Utu, page 16
This morning, all that remained was a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach and the certainty that something had happened—something horrible.
The Chevrolet was there, on the other side of the street, parked any old how near the bus stop on Shortland Street, a ticket on the windshield. So he had taken it last night. With his revolver. No memory of that.
Osborne drank three coffees one after the other and smoked his first cigarette of the day, praying for the earth to blow up, just like that, without warning.
* * *
Tom Culhane was drinking the hot water that went by the name of coffee, staring out at the ocean from the window of the office. He was thinking again about last night’s barbecue, about how he had dozed off—had they really drunk that much?—and how he had found Rosemary later on the bed in their room, in tears.
Disconcerted—he had the impression they’d had a good time before he’d fallen asleep—and fearing one of her sudden mood swings, he had tried to find out what was upsetting her, but she had refused to tell him. His tender words didn’t seem to have any effect. But she had swallowed her tears, turned out the light, and pressed herself against him. Not quite believing what was happening, he had let her guide his hand under her dress. He was filled with emotion, but hadn’t let it show. They hadn’t made love in weeks, and now here they were, doing it in silence, with a kind of desperation.
He hadn’t washed this morning. He felt as if Rosemary’s ass was still rubbing against his stomach. He had kept the smell of it, a strong smell, a mixture of him and her, like the old days, a scent that clung to him, wouldn’t let go of him . . .
Osborne arrived about noon, looking wrecked, barely saying hello. His eyes red with burst blood vessels, he lowered himself into his swivel chair like a sick bird and lit a cigarette that smelled like medicine. The windows in the office were open, yet he was dying of heat. Culhane thought he looked really bad. Right now, last night’s dinner seemed a long way away.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I must have dozed off. I don’t understand it. Working too hard, I guess.”
Osborne gave him a black look. “Drop it.”
He was just emerging from a nightmare, and the hours to come seemed equally threatening.
Culhane thrust the knife in a little more. “You know they found a body over in New Lynn?” he said. “A girl.”
Staring out at the Pacific, Osborne massaged his temples.
“This morning,” Culhane went on, “near a disused sawmill. Definitely homicide. The body’s just been identified.” He threw a photograph on the cluttered table. “Ann Brook,” he said. “Twenty-five years old.”
Ann.
Dead.
His eyes fixed on the photograph, Osborne swallowed back a sludge of tears. Ann. Ann Brook. Her shattered head, surrounded by rubble. Sergeant Culhane’s voice was nothing now but a sinister echo. Ann was there, on glossy paper, frozen forever, her beautiful face distorted in death. The adrenaline climbed up his legs, and fragments of memory passed through his skull like comets.
“Right,” he said pushing the photograph away.
Culhane gave him a sideways look. “We don’t have much for the moment,” he said, “but the whole department is on it. Captain Timu’s just arrived. He looks furious. Gallagher has gone to question the victim’s parents. The case is already causing a stir. It’s the only thing they’re talking about on the radio. They even sent a TV team to the scene of the crime this morning.”
A draft blew Ann’s photo across the desk. Osborne was floating in the ether.
Noticing how alarmingly white he had become, Culhane broke off his monologue. “Listen, are you sure you’re OK? You look really pale.”
Osborne looked up. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
* * *
“Amelia?”
“Yes!”
“It’s Paul. Paul Osborne.”
“I recognized your voice.”
“Can I talk?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you alone?”
“For the moment, yes. I’m at the lab. Did you get my letter?”
“Yes. Good work.”
“Thanks. But you sound strange. Is something wrong?”
“Any news about the postmortem on Joanne Griffith?”
“It was Moore who dealt with it.”
“Weren’t you involved in the tests?”
“No. But I’m used to that, it’s not the first time I’ve been excluded.”
“So you haven’t read the report?
“No. All I know is that it was sent to Lieutenant Gallagher, according to procedure.”
“There must be a copy.”
“If there is one, it’s in Moore’s desk. And don’t think I’m going to get it for you. I’ve already done too much that I shouldn’t.”
“A pity.”
“Why, what are you thinking?”
“Poison. Is it possible to see the body?”
“Joanne Griffith’s body? It was taken to the crematorium this morning.”
“Already?”
“You’re forgetting how badly decomposed it was.”
That also meant that there wouldn’t be any other tests. There was a brief silence on the telephone.
“Can we meet?”
“Meet? Er . . . yes. When?” Amelia’s heart was pounding.
“How about in an hour?” he said. “On the beach at Devonport, near the fastfood stands. It’s only five minutes from the Institute.”
“I’ll be there.”
She would go anywhere.
* * *
Auckland lay on the other side of the bay. Osborne was sitting on the warm sand, smoking one of his chemical cigarettes, well away from the little group of holiday-makers that had formed in front of the steps. The breeze was sweeping the beach at Devonport, taking away the smells of fried food from the nearby stand. He was thinking about Ann, what they had been through, the ditch that had swallowed her . . .
