The Simple Death (35 page)

Troy grabbed Davies' lapel with his left hand and pulled back his right, about to sink a fist into the man's gut.

But someone else was here now. It was Sam, who'd come in behind Davies and put an arm around his throat, was dragging him away from Troy. Davies tried to elbow him, and Sam did something Troy couldn't see that made the politician's body sag, his face contorted in pain.

‘You got to watch that temper, mate,' Sam said to Troy, his voice muffled by Davies' shoulder. ‘Luke used to talk to you about that.' Then he swung the politician around and hustled him out.

Troy looked at his face in the mirror. There wasn't much blood and he cleaned up slowly. With a nose, you have to take your time.

Sam came back in and looked at him. ‘You'll survive.'

‘You should have let me hit him. He deserved it.'

‘Keep it simple, mate. That's the big thing. What Luke used to say to me.'

Troy smiled, calmed down. ‘Did it work?' he said.

‘No.' Sam smiled too. ‘Not enough room in it for me.'

Troy didn't know what to say. Luke had never said it to him.

Sam said, ‘He ever talk about me?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Used to talk about you all the time. What you were doing, when you got married and all.'

‘You saw him?'

‘He visited once a year. Last time, it was during that Tower thing, he said to me, “It's a great disappointment, son, that you're back on the juice.” ' Sam's voice slowed as he did a bad imitation of Luke's accent, full of affection.

‘ “The juice”?'

‘He loved them old movies. Then he went on about that case you were doing, he had this newspaper photo of you in his wallet. I asked about your wife and he said, “Nick didn't keep it simple. That's always a mistake.” ' Suddenly his expression changed. He didn't cry, but he might just as well have: the grief was in his face, and it looked at home, not reluctant or ugly the way it did with some people. Troy moved towards him, and this time he allowed himself to be held.

They walked back around the church to the empty forecourt. Tim Kalnins was opening the door of a taxi on the road. He saw Troy and waved, seemed about to come across but changed his mind and got in. The taxi drove off.

Troy knew he was going to keep the promise he'd made Luke.

He said, ‘It's never been simple for me either.' Wanting Sam to understand him.

Sam shrugged. It was polite, but it was a rejection of anything Troy was offering, or asking.

‘I'd better be going,' he said.

And he went.

Troy walked over to Anna, who was waiting in the shade of the porch.

‘I saw Davies go in after you,' she said, ‘and that dodgy-looking fellow. Did you sort it all out?'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Good.' She smiled at him, her smile different to the one he'd known in the past. For the first time in his life he realised, fully, that he was growing older. It felt a bit like waking up.

She said, ‘There's blood on your shirt.'

THE CALL

Sixty-eight

D
avid Saunders had been at the funeral, although Troy hadn't spoken with him there. Two days later, Saunders called to say the review of the theft of pethidine from the pharmacy had found nothing.

‘That's a problem,' said Troy.

‘Found other things missing,' Saunders said. ‘We have a new chief pharmacist.' He cleared his throat and apologised for what had happened with the three complaints to the ombudsman regarding deaths in Oncology. ‘Paula Williams shouldn't suffer,' he said. ‘If there's any fallout, please direct it to me.'

‘I will,' Troy said. He wondered why Saunders was calling. The matter had already been resolved, with McIver.

‘I know this is not an excuse,' said Saunders, ‘but I'd never have done it if I'd known that Mark was dead, let alone that there might be something seriously wrong in Oncology.'

‘I wish you hadn't,' Troy said. ‘We might have got to Burns sooner. Several people might still be alive.'

‘I'm deeply sorry. It's something I'll never forgive myself for.' Troy said nothing. ‘I didn't trust you but I should have. There was one moment I almost called you and said what I'd done, when I heard about Carter's alibi. Roz Herron is Dirk Wainwright's sister. You know who he was? A gay man—'

‘I know who Dirk Wainwright was.'

‘Ian was very good to the family. They'd do anything for him.'

Troy thought about this strange conversation a lot over the next day, trying to fit it into what else he knew. He pondered Saunders and Archbishop Walsh. He'd never met people like them before. He'd met people who were trying to be like them, but most would never make it. Saunders and Walsh, though, they had made it, and once you knew what to look for, you could tell the difference. So he thought about the conversation more specifically, considered it line by line. Especially the last one.

‘Tell me again,' McIver said. ‘I don't think I heard you correctly.'

So Troy told him again, and it didn't make McIver much happier. Still, you could see he was intrigued by the idea of it.

‘There's nothing on the CCTV.'

‘No, but the cameras don't cover the whole wharf, at either end.'

‘The expense,' said the sergeant, ‘would be enormous. We are talking needles and haystacks. Are you sure it's even possible?'

It was. Troy had done the work on that, talked to someone in the Forensic Services Group, and he laid it all out.

McIver shook his head. ‘I won't deny we've got a certain number of brownie points at the moment. But if this goes wrong, we won't have them for long.'

In the end, he said he'd talk to Peters about it, and Troy was content. Peters was the sort of superior more likely to respond well to a huge proposal than one that was merely irritatingly large. With a certain type of manager, you needed to grab their attention.

Troy caught Peters out front of Police Headquarters, walking back with a cup of coffee, and they stopped to talk. The inspector said McIver had told him about the idea and Troy should get moving.

