The Tower

by Michael Duffy

  He parked carefully and sat in the car, watched a group of people walk by, a boy pushing the luggage trolley awkwardly while a man and woman tried to hug and kiss and walk at the same time, a teenage girl with them looking embarrassed but happy. Suddenly Troy wanted to weep, it seemed like the thing that needed to be done, but no tears came. He looked up at a plane that had just taken off and wondered if it was the one, or if they were still in the terminal. Realised it was the wrong time to talk to Anna. If he’d told her what was going on himself, he’d be owed something. But now, looking at it from her point of view . . . he was going in circles.

  The terrifying thing was how quickly it all collapsed on you. You think there’s a man, Nicholas Troy, who has a job and a family that are important to him, you could even say they’re part of him. But who would have thought that if you took them away you’d find they were all of him, there was nothing left. Almost nothing, just a shell that looks like a man but is barely able to function. All of a sudden everything is questionable, even the past. Why had he married someone from another culture? For some reason Little’s comments about Indians came to him, now of all times. And what he felt was ambiguity, followed by a wave of anguish. Maybe if he’d married someone more like himself? It was foolish, of course, but it was there and you had to wonder where it had come from. Troy clasped the steering wheel, wondered if he was capable of driving home.

  And everything goes at once. His parents. No, they’d gone a long time ago. But their absence was pressing in on him now, when he could least deal with it, and this was strange. Everything was strange. Then there was Luke, who’d been one of his compass points. Now he was gone, too. With the sickness, Luke was definitely gone.

  He wondered what was left inside him, what he still felt. If he was going to rebuild himself, he needed a place from which to start. He searched the emptiness, hoping to find an emotion. Henry Wu flashed through his mind a few times, and after a while he decided to think about Henry Wu. Good old Henry. The fact Anna had received the film, what did it mean? Troy thought about this for what seemed like a long time.

  It could have been sent by an employee, or accomplice. But why would they? Troy sat there, thinking about what had happened, the strangeness of the explosion on the boat, the fact Wu’s body had not been found. He took the pieces of what had happened apart and put them back together in different combinations, added the sending of the film this morning, and finally it came to him. ‘You bastard,’ he said, seeing it now. He looked out the window, angry that he’d missed it before. Wu was still alive.

  It took a while to accept, but he saw that it was true, the man was out there somewhere, living and breathing. And he found the realisation invigorating, it gave him something to cling to. A tiny rock in the ocean where he had been drowning.

  Troy turned on the engine and carefully drove out of the car park. He paid the fee, functioning well enough now he was thinking about Wu. The possibility of revenge was running hot inside, giving him strength. Wu was smart, he’d looked at the bomb and turned it from a threat into an opportunity. Get rid of Randall, who knew too much, fake his own death. Get away.

  Troy realised he was the only one who knew this. The knowledge made him feel better, the pain inside him receded a little. He had to find the man who had destroyed his marriage, his family and his life. There was no one else to turn to. It was between the two of them now; the police structure he’d relied on for so long had let him down. Anyway, by sending the film to Anna when it was no longer necessary, Wu had made it personal, in the way things had been personal once upon a time, before Troy had become a cop. He could do this. Wu thought he was a fool, lacking in ingenuity and imagination. But Wu did not know him.

  The man needed to be stopped, and Troy had the right to do this, he’d been given that right by what had been done to him. It came to him that he’d also been given the opportunity to right this wrong with Conti’s phone call this morning, the divine accident of it, her not knowing he was off the investigation. And McIver being busy when he’d called to pass on the information. The name of the ship was a gift from fate. The ship on which Wu would leave Australia. Henry Wu had been given to him, to deal with. After only a few minutes, he saw how it could be done.

  He stopped in Maroubra Junction and walked around, looking for a public phone. When he found one he rang Dutton and asked if he still needed the piece of information about the docks investigation. At first Ralph said nothing, perhaps too surprised to speak, and then it poured out of him.

