Dan Bergman was ready to go and Troy led the way out to the car. Lucky with the parking this morning, it was only a hundred metres up the hill. He’d just unlocked the doors when his mobile rang. It was Randall, who said he was calling to say hello. Troy couldn’t believe it. He took a few steps away from Bergman so he could talk in private.
‘Have you decided to tell me what this is all about?’ he said quietly.
‘Mate, you tell me, for Christ’s sake. I can’t help you if I don’t know anything.’
Troy put the phone against his chest and told Bergman he’d be a few minutes. He had to say something, to try to get Randall to open up.
‘Someone’s approached me about what I did the other night,’ he said softly. ‘I’m walking into my boss’s office to tell him the whole story. If you want to tell me where you fit in, this is your last chance.’
‘I have no idea—’
‘Forget it. I’m going now. We won’t speak again.’
There was silence, and Troy was about to hang up when Randall spoke.
‘I was asked to give you the number,’ he said. ‘I believed the person involved just wanted to do you a favour. If anything else has happened, I’m very sorry.’
‘Who asked you?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why not? Is it a criminal?’
‘No way, mate. I wouldn’t do that.’
For the second time that day, a line from the Bible came to Troy. A thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me.
He said, ‘Very soon, two angry detectives are going to come into your office. At that point it becomes official and your whole life changes, Sean. You’ll be charged with blackmail. In the court case, my name will be suppressed. Yours won’t be.’
Randall said nothing, and Troy could feel his own heart pounding. He said, ‘Is this to do with The Tower?’
‘No way, mate. No way.’
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
‘Jesus. They’ll kill me.’
‘Who are they?’
Randall said, ‘I am so sorry about this.’
His voice had changed. Partly it was because the usual energy had disappeared from it. There was also the resignation Troy was familiar with from the voices of criminals who’d been broken.
Troy said, ‘Talk.’
‘I was told to give you that number by someone I don’t know. They have something on me. What have they done to you?’
‘Who are they?’
‘I have no idea. They contact me by email. They have something on me.’
‘You mean they’re blackmailing you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How could they? You’re not married.’
‘Believe me,’ Randall sighed. ‘They’ve got something.’
Troy felt as though he’d stumbled into another world, where everyone knew more than he did. He sensed there were false notes in what Randall was saying, but there was a lot of truth there too.
‘What do they want from me?’ he said. ‘Do you pay them money?’
Randall said reluctantly, ‘I don’t think it’s money. You’re a cop.’
‘Is it to do with The Tower?’
‘I have no idea. Honestly.’
Jesus, Troy thought. His mind raced to make sense of this but there was too much there. Too much that was unknown. But it was bad, much worse than before, when he’d hoped he’d just been caught at random. Then something occurred to him.
‘Why would they think I’d use the number? If I wanted to blackmail someone it’d be a long shot, just to give them a bit of paper with a phone number on it. Unless I knew . . .’ He thought about it. ‘You told them about me and my marriage, didn’t you?’
‘I swear I did not do that, mate,’ Randall said, his voice sounding distant. ‘I have to go.’ He hung up.
For a few minutes Troy just stood there, waiting for his heart rate to come down. It must be The Tower. And yet it had all happened so quickly. He still didn’t understand how Randall could have detected his vulnerability so soon, wondered if he was missing something. But the man had some strange talents. Troy realised how much he must have opened up to Randall last week, how vulnerable he’d been. The shooting had affected him far more than he’d realised.
He looked around for Bergman, but the other detective had disappeared. Troy wrenched open the door of the car, got in, and started the engine. He pressed the horn. When Bergman didn’t appear, he put the car into gear and drove off. He knew it was the wrong thing to do, but in the scale of things it wasn’t that wrong. And he didn’t know if he could cope with Bergman right now.
Thirty-six
Jenny Finch’s parents lived in a brick and wood house on one side of a valley in Forestville. Dick Finch was in his late sixties, slightly stooped with white hair. He showed Troy into the lounge area of an open-plan layout. There were a few other people around, mainly women in the kitchen, and Troy realised he’d walked into some sort of gathering. Maureen Finch, a thin woman clasping a handkerchief, was waiting on a sofa and did not get up when Troy was shown to a seat.
‘Jenny’s funeral is this afternoon,’ Dick said. ‘We’ve asked our friends back to the house afterwards, and some of them have been helping Maur prepare the food.’
‘I’m sorry to intrude on your grief,’ Troy said, remembering that on Friday they’d be doing it all again for Margot. He knew there was nothing you could do at a time like this to make it any easier. You just had to be as respectful as you could and get on with the questions. He said, ‘I wonder if you know anything about the interest Margot was taking in The Tower, before she died?’
Maureen broke into sobs and after a second stood up and staggered from the room, assisted by her husband. Troy sat there, staring out the large windows at the bush across the valley, distancing himself from all the emotion in the house, the indignant murmurs of the helpers in the kitchen. He wondered if the house was ever in danger during the bushfire season.
