Death on Demand Read Online Free PDF Page B

participating in mass man-love, however sheepishly.
    The players came off the field, the teams shook hands, chilly bins were looted. Van Roon sniffed the beguiling aroma of sausages on the barbecue and wondered how long he’d have to wait for Ihaka. But less than five minutes later he came over with a bottle of beer in each pocket and a sausage wrapped in white bread and smothered in tomato sauce in each hand.
    â€œSo how do you like Wellington?” he said, parking his backside with a thump which made the bench shake and Van Roon think that maybe his eyes had deceived him after all. “And spare me a five-minute bleat about the weather.”
    â€œWho needs five minutes?” said Van Roon. “The weather sucks, end of story. Apart from that, Wellington’s great.”
    â€œAnd the job?”
    â€œThe first few months were interesting in the sense that nightmares can be interesting. It seems to be getting less interesting, thank Christ. And you?”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œHow’s it going over here?” said Van Roon. “I mean, it’s been five years, right? I didn’t think you’d last six months.”
    Ihaka shrugged. “Time flies when you’re asleep. You didn’t drive over the Rimutakas to watch me play cricket, so what’s up?”
    â€œMissed you too, mate. McGrail wants to see you.”
    â€œWhat the fuck for?”
    â€œHe didn’t share that with me,” said Van Roon. “Said it was confidential.”
    Ihaka grunted derisively. “What did he say?”
    â€œThat he wants you up there ASAP.” Van Roon rummaged in the pockets on his cargo shorts and produced a folded sheet of paper. “Your flight details.”

    Ihaka scanned it. “I’m on a flight first fucking thing in the morning.”
    Van Roon nodded. “He said – and I’m not making this up; he really did use these words – ‘time is of the essence’.”

1
    Now and again, during what he sometimes thought of as his exile, Tito Ihaka would wonder what he’d be doing at that moment if he’d actually remembered to forget his cellphone.
    When the fateful call came, five years earlier almost to the day, he was in a Ponsonby Road bar striving to maintain a Mandela-like air of twinkle-eyed magnanimity as he waited for a woman he’d known for less than half an hour to finish apologizing for what her ancestors had done to his ancestors.
    There’d been a time when it amused him to see how many of Maoridom’s current social and economic ills he could browbeat contrite Pakeha into accepting the blame for, and how outrageous his demands for redress had to be before they baulked. But white liberal guilt wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. In fact, it bored and sometimes even irritated him, all that vicarious shame and retrospective moral certainty over what took place in another time and a different world.
    The woman had moved on to imported diseases. She was clearly a bit of a flake, but a certain amount of flakiness had to be expected in that neck of the woods. And she was a cutie all right, standing there gnawing her lower lip and showing off her pierced belly button and a scoop
of active cleavage. Ihaka’s strategy, based on several optimistic assumptions, was to hang in there nodding gravely for a few more minutes, get another margarita into her, then steer her onto the subject of race relations in the here and now and exactly what conciliatory gestures she was prepared to make to atone for the rapacity of her forebears.
    When his cellphone rang, Ihaka automatically plucked it from his jacket pocket. He apologized and went to put it straight back, but the woman wouldn’t hear of it. “Answer it,” she said. “Please. Do it for me. It’s bad luck not to. I really believe that.”
    â€œWhere the hell are you?” rasped Detective Sergeant Johan Van Roon, once Ihaka’s