The Tower (20 page)

Troy felt a twinge of pity. ‘Won't Warton just move you to another job?'

‘Morning Star are their biggest client, and they're hard bastards. I'm out.' Randall was running a hand slowly over his shaved head. His face had gone red, but was now returning to its normal colour. He shrugged. ‘I always wanted to see more of the world,' he said in a voice suddenly hoarse with self-pity. ‘This could be my opportunity.'

Troy laughed. ‘Tell me about Tony Teresi.'

In a moment Randall was alert again. ‘A very interesting bloke, like one of those big entrepreneurs of the eighties, but with a difference. He wasn't just a money juggler, he wanted to build productive businesses. Pretty good at it, too.'

‘He worked in America, didn't he?'

‘Spent a decade or two in the gaming industry; must have done well because when he came back here in the nineties he owned two casinos, in Las Vegas and Macau. Came back because his wife was dying of cancer. She wasn't that old, wanted to be near her parents. So, the casinos are still churning out cash but he can't break into that industry here, it's too tight. Tony looks around, buys some coalmines up and down the east coast, bit like a hobby, and then becomes interested in how the coal gets to the ports. Before long he's out of coal and big in the railway business. Very big.'

‘I thought the railways are owned by government.'

‘Government owns the tracks but they sold off the freight services that run on them. A lot of the buyers lost their shirts in the confusion that followed, paid too much, the winner's curse. Tony comes in as a second-generation player and cleans up. The commodity boom gets bigger and he keeps making money. He did other stuff too, but basically it was coal and casinos.' He paused.

‘So what happened?'

‘Tony's wife dies and he takes it bad, really bad. Starts thinking about mortality, leaving some monument. I only know what I read, I never met the bloke, but that's when he started work on his idea for the tallest building in the world, here in Sydney. The Olympics were coming up and there was a feeling this city could do anything. It was going to be called Elena Tower—that was the name of his wife.'

Troy nodded, remembering more of the story himself now. The new owners had changed the name to Morning Star Tower, but it hadn't caught on.

Randall went on, ‘It takes him five or six years to buy an entire block, fifteen separate properties. It's on the fringe of the CBD but, even so, incredibly difficult. No one thought you could own a whole block in this city anymore. A massive achievement.'

‘He paid too much though, didn't he?'

Randall explained how The Tower had become an obsession. Teresi became impatient and started paying up to fifty per cent more than he should have. The finances became precarious. The Empire State Building design was picked because it had been his wife's favourite building, but it created all sorts of problems for a building of this size.

‘But couldn't he afford his folly?' said Troy.

‘He just kept paying too much for everything. He wanted the greatest new building in the world—a monument to Elena, like a modern Taj Mahal.'

Randall stood up, walked over to the window and, craning his neck, looked upwards. ‘For me he was a hero. When I was at university, people used to look down on engineers—the arts crowd said we had no imagination. But you need imagination to create something like this out of nothing.' He waved a hand and turned back. ‘What have they got to put up against this? There's no Picasso anymore, no James Joyce. But we can build things like The Tower that we've never built before.' He sat down and Troy wondered what this was all about. ‘Anyway, Tony had been spending all the profits from his other businesses on The Tower. Then the coal boom dipped and there was a problem with the casino in Macau. Suddenly Tony was going backwards. Morning Star had been a twenty-five per cent owner from the start, and had an option clause in the contract, so they got the rest cheap. People say Tony lost several hundred million by the time he got out. But even so,' Randall pointed out the window, ‘there it stands.'

‘What happened to Tony?'

‘Basically, he lost the lot. The shareholders sacked him at the AGM two years ago, and a week later he died of a heart attack.'

‘How many children?'

‘Just one. She got some bits and pieces. Not all that much, but I doubt she struggled.' He shook his head. ‘Still,' he said, ‘poor Margot.'

Troy was anxious to be off to visit Margot Teresi's place, wherever it might be—Ruth was getting the details—but he wanted to learn as much as he could from Randall first.

‘Are Morning Star good to work for?'

