The Hana Du Rose Mysteries Collection

LOGAN DU ROSE-2

Logan watched his brother’s eyes darken as Michael grabbed another ball of toilet paper and pushed it hard into his face. “It’s slowing. It might be okay this time.” He glanced up at Logan. “Sorry for dumping you in it.”

Logan shrugged. “Who is it today?”

Michael’s handsome face creased into a mischievous grin. “That girl down the hall; you know, the one with the long blonde hair. Her friends are going out for the day and she’s gonna fake sick. Then we can take as long as we like this time.”

Logan shook his head. “You know your seed is sacred, don’t you? You’re the great grandson of a rangatira, that’s God given isn’t it? The eldest rules the whānau and with Barry gone that’s you.”

Michael’s hand felt heavy on Logan’s shoulder. “There is no whānau, bro’. Isn’t nobody left to lead.”

Logan pulled the wad of tissue away from his nose and examined it. “Has it stopped?”

Michael peered at his nose and lip and nodded. “Yeah. That’s a first.” He shrugged. “Must be me. I’m gonna be a doctor.”

Logan shook his head. “What’s wrong with being a farmer or a teacher?” he asked, his face still filled with childish innocence.

Michael eyed him with pity, his usual quick retorts abandoning him. “Nothing, bro’,” he replied. “Just make some money and get off that damn mountain, yeah?”

Logan nodded, the tug in his breast inducing physical pain. The tangata whenua groaned in their graves at the threat of losing their chosen son, writhing in agony and trapped in New Zealand, eighteen thousand kilometres away.

Miriam knocked on the bathroom door, her voice wavering in the interlude before her medication kicked in. “Are you both ready, tamariki?” she asked.

With a nod at Michael, Logan wrenched the door open and gave her a watery smile. “Just me today, Ma,” he said.

Her eyes widened at the specs of blood on his shirt and Michael used her averted gaze to throw the stained towel behind the door out of view. “I’m sick, Ma,” he said, rubbing at a genuine pain in his bruised stomach. “I’ll stay here.”

“But you’re coming?” Miriam asked, fixing her gaze on Logan. Michael’s eyes flared with jealousy at the way she looked at her youngest son, emotion in her face which she never spared for the others.

“Yeah, Ma,” Logan replied, taking her hand. “I had a wee blood nose, but it’s stopped now.”

“Good,” Miriam said, relief spreading across her face. “Let’s go then. If we walk to the station quick, we can make the next train.”

“Sure you’re too sick to come?” Miriam asked her handsome son as he leaned against the door frame.

“Yeah, he’s sick all right,” Logan answered for him. “Sick in the head.”

Michael smirked and Logan saw him contemplating the blonde girl who would soon wrap her lithe legs around his waist in the big double bed. She was less girl and more woman, his senior by at least ten years. Logan shuddered, finding the thought of s*x with a stranger abhorrent. Michael was rampant, exercising his charms wherever he got the opportunity, even with the sisters of day boys at their school on the north shore of Auckland. Logan wondered where he found the energy but he seemed insatiable, a human mating machine.

“Don’t wear yourself out too much,” Logan threw over his shoulder as Miriam led him from the room. He didn’t need to see his brother’s grin to know it existed.

The room door clicked behind them and Miriam bustled down the long corridor to the lifts. Logan glanced back and saw the blonde woman emerge from her room, giving them a cursory glance before knocking on the door. Her tall body was little more than a tantalising outline under a skimpy robe, doubtless naked beneath. She carried a bottle of white wine in the hand she used to clasp her robe closed. As the lift door clanked shut with agonising slowness and Miriam peered into the mirror of her compact yet again, the blonde winked at Logan and offered him a full frontal. She ran the bottle from between her naked thighs and dragged it over her stomach, giving him a smirk of encouragement. He experienced a flush of embarrassment but couldn’t look away, the doors taking an age to close on the woman’s immodesty. He was still staring as the metallic doors blocked his view.

“I don’t think I’ll marry an Englishwoman,” he said, watching as Miriam patted the powder puff over her tattoo. “They’re weird.”

“You most certainly won’t!” his mother exclaimed. “You’ll marry one of your own kind, tāne. Du Rose sticks to Du Rose in this life and don’t you forget it.”

Whare Tūroro - The HospitalThe sick man lay in a hospital bed, his breathing laboured as the pillows prevented his descent into the mattress. A thin curtain maintained his privacy and Logan felt awkward, imposing upon the tiny space. An oxygen mask covered the thin brown face and Miriam gave Logan a shove from behind as she scraped the curtain aside.

“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 d**k, 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.”

“s*x?”

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.”