  ‘Mate, oh mate, that is lovely. Oh I am extremely grateful. I don’t want to rush things but any chance you could find out today?’

  Troy had already found out. ‘It has to be today,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Good. Excellent.’

  ‘You said you’d give me something in return. Anything.’

  ‘Mate, of course, anything. Within reason of course.’

  ‘I don’t want much.’

  ‘Well, have something, mate. That’s how these things should work, you’re doing me a big favour here. Take something for yourself.’

  Troy waited for him to run down but he just ran on, almost babbling. Maybe he was in mild shock from the call.

  ‘What I want,’ Troy said, ‘is a gun.’

  There was silence.

  ‘You’ve already got a gun. Mate?’ Said in a pleading tone.

  ‘Pistol, untraceable, at least twelve rounds.’

  ‘Jesus—’

  ‘And access to Rice Turner’s. Tonight.’

  More silence. Dutton had thought he was in charge, just a matter of building the emotional pressure on his old mate, whose conscience, at the end of the day, was expendable. Troy felt a surge of anger but pushed it down. Now he was in charge.

  ‘Mate—’

  ‘It has to be tonight.’

  Troy knew Dutton was just making noises while he assimilated the offer.

  ‘This dock thing, I got to tell you,’ Dutton said. ‘The gun’s a possibility, but—jeez, you’re not going to use it, are you?’

  ‘No, but it has to be untraceable.’

  ‘It’s just—access to the wharf, their security’s tight as.’

  Troy looked at his watch. ‘You haven’t got much time.’

  ‘What about we give you a car?’ Dutton said. ‘Something nice but not too flashy. Time you upgraded the Camry.’

  Again the anger inside Troy, and he shifted on his feet. The anger was there but he was managing it. Just before he hung up he said, ‘I’ll come by your office at seven.’

  Later he rang Anna’s parents in Brisbane, figuring they’d be home by now. He rang them on their landline, wanting to confirm Anna was there. If she was unsure about things, she might have stayed in Sydney. But if she’d gone home to Brisbane, he knew it was over between them. Brisbane for her represented something apart from himself, an alternative.

  Mary answered the phone and he asked to talk to his wife. She said Anna didn’t want to speak to him.

  ‘She’s there?’ he said.

  He heard Mary saying something to someone else in the room; there was an emotional response. ‘She says no. You should go away now, Nicholas.’

  The phone went dead. Like his marriage.

  Fifty

  Margot Teresi’s funeral was being held at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium and Troy got there quickly, taking the Harbour Tunnel and then the Lane Cove one. He’d been here several times before for work. This was not work, though. He wasn’t sure what it was, but going to Margot’s funeral felt like the right thing to be doing on this day.

  When he arrived, the ceremony had begun and the car park was full. Troy parked along the driveway and walked up the red road, thinking he’d stand up the back for a few minutes, say a prayer for Margot, and leave before it was over. Up ahead another late arrival was walking along the road, a man in a black suit. He turned a corner and Troy couldn’t see him anymore, but he thought he’d recognised the man. It was Damon Blake. As he approached the corner h
imself, he sensed a commotion.

  It was a media scrum, surrounding the singer. Through the trees, Troy saw the Spanish-style crematorium building, and a large crowd outside one of the chapels. This must be Margot’s service, and there was no way he was going to get inside. Speakers had been set up and he could just make out Dick Finch’s voice, sounding tired but defiant.

  A reporter in the pack surrounding Blake looked around and saw Troy. She grabbed the arm of one of the cameramen and they detached themselves and came towards him. He turned and walked away, ignoring her urgent cries as he rounded the corner and sped up. As he went, he passed more people in dark clothes. It was as though all of Sydney was coming to the funeral, like flies to the bloated face of the dead man they’d found on Tuesday.

