Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  The Hana Du Rose Mysteries

  K T Bowes

  Published by Hakarimata Press

  Copyright 2013

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  LOGAN DU ROSE

  ABOUT HANA

  HANA DU ROSE

  LEGACY DU ROSE

  Other works by this Author

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  LOGAN DU ROSE

  The Hana Du Rose Mysteries

  Book 1

  K T BOWES

  Acknowledgement

  For William Ulyatt, who didn’t always know how to say what he meant.

  Proverbs 22:6

  “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

  King James Version (KJV)

  Rānana - London 1987

  “He’s dying, man! Have some decency!” Logan Du Rose ran a hand through his dark hair and glared at the teenage boy sprawled on the bed.

  “I only met him a few weeks ago. Why should I care about an uncle I don’t know?” the teen replied, sneering at his younger brother’s irritation.

  “Because you’re the oldest. And he paid for your flight here.” Logan took a step back, almost falling over his own feet in the uncomfortable shoes. He swore and righted himself. His brother laughed.

  “You look a dick in shoes,” he said. “Can’t walk in them, either.”

  “Nor can you!” Logan retorted. His body felt weird, encased in the smart, unfamiliar clothes. The borrowed shoes were a size too big and tripped him if he didn’t watch his feet all the time.

  “Get ready!” The female voice pulled the boys from their dispute but its owner missed the rude gesture which the bigger boy delivered from his position on the bed. Logan eyed the neat jacket with disdain and opened his mouth to complain. “Jacket!” his mother snapped, pointing a work worn finger towards the chair it hugged.

  Logan exhaled with exaggerated effect, wasted on Miriam Du Rose. As he passed her, his jaw grew slack and he stared at her in surprise.

  “Quit staring!” she said, her voice wavering. But he couldn’t. He continued to search her face until she aimed a sharp slap to his left ear. He ducked, forcing her to miss and pointed towards her smooth olive chin.

  “What happened?” The innocence in his face made his mother’s cheeks flush with shame and embarrassment. She raised her fingers to her chin and then remembered her sister’s instructions. ‘Don’t touch it once it’s on or you’ll rub it off. Europeans don’t understand our customs. Women with facial tattoos get stared at. You’ve got enough to deal with, sister. Keep your moko covered with this cream until you’re home on Papatuanuku’s New Zealand again. Go well.’ Her sister kissed her forehead after issuing the warning and Miriam Du Rose shoved the cream into her flight bag and then forgot it.

  Michael sat up in the bed and pulled a face at his brother. “What did you do, Ma?” he asked. “Where’s your moko?” His brow knitted in concern.

  Miriam shrugged. “Didn’t you see the pakeha on the train yesterday?” she asked, the flush claiming her throat and neck as her anxiety hiked. “They stared at us like we were a freak show. I’m tired of it. Just a few more days and we’ll be free of this place. The Māori lineage on my face has no meaning for them. Sister warned me but I didn’t listen.” She wrung her hands in dismay, the veins standing out like tram lines.

  “It’s ok, Ma.” Logan put an arm around his mother, the outrage making his eyes glitter storm water grey. “Kuia said to be proud of who we are.” His grandmother’s words washed over him, a cool mist in the overheated hotel room.

  “Kuia never had to leave Aotearoa!” Miriam snapped, her pitch rising as she contemplated the difficult journey to the hospital. “She spent her life waving her moko at the sky, not riding the underground and being stared at by whale-stinking white people.”

  “We’ll look after you, Ma,” Logan said, kissing her on the temple, already tall for his fourteen years. “We’ll fight them for you.” He flexed the fingers of his other hand and screwed them up into a scarred fist.

  Miriam shook her head. “No fighting! Just do as you’re told.”

  Logan dropped his arm from her shoulders and snatched up the jacket, hoisting it over his scratchy shirt and the tie which hung askew beneath his collar. He watched his older brother through narrowed eyes.

  “Michael!” Miriam’s shriek told Logan she’d noticed his brother’s apparel of underpants and the downy chest hair of youth. He smirked as he wiggled into the jacket and saw his mother whip the bed sheets back. “The train leaves in twenty minutes!” she shouted, forgetting her proximity to other humans in this grid locked city.

  Logan’s eyes widened as someone in the room next door banged on the wall. “Mum!” he said in alarm. “You can’t shout here like you do at home. There’s people to hear you.” He inhaled and felt the call of the mountain on his heart strings. He was bound to it by some ethereal cord and it rebelled against his absence, the tangata whenua, the people of the land demanding his return. Logan glanced at his elder brother to see if he felt it too, but Michael busied himself repelling Miriam’s grip on his ankle.

  “Get dressed!” she snapped, keeping the hairy ankle firmly in her hand. Undeterred, Michael retched, making convincing noises as though he might vomit. Logan sneered and shook his head.

  Miriam let go, staring at him and glancing towards the ensuite bathroom. “Go in there!” she squeaked. “They’ll charge me extra if you’re sick on the sheets!”

  Logan watched his brother dash into the tiny bathroom with scepticism. Miriam’s eyes looked bulbous and spacey in her olive face and he narrowed his eyes. “Did you take your pills today, Ma?” he asked.

  She shrugged, not seeming to understand the question. “Pills?”

  “Your special tablets, remember? The white ones. Did you take them?”

  “I don’t know.” Miriam gnawed on her bottom lip, her mind elsewhere.

  Logan watched her struggling to recall and forced his voice into a gentle, adult timbre. “It’s ok, Ma. I’ll count them.” He strode across to the cabinet next to the double bed, tripping over the borrowed shoes again and trying not to curse. Fourteen days away from home and four small white tablets each day. He tipped up the bottle and watched the pills skitter onto the wooden surface. “We fly home the day after tomorrow, aye?” he asked, mentally calculating how many should remain.