‘Their local manager is Henry Wu. Born in China but got out to Hong Kong years ago. They're tough people but they're spending big.'

He swivelled in his chair and pointed again at the facade of The Tower.

‘The pattern work on those granite slabs goes up for the first forty storeys. I mean, who's going to see it? But for them it's important to be able to say it's there. Have you been to Asia?'

‘Once.' He had been to India on his honeymoon.

‘Different ways of thinking. Morning Star are looking to dominate the insurance industry in the Asia-Pacific region within ten years, so there's a lot of symbolism here. They've added about fifty million dollars to the detail and upgraded materials—you should see some of the stuff they're bringing in.' He explained how normally with a new office building, the tenants would be expected to do the fit-out of the entire floor. But Morning Star were doing the area around the lifts on each floor themselves, with particularly fine timber work. ‘We're using beautiful tropical timber. They get the marquetry done in China and fly it down in sections. Huge quantities of some of the best stuff available anywhere in the world.'

‘They must have a lot of money to spare.'

Randall shrugged. ‘They're the modern equivalents of the companies that built the big New York skyscrapers in the twenties and thirties. And they know it. Symbolism matters to them. They like the way The Tower's the same as the Empire State Building—but bigger.'

Troy said, ‘Any thoughts on why Margot would have been there on Sunday?'

‘None.'

‘How easy would it have been for her to get in?'

‘Once you assume Bazzi's involvement, it becomes pretty straightforward, with Asaad involved too. She might have known Bazzi from the old company. He could have arranged the shift so there were no other guards near the front entrance at a certain time. She walks in. Asaad's on the gate, he doesn't note her on the list.'

‘Sergeant Little tells me your CCTV camera at the pedestrian entrance was disabled for the period we're interested in?'

‘Yep, another reason why it must have been that entrance. As shift manager, Bazzi had the key and the password; he must have switched off the camera. The other one, at the vehicle entrance, was left on. It doesn't show anything.'

Troy nodded. He knew all this already—the police had viewed copies of all the CCTV footage—but it was useful to see just how far Randall had conducted his own inquiries. He closed his notebook and stood up, said he'd be going. Randall, getting to his feet more slowly, looked suddenly serious.

‘Your boss, Sergeant Stone,' he said. ‘He asked for a pass for all the lifts in the building, which we thought a bit strange, but we gave it to him. Turns out he's been going all over the place, as high up as level ninety-two. What's that all about?'

‘I'm sure he'll let me know what lines of inquiry he's pursuing later today,' Troy said.

He started to walk towards the door but Randall didn't follow him. Instead, he called across the room, ‘Stone interviewed me yesterday, but he didn't seem all that interested. You're the one running this inquiry, aren't you?'

‘Now, why would you think that?' Troy said.

‘It's pretty obvious. With all due respect to the sergeant.'

The door in front of him opened and Randall's secretary appeared. She smiled at Troy and he smiled back.

‘Angel, this is Detective Nicholas Troy. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of him.'

‘That's good,' she said.

Troy smiled some more and turned to say goodbye to Randall, who was crossing the room now, his hand out. He seemed distracted and Troy guessed he was thinking about his future.

‘Thanks again for the other night,' the engineer said. ‘Let's catch up for that drink when you've got the time.'

They shook hands. Randall had a good firm grip. Troy liked the man. It was good to meet someone about his own age, at his own level, tackling similar sorts of career problems; discovering the world was more complicated than he'd realised.

‘We'll do that,' he said.

Downstairs, Troy stood on the footpath, taking in the busy, sunlit street, so different from Sunday night. The television crews he'd seen earlier had left, and two trucks were waiting to drive into the building's vehicle entrance. The people walking by were looking at The Tower with particular interest. There'd be a lot more interest when the victim's name was made known. Remembering he was short of cash, he went to the ATM outside the bank, where he made a withdrawal. As he waited he noticed the sign saying customers might be filmed while making a transaction. He looked for the camera and estimated from the angle of its lens that it would have no coverage of the other side of the road. Still, there was a possibility Margot Teresi had walked along this footpath, or even used the machine. As far as he knew, no one had checked.

