The speaker hung up.
The blow had fallen, and part of Troy’s world changed. It was as though its component parts were separated, thrown up in the air, and as they came down they didn’t fit together anymore. He got into his hot car and saw it was after midday. He thought about everything, and nothing. In the emptiness a line from the Bible came to him: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Not that this was God, but it felt like it.
At the office he logged on to his personal email account and there was another video clip waiting for him. Unlike the first one, this had some text: A present for Anna? It had been sent from an address he didn’t recognise, just a string of letters and numbers that he recorded. Presumably it would be no good for a trace. Presumably the person who’d sent this knew what he was doing. He deleted the message without looking at the attachment, thinking about what the man on the phone had said, thinking about the images being on the internet. Forever. People he knew, his son when he grew older, could find them there.
He sat for a while, wondering what to do. Mr A must be important. Hugely important. Nothing else came to him and he realised his energy level was down, every decision was like lifting heavy weights. His mobile rang and he answered it reluctantly.
‘Peter Wood,’ the caller barked. ‘You rang me.’
For a moment his mind was blank and then it came to him: the man whose number Dick Finch had given him. The man who just possibly might know something about the fellow Margot Teresi had met at The Tower. That was a piece of knowledge Troy should not have, if he was to follow the instructions of the man who’d called earlier. This was it, he thought: decision time.
‘It’s okay,’ Troy said slowly. ‘I thought you might be able to help with a query. But I think I’ve sorted it out.’
He stopped and waited. Now it all depended on whether Wood had seen the appeal for information about Mr A and connected it to Troy’s call, in which case he might say something. And if he did this, Troy would have to act. But Wood just sighed loudly and hung up.
Troy wondered what he’d just done. He’d put a foot across the line, but he hadn’t crossed it. He told himself there was still time to go back. Told himself he needed some time to think.
He typed a brief account of what Dick Finch had told him, leaving out the reference to Peter Wood. As he worked, he noticed the changed dynamic in the room, the organised energy as people came and went from McIver’s office. Ruth called out that the corpse found off Botany Bay had been confirmed as Andrew Asaad, lots of sea water in his lungs, the leg chewed through by a shark. The people who’d disposed of the body had been unlucky: it should have sunk to the bottom forever. It was like the Shark Arm case Dutton had told them about, Troy thought. The Sydney Send-off was fallible.
After lunch, McIver yelled out and he went into his office. It seemed even smaller than when Stone had been the occupant. McIver was not as big, but he exuded more energy.
‘You well?’ he said to Troy.
‘ “Less is more.” Know what that means?’
‘Argument in favour of concrete boxes. If you make a building less attractive you can build it more cheaply. Look at this,’ he said, pushing a large photograph across the desk. It showed a man’s head, and looked like it had been taken on a street at night. Troy recognised the face. When he saw it he had to sit down. It was the shooter.
‘You all right?’ said McIver.
Troy nodded.
‘CCTV from outside a school in Darlinghurst. Same street where the security pass was found.’
‘Sunday night?’
‘That smart Constable Conti tracked it down. She’s not just a pretty face.’
Troy picked up the photograph and studied it. The quality of the picture was good. ‘We’re putting it out?’
‘Immediately. What you been up to?’
After Troy had given a summary of his morning’s activities, again neglecting to mention Peter Wood, McIver said, ‘On Friday I rang a mate in the FBI, asked for a confidential briefing on Tony Teresi’s time in the USA. Jack called me back yesterday. Says Tony Teresi was probably as honest as you could be in the casino business.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They’ve cleaned it up since the good old days. Organised crime is pretty much out of it. The main law enforcement issues now are the inducements offered to high rollers, basically sex and drugs. Teresi would have been involved in that on his way up the ladder. He would have hired people to do it for him when he got to the top. But in terms of his business dealings, his known associates, Tony was okay. There are lots of more corrupt industries these days.’
‘What about Macau? Teresi had a casino there.’
‘Jack says that’s the new Wild West. Tony was one of the first outsiders to break in. He must have used political contacts, which means graft. That’s all he knows.’
‘You don’t have a mate in Macau, I suppose?’
McIver shook his head. ‘Asia’s a young man’s game. Maybe you should go up there, get yourself on a conference, make a few contacts.’ He looked thoughtfully at Troy. ‘But that sort of bonding involves a certain relaxation of normal standards. At least in my experience. Maybe not for the pure of heart, such as yourself.’
You’d be surprised, Troy thought.
Leaning back in his chair, McIver said, ‘That was what finished my first marriage, the San Francisco conference.’
‘Can’t the pure of heart bond with each other?’
‘Over cups of tea, you mean?’
Troy was tempted to tell Mac about the blackmail. But since the anonymous phone call, he knew it might set things in motion that would destroy his marriage. He’d lose his son. There had to be some other way.
He asked how the investigation was looking. In general.
‘Basically, it’s rooted,’ McIver said cheerfully. ‘I’ve got twenty people out there smelling their own farts, retracing steps, repeating interviews.’
Troy shrugged sympathetically and stood up.
McIver said, ‘Feel like a drink later?’
‘It’s my wedding anniversary.’
