The Tower (51 page)

‘It's finished.'

Quit you like men, as the Bible put it. Be strong.

‘This is stupid.'

Troy saw Kelly walk past the door of the squad room, hurrying down the corridor holding a briefcase. McIver tried to pull away again, but Troy held him down. He could tell that this was what McIver really wanted. Half a minute later they heard the sound of the lift arriving. Troy gave it a moment and then he let the sergeant go.

Once on the road, he headed west, his mind hardly functioning. He rolled down the car windows, as though this might relieve the pressure he was feeling, but of course nothing changed. At the Light Horse interchange he turned left, heading down the broad ribbon of the M7 to Campbelltown.

St Joseph's was cream brick and glass, a 1960s building from the days when the south-west had been identified as the city's new frontier. The presbytery, a standard bungalow made from the same bricks as the church, had bars on all its windows. Troy pressed the buzzer and waited in the bright sunlight.

It was a while before Luke answered the door. He was clean and shaved, wearing a T-shirt tucked into track pants. Blinking in the light, he seemed confused by Troy's arrival.

‘No, come in,' he said, shaking hands. ‘Lucky to catch me, I was taking a quick nap before the Mertons arrive. My three o'clock.' He closed the door behind Troy, locking it carefully. ‘Pre-marriage counselling. They come, but they don't listen.'

Troy walked down the hall into the familiar lounge room, with its impersonal selection of furniture. It was neat and well-maintained— Luke had a part-time housekeeper—but sometimes it made Troy sad. The sort of room that needed to be filled with people. Right now it was dim, the blinds drawn, the red light of the answering machine blinking in a corner.

‘Have a seat,' Luke said. ‘I see you've sorted out the Teresi case. What can I do for you?'

Troy sat down on the sofa, and watched as Luke eased himself slowly into an armchair, as though sitting down was an effort. He was only sixty-six. Maybe sixty-seven. These days, that was nothing. But with the painkillers he was dopey, the edges of his character all blurred.

‘Do for me?' Troy said, and laughed, the sound loud in the stillness of the room. ‘I just felt like a chat.'

Luke nodded, and a moment later smiled.

‘It's always good to talk, Nick,' he said. ‘What do you want to talk about?'

Troy felt like standing up and leaving. But he'd come all this way, and the man was sick, he deserved some patience. So he began to talk, and as he went on it gathered force and he told Luke everything, about the photos and the blackmail and the attempt to frighten off Henry Wu with a fake bomb. A long shot, he said, but the only shot he had. And how it had all gone wrong and he'd been kicked out of the squad.

‘Expelled from Eden,' he murmured at the end, because he was in a presbytery and that was about how it felt.

Luke had his eyes closed but opened them when Troy finished speaking. He said, in a low voice, ‘Are you sorry for what you did with that whore?'

Troy winced. ‘I wish I hadn't done it.'

Not the same thing, he knew, but Luke had already moved on, was shaking his head.

‘Anna is everything, you understand that? I married you. Remember the day, the church here—'

He went on, gesturing in the direction of the church outside, but Troy wasn't listening anymore. It was the wrong church, they had been married in Maroubra.

‘This bomb,' Troy said, interrupting him. ‘My intention, it was quite different.'

Thinking of Randall. Thinking of all the men who'd used this argument to him in interview rooms: I didn't mean to do it. And now here he was, trying it out himself on God's representative on earth. God was merciful. But did he deserve mercy? That was why he was here.

‘What I need to know—'

‘Are you sorry for what you did with this woman?' Luke said, his eyes still closed. ‘I won't call her a whore—who can see into her heart? And we all need God's mercy.'

‘That's it—'

‘You must repent in your heart. You're still a young man, and the temptations of the flesh—'

What is it about these guys and sex? Troy thought. It had always been a big deal with Luke. Maybe younger priests were different, less obsessive. But Luke was all he had. All he wanted.

He wondered how he could change the subject from sex, and said, ‘I wanted to ask you about a situation involving a friend of mine.'

‘Another cop?'

