Anna had taken Matt to stay with the Duttons, before she’d moved to Brisbane. Troy hadn’t spoken to them since the day he’d called at their house while Anna was still there, and Wendy had refused to let him in.
‘That’s good,’ he said slowly.
‘It’d be nice for you to be friends with Ralph again.’
At the end of The Tower investigation, Ralph had saved Troy, with help from McIver. Troy had acted badly and there’d been a cover-up, he owed Ralph a great deal. He felt uneasy about what had happened between them, but it was not all his fault.
‘They want us to have dinner,’ she said.
This was strange. But with Anna you had to wait. One thing followed another. He realised that he might still love her. It didn’t seem possible, he was not even sure it was a good idea. And the timing was absurd, that this was happening now, just after he’d got together with Conti.
She said, ‘But you and I should have dinner first. Why don’t I meet you at the hospice tomorrow night?’
He said nothing, suddenly resentful of the way she’d treated him. As though in all of this his patience was just taken for granted, when in fact it had been the glue, the only thing still holding them together.
‘Nick?’ she said.
‘Okay.’
He needed to do this for Matt, if for no other reason. But as he said it to himself, he saw what he had not known before. Matt was not sufficient reason. He had to want to do this for himself, or it would never work. It would not be a life.
She said, ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
He said, ‘I’ll see you at six.’
After hanging up he turned on the television and watched a crime show. They’d never watched this sort of program together, because she didn’t like them. Lately he’d discovered this one and quite enjoyed it, although not for the reasons the makers intended. Its lack of realism made him think about his own job and why things were done in certain ways. Such thoughts were unexpected, he’d never been particularly reflective. Recently, though, this had started to change. The book he was reading was part of this, it pushed him to think in a new way. This was uncomfortable yet it also felt right, as if an unused muscle had been brought back into play. He wanted this to continue, and wondered what would happen if he got back with Anna.
SUNDAY
Thirty-five
Troy woke late again, and ate a bowl of muesli while sitting on the back step, looking at the yard. Trying not to think about Conti, he considered the string he’d stretched between pegs on the back lawn to indicate the ground area of the extension. There would still be plenty of grass left for Matt to play on. There might be other children, too. Anna and Conti, he thought. Shit.
He walked to the shops and bought the Sunday Telegraph. Luke wasn’t on the front page and he had to stand on the footpath and work his way through the paper, dropping inserts and advertising brochures on the ground, until he found the article. It was on page thirteen, with the same picture of Luke they’d run last week, taken not long ago when he was wearing his vestments outside the church. Luke had one of those tough faces made you wonder what he’d done in his life, to whom. You saw faces like that on old war criminals and generals. People said you got the face you deserved, but it wasn’t always so. Luke’s face seemed built for conditions different to the ones he’d had to endure.
The article had only one piece of new information, from Martin Napoli. He said he’d noticed Luke go off with Hughes because the other boy was his friend, but hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. He said Hughes had later told him he’d been abused on that night. This was a few months after the camp and Hughes didn’t say which priest had done it. But Napoli had remembered which priest his friend had gone off with.
‘I didn’t believe him,’ Napoli was quoted as saying. ‘Back then you couldn’t believe that about a priest, it seemed like an evil thing to say. But I’ve never forgotten his words.’
It wasn’t much, thought Troy, but it was enough for the paper to run last week’s story again. That was where the damage would come from—repetition. People tell you they don’t trust the newspapers, but most of them believe everything they read there. Read it twice and they believe it twice as much. There was a new picture of Hughes, looking sad but defiant.
So, a man touched you thirty years ago, Troy thought. Not Luke, but someone else. Jesus. Get over it. Worse things happen. Hughes should have joined the army, got out more.
He bent down and picked up the fallen bits of paper and looked around for a bin, mildly ashamed of what he’d just thought. It was not Hughes who upset him but the paper and what it represented, the way the world responded to all this. What about other victims of crime? Troy spent a lot of time with the families of people who’d been murdered. These people had had their lives torn apart, handed a load of suffering they would carry to their graves. Often they would end up feeling more pain than those who had been killed. And yet, you hardly saw anything about this in the media, while what had happened to Hughes became magnified, into something like this.
He found a bin and stuffed all the bits of the paper into it, pushed them down hard so they couldn’t come out.
Thirty-six
Stuart rings Leila and says, ‘Did you get the bottle?’
‘Not yet.’
She searched the house yesterday and found no trace of the diary Carl wants. So she spent the night here after all, and is going to search some more today.
‘This isn’t good,’ Stuart says, sounding agitated. ‘Alecia has the same disease as your mother. It’s in the last stages and she’s in considerable pain. Considerable pain.’
Leila knows this. She thinks back to those nights when her mother’s crying would echo through the big house. Her own arms and legs start to ache and she twists in her chair. She knows she owes Stuart a great debt.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says softly. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. Carl’s being difficult.’