‘Don’t forget to give her flowers. I always did.’
Troy was going to ask if this was the secret of his other two divorces, but he didn’t have the heart for it. And anyway, McIver was already staring at his screen again.
Thirty-seven
When he got back to his desk there was a note saying a man was waiting for him in reception. He had information regarding the media appeal in relation to the unknown man who’d gone into The Tower. Picking up a pad, Troy gazed dully around the office. It was three o’clock.
‘Bergman,’ he called.
The detective was sitting with two others, going through some lists. Troy explained that he needed him for an interview and a sergeant asked if it could wait fifteen minutes.
‘I want Bergman, and I want him now,’ Troy said, and turned on his heel and left the room. In the corridor he said to Bergman, who came running after him, ‘Let me do the talking. Just sit there, observe, and give me your impressions afterwards.’
‘Is it true the sergeant is thinking of sending me back to my station?’
‘Just concentrate on the job at hand.’
The man out front introduced himself as Geoff Rochford. He was in his late fifties, tall and balding, and Troy thought he could certainly pass as Mr A. When they shook hands, Rochford’s was warm and slightly damp. Troy asked to see some ID and Rochford handed over a driver’s licence. They went into an interview room and Troy recorded the details on the licence before handing it back.
Opening a folder, he slid the still photo of Mr A across to Bergman, raising his eyebrows. Bergman scowled in concentration, looking from the photo to the man across the table and back again. Troy raised his eyebrows, and Bergman nodded vigorously.
Rochford told them he’d gone to The Tower to meet Margot Teresi on Sunday night. Troy asked why.
‘Well you see,’ Rochford
said, ‘I’m a grief counsellor.’
He reached into a pocket of his blue coat and handed over a business card. There was silence in the room for a while as Troy read it and recorded some more details. As he wrote, he shook his head in grudging appreciation. The person arranging all this was like someone putting on a show, and they were good at it. They’d probably done it before.
‘A grief counsellor,’ he said. ‘Tough job?’
‘I try to help people.’
‘Society is grateful for the work you do.’
Rochford stared at him, said nothing.
Troy said, ‘Why was a grief counsellor trespassing on a building site on Sunday night?’
‘Margot had been seeing me for therapy for about six months,’ Rochford said quickly, opening his briefcase and taking out a large diary and a receipt book. He pushed them across to Troy. ‘You can see from my appointment book, she was on the first Monday of every month.’
Certain pages in both books had been tagged with yellow stickers. Troy flicked through each of them and then passed them to Bergman.
‘Paid in cash, I suppose?’
‘As it happens, she did. The receipts are all there.’
It was an impressive set-up, and Troy wondered how it had been done. Maybe Rochford wasn’t a grief counsellor at all. Or maybe he was and the books had been cooked. The essential thing was not to query him or his story. That was the point of the phone call he’d received earlier in the day. The point, maybe the only point, of the blackmail. It seemed almost trivial, but of course it wasn’t. Mr A, the real one, must be incredibly important to the investigation.
‘Margot wanted closure,’ Rochford said.
‘You’re sweating a lot, Mr Rochford,’ Bergman said. ‘Is anything wrong?’
Troy nudged Bergman with his knee. It was true Rochford was acquiring quite a shine. The last thing Troy wanted was for him to break down or walk out. ‘Tell us about that night,’ he said.
Looking eager, Rochford explained that Margot had visited The Tower about once a month, with the help of some of the security guards. The visits were of enormous emotional significance to her, but they were becoming increasingly risky as the building neared completion and became more busy. The guards wanted them to stop. Margot had formed the idea that a counselling session held in The Tower itself might help her finally deal with her grief.
‘I was reluctant,’ Rochford said, looking at Troy. ‘But Margot was a very persistent woman, and she was in a state of desperation. She talked of killing herself several times.’
‘Do you think—’
‘I want to emphasise that. I thought Margot Teresi was suicidal.’
Bergman was breathing deeply and twitching, looking at Troy as though concerned he might have missed the significance of this.
Troy said to Rochford, ‘You think she killed herself?’
‘It’s what I firmly believe.’
‘And what you’ll tell a court?’
‘That’s correct.’
Troy asked him to describe his visit to The Tower, and the grief counsellor led them through it, step by step. The way he spoke, it was like a child reciting a lesson learned by heart. He said they’d taken the lifts to level one hundred and ten.
‘What was it like up there?’
‘Cold. Windy. Dark. When we walked to the edge there was a sort of metal fence and you couldn’t see anything. There was mist.’
Troy remembered that night, what it had been like on level thirty-one. It annoyed him that Rochford’s lies could evoke the memory so powerfully. The man across the table was still sweating a lot, but apart from that he was doing well, consistent and assured. Troy asked him what Margot had been wearing, and received a detailed description. As the police had not released information about Margot’s bag or coat, this meant Rochford had been briefed by someone who’d seen her that night.
‘How did the counselling session go?’
‘It was a disaster. Margot broke down and we returned to the ground floor with the man who’d brought us up.’
Troy pulled photos of Bazzi and Asaad from the file and Rochford identified Bazzi.
