The Simple Death

by Michael Duffy

  ‘Maybe too good?’

  ‘I trust her,’ McIver said. ‘You’ve got to trust your instincts. Also, she was in a restaurant in Fairfield with a dozen other people.’

  Putting down his knife, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a few pieces of A4 paper stapled together.

  ‘I want you to think about the Pearsons,’ he said. Troy took the paper and saw it was a printout of a feature story about the couple. ‘The facts aren’t getting us very far, let’s try and get a sense of who they were.’ Who gives you why, sometimes.

  ‘Some of their art is pretty good. It made me think.’

  ‘What about?’ said Troy.

  ‘About art.’

  ‘Not about the Pearsons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you want art that makes you think about art?’

  ‘Well, what do you want art to do?’

  Troy hadn’t thought about it. But he didn’t want to seem stupid. ‘I like to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Every picture needs to tell a story?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Mac pulled a piece of meat from between two teeth. ‘Pearson’s pictures do tell a story,’ he said. ‘You just don’t know what it is.’

  ‘What, like a private joke?’

  Mac said nothing.

  Troy knew he was being patronised, although he couldn’t quite see how. This was McIver at his worst, the price you had to pay. Mac waved a hand at the article and said, ‘That’s from Boss last year.’ Smiled, an apology of sorts.

  ‘I thought Boss made suits,’ said Troy, accepting it. He’d seen some in the department stores, wondered who could afford to buy them.

  ‘Hugo Boss.’ McIver explained that Boss was also a magazine in the Financial Review. ‘Emily and Mark, the golden couple,’ he said. ‘Young high-fliers, inter-racial marriage. She did the orphanage. He was the son of a judge, collected art and played the world sport. What more could you want?’

  Troy scanned the first page, saw the article had been written just after Mark’s appointment as ombudsman. It was one of those stories where they dress the subjects up in expensive clothes, which are listed with their prices in an accompanying box. The Pearsons’ life together seemed to have struck the journalist as wonderful. Possibly it had been.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Mac. ‘I want you to go see her this afternoon, keep her up to date.’ Troy looked surprised. ‘Peters wants it. I’m giving the judge the same treatment.’

  ‘I take Conti?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘Spend some time with Emily, alone. Whatever Pearson was into, she probably knows. Maybe she doesn’t know she knows, but it’s in there somewhere.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Someone has to know something, that’s our working hypothesis.’

  Troy had been glancing at the article some more. Emily had gone to James Ruse Agricultural High, a selective school and the most academically successful in the state. That meant she would have spent much of her free time from the age of six studying and being coached. Her involvement with the orphanage in Vietnam had been as a fundraiser while at university. That was time-efficient: she’d had nothing to do with setting it up or running the thing. She’d come top of her final year at the University of Sydney, gone straight into a big law firm.

  ‘She’s on more than twice my salary,’ McIver said.

  ‘And twice your hours,’ Troy said. ‘Maybe she deserves it. Parents came here as boat people in the eighties, worked hard—’

  ‘No one could work twice my hours.’

  Troy folded up the article, wondering if anyone’s life could really be so neat. ‘She seems to have spent her entire life working. I wonder if she would have noticed if he was doing something on the side?’

  McIver grinned. ‘Just because she was so smart,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean she was stupid.’

  The waitress came by and poured more wine, just a dash for Troy, whose glass was still full. McIver took a gulp and looked at Troy. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You forget that I’m a trained investigator. It’s Luke, isn’t it?’ Maybe it was. ‘I saw A Current Affair last night.’

  ‘I didn’t. Anna told me.’

  ‘She’s back?’

  ‘They have telephones in Brisbane.’

  ‘That guy Napoli looked pretty solid.’

  ‘Luke says he didn’t do it.’

  ‘Well,’ McIver said slowly. ‘The Catholic Church can be a funny place. I did this investigation once, involved two bishops and a lot of very powerful laypeople.’ He shook his head. ‘It was like a big family. Or the mafia.’

  ‘The mafia?’ Troy sounded dubious.

  ‘I exaggerate, but still . . . History, blood ties, hierarchy, that sense of them against the world, but they hate other members of the family even more than outsiders.’

  He went on, gave a short lecture on the Church in Sydney. Sometimes when he talked it was as though the city was a single entity, knowable to one person. As though he understood all its parts, and how they fitted together. It was an illusion, Troy knew, but a deeply appealing one. He wanted to tell Mac this, but lacked the words. When the lecture finished, he said, ‘I’m reading this book, The Fatal Shore.’

  ‘Good book.’

  ‘I think so.’ A friend had lent it to him, something to fill the long nights. It had lain by the bed a few weeks, its bulk intimidating. Then he’d opened it, found himself drawn in.

  ‘It’s like a song,’ McIver said. ‘Lots of emotion there. Good words, too.’

  A long song.

