Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4 Read online

  “Brother?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

  The man shifted and dragged the mask from his face. A hiss of escaping air filled the silent space. “Still here,” he sighed, his voice sounding like iron filings shaken in a tin. “Still waiting for Papatuanuku to take me home.”

  Logan swallowed and stepped to the side as Miriam leaned over to kiss her brother on his sallow cheek. The room smelled of disinfectant and death, a white, clinical waiting room into which God seemed reluctant to trespass.

  “Where’s the boy?” the man asked and Logan cringed, hating his brother for pounding his energy into the blonde woman instead of doing his duty.

  “Michael’s sick,” Miriam apologised. “Something he ate from the cafe in the station.”

  Sensing Logan’s imposing shape, the olive face turned towards him, the grey Du Rose eyes sparkling with life around the decaying body. The lips parted over perfectly aligned teeth, albeit yellow from smoking. “I meant that one,” he said, his vocal chords struggling with the effort. A hand moved from the bed and the finger crooked, bidding Logan to come closer. He edged forward, scared of the stranger and the shroud of death which hung over him. Logan knew death. He’d met it before.

  “Kia ora, uncle,” the teenager said, hearing the deepness of his own broken voice as though for the first time. The man in the high bed sighed with pleasure and his smile widened, ghoulish in the hollow cheekbones.

  “Thank God,” he rasped. “Sit with me and speak my mother tongue. My soul craves its soothing influence.” The crooked finger hooked itself over Logan’s jacket pocket and pulled with surprising strength, lurching the boy towards the bed and making him fall over his own feet again. “Sit!” the invalid ordered.

  Logan looked at the only chair in the cubicle and then back at Miriam. As female elder, he deferred to her comfort first. She nodded, acceding the seat and propped her bum on a corner of the bed. Her feet barely reached the floor and she balanced with the same precariousness with which her life hung. The man in the bed cast an appraising eye over his younger sister, seeing what he expected and seeming disappointed. “You learned nothing from our kaumatua, did you wahine?” he asked and Miriam’s eyes darted to Logan and then back to her brother’s face, a tinge of fear in her eyes. The shake of her head was imperceptible. The man sighed. “There’s still time for you, sister. Make good use of it.” He turned the smoke grey eyes onto Logan. “I want to talk to the boy. Alone.”

  Miriam looked nervous, shaking her head and chewing on her bottom lip. “No, Rangi, wait for Michael. We’ll come again tomorrow. He’ll be better by then.”

  “No.” The man stared at Logan with ethereal perception. “I’ll speak with this one.”

  Miriam made a pretence of huffing and puffing but did as her elder bid, leaving the curtains swishing in her wake. Logan smirked at the sight of her black boots poking beneath the orange material. Rangi Du Rose raised his eyes to the ceiling tiles and drew in a huge breath. He exhaled it at a volume which made Logan jump in fright. “Bugger off, wahine!”

  Miriam’s boots skittered away and the teenager joined in with the laughter which issued from the starched white sheets. When the patient reached for the oxygen mask, Logan rose and handed it to him, the contact between their fingers producing a surge of electricity which burned the boy’s flesh. He leapt back but Rangi used his free hand to grab hold of Logan’s wrist, his grip betraying incredible strength for a dying man. Logan gritted his teeth against the searing pain, swallowing a sickness born of fear.

  Rangi dragged the mask from his face. “I knew it was you,” he rasped. “Not the other one. You.”

  Logan nodded and tugged at his wrist, regretting the look of pain in his uncle’s eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the man said. “Please, sit.” He jerked his head towards the bed and Logan perched on the edge, staring at the scuffed shoes he borrowed from one of the township boys. Rangi sucked in more air from the mask, his hand covering the plastic which gave him the illusion of a beak. His other hand rested on Logan’s wrist. When he’d drawn enough air he removed the mask, sitting it atop his forehead with the elastic flattening his ears like a brown eagle.

  “Do you know how old I am?” he asked and Logan shook his head, surprised at the triviality of a conversation Rangi fought so hard to have.

  “Old,” he concluded, which he mentally applied to anyone over thirty. He realised it almost encompassed the blonde woman currently buried under his brother in the scruffy hotel room, placing her age around twenty five. He wrinkled his nose in distaste and Rangi watched him with interest.