“How are you?”
Amelia Prescott was wearing tight pants and a blouse that held in her wasplike waist. Osborne hadn’t even heard her coming. It was as if she had been flying on the back of the sand.
“You should get more sleep,” she said, seeing his face. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but you look ten years older.”
“That’s ten fewer years to worry about,” he replied.
Amelia’s smile was so light, it wafted away on the breeze. “You wanted to see me?” she said, sitting down on the sand.
“Yes. It’s about Joanne Griffith again. I read your test results, but I just can’t put the pieces together.”
“What pieces?” Amelia was sitting very close to him, as if seeking shelter from the wind.
“I’m investigating a burglary at the house of Nick Melrose,” he said. “He’s a businessman with lots of irons in the fire. One of the companies he owns is Century, the construction company Joanne Griffith worked for. You and I both know that Griffith was poisoned. I don’t know how the killer managed to get hold of such a large quantity of tutu, but he clearly knew her habits and timetable. The killer or killers transported the body all the way to Karekare before throwing it in the sea. I think she was bled to attract the sharks.”
“Bled?”
“The sharks ate her up to the trunk but no wounds were found on her upper body. Griffith was bleeding, though. There must have been a wound on her legs.”
“The femoral artery?
“It’s possible.”
Amelia frowned: she, too, lacked enough to go on. “Do you think Joanne Griffith was bled to make sure the sharks would dispose of her body?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. I’m also investigating the Kirk case. That’s the serial killer who was shot down some time ago. Did you hear about that?
“Of course. I heard it was quite a disaster for the police here. In fact it was after the internal reorganization that I was transferred to Auckland. But what’s the connection with Joanne Griffith?”
“Kirk removed bones from his victims’ bodies,” Osborne said. “A mass grave was found with several bodies but the femurs had disappeared.”
Amelia was starting to follow his logic. “And you’re wondering if Joanne Griffith could also have fallen into Kirk’s hands. That’s forgetting one thing: he’s dead.”
“Which means he had accomplices. Kirk had protection from someone, and he wasn’t the only one. The police officer leading the investigation was on the trail of a former Maori activist named Zinzan Bee, but he killed himself before the case was fully solved.”
Now they were getting there!
“Do you mean Fitzgerald?”
“Yes,” he said. “Did you know him?”
“No, but I heard you worked with him,” she said, evasively. She really didn’t talk to talk about it. Tom Culhane had told her that Osborne hadn’t yet gotten over his friend’s suicide.
“I’ve been following Fitzgerald’s lead,” he said, “but Zinzan Bee has dropped out of sight.”
Amelia looked down at the small heap of sand she had been mechanically amassing. “Do you think Zinzan Bee was Kirk’s accomplice and that he’s still removing bones from his victims, like Joanne Griffith, and still benefiting from the same protection?”
“Something like that.”
“What’s the connection with your burglary case?”
“Among his other activities, Melrose writes novels, historical sagas that could be called revisionist, and might well have caused animosity in some of the Maori community. Melrose also collects primitive artworks. The hatchet stolen from his house used to belong to an old chief of the Ngati Kahungunu Tribe. Zinzan Bee is a member of the same tribe.”
“Does that make him a suspect?
“It makes him my lead. Joanne Griffith’s killer knew her habits, just as he knew the habits of the Melrose family.”
“Maybe,” Amelia said, “but surely there has to be a motive, or a reason for all this? If the killer had a grudge against both Griffith and Melrose, why just steal a hatchet from Melrose? The man was sleeping upstairs. He could easily have killed him.”
Osborne planted his cigarette butt in her sand pile. “In any case,” he said, “the bodies found in Kirk’s mass grave were connected with the investigation that Fitzgerald was carrying out, all except one, the body of Samuel Tukao, a lawyer in Magonui. His body has only just been identified. He disappeared two months before the mass grave was discovered, and he was tortured to death. But I seem to be the only one who finds that unusual.”
Amelia kicked the cigarette butt away from her sand pile. “You think Griffith was murdered and no one wants to talk about it?”
“That’s the kind of thing I’m wondering,” he said.
“Why?”
“That’s also the kind of thing I’m wondering.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
A mother and her children were ordering ice creams at the fast-food stand.
Osborne searched in his jacket pocket, and took out a plastic sachet. “Can you run a test on this for me?”
Amelia peered at the sachet: three hairs, black this time, stuck together by what looked like congealed blood.
“Where did you get this?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
Beneath his air of mystery, Osborne seemed suddenly weak.
“In other words,” Amelia said, “you don’t know anything about the cases you’re conducting but you’re asking me to take care of everything?”
“No one’s forcing you, it’s just a request.”
“It comes to the same thing,” she said, her catlike eyes fluttering in the breeze.
Osborne hoisted himself to his feet. “Not a word to anyone about this, all right?”
She pocketed the mysterious sachet and also stood up. “Don’t you trust Moore?” she said, brushing the sand off her pants.
