1

Dan

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa extended her lace-gloved hand across the steps below the Sydney Opera House. The deep blue harbor was as operatic a backdrop as you could wish for, decorated with taught mainsails and bulging spinnakers and sturdy little green and yellow ferries seemingly under attack from squadrons of squawking, wheeling, diving seagulls. The scene was anchored and framed by the mighty span of the harbour bridge. It was picture perfect as planned, press cameras capturing a classic marketing photo op for Dan Delaney’s beautiful, beaming daughter-in-law Mira Vukovich/Delaney shaking the proffered hand of their Kiwi prima donna assoluta.

‘Welcome to Dame Kiri and all our Australian friends,’ Mira spoke into the crackling microphone, one hand holding her large pale-blue straw hat in place. ‘Vukovich Vineyards is truly honoured to have you all here, and doubly honoured that our own Dame Kiri has graciously agreed to launch our new wine. We believe that our wine is as elegant, as exquisite, as ravishing as our own national operatic treasure.’

There were more flashes from press cameras, the artificial light enhancement scarcely necessary on this squint-bright and breezy inferno of a late January morning. There were cheers and a few jeers and sustained ripples of applause. The positive reactions were undoubtedly from the vested interests such as family, the wholesale distributors, the commercial folk from the New Zealand Embassy, and maybe some of the curious who materialised from nowhere at the sighting of a filmed assembly. The ABC cameraman was kneeling on the bottom step, filming the moment. A woman pushing against Dan, bulging out of a too tight, teal-coloured tank-top and clashing purple matadors, was yelling at her short, plain companion: ‘Look, it’s the singing Maori princess. Seen her on the teev, yeah. Had to be Paul Hogan’s Show.’

The wind was intensifying, garbling Mira’s words and attacking the large hats and loose dresses women were endeavouring to hold on to. Some lost hats, and among them a few male Panama hats, whisked away over the harbour, disappearing into the haze and chop. Mira wasn’t to know the wind would conspire against an al fresco launch. It was an uphill battle anyway persuading Ockers to try Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc when their only previous experience was Riesling and Gewurztraminer paint-strippers. However, the ABC cameraman and the press were here, and of course the time-sensitive dame, so the show had to go on.

‘… as Kiwi as Kiri,’ Mira’s voice erupted into a wind lull. ‘It is named after a classic French wine, but I can assure you it is something else that could only come from our own unique soft southern climate and well-drained gravel soils. You will enjoy citrus and gooseberry notes, you will enjoy the most refreshing taste you have never experienced. We offer you crisp green flavours you need on a hot Sydney day to accompany your renowned rock oysters and our own delicacy, whitebait, specially flown in for this occasion. We will be serving you our wine shortly in the Harbour Room, to which by special dispensation you are all invited. Our Koromiko Sauvignon Blanc is an instant and irresistible classic.’

‘Who’s the PR hack wrote this load of bulldust?’ a fruity voice snickered behind Dan. He swung round. A burly man in a yellow check suit was looking about for approval.

‘You’d know, Max,’ somebody laughed.

‘Yer,’ another agreed. ‘You prob’ly hire the same hack.’

Max was waving away the remark with a suit-mismatched mauve hankie he flipped out of his top pocket, using it to dab at his perspiring forehead.

‘Kiri!’ a photographer hollered. ‘Look this way, will ya?’

Kiri turned slowly in stage regal fashion, holding her flapping butter-coloured straw hat in place. She looked as composed as she had a few years ago in Westminster Abbey, though this time she wore a more subdued and certainly more form-fitting version of the peacock yellow and blue blanket she sported at the Royal Wedding. She looked spectacular, and an Embassy man told Mira that she pretty much guaranteed media coverage for the launch. He didn’t think they had much to worry about from Max, there was no evidence of any press gang like those who surrounded Frank Sinatra at the airport and taunted him into taking a swing at one of them.

