The White Tower (22 page)

Twenty-four

Sitting in her garden, Moira Howley listened to my account in silence. I looked at her and thought how summaries must always be unsatisfying, and how, as so often, the important things were not being said.

The old Moira, the Moira I'd met at the beginning of September, would have been tense and concentrated with the effort of what she wanted to say next, of not losing the thread of her intentions, of what she must impress upon me. Now she seemed drained of responses and emotions.

We talked about Colin Rasmussen, who'd made a full confession. On 21 June, Colin had sent Niall an email pretending to be Fenshaw, and asking Niall to meet him at the tower the following night. Niall had emailed straight back saying yes. Colin had intended getting Niall onto the public gallery, then overpowering him and throwing him over the fence. He hadn't reckoned on the weather being so bad. He'd got there early and walked around, keeping out of sight of the guards, confronted by the practical problems his plan presented. He'd overheard the two technicians talking. They'd been so absorbed they hadn't noticed him. When he saw them disappear into the basement, he'd tried the security door and found it open.

He'd met Niall, explained that Fenshaw hadn't been able to make it, but that he and Fenshaw had decided they could see no problem with a new inquiry into the Ventac. They'd reconsidered and come round to Niall's point of view.

Colin then told Niall that there was something going on and nobody appeared to be paying much attention to security. ‘Why don't we sneak a look at their fancy equipment?' Niall had agreed. Once inside, Colin had pushed him over the edge.

Colin's sarcasm came strongly though this part of his statement, as though the fact that Niall hadn't run away, or called for help, made him easier, and therefore more contemptible, prey.

Colin had stalked Niall on the MUD and, masquerading as Ferdia, caused trouble between Niall and Sorley Fallon, threatening to steal the game's source code and bringing Fallon's wrath down on Niall's head. Fallon's counter threat had been perfect from Colin's point of view. He hadn't thought of murder until then, but when Fallon made his threat known on the MUD, the idea came to him of the Telstra Tower, and a way of getting rid of Niall for good.

Colin had picked Peter up from school and then sent me that spiteful picture. Re-routing it so that it appeared to come from Fallon's computer, and timing it so that it arrived after Peter was missing, had been easy for someone with his skills.

In his confession, I could find no hint of remorse for kidnapping Peter, or for killing Niall, but he did state that he'd had no intention of harming my son. His aim had been to punish me, and to draw attention to the evil that I represented. People like myself and Niall were ­‘parasites whose aim in life was to spoil everything' and ‘the scum of the earth'.

I'd risked Peter's safety, wilfully brought him into danger. Derek would never forgive me. I doubted if Brook would either.

Ivan was reluctant to let Katya out of his sight. He'd rung the creche and told them we'd be keeping her at home till the start of school next year. I knew he was within a hair's breadth of chucking in his job at the ANU, so he could be with her all day and not have to leave her with me.

How much of Colin's confession was calculated to sound insane, and how much genuinely so? The whole of his vendetta against Niall was crazy. Most chilling of all was that Colin seemed completely convinced that what he'd done was right. Anyone who challenged him or got in his way deserved to be eliminated. The Ventac saved lives. People would always make mistakes, and were expendable.

But I couldn't help wondering if Colin had
wanted
to be caught. When his carefully constructed fantasy about Niall started to unravel, and the police began turning up again at the hospital, when it was clear that Fenshaw was under serious investigation, Colin had grabbed Peter and, when caught, confessed immediately to Niall's murder. Was it too far-fetched to see the kidnapping as a desperate, last ditch bid to save Fenshaw and draw all blame, all responsibility down on his own head?

Fenshaw had played a part in attempting to discredit Niall, and, that night at Regatta Point, it was
Fenshaw
Niall had told about his decision to go public. I knew that if Colin went ahead and pleaded guilty, as he was intending, I'd have a next to impossible time trying to convince anyone that Fenshaw was at least partly to blame.