  “Yes.” She wiped a hand over her eyes, managing to avoid touching her chin at the last minute. “Home.” She said the word with care and Logan’s brow knitted, wondering if she felt it was a blessing or a curse. He doubted Miriam Du Rose could be happy anywhere. He touched the tiny tabs with his finger, recounting twice more.

  “Ma?” His tone held anxiety. “You haven’t taken them for days. There’s too many here.” The volume rose on the last sentence and Logan’s heart went into a free fall of fear. He seized a glass on the tiny kitchenette and filled it with water, pressing it into Miriam’s hand. “Take two now,” he instructed. “Dad said.”

  Miriam gasped and her eyes widened, losing touch with reality by degrees. “I love your father so much, Logan,” she said, her voice a whisper. She stared up at him with something in her face he didn’t recognise or understand.

  “That’s nice,” he replied, the
answer lame. “You have to take these; he said so.”

  “Your father said so?” she asked, her face breaking into a smile. “Ok.” She pushed the white pills onto her tongue and took a sip of the water. Logan watched her swallow, hoping she hadn’t faked it. If the mania caught hold of her they wouldn’t be allowed on any plane, probably ever. He forced a smile onto his lips, resenting the role of parent which rested on his young shoulders.

  “You’ve smudged your make up,” he said, keeping his voice light as he lied. “Sit on the bed and put it straight and I’ll deal with Michael. We’ll leave in one minute.”

  Miriam nodded and placed the glass in the sink. She sat on the double bed and reached into her handbag for the compact her sister lent her. Logan waited until she fluffed around, staring anxiously at her face in the miniscule mirror and then strode to the bathroom. He used a coin from his pocket to turn the catch from the outside on the locked door, slipping inside with a bushman’s stealth.

  Tamatāne - to be a Boy

  He entered with such speed; he caught Michael admiring his own face in the wide mirror. He spun him one handed and administered a spiteful uppercut to the stomach with the other at the same time as closing the door with his heel. As Michael bent double with a grunt, Logan yanked his head backwards using a handy tuft of black hair at his crown. “So, tell me about the pills, you lazy bugger,” he hissed into Michael’s upturned face.

  His brother cussed and Logan fixed a large palm across his mouth. “Shut it!” he told him. “You had one job; to make sure Ma took her tablets and you couldn’t even get that right.”

  “She’s fine,” Michael lied as Logan moved his hand, using the opportunity to bite down on the fleshy palm. Instead of pulling his hand away, Logan shoved it harder into Michael’s mouth, hurting his own fingers but busting his brother’s lip at the same time.

  “Liar!” he spat.

  “Gerroff me!” Michael grunted, wrapping his arms around Logan’s waist and ploughing him into the door. There was a muffled clunk as Logan used the rubbery soles to slow his backward momentum on the floor tiles and Michael cried out as Logan lowered his face and smashed it on his knee. “You fight like a girl,” Michael huffed, bleeding from two different points on his lip.

  “That should please you,” Logan hissed, screwing one of Michael’s ears around in his bruised hand. “Sex machine like you; don’t you enjoy it rough?”

  As Michael wailed in pain, Logan head butted him on the bridge of his nose, giving himself a headache. “Kiss that, big man!”

  Michael dropped to the floor like a stone, gripping each painful body part in turn. “I hate you!” he groaned.

  Logan stepped back and glanced at himself in the mirror. The starchy shirt had specks of blood on the front and he watched in dismay as a line of red began a steady track from his nose to his top lip. He swore and grabbed the white hand towel, balling it under his nose. Michael sat up and wiped his face on his forearm, leaving a line of blood and spit on the hairy surface. His face paled as he watched Logan’s grey eyes bug in fear above the towel, anger turning to concern in a split second. “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “She’s missed four days,” Logan said, his voice muffled in the towel. “She must have stopped taking them after that visit when the doctor told her to contact the rest of the whānau because uncle wasn’t gonna make it.”

  “I didn’t mean her; I meant you. That’s doctor’s a stupid bugger,” Michael grunted, hauling himself to his bare feet. “Do we look like we’ve got family here?”

  “You’re meant to be in charge,” Logan jibed, anger in his grey eyes.

  “Yeah, I know. I got distracted.” Michael reached for the toilet roll and balled up a wad, thrusting it towards Logan. “Here, use this. They charge extra for stains and stuff on the linen.”

  “You’d know,” Logan spat, releasing the towel and examining the smattering of red in the tufty white folds. “You flew here to see uncle, not go spreading your seed around the wider London area.”

  “I’ve seen uncle,” Michael retorted, pressing the toilet roll to his brother’s nose. “What’s to see? He’s an old man who’s dying of lung cancer. That’s what you get for smoking sixty a day your whole life.”

  “He’s got no tamariki,” Logan replied, his eyes wide with disbelief. “No children means you’re it. He needs to pass his mana to you before he dies, otherwise it’s lost to the family.”

  Michael laughed. “You don’t believe all that crap, do you bro’? The old ways are dead. Any mana our whānau had is gone, wasted. Their spiritual superiority got trampled under their selfishness, can’t you see that?”

  Logan shook his head. “No. Kuia had mana, heaps and heaps of it. It’s not gone.”

  Michael drew the toilet roll away and examined Logan’s face. “Yeah, well she was the last, bro’, sorry to break it to you. As soon as I’m old enough, I’m escaping that bloody cursed mountain and never going back.”

  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 ok 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 sex with a stranger abhorrent. Michael was rampant, exercising his cha
rms 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. Brown sticks to brown in this life and don’t you forget it.”

  Whare Tūroro - The Hospital

  The Māori 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.