‘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
Randall 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.
He pulled over to the side of the road, making sure there were no people around. Earlier, he’d ended up in a cul-de-sac, no warning, no No Through Road sign—he’d just come to the end of the road and had to reverse, do a three-point turn. Two guys standing around the open bonnet of a red car had stared at him. They were wearing T-shirts, one had just a blue singlet on. And serious tatts, not small and stylish but running down their big arms like skin diseases. One man had started to walk towards Randall and as he came closer you could see what he was holding was not some tool but a bottle of bee
r. The fellow had moved slowly, his face expressionless. Randall had completed his turn and got out of there before the need for conversation arose.
Jumping at shadows, he thought, now leaning back against the headrest but keeping his eyes open, flicking his gaze at the rear view every few seconds. A big white car came slowly down the street and the pain flooded into Randall’s stomach as it went past, his hand up to the side of his face. He’d seen the car before, when he was coming through Mount Druitt. Or a car like it. Big white Commodore, the car of officialdom. An area like this it could be Social Security, Housing, Health. A parole officer, council engineer, truancy. Big white cars keeping welfare-world in line. The car kept moving, turned the corner up ahead, and disappeared, unlike the pain in his gut.
‘I’ve had enough,’ he murmured, and pulled out his mobile and a piece of paper.
He called the doctor whose name Angela had got for him, some GP with an office near The Tower. They couldn’t see him that afternoon, so he made an appointment for tomorrow. At least, he thought it was tomorrow, realised when they’d hung up he just had a date but didn’t know what today was. Should write it down somewhere. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow while he examined the street directory. Kept thinking about Henry Wu.
In Shanghai, Randall had fucked up big-time. On an evening when he should have been supervising a concrete pour on level forty-nine, he’d been at home humping a Chinese girl he’d met a few days before. Most Chinese women he didn’t find all that attractive, flat faces and flat chests; they probably didn’t find him attractive either. Live and let live. But this one was from some ethnic group to the west, and she was something else. As if she wasn’t meant to be here but defiant with it, holding herself high and back. He could still remember her vividly.
But in China it wasn’t easy and you had to take opportunities when they occurred. Which is why he’d been screwing the woman during working hours when back at the site the big hose up on forty-nine had wriggled its way loose and thrashed around for a bit until they got the flow stopped. By then three men had been knocked into space. Jesus. It was a typical Chinese situation, of course. Randall had checked the metal bracket securing the pipe mid-afternoon and everything had been fine, but someone had stolen it and replaced it with old rope between then and when the liquid concrete started to come thrusting up the pipe from way below. A long pipe, lots of pressure. Lucky it had only been three men.
Warton had paid their families well, ten years’ wages each. There were plenty of workers in China would have lined up for a deal like that. But still. The cops had got onto it quickly, come banging on the door of his place while the girl was still there, surprisingly rude. They were rude, the Chinese, generally in small ways. Peripheral rudeness. But up front they tended towards a more neutral position, and the ones Randall dealt with had mostly mastered the art of hiding their dislike of Westerners. Like, build us a skyscraper and here’s your money, thank you very much. See you in a few years in Vancouver. Or Paris. Or Sydney. But these cops had been something else.
Henry had saved him. Turned up in person at the police station two hours later, two long hours, and arranged his release. He was Morning Star’s construction manager for Asia back then, Hong Kong-based but fortunately in Shanghai that afternoon. Henry got him out, no charges, and Randall at first thought this is the way it goes—a crazy town, shit happens, no one wants it to become a place Westerners won’t want to work. Not yet, anyway. So life returns to how it was.
But it hadn’t. His boss at Warton, a beefy Aussie named Jensen, had driven him to the airport the next day and told him his time in China was finished. Jensen had always seemed a decent guy, liked a drink, but straight, just wanted to do his job.
‘I can take it from here,’ Randall had said as they approached the chaos of Shanghai International.
Jensen swung towards the car park and told Randall he had to see him onto the plane. That was the deal. Randall felt mildly flattered to be the subject of a deal. Important Western engineer handled delicately. Nice story to have on the CV. The unofficial one, not the one he’d have to drag out now in the search for another job.
‘I’ve always wanted to ask you,’ Jensen said. ‘Randall’s not an Irish name, is it?’
He said it as if he were really interested, as if the question had been bothering him. So Randall told him the tale, half shouting as they made their way through the crowded airport building, him not knowing which airline it was, not even which flight they were dumping him on. He told Jensen how his mother had been working as a chambermaid in London in the 1970s, innocent Irish girl seduced by a local tradesman doing some work in the hotel. Familiar story. But then, a surprise happy ending: Ben had married Kaitlin and returned with her to Dungarvan, fitted in quite well. He was a drinker for a start. Said he’d never felt at home anywhere until he moved to Ireland.