Colin had found Niall's body at the base of the tower that night, and, wearing gloves, removed his wallet and keys. He'd waited several hours, then gone to the Howleys, where he'd let himself in with Niall's key, loaded the castle scene and deleted everything else. As a parting gesture he'd emailed it to Sorley Fallon. Then he'd packed up all of Niall's letters and papers and left again, but not before Moira had heard him. One last trip to the tower car park to replace Niall's keys. Even using the bad weather as a cover, it had been an audacious plan.

Moira lifted her face to the smell of the roses. Her thick grey and brown hair was pulled back off her face with combs. Exposed, her face spoke of a knowledge and a sadness that would always hold her apart from other parents.

Bernard had moved into a flat in Braddon. Their house was up for sale.

‘What will you do?' I asked her.

‘Oh,' she said, with a touch of her old dismissiveness, ‘I have money of my own.'

I could have thanked her for paying me handsomely, which she had. She would have thanked me for my thanks, and that would have kept us afloat over shallow ground.

She said suddenly, ‘I've written to some of my Irish relatives.'

‘Did you write to Fallon too?'

Moira smiled. ‘He wrote back. A nice letter.'

There was no breath of wind. In an hour, or less, it would be too hot to sit outside. Just so the summer had arrived, cold one day, hot the next. The wisteria blossoms were long gone. The vines were covered with a mass of healthy, dark green leaves.

‘It will be winter over there,' I said. ‘He'll take you to see Dunluce castle in the snow.'

Moira's smile faded, but she didn't contradict me. Before she could leave Australia, she had police interviews to get through, court appearances.

I left her in a garden that had not been able to help itself turn green. Whenever I wished to, I could think about that, and how Moira might go on breathing in and out, might make it through the next day and the next.

Pictures can tell a simple story. Perhaps we don't give them enough credit for that. The Telstra Tower and Fallon's castle were connected in a dozen different ways, each an edifice behind which games were played, of threat and counter-threat, played in the mind and on the nerve ends. But were human motives simpler when you boiled them down—pride and fear together? Where did love come in? Once the play-acting began, did love enjoy the view? Or did love become its own dance down a mountain, not stopping for the gum trees? Who had understood this best? Sorley Fallon? Alex Fenshaw? Colin Rasmussen?

If Fallon's existence on that Antrim coast was proof of anything, then it was proof that unexpected contacts might be made. What would Moira Howley find when she visited his jewellery shop? Would she be the only visitor? When Fallon took her walking on the cliff path, would she look up, or down?

. . .

To walk into Brook's house was to experience seasons coming at me in waves of different coloured air, light and heavy, cold and hot. Brook hated being stuck in bed. The women in his life took up positions round the sick room, along with Bill McCallum, Ivan too. We who cared for him stood round about and waited, while seasons rumbled at each other through rooms that had lost their heart. Brook sat up in bed and complained at our attempts to wait on him. His eyes, when they were open, said he could not bluff anybody any longer.

I brought Katya over in the afternoons, when I knew that Sophie, who worked part-time for an insurance company, wouldn't be there. Sophie had asked for reduced hours in order to do her share of the nursing. I did not mind meeting her on my way out. We could be civil then, each of our meetings recalling, in a sadder way, that one on the steps of the city station, on a day of furious retrograde winter, day of happiness, a woman in a good suit and high, high heels walking up some steps to meet her man.

When Brook was awake and had the energy, he liked holding Katya, or letting her crawl up and down the bed, making a tent for her out of the sheet, which she hid in, shrieked and laughed, understanding perfectly, and all at once, the intense duality of pleasure in hiding and anticipating being found.

Other days, I watched Brook breathing with his eyes closed, and shrank into myself, and wished my daughter would be quiet, and felt too tense to read or look about me while I waited for him to wake up, if indeed he was asleep, and hated myself for feeling relieved when I left to pick Peter up from school.

We talked about Colin Rasmussen and Fenshaw, Sorley Fallon and Niall Howley. Our talk had an air of unreality about it, the same air that moved, too compressed, too mixed-up, through the house. Yet Brook wanted to talk. Wondering aloud about these men, one dead, one awaiting trial, one being questioned by British and Australian police officers, one so far escaping culpability, made Brook feel his mind had not closed down. His voice gained some of its laconic confidence, though always with a shadow underneath.