Finch came back and sat down heavily. ‘Do we really have to do this now?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Is there anything you can tell us about Jenny’s death?’ he said, running a hand through his hair. ‘Have you talked to the officer involved?’
Troy looked at him for a moment, catching a glimpse of how it must be to be on the other side of all this. ‘I was there when she took her life.’
Of course. He had something precious for the Finches. If Finch had not raised it, he might have left their house without mentioning he was the last person to talk to their daughter. He realised how distracted he was.
‘I’m sorry,’ Finch said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It must be very distressing to have to deal with situations like this, with people such as me in a state of grief. You’re so young.’
‘I’ve been a detective for eight years,’ Troy said, keeping his voice steady.
‘And then, with all you’ve been through in the past week. Shooting that man, shouldn’t they give you some sort of leave?’
Troy decided not to respond to this, not sure what he could say, and launched into the story. He explained how he’d gone to Margot’s flat after her death for a routine check.
‘Jenny was there and she let me in and we talked,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t heard that Margot had died, so I told her. She was upset, and she started to cry.’ He paused, remembering the pale, thin woman on the black leather couch. This man’s child. ‘I asked her if she was all right and she said she was, she just needed some time to herself.’
‘Did you have a partner with you?’ Finch said.
‘No.’
‘Don’t detectives normally work in pairs? I imagine it’s preferable to have a second opinion on things.’ He didn’t sound aggressive, but clearly it was something he’d been thinking about.
‘Not always,’ Troy said carefully. ‘We prefer to, but in the early stages of an investigation there can be a lot of things that have to
be done quickly with limited resources.’ Finch nodded, as if he understood all about resource constraints, and Troy went on: ‘I said I’d go and have a look at Margot’s bedroom and her home office. At that point we were very keen to find her diary and her mobile phone.’ They still hadn’t found them. McIver had talked about that this morning. ‘I asked Jenny if there was anyone she’d like me to call, and she said it was okay, she’d call her mother to come over.’
‘But we weren’t in Sydney.’
‘I know that now. I didn’t at the time, so I left her. She seemed upset, but in control of herself. I thought she was going to ring her mother.’
‘They say people about to commit suicide often present like that. They can even appear happy.’
There wasn’t much Troy could say to this, so he remained silent. Finch began to cry, holding his head at a strange angle as he burrowed into one of his trouser pockets for a handkerchief. He was tensing his upper lip in an attempt to stop the tears, but they were coming anyway.
‘When I came back into the room she was gone,’ Troy said, wanting to finish it.
He stood up and went over to the big windows, giving Finch time to gather himself. After a while, the other man began to speak. He told Troy about his daughter’s upbringing, how everything had seemed normal until she had a breakdown in her early twenties.
‘In retrospect there were a few things wrong before then, but we didn’t pick up on them. Jenny was an only child; maybe if we’d had more we would have had something to compare her with. But she had friends, sailed through university. You think if your child makes it to that point, they’re pretty stable. A doctor told us sometimes they can’t explain these things.’
‘Did you see a lot of Margot and her parents back then?’
‘Almost nothing. They were in the States for all of Jenny’s youth. Came back when Elena got the cancer—she wanted to be with her mum, who was still alive then, and Maur. The two girls started to see a lot of each other at family occasions, but I can’t say they got on all that well. Margot was difficult, she resented having to leave California. And then, of course, her mother died.’
The talking had helped get the tears under control, and Finch blew his nose and put the handkerchief back in his pocket. ‘We didn’t see her for a while, but after Tony died, she started visiting a few times a year. Maur encouraged her, of course. Margot went to see Jenny when she was in the clinic, and the next we knew they were living together. It seemed to be going well.’
‘Did Margot ever talk to you about The Tower?’
Finch nodded. ‘I think that was one of the reasons she came here. I’m a structural engineer; before I retired I was an executive with Multiplex. It was a surprise the day Margot realised her boring old uncle in the suburbs was an expert on a subject that had come to mean a great deal to her.’ He smiled and looked away. ‘I think The Tower is a work of genius. I understand what Tony had to do to get it built. We ended up having a lot of long conversations about that. Maur and Jen would leave the room.’
He described some of these conversations, and Troy said, ‘Do you think Margot could have committed suicide?’
Finch shook his head. ‘Not a chance in the world. It wasn’t in her. And anyway, she was determined to clear her father’s name.’
‘She’d been trying for a while. What if she’d realised it couldn’t be done? What if she came to the conclusion he’d been a failure after all?’
‘It’s not possible. Morning Star treated Tony shamefully—they practically stole the building from him. Everyone in the business world knows that.’ Finch’s voice had sped up. ‘I talked to Margot on the phone three weeks ago, just before we went to Spain. She was very positive, she had a new lead.’
‘Do you know what it was?’
‘Someone she’d met. She didn’t say who.’
Troy pulled out a photo of the man known as Mr A and showed it to Finch, who shook his head. ‘It’s not very clear, is it?’
‘You didn’t put Margot on to anyone?’
‘I suggested all sorts of people she could talk to, journalists and so on.’
‘Anyone in particular? Anyone in the industry?’
