Bright Air

by Barry Maitland

  She smiled. ‘Oh, Damien was fun. Of course he only came for the last couple of weeks, but he livened things up.’

  ‘I wondered if he might have been, well, comforting Lucy, after our break-up?’

  ‘No, actually,’ she grinned, ‘he and I got together for a while. Then …’ She ducked her head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, when the racing yachts came in, there was this really dishy guy on one of them, and when they had the party I went off with him. Damien got pretty annoyed.’

  ‘Luce was at that party, wasn’t she?’

  She thought. ‘Ye-es, she must have been. Yes, I remember her talking to one of the yachties, an American I think.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else about that evening?’

  Another big smile, half-embarrassed. ‘I was pretty preoccupied—but I remember Lucy was very quiet, not drinking. I think she got upset with something the yachties said. But I pretty much had my hands full with … Do you know, I can’t even remember his name now.’

  ‘They were due to fly out on the Saturday. Didn’t she say goodbye to you?’

  ‘Not that I can remember. Anyway, they stayed on, didn’t they? The weather turned foul.’

  ‘So, did you see them again after that?’

  ‘Ye-es. At least, I saw Damien. It was the night before the accident. He was pretty annoyed with me, but it wasn’t just that. Something was wrong, something to do with their work. They were all pissed off.’

  ‘And Lucy?’

  ‘No, I’m sure I didn’t see her. I think she was feeling ill again.’

  ‘What, they told you that?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And the next day, the day of the accident?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see her, but she must have felt better.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, she went climbing with them, didn’t she? I thought I might have seen her when I went to the house that day—that was my regular cleaning day—but she wasn’t there, because she’d gone with them. It’s terrible to think, isn’t it—if she’d been a bit sicker she wouldn’t have had that accident.’

  ‘Yes, true enough. How about the Kelsos, were they nice people?’

  She screwed up her nose. ‘I was glad to leave, frankly. Muriel—Mrs Kelso—seemed all right at first, but she was a hard bitch if you were working for her. I didn’t have much to do with Stanley, but he’s an important man on the island and you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.’

  ‘How about the sons?’

  ‘Not my type. Bob was okay, I suppose; didn’t say much, spent all his time with his boat. I did think he might have had a bit of a crush on Luce, the way he looked at her sometimes. Harry … he tried it on with me a few times, until I finally got it into his head that I wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Bit pushy, was he?’

  ‘Yeah, seemed to think I’d make myself available as part of my contract.’

  ‘Was there some rumour that they were into something dodgy, smuggling or something?’

  ‘Drugs? I never heard that.’

  ‘Not drugs necessarily.’

  But she didn’t like this line of questions. She looked pointedly up at the clock and said she’d have to go.

  ‘Sure. We really appreciate you talking to us, Sophie.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Who else have you spoken to?’

  ‘Oh, you’re the first we’ve tracked down, really. Who do you suggest?’

  ‘Well, she was friends with Carmel Bisset, the National Parks ranger; they used to meet every day on account of their research project. And she knew Dick Passlow—that’s the doctor—and his wife Pru. She was the island nurse.’

  ‘Right.’ I was making notes, playing the part of a grieving boyfriend. ‘But they’d still be on Lord Howe, I suppose.’

  ‘Not necessarily. I know the Passlows only had another year of their contract to run, though I suppose they could have extended it. Carmel would probably be in the same boat. They weren’t permanent residents.’

  ‘Sophie!’ The call came from a harassed-looking young man who had burst out of the make-up room.

  ‘Yes, coming. Sorry, I have to go.’ We got to our feet and she added coyly, ‘Do you still keep up with Damien?’

  ‘Yes, saw him just the other day, actually.’

  ‘Oh, well, you might give him my number, if you like.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s married.’

  She shrugged. ‘All the same …’

  Anna spoke for the first time. ‘You should be careful with all that lipstick, you know.’

  Sophie looked at her in surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s full of synthetic chemicals. Over your lifetime you’ll swallow about four kilos of it.’

  Sophie raised a carefully engineered eyebrow and stalked off.

  Outside, as we stepped around the rubbish bins in the lane, I said, ‘Four kilos?’