  Most of the people looked and some nodded as though they knew him. He realised they had recognised his face, despite the poor quality of the photographs in the newspapers. The human face is so distinctive that each of us is recognisable, even if caught crudely on CCTV. He thought of the grainy image of Mr A, and it struck him that however many more billions there will be, each of us will still be unique. This will be so even as new pairings, new diets, new circumstances and the whole wonder of DNA provide unlimited identities. There was something precious about this process, but it could throw up horrors too. And they had to be dealt with.

  The people in their dark clothes were still coming towards him. He felt like telling them to go away. The chapel was full and there was no more room. Margot was dead. No one could ever know her now. It was too late.

  ‘Detective?’

  A man and a woman, late fifties, pausing in their haste. The man held his hand out. ‘Peter Wood from Multiplex, we spoke on the phone.’

  He looked like a good man, a normal sort of person. His face was open and smiling, and you could see that at heart he just wanted to be happy, and for you to be happy too. The thing about being a detective was that you could end up outside of things. Troy shook Wood’s hand warmly and smiled at his wife. Someone had to protect these people, what they had.

  Fifty-one

  Dutton’s office was in a prefabricated building on the edge of the airport. The corporation that ran the place these days was privately owned, and Troy had expected something grander: his own office at the squad had been in a solid modern building, and he’d always assumed the private sector did better in these matters. This place seemed strangely temporary, although it was all new and clean, and there were shrubs on the lawn outside the windows, just starting to come into flower. The door was locked, so Troy pushed the buzzer on the wall.

  Dutton appeared quickly. ‘Come through to my office,’ he said, standing just inside the door in his shirtsleeves, looking Troy up and down. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Troy almost had to push him aside to get in. He looked around for a CCTV camera in the reception area, but realised he didn’t care about that. He didn’t care about anything anymore, except seeing this thing through.

  ‘It’s just,’ Dutton said, closing the door behind him, ‘this is a very unusual request. Two of them.’

  ‘There is no explanation.’

  ‘You don’t want to talk? I was your best man, for Christ’s sake.’

  He turned and began to walk, as though he’d thought better of the idea the moment the words were out. Troy followed him down a corridor. The offices on either side were empty, this must be some sort of admin block. It looked like a sterile place to work, and Dutton receded even further in his mind. Some old friends, the time comes when you need to move on. But he needed to say something, Dutton was too nervous. One of the old stories should calm him down. ‘Remember that guy who’d been shot? At Silverwater?’

  He and Ralph had been young constables called to a report of shots being fired in a house. They’d found a man sitting against a wall with a bullet hole through his chest. He must have lived for a while after he’d been shot, because he’d placed a schooner glass against his stomach beneath the wound, to catch the blood coming out of his chest. When the constables had arrived, the man’s hand was wrapped tightly around the glass.

  They had often talked of it, but not today. Ralph nodded in acknowledgement of the memory and said, ‘Sure you don’t want to talk about why you want a gun?’

  ‘Best you don’t know. Believe me.’

  He sounded like Kelly, but why not? Maybe this was how the world ran, on secrets and lies.

  ‘I heard they’ve kicked you off the squad.’

  ‘These things happen.’

  ‘You’ll be back. With your record.’

  Funny, Troy thought. I can read this guy, yet Sean Randall fooled me completely. He came in by another door. One I left open.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said as they turned into Dutton’s office. ‘I’m not going to gun down Kelly.’

  It was a pleasant room, view of saplings through the window, art photos of airport terminals on the walls. Dutton went to the other side of the desk and stood in front of the chair there, staring at Troy again. Then he reached down and opened the top drawer, removed a paper bag with something inside it and passed it across to Troy.

  ‘Should be familiar,’ he said.

  Troy took out the gun, a Glock, and checked it, opened the box of ammunition to make sure the contents matched. My weapon of choice, he thought: whenever I shoot someone.

  He put the gun and the ammunition back in the bag and said thanks, asked about access to the dock.

  Dutton sat down heavily, still staring at Troy. ‘The war on terror,’ he said slowly. ‘Docks are difficult. I haven’t worked out how to do this.’