  “I’m fifty,” Rangi said. “Not old enough to die, but too old to change my ways.” He increased the grip on Logan’s wrist until the boy hissed in discomfort, too afraid to break free. “Promise me you won’t abuse your body?” the man asked, an edge of pleading in his voice. “Don’t be a dick, like me. No smoking or drinking. Understood?”

  Logan nodded. “Yes, uncle. I don’t like it anyway.”

  Rangi shook his head. “You’re a child and you’ve already tried it.”

  Logan focussed his gaze on the hideous, patterned curtains. “Yes, sir.”

  “Sex?”

  Logan cringed and his mind wandered to thoughts of his randy brother. “Not really, uncle.”

  “Not really? Either you have or you haven’t!” Rangi wheezed. “No matter. That brother of yours stinks of it. Don’t be like him, you hear me?”

  “Yes, uncle.” The grip increased and a peculiar tingling began around the cragged knuckles and worked its way up Logan’s arm. He stared and saw his uncle felt it too.

  “I miss home,” Rangi said with a sigh. “It tugs in my chest until it hurts. I ache for the fresh mountain air and the sweet, sweet grass.”

  “I get that too!” Logan felt a skip of excitement, his curious foreboding recognised by another.

  Rangi nodded. “You will, my son. The tangata whenua speaks to its chosen.”

  Logan shook his head, denying the man’s deluded imposition of a false status. “Why did you come to England, uncle? What do you do here?”

  “Stockbroker,” Rangi replied. “You know what that is?”

  Logan nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, there’s no money left, boy. But you’ll do better, aye? Go hard or go home.”

  “Thank you for paying for our trip, uncle,” Logan said, remembering his manners. “Otherwise we couldn’t come.”

  “I know, tāne,” Rangi smiled and dipped his head. “I sent the tickets but didn’t know who’d come. Figured Atua would send who I needed most.”

  “It should be Barry and Michael really,” Logan said, his tone apologetic. “But Barry died a few months ago. Liza’s at university, else it would be her.”

  “Na, son. I’m glad you’re here. I needed to see you most.”

  “Thank you, uncle.” Logan’s brow knitted in confusion. As youngest son he was usually the bottom of the pile. Last in the queue for most things.

  “Do you know the prophecy?” Rangi asked, covering his face with the mask.

  Logan nodded, his eyes wide. The coded message in his grandmother’s will sprung to mind, attached to the plot of land at the top of the mountain which she left to him. Nobody knew about that, only him and his parents. Rangi couldn’t know. It was secret.

  Rangi tugged air from the mask and let it ping back onto his forehead. His chest sounded tight and painful. “Do you understand the prophecy?” Rangi wheezed. “It’s important.”

  “No, sir.” Logan swallowed, the heat of the hospital making his collar choke him and the air growing stagnant within the curtained cubicle. He focussed on his mother and willed her to return, desperate to leave the stranger’s odd company.

  “It’s for you, Logan. Your life is the fulfilment of the prophecy; it all rests on you, tāne. It’s your life’s work. Reunite the two halves of the mountain and build the house. Nobody else can do it but you.” Rangi’s grip on Logan’s wris
t relaxed and he let the boy’s finger joints pass through his soft hands. “Don’t forget, tāne. It’s the family’s last chance.”

  Logan opened his mouth in confusion but the greyness of Rangi’s pallor halted his question. His uncle’s eyes lost their glitter and the air seemed to still around them. “I’m tired,” he said and Logan bounced to his feet in anticipation of escape. Rangi raised his hand. “No, son. I’m tired of living. I’m done, tāne, finished.” He held his hand out, palm upwards and Logan stared at his own left hand before placing it into the pale fingers. Rangi clasped it, his grip less fierce.

  The burn began like a slow tingle, making Logan’s fingers twitch and dance in the large hand. His bones ached and the fizz spread up his arm and into his body. The essence of who he would become washed over him, bringing with it a sense of hope and peace. He closed his eyes and smelled his grandmother, her musky, floral scent. His mind took him to the paddock at the top of the mountain where he last saw her, black skirts brushing the ground as she dismounted from her bay horse. The memory of her death washed over him like acid, grief as fresh as the day she collapsed before a helpless, five year old boy. He opened his eyes, tears turning them gun metal grey and found Rangi watching him. “The tangata whenua will watch over you,” his uncle whispered. “I’ve been away too long. Don’t disappoint them like I did.” He sighed and his eyes rolled back in his head, a freakish, terrible sight for a man-child. “Take me home?” His grey eyes returned, pleading, childlike and desperate. “Don’t let them keep me here. Take me home to the mountain?”

