Four
A week earlier, hundreds of people are standing around one of the carousels in the baggage collection hall at Sydney International Airport, waiting for their bags to be churned up from below. Many have that stunned expression you can get from a thirteen-hour flight when you haven’t slept well, or you took something and slept too well. Either way, you just want to get home.
Leila Scott watches the dog making its way across the hall. Doesn’t know much about dogs, this one might be a beagle, medium-sized mutt wearing a blue coat like a uniform, eager to please. It’s on a leash but you hardly notice because it works so well with its handler, a female customs official who keeps murmuring to the dog from one side of her mouth, with the other side ordering people to put their bags on the floor. She kneels, urges the dog on as it goes to work on the bags.
Leila has to breathe and she has to smile. She’s tried thinking about other things, like the Gauguins in Los Angeles. Starting to drift, but important to stay focused. Her breathing seems okay, so she works on smiling vaguely at the dog, which is only five metres away now and has just barked after sniffing the bag of a man with long hair. Maybe there’s two kilos of coke in there, or a human head. The handler takes something small from a pocket and slips it into the animal’s mouth as she speaks to the man, who opens his bag reluctantly. She goes through it with one efficient gloved hand, people all around staring. What sort of country has this become. You could insist a search occur in private, but imagine the delay. Customs might take it out on you too, perhaps check your other bag off the carousel. The essential thing is not to draw attention to yourself, to fit in. You have to breathe and smile. But not too much.
The customs officer is holding up an orange and talking sternly to the man with long hair, her fat face creased in an ecstasy so nearly sexual Leila feels embarrassed. But no one else seems to see it that way.
‘He should have known not to do that,’ a man says quietly.
Leila looks over and sees a couple in their late sixties, with matching clothes that are loose and sensible, not cheap. The couple examines her own outfit, tailored blue jacket, khaki slacks. Hair long, well-cut.
The woman smiles, says, ‘I do like the dog, don’t you? It’s like a welcome-home.’
Leila takes two steps towards them, manoeuvering her trolley awkwardly. They are just what Stuart recommended.
‘I’m impressed they’re so keen,’ she says. ‘At this time of the morning.’
A yawn appears from nowhere, she puts up a polite hand to cover her mouth. Feels proud she can appear so relaxed despite the tension. Convince yourself, Stuart said, you’ll convince the world.
‘Did you have a bad flight?’ says the woman. ‘My name’s Marilyn, by the way, and this is Jim. We’ve just been on a cruise in Alaska.’
‘Leila Scott. I took a few days off work to visit the Getty Museum in LA, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’
Marilyn beams, you can see she’s wondering why Leila’s travelling alone, an attractive woman who can afford a jacket like this. But what she comes out with is, ‘We love art too.’
Breeding will tell. Leila stifles another yawn, shakes her head apologetically. ‘I didn’t sleep, at all.’
Stuart talked about sleeping tablets, but in the end they’d decided against them. She is sensitive to many forms of medication, and the last thing they want is for her behaviour to attract attention. So now she is tired, but tired is normal since taking leave from work a year ago to care for her mother. Elizabeth is dying of bone cancer, often in so much pain she can’t sleep. The pain is all around her now, like water around a fish. Usually Leila goes to bed early and is awake by midnight, helping her mother through the night with Jane Austen and Dick Francis. So she’s tired most of the time, except when she’s asleep.
‘Would you put your bag on the ground, please.’
She turns, remembers to keep breathing. Somehow the customs woman and her fucking dog have worked their way around behind her and here they are, taking her by surprise because she’s been rabbiting on about the bloody Getty Museum. For a split second she wants to scream, but it goes away as she lifts her leather backpack off the top of the trolley. She is an executive in an important government department, a friend of Jim and Marilyn over here, absolutely nothing to worry about. As she puts her bag on the ground she wonders if maybe they are smugglers, using her as a cover. That would be funny.
But not that funny. She keeps her smile under control as the dog’s bobbing head sniffs away; you’d think they could invent a machine. Be friendly but not ingratiating, Stuart said. He predicted what she’s feeling now with impressive accuracy. Maybe he’s done the run himself.
The dog is excited about something.
‘Is this your bag?’ says the customs woman.
She is butch, short blonde hair and carrying at least ten kilos too much. Looks her best in uniform, as fascists do; imagine Hitler in pyjamas. Her private life is probably a complete mess.
‘Yes,’ Leila says.
Of course it’s my fucking bag. But it’s not the one you want.
‘Would you open it please.’
Leila crouches down, thinking about the word please. She’s noticed these past days that while Americans are often excruciatingly polite, at least it sounds genuine. Australians have learned more recently to include please and sorry in many of their sentences. Their resentment still shows.
‘You have any fruit in your bag lately?’ says the woman.
She is straightening up, removing a latex-covered hand from where it has been searching through Leila’s things, the pair of dirty knickers in a plastic bag, the packet of tampons, the Ian McEwan novel. I ate an apple two days ago, you bitch.
‘Yes.’
