The Simple Death (20 page)

Thirty-four

M
cIver had given Troy the weekend off. The Clinical Excellence Commission's response to the stats wouldn't be ready until Monday, and the investigation had stalled. The sergeant wanted a chance to think it over, work out where to take things. He was meeting with Alan Peters some time Sunday for a review.

Troy slept in, got to the hospice at nine.

There was an armed security guard in the foyer, and he stood up when Troy came in, as though he recognised him. Troy flashed the guy his badge and kept going. The man stood back instinctively but Troy could tell his mind was starting to turn over. It was a slow job that tended to keep your reaction time down.

Luke was asleep in his room, which was in semi-darkness. There was a drip in his arm and he seemed peaceful, his snoring nice and steady. The cat was sleeping on top of the blanket, nestled against Luke's hip. Troy took the priest's hand and squeezed it gently, stood there and tried to calm everything down, bring himself into some kind of sync with the man on the bed. He shook Luke's shoulder, spoke to him, but there was no change in the rhythm of his breathing. Shook him some more, but it made no difference.

Troy sat down heavily and looked around the room, at the get-well cards on the windowsill. He reached out for some and read:

You're a good man, Father. Stand by you always.

I was one of the boys on the Colo camp and I know you didn't do this thing. Stay strong.

We will always be grateful for the ten hours you prayed by our Steve on his last night on this earth. Knowing you for fourteen years we know you are innocent.

Troy took out his phone and rang his sister, Georgina, who was a psychologist. She and her family had been on holiday in Sicily and he wasn't sure if they were back, but she answered after a few rings and they talked about the vacation. Georgie and he had been brought up separately after their parents died. For years the two of them hadn't got on, but lately, before Anna had left, their families had been seeing each other a bit.

When they'd finished with the family news, he told her what Tim Kalnins had said about Luke. Without mentioning names, he asked if a man who was having a passionate physical affair with a woman would abuse a young boy at the same time.

‘It's unlikely. I'd say almost impossible,' she said.

Her voice was warm and strong; she'd make a good expert witness.

He saw someone had come into the room, and told Georgie he had to go. She told him she loved him and disconnected.

‘Detective Troy. They couldn't keep you away then?'

‘Hello, Ms Moore. You work weekends?'

‘It's Dr Moore, actually. You need to go now, you're trespassing.'

He looked down at Luke's face. ‘He's sleeping well.'

‘It's the drugs. Without them, he'd be awake and in a great deal of pain.'

‘I'd like to stay for a while.' He rubbed the cat's fur lightly. ‘We're not doing any harm.'

She reached for her phone, staring at him. Bitch.

He stood up heavily. ‘Was the archbishop here yesterday?'

‘His Eminence visits most days. He's been very good to Father Carillo.'

She picked up the cat, murmured ‘Dexie' and nuzzled it with her jaw. Her phone fell onto the bed and Troy picked it up for her. They walked out. At the doorway, the cat twisted out of her arms and ran back to Luke's bed.

‘Good judge of character,' said Troy.

She smiled, shook her head. ‘He knows, that's all.'

‘Knows?'

‘When someone's near the end.'

He went quiet and she said nothing, letting him absorb it. He could see that from her point of view he was a pain in the arse.

On the stairs he said, ‘Why do you think Luke doesn't want to see his old friends?'

‘Maybe it's a sense of shame. This type of revelation can change a person, you know.'

‘I was just wondering, because I know for a fact he didn't do what he's being accused of.'

He'd wanted to surprise her, but she just gave him a look of pity. Of course.

They reached the lobby and Troy looked over at the security guard, who averted his gaze.

‘That man was confused by your badge,' Moore said loudly. ‘It won't happen again. Next time we'll call the police. I mean it.'

Troy nodded. ‘If this is maybe my last visit, could I say goodbye to the nurse I met before, Julie? She was good to Luke, I'd like to thank her.' He hoped he wasn't getting her into trouble.

‘Julie's not here anymore.'

‘She moved on?'

Moore cleared her throat, looked tired. ‘I'm afraid she died,' she said. ‘It was peaceful. Apparently she had an undiagnosed heart condition.'

He stopped in the doorway and stared at her. ‘Dead?'

For a second her confidence faltered. ‘I know. In a hospice, it's not the staff you expect to die.'