‘Do you think you would've liked him?'

‘Fallon?' Brook said, thinking this was who I meant.

‘Niall.'

‘Probably not. I don't know what kids are coming to these days.'

I bit my tongue. Here was another warning that I should look after mine.

‘Niall was brave,' I said.

‘But crazy. That Fallon's crazy too, if you ask me. And Rasmussen. Jesus.'

‘Colin had an older, calculating mind behind him.'

We'd reached a stalemate over Fenshaw's involvement, which Colin was denying vehemently.

Katya had been tired that afternoon. While we were talking, she'd dozed off in my arms. She was at the stage of resisting an afternoon sleep, but I'd sat her on my knee with an open cardboard book, the kind she liked to pat and hold a conversation with. I didn't want to move in case I woke her.

Brook closed his eyes. While I waited for him to gather the energy to continue talking, or let me know he'd had enough, I watched the progress of the afternoon across a back lawn Ivan had mowed the previous weekend. Mowed seemed to precise a word for the scrawly lines across thick grass he'd managed to incise.

The year was nearly over. Soon the school holidays would begin. Peter would be home all day. Soon these long afternoons, their anxiety and moments of companionship, would be interrupted by a Christmas nobody seemed ready for. Through Brook's bedroom window, the hot, settled air approached midafternoon.

I heard a noise and turned round.

Sophie stood just inside the door, a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. Her expression said what mine must have too, that for once our system of avoiding each other hadn't worked. The bags looked heavy and her face was flushed. There was a line of sweat around her hairline and along her upper lip. I pictured her emptying the bags, tidying their contents into cupboards, taking care of her face and hair in Brook's small bathroom mirror. Then what? Sitting as I had just been doing, while the shadows lengthened?

Words stuck on the roof of my mouth. Katya wriggled in my arms and made a short, sharp sound.

‘Come into the kitchen.'

I shut the door behind us, and sat down again with Katya on my knee. Sophie had not acknowledged my daughter, not so much as glanced in her direction.

‘It's bad isn't it?'

Sophie stood with her hands hanging loosely by her sides, a woman who despised empty hands.

‘They're talking about a bone marrow transplant.'

‘I thought he was too old for that.'

Sophie moved her head and shoulders, half a nod and half a shrug of helplessness.

‘It's less effective the older you are, but—'

‘What about more chemo?'

‘It's an alternative.'

‘How much longer would it give him?'

‘The doctor wouldn't say.'

‘I wish—'

Sophie did not want to hear my wish. ‘He needed to keep well for you. And your daughter. He wasn't going to let anything spoil that. He wouldn't have more tests. I tried to make him and he just got angry. He said he wasn't a patient any longer, wouldn't be a patient.'

She raised her hands again, this time vigorously, a person who's suddenly decided to do something after a long period of inactivity. There were the groceries to put away. There was Brook's afternoon tea.

Katya made a fist of one hand, raised it to my cheek and gurgled.

I said, ‘I need to get my bag.'

Brook's eyes were still closed, and he was lying in the same position I had left him in. I bent for the cardboard book and put it in my bag. Then I leant again, over the bed this time, and kissed him gently on the forehead. Katya was staring into my face, her black eyes wide and, perfect mimic, she pursed her lips exactly as I'd just done, and kissed the air.

. . .

Over the phone, I told Bernard Howley that there was no record of Sorley Fallon ever having been in Australia.

‘In spirit maybe, but that's all.'

There was a silence which felt like Bernard was searching for a way to contradict me. I'd already told him that the friendship society had been thoroughly checked out, and it was no more, or less, than what it appeared to be, a fundraising organisation. There was no record of money having found its way into bombs or guns. I told Bernard that Detective-Sergeant Bill McCallum would be happy to talk to him about it any time he wished, and to go through the results of the investigation. I was pretty sure that he would not take up the offer. For Bernard, it was enough that Moira had gone behind his back and sold those concert tickets, continued an association that he disapproved of, and encouraged Niall to do the same.