  Logan nodded and exhaled as Rangi released his hand. His body felt strange as though he’d undergone an ancient rite of passage, his feet shuddering in the overlarge shoes.

  “Oh, he’s sleeping.” Miriam sounded disappointed, her hands filled with two disgusting looking coffees and her handbag strap resting over her forearm. Her eyes darted to Logan’s. “What did he tell you?” She looked concerned and the coffee wobbled in the cups, betraying her trembling hands.

  “Just some stuff about the family,” Logan said, forcing a smile onto his lips. “About taking care of our whānau and stuff.”

  “Ok.” Miriam seemed relieved and the coffee stilled. She handed the nearest cup to Logan and he sipped it, tasting the earthy liquid and faking the expected smile of gratitude. Miriam placed the mask back over her brother’s face with extreme care and took the only seat. Logan hovered, sipping the awful coffee to distract him. He dropped into his usual state of introspection, knowing he felt different but not able to isolate how.

  “He’s been a good brother,” Miriam sighed, the imminence of death making her sombre. “We always hoped he’d come back and sort out the mess your grandmother left.”

  “What mess?” Logan rose to his revered kuia’s defence, remembering how capable she was, the only female Māori landowner he’d known in his lifetime.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Miriam swallowed her criticism, recognising a hostile audience. “Rangi left when he was twenty and never returned. He’s made and lost more money than we’ve ever owned. He’s a good businessman.”

  Logan watched a brown speck move around in the coffee. He spun the cup in his hand, watching the liquid move and confused by how the speck lurked next to the space he wanted to put his lips. He turned it this way and that but still it remained, waiting to invade his mouth when he sipped. “I’ll be a good businessman one day,” he muttered, prodding at the speck with his index finger.

  Miriam glanced up at her son, smiling at his statement. “Yes,” she said. “You will. You have the genes for it.”

  She held her brother’s hand until the bell rang for the end of visiting time. The sharp sound stirred him but he didn’t speak. Before they left, Logan took the olive fingers in his and gave them a light squeeze. “Bye, uncle,” he whispered. The fingers gave the faintest press in return and Logan bent closer to the mask. “And thank you, sir,” he added. “I’ll do what you ask.”

  Rangi Du Rose exhaled with something like relief but the words uttered through the hiss of the oxygen mark were lost. His grey eyes flared above the plastic beak and then fluttered closed.

  The underground ride seemed endless, the carriages so full the Du Roses stood for most of the journey. The over ground train to the docklands was the same, packed to bursting. At Limehouse they emerged into a wintry dusk and hustled along the cold street to the cheap hotel. Logan gnawed at his bottom lip in the lift, hoping his brother had dispatched his latest bed partner. Miriam seemed fragile and quiet and Logan slipped a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “You’re a good boy,” she whispered. “Rangi seemed to like you.”

  Michael lay sprawled in the centre of the double bed, asleep on his back and snoring. Logan yanked the sheet over his naked form in the darkened room, sparing his mother the true nature of his sickness. The sweet scent of alcohol permeated the bedroom and Logan wrinkled his nose. An extractor fan in the ensuite and the squirt of an air freshener dispersed the evidence as Miriam shrugged out of her coat. “I’ll be glad to get home,” she sighed. “I’m sick of being cold.”

  Logan nodded and conjured up the kiss of the sun in his imagination, remembering what it felt like to be too hot even for clothing. “I know,” he agreed. “Me too.”

  Michael woke only to vomit, his hangover punishing him with a monster headache. Miriam seemed concerned, her eldest son’s death still fresh in her mind. “Do you think I should find a doctor?” she asked, feeling her treacherous son’s forehead.

  “No,” Logan sighed. “It’s just a bug. I didn’t feel well yesterday but I’m fine today.”

  “You think so?” his mother asked, her eyes begging for reassurance. “I’ve lost one son.” She gulped and the haunted look drifted across her face.

  “Definitely.” Logan fought to convince her, hating Michael’s selfish nature and the seamless way he took what he wanted without consequence.