Her attention was distracted by a man coming in from the street, and she turned to him. ‘Carl,' she called. Then to Troy, ‘This is Julie's boyfriend. I have to go.'

The man was in his mid-thirties and had a pale, fleshy face and short blond hair. He avoided Troy's eyes and Moore's too as he stopped and spoke to her about getting something from Julie's locker. He was looking at the ground as though human contact was difficult for him at this time. Troy walked away, thinking about Cornish and her kindness to Luke.

For the rest of the day he was on the beach, and had dinner at the home of one of his fellow lifesavers. He left early because he felt pleasantly exhausted. It had been hot and they'd performed three rescues, always satisfying but they took it out of you.

Not long after he got home, Anna called. He'd been thinking about ringing her but had put it off because of Conti, afraid he might give something away through his tone. But he must have sounded normal, because they chatted amiably for a long time. He was in the right mood for the phone, weary but not ready for bed. They talked about Matt and then Troy asked about the strange call he'd had from Mary. Anna said she didn't know about it, sounded embarrassed.

They moved on, he told her about Ruth being pregnant, thought she'd be happy.

‘How old is Mac?' was what she said. ‘Forty-six?'

‘In his prime.'

‘So he'll be sixty-seven when the child turns twenty-one. That's too old.'

‘I don't think he planned it this way.'

‘Is that an excuse?'

‘You're a hard woman.'

She didn't laugh. ‘You've got to think of the children's interests. What if he gets sick? Sixty-seven's not young. Are they having more kids?'

‘There's supposed to be more in the
Telegraph
tomorrow,' he said. ‘About Luke.'

‘You're changing the subject.'

‘I'm postponing it. I need to think.'

‘Luke,' she said slowly. ‘How sad.'

He wondered if he should tell her Luke was innocent. But he'd made his promise.

‘I'll try to see him tomorrow.' Told her about the trouble he'd had at the hospice that morning.

‘I want to see him too.'

He said, ‘You'll have to come to Sydney to do that.'

‘I am in Sydney.' No, he thought, you're in Brisbane. ‘I'm staying with Wendy and Ralph.'

Anna had taken Matt to stay with the Duttons, before she'd moved to Brisbane. Troy hadn't spoken to them since the day he'd called at their house while Anna was still there, and Wendy had refused to let him in.

‘That's good,' he said slowly.

‘It'd be nice for you to be friends with Ralph again.'

At the end of The Tower investigation, Ralph had saved Troy, with help from McIver. Troy had acted badly and there'd been a cover-up, he owed Ralph a great deal. He felt uneasy about what had happened between them, but it was not all his fault.

‘They want us to have dinner,' she said.

This was strange. But with Anna you had to wait. One thing followed another. He realised that he might still love her. It didn't seem possible, he was not even sure it was a good idea. And the timing was absurd, that this was happening now, just after he'd got together with Conti.

She said, ‘But you and I should have dinner first. Why don't I meet you at the hospice tomorrow night?'

He said nothing, suddenly resentful of the way she'd treated him. As though in all of this his patience was just taken for granted, when in fact it had been the glue, the only thing still holding them together.

‘Nick?' she said.

‘Okay.'

He needed to do this for Matt, if for no other reason. But as he said it to himself, he saw what he had not known before. Matt was not sufficient reason. He had to want to do this for himself, or it would never work. It would not be a life.

She said, ‘You don't sound very enthusiastic.'

He said, ‘I'll see you at six.'

After hanging up he turned on the television and watched a crime show. They'd never watched this sort of program together, because she didn't like them. Lately he'd discovered this one and quite enjoyed it, although not for the reasons the makers intended. Its lack of realism made him think about his own job and why things were done in certain ways. Such thoughts were unexpected, he'd never been particularly reflective. Recently, though, this had started to change. The book he was reading was part of this, it pushed him to think in a new way. This was uncomfortable yet it also felt right, as if an unused muscle had been brought back into play. He wanted this to continue, and wondered what would happen if he got back with Anna.

SUNDAY

Thirty-five

T
roy woke late again, and ate a bowl of muesli while sitting on the back step, looking at the yard. Trying not to think about Conti, he considered the string he'd stretched between pegs on the back lawn to indicate the ground area of the extension. There would still be plenty of grass left for Matt to play on. There might be other children, too. Anna and Conti, he thought. Shit.

