The Tower (37 page)

Troy tried to picture the layout of the flat but couldn't get it straight in his mind. He hadn't been paying attention. There could easily have been another bedroom with a closed door, someone else could have been in the place all along. He hadn't thought about it at the time; having dropped his defences in order to make the visit, he hadn't been thinking as he normally would. And he'd been drunk.

He remembered the mirror. It was floor-to-ceiling, attached to one of the big sliding doors on the built-in wardrobe lining one side of the room. The mirror had been part of the experience, he'd enjoyed seeing some of the things the woman was doing to him. The memory of it was still exciting, despite the danger he sensed all around him now. The mirror must have been two-way, with a camera behind it.

He went back to the bedroom and found Matt lying on the bed, playing with a wooden rattle. Anna was seated before the computer, her email program on the screen. Troy's heart seemed to stop. He couldn't believe he'd allowed this to happen. He stepped across the room and looked over her shoulder. She must have gone through her mail already, because none of the messages in the inbox was highlighted. He scanned the list of subjects and saw no reference to the Mornington Apartments.

‘Your computer skills haven't improved much,' she said. ‘When I switched it on, I had no problems.'

He listened as she continued speaking, telling him about some of the research on asthma that she'd found and wanted to share with Liz Matarazzo. Normally her focus on asthma annoyed him, but today he was glad she was talking so much, and listened closely, trying to detect if she was upset. Her voice ran through his head like the green line on one of the screens he'd seen when he'd visited McIver in the ICU. If Anna tried to hide anything from him, her tone would be different and the line would change direction, there would be a blip, and he would know. But she kept talking, and the line ran straight.

‘I've been supposed to do a computer course,' he said, sitting on the bed and picking up Matt, holding him upright while he tickled his tummy. ‘But it never seems to fit in with the jobs I get.' He paused. ‘You know, there's no need to lock the door at night.'

‘I don't like you standing there, looking at me,' she said, still staring at the screen.

‘I just come in to kiss Matt when I get home.'

‘The other night you were just standing there, staring at me, breathing heavily. It scared me, Nick.'

‘I like to come in to say goodnight to him.'

And you. I still love you, even if the relationship exists only in my head.

‘I opened my eyes and you walked out. I checked the clock later and it was after midnight.'

She was still staring at the screen but her voice had risen and the knuckles of the hand gripping the computer's mouse were white.

This was all new. The green line had changed, but not for the reason he'd feared.

‘Don't lock the door,' he said. ‘I have a right to kiss Matt goodnight.

I won't look at you.'

There was no response. She was printing something now and he stood up, wandering around the room with Matt, glancing at the printer as casually as he could, checking that it was printing text and not pictures of himself screwing a Malaysian prostitute.

‘Any chance you'll be able to make the barbeque?' she said, logging off. ‘Mark wants to talk to you about putting Billy in Nippers this year.'

He told Anna he'd do his best, and got dressed. He thought twice about putting on his gun, which he'd got back after the stress shoot last week. In the end, habit prevailed and he strapped it on.

Twenty minutes later he was out of the house and driving towards the city. He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror, feeling that he was handling it okay, checking to see that his face looked normal. He saw that he'd forgotten to shave. It was the first time he'd ever gone to work like this.

He parked at the station but didn't go in. Instead, he walked to the Mornington Apartments, up in Sussex Street. On the drive in, he'd been wondering if he should call Randall, find out what he knew. But the engineer might know nothing, and he didn't want to give him any idea of what had happened if it wasn't necessary. The fact there'd been no message with the video file was worrying him. He guessed that was the point, to fill his head with vague fears. At the moment he should do as little as possible, just wait. But it was hard.

He called Randall, got his voicemail.

‘Something's happened,' Troy said. ‘Call me now. It's urgent.'

The building was up ahead. Now he was outside it, looking in.

