The Tower (17 page)

‘That's it,' he said, and went into the kitchen.

He opened a beer and took it back to the lounge room. After a few mouthfuls he told her about Little and his racist remarks, and how he'd decided to keep him on the team anyway, for lack of other options. ‘I keep thinking: what would McIver do?'

‘You think about Jon too much.'

‘He would have found a way. He's not one for compromises.'

‘I wouldn't be so sure,' she said. ‘He's spent a lot of his life pretending that he doesn't make compromises, all that cowboy stuff.'

‘It seems to work for him.'

She shook her head. ‘It's an act. How could he survive in the police force if he was really the Lone Ranger? Come on.'

She was right, of course. There was McIver the myth and McIver the operator.

‘You're right,' he said.

‘He's made compromises too, he's just better at hiding them.'

‘Maybe.'

She seemed happy that he'd acknowledged her insight, and asked if he would call all the people who'd been in touch. Social obligations like that were important to her. He promised to do it tomorrow.

‘Would you like me to call them?' she said. ‘I could say you'll ring when you're up to it.'

He shook his head. He was up to it.

‘Are you coming to bed?' he said. ‘It'd be good to hold you. Just hold you.' He'd almost said it'd be good to hold someone. Anyone. The way he was feeling, it was that basic. There was fear in her eyes now, and he wondered what he could say. In the end he said, ‘I need you.'

It was important. After what he'd been through last night, and the way things were between them, this was some kind of moment of truth.

She must see that.

‘Georgie says—' she began.

‘I don't care what Georgie says. Will you sleep in our bed tonight?'

It came out more roughly than he'd intended, but he found he didn't care. She was turning away.

‘I'd better sleep in Matt's room,' she said. ‘He was a bit chesty this afternoon.'

She left the room hastily, without a backwards glance.

Always when he asked there would be some reason, as though each night apart was unique. All five hundred of them. But tonight had been different. To say no tonight, to just walk out on him like that, was really something.

He tried to stop thinking about it so he could get to sleep, but after he turned out the light he lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness.

TUESDAY

Thirteen

H
e woke early, as he usually did in the first days of an investigation. Dawn was breaking as he got into the car, and he decided to go through Coogee and pick up a newspaper on the main road. Along Malabar Road the low orange sun half blinded him as he tried to make out the ocean between the houses. There was a queue in the newsagency, and as he waited he watched the other people, the way they handled their cash so differently. A middle-aged woman in shorts and a windcheater was counting hers almost obsessively, as though afraid she might not have exactly the right amount. A young man hadn't even bothered to take any money from his pocket, and held up the line when he was served while he searched for his wallet, finally extracting a fifty-dollar bill. Troy found detail fascinating, and was grateful he'd found a job where this was useful.

He drove past the racecourse at Randwick, where the jockeys were working the horses around the track. By seven he was in the city, breakfasting at his desk on coffee and a bacon-and-egg roll. He thought about the investigation, occasionally jumping up to make a change on one of the whiteboards. Later he would visit McIver, but for now the briefing was occupying all his attention.

After he'd been there half an hour, Don Vella rang from Bourke. He was in a car and reception was patchy, but Troy could make out a string of comments about the investigation he was working. Then he yelled, ‘How come you haven't put out the bracelet?'

‘It's this guy Stone,' Troy said. Vella was right, last night's press conference would have been a good time to show the public a picture of the bracelet. And the dolphin tattoo. ‘I was out at Villawood until late—I assumed he'd be on it.'

Assumed Stone would be running the investigation, like he was paid to do.

‘Do you know anything about him?' Vella said.

‘Not a lot. You?'

‘Never heard of him. It's not good.'

Then the line dropped out. Troy looked at the phone in disgust. It was just like Vella—lots of comments and no solutions. But he was right: it wasn't good.

‘Nick, how are you?'

He looked up and saw Helen Kelly, fresh-faced and wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit. She put her bag on a desk and told him she was on her way to an interagency conference in a city hotel. ‘I thought Sergeant Stone might be here,' she said.