‘I told Alecia about the bottle, which is unfortunate. Now she’s expecting it. I didn’t realise there’d be an issue.’
‘He won’t give it to me.’
Stuart is surprised, sounds disbelieving.
She says, ‘Is Carl okay?’
‘Of course not. I’d imagine he’s distraught.’
‘I meant more generally.’ She’s been thinking of the missing money, and the necklace.
‘Definitely. He’s difficult, but that’s a different thing entirely. Don’t forget he gave some of his time to help Julie with your mother. He’s helped other people too.’
‘So why won’t he give me the bottle?’
‘He might not believe it’s yours. It all depends on what Julie told him. It’s still a puzzle why she took it from you at the airport. If anyone’s unusual it was her; maybe he’s just trying to clean up after her, in a sense.’
‘Julie?’
‘They were very close, my impression is they were two lost souls lucky to find each other. He was the strong one, but he must be shattered at the moment. At least Julie had her religion.’
Leila thinks about this, about everything she knows, all the bits cancelling each other out so that what remains is a void.
‘What are you keeping from me, Stuart?’
‘What?’ he says, impatient. ‘Nothing. I know Julie was a good friend to you. Why don’t you talk with Carl again—’
‘I just—’
‘I have to go. I’ve got a patient.’
And he is gone.
Leila sits still, her thoughts going round in circles. Finally she stands up and stretches. I know nothing, she tells herself. There is no framework, no connections.
Looks around the big lounge room with its chintz-covered chairs and sofas. Thinks: it is time to leave.
Thirty-seven
Troy got to the hospice just after five, needing some time with Luke before Anna arrived. He’d called earlier and been told Luke would see them. When he arrived, the priest was propped on pillows, staring at the door. His skin had acquired a yellowish tint and his eyes were pale. They exchanged greetings, and Troy sat down next to the bed, until he realised Luke was having trouble turning his head to look at him.
He stood up and Luke caught his eye, said, ‘Where’s Anna?’
‘She’ll be here soon. I’ve talked to Tim. I knew you didn’t do this.’
‘What?’ Luke looked confused.
‘Abuse Brian Hughes.’
There was silence for a while, then Luke said slowly, ‘I’m not always like this. About once a day I’m lively.’
‘You going to tell me what this is all about?’
Luke sighed. Often when people sigh, it’s just a form of punctuation, but this was the real thing. ‘Napoli’s going to be chairman of the big education review the government is setting up. He wants to please.’
Troy reached out and gripped the bed head. ‘Please who?’
Another sigh. ‘If I tell you what’s happening, you’ve got to not tell a soul, promise you won’t talk to me about it again. I’m . . . I’ve had enough, Nick.’
‘That’s—’
‘For a month. You won’t talk to me about it for one month. On your oath.’
Because you’ll be dead in a month, Troy felt like saying. But there was no need to say it. He knew that unless he gave this promise, he’d learn nothing.
‘Okay.’
He recalled the similar assurance he’d given Tim Kalnins: it was all part of the same promise, really. He might come to regret it.
‘Knowledge can be a burden, can’t it?’ Luke said, smiling faintly. ‘I suppose you know something about that too.’
For the first time since Luke had started to die, Troy felt like crying.
The old man used his elbows to push himself up a bit on the pillow.
‘Hughes was abused at the camp,’ he said slowly, settling back. ‘It was done by the seminarian who was there with us, a young man named Geoffrey Davies.’
For a moment Troy recognised the name but couldn’t remember who it belonged to. Then he gripped the bed head more tightly.
‘The politician?’
‘There was another incident a month later, at a church down near Wollongong, but this time the boy’s family complained. I knew nothing of any of this at the time, of course. It was kept very quiet, and Geoffrey left the seminary. A psychiatrist said he’d been having a nervous breakdown. The archbishop has assured me that from that time on he’s led a blameless life. For most of it he’s been happily married. There’s five children.’
‘They won’t be happy when this comes out.’
Luke just lay there for a while, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling. Then he said, ‘It’s not going to.
‘It’ll have to.’
‘Geoffrey’s career as a trainee priest was so brief it hardly happened. He went straight to university the year after leaving school—it’s not on his C.V.’
‘So—’
‘Apart from the compassionate angle, Geoffrey is a very good friend of the Church. He’s responsible for the money the government gives our schools, and we’re about to get a big boost. This is a national issue, Nick.’
Troy knew the budget was enormous and it was important: Catholic schools made up a quarter of the country’s education system. Millions of pupils attended them.
‘No.’
Luke said, ‘Other members of the government are hostile to the Church, so it’s essential at the moment to have a Catholic in that position. A huge stroke of luck. This Hughes scandal happened at a very bad time for us.’
Troy remembered how central the local primary school had been to Luke all the years they’d been friends. The meetings he’d attended, the fundraising. For the Catholic Church in Australia, schools were as important as churches. But even so.