The concierge was the same young Chinese man who'd been there three days ago. Troy stood outside the glass door for a moment, watching him, wondering whether he was involved. The man was sitting behind a white counter looking at something on the desk. He ignored Troy until he pressed the button on the small speaker next to the door. The concierge looked up and leaned down to talk into a microphone.

‘What you want?'

Troy identified himself as a police officer and held up his badge.

The speaker crackled again. ‘Manager not here. Come back Monday.'

The response made Troy pause. He didn't want to do anything that would bring in the locals from City Central. What a mess.

He was still undecided when a couple turned off the footpath and came up to the door. Troy stepped back and the man approached the speaker and said something in Mandarin. Troy could see the concierge still hesitating, and then there was a buzzing noise and the glass door opened. Troy followed the couple inside.

He waited until the concierge gave them their key and they'd gone around behind the counter to the lifts. He kept waiting until the lift doors opened and the couple disappeared. The concierge was watching him uneasily. Occasionally he'd glance down. Troy walked around to the side and looked down at his desk, where there was a small DVD player. The man was watching the last
Batman
movie.

‘How you going, mate?' Troy said, walking back to the front of the counter and leaning on it. ‘You good?'

‘Manager come on Monday. I have no authority—'

‘Who's the tenant in number forty-two?'

‘Forty-two empty. Moved out now.'

‘Give me the key.'

‘Don't have keys. Come back Monday.'

Without really thinking, Troy went over to the lift and took it up to the fourth floor. When he got there he went down the corridor and knocked on number forty-two, just as he had the first time he'd come here. For a moment he had a fantasy that she would open the door and he could change the past, it would be Wednesday night again and he would tell her he had the wrong address, turn around and walk away.

Come on, he prayed, as he waited there. Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

But there was no answer, not even after he'd knocked again. He tried the handle, but of course the door was locked.

There were three other flats on the floor and he knocked on all of them. There was no answer from the first two. It was like one of those stupid game shows, if you picked the door of the right box your whole life might change. As he waited in the anonymous corridor, he wondered about the private worlds on the other sides of the doors, lives connected to other lives throughout the city and beyond. The third door opened and he forced himself to concentrate.

It was a young Chinese man wearing glasses. Behind him another young man was looking from the end of the flat's short corridor, as though they didn't get many callers. Music was coming from inside and he could see stacks of textbooks on a table in the lounge room. The door was on a security chain and the men looked anxious, so Troy showed them his badge. It did nothing to relax them.

When he asked about the occupants of the other flats, the man at the door said, ‘Don't know,' speaking English with apparent difficulty.

‘Students like us there,' he said, pointing to one of the doors Troy had just knocked on. He said the other was empty. As for forty-two, ‘People come and go. Maybe tourists.'

‘Have you seen a young Malaysian woman lately?'

The young man blushed faintly. ‘Seen her twice in lift.'

‘When was the last time?'

‘Maybe last week?'

‘What about your friend?'

‘That my cousin. He only come from Taipei yesterday.'

After a few more questions, Troy thanked them for their assistance and the door banged shut. Again he was alone in the brightly lit corridor. He walked back towards the lift, looking at the three doors. After knocking on all of them once more, he took the lift downstairs.

He approached the concierge again, letting his coat flap open to show his gun.

The man said he had no idea who owned apartment forty-two, and gave Troy a card with the name of the managing agent. Some people came out of the lift with a lot of luggage, and the concierge left his desk to help them out to a taxi. While this was happening, four young people squeezed their way from the street into the lobby, talking loudly. Like the others, they were Chinese. One of them held a water bottle, and a map in a plastic holder hung from her neck.

‘Short-term leasing,' the concierge said to Troy when he got back. He shrugged and returned to the small screen on the desk. Maybe he really did know nothing.

Troy called the number on the card, and received another number to call for weekend emergencies. He rang it and talked to a tradesman who claimed not to have a mobile for anyone at the agency, and hung up when Troy identified himself as a policeman. He wondered what to do next. Running a finger down his cheek he felt the bristles, and decided to buy a razor and have a shave back at the station.