The woman nods, as though this explains some deep mystery, her worst suspicions confirmed, and moves on with her gambolling companion. Leila pushes the items back into the bag and stands up angrily, wanting to yell, ‘Don’t I get a thank-you?’ So many adults today are like children.
The people who’ve been staring avert their gazes. They look disappointed, as though a public sacrifice hasn’t gone quite as hoped.
‘You’d think they could train them to detect if there is really any fruit there,’ Jim says. ‘It would save a lot of, ah, time.’
The carousel starts to turn, and big bags come thumping onto the moving rubber mats. Modern life, fast, efficient, noisy: no time for irony.
The crowd comes alive and Marilyn calls out with excitement, ‘There’s one of ours.’
Five
McIver was in the big room that had been allocated to Furnace, his coat off. With relief he pushed papers away, stood up.
‘I have to read them,’ he said, ‘and sign to say I’ve read them.’ Troy said nothing, knowing McIver sometimes needed to work his way in. ‘The joys of command. You stay where you are. Senior constables have the most fun.’
Troy smiled politely. He’d been urged to seek promotion recently, had said no.
McIver looked for his coat. ‘Shall we dance?’
Pearson’s flat was so close they could walk. McIver was an active man in his mid-forties, almost twitchy, and didn’t like driving if he could avoid it. Troy was happy to walk too; he was more than ten years Mac’s junior and fitter than he’d been for years. Since Anna had taken Matt away to her parents’ he’d been running in the morning and at night, trying to pound out his loneliness on the footpaths of Maroubra and adjacent suburbs. There was a long, steep hill leading down to the cliffs at South Coogee, so steep the footpath included flights of concrete stairs. Troy could run up and down the whole street several times now without stopping. One day an old man had come out of a house and stopped to watch him.
‘It’s unnatural,’ he’d said, the third time Troy went past.
Troy had no disagreement with that.
So now, as they walked in the hot sun up towards the headland where the ex-seminary sat, he did not sweat.
‘Pearson’s father, the judge,’ he said. ‘You know him?’
McIver shook his head. ‘Civil,’ he grunted. He’d started to breathe heavily soon after they left the station and the humidity embraced them. Troy knew he didn’t smoke, but he drank a lot.
He said, ‘You saw the Sunday Telegraph?’
‘No, we had a gig. Katoomba.’
‘Ruth and you?’
‘That’s it.’
Ruth was an analyst in Homicide, Troy’s age, had a beautiful singing voice. These days she lived and performed with McIver. It had surprised everyone when they’d got together a few months ago.
‘Father Luke Carillo,’ he said, heaving his attention back to the thing. ‘My mate.’
McIver nodded. He’d met Luke when Troy had taken the old man to the Mundine match two months ago. A disappointing fight, over quickly, but the priest had been happy to be there: the boxing scene was still vigorous in parts of the city. Luke and Mac had a long conversation after the fight, about John Ford movies. Troy liked to think the two men had connected.
‘He’s been accused of kiddy-fiddling,’ he said quickly, wanting to get it out as fast as he could. ‘The complainant says it happened at a boys’ camp in the eighties. Told Archbishop Walsh about it six months ago, got no satisfaction. Set up a website to tell the world what was done to him.’
‘I heard on the radio,’ McIver said. ‘He’s put it on Facebook too.’
‘The site’s been shut down, but the paper checked out the story. Luke was definitely there, with four other priests and a seminarian. This guy, he says it was Luke.’
‘What do you think?’
Troy looked at him. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Just take it slowly.’
McIver stopped and wiped his brow, and Troy wasn’t sure if he was talking about Luke or their walk.
‘I lived in a presbytery with him for a while. There was never—he was a ladies’ man, the way women would look at him. I mean—’
‘Just take it slowly.’
Troy shook his head. Luke had been handsome in those days, he still was. Some of the women of the parish had obviously liked him, they’d even complained he had a housekeeper like Brigita, a young spunk, living in the presbytery. As though they’d been jealous. Back then though, priests were still given the benefit of the doubt. No one had really believed anything bad of Luke.
‘It’s not possible,’ he said.
McIver said nothing, and after a long moment they began to walk again through the heat. It was so humid if you reached out your hand you could almost touch it. Troy wondered about McIver’s silence but didn’t know what else to say. The whole thing was cloudy, like the heat.
The white apartment block was about forty years old, and looked onto Manly Cove and the harbour. They stood outside the front door in the shade for a minute, while McIver got his breath back. The view of the water far below was interrupted by hills and buildings, but Troy could see it was deeply, intensely blue, more so than when he’d been looking at it from the ferry. The sky, on the other hand, seemed lighter than before, still cloudless. These days his surroundings made more of an impression on him, he was more aware of details: maybe he had too much time to himself.
‘We need to be polite,’ McIver said. ‘Peters says she does not believe in the unnecessary use of force.’ Alan Peters was the new inspector in charge of their team in the Homicide Squad. ‘So we don’t want to give her reason to go public again.’
‘You still think Pearson will reappear?’
‘That’s what the odds are telling me.’
Idly he pushed the security door. It swung open.
