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public.” Lilywhite blinked in surprise. Ihaka gave him a quizzical look. “You think I stopped watching you just because the minister threw a wobbly?”
    â€œDid you report that?”

    â€œJesus, that would’ve got me in the shit, not you. By that stage the investigation was on the back-burner and I was under strict orders to stay away from you. Just mentioning your name was enough to get me in strife. No, it was just for my benefit.”
    â€œThe quiet, private satisfaction of knowing you were right and your critics were wrong?”
    Ihaka shook his head. “No, more the relief of knowing I hadn’t fucked up my career over nothing.”
    Lilywhite subsided into the pillows, closing his eyes. A minute went by, then another. Finally, his eyes opened and locked onto Ihaka: “There’s one condition attached to what I’m about to tell you: that you keep it from my children until I’m gone. Beyond that, well, anything you can do would be much appreciated. Agreed?”
    â€œAgreed.”
    â€œYou’re right, of course. I had Joyce killed.” He tapped his chest. “In a funny sort of way, the guilt has helped me come to terms with this. Why should I have what I took from her?”
    â€œSo who killed her?”
    â€œWell, there’s the catch. I don’t know.”

3
    Christopher Lilywhite made his confession as if he had all the time in the world. He began at the beginning.
    In 1972 Joyce Herbertson came down from Dargaville, where her father dug holes for the Ministry of Works, to attend Auckland Teachers’ Training College. She lived in Royal Oak with her aunt and uncle, who mowed sports fields for the city council.
    A friend of her aunt’s worked at Smith and Caughey’s in Queen Street, where one got to fawn over a better class of person. She took a shine to shy little Joyce, who’d been brought up to be respectful of her elders no matter how ghastly they were, and wangled her a part-time job in the Manchester department.
    Joyce studied hard, she played competitive netball, she went to church every Sunday, even paying attention to the sermons. Her aunt soon gave up stealing peeks at the diary which Joyce wrote up in bed each night and kept under her pillow. Although she rationalized this invasion of privacy as in loco parentis concern for her niece’s welfare, it was nothing more than prurience, and in that regard Joyce was a disappointment. After two anticlimactic months her aunt decided she got more of a tweak from a Mills and Boon.
    Now and again Joyce permitted herself to dream, but what she expected to do was go back to Dargaville, teach
at the primary school she’d attended, and couple up with a nice young man with reasonable prospects, a steady sort who’d go on to be a deputy this or assistant that or a subbranch manager. Her parents would want him to be a churchgoer, but that wasn’t a sticking point for her. After all, if you took out the miracles – the virgin birth, and take up thy bed and walk, and on the third day he rose again (all the slightly hard to believe stuff) – and the ritual – the prayers and psalms, the stale wafers and communion wine – it really boiled down to being a good person and treating people the way you’d like to be treated. She would never have voiced this thought, but it often occurred to her as she slid to her knees to drone along with the rest of the congregation: wouldn’t it have pretty much the same effect if they dispensed with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and just drummed the Golden Rule into everyone?
    She got a job at Remuera Primary School and moved out of her aunt and uncle’s place into a flat in Meadowbank, sharing with a couple of girls from her netball team. One of them was in her second year of a Bachelor of Education at Auckland University. People were always telling Joyce she had a good brain, so she enrolled at university and paid her