  McIver put his glass down. ‘I’ve only met your priest mate the once, he seemed like a good bloke. But looking at this from the outside—’

  Troy came back from the horrors of convict history. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘You need to hear this.’ Mac reached across the small table, grabbed Troy’s arm for a moment. ‘I once worked on three cases like this, back in the nineties. It was my punishment for something, and I suffered, because it was very hard and horrible work. I don’t know your mate but I’ve seen others in this situation, talked to their friends. I’ve seen how it affected them.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Let me just tell you this. In each of those cases the friends had no idea. They said their mate could never have done such a thing. Some of them still don’t believe their man was guilty, even after he was convicted.’

  Troy said, ‘It’s one person’s word at the moment, on something that happened twenty years ago.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, are you?’

  ‘A memory recovered with the help of a therapist —’

  ‘And the possible lie about leaving the dinner.’

  Troy gazed around the restaurant. McIver hadn’t even bothered to stay sober to have this conversation with him. He ought to be with Luke. Every day he expected a call from the hospice to say his friend had died. When it came, he knew he’d feel bad about not having been there. He looked across the table. ‘Why are you so hot on this?’

  ‘I don’t want you hurt, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  Mac laughed, leaned back in his chair and began to sing in a low voice. Shut his eyes, and Troy wondered if there was any feeling there at all.

  ‘You’re not happy, are you?’ he said.

  McIver opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Not happy at all.’

  ‘I came to see you play at the Bridge last week. Good crowd, loved what you were doing, up there with Ruth, you looked happy.’

  ‘I was. In my element.’

  ‘Well? You’ve just discovered this new thing in your life.’

  ‘The singing, it’s not the solution, it’s the problem.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

 
McIver just closed his eyes again, said nothing.

  Troy said, referring to the time McIver had helped him when he’d almost killed a man last year, ‘That thing you did for me, what happened, it changed things between us.’

  ‘But not for the better.’

  ‘I thought going through something like that—’

  ‘A shared experience.’ McIver was mocking him, needing to push it away. Troy could see this—he realised he could see him more clearly now. Mac had always been bigger than him, but maybe that was not how it was always going to be.

  He called for the bill. When it arrived he put down the money for half and stood up, thought about telling McIver how angry he felt. But the moment passed in silence.

  ‘I’ve got to get back.’

  ‘There’s something you want to say to me?’The sergeant’s voice was slurred now.

  ‘No.’ He looked at the empty bottle of wine and scowled.

  McIver said, ‘This is not about the wine, you know.’

  ‘It’s a bit about the wine.’

  McIver considered this, as though the statement required an answer. At last he nodded. ‘Okay, it’s a bit about the wine. Have another glass and I’ll tell you.’

  Troy wondered if there was anything useful he could say about the wine. He hadn’t seen McIver like this so early in an investigation before, not in the middle of the day. Once, lots of detectives had drunk like this every day, but that had stopped years ago. He didn’t know what to do—he had no idea why the man drank, let alone how to stop him drinking. He sat down heavily.

  Perhaps it was the shooting. McIver had been wounded in the arm last year, had come back to work almost straight away, impressed everyone with how he’d seemed to shrug it off. But maybe it had caught up with him.

  Troy said, ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘As the actress said to the bishop.’ McIver leaned back and laughed. ‘Anna and you, any movement there?’

  ‘She’s still at her parents’ in Brisbane. I told you.’

  ‘With Matt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You must miss him.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You need to get back together. Call her. Young Conti, you know, she’s nothing compared with a real woman.’

  ‘Mother to my boy?’

  ‘Anna and you are what the rest of us aspire to. You need to set us an example. Can’t let us down.’

  It would be easy to be offended by McIver, Troy thought.

  ‘So this is not sympathy. You’re blaming me for being separated from my wife?’

  McIver nodded and roared with laughter, looked around for the waitress. People were staring. Troy could have told him the woman was hiding from them. After a bit, with no sign of her, the sergeant stopped laughing, so suddenly it was worse than when he’d started.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mac said. And then, ‘My well test didn’t go as hoped.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Every three months, each detective in Homicide spent an hour with a psychologist to make sure he was fit for duty.

  ‘It was bad the time before,’ McIver said. ‘Kelly gave me one more chance.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘I’ll be right.’ He seemed to regret having said anything. The waitress appeared in the doorway and McIver beckoned her.

  ‘I’m going to have a Sambuca. You want one?’

  ‘No. What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll wing it. Like always. Now I’ve told you that, you have to have a drink with me.’

  Troy stood up as the waitress approached, shook his head.

  ‘Prick,’ McIver called. The waitress stopped.

  ‘Not you, love.’

  He gave his order and Troy shook his head. McIver looked drawn and almost confused. He must have a desire to be seen like this. Troy wanted to help him but couldn’t; he was surrounded by people he could not help.

  ‘We should go, Sarge,’ he said when the waitress had gone.

  ‘Fuck off,’ McIver said, not looking at him.

