Troy took a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said.
McIver grinned as though he’d said something funny. He held out his hand for Troy to shake.
‘The other shoulder’s hurting like buggery,’ he said. ‘I hate this sling.’
‘A sling’s okay.’
‘No. It makes you look like an invalid. It’s like a sign of vulner—’ He seemed to have trouble with the word. ‘You know.’
They walked towards the taxi rank. McIver looked in the direction of the sea, breathing in its smell. ‘You still do Nippers?’
When Troy moved to Maroubra, he’d joined the surf club and trained to become a volunteer lifesaver. Each summer now, he spent some of his weekends on patrol at the beach, and taught kids on Sunday mornings.
‘Sure.’
‘Some men would rather lie in.’
Troy looked at all the people swarming around them. People like him. He knew he needed them. The meaning of his life came from the fellow-feeling they gave him, and which he had for them. He recalled something from the Bible. Faith without works is dead.
McIver shook his head. ‘We’ll have to see which way it goes,’ he said vaguely. Then, coming alert again, ‘You and me, we have something. Don’t deny me again.’
There were tears in his eyes. At first Troy couldn’t believe it. McIver was crying. Awkwardly he put out an arm and held him stiffly.
‘I didn’t even know what was happening before it was over,’ McIver said. ‘Then woke up two days later and thought I’d had a bad dream. But now this. Few times a day. It’s not the alcohol.’
He spoke with great effort, as though he’d prepared these exact words. Then he pulled away from Troy and reached blindly for the door of the taxi.
Troy drove to the police youth club in Daceyville and found someone there to talk to, ended up staying quite a while. They gave him a tour of the place, and by the time he’d finished the day was almost over. When he finally reached home he found Anna in the kitchen, cooking dinner. She turned and gave him a hug, expressed concern at what had happened. He ran a hand down her back, closing his eyes, resisting the urge to compare the feel of her with the woman from last night. She pulled out of his embrace, and said she had to get the food in the oven. He told her about his day, and as he spoke she nodded, frowning in concentration at a recipe book propped up on the bench. The conversation was running down and after a bit he just stopped and she didn’t seem to notice.
He went into the lounge room to sit on the floor and play with Matt. Later she came in and asked if it was all right for her to go out after dinner to a Bible study group at ChristLife. He said it was fine.
‘Liz and Mark asked us over for a barbeque on Saturday,’ she said. ‘I said I wasn’t sure, but now you’ll be here I’ll say yes. And the Duttons are coming on Sunday.’
He nodded. At Homicide, when you weren’t busy working on an investigation, the weekends were free. Life had to go on. The dead owed that to the living.
He stayed up for a while after Anna came home, thinking about the events of the day, not feeling tired. Finally, after eleven, he decided it was time to try to sleep and went to have a last look at Matt. The door to the bedroom was closed, which was not unusual. Anna had started closing it a week or two ago. But when he went to open it, he discovered it was locked too. A rush of fury went through him and he had to restrain himself from yelling at her to open it. Still, after last night he had no right to be angry with her anymore. Suddenly feeling very tired, he stumbled off to sleep alone in the big bed.
Twenty-eight
Randall didn’t know how it had happened, but they were arguing. He hadn’t known Kristin long enough to have a major argument with her, so it seemed all wrong. But her strange behaviour demanded confrontation. Going through his wallet had been a joke, almost. But not this.
‘I didn’t give you a key to my place so you could go in and search it,’ he said, trying to remember why he had given it to her, someone he’d only known for a few weeks. It was the way she talked to him, the way she put things: she’d made it seem natural.
‘What have you got to hide?’
‘It’s not that.’ She’d turned up at his flat that night, an hour before they’d arranged to meet, well before he’d got home, and gone through his stuff. ‘You haven’t even given me a key to your place.’
‘What’s in the cabinet in your room? It has a most solid lock.’
They’d gone over this already. He’d told her the cupboard contained travel documents, plans and mementos of past jobs. One locked cupboard in his entire apartment, for Christ’s sake.
‘And that disgusting book.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘I read some of it. I found it obscene. Everyone knows it’s obscene.’
He put some spatchcock in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to speak, and stared at her. Apart from being pale, her skin was incredibly smooth. He didn’t know if that was an Icelandic thing, but it was almost like plastic. Her features were nothing special, her mouth rarely smiled, but he was still entranced by her skin, especially where it stretched over her cheeks, from the jawline to the bones beneath her eyes.
And then her hair, a colour somewhere between blonde and white. In many ways she was ordinary, even disappointing, but these two qualities, skin and hair, were so extreme they made her a type, and Randall had long been fascinated by types.
‘And what a title,’ she said. ‘Atlas Shrugged. Pompous capitalist crap.’
‘Ayn Rand had a lot of good ideas.’
‘She was a libertarian bitch, and an appalling novelist. I’m distressed that you can enjoy that muck. You do enjoy it?’
‘I do. The businessman as hero. You think what you do is important, and so do I.’
Kristin stood up, furious, and threw her napkin down onto the plate. It hit her wineglass, which teetered. Randall put out a hand and steadied it. Things like that mattered, objective reality: stopping a glass from falling. She stormed away from the table, almost running into a waitress carrying a stack of plates. Randall watched the apologetic dance and then Kristin was gone, but only to the toilets, not the front door.