  ‘Whatever. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did we learn anything?’

  ‘Not much. The Kelsos don’t sound like very nice people to stay with.’

  ‘No. Well, you can do the talking next time.’

  Dr Passlow was in the Sydney phone book, listed under a group practice in Leichhardt. Anna rang, saying that we wanted to speak to him on a private matter relating to the death of Lucy Corcoran. He agreed to see us at the end of the afternoon’s surgery, at around five-thirty.

  The waiting room was still crowded when we arrived, full of Italian women and their bambini suffering from what looked like an epidemic of spring sniffles. The confined, overheated space, full of coughing, sneezing, snot-encrusted infants, seemed to me like a pretty ideal breeding ground for viruses, and I thought we’d be lucky to get out unscathed. It was almost seven when we finally saw the doctor. He looked exhausted and didn’t try to hide his disappointment that we were still there. In fact, as he quizzed us about what exactly we wanted, it seemed to me that he was rather worried about our appearance after all this time. He refused to elaborate on Luce’s health or state of mind, and said he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her during the final week.

  ‘Well, look,’ he said finally, becoming more pompous as we became more probing, ‘there’s nothing I can tell you that wasn’t said at the inquest. I really don’t understand what you’re after. You’re not her relatives, are you? Is this just idle curiosity, or do you have some specific issue?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to murder Lucy?’

  He looked as if I’d punched him, his face going pale, mouth open. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s a simple question. Did she say anything to you to suggest she was afraid of anyone?’

  The colour flooded back into his face again. ‘No, certainly not. I’d have told the coroner if she had. Do you have some new information?’

  ‘We just find it hard to accept that Lucy fell accidentally,’ Anna cut in. ‘She was a very expert climber.’

  ‘Expert climbers are killed in accidents all the time. The coroner’s investigation was very thorough. And now, years later, you find it hard to accept? Is that all?’

  Anna shrugged. He shook his head in irritation and showed us to the door.

  As we walked back through the waiting room a nurse stopped him with a query and I veered off to the desk where the receptionist was clearing up. ‘Is Dr Passlow’s wife around?’ I asked, hoping he couldn’t hear me.

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘Pru—the nurse.’

  ‘Oh, Pru.’ She smiled as if at some private joke. ‘No, they divorced several years ago.’

  ‘Don’t know where I could find her, do you?’

  ‘Sorry, no idea.’

  Out on the street, Anna said, ‘That was subtle. You almost had him calling the cops.’

  I shrugged, becoming fed up with all this. ‘I need a drink to kill some of the germs I must have picked up in there.’ But Anna was reading a t
ext message on her phone. It seemed the young bloke who looked after the computers at the nursing home had managed to unlock Luce’s notebook. He didn’t know what it all meant, he said, but he’d sent her the contents by email, so we walked along Norton Street until we found an internet café where Anna could access her account.

  I waited outside on the pavement, breathing in the smell of pizza from the Italian restaurant next door. I felt tired and fed up after our prickly encounter with the doctor, and I just wanted to sit down with a bottle of red and a plate of spaghetti and forget about the whole thing. I noticed an empty table for two through the window, and when I saw Anna still hunched in front of her screen, shaking her head, I decided to take the bull by the horns. I opened the door and called to her, ‘Anna, I’ll see you in the restaurant next door.’

  She frowned over her shoulder. ‘Okay …’

  I got the empty table and ordered a bottle of wine while I waited. By the time she joined me my first glass was drunk, and I felt slightly better. She was still frowning.

  ‘Take a seat,’ I said, pouring the wine. ‘You look as if you need this. What’s the matter?’

  She slumped down and handed me half a dozen pages. ‘That’s the print-out.’

  While she sipped at her wine I scanned the pages. On them were printed lines of letters and digits, row after row. A typical sequence of lines ran:

  2509 1105 57J WF 06663 04432 055

  2509 1443 57J WF 06712 05512 072

  2609 0906 57J WF 06584 04470 046

  There were hundreds of lines like that, all following the same format with slight variations to the digits.

  ‘Is it some sort of computer code?’

