The Simple Death (6 page)

‘Actually, you're right,' Luke said quietly. ‘I have committed some serious sins. But not this one.'

Troy's chest relaxed and he took another breath, a deep one now. The relief washed through him. He knew Luke's idea of a serious sin, especially when applied to himself, would not be so bad. He put a hand on Luke's arm and the priest covered it with his own.

‘You should see Anna again.' He always raised this, whenever they spoke. It irritated Troy.

‘Let's talk about you. I want to help.'

‘No. Think about your own life. The boy.'

‘It's hard, them being in Brisbane.'

‘Of course it's hard.' Luke looked at him, suddenly bright-eyed. ‘You came to me for advice last year and I was no help. It was the drugs they had me on. They didn't know what they were doing down there.'

Troy remembered the conversation. Afterwards he'd been de- pressed by Luke's response, much more than he'd realised. He'd ended up almost killing someone.

‘You seem better now.'

‘This is a good place, you wouldn't believe how good it is. It's not just morphine, they use other stuff too.'

Troy nodded politely.

‘They mix them up,' Luke went on, ‘call it a cocktail. I've never drunk a cocktail in my life. Maybe I should've started earlier.' He paused, waiting for a response to the modest joke. Cheeriness was part of a priest's stock in trade, but sometimes it could get in the way.

‘So what's happening about this accusation?' Troy said.

Luke blinked. ‘His Eminence is looking into it. He wants me to say nothing. For the moment.'

‘Tell me about it, anyway.'

The complainant was a man named Brian Hughes, in his late thirties and an invalid pensioner due to the effects of this alleged abuse, and other abuse he'd received as a child. He'd approached Archbishop Patrick Walsh six months earlier with a complaint, the first time he'd told anyone in the Church. A lot of people thought a delay like that was suspicious, but Troy knew enough about child sexual assault to be aware it was not unusual. The complaint had been investigated, and two months later Walsh wrote to Hughes and said Father Carillo had denied the accusation and there was no evidence to support it. Therefore, the Church would not be paying compensation or referring the matter to the police. Hughes was free to talk to a lawyer about civil action or go to the police himself.

Instead, he'd gone to the media.

Troy said, ‘Do you know this guy?'

‘Absolutely no memory. There were fifty boys, a week on the Colo River. Canoeing, abseiling, people coming and going. All I remember clearly is two of the other men stopping me from conducting boxing lessons. They didn't want to encourage violence.' Troy grunted, not wanting to get him started on this subject. Luke said, ‘Don't get me started.'

Hughes had been eleven then. He said Luke had taken him down a track to the river one night during dinner, removed his shorts and asked the boy to masturbate him. Hughes did as he was told and they returned to the campsite. That was it, maybe twenty minutes in a life. In two lives.

‘I don't know,' Troy said. ‘In the order of things—'

Luke snorted. ‘The order of things has changed,' he said. Then, calming down, ‘I know blokes who've been abused. It can knock a life off course. None of us who haven't been there can judge.'

‘Has Hughes been in touch with you?'

‘Never.' He sniffed. ‘I called him, he hung up. Walsh told me not to try again.'

‘Would you like me to look into it?' He had no idea where he'd start or what he could do. But it was what he did, investigate things.

‘No.' The priest shook his head. ‘His Eminence told me they've got people handling it. The Church has a lot of experience with this sort of business.' Said without irony.

‘They've talked to the other priests who were there?'

‘Two are dead, but yes, and some of the boys too. You know how it works. If there's a case to be made, the Church will pass it over to Caesar.' He smiled. ‘It might come your way.'

Troy had never worked in Sex Crimes and never would. Some forms of badness he felt he could understand, but not this one. He scratched his cheek. ‘Did the archbishop tell you how long it would take?'

‘The newspaper says it has more information it's publishing next Sunday. They've refused to tell the Church what it is. Walsh thinks they might be hoping more witnesses will come forward during the week.'

‘So, what's he saying publicly?'