‘Here we are,’ Jensen said.
A queue in front of the United counter.
‘Where am I going?’
Jensen put down Randall’s second bag and looked at him, moment of truth. Now he’d learn they weren’t going to pay him anything, he’d never work in this industry again, rhubarb rhubarb.
‘If I had my way,’ Jensen began, and Randall felt a little kick of hope somewhere in his chest.
If I had my way was good. The moment you said that you were admitting you’d lost. Jensen explained that if he had his way, Warton would sack Randall because he’d just killed three men. Even though there were aspects of the accident that made him uneasy, Randall was still to blame. This was sounding good, Randall thought, wishing he could fast-forward Jensen. They had reached the counter.
‘But Henry Wu thinks you deserve a second chance,’ Jensen said.
Randall blinked. The guy who’d got him out of the police station yesterday? Couldn’t say he knew Wu, just one of a dozen Morning Star executives he’d met over the past year.
‘Where we go today?’ said the woman behind the counter.
‘Houston,’ said Jensen, pulling out Randall’s passport and putting it on the counter. Randall wondered how they’d got him into the States so quickly, but he guessed there were ways and means.
‘You’ll be met,’ Jensen said, presenting Randall with a sealed envelope. ‘The Southern Building, a nice project. Things could still work out for you in Warton, mate. You just need to sort out your priorities.’
‘Thank you,’ said Randall, not quite believing this. Houston. Globalisation: don’t you just fucking love it.
Jensen put out his hand and Randall took it, tightening his grip.
‘I won’t tell anyone what happened yesterday,’ Jensen said. ‘I believe in second chances. Read the Bible, mate, join a local church over there. With His help, you can get through this.’
There had been tears in Randall’s eyes. Sweet Jesus, it’s never over till it’s over.
He put the car into gear and drove off, seeing from a sign that he was in Dharruk and working his way through the short roads over to Hebersham, looking for street names: Mackellar, that would take him into Richardson and Timms. The roads were short and winding, redolent of a discredited planning fashion Randall had seen around the world, the Radburn model. He had an interest in residential building; it had started with observing his father.
After moving to Ireland, Ben had set up as a builder in the early eighties. It had been touch and go for a long time—the drinking didn’t help—but at some stage he’d accepted some acres outside Cork as payment for a debt. Real wasteland it had been, Randall could still remember his parents arguing over it. But ten years later, Ireland was booming and the land was worth fifty times what it had been. Ben had somehow fallen in with an honest partner and they’d developed it themselves, turned it into a light industrial estate. Most of Ben’s development projects since then had ended in one form of disappointment or other, but the estate kept pumping out rental income, so none of that really mattered. He drove a Jaguar and was respected in the rolling hills south
of Dublin as a cunning businessman, at least by those who didn’t know any better. Which was most people.
You can be lucky.
It was Randall’s ambition to get into housing himself one day. His father had given him the bug, and also many lessons in how not to do things. For years Randall had resented this, resented having a dad who was such a flop, even if most of the world didn’t know it. But lately he’d seen that you can learn from other people’s failures as well as their successes. All those master classes on his father’s sites during university holidays.
He approached a T-intersection and saw a white car shoot across the top of the street. He couldn’t tell if it was the same one as before. He slowed down, glad he’d gone to the trouble of getting a hire car just in case he was followed. Not that he had reason to think he would be.
Henry had turned up in Houston just once, for a very pleasant night out. It was a bit tense to begin with; Henry had put some money into an oil exploration project and been out there that day, turned out it was a dry hole. They’d had a few drinks and Randall had ended up telling Henry of his dreams—you have to talk about something. To his surprise, the man had been interested and they’d talked for hours. The opportunities around Houston, lots of raw lumber in the air. Randall had a plan, reckoned to start with some stick-built stuff, get into bricks down the line.
‘I’m going to be pretty liquid in a year’s time,’ Henry said, ‘there’ll be a few million looking for a home. I like the idea of Texas.’ He gave Randall to understand this was his own money, nothing to do with Morning Star. Made Randall sit up. Henry Wu, serious player.
‘But first,’ Henry said, ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d help me out with an exciting project. You know Sydney?’ Sure I know Sydney. ‘Well, that’s where it is.’ Randall had thought, fuck Sydney. Not part of the plan.
‘I’d have to ask Warton,’ he said.
‘Leave Warton to me,’ Henry said. ‘You want another bottle of this chablis? It’s very good.’
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