28

Daniel and Cheryl take one of the lifts. He hadn’t expected this: Aaron’s lawyer is located on the fifteenth floor of the Benthan Towers, one of the most impressive buildings in downtown Queen Street. All glass the colour of varnish, the building now glows like translucent skin in the mid-morning summer light.

‘I knew Uncle Aaron was the Man, but I didn’t know he was this big!’ Cheryl whispers as they enter the expensively furnished and carpeted lobby of the law firm. In front of them, behind the well-groomed receptionist at the marble counter, on the white marble wall in large gold letters is ‘MILLS, WALKER and ASSOCIATES’. Considering the nature of what Daniel believes was Aaron’s ‘business’ activities, he’d expected some seedy office hidden away from public scrutiny. He is surprised and impressed by the visible opulence of Aaron’s lawyers.

Cheryl following, he walks towards the counter into the middle-aged receptionist’s wide smile and flawless make-up. ‘Good morning, Mr Malaetau!’ It’s a sweet and admiring welcome.

‘Good morning,’ he replies. ‘This is my daughter, Cheryl.’

The receptionist greets Cheryl and, turning to Daniel, says, ‘Mrs Mills is expecting you, sir. Please follow me.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ Cheryl says, and she takes the nearest armchair.

Ten or so paces down the lushly carpeted corridor, the receptionist raps respectfully on a door, opens it and stands aside to let him enter. He does so, and is blinded by the silver-white sunlight that is flooding in from a long row of windows that opens out to the city and sky and the Gulf.

‘Welcome back to Auckland, Mr Malaetau,’ a deep alto voice breaks through the light. ‘I’m Katherine Mills.’ He extends his right hand towards the figure outlined in the light. Her grip is firm, trusting. ‘I’m sorry about the power of the light today, Mr Malaetau, but perhaps you are used to the tropical light of Hawai‘i.’ She indicates a soft chair beside the coffee table, on which there are cups and saucers and biscuits. He takes it, and she sits down in the opposite chair. He blinks a few times, and his eyes adjust quickly to the light.

She asks about his arrival, and for a while they make small talk. It’s hard to tell her age because everything about her appearance and manner is expensive but subdued and deliberate; carefully cultivated to create the image of a person of culture, breeding and power, but someone who doesn’t care for those things in themselves; a supremely expert lawyer who will do whatever her clients want, providing them with the best legal advice and help possible, and procuring for them the best outcomes. She asks about his life in Hawai‘i, telling him she and her family had holidayed in Hawai‘i twice, the last time on Kaua‘i. She’d loved the landscape there, especially the Waimea Canyon. He finds himself giving her information he doesn’t normally give people he has only just met.

‘How long have you been Aaron’s lawyer?’ he asks a short while later.

She ponders for a moment and says, ‘Since I met him at uni when I went back to do my masters. Years ago. He was finishing his masters too, in chemistry.’ It is another large surprise. ‘At the time I was a junior lawyer in another firm. Just starting.’

‘He never told us that – then or since then,’ he says.

‘Daniel – may I call you that?’ she asks. He nods. ‘He wouldn’t have, because that’s the way he wanted it. When we met and he discovered I was a lawyer, he said he would give me all his business if I promised not to let anyone know I was his lawyer.’ She smiles. ‘I agreed with him, because I had no expectation he was going to be a lucrative client. No, sir. He was poor, and I believed he wasn’t going to be a paying client then or in the future.’ She turns her face away from him. ‘How wrong I was’, she whispers, more to herself than to Daniel. ‘I agreed also because I trusted him.’

Daniel isn’t surprised by that admission: anyone who helped Aaron usually came to feel that way about him. Inexplicably he doesn’t want her to be that confessional. ‘Ms Mills,’ he therefore addresses her, ‘… you’ve been his lawyer for over twenty years?’

She nods, clears her throat and says, ‘When Aaron and I graduated, he persuaded me to set up my own practice. In those days, Auckland was dominated by a few Palagi law firms, and if you didn’t have the right connections you didn’t have a hope of being hired. But that didn’t deter Aaron, and you know how irresistible he is when he wants you to do something.’ Pauses. ‘Within a few months, I was established in K Road in a modest office that Aaron helped get for me, with a growing number of clients: mainly criminal cases, and mainly Pacific Islanders and Māori. I soon learned that most of my clients were being referred to me by Aaron. Aaron started buying property and other things through me. The amounts got quite large, and I asked him where he was getting the money from. “Please don’t ask me again,” he said. “I have wealthy friends who want their money invested, anonymously.” I never asked again.’ She pauses, waiting for Daniel to speak, but he doesn’t. ‘Right up to the day he came for me to write his will – and that was only three years ago – I didn’t know anything about what he called his “Tribe”. There was an unwritten agreement between us: he didn’t want to know anything about my family and life outside my office, and he didn’t want me to know anything about his. It was quite painful for me to adhere to that. When he sat down opposite me and, avoiding my eyes, started dictating his will, I thought I had him: he now had to reveal to me some of his history, and some of the people and circumstances in his life.’