He walked back around the counter and looked in the flat box on the wall from which the concierge had taken the keys he'd just given the group who'd come in. Inside were pegs, with the number of an apartment next to each one. There was at least one key on most of the pegs, presumably a spare. In some cases there were two, but there were no keys at all on the peg for number forty-two. Troy looked at the man.

‘Manager has keys to clean flat.'

‘Why's he cleaning it?' Troy said.

‘Don't know. Come back Monday.'

On the desk was a plastic DVD case with a photocopied cover showing Heath Ledger. Troy hit the eject button on the player and took out the DVD. The disc was blank, except for some Chinese characters written in marker pen. He put the DVD in the case and waved it before the man's face.

‘The courts are taking DVD piracy very seriously at the moment,' he said. ‘I'm going to arrest you unless you give me the key to number forty-two now.'

He didn't think it would work. But he couldn't think of anything else to do.

It didn't work. The man just stared at him. Troy thought about his next step. He could pull out his gun and push it into the man's mouth, blow his head off, but it would probably be a mistake. The whole thing was like a nightmare, not just the content of the day but how it was progressing, in fits and starts. He seemed to have lost his sense of time, and there was even something askew in his feeling for distance, so that he wasn't sure if he was standing close enough to the man he was talking to.

There was a ping from around the corner and he looked at the lift. An old man emerged and walked slowly, calling out to the concierge in Mandarin. Then he saw Troy.

‘Can I help you, detective?'

It was another dreamlike moment, for Troy didn't recognise the man, who was looking at him like they were old friends. Then it came to him: it was the guy he'd saved from being mugged the last time he was here. He even remembered the bloke's name, Mr Foo. They shook hands. The old fellow had thin, papery skin, and for a second Troy thought of Jenny Finch, but he pushed that away. The man seemed weak, and leaned against the counter, with the concierge up now and hovering next to him anxiously.

Troy explained his need to get into the flat upstairs, wanting to move on. Maybe he ought to try something completely different. He was wondering if he should talk to Inspector Harmer; she seemed a decent sort of person. Explain what had happened, throw himself on her mercy and see if she knew what was going on in this building. But then Siegert would find out. And Little.

He realised Foo, who'd been speaking to the concierge, was now talking in English again. ‘Mr Chan has language problems sometimes. He will be happy to help you, but would be grateful if his assistance went unacknowledged.'

The concierge had gone back behind the counter and was rustling in a drawer. A moment later, he placed a ring with two keys on it on the counter and stood back, not looking at Troy. He seemed to be experiencing some sort of inner turmoil.

‘You're very kind,' Troy said, looking at each of them. It was clear that as far as Chan was concerned, he still didn't exist. He added, ‘So the place is empty?'

They just smiled at him, until finally he walked away.

On level four there was still no one about. He unlocked the door and went inside, breathing in the aroma of recently used cleaning products. For a moment he stood in the middle of the bare lounge room, recalling the other night. The dog returning to his own vomit. The apartment was empty of furniture, like a movie set from which all the props have been removed. In the bedroom he slid back the mirrored door of the wardrobe and awkwardly stepped inside. A large hole had been cut into the door. The mirror was an ordinary one, so the two-way they'd used to film him had been replaced. The hole behind it was the only evidence of what had happened. Apart from the footage itself. Methodically he searched the whole place but there was nothing: no phone, no scrap of paper in any of the cupboards.

Back in the lounge room he looked out the window at another residential block across the road. It was a modern place with huge windows that ran from floor to ceiling. Some of the flats looked neat; others were messy, with sheets and clothes piled up against the bottom of the glass. He thought of single men living carelessly in small apartments. That could be him, soon. For a moment he was struck by a sense of despair, and wondered how he could have been so reckless as to put his marriage at risk. He told himself Anna deserved it. Other men would have walked out by now. He realised it was foolish to have regrets, they would only weaken him, hamper his thinking about how to respond.