The Tower (54 page)

Returning to the beginning of the corridor, Troy wondered where to go next. Someone appeared at the end of the next corridor and came towards him, an old Chinese man in a blue work shirt and trousers, wearing sandals. He smiled vaguely at Troy, and went to walk by.

‘Mr Wu?' Troy said.

The man pointed behind him and upwards, and kept walking. Troy looked in the direction he'd come from and turned back to the man, but he'd disappeared.

‘Sent by God,' Troy said into the silence.

But he hadn't been of course. The man had just been going to one of the bedrooms.

Matt would be asleep in his cot by now, up in Brisbane. Anna would be hunched over a cup of tea in her parents' kitchen. He tried to imagine her pain, but on top of his own it was unbearable. Best to concentrate on the job at hand. He went to the end of the main corridor, turned right and found another stairway. A murmur of sound was coming from somewhere. When he reached the top he found a large room, with a big plasma screen and lounge chairs scattered around. There was one man there, watching some sort of game show on the television. When the man heard Troy he turned around and an expression of surprise flickered across his face. It was Henry Wu.

Too easy, Troy thought. They've made it easy for you so you'll be confused. But it won't work because I have the anger, and it is just too strong. He took the gun out from his holster and pointed it.

Wu's attention had gone back to the screen. Apparently.

‘They don't see that boxes three and five have a twenty per cent better chance of being the right one,' he said. He picked up the remote control and clicked off the television.

‘My wife got the film,' Troy said. ‘She's left me.'

Wu nodded. ‘I'm sorry,' he said, his voice warm with concern, but not too warm. ‘I programmed my computer to send it if anything happened to me, if I didn't check in after twenty-four hours. In the event, I had to leave in a hurry, there was no time to reprogram.'

He didn't seem at all anxious. There was even a certain dignity to him. He's a fine-looking man, Troy thought, and a fine-speaking one. You have to remember what lies behind that face. The misery he's caused.

‘I was just a cop, doing my job.'

Get on with it, he told himself. Wu looked at the gun, then into Troy's eyes. ‘You still are, I hope. Anna will come back to you.'

He exuded willpower, charisma. Even now.

‘Why Randall?'

‘An accident. He shouldn't have been on the boat. Your present scared me. Sean was a friend of mine.'

Troy steadied his gun.

Wu said, ‘Think of Matt.'

Troy felt a stab of anger. This man, this creature, did not know him. Wondering how Wu knew the name of his son, he said, ‘I am.'

‘If you do this, one day he'll know about it. What you've done.'

Troy breathed deeply, telling himself Wu could not take this away from him. Not now. Important not to allow the man to play with his mind. He lifted the gun to eye level. It was not the best way to shoot, but it blocked the sight of Wu's face.

‘You're clever,' he said.

Once before, things had frozen for him, but that was after he'd killed a man, not before. For half a minute he stood there, thinking to relish the feeling, but he waited too long. He found he was no longer in the moment but able to look in on it, in on himself. There was a great stillness, and then the moment had passed.

He lowered the gun. The meaning of the action still hung in the balance.

‘You haven't won,' he said. Then, really seeing it now, thank God: ‘You've lost.'

He turned around, needing to get away, and someone punched him in the face.

It was a big man, lots of muscles and tattoos, and as Troy went down the man wrenched the gun from his grip and threw it over to Wu. The man stomped on his groin and Troy jerked away just before the blow landed, so it hit his inner thigh instead. He pushed up from the floor and the man went to kick him in the head, but the blow missed and struck his shoulder. Troy spun awkwardly, and went down again.

‘Quickly,' he heard Wu say.

The man had him up now, and everything was moving fast, he was dragging him down the stairs. At the bottom, he threw Troy against a wall and roughly ran his hands over him, searching for a weapon. When he'd finished, he grunted to Wu and pushed Troy to the floor.

Looking up, Troy saw Wu was holding a piece of wire between his hands, excited like a young kid. He pulled it tight: the wire must be attached to small handles at either end.

‘The hold,' Wu said, ‘we'll do it there.'

Troy tried to get up but the man pushed him down easily now. The guy was not all that quick, but he was strong, and Troy was winded and sore. He thought of Margot Teresi.

Looking up at Wu, he said, ‘Did you kill her yourself?'

Ignoring him, Wu said, ‘Let's go,' and the big man reached down for him. Troy struggled but he was too dizzy from the blow to the side of his head when he'd hit the wall. He was recovering his wits, but not quickly enough. The man got him up, his arms wrapped around Troy's own arms and chest. Now he was on his feet again, Troy saw Wu was watching the fight with intense interest.

‘Move aside,' a voice said.

Who'd spoken? Troy realised it was Wu, but his voice had changed. It seemed to be in a higher pitch than before, definitely more excited.

‘Get away,' Wu cried to the big man, impatiently waving his hands with the wire in Troy's direction. As though he couldn't wait.

Troy wrenched himself sideways and the big man spun backwards, slammed into the wall. Then he let go and Troy, disoriented again, began to fall to the floor. The man stepped away and as Troy hit the ground he saw Wu move towards him.

Then someone yelled out, the voice loud in the enclosed space. Troy didn't hear what was said, but it was new voice, one he recognised. There was a scream from someone else, a high-pitched yell of rage that went beyond the physical and into some other realm of frustration and anger. Halfway to his feet now, Troy saw that Wu was grappling with a man, and a moment later he saw it was McIver. He had no idea where he'd come from. Another man was behind them, trying to get around the entwined bodies in the narrow corridor. It was Dutton.