Troy nodded. He told Luke about the Perry case, leaving McIver's name out of it, explaining how a biker had been set up to be sent to jail. He kept it simple; Luke's eyelids were growing heavy, although he was obviously interested in the story.

When it was finished, the priest said, ‘It was a sin. But a sin committed for a reason like that, I would say there were extenuating circumstances. I don't know what the law would say, but that's what I would say, if I was hearing the man's confession. It was you, was it?'

‘No. It wasn't me.'

Not long ago, he would have said with certainty he could never do a thing like that. But not anymore.

The priest had stopped talking and was just sitting there, his eyes still closed, very still. Troy waited patiently. After a while he looked at Luke more closely. He couldn't be dead, not just like that. Anxiously he stood up and took a step towards him. Then the old man's head tilted back and his mouth dropped half-open. Softly, he began to snore.

Back at City Central, he logged on and went straight to his email, hoping Ferguson's scanned statement would have come through from Chicago. There was nothing there, and he leaned back in his chair, looking around the busy room for McIver. He was in his office, talking to several detectives. They were taking notes.

A few people came up to Troy and told him they were sorry he was going. He could see they were confused that he was leaving, after such a week of triumph, but they seemed to accept the story about stress leave. Perhaps he should go with it too, see how he handled two weeks' compulsory holiday. Find out what else he had in his life. There was the new room on the back Anna had wanted for a long time, maybe he would look into what was required to become an owner-builder. Buy himself a good hammer.

Little came up and said a few words. He seemed to have some idea that things were not as they seemed, but Troy brushed aside his questions.

‘You'll come out tonight?' Little said. ‘We'll give you a send-off.'

‘Tomorrow.'

Tonight he had to be with Anna. The way she'd been behaving lately, he knew he had to look after her.

His mobile rang. It was Sergeant Sally Offner, AFP Washington, calling from the Chicago Omni. Her portable scanner had broken and she was about to go to the hotel's business centre to send Ferguson's signed statement. ‘There's something I thought you'd want to know as soon as.'

‘Yes?' He should hand the call over to someone else, but he wanted to hear what she had to tell.

‘We heard about the death of Henry Wu, so I told Ferguson. He hadn't heard. I thought it might help him open up, given he'd been so scared . . .'

‘Did it?'

Offner paused. Then: ‘He saw Wu at The Tower. That night.'

Troy sat up straight. ‘Go on.'

‘There were two other men there, as Ferguson told you. But Wu was with them. Margot Teresi had never been able to get to see him before, and she started to swear and told Ferguson to leave, she was going to grab the chance to talk to the man who'd destroyed her father.'

Troy stood up. He turned around and ran a hand through his hair, feeling the need to move. ‘He's sure it was Wu?'

‘They both recognised him, from photos. Margot said words to the effect, “That bastard, I'm going to have it out with him.” '

‘And then Ferguson left?'

‘Gone before Margot reached the three men. He didn't think there was any chance of danger. Not with a man like that, a big executive. He just didn't want any part of it himself.'

Troy said nothing.

After half a minute, Offner said, ‘You still there?'

‘Yes.'

‘But when Margot died, he knew Wu was involved and might come after him too, because he was there. From what he knew about the man, he didn't think the police could protect him. Seems a nervous type of bloke, said to say sorry.'

‘What?'

‘For not telling you. But now that Wu's dead, everything's changed.'

Troy thanked her and put down the phone. Feeling like he was sleepwalking, he stood up and went across the big room, bumping his leg against a desk as he went. The pain cleared his head, a little.

He leaned against the doorframe of McIver's office and said to the detectives inside, ‘Give us a few minutes.'

McIver said, ‘We're almost finished.'

‘Whatever you're doing,' Troy said, ‘this is more important.'

The detectives filed out and Troy closed the door after them. The room was stuffy. He told McIver what he'd just learned from Offner. When he finished, McIver let out a yell of joy. Everyone outside was looking at them, Troy could see them through the glass. He smiled, wishing he could share the full extent of McIver's emotion. But he did feel some happiness; after this news, Wu's death was even less difficult to regret.

