The Simple Death (34 page)

THE FUNERAL

Sixty-seven

A
nna was graceful in a black dress, moving around the kitchen with a certain delicacy as she did her best to keep it clean despite the little fellow's uncouth eating habits. She had her hair drawn back and was wearing gold earrings, the effect different to the silver she usually wore. Troy kept glancing at her, trying to see just what the difference was, and looking away. He wondered if she was too beautiful to be going to a funeral, but there was nothing he could do about that.

They dropped Matt at a friend's house and began the long drive towards Campbelltown. Troy told Anna about his last visits to Luke at Charity, and about what he'd learned of Luke's relationship with Brigita Kalnins. She didn't know any of this and now he told her the whole story. He also described the promise he'd made to Luke, never to disclose what he'd learned.

‘You're telling me,' she said.

‘You don't count,' he said. It was what he'd decided. ‘You're not someone else.'

‘Nick!'

It was a warning. He'd realised in the past week she had a firm idea of where things had gone wrong before, and had a plan for how to avoid it happening again. He didn't believe in plans on the whole, but was happy to go along with what she had in mind. Sometimes the important thing was to think you were in control.

‘I'm tempted to tell people,' he said. ‘It's wrong that Luke's reputation is destroyed while Geoffrey Davies goes free. Apart from what he did back then, Mac says he's a bully.'

He could tell the world. There were two journalists he'd dealt with once, and he thought he could trust them.

‘If you break the promise,' Anna said, ‘really break it, that means you don't respect Luke as much as you did.'

‘And this Napoli—' he said.

‘It's not about them. This is about you.'

‘Yes.'

‘No, really, Nick. Think about it.'

He'd thought about it a lot. But now he thought about it again, and realised it might be different to the way he'd been seeing it.

There was a surprising turnout at the church, and when the service began, Troy saw why. The archbishop was doing the mass after all, and this had freed Luke's parishioners from indecision. They'd come to mourn his death, if not his life. But at least they had come to mourn.

Because of the size of the crowd, Troy and Anna were sitting towards the back of the church. There was no sign of McIver, which disappointed him; it didn't fit with the way he saw their friendship. The readings were done by people Troy didn't recognise, one an old priest and the others laypeople. He paid attention for a while and then his mind wandered, as it often did in church.

Looking around, he saw a man on the other side of the aisle who reminded him of Jim Austin: an Aboriginal man wearing a light top with the hood down. It might be Sam, and yet Luke had said he was in jail. Maybe it wasn't Sam. Troy looked again, but people in between them had shifted, and the guy's face was hidden now. If it was Sam, he hadn't aged well.

The archbishop's sermon was masterful, short and full of sweet sentences about not knowing what happens in another person's soul. Only God can know the full truth about any one of us. This moved into a brief meditation on how hard it can be to know the truth about anything, although we must strive, and Troy saw the archbishop was spinning a web of uncertainty around Luke, the least uncertain of men. It was gently done: he could not afford to suggest Luke was innocent, given what was on the public record. But still. Walsh concluded that Luke Carillo had fought a good fight. He finished his course. He kept the faith.

Troy wondered if the sermon was directed at himself, partly. Maybe the archbishop's presence today was some sort of appeal.

And maybe he would keep his promise, he thought, as the service ended. Maybe the time had come to accept that this was, as Anna said, what Luke wanted.

As the coffin was carried down the aisle, Troy stared at it and said a prayer. He realised that telling Burns about the Queensland inquiries during their second interview might have dangerously unsettled him. Perhaps this was why Luke had died. Maybe, in the bigger scheme of things, he had made a terrible error and it needed to be accepted, and Davies' crime needed to be accepted too. Thinking of such matters in church seemed to make more sense of them. Troy was not sure if God had anything to do with this. Religion did, definitely.

Anna and he made their way into the aisle, surrounded by people. Everyone wanted to shake the archbishop's hand on the way out, so progress was slow. Troy looked around for the man who might be Sam. He couldn't find him, but saw another familiar figure. Geoffrey Davies was ahead of them in the queue, standing next to a tall, thin woman and chatting to an old couple in front of them. Troy pointed this out to Anna, who craned her neck and said the tall woman was Davies' wife.

