The Tower (6 page)

He walked around the space, staring at the suitcases on the ground, at the clothes and other belongings spilling out of them. Randall was standing there, looking blank. Troy realised he'd probably lose his job over this.

‘No gun?' Troy said.

‘No. Your colleagues searched the men. It could be anywhere.'

Little came up and said, ‘Let's get out of this stink.'

He kicked a book that was lying on the ground and walked out.

Harmer took Little and Troy aside, away from the men on guard and all the police activity. ‘They're not saying anything, but here's my best guess: they're illegals working for one of the contractors, who's been paying Bazzi to make it possible. There must be other guards in on it as well. We're familiar with the employment side of it, the use of illegals on city building sites. But the living arrangements here are a first.' She shook her head in a moment of bewilderment. ‘Randall thinks the contractor who's pouring the concrete floors is the best bet as their employer.'

‘It seems like a pretty elaborate set-up,' Troy said.

‘This bloke is being paid on the basis of award wages plus overtime, which is pretty good. This is a huge job, so if he pays the illegals half the going rate, that leaves maybe a million dollars to be split between him and the smuggler who brought them to Australia.'

‘Minus what they're paying Bazzi.'

Harmer nodded. ‘I've just had a call from level thirty-one. Internal Affairs are here for you. You're sure you don't recognise the man you saw up there?'

Troy shook his head. Over the inspector's shoulder he saw a uniformed officer coming towards them, holding an object in an exhibit bag.

‘Ma'am,' he said, pointing.

It was a gun. Troy took a step towards him but Harmer grabbed his sleeve.

‘Level thirty-one,' she said. ‘That's an order.'

Five

U
pstairs, the floor had been transformed. There were screens blocking much of the wind, and bright lights illuminated the dead man on the ground and the area nearby, where McIver's blood stained the concrete. Crime scene officers were moving around methodically as they had moved in the enclosure down below, photographing and measuring, collecting evidence. Troy stood for a moment, taking it in, and shivered. He zipped up the coat and put his hands in his pockets. Almost immediately, two men appeared from the darkness. The senior one was Inspector Malcolm Ferris. Troy took his right hand from the pocket of the jacket and extended it to Ferris, who shook his head.

‘We'll get you swabbed in a moment,' he said. ‘Then you can clean up. We'll need your clothes, too.'

It took a moment to sink in. Troy realised he needed to flip the situation around: see himself as a suspect. That was what these men were doing.

As he finished running through his story for the first time, one of the lifts opened and Helen Kelly emerged. The commander was a tall woman with medium-length dark hair, and attractive. Some of the officers considered her glamorous, although standards were not all that high in the police force. But she dressed well and was thin. In fact, Troy didn't recognise her at first when she came out of the lift, because she was wearing one of Randall's bulky jackets. Now she came over to him and took him by the arm, her eyes full of concern. There was kindness there but calculation too: she wanted to know if he was going to fall to pieces. He told her he was all right, and he thought he was. His mood hadn't shifted at all since he'd last thought about it. Maybe this was as bad as it would get.

He hadn't had the chance to form a strong opinion of Kelly yet. She'd been with the squad only two months, coming over from Sex Crimes, which she'd run for several years. Married, early fifties, no children. McIver said she did everything by the book. In Troy's opinion this was not necessarily a failing, provided you knew the book backwards. He suspected she did.

The way she was talking to Ferris now, he could tell they'd met before. When they'd finished she came over and put a hand on his arm, said to Ferris, ‘If I could just have a word with Nick, see how he is,' then led him away. When they were out of earshot she said, ‘How are you? Really?'

‘I'm okay.'

She looked at him. She had a nice smile that rarely made it to her eyes, but he didn't think she was insincere.

‘It's a homicide?'

‘Almost certain.'

