Pete Kowalski

Pete Kowalski is 41 and has photographed, since he was 25, what people prefer not to see. He was born in Pittsburgh, the son of a steelworker and a seamstress, and bought his first used camera at 14, with the money from a summer delivering newspapers. He followed fishermen, miners and protesters until he reached the environmental group, where he found the first job that made him believe pictures were good for something.

In Auckland he rents a simple room in a hostel near the port, with an iron bed, a window facing the cranes and a small sink where he washes his clothes instead of using the laundromat. He always has an electric kettle going, an ashtray full and a stack of letters from his daughter, who lives in Chicago with her mother. He says he has slept little since he turned 30.

He is a man with a full red beard flecked with white, tousled red hair and the sunken eyes of someone who doesn't sleep. He wears an olive-green canvas jacket with big pockets and a gray wool cap he doesn't take off even indoors. He is shaken, speaks in broken sentences, chain-smokes and blames himself for being alive.

About the night of the sinking, his account is that of someone who can't stop repeating it: he was at the wharf bar, with half the crew, and when the first explosion came he ran back and saw the twisted deck. He arrived in time to see the second. He remembers his friend shouting that the films were in the cabin, and that he let him go. He says the group in Auckland had no shortage of enemies, from the trawler fishermen to half the newspapers.

Pete speaks looking at his own hands and stops mid-sentence when he remembers his friend. It may be the genuine grief of someone who lost a person he considered family. It may be the weight of someone carrying more than the guilt of letting someone go back. The detective will have to decide which.