  Troy didn’t know what to do, but being here was no good, and so he left, walking through the dappled shadows beneath the grapevines. When he got to the footpath outside, the sun was so bright he could hardly see.

  Seventeen

  Leila is in Dan Murphy’s, looking for a bottle of pinot gris to have with her solitary dinner. Normally she avoids these vast alcoholic supermarkets, with their implication of drinking on an industrial scale. This morning she began sorting through her mother’s things, and soon realised the job is difficult and will take a very long time. Her brothers will have to wait—she is going back to work next week. After a few hours she felt the need to get out of the house; it was raining heavily so Dan’s seemed like a place to walk and think.

  ‘Buying some Baileys?’ She looks around and it is Ben Farrell, pushing a trolley laden with several boxes of wine. He says, ‘I’m told it’s good for disguising bitter flavours.’

  This is a surprise, although maybe it shouldn’t be.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The doctor is in a suit but his tie’s askew and he looks strained, the eyes slightly red and the skin beneath them swollen. She wonders if he’s been drinking.

  He says, his voice hoarse, ‘Last night I looked up Dr Philip Nitschke on the internet. He recommends a glass of Scotch or Baileys after you’ve swallowed Nembutal.’

  She studies him calmly. He is raw and hurt and dangerous.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know that. I guess I never thought I needed to.’

  No more bedside manner, no more wise doctor and grateful patient’s daughter. But the deflation has to be managed.

  ‘What is this, Ben? Are you implying something?’ she says, trying for perplexity rather than anger.

  He stares at her and then looks away, studies the labels of some bottles of shiraz. She sees he is still seeking a level of certainty, or perhaps courage, that he can’t quite find.

  He looks back. ‘I heard Stuart Emery came to your house after the funeral. You know he has a certain reputation.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The lie is fluent, not just the words but the emotion behind them. She lies so much in her work, usually white or grey lies rather than black ones, but still lies. It is necessary and it is something she is good at.

  ‘He helps people kill themselves,’ Ben says, looking at her closely.

  One of Leila’s friends is a television producer, and she once described reaction shots, footage filmed after an interview subject has left, when the journalist fakes expressions of interest or disbelief to be used later when editing the interview. Leila gives Ben a reaction shot now.

  ‘Good heavens, I had no idea. He’s a friend of my mother’s, but it was nothing to do with that. I’m sure she would have said something.’

  He continues to stare at her. ‘You weren’t there, though, were you?’ he says. ‘When Elizabeth died.’

  ‘I was at the movies.’

  ‘So you can’t be sure she was alone.’

  Another reaction, this one polite bemusement. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m sorry to bring this up, but the man does have a reputation.’ Backing down a bit now: this is better.

  ‘But he can still have normal friendships, can’t he?’ she says, calmly reasonable. ‘Just like people can drink Baileys even when they’re not killing themselves.’

  Ben gulps. Does the looking-away thing again, comes back to her. ‘A colleague told me about a patient of Dr Emery’s, over in Ryde. He had premature dementia and they say Emery helped his wife kill him. It was his third wife. Apparently the first wife and their adult children weren’t involved in what happe
ned, they never even had the chance to say goodbye. It was murder, Leila.’

  She is familiar with the case, which was in the news. Stuart has talked about it, and it did not happen the way Ben thinks. Anyway, it has absolutely nothing to do with Elizabeth’s death.

  She says, ‘Have the police charged him?’

  ‘There isn’t enough evidence. But they told my colleague there’s no doubt in their minds. I’m telling you this in confidence, you understand?’

  He looks at her, almost pleading now, and she feels quite angry. He is full of self-pity but he is just like Lewis and all the others, A students wanting to protect what they have at other people’s expense. She will not be their victim: she’s a decent person, standing here in her chambray shirt and 501s, just trying to puzzle her way through life and do the right thing.

  ‘So just why are you telling me, Ben?’

  ‘I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Know what, exactly?’

  ‘Just think about your mother’s last days. Was Dr Emery there? Anything that might have been said, why you went to the movies that night.’ She gives a look of astonishment and it must be a good look because he gulps, says, ‘No, please forget it. I shouldn’t have brought this up.’

  ‘I went to the movies because Mum seemed all right and I always went once a week, you know that. Stuart Emery has known my mother for some time and I have absolutely no reason to think he helped her kill herself. Even if he did, which he didn’t, so what? What right . . .’ She stops, thinking she might have gone too far, and wonders how to muddy the trail. ‘What I mean is, what right do you have to raise the possibility my mother killed herself, and then tell me to forget it?’

  The expression in his eyes is different now. She sees indeed she has gone too far. A second’s miscalculation and everything has changed.

  ‘You must think I’m an idiot,’ he says bitterly, and begins to push his trolley past her.

  She says softly, ‘Ben, this is not about you.’

  He stops. ‘Yes it is. I signed the death certificate. You always knew I’d be doing that one day.’