He went into the bank and asked to speak to the manager. Some of the tellers were staring at him, presumably on account of the photo in the newspaper. It was not an enjoyable sensation: as a detective, he was used to looking at others. If you became the object of attention yourself, usually it meant you had failed.

A man a little older than himself, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a name tag that identified him as Alan Wainwright, came out of a door beside the tellers' counter and shook his hand. They went into a plain office with no windows. Troy explained his request, and Wainwright opened a top drawer and took out two DVDs in slim plastic cases, which he put on the desk. He pushed one across to Troy.

‘I called our security director yesterday to ask if I should contact the police and offer these,' he said, his voice a little strained with the excitement of it all. ‘He hasn't got back to me, but it's company policy to hand over CCTV footage if and when the police ask for it, so it's all yours.'

Troy nodded his thanks and slipped the case into a coat pocket.

He looked at the remaining DVD, wondering what it was. ‘Can I have that too?'

‘You'll have to tell me what it is you want,' said Wainwright.

This is stupid, Troy thought. But the manager was completely serious. Troy leaned back in his chair and thought about what he'd seen since he came into the bank. It came to him after a few moments.

‘There's a camera in the banking chamber,' he said. Actually, he didn't recall seeing it, but there must have been one.

Wainwright nodded and pushed the second DVD across the desk.

The manager said, ‘It has a not-bad view across the street. It's amazing what they can pick up these days.'

Troy went still, and told himself to keep breathing. ‘I don't suppose you keep it on at nights?'

‘We keep it on all the time.'

Troy stood up and shook the guy's hand. As he left the bank he cursed Ryan and Bergman, who had canvassed businesses along the street. They'd missed the cameras altogether. Sometimes, he thought, it was a wonder any crime got solved at all.

Seventeen

R
andall had never been in this part of the city before, way out west. He'd had no idea a place like this existed in Sydney. A few minutes earlier he'd passed a strip of shops, all with bars on their windows and doors, one a burned-out shell. Men were sitting on the gutter drinking from bottles in brown paper bags, staring at him with dead eyes. This was badlands territory. Randall paid attention to the sound of the hire car's engine, hoping it wouldn't break down.

It was early afternoon and he was looking for the address Jamal had given him, Asaad's cousin's place, in a suburb he'd never heard of called Hebersham. His thought was to warn Asaad to leave the city. Get out and far away; name like that, he must have contacts abroad. If it was the money, Randall could help: he had the cash Jamal had given him—it was Asaad's anyway. Of course Asaad ought to be in a police cell, answering questions about his involvement in the death of Margot Teresi. But that wasn't going to happen, because of the damage that might do to Jamal. Still, Asaad certainly didn't deserve to fall into the hands of Henry Wu. Not that Randall had any idea of what that might mean for the fellow. But it was not something he wanted on his conscience.

You had to wonder if Henry had had anything to do with Margot Teresi. Randall tried not to wonder about it, because to wonder was not pleasant, but it kept coming back into his mind. When he hadn't known who the victim was, a link between Henry and the dead woman had never occurred to him. Even now he had no idea what that link might be. But Margot Teresi was a coincidence, and the way Henry had been going on, it made you think. And yet, even if he was capable of killing someone, which Randall didn't believe he was, Henry wouldn't be so stupid as to do it on the site. He kept coming back to that. The fellow might have a capacity for violence, maybe even reckless violence. But he was not stupid.

Randall needed to look in the directory; he was lost again. Maybe he wasn't in Hebersham anymore. As far as he could work out there was a clump of half a dozen suburbs that ran in and out of each other, all the same place really, sharing a postcode the way he bet the women here shared the men. Lots of uncut grass, makeshift curtains, even its own design feature, this weird little copper-coloured peak on top of the roofs of many of the houses, as if some architect had decided to badge them as public housing. And the people, he thought. There weren't too many on the streets—they wouldn't be great walkers out here—but the young women he'd seen had been fat, pushing strollers, trapped. Randall felt trapped himself.