‘Nothing, except the Church has already investigated the allegation and found insufficient evidence. It will reopen its inquiry if new evidence is produced.'

‘He should stand by you,' Troy said. ‘At least say you're innocent.'

‘He did that three years ago with Father Delaney.'

Troy remembered: Walsh had defended one of his priests, even accompanying him to court, and the man had been found guilty of abusing a dozen boys. The archbishop had been savagely criticised for seeming to side with the abuser instead of the victims.

‘You've got to see it from his point of view,' said Luke.

He sounded calm enough, but when Troy looked down at the priest's hands he saw they were clutching the arms of his chair again, so hard the knuckles were white. He put out a hand and pressed Luke's arm gently. After a few seconds he felt it relax.

‘It's tough.'

Luke nodded. His face had changed since Troy came into the room, the skin seemed to have gone more slack.

The priest said, ‘I keep thinking of some of the fights I had. I was pretty good then, but there were some hard ones. Some were really hard—what this feels like.'

He stopped, and Troy saw that he was more slumped now, his head forward.

‘You never gave up.'

‘I keep thinking of this one,' Luke said, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘The state championship. I lost, that was okay, he was better. But I took it to eleven rounds.'

‘That's good.'

‘I can remember every minute of it and that's what I do, sit here and go through it in my mind. Charley Jenkins.'

Troy pressed Luke's arm again. He wanted to stay with him. He wanted to help him, to rescue him from all of this. You love people and this is where it ends up. But it was after nine: McIver would be waiting over at the hospital.

Luke, seeing him glance at his watch, said, ‘This Brian Hughes, the archbishop says he's a paranoid schizophrenic. That's why he's got the pension. A self-professed crazy, and yet others believe him. His word against mine.' He shouted, ‘He's a shit, Nick. He's a nothing!' Luke's eyes were dry and hot. Troy waited for him to calm down. A nurse came to the door, looked in and went away. The priest spoke, quiet again. ‘At least I could see Charley. It was all out in the open.'

‘I'm afraid I've got to go.'

‘Of course.' Luke breathed deep, looked as though he were about to try to get up again. Realised he didn't have the strength.

Troy said, ‘The people here treat you all right?'

‘They don't come near me since Sunday, and when they do it's all long faces and silence. Julie's the only one, she hasn't changed at all. The girl's a saint.'

On his way out, Troy looked for the nurse, wanting to thank her for her kindness to Luke. There was a lot of noise coming from one of the rooms on the ground floor, and he stepped to one side as a trolley loaded with medical kit came racing down the corridor propelled by two staff members. They pushed it into the room. Troy saw Julie Cornish standing next to the bed, talking urgently to several people he took to be doctors. She seemed to be explaining something to them and they were nodding, then they all turned to the trolley and grabbed pieces of equipment. She looked in his direction, appeared not to recognise him, and he moved off.

As he left the building, he thought about the sorts of decisions that must be made every day by the people who worked there. Hard calls, about pain and life and death. He couldn't do it himself, wondered if those who could were different from the start, or had been changed by something in their lives. He was not introspective, but for a moment considered if he had been changed by what he did, his work with the dead. And if he had, how he compared with other people. Maybe this was why Anna had left him.

He switched on his phone and saw he had a message from McIver. The meeting with Saunders had been postponed; they'd found a body at Gordons Bay.

Nine

T
he white police boat looked far too big. The
Avery
was at least fifty metres long. Gordons Bay was only a few times wider than that, a small inlet scooped out of high cliffs. It wasn't that far north of Maroubra, and on days when Troy was feeling particularly energetic he ran here in the morning. He'd never much liked the place: the cliffs were gloomy walls, and at their base the tide surged over large, grey rocks that had fallen hundreds of years ago. The only relief was a patch of sand in the middle, where wooden frames held a number of small boats.