He walked to the shops and bought the
Sunday Telegraph
. Luke wasn't on the front page and he had to stand on the footpath and work his way through the paper, dropping inserts and advertising brochures on the ground, until he found the article. It was on page thirteen, with the same picture of Luke they'd run last week, taken not long ago when he was wearing his vestments outside the church. Luke had one of those tough faces made you wonder what he'd done in his life, to whom. You saw faces like that on old war criminals and generals. People said you got the face you deserved, but it wasn't always so. Luke's face seemed built for conditions different to the ones he'd had to endure.

The article had only one piece of new information, from Martin Napoli. He said he'd noticed Luke go off with Hughes because the other boy was his friend, but hadn't thought anything of it at the time. He said Hughes had later told him he'd been abused on that night. This was a few months after the camp and Hughes didn't say which priest had done it. But Napoli had remembered which priest his friend had gone off with.

‘I didn't believe him,' Napoli was quoted as saying. ‘Back then you couldn't believe that about a priest, it seemed like an evil thing to say. But I've never forgotten his words.'

It wasn't much, thought Troy, but it was enough for the paper to run last week's story again. That was where the damage would come from—repetition. People tell you they don't trust the newspapers, but most of them believe everything they read there. Read it twice and they believe it twice as much. There was a new picture of Hughes, looking sad but defiant.

So, a man touched you thirty years ago, Troy thought. Not Luke, but someone else. Jesus. Get over it. Worse things happen. Hughes should have joined the army, got out more.

He bent down and picked up the fallen bits of paper and looked around for a bin, mildly ashamed of what he'd just thought. It was not Hughes who upset him but the paper and what it represented, the way the world responded to all this. What about other victims of crime? Troy spent a lot of time with the families of people who'd been murdered. These people had had their lives torn apart, handed a load of suffering they would carry to their graves. Often they would end up feeling more pain than those who had been killed. And yet, you hardly saw anything about this in the media, while what had happened to Hughes became magnified, into something like this.

He found a bin and stuffed all the bits of the paper into it, pushed them down hard so they couldn't come out.

Thirty-six

S
tuart rings Leila and says, ‘Did you get the bottle?'

‘Not yet.'

She searched the house yesterday and found no trace of the diary Carl wants. So she spent the night here after all, and is going to search some more today.

‘This isn't good,' Stuart says, sounding agitated. ‘Alecia has the same disease as your mother. It's in the last stages and she's in considerable pain. Considerable pain.'

Leila knows this. She thinks back to those nights when her mother's crying would echo through the big house. Her own arms and legs start to ache and she twists in her chair. She knows she owes Stuart a great debt.

‘I'm very sorry,' she says softly. ‘I don't know what's happening. Carl's being difficult.'

‘I told Alecia about the bottle, which is unfortunate. Now she's expecting it. I didn't realise there'd be an issue.'

‘He won't give it to me.'

Stuart is surprised, sounds disbelieving.

She says, ‘Is Carl okay?'

‘Of course not. I'd imagine he's distraught.'

‘I meant more generally.' She's been thinking of the missing money, and the necklace.

‘Definitely. He's difficult, but that's a different thing entirely. Don't forget he gave some of his time to help Julie with your mother. He's helped other people too.'

‘So why won't he give me the bottle?'

‘He might not believe it's yours. It all depends on what Julie told him. It's still a puzzle why she took it from you at the airport. If anyone's unusual it was her; maybe he's just trying to clean up after her, in a sense.'

‘Julie?'

‘They were very close, my impression is they were two lost souls lucky to find each other. He was the strong one, but he must be shattered at the moment. At least Julie had her religion.'

Leila thinks about this, about everything she knows, all the bits cancelling each other out so that what remains is a void.

‘What are you keeping from me, Stuart?'

‘What?' he says, impatient. ‘Nothing. I know Julie was a good friend to you. Why don't you talk with Carl again—'

‘I just—'

‘I have to go. I've got a patient.'

And he is gone.

Leila sits still, her thoughts going round in circles. Finally she stands up and stretches. I know nothing, she tells herself. There is no framework, no connections.

Looks around the big lounge room with its chintz-covered chairs and sofas. Thinks:
it is time to leave
.