Mira’s offer of a free and mostly liquid lunch and the chance to escape from this dire weather had the crowd rushing the steps. Some maybe wanted to shake the hand of the woman who sang for the next king and his shy young bride. Dan had no doubt the burly little olive-dark man had that in mind. He had last seen Marty Webber decades ago doing dodgy deals in Wellington. Here he was, had to be nipping 80, creaming it in Sydney property and funding the launch. With one hand he was holding on to a stunning woman in a red silk sheath as exotic as a ‘dusky maiden’ Tretchikoff painting, with the other he was gesticulating at the slender French wine merchant he earlier assured his Kiwi guests would be their entrée into Europe.

‘She’s no threat to our Dame Joan,’ the loud lady was saying. Her companion suggested she was prettier. ‘If you like the Abo look,’ she scoffed.

Dan was distracted by the disturbance on the harbour. The menacing shape of a dark grey warship was sliding directly through the fragile scattering of yachts tacking away like a school of fish fleeing a shark. In Auckland harbour yachts would be swarming instead of fleeing the warship, protesting the Yankee intrusion. He knew from the papers there were protests here too. Ali would have the details. She had been one of the Auckland protesters. He didn’t doubt she would be among the local protesters, since she took up the junior lectureship at Sydney University. He’d find out soon enough, she had confirmed she was coming to share the Vukovich/Delaney family occasion. She was uncharacteristically late.

A jab in the kidneys jolted him out of pondering his older daughter’s whereabouts. It was his wife, pushing across him and wanting to know from his son if Mira gave the press as agreed both surnames, her maiden name and her married name.

‘Dunno,’ Matt said. ‘But she is the only Vukovich. And it was her idea to take our sauv blanc offshore.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Jasenka Delaney said nastily. ‘I thought Matua were first to market Sauvignon Blanc abroad.’

‘In Europe,’ Dan said hastily. ‘But we can claim first dibs in Australia.’

Jas snorted and took off up the steps, muttering that if you

wanted something done, you did it yourself. Dan shrugged at Matt, said it was the weather making her cranky. He gave Dan a sceptical look and said he’d best get between them. Dan stood there uncertainly, watching his son follow his wife. He was not her son but that was not usually a problem, and they were all directors of the company. Mira was the problem for Jas. It was a small and probably sensible thing commercially Mira dropping Delaney as her surname, but his traditional wife seemed to think it a big deal.

It was a different and hopefully small concern Dan had. Matt had said Mira was the only Vukovich. Her brother was rumoured to have fled to Australia after his attempt on Matt’s life. He was conceivably still alive and kicking whoever, given he was in his early 50s, Matt’s age. He couldn’t come back to claim his half-share of the Vukovich Vineyards without facing a long prison term, but he could cause trouble this side of the Ditch.

‘Daniel Delaney?’

He turned to face a tall, gaunt man maybe in his thirties. He had the plummy voice and languid manner of the British upper classes. Dan flashed on Jono Smith all those years ago. He had the same long, horsey face, irritating blond hair falling over one eye, but he was tanned a deep chestnut. An open white shirt revealed a mix of tan and wiry chest hair. The crumpled cerise linen suit with the wide lapels and his crooked, buck-toothed grin brought to mind a fictional character Ali rabbited on about, Barry Humphries’ ratbag cartoonish diplomat the appalling Sir Les Patterson.

‘Brian Portillo,’ he said, capturing Dan’s hand. ‘I work with Alice. Freelance.’

‘Dan will do,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know they had freelancers at the university.’

‘Nah,’ he laughed. ‘We work for the National Times.’

It was news to Dan. Perhaps junior lecturers were allowed to freelance?

‘Come on,’ Portillo said. ‘Let’s join your party. Can’t wait to try your plonk after the big plug it got. And an oyster or 12.’ Definitely a gourmand in the Sir Les mould.

The Harbour Room was buzzing as people encouragingly knocked back the Vukovich wine and the buffet spread, nobody yet taking seats for the inevitable speeches. Photographers were getting in the faces of the newsworthy, he thought he spotted the Aussie film star Bryan Brown and his equally famous film star wife Rachel Ward, talking to New Zealand’s own Sam Neill. The Aboriginal man wearing a Panama at a gravity defying angle was a champion boxer, or was he a rugby league star? Even the ABC cameraman was roaming about. Marty had attracted more celebrities than Dan expected. The squawks of excitement of the big teal and purple lady reinforced celebrity recognition, as she reached to grab another drink from the waiter’s tray. Brian Portillo captured drinks as Jas fronted, telling Dan it was time he was at the top table.