McIver and Conti were waiting for him up top, Conti working her phone while McIver examined the scene below through dark sunglasses. When Troy reached them, they made their way down the steep stairs. He could see uniforms at either end of a path that ran around the bay, diverting the pedestrian traffic. Although it was almost ten on a weekday, there were plenty of people about. A police photographer had set up a camera on a tripod and was filming the scene.

The
Avery
was the Wateries' biggest vessel, and Troy guessed it was here because it was the best for working outside the heads. Two men in black wetsuits were in the water, pushing a floating stretcher towards the shore. Two more were standing among the big rocks with a group of half a dozen other police. The detectives reached one of the uniforms standing on the path and showed their ID.

The body was lying between two boulders, a dark plastic sheet covering it. The smell was apparent as they got close, and Troy figured they'd need to get it out of the sun before too long. A uniformed inspector explained they were waiting for the doctor, who'd been delayed. He said, ‘According to the Wateries, the position and state of the body are consistent with Pearson coming off the ferry Thursday night, being taken out to sea and brought back by the tides last night.'

McIver nodded and looked around.

Conti said, ‘We need to get some tape up.'

‘It's not a crime scene,' said McIver.

Conti appeared surprised. So was Troy: it was almost certain the body had floated in, but this needed to be established beyond doubt. McIver was staring at the sea, unconcerned; Troy saw that yet again he was not himself.

‘What have we got?' he said to the inspector impatiently.

The man looked up and around to see how visible they were to the onlookers. He told two of his officers to lift up one side of the sheet so it would act as a screen.

Troy had never dealt with a drowning before, but he had some idea what to expect. Pearson's body was bloated. Troy couldn't recall if at some point the stomach would burst, or if the gases would go down. The face and hands were swollen and covered with what at first looked like large red sores, and he realised the flesh had been eaten by sea creatures. Despite this, he recognised Pearson from his photographs. McIver was holding one up, comparing what was in front of them to the picture of a smiling young man standing next to his father at what looked like a family gathering. God bless you, Troy prayed. You and yours.

‘The clothes are what his wife says he was wearing that day,' the inspector said, ‘and we found his wallet in his pocket.'

Troy looked at Conti, who was staring hard, no sign of emotion apart from a certain heaviness to her breathing. She pointed and said, ‘What happened there?'

Most of the clothing on Pearson's left arm had gone, and the limb had been gnawed so badly that in several places the bones were visible.

‘Probably the sleeve got torn off by a rock or the ferry's propeller,' McIver said. ‘Or maybe a shark had a go at it, exposed the skin and allowed the fish in.'

‘Jesus,' said Conti.

‘It's a bit like that.' McIver looked around. ‘Seen enough?'

The doctor had arrived, and after greeting the detectives he crouched down by Mark Pearson's body.

Troy said, ‘The arm's not good.'

McIver grunted. ‘He was right-handed?'

Troy closed his eyes and pictured Pearson's desk in his flat. The mouse had been on the right of the computer.

‘Yes.'

‘Bugger.'

‘What?' said the inspector.

McIver frowned. ‘If he was a pethidine addict and injected into his left arm, we won't be able to see the marks.'

‘Won't toxicology tell us?' said Conti.

‘It'll show if he used recently,' the doctor said, ‘but not if he was a regular.'

McIver told the inspector they'd finished, and turned to go.

‘Do you want me to have a look around?' said Conti. ‘Just in case.'

In Troy's opinion, she was pushing it.

But McIver said, ‘You do that.'

Conti began to search the nearby rocks, examining the ground as she went. McIver made his way back towards the path, and after a moment's hesitation, Troy followed.

When they reached the foot of the stairs leading back to the road, he said, ‘What about Conti?'

McIver began to climb. ‘She'll work out we're gone eventually,' he called over his shoulder. ‘She's an observant girl.'

He trudged upwards, panting as he went. When he was halfway up, his phone rang, and he stopped to take the call. Troy passed him, and jogged the last few dozen stairs to the top. When he got there he turned around and saw Conti just starting the climb. Mac was still where he'd left him, staring at the ocean.