‘I’m out of touch these days. I gave her the number of Peter Wood, a friend at Multiplex. He used to be my deputy.’
‘How old is he?’
‘About fifty, but he has a full head of hair.’ Finch smiled briefly. ‘And you wouldn’t get Peter skulking around someone else’s building site on a Sunday night.’
Troy recalled that according to Margot’s phone records, she had called Multiplex once. The police had got in touch with the switch there but they had no record of whom she’d been after. He asked for Wood’s direct phone number and after Finch gave it to him, said, ‘ “Less is more”. That’s what Jenny said to me about the white walls of the block of flats.’
‘Mies van der Rohe,’ Finch said, his eyes tearing up again. ‘A modernist architect.’
There was nothing more to say, so Troy stood up. One of the women in the kitchen called out to Dick, needing to talk to him about some arrangement, and Troy said he’d find his own way out. On the way he looked for Maureen Finch, but she was nowhere to be seen.
He took the steps down to his car, which was parked across the road. Another vehicle had just pulled up behind it and he recognised one of the cars from work. He stopped on the stairs, waiting to see who would get out, wondering if they had found out about the video and had come to take him in for questioning. A man stepped out of the car, looking around uncertainly. It was Bergman.
In the subsequent conversation, which took place next to the cars, Troy had to restrain himself from hitting the young man. Bergman explained at length how he’d been overcome on leaving the station by a desperate need to use the toilet. It was something to do with a goat curry he’d consumed in Newtown the previous evening. Seeing Troy’s attention occupied by the long phone conversation with Randall, he’d ducked back inside. He’d been away for longer than he’d intended, but his mobile had been switched on throughout the ordeal— ‘Forget it,’ Troy said, pulling out his keys. ‘The interview’s over, I learned nothing. Let’s go back to the station.’
Bergman started to talk again but Troy turned his back on him and walked over to his car. He opened the door but didn’t get in, waiting there until eventually he heard Bergman drive away.
When the street was quiet again, he checked his mobile for messages. Anna had called, which was unusual. He rang back, his heart pounding. She answered straight away.
‘You’ve had a strange call,’ she said. ‘A man asked me to tell you to meet him. I told him he should call your mobile, but he said he was calling from a public phone and didn’t have any more money.’
‘What was his name?’
‘He wouldn’t leave a name. He said to meet him at the Mornington Apartments. He said you’d know the time.’
It was as though a small explosion had gone off somewhere. So this is it, Troy thought.
‘Thanks, honey.’
‘How did he get our number?’ she said loudly. ‘He woke Matt, he was having a sleep. It took me an hour to get him off.’
She sounded almost hysterical. Troy wondered if he should have married someone with more experience of life. He’d wanted the serenity she seemed to offer, which came partly from innocence. He’d fallen deeply, hungrily, in love with it, as though it might counteract what he’d been through in his own life. But whatever peace he’d found, it had proved fragile.
‘I have no idea. Maybe someone at the squad gave it out by mistake.’
‘I have to go. Matt’s crying again.’
Troy could hear that. ‘I’ll tell him not to call home again.’
She was gone.
He wondered how anyone could have got his home number, which was unlisted. Despite what he’d said to Anna, no one at work would give it out. Presumably the blackmailers had ways of obtaining it, would have someone they paid at a phone company. That didn’t matter
. What mattered was that they were playing with his mind, preparing him for some demand to come. It was important to remain steady.
Flipping open his notebook, he found the number Dick Finch had just given him and rang it. A secretary answered and said Peter Wood was in a meeting. Troy left his name and number and asked that Wood call him back as soon as possible.
He walked across the footpath and stood staring at the bush beyond. After a while he realised his mind had closed down, and he tried to focus on what he was looking at, to think about another subject. A strip a hundred metres wide had been cleared and covered with bark mulch, with the occasional native shrub or tuft of grass. It was well maintained. According to a small sign Troy found fifty metres down the way, it was cared for by local residents. There was even a rough, meandering path through it, and Troy imagined how pleasant it would be to bring your dog down here at the end of the day, chat with neighbours in the cool of the evening. There was nothing much to burn, so it would act as a break if a fire ever came up the valley. He turned and walked back to his car, looking up at the Finchs’ house. A woman’s white face was in one of the windows, staring down at him. He thought it might be Maureen Finch, although with the sun bouncing off the glass he couldn’t be sure.
The phone rang and when he answered it there was an unfamiliar voice, distorted by some mechanical device.
‘No need to visit the Mornington Apartments again, detective.’
Another distant explosion. In the silence that followed, Troy said nothing.
‘The man you’re looking for will visit you this afternoon at City Central at three. His evidence is perfectly acceptable if you don’t push it too hard. If there are any problems, I’ll send pictures of you and the lovely Tanya to your wife. The same if you talk to Mr Randall about this again.’
Troy said, ‘I’m telling my wife tonight.’
‘In my experience, it doesn’t matter what a wife’s been told, pictures will have a substantial impact. But we’ll also send it to a large number of your colleagues and the media. And the internet. It will stay on the internet forever. The decision is yours.’
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