‘He's decided to skip today's briefing.'

‘You're okay to handle it?'

‘I guess.'

Kelly didn't seem interested in Stone. She sat on the top of a desk, showing plenty of leg, and talked about last night's press conference. She had good legs, but he had no trouble keeping his eyes on her face because she was beaming, which was uncharacteristic. Maybe she really liked doing press conferences.

‘I came to tell you IA are okay with what you did the other night,' she said. ‘I'm very glad. You're a hero, Nick.'

He smiled. Other people had used that word already, but Kelly had waited until IA had cleared him.

‘What happens next?' he said.

They talked about the stress shoot and the need to arrange a meeting with a psychologist. Then she smiled brightly. ‘I want you to think seriously about this conference in Florida. You can get away from home?' He nodded; getting away from home would not be a problem. And he was feeling better about the conference. If that was the trade-off for working with Stone, why not take it? He'd never been to America.

She looked at her watch. ‘I want to visit Jon McIver. He was out of it for most of yesterday and they were worried about his head, but it looks like it's okay—he'll be out of hospital in a day or two. He should rest for a few weeks but it's up to him, he might be feeling fine. We should persuade him to take some time off.' Like you persuaded me, Troy thought. Then, ‘Vella told me about the bracelet. Can I see it?'

‘It's at the jeweller's.'

‘Still?'

‘We were busy yesterday.'

‘Make sure you get it today.'

He found a photograph and showed it to her. She examined it carefully. ‘It's a nice piece. Probably bought overseas within the past twenty years. Before that, few Australians would have had the taste or the money. I don't think there would have been anything like this in the country before 1980.'

‘You seem to know what you're talking about.'

‘Well,' she grinned, ‘we all need our hobbies. What's yours?'

He shook his head. He didn't feel the need, although lately he'd been thinking he'd like to learn a bit more about the city's history.

‘You haven't released this to the media yet?' she said, waving the photo.

Don't look at me
, he felt like telling her, but just said, ‘We'll do it today.'

‘I'd treat it as a matter of urgency. The tattoo as well.' She didn't sound too upset, which was strange. ‘By the way,' she went on, ‘Brad Stone told me about his arrangement with you. I appreciate that you're bearing so much of the organisational burden here. It won't be forgotten.'

This was it, Troy realised: the conversation Kelly wanted to have, the one that mattered to her this morning.

He said, ‘Do you know where Sergeant Stone is?'

‘He said something about talking to more of the workers at The Tower.'

Only a few minutes earlier she'd said she'd expected to find him here, in the office. Troy decided his first trip to America might have to wait.

‘I didn't know that,' he said slowly, ‘and I don't understand it.'

She smiled but it was an impatient smile. He wondered if she'd be smiling at all if he wasn't a hero. ‘Brad told me he'd explained his situation to you.'

He said, ‘You should have told me first. There's something not right about him.'

He had to be careful; if he protested too much, she might take him off the investigation. She slid off the desk, smoothing her skirt as she stood up.

‘His life is at risk, he's helped put some very nasty crims in Victoria away. A decision was made at a higher level to keep his recent duties secret. We're not happy he told you, but I've assured them it won't go any further.'

‘It won't,' Troy said. ‘But other people can see something's wrong. He's not acting like a man running a homicide investigation.'

Her smile was warmer now. He wondered if she practised different expressions in front of a mirror.

‘Well, you'll just have to reassure them, won't you? Don't forget he has a great knowledge of the construction industry, you can use that.'

‘Isn't it a risk, to involve him in the same industry again?'

‘There's not much crossover between Melbourne and Sydney. Look, it's what he wants. Brad's a brave man and he deserves to be looked after. Any of us would expect the same if we'd been through what he has.'

She looked at him to see how he was taking it. This was what leaders did: they kept telling their story, to see if you were still with them.

Finally he nodded.