She nodded briskly. ‘I'm having trouble finding another sergeant. It's ridiculous, isn't it, that the police force should be short of homicide detectives?' It sounded like a conversation she'd been having with other people for a long time. ‘I've got five people doing double shifts tonight, but tomorrow they all vanish.' She looked around. ‘Rogers was supposed to be here,' she said, referring to the police commissioner. ‘You haven't seen him?'

Troy shook his head. Kelly looked almost rattled, and this made him nervous. It was the job of senior officers to maintain unflinching enthusiasm, no matter how irrational this might be.

She went on, ‘Have you heard of a man named Henry Wu?'

‘No.'

The questions were starting to annoy him. He felt like telling her he'd been busy with other things.

‘Runs Morning Star,' she said, ‘who own this building. A very aggressive man, and well connected. Anyway, we've shut down the building site indefinitely.'

Of course they had. It was what you did. He said, ‘I want to be on the investigation.'

‘I can't permit that. I know you're anxious, this is personal, but there's procedure we need to follow.'

‘It's not because of Mac—not only. I feel fine.'

She shook her head almost angrily. ‘Sometimes it takes a while. After these good people have finished with you, go home and sleep. There'll be debriefing, counselling . . . I'll call you tomorrow.'

Don't be angry with me
, he felt like saying, but she had turned her back on him and was talking to Ferris and his partner, who'd been waiting impatiently and only just out of earshot. Then she turned again and lowered her voice. ‘You need to know something. Siegert at Central is gunning for you and McIver—he thinks you ruined the good reputation of The Tower, for which he feels responsible. He just told me the man you shot would be alive but for the reprehensible behaviour of my two officers.' Troy stared at her. ‘It's going to be a media frenzy, and he's looking to distract attention from the illegals. There's concern about how this man Bazzi was allowed to get away.'

‘That was hardly our fault.'

‘Of course not. But it could be made to look like it. Do you see what I'm saying?'

Troy felt himself starting to sweat. He'd acted appropriately within the situations that had occurred, but Kelly was saying people might argue those situations should not have occurred. This was out of his league; it all came down to McIver. And Kelly was telling him something about that too, in the comments she'd made earlier on the phone. Troy was not used to politics, had rarely felt its breath on his cheek. But he knew it was out there, waiting for him like everyone else.

Kelly said, ‘You and Mac don't share equal responsibility. He was the senior officer, disobeyed an instruction to come up here. You might want to consider that.' Troy's mind was blank now. He wanted to help McIver, but for the moment he didn't know what to do. Kelly said, ‘You only went up to help him.' She was watching him closely, her lipstick glistening in the harsh arc light. ‘Was he capable?'

‘The sergeant was fine,' he said. ‘He has my complete support.'

She pulled her lips back, and touched one with her tongue. ‘That narrows your options.'

He nodded, dimly aware of what she was getting at, and said, ‘So what happens now?'

‘It goes to the commissioner. Once upon a time that wouldn't have happened, but these days . . .'

Troy knew what this was about, at least. Frank Rogers had been running the New South Wales police force for six months, and everyone knew how concerned he was about the media. Some said he didn't have much time for anything else.

‘Siegert and I each try to be first to talk to Rogers in the morning,' said Kelly. ‘He'll decide if you're to become a hero or a disgrace to the force.' He started to smile but realised she wasn't joking. She went on quickly, glancing behind her, ‘Your statement will be the vital document.' She took his arm and started to guide him back to the two IA officers. Before they reached them she said in a low voice, ‘Everyone knows Rogers is a genius at manipulating the media. But it's a two-way thing. They influence him too. What they print in the morning will be crucial.'

‘Crucial?'

She nodded and turned away. He wanted to ask what she meant by that, but she was already shaking Ferris's hand, heading for the lifts.

The detectives took him over the scene, and he told his story again. He was thinking of it as a story now, a version of events that would strike different people in different ways. After he'd been swabbed for gunshot residue they took the lift down to ground level. They went in the officers' car down to City Central, not far away. The other two were silent during the drive through the dark and empty streets. They hadn't been exactly unfriendly, but it was clear they wanted to keep their distance. This disconcerted Troy, even though he knew it was how it had to be. He felt isolated. He had to make sure he was thinking for himself.