‘Mrs Delaney?’ Portillo said, passing Dan a drink and congratulating her on the turnout.

‘You are?’

He told her who he was and who he worked for, emphasising that he was employed by the country’s leading magazine.

‘The Times,’ Jas repeated, her voice reversing from peremptory to complaisant. ‘My husband can give you the background on our company. I must get back to our principal guest, but please come up later if you have any further questions. Or just come anyway. I am sure Dame Kiri and her husband would like to say hello.’

Jas could be very appealing when she wanted to. Portillo seemed to enjoy her two-handed squeeze of his arm.

‘Lovely lady,’ he said as they observed her sashaying through the increasingly boisterous gathering. It was nice the wife was appreciated, but Dan preferred it was not by this leering, drunken Lothario.

‘You were saying you worked with my daughter?’ Dan said, sipping at their wine he was not a huge fan of. Daytime drinking gave him a headache, white wine made it worse – something he could not ever admit to wife, son and daughter-in-law.

Portillo upended the shell and gulped an oyster down his gullet, burped, swallowed his wine and reached for replenishments.

Dan turned towards the epic window view of the harbour and bridge to avoid the sight if not the sound of another oyster ingested. Unlike Sir Les he didn’t belch, dribble or chunder, but he soon would be at this rate. ‘Magnifico,’ he sighed. ‘No, I have not had the pleasure, at least not yet, of working with your daughter. I met her in the Mitchell restaurant. You familiar with it?’

Dan shook his head. Portillo explained that it was a café on top of the Mitchell Library, the premier research institute in the city, where they did great maple waffles. Over a plate of them they got talking. She was researching Kiwi writers in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb, if Dan knew it.

He told him he knew no more about Sydney than the view out the window and newsclips of the noisy crowd on the hill at test matches.

Portillo said it was good to start with the highlights, journos always did, and he gave her a lift back to the scruffy end of Surry Hills, where for the sake of academic verisimilitude she lived the same kind of spartan life once endured by wife and husband writers Ruth Park and D’Arcy Niland. She declined his offer of a drink at the corner hostelry, said she was expecting Brad back. He told Dan about his supposedly retiring daughter at the forefront of every downtown protest, how it cost her the trial position at the university and hence her freelancing.

Dan learned a lot more than he wanted to about this sea change in his studious, retiring daughter. He swallowed concern that she was without a real job and told him he was expecting her here today, she was obviously delayed.

Likewise, Portillo said. She was keeping him informed about local protests against the ANZUS naval exercises. He nodded out the window.

Dan said he saw the American warship, knew from the media it was the Buchanan, which was rumoured to be trying to enter New Zealand’s nuclear-resistant waters.

He gave Dan an assessing look. ‘I knew your brother Sean. We worked together on one of Rupert Murdoch’s rags, until God let me go. He was doing one of his unannounced visits to the newsroom and saw me with my feet up. He tapped me on the shoulder, told me he paid people to work not loaf and I was fired. It was Sean told me about your Security Intelligence Service connections.’

The slovenly Sir Les speech had disappeared. Dan told himself he would have to be careful with this joker. He looked around at the merry gathering, not because he thought anybody might overhear talk of supposedly secret employment he was not ashamed of. It was a long time since he had any role or even contact with spy services. Indeed, the last connection with any spy service was the Israeli one a decade ago, when his family got caught up in a terrorist incident in Jerusalem. Ali would not have been able to tell this fellow anything, certainly nothing remotely current or relevant to Australia. It was totally unexpected, almost surreal, to be bailed up at a wine promotion by this sly member of the Fourth Estate -- if that is what he was.

‘What kind of journalist did you say you were?’

Portillo shrugged, leaned away to capture another glass off the passing waiter’s tray. Back in Sir Les mode, which was not funny. It was the boozing did for Dan’s brother.

‘Just a feature writer,’ Portillo said, scoffing an entire whitebait fritter. ‘Not bad,’ he said, spraying bits of eggy matter. ‘If you ignore the fishy eyes.’

