the torchlight, he saw at least twenty of them, Maoris with tattoed faces. Those who were wearing dark uniforms stood back while the others, bare-chested, formed a circle around a man. Hidden by the muscular backs, the man who seemed to be the master of ceremonies was speaking in a monotonous voice, in Maori. Age-old words that Osborne couldn’t understand well, words from another time, an ancient ritual, calling on the favorable spirits before battle.
The ceremony of pure . . .