‘Weren’t you ever tempted to investigate his life without him knowing?’ he asks.

‘Of course I was, but I knew if he ever found out, he would severe all his ties to me.’ He can see a slow sadness rising in her. ‘He once told me, while he was sitting in that chair having coffee – and I’ve never forgotten the feeling of unshakeable finality and threat that was in and around his statement – “Katherine, you do not want my life to taint you and your family. Best that you only see and know my best side.”’

‘Do you think he ever delved into your life, without your knowledge?’

‘You think he would’ve done that?’ She sounds genuinely surprised.

He chooses the easy way out. ‘I don’t know. Like you, I didn’t know much about Aaron’s “other” lives. Mostly I saw his best side.’

‘Are you sure, Daniel?’

‘Why do you ask that?’ He feels Aaron’s amused presence in the room.

‘Because he has made you the sole executor of his estate,’ she says, her scrutiny of him unwavering.

‘Perhaps for the same reason he chose you as his sole lawyer and remained loyal to you all this time,’ he replies, almost waiting for Aaron’s usual ironical laughter. She rises, goes to her desk and brings back a leather-bound folder. When she is seated again, he has to ask. ‘Did you expect him to die – to die the way he did?’

She looks away from him, and starts shaking her head, but stops and then says, in almost a whisper, ‘I suppose I did, and I dreaded it.’

‘We dreaded it also – but we didn’t do anything to stop him, because that’s the way he wanted to live. Or should I say, some inner power compelled him to live that way.’

‘Always at the edge; always in danger,’ she says. ‘And always trying to be in control.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘I don’t want to speculate but I think he knew who were going to cause his – his end, and how he wanted them punished.’

For a breathless moment, Daniel tried not to believe her. ‘How do you know?’ he asked finally.

‘Some of it is in his will.’ She smiles and looks over at him. ‘I think he has also prepared his utu.’

‘Who do you think killed him?’ It was so easy to ask it, though he didn’t want to face that terrible revelation.

‘Perhaps some of his “close associates”? But he kept me out of his ‘otherworld’ so I don’t know.’

They sit for a while in silence, as the gallery of Aaron’s close associates that Daniel knew about paraded through his mind, with Feau and Bonzy being the most demanding of his attention.

She opens the folder in her lap, puts on a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles with purple-black lenses, and says, ‘It is a simply worded will.’ She pauses. ‘Aaron always had an elegance and simplicity about him.’ She waits for his reaction, but he maintains his silence, so she asks, ‘Do you want me to read it to you?’ He nods once. She starts reading Aaron’s will.

Contained in himself, he stands close to Cheryl, who gazes up at him with concern. She reaches over and holds onto his left arm. The elegant lift descends as if he is descending into the complex depths of Aaron’s will, into implications that grow and grow, lushly, into an intricate and inescapable web with him as the untangler, the unraveller; it is a role he doesn’t want but knows Aaron has deliberately assigned him. The will is three pages long and in simple lucid English, but it is like an inspired and well-ordered poem whose surface simplicity, when you dive into it, opens into seas that change colours, tides, meanings and feelings with every reading. But this isn’t a poem to be appreciated and deciphered. No. Aaron is leaving him the ‘results’ of his life and the total responsibility for dividing and distributing that to the members of their Tribe and others named in the list of beneficiaries. If he rejects that role, it will all go to charity. Aaron’s laughter echoes in his head, knowing what will happen if Daniel, the unraveller, allows that: the people in the list would hold him responsible for giving away their entitlements, and the harmony and alofa in the Tribe would disintegrate …

‘Are you okay, Dad?’ Cheryl rescues him from his contemplation.

‘Yes, I just have to think it through.’

‘Think what through?’

‘Your clever Uncle Aaron’s will,’ he replies. ‘I have to administer it and ensure his wealth, his estate, is shared out according to his wishes.’

‘What’s in his will, Dad?’ she asks.

‘Sorry, but I’m not allowed to tell you or anyone else, darling. Apart from his lawyer, I’m the only one allowed to know the full will.’ She looks disappointed. ‘You know how your uncle was such a mysterious guy – with a weird sense of humour and justice. I think he’s put me right in the shit, and he’s now enjoying watching me trying not to drown in it.’

‘What do you have to do now?’

‘Arrange his funeral and burial.’

‘What sort of funeral does he want?’

He tells her, and her face breaks into a shining smile, her eyes aglow with mischief. As the lift reaches the ground floor and the door slides opens, he puts his left arm round her shoulders and they walk into the lobby, Cheryl trying to suppress her erupting laughter and Daniel joining her.

The lobby floor is shiny grey-white marble that catches their laughing reflections as they move across it towards the front entrance, as if they are dancing.