‘You’re not here to write about an unknown Kiwi wine company?’

He shrugged, swigged his wine. ‘If I find an angle.’

‘A sleaze angle?’

‘Trust me, I am not trying to dig any dirt on you folk. I am very fond of Ali. But I am a little concerned about her.’

Dan flushed with anger. This cheap bastard had ambushed him, hinting at his daughter in trouble. He felt a spurt of anger, not just at the suggestion his daughter was threatened, but also at the snarky manner in which it was made, as if he wanted to capitalise on the situation. He considered decking him, but reined in the urge, telling himself that is exactly what journos liked, viz Sinatra. Maybe if he invited him outside, where there was no audience. Dan grabbed his arm, spilling the family wine over his suit, suggested they slip away from the crowd and he could tell all about it.

The hubbub died as the doors closed on the gathering and they stood on the deep purple carpet that disappeared around the corridor’s curve.

‘It’s what your daughter’s working on,’ he said, swiping his hand across the damp patches and stepping back from Dan. ‘Nothing’s happened,’ he said quickly. ‘But Frankie Frankuvich is bad news.’

Dan took a deep breath. ‘You’d better explain.’

He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, offered them. Dan shook his head. He used a brass lighter, inhaled greedily and blew the smoke away from him. ‘You’ve not heard of Frankie?’ Dan said he had not. He promised the short version. Frankie had for several decades been the King of the Cross, ran the gambling, drugs, prossies, including the male strippers. He nodded back at the party, said one of them was in there.

It might have been a short version, but it still took him some time to do a potted bio of Frankie’s seedy career. Ali met him through the doyenne of Les Girls, the male/female stripper the others called Carmen.

She was the first name that rang a bell. Dan had been involved in arresting her for running a suburban brothel during his forgettable stint working with the Wellington Vice Squad. She had emigrated to the more lucrative pastures of Kings Cross and was now retired in Surry Hills, and Ali had been interviewing her. Small world.

Those on the shady side were a magnet for journalists, but Dan would not have thought his daughter would be one of them. She tended to demure, if not prudish. Now she interviewed male ladies of the night and had an American boyfriend. A case perhaps of travel broadening the mind, but Dan was not inclined to be broadminded about his formerly reserved daughter manning the protest barricades and interviewing lowlife.

He switched back on to Portillo saying one of the ‘girls’ was now a real girl, after a successful op. Dan did not have the faintest idea what he was on about. He might have noticed, Portillo continued, the leggy lass the leg-challenged ancient Mediterranean joker was trying to hold on to? Dan admitted it was hard to miss her, but he didn’t admit to knowing Marty Webber from way back.

Frankie, Portillo continued, ran those alternative girls until he took advantage of some of them and now had full-blown AIDS. He was dying and had lost everything, his business taken over by Yucca O’Toole, but that was another story. He seemed to have a lot of other stories.

Maybe he sensed Dan was getting toey. Now Frankie, he said quickly, was wasting away in a dump in Surry Hills and Carmen took him takeaways, ‘meals on heels’ she called it. Ali had written a story on her that the Times ran. When Carmen had to leave town, she got Ali to deliver Frankie the takeaway tucker. It was inevitable Ali wanted his story too. She was trying to persuade Frankie to talk.

‘He doesn’t sound dangerous.’

‘He might be. He has played host to a good few of the movers and shakers around the place. They don’t want their names in print, well, not in the context of consorting with prostitutes, most certainly not if they are gender benders. Bad for careers. He no longer has anything to lose, not now he is about to lose his life. If he started naming names, you can imagine there would be repercussions.’

‘Is there a point to all this?’

‘Yes. Ali’s boyfriend is a tad on the extreme side about American military might, particularly the blue-water kind. I have a few contacts in your old world. You will know what I mean. You saw that American warship. There are a lot of rumours floating – sorry, unintentional pun --- about plans to do something spectacular in the way of protest. As you would expect there are countermoves underway on the part of the surveillance agencies.’

Dan had had a gutsful of all these opaque claims. It was time to get particular with this clown he suspected was playing both sides to his advantage. Portillo backed away as he grabbed his obliging lapels. He shoved him against the gleaming corridor wall and got up close. ‘Tell me exactly what you know about these protests you claim my daughter is involved in.’