  Miriam walked downstairs to the hotel reception to buy crackers for their evening meal, their money short after two weeks on foreign soil. Logan took the opportunity to wake his brother with a slap to the face. “I hate you for this!” he exclaimed as Michael sat up with a start, clutching his forehead. “You’re a selfish bugger.”

  Michael groaned. “Shut up! I’m knackered. That chick wore me out.”

  “You’re drunk!” Logan curled his top lip in disgust. “Ma deserves better than this.”

  “I’m hungry,” Michael complained and Logan shoved him backwards on the bed.

  “If I hear one word from you, I’ll throw you out the bloody window!” he raged. “She’s run out of money so we’ll go hungry until they feed us on the plane home. One damn word, Mike, and I swear, I’ll kill you!”

  “Yeah, whatever!” Michael lay back on the bed, sweat beading his top lip. Logan wrinkled his nose at the smell emanating from his brother.

  “You stink! Get a shower before Ma comes back.”

  Michael swore at Logan and batted his hands away as the teenager yanked him up by the shoulders and hustled him into the ensuite bathroom. Logan turned the shower on cold and shoved him in, ignoring his shrieks and pressing against the cubicle door. “Shut up, ya pussy!” he hissed as his brother squealed and hammered on the glass. “Get a move on and cover up before Ma walks in and sees all those hickeys. She’ll beat you into next week if she sees them.”

  Michael stopped his protest and looked down at himself. The purple welts of the woman’s lips marked his flesh in several places, the one nearest his groin making Logan’s eyes widen. “Oh. Yeah.” Michael grabbed the hotel soap and scrubbed at his body, the scented flora mingling with the fetid smell of sex in the humid room. The extractor fan laboured at the ceiling, dragging away the evidence of Michael’s exploits and hurling them into the London winter evening.

  “You’ll catch a disease one day,” Logan announced, turning his back on his brother’s nakedness. He glanced down at his own arms and flexed the toned stomach beneath the shirt, knowing he was bigge
r than Michael and more muscular. He caught a flash of his own reflection in the mirror over the sink as he moved, expecting to see the tousled Māori teen with the grey eyes, the intense, serious boy who mustered cattle on horseback in the holidays and silenced the stock men with a look. The face which observed him had a new maturity etched into the line of his jaw. Black hair flipped into sultry grey eyes which didn’t fit with the olive face and Pasifika legacy. The Du Rose Frenchman who claimed the mountain as a dowry for his tribal wife, gifted his descendants the striking grey irises. His grandchildren four generations later wore flesh like milky coffee but the grey eyes trumped every other genetic influence, marking them out as Du Roses, even Rangi, his mother’s brother.

  “Move, dickhead!” Logan jumped as Michael shoved on the shower door. The older boy emerged looking awake but grumpy, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead.

  “You’re fifteen,” Logan sighed. “You’re under age here.”

  “We’re under age everywhere,” Michael snorted, grabbing a towel. “You think anyone cares?”

  Logan shrugged and leaned against the wall, his head back examining the grey stains on the ceiling. “Dad will, when some woman turns up with a kid in tow and says it’s yours.”

  Michael smirked, examining the love bite next to his right nipple in the mirror. “He’ll do the same as he did last time, I guess. Pay her off.”

  “What?” Logan stood up straight. “Who? Not one of the girls from the township; they won’t go near you.”

  “Maybe one did,” Michael said, the lack of caring evident in his light tone. “Maybe I’m irresistible.”

  “How did Dad pay? They’ve got no money.”

  “Dunno.” Michael shrugged and scrubbed at his body with a towel. The bloody one from Logan’s nosebleed earlier nestled behind the door, the red stains stark against the pristine white. Logan snatched it up with a wince and elbowed Michael away from the sink. He ran water until it burned his fingers and slipped the hand towel beneath the level, watching the liquid lay claim to the luscious folds. His mind drifted to a niece or nephew he would never know. He wondered if the baby was already born or aborted and pushed into an incinerator somewhere. Rangi told him to lead the whānau and already a tendril of the family escaped him, drifting in another place. Or drifting nowhere. Nausea bowed his shoulders as he pressed hard on the towel, preventing it floating upwards. The hot water bit his fingers, reminding him of his task and Logan hissed in pain and began to scrub the blood free.