‘He's got a nerve,' Troy whispered.

You had to be amazed at the man's presumption, as though he thought he could impose himself, impose a new meaning, on Luke's funeral. On his life.

Davies was in profile now, and he saw the man's jaw thrust upwards in a pose familiar from television, the tanned face and the steel-grey hair that always looked as though it had been elaborately styled, al- though Davies swore it wasn't. It had been joked about in parliament, and Davies had declared he'd never used a hairdryer in his life. The stupid things you know about politicians, Troy thought.

Finally they were greeting the archbishop, who looked impressive in his funeral vestments and was courteous to Anna. As she moved away, Walsh said to Troy, ‘How are you?'

‘I see Davies is here.'

Walsh blinked. ‘He shouldn't have come.'

There was no apology there, just a statement of fact, more convincing than an apology.

‘Napoli's gone quiet.'

‘He won't be speaking of this again,' Walsh said softly. ‘He's not going to be heading the education review anymore. Sometimes, Detective, it's our friends we have to watch most closely.'

Troy stared at the archbishop, and remembered how powerful he was. How effective. Maybe even impressive. He nodded and moved away, and saw that Anna was talking to some people about their own age. They were a couple who'd been to the same marriage preparation talks Luke had given in the months before their wedding, years ago.

Troy wandered off in the crowd, wanting a few minutes to think about what he was going to do. The archbishop hadn't asked him, which he respected. Last night, he'd decided he would call the newspapers today, tell them about the whole sordid deal: Luke's reputation destroyed forever, Davies' protected, in return for more government funding of Catholic schools. But now he was undecided. He thought about his conversation with Anna in the car. If he hadn't opened up, talked to her about this, everything would have been simpler.

‘G'day, bro.'

He turned and saw Sam standing next to him, short-cropped hair, the big smile he remembered. He looked as though he'd been in a fight long ago and never got over it. There were two teeth missing, and at some point his nose had been broken. Troy opened his arms to hug him, but Sam thrust out a hand and grabbed Troy's firmly, pulling it in between them so the handshake kept them apart. Troy tried to pull him closer, clapped him on the back. The smell of mothballs and alcohol was strong.

‘Great to see you,' he said.

‘So the old bastard's finally gone, eh?' said Sam, withdrawing his hand and stepping back, his eyes avoiding Troy's. ‘Been in Grafton, they let me out two days early for this.' His gaze flickered around the crowd without enthusiasm. ‘Luke used to write to me each month. Bloody boring letters.' There were tears in his eyes.

‘You want to stay with us for a while?' Troy said.

‘Nah. Got to go to me aunty's in Walgett.' He was moving from one foot to another, as though already anxious to be off.

Troy sensed the vast gulf between them, recalled an argument about the lyrics of a Springsteen song Sam said was his personal poem. Troy couldn't recall what the argument had been about, but remembered it had been mysteriously fierce. As though their friendship had been fragile in ways he hadn't realised.

‘Let me give you a lift to the cemetery,' he said, ‘and we can talk about it. Introduce you to Anna, my wife.'

Sam took a step back. He was in good physical shape, Troy saw, but twitchy, and there was something in him that had not been there fifteen years ago. Some sort of surrender.

‘Nah,' said Sam. ‘I just come see the old feller was really dead. Successful copper, you, seen you in the papers. Who would have thought it?'

‘Well—'

‘Some of the things we used to get up to, I'm surprised they let you in. I might have to tell the commissioner.' Sam wasn't looking at him, his eyes were glancing around as though searching for something, but there was no pattern to it.

‘Why don't—'

‘We're on different sides these days but. Let's keep it that way. You're the good fella, I'm the baddie.'

Troy recognised the old mockery, but now there was none of the light that would appear in Sam's eyes when he was having you on. Maybe it was not mockery anymore.

He said, ‘It's not that simple.'

‘Us simple people like simple. I got to go.'

Troy said, pointing to the hearse, ‘He didn't do those things.'

‘I know that.'