‘Calm down,’ Portillo said. ‘A round-up of protest leaders is underway. I had hoped to warn Ali. In case she was on the list. Will you let go of me.’

‘Come on,’ Dan said, resisting the urge to head butt the messenger. ‘You’re going to take me to my daughter. Clear?’

He nodded. Dan dashed back into the launch, pulled Matt away from the group around Mira and the French wine merchant, told him he was picking up Ali and would be back soon. Matt said he had better check with Mira and Jas in case there was anything he was needed for. Dan told him he had to be joking. Hadn’t he noticed he was the spare prick at the wedding? His son looked shocked. Dan told him he’d received a message about his halfsister and left before he could ask what it was.

The Holden taxi which had seen better days rattled past the massive concrete statement that was the Sydney Hilton, where Marty had generously got them a suite, Dan trying not to think of why Ali had not shown up at the launch. He was only too aware from his own experience what bastards the Australian authorities can be, especially with foreigners, and that included Kiwis, and particularly if they were perceived as commie feminists challenging the Ocker way of life.

The chubby, dark-complexioned taxi driver was shouting over his shoulder in a barely comprehensible pastiche of English, perhaps Greek or Italian, that the Hilton was the tallest, biggest, best bloody hotel in Orstralia. Did he think they were tourists? And why would tourists want to photograph this concrete monstrosity? The tower was as flat and plain and boring as the cuboid monolith in the movie 2001 Ali dragged him along to.

Dan could have said they were staying at the hotel, but it might have got him even more excited, and probably would double the fare. Unfortunately, there was no glass panel he could slide and shut him down. He moved on to shouting about Hyde Park the greatest park in Orstralia and something about the biggest Mordon By Pigs in the world.

Portillo no doubt could see Dan was getting tense. He leaned close, delivering a high-octane brew of oysters, cigarettes and wine and said he was talking about Morton Bay Fig trees and it was a short ride. Dan knew the trees, they were around Auckland parks and waterfronts, huge knobbly monsters with massive roots that bulged up through the footpaths. He could care less.

It was a mercifully brief drive up a main thoroughfare where the street barrows, they were informed by their unsolicited tour guide, sold more Queensland bananas than anywhere else in the world. A sudden turn right ended the commentary. Portillo paid him off, asked for and got a receipt, and waved away his advice to have the best day of the rest of your loife.

They were in a street devoid of Moreton Bay fig trees or indeed any other foliage. On either side of the pot-holed asphalt were rows of battered two-storey stucco and brick houses propping each other up in the dreary fashion known to Coronation Street viewers. At the end of the airless avenue men were sprawled on the stoop and footpath outside the closed pub. A distant church bell roused no movement out of them. This was not part of the Lucky Country. Portillo pushed open the creaking wrought-iron gate and led the way up a buckled garden path past dying clumps of grass to a cracked front door. He rapped loudly on the distressed black metal knocker.

All was quiet. Portillo rapped more loudly. A voice from the balcony across the road told them to put a flaming sock in it, some of us were trying to sleep. Portillo looked at Dan, shrugged and rapped again.

‘Whadya want?’

They stepped back and looked up at a sorry example of the celebrated iron lace. The angry American voice was wisely keeping back from the sagging, rusted-out wrought-iron railing.

‘Is Ali in?’

‘Alice? She’s feeding that old fuck.’

‘Frankie?’

There was the violent scraping of a buckled door reluctantly closing.

‘He’s not far,’ Portillo said. ‘We can walk there.’

As they passed the pub there was a stirring and several rough voices begged a dollar for a feed, no doubt the liquid variety. They moved on round the corner into a street a step up in the social scale, young trees at ring-fenced intervals, a few shrubs behind upright railings, doors painted, terrace houses that had not taken mortar rounds recently, iron-lace balconies in reasonable nick. Dan gave it only a cursory glance. He wanted to know if his daughter was well, and if she was, why Ali was here and not at the launch. There was a message from her when they arrived at the hotel last night saying she was looking forward to the launch. She had left no phone number, he guessed because she did not have one.