Still, this was better than talking about the illegals, which had occupied the first part of the meal. He checked his phone to see if Troy had rung, but there was no message. That afternoon Wu had called, told him Troy had taken the bait, told him never to tell anyone about the number he’d given the cop the night before. For a few hours, Randall had ignored the implications, just like he’d been ignoring them ever since Wu gave him the number yesterday. But they sunk in. He realised Troy might work it out and come after him, full of anger. He was a very physical fellow, although these past few days he’d hardly been acting impressively. Last night at the restaurant he’d been all over the place. Randall felt a small glow of pride at the thought that he’d come out of Sunday night in better shape than Troy. And Henry was happy with him again, because of how he’d handled the detective. It was as though he’d had a disease and it had been passed on.
Margot Teresi’s name had been released to the media, so now the whole world knew she was the victim and was talking about it. Jack Taylor hadn’t said a word. They’d been in meetings together twice that day, and Taylor had said nothing, he’d treated Randall the same as normal. It looked like his job was safe. Thanks to Henry.
The problem was, as he sat there waiting for Kristin to come back, Randall found he didn’t feel good about Troy. He didn’t know precisely what it was he’d done, but he had a strong feeling it might be painful. Troy was a decent sort of fellow doing an important job for poor pay. He didn’t deserve to get Randall’s germs. I have not always been a good man, Randall thought, but my crimes have usually been victimless, or at least done to strangers. This is different. But then, Troy is such a decent fellow, he might not blame me. He might blame himself.
Kristin came back from the toilets, all bouncy as she flopped into her chair, complete mood transformation. He’d given her
some stuff earlier in the evening, in the bar where they’d met, and she must have done a line or two in the ladies’ just now. He hoped the waitress wouldn’t notice, but she probably would. They needed to go, and he shovelled the last of the wild rice on his plate into his mouth. Kristin seemed to have lost interest in her food, and looked around for someone to bring them the bill.
Kristin reached out and put a hand on his wrist. He liked the way her skin was so pale it made his look dark. He was fair himself, and usually with women it worked the other way round.
‘This Thai girl, Sally,’ she said, and he nodded, recalling the prostitute picked up by the cops on Sunday.
‘Immigration were very enthusiastic at first,’ she said, ‘but it’s gone wrong. They say there’s not enough evidence for them to charge anyone with sex trafficking.’
‘Didn’t the papers say she had some huge debt she could never pay off?’ He’d read that she only came here because they’d told her she’d be a dancer. But then, she would say that.
‘I know.’ Kristin grasped his wrist more firmly. ‘It’s terrible. Can you imagine? Forced prostitution.’
A waiter turned up with the bill at last, and Randall gave him his card. Kristin put hers on the tray too; she always insisted on paying her share.
‘So it’s a question of evidence?’
‘It’s a question of police determination. They’ve backed off, it’s all too hard.’ She stood up, face flushed, realised the cards hadn’t been brought back yet, and sat down.
‘What can you do?’ he said.
‘One of the detectives, Susan Conti, was really keen to pursue it,’ she said. ‘But now the police have been taken off Sally’s case.’
‘Is this Conti any good?’
‘She’s sympathetic. But has no power.’
Their cards came back and Kristin stood up. ‘Now let’s go and fuck.’
Jesus. ‘I went to the doctor today about a pain in my stomach. She gave me some medication that has a side effect. It interferes with my libido.’
‘It’s the cocaine,’ she said, so loudly that a woman at the next table looked over. ‘You need to ease off.’
‘No it’s not. I have this pain.’
‘In your stomach?’
‘That’s right.’
He stood up and took his briefcase, and they walked out of the restaurant.
‘What is this medication called?’
What the doctor had recommended, until the tests could be run, was something called Mylanta. Off the shelf. He had a big bottle in his bag, and if Kristin thought the medication was in there, she’d grab it and do a search. Right now she was very frisky.
‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘It’s back at the office.’
‘I think there must be some mistake. Tomorrow, you tell me the name.’
Outside the restaurant, Randall said, ‘Tonight, do you mind if we just sleep?’
Some girls would have thought this rather sweet, but Kristin didn’t look happy. He knew she had strong needs and took them very seriously.
‘I think I’ll go home to my place then,’ she said. ‘I’m a healthy woman. In bed with you, I might be too frustrated.’
‘Well—’ he said.
‘I think it’s best.’
She stuck her arm out, and a passing taxi pulled over. He could see she was furious.
‘How about we go away together for the weekend? I’ll pick you up at five on Friday.’
‘That’s tomorrow. Where will we go?’
He had no idea. ‘Somewhere nice. A surprise for you.’
‘Okay.’ She kissed him hard on the lips. ‘But tomorrow, I want to know the name of your medication.’
He watched the taxi pull off. She was so efficient, he thought, at just about everything. She hadn’t encountered messiness yet, and would probably make sure she avoided it for life. He wondered where they would go tomorrow night. Leave the mobile at home. Somewhere far away from Troy.