Emily Nguyen was even more attractive than her picture had indicated, in her early thirties and unexpectedly tall, with a hint of Europe in her face. Pearson had done well to catch someone like this. Right now her eyes were red and there were dark smudges below them, but she was still worth looking at. Her clothes were formal, a white blouse and grey slacks, as though she was leaving for the office.
‘Do you have any news?’ she said. The main thing in her voice was impatience.
‘Not much, yet.’
‘I want to know everything. Everything.’
Her eyes flashed at them. Troy knew she was struggling to adapt to the great change that had occurred in her life. The requirements of the police investigation would not make this any easier.
McIver said, ‘I’m sorry, but at the moment we have more questions than answers.’
She blinked, realised she’d kept them standing in the doorway, and stepped back. They walked down a hall to a big lounge room, where an old woman sat in a chair next to a full-length window, looking out at the water. Emily introduced her mother, and Troy had to ask her to spell the name so he could write it in his notebook. Qui Nguyen was much smaller than her daughter and dressed in a dark blue suit. She said something about how long it had taken the police to get here. The details were hard to make out because of her heavy accent.
Emily sat down in a boxy leather armchair and seemed to fold in on herself, the angles at her joints almost painfully extreme. From somewhere she produced a man’s white handkerchief and began to cry. Troy sensed a lot of anger mixed with the sadness.
The mother said, ‘This is not good for her.’
‘No,’ said McIver. ‘Of course.’
‘Nothing like this happen to her before. She have a good life.’
Troy looked around the room, which was large and sunny, white with splashes of colour. Mainly the colour came from a dozen or so paintings. Their sizes varied—one group of six was quite small – and most were abstract. On a glass sideboard stood framed photographs of Emily and her husband: Mark and Emily in academic gowns; in formal dress at some sort of event; in front of the Eiffel Tower; Emily when she was younger receiving an award from the former prime minister. There it was too, in a frame by itself: the certificate for the Young Australian of the Year Award. There were family photos as well, and he examined them carefully. Saw that the man he assumed to be Emily’s father wasn’t in the more recent ones.
McIver was telling Emily about the pethidine they’d found in her husband’s bag. She moaned and bent over, as though about to be sick. Her mother got up and hurried across the room, not much bigger standing up than she’d been sitting down. Troy thought he saw a flash of anger on the old woman’s face, but it was not directed at the police. She grabbed hold of her daughter and spoke sternly in Vietnamese.
Troy relayed a message from Conti: ‘We want to check the drug ampoules for fingerprints. I’d be grateful if you could let me borrow some small item Mark would have touched?’
Emily straightened up, said, ‘This is not possible. If you knew Mark . . .’
More tears, but to Troy’s mind they were fierce ones now. Her mother’s words had restored some strength to her.
‘You have absolutely no reason to think Mark was taking any sort of drug, any medication?’ said McIver.
‘No.’
‘He had no health condition, no sporting injury?’
‘No. He played football, soccer. But there was nothing wrong with him.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Not. A. Thing.’
‘You have other matters to tell us?’ said the mother, who seemed to think the pethidine was too ridiculous to discuss.
McIver appeared to accept this, and moved on. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a diary covered in black leather. ‘Mark’s diary records a series of appointments described with the initials LS,’ he said, ‘usually around six pm. There was one last Thursday night. I was wondering—’
‘It’s when he finished work,’ Emily said. ‘I think he’s been making a
record. Next week he’s going to ask for another staff member, and he wants to be able to tell the CEO, Alan Bellamy, the hours he’s been working. He starts at eight, sometimes he goes till eight or nine at night. It’s ridiculous.’ McIver smiled politely and handed her the diary, open at the previous week. She stared at it and frowned. ‘This isn’t right,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He works much later than this.’
‘Are you sure?’ said McIver.
‘I have a very good memory.’ She was looking from the diary to the detectives’ faces, scowling as if the mystery was their fault. ‘Last Tuesday, for instance, he was at work till nine, and here it says six thirty.’ She handed back the diary, misery in her face.
‘You don’t know who LS might be? Or what?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘No,’ McIver said. Conti had checked with Mark Pearson’s staff over the phone. They’d been able to verify most of the appointments in the diary, but not those marked LS. The initials meant nothing to them. ‘Did Mark stay at Liverpool a fortnight ago for the night, like it says?’
‘Of course, it’s the audit course at the hospital. You don’t think, you don’t—he didn’t meet someone there?’
She was getting teary again, Troy saw, and the expression of grief transformed her; he could almost see the emotion forcing its way into the bones of her beautiful face, as if it might twist them.
‘We don’t think anything yet,’ Mac said. ‘I’m sorry we can’t tell you much.’
He looked around the room, as though seeking inspiration. There was sweat on his forehead, even though the place was air conditioned. His attention was caught by the photos Troy had been examining earlier.
‘Mr Nguyen?’ he said.
‘He died three years ago.’
‘How?’
‘Heart attack. Why—’
‘There’s no chance this has anything to do with your family?’
The Simple Death Page 3