‘You can’t do this.’
Luke smiled. ‘I have done it.’ He yawned. ‘Sometimes I think Jesus led a pretty straightforward kind of life.’
Troy wouldn’t have thought Luke could hold such a thought, let alone express it. Wondered if the priest had been reviewing things in recent months like he’d been doing himself, if they were turning into different men. If those men would still like each other.
He said, ‘So you’ve agreed to keep quiet? For the good of the Church?’
‘Yeah, and you have too.’ The promise. ‘I wanted to tell someone.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I wanted you to know. It’s . . . You know the line in the Bible: “He died in a good old age, full of days, riches and honours.” One out of three would have been nice.’
‘Luke—’
‘I’m tired, son. You’d better go now.’
‘Before you tell me any other secrets?’
‘Just bugger off.’
He didn’t mean it, looked over Troy’s shoulder and came alive, pushing himself up again on the pillows. Troy turned around. Anna was standing there smiling at them, her teeth white against her dark skin, the light glinting off two silver rings in her left ear. She was just over average height, her figure curvy, more so than when she’d left him. That’d be Mary’s cooking. One hand was clasping the strap of a bag she had over her shoulder, in a characteristic pose that made him grin idiotically. As she stepped forwards, he remembered that he loved her. It was probably not wise, but he was certain. He put his arms around her and she responded, he felt the pressure of one of her hands on his back, and it was as intense as any physical connection they’d ever had. Then it was gone and she moved around him to the bed and leaned over Luke, greeting him too.
She was wearing jeans and he looked at them until she straightened up. Then he watched Luke and her while they talked. It went on for a long time and there were tears. Luke told her he was innocent of the allegations against him but didn’t go into details. He asked her a lot of questions about Matt.
After twenty minutes, Luke started to fade. The colour left his face and his eyelids began to flicker, then they closed. It was as though when Anna had arrived some power source had been switched on and was now running down.
She said, ‘We’d better leave.’
‘Stay.’
‘I’m a nurse, all right? I’ll come back tomorrow.’
She looked around the room as though seeing its details for the first time, peered at the drip just above her shoulder. Then she patted Luke’s hand and he murmured something.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
‘He said “Happy”,’ said Troy, putting an arm around her. She pushed against him, rubbing her forehead on the side of his chest. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
*
In the warm streets they wandered the hills of Paddington, peering through terrace windows into rooms furnished with books and paintings and old wooden furniture that gleamed as it grew dark and lights were turned on. Not all the rooms were furnished like this, but a lot of them were. Troy wondered if you could live in a room like that and do the job he did. Probably you couldn’t.
Anna asked him about work. They’d rarely talked about this since he joined Homicide. The superintendent who’d hired him had said it was important not to take the job home with you, and Troy had accepted this. Anna, who had never shown any interest in hearing about violence or death, had been happy when his work was no longer a conversational topic. But maybe that was a mistake and you have to talk about things that matter to you. He began to tell her about the Pearson case and she seemed interested, so he went on.
They reached the top of a steep road and he led Anna down towards the industrial area, vaguely hoping they might see the pigeons, but it was too late. He tol
d her about the caravan on the roof of the old warehouse and she laughed in a way he remembered. Everything about her was both familiar and new.
On the climb back towards Oxford Street she said, ‘I thought about you all the time.’
‘That’s good.’
‘No. You’re supposed to say, “I thought about you all the time too.’’ ’
He said it, and she told him a little more conviction would be appreciated.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve been gone almost five months.’
He wasn’t going to lie to her. He didn’t think he was going to hide anything, either. In the past he’d kept things back because she was unwell, but he knew if they were to have a future together he couldn’t do that anymore.
‘Four months isn’t that long,’ she said.
‘You said our marriage was over.’
‘That was then.’
‘Last time I was in Brisbane I asked how you felt,’ he said gently, ‘if you’d changed your mind. You didn’t say you had.’
‘I didn’t say I hadn’t. I’m sorry, Nick, I still wanted to punish you.’ He said nothing. ‘I’m really sorry. For a long time I just blamed you. But Mum sat me down and showed me I was to blame. Partly.’
‘Mary?’ he said.
This was all surprising.
‘Do you accept my apology?’
‘Yes. And I apologise too.’
‘You already have.’
He breathed in the night’s damp air. The smell of rotting vegetation came from somewhere, a reminder. ‘I’m afraid I saw someone,’ he said. ‘Not for very long. It was nothing. I thought you weren’t coming back.’
She stopped walking and looked at him, clasping her bag strap tightly. Her face changed, and suddenly she looked desolate. He wished he hadn’t told her.
‘You mean you had an affair?’
‘It was only one night. No one you know.’
‘What about Matt? What about us?’
‘I waited a long time.’
She was crying. ‘You mean it was recent? Tell me it’s over, Nick.’
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