FRIDAY
Twenty-nine
Troy woke early, just before dawn. Matt started to grizzle so he went to the boy’s bedroom and found the door was now unlocked. Anna must have got up during the night. She was still asleep on the couch, and he changed and dressed Matt as quietly as he could. Then he took him out to the kitchen and prepared some hot water to warm the bottle of formula standing ready in the fridge. Anna had stopped breastfeeding a few months ago. While the bottle stood in the water, he took Matt into the main bedroom and propped him up on some pillows on the bed while he changed into jeans and a warm top. The baby looked at him earnestly as he got dressed and began to cry. Troy put on a little pantomime act, held his finger to his lips, tried to look concerned. The baby stopped crying and furrowed his brow, apparently in concentration. As he returned to the kitchen, Matt held in the crook of his left arm, he continued this one-sided dialogue.
When they left the house it was light, and there was more than a trace of heat in the air. Troy pushed the stroller down in the direction of the beach. It would be two months before the water was warm enough for most people to swim, but from now on the sand and the broad pathway above it would attract more and more people in daily rehearsals for summer.
Troy steered the stroller around a long stretch of pavement covered in broken glass. Unusually for a beachside suburb, Maroubra had lots of public housing. Anna had a friend who was a midwife and made home visits in the area. If she went to one of the blocks, it was procedure to notify the local police as she went in. If they hadn’t heard from her within half an hour, a car would be sent around immediately. Despite this, the suburb was now an expensive place to buy a house, although the new owners coexisted uneasily with the welfare population. Someone at the surf club had suggested this was why so many of the new houses looked like concrete fortresses.
When they reached the beachfront, Troy turned right and pushed the stroller towards the Malabar headland, a vast area of grass and trees that contained a riding school and several rifle ranges. On its far side there was a sewage treatment works and then, a little further on, the site of a former hospital recently turned into housing for the wealthy, and then the large and still very current Long Bay jail. It was an unusual combination of elements for the coast, which elsewhere consisted largely of houses, beaches and national parks. Troy liked it.
It was only by accident that he lived here and not inland. Four years ago, a solicitor had called to say someone had left him and Georgina a house. It turned out their mother had an uncle they’d never heard of, a single man who’d lost touch with her decades before she died. Now he had died too. Georgina and Troy had met the solicitor at the house, a small, dark-brick place built in the 1940s. They’d walked through it and Troy had liked the bare, grassy backyard and the way the sunlight came in through the windows, making patches on the old carpet. It seemed peaceful, and reminded him of the house they’d lived in before their parents’ deaths. It reminded him of a time when he had been a different person.
‘His name was Wal Barton,’ said the solicitor. ‘He said to apologise to you, and left you all his possessions. Which means the house and contents.’
‘Apologise for what?’ said Georgina.
‘He didn’t say.’
Troy said, ‘When’s the funeral?’
‘It was last week. He didn’t want you to be told until now.’ The solicitor thought about what he was going to say next. ‘There were no mourners.’
After they’d finished at the house, Troy and Georgina had gone to a cafe near the beach. She told him she didn’t want her share: the house was his. When he protested, she described her husband’s earnings and career prospects. ‘We don’t need any more money,’ she said, putting a hand on his arm.
He knew it was not just that. It was about the different lives they’d been handed after their parents died. He said he’d think about it.
At the time, he’d just started seeing Anna. She was a nurse and they’d met when he was at Westmead interviewing an assault victim. Things
between them grew serious, and the house at Maroubra became part of it; suddenly he could see a future for himself and her, there. A family, for heaven’s sake. Him. It was a future he’d never imagined, but which he found he desperately wanted. So he’d called Georgina and said he accepted her gift.
Much later, Anna had pointed out their lucky financial situation meant he could walk away from his job any time he liked. He could afford to take a few months off and do nothing. At the time he’d wondered why she’d said this, but she hadn’t mentioned it again. Money wouldn’t have been a problem in their lives even if they’d had a mortgage. He could always find work in the private-security sector, earning much more than he did now. Like Ralph Dutton, who was coming over on Sunday with his family. He’d left the police a while back, and these days he lived like a king.
But that was not for him. Troy knew that being a homicide detective was his vocation. No matter what Helen Kelly might be doing to the squad, it was the only place he wanted to be.
When they reached the car park at the southern end of the beach, Troy took Matt from his stroller and walked through the trees and across the sand to the rock pools. Troy crouched to look into a few of the pools but they were bare, long since stripped of anything edible by the city’s expanding population, with its varied range of culinary desires. He held Matt tightly, breathing in the baby smell of his hair.
‘We’re fifty years too late, mate,’ he murmured, looking into the rock pool.
He stood up and walked back slowly across the sand, feeling the sun warming his back, basking in a contentment he had not had in a long time. He resisted the temptation to hug Matt again; sometimes he held him so close the boy had trouble breathing.
There was a sign saying DANGEROUS RIP: SWIMMING PROHIBITED. He stood in front of it for a while, watching twenty surfers in their wetsuits paddling on the swell. It wasn’t a good day for it, and after a bit Matt began to grizzle, so he turned back to the road. He put the boy in the stroller and soon he was fast asleep.
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