‘Police,' McIver rasped out, sounding breathless.

The big man stopped, turned, and ran back past Troy. Dutton came over and leaned down to help Troy up. Beyond him, Troy saw Wu shake himself free of McIver. Troy called out and Dutton turned to see what was happening. He started to move towards Wu, who produced Troy's Glock and fired. Dutton bent over and fell to the floor, clutching his leg. McIver grabbed for Wu's arm and wrestled the gun off him, doing most of the work with his right arm. Wu looked at the gun in McIver's hand for a split second, then turned and ran. Troy went after him, past McIver, who was panting heavily, around the corner and up some stairs.

He came out onto the ship's bridge, a long room lined with large windows along one side. At either end, steel doors with large glass panes opened onto balconies that jutted out over the side of the ship. As Troy cleared the top step he was disoriented for a moment by what he saw through the windows. There was a red container there, an enormous box over ten metres long, just outside the glass, blocking the view entirely. How could they operate the ship if the containers were stacked so high?

But then it began to move to the right, and Troy realised it was in the process of being lifted out of the hold by the crane, and was dangling in space as it was pulled horizontally towards the dock.

At the far right of the bridge, Wu was pulling at the heavy door, getting it open, stepping over the little wall at its foot designed to keep the water out, moving onto the balcony. McIver came banging up the stairs, his face red, and Troy went after Wu, the sergeant close behind. He started to pull open the door and saw Wu checking out the small white deck, which was surrounded by a steel wall about chest-high, realising there was no other exit.

Troy got one foot through the door and turned to let McIver through.

‘No!' the sergeant yelled, looking past Troy at Wu.

Troy turned.

The lights up here were almost as bright as below, and he could see every detail of what happened. Wu had already got up onto the wall and was standing on its flat top, his arms half-extended to balance himself. His attention was focused on the big red container moving past him, a little below his level and now only a few metres away, maybe less. As McIver came through the doorway, Wu jumped, his arms outstretched and high.

If he'd had a run-up he might have made it, but as it was, he didn't even touch the container, which continued to move on its way while Wu fell through the air, his hands clutching at emptiness. Then he was out of Troy's line of sight. Troy took a few steps forward, but stopped before he reached the wall.

McIver came past and peered over. Troy saw his shoulders jerk, and a few seconds later he turned around.

‘Long way down,' he said.

Troy walked over and looked at the tarmac far below. The way the body had landed, it was as though Wu had been slammed sideways into a wall while running. You could see the blood on the concrete from up here.

A man came walking quickly towards the body, a worker in a hard hat and a jacket with reflective patches on. When he was about ten metres away he slowed down and paused. Then he turned and walked back in the direction he'd come from, more slowly now.

Troy went over to McIver, who was leaning against the door, still getting his breath back. There was a roaring in his ears.

McIver said, ‘We need to get back to Ralph.'

‘Ralph?'

‘He called me,' said McIver.

‘We had a deal.'

‘He broke the deal. He was concerned about you.'

Troy felt like he was waking up, waking up from a sleep of anger. He didn't think you could compare anger with sleep, but that was how it had been. Thick and heavy.

‘I didn't shoot Wu,' he said.

‘No,' said McIver. ‘He fell.'

‘I mean, I could have shot him before. But I didn't.'

‘You made the right choice.'

Troy wasn't so sure: it felt more like some force had stepped in and saved him. But the important thing was how it had turned out.

‘What happened to your arm?' he said, noticing that the sleeve on McIver's forearm was ripped and bloody.

‘He had a garrotte,' said McIver. ‘Tried to get it over my head and I used the arm to protect myself. Quite a scrape.'

Troy thought back to the man lying on the bed with his swollen face among the flies at Waterloo. The man who'd been strangled. He took a deep breath and nodded.

‘There's something else,' McIver said, as Troy wrenched open the heavy door and they went inside. ‘The Wateries took some DNA from Wu's house to match with any body parts they recovered from the harbour. When the lab processed it, they ran the results though the computer, and got a match.'

Troy shook his head, seeing what was coming.

‘Margot Teresi,' he said.

McIver nodded. ‘The skin scrapings beneath her fingernails.'

So, Troy thought, it is finished. This, at least.

They could hear a siren, somewhere outside the docks.

McIver said, ‘We'd better go see if Ralph's okay. He got shot in the leg.' He paused at the top of the stairs. ‘By the way, he told me on the way over that Anna's staying at his place. He didn't want me to tell you.'

Troy felt a stab of joy. ‘They're not in Brisbane?'

‘Apparently not.'

‘I'll go and see them.'

He wondered what would happen. He had no idea.

McIver looked at him and nodded. ‘I would,' he said.

THANKS

I
t takes more people to write a novel than I ever would have imagined. Among those I want to thank are: Robert Alison, John Baffsky, Trevor Bailey, Margaret Connolly, Frank Devine, Lauren Finger, Carl Harrison-Ford, Dave Higgon, Ali Lavau, Gail MacCallum, Graham McCarter, Jane Palfreyman, Alex Snellgrove and Carla Tomadini.

The song ‘Water and Wine' mentioned in the novel was written by Paul Comrie-Thomson and recorded, but never released, by The Saints. I am grateful to them for permission to use it as the book's theme song, and they retain the relevant copyrights. To hear the song, and to learn more about Nicholas Troy and Jon McIver, visit
www.cityofsharks.com