The door opened. Apart from dark rings under her eyes magnified by her thick lenses, his daughter looked fine if wary, peering around the half-opened door. She brushed away her light blonde hair straggle, blinked in the bright light.

‘Dad! Brian. What are you doing here?’

‘I was worried when you didn’t make the launch. You all right? When we didn’t hear … Can we come in?’

She looked behind her, a gloomy hall. ‘Ah, Mr Frankuvich is not well. Let me have a quick word.’

She shut the door on them.

A dog started barking from behind a fence a few doors down. Dan was now painfully aware of cicadas, or whatever was making the invisible racket in the otherwise petrified street scene. Sweat was trickling down the back of his shirt. He considered undoing the top button and loosening the RSA tie strangling him, unslinging the Reefer jacket several wool grades above the comfort zone. Jas organised what she called dress to impress, without taking account of the heat wave. The phrase ‘heat wave’ did not do justice to this gob-choking, saliva-sucking, eye-frying heat. The ladies were much better adapted with their air-conditioned dresses.

Ali was a case in point. She emerged with large and very dark wraparound sunglasses concealing most of her face. He wasn’t sure if the brightly coloured garment was a mini or a T-shirt. Whichever it was, it scarcely disguised her tall, thin frame.

‘Brad is not himself. He’s resting. I should have … I would have rung, but I promised Carmen to check on Mr Frankuvich first.’

‘She away?’ Portillo asked.

‘Yes,’ Ali said. ‘At a funeral in New Zealand, in Taihape. Dad, it’s really strange, Mr Frankuvich keeps asking about you. When I told him you were in Sydney …’

A buzzer was sounding. She dashed back inside. They looked at each other. ‘Interesting,’ he said, the crooked Sir Les smile. ‘He obviously knows you. Another secret. Would you care to reveal?’

‘Rubbish,’ Dan said. ‘I’ve never been here in my life.’ Portillo shrugged. Before he could ask any further curly questions, like where Dan had met Frankie if not here, Ali returned.

‘He wants to see you.’

‘Eh?’

‘He wanted to know who was visiting and when I told him it was you, he got agitated. He wants to see you, on your own. Come on. We’ll wait in the kitchen.’

She pulled her father by the arm, down the hallway and up the stairs to a landing of dark plywood panelling and through to a bedroom with the musty smell of neglect. ‘Thanks, Alice,’ a voice gasped. Ali whispered she would leave him to it. The lace curtains were closed but he could make out a figure propped up in bed, breathing into an oxygen mask attached to a hissing tank apparatus.

The figure was beckoning. He approached. As his eyes adjusted, he could see a skeletal old man pointing at the skewed bentwood chair beside the bed. He took the seat, scraping the legs on the bare wood as he eased back from somebody he had not seen in many decades.

He pulled away the breathing mask and emitted a kind of muffled bark.

‘You recognise me then,’ he croaked.

Dan said he did. Ante Vukovich was the same age as the man he tried to stab to death, his son Matt. His savage illness made him look twice as old. He brought to mind those pitiful wretches Dan briefly encountered in a concentration camp in Germany, his eyes dull with resignation in hollowed-out sockets, his face defined by thin yellowed skin stretched tight over the outlines of his facial bones, a few strings of white hair over a pale skull glistening with sweat. His chest was collapsed under a pyjama top. It was not just recognition of a detestable Westie lad proud to call himself a fascist like his father that Dan reeled back from, there was the fetid breath, the scent of death.

The sash window was up but there was no breeze stirring the curtains, only the agitation of a fly that was trapped in the fabric. He was in torment in this informal sauna of a room sparely furnished with a double bed, the chair on one side, on the other side next to the air tank a small table on which was a packet of medication and a jug of water and a glass. In the far corner was a lopsided dark oak wardrobe. Beside it on the wall was a small wood crucifix hosting a metal Christ, on the near wall a kitsch depiction of a pale, effeminate European Jesus with long light brown hair and his hands apart revealing an enlarged bright red heart ringed in barbed wire.

Ante’s body was covered by a sheet. One hand rested on it, gripping a grey plastic fly swat. He raised the swat and pointed it shakily at him.

‘Your daughter doesn’t know.’