  ‘No idea. My expert hasn’t a clue.’ Anna sounded flat. After going to so much trouble to get the notebook, this was obviously a major disappointment.

  ‘You were expecting the names of the guilty parties,’ I said. ‘But I told you before, things like that only happen in books. This could be data on anything—tides, weather, bird migrations, buried treasure …’

  ‘Buried treasure?’

  ‘I’m joking.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but what could we realistically have expected?’

  A harrowing account of the breakdown of a wonderful young woman after she was heartlessly ditched by a slimebag called Josh Ambler, I thought. I couldn’t tell Anna how very relieved I was to see those meaningless data strings.

  ‘So what now?’ I saw the waiter approaching. ‘Let’s order.’

  We picked the day’s pasta special, then Anna said, ‘I suppose you had lots of holidays when you were in London.’

  ‘Sure, cheap flights everywhere—St Petersburg, Istanbul, New York. Lots of places. How about you?’

  ‘I haven’t had a holiday in three years.’

  ‘Really? You must need a break.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. Some island getaway.’

  ‘Aha,’ I said, suddenly cautious. ‘Sounds interesting. Would you go on your own?’

  ‘It’d be more fun if I could persuade somebody else to come along. Even if I haven’t got big lips and a yellow bikini.’

  ‘You could always get that—the bikini, I mean.’

  ‘And I might even do a bit of climbing, if I had a partner.’

  ‘That’s possible. No breaking and entering, though.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I don’t think Damien would approve.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t planning on inviting him.’

  ‘You know, I always wondered about that night at the Hibernian Hotel. How did it turn out for you?’

  She looked impassively at me. ‘Josh, there are some questions a gentleman doesn’t ask.’

  When I got home after dropping Anna in Blacktown, Mary met me with a happy smile.

  ‘Your friend Damien rang up half an hour ago. Such a charming young man. We had a good chat.’

  ‘That’s nice. I wonder why he didn’t ring my mobile.’

  ‘No, it was me he principally wanted to talk to.’ Mary sounded quite flirtatious.

  ‘Really? What about?’

  ‘He and his wife wanted to invite us both to dinner, and he was worried I might not be able to take an evening off from the hotel.’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘But I said it wasn’t a problem. We’re going tomorrow, is that all right with you?’

  ‘Well, yes, fine.’

  12

  The next evening I realised I didn’t know where Damien lived, and asked Mary if he’d given her his home address. She said yes and named a new apartment tower in The Rocks, overlooking Circular Quay. I whistled. ‘Prime real estate.’

  ‘It does sound rather grand, doesn’t it? On the twenty-eighth floor.’

  We drove down there, and I found a parking meter not far from the address. It was a spare, elegant tower with tiers of curved balconies disappearing up into the night sky. At the glass doors I rang the number Damien had provided and his voice gave a tinny but affable welcome. He buzzed us in, and the door clicked open. Inside we gazed up in awe at the scale of the lobby, three storeys of space with bridges and balconies supported on slender creamy concrete columns, more like the foyer of a theatre or art gallery than a block of flats. A glass swimming pool was cantilevered out above our heads, so that we could look up at the pale belly of a figure stroking through the green water, and on another level, beyond a small herd of Barcelona chairs, other residents worked resolutely on treadmills and exercise bikes.

  We found the lifts and went up to the twenty-eighth floor, where Damien was waiting for us, freshly showered and scented. He gave Mary a hug and we shook hands, and he led the way across the lobby to his open front door. Inside we passed through a hallway and into his living room. The furniture was stylish muted browns and creams, and the wall beyond was floor to ceiling glass, through which the lights of other towers glittered against the dark.

  ‘Pretty stunning apartment, Damien,’ I said.

  ‘Seidler,’ he murmured, unable to suppress the little smile of pride. ‘One of his last.’ He cocked his head to a side door. ‘Darling?’

  Lauren appeared. She was pretty stunning too, a svelte brunette with shrewd eyes and an ironic smile. She kissed us in turn, saying how wonderful it was to meet us finally, Damien having told her so much about us. Mary was clearly captivated. She handed over some chocolates and asked if the evening was meant to celebrate something, perhaps the new flat.