‘I wanted to stay with her when we got downstairs, but this man insisted I leave. She told me to go, she said she would stay behind for a moment. She said she wanted to go up again, by herself. That was the last time I saw her.’
‘And what time was that?’
‘I was there about half an hour, maybe forty minutes. So it would have been something like ten to seven when I left. I didn’t check my watch.’
Troy knew from the bank’s CCTV that it had been 6.45 pm, so Rochford’s estimate was close enough. This piece of information had not been released to the public either. Troy wondered where the real Mr A was. He stared at the man across the table, realising how close he was to the people who were pursuing him. It was one degree of separation; he could almost reach out and touch them.
‘Mr Rochford, I have no further questions.’
As he said this he watched Rochford’s face carefully. He could see it shutting down, as though the relief was almost too much to bear. The three men stood up and Troy opened the door.
‘Why don’t you go back to the office,’ he said to Bergman, half pushing him out. ‘I’ll see Mr Rochford off the premises.’
When Bergman was gone, Troy shut the door and turned back to Rochford. He thanked him for his help and they shook hands. Rochford’s was almost wet now, and when Troy released it the other man took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.
‘It’s a nerve-racking business, isn’t it?’ Troy said.
‘It’s hot in here.’
‘I mean lying to the police.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Rochford said, without any attempt at conviction.
‘Can we help you in any way? My superiors know everything,’ he lied. ‘We can guarantee confidentiality.’ For a moment he saw panic in Rochford’s eyes. ‘We can protect you.’
‘No one can protect me,’ Rochford muttered. Then, summoning energy from somewhere: ‘I want to go now.’
Later in the afternoon, Troy ducked out and bought an anniversary present for Anna. It was an opal ring he’d seen in the window of a shop nearby. The opal was set in silver; he’d always liked the way silver looked against her brown skin. She did like jewellery, lots of it. One of their first arguments had been about the quantity of earrings and bracelets she’d been wearing when they went out to a film. He couldn’t remember who’d won, but she still wore more jewellery than most women. He’d come to accept it. Sometimes people would stare, when they went out, but it didn’t worry him anymore.
Soon after he got home that night, they drove down to a seafood place at Brighton-le-Sands. Anna had put a lot of effort into her hair and makeup, and was wearing a sari in rich shades of red and brown. She hadn’t worn a sari in a long time, and it surprised him when she came out of their bedroom. He wondered what it meant.
They had oysters followed by grilled fish, and talked about the visit from the Duttons yesterday. After a bit he tried to change the subject, but she stuck with it.
Finally she said, ‘Wendy says there’s lots of jobs going at the airport.’
‘Boring jobs.’
‘Safe ones.’
She’d never talked about him leaving the job before this investigation. He wondered if it was just the events of last week, or if it had been on her mind for a while.
‘Ralph said he wasn’t going to offer me a job because he knows I wouldn’t be happy there,’ he said with a smile.
He looked around the room, desperate for something else to talk about, but it was too late. Anna’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I do want you to be happy, Nick,’ she said. ‘You know that.’
‘Do you?’
She stood up and went to the bathroom.
Troy finished the wine in his glass and sat there, not sure how much more of this he could take. There was no pattern to their lives anymore. A waitress came by
and filled his glass and flirted with him mildly. It was pleasant. When she left he picked up the glass, looked at its contents, and put it down. One day he might become an alcoholic, as a way of dealing with the way his life was going. He’d seen it happen to other men. But for now, he didn’t have the time.
Anna assumed his patience was infinite, based on the belief he would keep coming back to her no matter how often she pushed him away. But one day he might not. Or was that the idea? Was she actually trying to push him away? If he left her, she would get half the house and could take Matt to Brisbane and live near her parents. Which, after all, was what she wanted. It was a shocking thought, and he felt guilty for even harbouring it. But as he sat there the guilt began to fade, while the thought remained.
When they got home he walked the babysitter to her place. He took his time on the way back, enjoying the stars and the spring night air, blowing in from the sea out of sight down the hill. Inside, he cleaned his teeth, turned off the lights, and went into the bedroom.
Anna was there, sitting up in bed in a red nightie he vaguely remembered. The lower part of her body was hidden by the bedclothes, but he could see most of her breasts, and even make out the nipples beneath the red silk. It had been a long time since he’d seen her like this.
‘Well, are you coming to bed or do I have to get out and haul you in?’ she said, her voice slightly hoarse.
Actually he felt like crying, an absurd feeling that passed quickly. He said he wouldn’t mind being dragged in and she said it was time for him to show a bit of enthusiasm. ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours, wondering what you’ve been getting up to with Aleisha.’
The words came out awkwardly but he appreciated the effort, and got out of his clothes. Pulling down the sheet, he climbed in next to her.
The thing was to take it as slowly and gently as he could. It would not be easy, the way he was feeling, but he told himself he could do it. She was still just sitting there, nervously, which helped calm him down. Twisting around, he kissed her softly on the side of her mouth. He kissed her some more and she turned slightly towards him, and responded for a moment, the feel of her skin and the smell of her almost overwhelming him with memories of what they’d had in the past.
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