He started coughing, waved Dan away with the swat and picked up the mask. Dan could see every vein distended under the wrinkled skin. He assumed Portillo and indeed everybody who knew the former King of the Cross did not know he once worshipped under his real name at the altar of Catholic Croatian fascism.

‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘I won’t be around much longer.’

Dan took in a breath, trying not to include the odours hovering like an invisible gas. ‘Do you want to see your sister?’

‘No!’

He resorted to the oxygen. He slumped back on the pillows, held up the fly swat. It was too much, he let it go and his hand fell on to the sheet.

‘My will is for the Church. For you …’ He paused, harvesting what breath he had left. ‘Your mother … had a brat over here. Bastard boy … girl. You got the convict stain in your family, Delaney. Father can tell you. Or Jesus.’ He struggled to sit up, his lungs as feeble as a busted bellows. He sank back on the pillows. His grimace could have been a smirk.

It was all he could manage, as he was shaken by a prolonged fit of coughing. His chest was heaving in a doomed attempt to clear the mucus he was drowning in. There was the ghastly stertorous sound of blocked airwaves. His eyes were bulging as Ali rushed in. She pushed Dan aside and lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a baby. She was yelling at Dan to adjust the pillows. He was shaking and gasping. She got the oxygen mask on him and he managed to pull in some relief. He looked up at her, his eyes blank as he swatted the mask aside.

‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned.’

He tilted sideways. She put the oxygen mask over his face. There was no movement. She looked up at her father with tears in her eyes.

‘Ask the woman across the road, where the dog is, to ring an ambulance.’

Dan nodded, resisted the urge to tell her that her depressing of his chest was too late. He had seen enough bodies to know that Ante Vukovich was dead. He involuntarily jabbed forehead, tummy, left shoulder, right shoulder, the nun-driven Sign of the Cross, as he ran down the stairs. He told Portillo what he was doing and reluctantly headed towards a confrontation with a caged and aggressive dog. It was as futile as the gesture a lifetime ago confronting the Alsatian attack dogs and a Nazi camp guard whipping Jewish prisoners. Ante had joined the very victims he despised. And he had clearly lost his wits, claiming Dan’s mother had an illegitimate child here and his father would tell him. Ante was as dead as his parents and he took his despicable claim with him to the grave.

The woman of the house called off her Alsatian before it broke down the gate. She snarled she was not buying, peering at him suspiciously from under an abundance of dyed scarlet ringlets. He explained the medical emergency. She gave Dan another hard look no more friendly than that from the rumbling weapon quivering next to her, told him to stay, told her dog to stay. They both obeyed, watching her waddle back inside.

The ambulance finally made its presence heard, the dog was called in, reluctantly obeying but baring its fangs. The ambulance pulled up with a dying siren shriek and Ali met the emerging medics. Ante was stretchered into the back and Ali accompanied the corpse of a man she did not realise had tried to kill her half-brother.

Portillo was rummaging inside the dropped lid of a davenport that had seen better days. He looked up, said there might be some papers, a will perhaps. Dan said Ante mentioned proof in Jesus. He realised too late Portillo knew him as Frankie, but thankfully he did not seem to notice. Portillo stood, stretched, shook his head. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘the old reprobate really did find Jesus at the end.’

Dan shrugged, said stranger things happen. The Church he vaguely recalled allowed a genuine act of contrition to shrive you of your sins. Perhaps he did repent, and perhaps he did not find time for the less urgent matter of writing a will. What had he meant about Jesus telling me? The only Jesus Dan had seen was in his bedroom. He told Portillo he had a thought and took the stairs.

He went straight to the lurid Sacred Heart image and lifted it off its hook. On the back was sellotaped a faded black and white photo of his mother holding a swaddled baby in her arms, looking anxiously at the camera. This was not the calm, reserved face he grew up with. She was gaunt and fearful. Mother never showed her boys much affection. She was not a hugger, she never read them stories. But she fed them and patched them up when required. Much of her spare time after domestic chores was spent on her knees praying in their bedroom before a congregation of religious images, including those Ante kept close. Dan blinked. Mother would not have approved of tears.

