I’ve never visited my dad. We may share the same name and DNA but that’s all. I spent nine years of my life being Jack Jr. before going by my middle name. Sometimes when I was in trouble at home, Mum would call me Jack-son. She would save that name for when she wanted my dad to deal with me. I was his son and his responsibility, like when I failed a subject at school or cut the hair off my sister’s favorite doll. Belinda would call me Jacky in the times before our lives changed, and kept telling me I looked like a girl.

My last memory of Dad is that shy, humble smile of his, flashed at me from the back of a police car, his head twisted toward us, not a hint of shame in his features, almost a look of relief in some ways, as if he didn’t have to hide his true self anymore.

I’ve seen him a few times since, but only on TV and in the papers. Nobody has taken a photo of him in about eighteen years, not since he got snapped dozens of times being led from the back of a van to the back steps of the courthouse. Only reason I knew he was still alive was because nobody has ever rung to tell me otherwise.

I don’t know whether you have to phone ahead or simply show up, but once I drop Sam off I use my cell phone and call directory and ask for the number. A minute later I’m on the phone to the visitation department. I ask for directions and compare them to a map that’s about ten years out of date but does the job.

It’s a thirty-minute drive from my in-laws’ place. I take a shortcut out behind the airport where the roads are narrower but have a higher speed limit. There are cars parked up off the sides, the front windscreens facing the runways on the other side of the chain-link fences, people inside them watching for hours on end the planes come and go. I head down a highway enclosed by pastures, the road edged with fir trees and wildflowers. There are large transmission towers growing out of the fields and shrinking off into the distance. The road markings are all faded from the sun and worn from constant traffic. Mailboxes stand to attention every kilometer or so where gravel roads twist off from the highway between fields of gorse, winding their way toward large farmhouses built to capture the sun.

The prison is hidden out of sight beyond fields of trees, well away from homes that escapees would visit within minutes of being on the run. The complex is a mixture of several buildings, several wings, all made up of concrete blocks and interconnected with more concrete blocks, the whole place with an industrial feel, as if inside are not the condemned, but men welding steel and creating the machinery that runs this city. Just concrete and steel everywhere, and wire too—plenty of razor-sharp wire tying the look together. A couple of guard towers up in the corners, unarmed men up in them staring down, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of trouble. Behind it all the tall skeletons of cranes at work, dust in the air kicked up by heavy equipment, engine noise from the bulldozers and cement mixers carrying for miles. There’s a long wing with scaffolding erected near the end and workmen busy on extending it, big burly men covered in grease and sweat who all possibly live within the walls they’re creating.

The visitors’ entrance is far more modern, like the entrance to a three-star hotel. There are large glass doors that seem as though they could be opening into a well-furnished foyer. The entire thing has the fresh look of renovations, and I wonder about the reasoning behind it. I’m not sure how it looked in the past, but the last few years have seen plenty of add-ons and updates to accommodate the new and the aspiring criminals this city is producing. Already some of the large open grounds out here have been zoned for more buildings, more cells, more inmates, and the grounds immediately nearby are already being converted. There have been editorials in the papers lately suggesting they build the concrete walls around Christchurch City and save some time; some even think we should take the biblical route and fill those walls up with water. I never believed them. I never knew Christchurch was really this bad—but now I know it’s worse.

There is a landscaped garden with a lush lawn heading toward the glass doors. I’m not sure what image they’re trying to sell here, but the whole thing seems very corporate. The doors open and it’s air-conditioned inside, which is a relief, because the parking lot with the asphalt has to be over forty degrees. A woman watches me from behind a reception counter with Plexiglas separating her from me. There are two men back there with her also. Three video surveillance cameras stare down at me from different angles within the room.

“Can I help you, sir?”

It’s like a bank in here, large potted plants, chairs everywhere, the counter with the smiling woman. If six armed men burst into this room I don’t think they’d get far. For the hundredth time today I wonder where those men are, and know they’re about as far away from this prison as you can get.

“Sir?”

The visitor’s entrance may be fresh and friendly, but the woman behind the desk is not. She’s in her forties with the kind of steely look that could scare half of the inmates straight. “Ah, yeah, I’m here to visit somebody.”

“Name?”

“Mine or his?”

“Both.”

“Ah, I’m Jack Hunter,” I say, hating the sound of the name, and saying it because that’s the name my dad will have given them. “My dad is . . .”

“Jack the Hunter,” she says, and she flinches away from me, just a little, but enough to notice. “Hang on a moment,” she says, and she buzzes for one of the guards. “Take a seat.” I do as she says in case she stands up and throws me into one.

It takes a couple of minutes for the guard to appear. He’s older than me and a lot bigger and looks as if he can’t wait for me to say the wrong thing.

“This way,” he says, and I follow him.

“No touching,” he says. “No yelling. No passing any objects. That’s pretty much all you got to know, but you break any of those rules and you’re out of here. You get me?”

“No touching, no yelling, no handing over anything. I get it,” and I wonder if the rules are the same for everybody.

The corporate image disappears. We head down a concrete hallway to a heavy metal door, passing an office on the way full of video monitors showing images from the prison. There are a few guards there, and one of them comes out and pats me down and passes a metal detector over me. It beeps a few times and I have to leave my keys and wallet in a tray. The original guard leads me toward another door. It’s buzzed open, and then we’re in another corridor. Another metal door. Another buzzing sound. The guard opens the door and takes a step back. “In there,” he says, and then he follows me inside.

I was expecting a row of phones with a thick piece of Plexiglas between them, covered in palm prints and scratches. Failing that, it’d be an interrogation room, my dad handcuffed and shackled to a chair. Instead it’s a large room with about a dozen tables. There are plenty of other prisoners in their orange jumpsuits talking to family members. One of them I recognize, a man very much like my father. I’ve seen him scattered over the pages of the papers, his face always on TV. He’s sitting opposite a woman and a man in their midsixties—perhaps his parents, because the woman is an older, female version of him. The man is the Christchurch Carver, and the media made the connection quicker with him and hyped him up as the city’s most infamous serial killer—even though he has maintained his innocence. The Carver looks up at me. He’s got a scar running down the side of his face and an eyelid that’s all twisted and doesn’t seem to fit right. He smiles and his broken eyelid droops.

A door at the opposite end of the room opens, and my dad comes through, a guard right behind him. For a second I’m back in time, watching his smile, then I’m further back, Dad throwing a ball with me, hugging me at night, putting a Band-Aid on my knee or removing a splinter, and back then Dad was the best dad in the world. When I was eight years old I even bought him a coffee mug that said the same thing. The mug lied. The memories lied too. He walks over toward me, but before he can reach out the guard following him reminds us of the no-touching rule—which is perfectly fine with me.