A minute later she was out of the room. It would be easy to dislike Kelly, adopt the McIver position. But she was effective, Troy could see that. On the whole he liked her, suspected she might be the first female police commissioner one day. But there was a vast gap between them. She had a superior grasp of politics, and he realised she would never really respect him until he'd closed that gap, at least partly. Maybe he'd started on Sunday night, with how he'd dealt with the journalists.

His phone beeped and he saw there was a text message, from the man himself. Stone wrote:
Need put more pressure on illegals. Reinterview. Conti's
dad was Bill.
Troy shook his head in wonder. ‘Management by texting,' he murmured, and read the words again. The reference to Conti made no sense at all. As for the instruction regarding the illegals, he decided to ignore it. They'd wasted too much time at Villawood already.

Soon all the team members except Bergman arrived, along with two new detectives. Troy introduced everyone and began the briefing. Little asked where Stone was, and Troy said that he was working on obtaining more resources for the investigation. Bergman arrived five minutes late and took a seat at the back of the room, looking apologetic. Troy summarised the state of their knowledge. DNA samples had been obtained from everyone who'd been at The Tower that night, and were being compared with the skin scrapings from under the victim's finger-nails. He told them about the bracelet and dropped Kelly's name to emphasise its importance.

‘The victim was probably rich,' he said, ‘which makes it even more strange no one's reported her missing.' He'd rechecked with Missing Persons fifteen minutes ago. ‘We really need to keep our minds open. We still have no idea what happened up there on Sunday night. Time is getting on.'

He looked at Little, who smiled and said, ‘The clock is running.'

‘We need to give the media the tattoo and the bracelet,' said Conti. ‘We should have done that yesterday.'

Troy looked at her and nodded. But when he spoke, it was to allocate tasks among the officers.

Bergman and Ryan were to go over the reports that had been made by the uniformed officers from City Central who'd canvassed businesses in the streets around The Tower on Monday.

‘I've read them and there's nothing there for us that I can see,' he said. ‘Have another look and then revisit all the businesses facing The Tower on Norfolk Street. See if anyone was working on Sunday night.'

The others were to concentrate on the security guards.

‘I'm going to interview McIver and see if he recognises any of the illegals,' he said. He ought to stay here and concentrate on the paperwork, but if Stone could break their agreement, so could he. And he wanted to see Mac.

The detectives stood up and prepared to leave the room, chatting and gathering what they needed. Troy saw David Johnson, one of the new detectives, bend over and say something to Conti, who turned away impatiently. You could tell there was something between them. He made a mental note to ask McIver what Stone had meant about Conti's father.

Fourteen

R
andall had never been up here when the view was so good. The rain in the past week had washed all the shit out of the sky, and this morning he could see the Blue Mountains far to the west, and right down the coast to Wollongong. The glory of it still astounded him, that men like himself could build something like this, something that had never existed in nature. The daring of it, the achievement, gave life meaning. At university he'd had a girlfriend who'd been doing English literature, lovely big tits but obsessed by postmodernism. They broke up because she'd sneered at his friends. He'd had to explain that postmodernism was a fraud because it was never tested. There were no postmodern bridges or jumbo jets.

Level one-sixteen would contain Henry Wu's office when The Tower was finished. Henry came up to the floor a lot now, as though he couldn't wait. In fact, he liked to have meetings here with Randall. The man had a pass to the whole building and Randall knew he spent time wandering all over the place, talking to people. Sometimes Randall had come upon him in earnest conversation with a subbie, hunched over a plan or a piece of equipment. It wouldn't surprise him to see Wu one day with his coat off and a power tool in his hands.

Randall had never met a client like this before, and Henry himself hadn't been this way when they'd first met, during the construction of an eighty-storey tower in Shanghai. Back then he'd acted entirely normal, striding around during site inspections in his Zegna suit, surrounded by a group of lackeys in cheaper, darker clothes. Those appalling ties the Chinese wore. But here in Sydney, Wu had become more of a loner; removed from his context, he seemed to have changed. Or maybe it was just that here he had the freedom to express his true nature. All that weird stuff with the DVDs. But at least it gave them something in common.