‘There you go,' McIver said. ‘Explains why Ferguson left Margot with a couple of dodgy strangers.'

‘That's been worrying you?'

‘Gent of the old school, abandoning a young lass not much older than his daughter? You bet.'

Troy knew what he meant. ‘I can't believe Wu would kill her. On the site.'

McIver looked around his desk, which was covered in papers and files. He gave up the search and waved a hand over the pile. ‘I've just got some stuff from our embassy in Beijing. Henry Wu was seriously cracked. Saw his father beaten to death by a mob during the Cultural Revolution. When he swam across to Hong Kong, two of his group didn't make it. Sharks. Then there was what he had to do to succeed over there. He was involved with some very dodgy characters, still is. The bloke's lived more lives than most of us, and they've all been bad.'

Troy thought about it, how his life had crossed that of a man like Wu, who'd escaped the sharks and become one himself.

McIver said, ‘Lots of business execs are violent men, it's why they're good at it. But they keep it under control. Wu's used to getting away with things, and that's not good for the soul.'

‘And then he came here.'

To this city.

‘Easy pickings.'

‘It helps explain why he didn't want us talking to Ferguson,' Troy said. He shook his head, still taking it in. ‘He knew he'd been seen there.

He knew but still went ahead and had Margot killed. Imagine a man in his position, taking such a risk.'

‘The risk was the whole point. The bloke was a nutter and a serious gambler.'

And now it's over, Troy told himself. He didn't say this to McIver, because he didn't feel like he deserved to be off the hook. But he was. You couldn't help being happy.

McIver was staring at the wall. Someone knocked at the door, looked through the glass panel next to it, and the sergeant shook his head at them, almost angrily. One of the things about being a cop was you found out things before others did. McIver wanted to relish their new knowledge a little longer.

But as well as the pleasure of secrecy, there's the pleasure of disclosure. After a minute's silence, he sighed and smiled at Troy. ‘Let's go tell the troops. It's going to be another big night.'

That night, Anna came to him. When he arrived home and gave her the news about leaving the squad, she was delighted. Of course he couldn't tell her the real reason for what had happened, so he told her it was time for a change. She came over and kissed him, told him anyone who'd been through what he had deserved a break. He saw how other people would automatically see it this way too. It fitted in with the times, a familiar response to trouble. Fall to pieces. Walk away.

Maybe he had fallen to pieces. Maybe he should have walked away.

‘Actually,' he said, stroking her hair, ‘that's the official version but it's not the real one. I made a mistake. I did something to try to put pressure on a witness, and a man we're investigating found out and used it against me. Helen Kelly told me I had to go.'

She wasn't interested, put a hand on his cheek and told him he was a good man and she was sure he'd done the right thing. She said she was sorry he had to leave the squad, but he knew she wasn't.

Mary and Charles were arriving the next morning, and Anna was busy preparing an elaborate range of food. He looked after Matt for the next few hours, giving him a bath and feeding him amid the smells of curry and other spices. As he played with Matt he wondered if he could bear being another sort of cop now, or if it might be better to leave the job completely. Follow Ralph Dutton into the private sector. But of course he wouldn't.

Once Matt was in bed and they'd eaten, Anna kept working in the kitchen. Troy watched television for a while, not taking it in, and eventually turned the thing off. He went into the kitchen where Anna was washing up, put his hands on her shoulder and kissed her neck to say goodnight.

There was no acknowledgement of his presence; her arms were still working away on the pots in the water.

‘Good night,' she said without turning.

He was almost asleep when she came into the room and slipped into the bed and cuddled up next to him. He put out a hand and realised with surprise she was naked, and then she pulled him to her and they began kissing. It was difficult at first, even after he realised this was going to be different from the other night, that this time she was not going to leave him. It was like making love to a stranger, but gradually he began to recognise the curves of her body, the once-familiar mounds and hollows. They made love and it went on and on. For a long time he forgot about everything that had happened.