  Troy had.

  ‘I’m here, right?’ he said.

  Dutton nodded reluctantly.

  ‘I dropped by to talk about job opportunities in the security industry. Nothing definite, just a general discussion after recent events. Blowing off steam.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Now we’re finished, I say I need to make a call, my battery’s flat, so can I use the phone. You say sure, you’re going to the toilet, give me some privacy for the call. When you get back, I’m gone.’

  Dutton’s eyes were still searching Troy’s face for a clue. ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘You work late tonight, until eleven. Maybe then, maybe later, you discover the pass you left in the pocket of your blazer over there—’ he nodded at the blue jacket hanging on the wall, ‘is gone.’

  Dutton looked at the blazer. He sighed and said, ‘Right.’

  ‘Your pass is good for the dock?’ Troy stood up. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Dutton shrugged. ‘One last thing.’

  Troy came alert, wondering what it was. Dutton was staring at him, looking tense. Then he got it: he still had to fulfil his own part of the deal.

  ‘Your man is clear,’ he said. ‘So’s your wharf.’

  Dutton smiled, more widely than Troy had ever seen him smile before. How what pleases us changes, he thought.

  ‘No sign of any fake parts coming in through Rice Turner?’ Dutton said, unnecessarily.

  Troy shook his head and took the pass Dutton slid across the desk. The truth was, something illegal must be coming through the dock, if Henry Wu was linked to the Ocean Pearl, given the sort of man Wu was. But probably not spare parts.

  Fifty-two

  It was eight o’clock when Troy reached Botany. He parked at the end of the line of workers’ vehicles outside the fence, and walked towards the main security entrance. He was wearing Dutton’s baseball cap and, a hundred metres before the vehicle entrance, waved at the security office and turned to the pedestrian turnstile. Using the pass, he let himself in and strode confidently towards the first big pile of containers. It was all normal; Dutton had explained he’d been coming here at odd hours ever since his company had bought the business, checking things out. Ralph was probably very good at his job, Troy thought, as he walked around the corner of the five-container stack and stopped.

  Even though i
t was dark, the place was alive. An enormous blue gantry was moving rapidly past, a thirty-metre-high steel frame that ran on rails and carried containers from one end of the dock to the other. A truck sped by on the far side of the gantry, moving even faster. The enormous corridor between stacks of containers was illuminated by powerful lamps and the place was as busy as daytime, a group of men crouched around a hole in the ground in the distance, more moving trucks visible in the gaps in the huge walls of containers. One day he would buy toy trucks like this for Matt, toy containers too. They would play with them on the lounge-room floor. Ha ha.

  Troy oriented himself and headed towards the water, looking for the ships. He found two, being worked on by massive cranes, and he stood watching them for a while, getting a sense of what was going on, before he stepped out from the last row of containers and walked across the final expanse of tarmac. The ships were like gigantic cut-out shoe boxes, and the containers were stacked so high the vessels looked unstable. Their bridges, on top of the superstructure right up the back of the ships, were wide, on one ship even wider than the hull below, and were perched on top of what must look from the front like flat steel cliffs, against which the containers were piled to within a metre or so. Troy was slightly disturbed by the functionality of the vessels’ design, so different to his idea of the shape of a boat or ship. He rubbed his eyes, dismissing the thought. He had to concentrate.

  The cranes were much higher than the gantry he’d seen earlier, even taller than the ship’s funnels. But it was the speed at which they worked that caught his attention, picking up a container with magnetic clamps at the end of steel cables, lifting, moving and placing the enormous box precisely and with no pause for thought. Again and again. Doing in a few minutes what had once taken fifty men half a day.

  The hot liquid of revenge was in his brain, spurring him on. He walked along the side of the closest ship until he could see the name on the bow. Perimbula IV. Turning back, he went behind the row of containers and worked his way up to the other end of the dock, emerging at the second vessel. It was the Ocean Pearl.