‘How do you know?' Troy said urgently.

‘Because I know Luke.'

His feet were moving faster now, as though he was in the ring. Suddenly he was off, in a dance through the crowd.

Troy moved after him, worked his way through all the people, heard some of them say the bus that was going to the cemetery had been delayed. Sam was gone, so he slowed down, found his mind drifting, thinking now of Luke and Carl Burns, of Leila Scott. He'd been to see her a few times at Royal North Shore, but she was not ready to be interviewed. One day a nurse had told him Scott had been talking in her sleep, saying ‘a leech, a car'.

‘Maybe a leash?' said Troy.

He'd mentioned this to Anna that night, part of the new openness about his job.

‘Aleisha,' said Anna, ‘is a name.'

The next day he'd typed it into COPS, got nothing, tried spelling variants, found Alecia Parr. Called the locals and got the story.

Ms Parr was seventy-two, dying of cancer. The previous Thursday she'd walked across the suspension bridge at Northbridge, carrying a large gift-wrapped parcel, about the size of a wine carton. It was big, said the security guard stationed on the bridge at the time, but, from the way she was carrying it, light. The guard was there because the bridge had become a popular suicide spot, and the local and state governments were arguing over whether to erect an unsightly barrier fence along both sides. In the meantime, the council had hired a guard to deter jumpers. But as the man said afterwards, what can you do? He hadn't been told to breathe down the necks of everyone who used the footpaths on either side of the bridge. As he'd watched, idly, from across the road, the old lady had stopped, put down the parcel, stepped onto it and just sort of rolled over the wall.

Jesus, Troy thought. Logged out of COPS, went and found a cup of coffee. Wondered how much of this sort of thing was going on.

He found Anna still talking to the other couple who'd been married by Luke. She introduced them as Jason and Leanne. The woman was crying and being comforted by her husband and Anna.

‘He's polluted us,' she said, looking angrily at the hearse and then at Troy. ‘Polluted our marriage, the filthy old man.'

Pollution was a word Luke had used. Indeed, Troy thought, if the priest was listening now he'd probably approve of what the woman was saying. He saw that Anna was distressed. Maybe the implications of the promise he'd made to Luke were hitting her now.

But she said to Leanne, ‘You've got to try to forgive him. That's what this is all about.'

She looked back at the simple, cream brick church.

‘Can
you
forgive him?' said Jason. You could tell he was the calm one in the marriage.

Anna nodded slowly. ‘I can.'

‘How can you? After the way he's betrayed us?'

The couple stared at Anna, who for the moment was lost for words. As though the act of forgiveness had used up all her energy.

The bus had arrived and the crowd was disappearing as people made their way to vehicles for the trip to the cemetery. Troy told Anna he needed to take a leak and went around to the toilets. He'd just finished washing his hands when someone came in, and when he turned around he saw Geoffrey Davies. The politician checked that they were alone.

‘Wanted a quick word, mate,' he said, and came up to Troy. He was a powerful man, almost Troy's height. ‘Understand you might be going public with some stuff about me. Want you to know, you do that I'll deny it. Then I'll tell the world about Brigita and Tim Kalnins.'

Troy was stunned. It was not the threat, or the complete misreading of his own character it indicated. What shocked him was how much Davies knew. The archbishop must know about Kalnins, maybe he'd used that to force Luke's silence. And then he'd told Davies. Walsh had made him feel he was the only one who mattered. Of course he wasn't.

‘You bastard,' he said.

Suddenly Davies moved, pushing Troy back so that the middle of his back hit the hand dryer on the wall behind. It hurt. Davies' eyes were wide, he was enraged. For a moment Troy couldn't react: it was one of the most unexpected things that had ever happened to him. Davies was a federal minister, the risk he was taking was enormous.

He pushed back and Davies staggered, lashed out with a hand that struck Troy's nose. Troy could tell it wasn't broken, but it hurt and it was bleeding. The politician was staring at the blood, he seemed upset but excited too. He dropped his hands to his sides, his chest heaving, said, ‘Maybe I should tell the world anyway, what your dirty mate did.' He said it with contempt.