The question was who was the baby his mother was holding and where was she when the photo was taken? There was no indication where it was apart from another, larger crucifix on the panelled wall behind her. It was clearly not the one in his bedroom. There was the edge of a wooden arch, a hallway or entranceway. The crucifix suggested a Catholic person’s house. Not their one in Ponsonby, his mother’s crucifix was smaller and less crude, and the light seemed too harsh.

There was a folded piece of paper also attached to the back of the Sacred Heart image. Dan put the photo on the bed and unfolded the paper. It was clearly a will. He peered at the crossed-out line leaving all his worldly possessions to a name it was impossible to decipher. In its place was added the Marist Fathers of St Brigid’s. The correction was initialled AV, which he wondered would stand up in court.

He refolded the will and put it with the photograph in his inner jacket pocket. The reference to Jesus might have been a last and confused act of malice. As for this convict stain comment, well that was plain bonkers.

Ante Vukovich might have presumed Dan would, as an upholder of the law most of his working life, feel obliged to hand the will over to his lawyer, if he had one, or the police or the coroner. If that was what he hoped for, stiff cheese. It was not difficult to put family before the letter of the law. Dan was not going to dispossess Mira and his family of half of their company to fulfil the dying wish of her criminal brother, even if it was likely that the New Zealand courts would not uphold the will of a would-be killer who had fled the country ahead of justice and changed his name. The Church might have been informed of his will, and for that matter whoever was the indecipherable name might have been anticipating this windfall. Tough.

Portillo entered the room, sighed. ‘Nothing downstairs.’

‘Ditto here,’ Dan said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’

‘Even if there was anything the old bugger left,’ Portillo said, ‘Yucca would get his mitts on it in lieu of what Frankie owes him. Like the inflated rent for this dump.’

‘It appears,’ Dan said, ‘Frankie has paid the wages of sin.’

‘You still Mickey Do? Like your daughter was when I first met her.’

Dan shrugged. ‘That was a long time ago, in another country.’

‘And besides the wench is dead?’

‘Not quite. More like death of faith.’

‘Let’s not speak ill of the dead here. Frankie had to have repented to that priest who was always calling in.’

‘Oh. Who would that be?’

‘Father Petrus from the Marist outfit over in Millers Point. He is old and frail and was accompanied by a young priest. They were likely consulting about the funeral service. A humble one, I imagine. Frankie didn’t have a brass razoo, let alone the fee for a flash send-off. The Catholics don’t do flash for free.’

Ali returned by taxi, joined them at the kitchen table and accepted a cup of black tea. There was no milk. She said they had to find a relation to handle burial details. Dan said nothing. He had not made up his mind about revealing who Frankie really was, let alone the will he left. He would have to tell Mira that her brother was dead, but no need to mention that he left his half of the vineyard to the Marist Order. Ali was involved too, but he was not sure what he should tell her.

While he silently dithered, Ali pulled a face at the bitter tea, another face when she brought out of a cupboard a bowl of sugar crawling with ants. She ran a hand through her hair, told them Frankie was promising to tell her a story he claimed was much more dramatic than any Kiwi tale-spinner Ruth Park offered her. Or even Carmen, though her story was pretty amazing. Dan remained silent. Frankie’s or Ante’s stories were best buried with him, unless he had deposited a version of the will with a lawyer. He would wait to see what eventuated.

Portillo said in his amused drawl that one thing puzzled him, she said Carmen was going to Die Happy. Ali laughed and said Carmen was talking about a town in the centre of the North Island called Taihape. She frowned and said she would tell Carmen of his passing if she had a number. She would have wanted to be at the funeral.

Yes, Portillo agreed. No doubt Frankie had the arrangements in place for a Catholic send-off. Dan couldn’t mention the Marist Fathers without explaining how he knew about them. Portillo resolved the dilemma by suggesting they track down the old priest who visited Frankie. Ali agreed he should be contacted right away. Frankie had obviously been conferring with the priest about burying his body and saving his soul.

Dan could only think how fanatical a Catholic Ante was, the kind who believed that killing Christ’s enemies, including all Jews and Communists, was a righteous act in the name of Jesus. You were not supposed to think ill of the dead, but Dan could not wish that Ante Vukovich rest in peace.