‘Bloody City Central,' Ferris murmured as they circled the streets. Even at this time of night there were police cars everywhere. ‘You ever worked here?'

‘No,' said Troy.

‘Don't. There's parking inside for six cars, and then you're on your own.'

Eventually they parked down on the side of the road that ran between the station and the Darling Harbour precinct opposite.

Inside the station a tall man in a suit was waiting for them. He was in his early fifties, like Kelly, and had silver hair and piercing, pale blue eyes.

Ferris looked from him to Troy and said, ‘Superintendent Ron Siegert.'

The superintendent stared at Troy, making no effort to shake hands. ‘We haven't met earlier because I've been here trying to clean up the mess Jon McIver and you created for us.' Troy had never seen anyone speak through clenched teeth before, but Siegert was coming close. When he said nothing, the superintendent went on, ‘That man should not have died. I intend to see the right thing done here. There'll be no cover-up.'

His face was red with anger.

‘We don't do cover-ups,' Ferris said tersely. ‘Come on, we need to get Detective Troy's statement.'

Troy took a step forward and Siegert moved to block his way. He was close to Troy's face, trying to make a deal of staring down at him, although there was only four or five centimetres difference in their heights.

‘I knew your father,' Siegert said.

Troy froze. His father had been dead for eighteen years. He'd been a cop too, although he'd left the force two years before he died. Troy didn't often come across anyone who'd met him.

Siegert said, ‘We were detectives together. He was a good man. Jon McIver's not worth his bootlace.' The super turned on his heel and stormed off.

The IA detectives led him through corridors and up some stairs, and Troy thought about what Kelly had said to him about the media, trying to work out what she had left unsaid. Wondering if there was any message there. Anna sometimes went to services at an evangelical church called ChristLife, and when he'd gone with her last week there'd been a banner saying:
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
Now he asked himself: What would McIver do?

Slowly, an answer started to form.

‘We're going to ERISP this,' Ferris said. ‘Okay?'

Troy realised he had to think quickly now. A filmed recording of the interview was not what he needed. ‘No way,' he said. ‘Let's do a typed record of interview.'

‘ERISP is standard.'

‘It's what I've been advised.'

Ferris looked at him. Troy had chosen not to have a representative of the Police Association involved, and from IA's point of view this was good. They wouldn't want him to change his mind on this by pushing him too hard.

‘If that's what you want,' Ferris said at last. ‘But you know how it might look.'

‘It's what I've been advised,' Troy said.

It was a nice phrase, and seemed to express some inner reality. As though there was indeed someone else inside him now, thinking more clearly than he was, telling him what to do.

Troy was shown to an area of the station where an old tracksuit and a pair of running shoes had been put on a chair. He changed into them slowly, retaining his wallet and keys. They'd already taken his weapon, back at The Tower. It was the absence of the gun rather than his suit that affected him most.

As they took his statement, it was typed up on a laptop. Troy kept things as simple as he could. At the end, the computer was spun around and Ferris told him to check what had been written.

Troy passed a hand over his eyes and yawned. ‘I'm tired, can't see the screen properly. Can we print off a copy so I can read it on paper?'

‘If you could just check this quickly we won't keep you,' said Ferris, pointing at the laptop.

‘It's been a big night.'

‘How 'bout I send you a copy to sign tomorrow.'

‘No,' Troy said, forcing himself to keep it light. ‘I want to take a signed copy with me now.'

Ferris smiled. ‘To be honest, I'm not sure I can print this out here, I don't think my laptop is compatible with this system. I promise you'll have a copy tomorrow. I'll email it to you.'

What bullshit. Troy wanted to swear at the guy, but knew this was no time to be making enemies. ‘I have the right to a signed copy of the record of interview. You told me that at the beginning.'