“He works hand in glove with Gallagher.”
“Who you don’t like either.”
“No,” Osborne admitted.
“What about Timu?”
“Not really.”
“In other words, you don’t like anyone.”
“Yes, you. I like you.
The wind from the sea pushed him towards her. Amelia really had a pretty body, and such gentle manners . . . Osborne gave a tense smile, as if fearing to reopen his wounds. “See you later.”
* * *
His mind full of foreboding, Osborne drove to New Lynn. The painkillers had alleviated his migraine but he wasn’t feeling any better. He had woken up in a room literally torn to pieces, with the cat sliced up in the bathtub, blood on his clothes, and a bullet missing from the cylinder of his .38, the girl he had spent the night with had just been found murdered near a disused sawmill on the other side of town, and there were about six hours he couldn’t account for. He was sure, though, that he had left his revolver in the room. What had happened to the missing bullet? If he’d come back to the hotel after the party, why had he gone out again? To kill Ann Brook?
There were all kinds of fleeting images in his head, but he couldn’t tell if they were actual memories. He saw a fence, an area of waste ground, a ditch, that horrible thing at the bottom of it, the sense of threat, the panic. And this smell of toxin-drenched sweat in the Chevrolet—was it the smell of a murderer?
Marshall & Bros. A sign on a rust-colored sheet-metal fence. In the middle of the waste ground, the disused sawmill where Ann Brook’s body had been found, looking dismal in spite of the afternoon sun beating down. Osborne slammed the door and spotted the uniformed officer guarding the entrance to the site.
Journalists and onlookers had left with their little bit of excitement, leaving the New Lynn neighborhood to its humdrum routine of passing cars and weary pedestrians. The former sawmill was off the main thoroughfare, in an area that would soon become a residential neighborhood: work was due to start in one week, according to the board. Contractors: Century.
Melrose’s company, the one that Joanne Griffith worked for. One more coincidence. As the site was off-limits until further orders, Osborne avoided the officer on duty outside the gate and walked around to the back. It didn’t take him long to find a way in. The alley was empty, apart from a dog searching through an overturned garbage pail. Osborne climbed the fence, almost tearing his jacket in the process, and jumped down on the other side.
Wild grass sagged in the breeze. The ground, which had been gone over by the various police departments, looked ghostly, with its two-colored tapes flapping in the wind. Stooping, Osborne proceeded to the spot where Ann Brook’s body had been discovered. A bunch of brambles, stony ground strewn with bottles, plastic bags, litter, and cans: there was a bit of everything, but not the hint of a ditch. He looked hard at the ground, but it didn’t remind him of anything.
Anything at all.
Ponsonby Road. Restaurants, bars, boutiques, people: everything here was as chic and British as could be.
Ann Brook had mentioned a friend who lived in the neighborhood and was throwing a party. Osborne vaguely recalled a swimming pool, but nothing more after that. That must have been around four in the morning. From Ponsonby to the Debrett Hotel was barely half an hour’s walk. Assuming he had returned to the hotel to get his revolver and car keys, he could have been back in the Ponsonby area around five. To do what?
His visit to the sawmill in New Lynn had left him cold. It was as if he had never set foot there.
Osborne drove around the neighborhood for a while before stopping the Chevrolet outside the fence of a construction site. O’Neill Street, a street at right angles to Ponsonby Road. Not a worker in sight—it was Saturday, a day off. He didn’t have to climb over this time: the site was wide-open.
There were a few foundations, prefabricated huts, pieces of scrap iron, a stock of breeze blocks, cement poured on the ground. There was a strange tightness in his chest as he kneeled and felt the ground. He first saw the water pipes, then the trench that had been dug the length of the foundations: a deep ditch running some sixty feet. Osborne studied it for a long time, then stood up. Still not the slightest trace of blood or anything to prove that the corpse might have been thrown there. It was as he was walking along the trench that he discovered what he was looking for: a cartridge case among the loose stones.
A .38 cartridge case.
He hadn’t recognized the ditch, but the fear was as strong as ever.
* * *
The wallpaper in the room was worth just about its weight in paper. Lying on the bed, Osborne was sticking back the pieces that had come away from his head. Night was falling and the questions were flooding in, oppressively. If Ann had indeed been killed at Ponsonby and not New Lynn, why had he retraced his steps with a gun? Had he seen something he shouldn’t? What exactly was he afraid of?
He leaned his elbows on the window and smoked a cigarette. Outside everything was quiet, so quiet it was almost too good to be true—one of those lovely summer evenings, with a gentle breeze and birds strutting on the roofs. He remembered Ann in the park, her tall figure in the moonlight, her laughing eyes, her lovely muscular legs and that Dionysian air of hers when she asked him to follow her. He didn’t care that others had treated her as a mere object of pleasure. Hana’s double had died, her skull split open, on waste ground, and he had no way of knowing if he was involved in the murder.