  Lauren said, ‘Oh no, we’ve been here six months now.’ Then she turned to Damien and said, ‘Shall I?’

  He smiled, shrugged, uncharacteristically sheepish, and she said to us, ‘There is something to celebrate, though. I’m pregnant—we’ve just found out.’ She gave a laugh. ‘We haven’t told anyone yet. You’re the first.’ She went to him, and he put a protective arm around her shoulders, grinning broadly.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘Just as well we brought champagne.’ I shook Damien’s hand again and handed him the bottle.

  ‘I suppose I shouldn’t,’ Lauren giggled. ‘I’ll give up after tonight.’ She looked flushed and excited, and it was impossible not to be touched. ‘I’m sorry, I was going to be so cool about this and not say a word, but the first people we meet I blurt it out. We’ve been trying for a while.’

  Mary said, ‘When is it due?’

  ‘The beginning of May.’ We sat on beautiful Italian leather while Damien brought flutes of champagne, and we drank a toast to the baby. Mary was full of questions. Would Lauren give up work? Certainly not. Were there conveniently available grandparents for baby minding? Lauren raised an incredulous eyebrow and spoke of a nanny agency. She offered to show Mary the rest of the flat, and Damien and I took our glasses out onto the balcony.

  We were about a hundred metres off the ground, a couple of pitches up Frenchmans Cap, and gravity yawed at me through the glass balcony front. We were in a canyon of towers, between which we could make out a section of the Harbour Bridge, the
lights of a harbour ferry. These peaks glittered with light, and were inhabited not by grey ternlets but by migrating tourists and mum-and-dad investors. Damien leaned on the rail and waved at another couple on a balcony facing us across the dark void. They waved back.

  ‘How was Suzi?’ he asked.

  ‘About as expected, I guess. Don’t worry, I behaved.’

  He smiled, then reached into his pocket for his wallet, and plucked out a business card, which he handed across to me. ‘Friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Merchant bank.’ He grinned. ‘Thought that would appeal to you. Looking for bright guys like you. If you’re interested, give him a ring. He’s a good bloke. You’ll like him.’

  I tapped the card with a finger. ‘Hm, thanks, Damien.’ I pocketed it and said, ‘I met an old girlfriend of yours the other day.’

  ‘Really? Who was that?’

  ‘Sophie Kalajzich.’

  He couldn’t place her at first, then I saw it register. ‘You saw Sophie Kalajzich?’

  ‘Yep. She’s a model now, remembers you fondly—actually asked me to give you her number, but I guess you won’t be needing that.’

  He studied me carefully. ‘Why did you want to speak to her?’

  ‘I had a bit of a brainstorm, mad idea probably. Looking back over the old newspaper cuttings about Luce’s accident, I came across a report that one of those yachts that called in to Lord Howe while you were there had been involved in smuggling rare birds’ eggs.’

  His face froze for a brief moment, then he very slowly shook his head. ‘Birds’ eggs.’

  ‘Yes. Quite a coincidence, I thought. So I wondered if someone on the island had been helping this smuggler, and I thought about the Kelsos, who seemed to be involved in everything. Sophie worked for them for six months, so I thought she might have an idea.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘No.’

  Damien just stared at me for a bit, then said, ‘Josh, you’ve obviously got too much time on your hands. You need something to occupy your mind again.’

  I grinned. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

  And he probably was, but I couldn’t get this odd coincidence out of my mind, and the following day I decided there was only one sensible way to move forward. I rang Kings Cross police station, and eventually got put through to Glenn Maddox, now a detective sergeant. I could tell he was intrigued when I introduced myself, and he suggested we meet in a café in Victoria Road, not far away. I recognised him from a photo in the press clippings Anna had copied for me. He was short and wiry, aged about fifty, with the air of someone who’d seen everything but was still game for one or two more rounds. His face was lined, with the trace of a scar on his left cheek, eyes steady, grizzled hair going grey around the ears, and his crumpled suit looked as if it had spent too long slouched in courtrooms and seedy bars. It had a bulge under the left arm that I guessed was his gun. He was in fact exactly how I might have imagined an experienced cop from Homicide to be.