‘You're a friend of Mac's,' he said. ‘What's wrong with him?'

‘You know—'

‘I know about the baby but it's more than that.' He sipped his coffee, nodded to a senior officer walking past. ‘Yesterday we were driving down the M7 to that shooting at Prestons, he was spouting bullshit.' Peters looked almost embarrassed. ‘Is he having some sort of breakdown?'

‘What did he say?'

‘Kept using this phrase, “sense of place”. Something about Sydney doesn't have one anymore. I mean, what does he fucking want?' Peters looked around the busy footpath, nodded to someone else. ‘Paris?'

‘It's the singing,' Troy said.

‘I told him to go to church if he wanted meaning in his life.'

‘He doesn't believe—'

‘Then he can go to fucking Bunnings like the rest of us.'

‘You told him that?'

Peters frowned. ‘The timing on this is up the shithouse. Tyler's being moved on in six months, we've been trying to get Mac to take his place.' Tyler was head of the unsolved cases team.

Troy said, ‘Mac's not an inspector.'

‘Which leads us to the other thing: Kelly is really pushing you to go for sergeant.'

‘I don't—'

Peters turned red. ‘Jesus, you think Homicide runs itself? People like Kelly and me work our arses off doing boring admin work, training you, watching your backs . . .' He stopped, pulled back. ‘Thinking is, time both of you stepped up. Put something back in.'

Troy looked at him in wonder. ‘I've never thought of it like that.'

‘Well fucking start. Now.' He calmed down. ‘Just think about it. You still reading that book?'

‘I finished it. I'm reading another one.'

‘Pearson's widow is writing a book; I read about it in the paper. What was her name?'

‘Emily. What sort of book?'

‘An autobiography.'

*

Three weeks later, they arranged for Ian Carter to come in for an ERISP.

McIver had been at Prestons, and Troy hadn't talked to him about the conversation with Peters. He didn't know where to start, anyway. One morning the sergeant was back, standing at his desk with a cardboard box. Troy went over and told him they were ready to talk to Carter. Mac said he and Conti should do the interview.

‘You don't want to be there?' Troy said.

‘I'm off to the States for three months.' McIver looked away. ‘Ruth and me, we're going to listen to some good music, while we can. Long service leave.'

Troy had had no idea. He nodded, and said what he'd been wanting to say for some time: ‘I thought you might have come to Luke's funeral.'

‘Yeah, well . . .' McIver reached into his pocket and pulled out a CD in a case and handed it to Troy. ‘I've not been myself. This will make up for it.'

The cover showed a big man, a bit like Boris Karloff's brother, holding a trombone.

‘Jack Teagarden,' Troy read. ‘You sure?'

But McIver was gone.

When Carter came in he had a lawyer with him, a thin woman with her hair tied back severely, dressed all in black. Troy read out the preliminaries and they got going. He said, ‘It's like this. I decided to visit the Crown Street Clinic to verify your statement you were there at the time Mark Pearson was killed. Roz Herron had told us—'

‘I know all this,' said Carter. He was staring at Troy with dead eyes: a lot of the energy had left him since their last interview.

‘Can I ask why we're having this conversation now?' said the lawyer. ‘I understand you visited the clinic a month ago, soon after Carl Burns died.'

‘As I was saying . . .'

He was saying it partly for Conti. She'd left Furnace soon after Burns's death. She'd stayed just long enough to take part in the hospital interviews with Leila Scott, who was in a wheelchair now, expected to recover most of the use of her legs with time. Emotionally, Troy didn't know where Leila was at. A nurse at Royal North Shore had told him she spent most of her time gazing into space. Friends had brought her stacks of books, but she hadn't opened any of them. Her answers during the interviews were terse.

After this, Conti had gone back to Manly, where she'd put in an application to transfer to the Homicide Squad. She was still at Manly. When Troy had called her yesterday and told her about the interview, he'd refused to tell her its purpose. This was improper and deeply irritating to Conti, but she was here anyway.

‘What I did,' he said to Carter and the lawyer, ‘was get all the staff except Herron together and give them a little speech. Said I was going to interview each of them about their memory of the night in question. We were also seizing the computer used for the volunteer rosters, which showed Dr Carter there from six to nine that night. We'd be examining it to see if that record had been altered since. Finally, I handed out photocopies of the relevant section of the Act, showing the penalties for hindering police.'

‘Fascinating,' said the lawyer. ‘So someone made a mistake—'

‘To cut a long story short,' Troy said, glancing at Conti, ‘we can now prove Dr Carter left the clinic at eight o'clock, not nine as the computer record indicated. Ms Herron has been charged with perverting the course of justice.'

Conti was looking at him now, but showed no emotion.

The lawyer said, ‘What's this all about? Carl Burns killed Mark Pearson because he'd become suspicious about the murders. That was in the papers.'

Carter cleared his throat, waved a lazy hand. ‘Roz lied to protect me,' he said. ‘In fact, I did finish at eight, but then I went home to sleep. I was alone. That meant I had no alibi, and I was afraid you'd fit me up, because of the trouble I caused when Dirk died. I had an anonymous call back then, from someone who said he was a detective, saying they'd get me one day. So I asked Roz to cover for me.'

Good story, Troy thought. But he'd always figured Carter for a good story.

‘You knew Ms Herron would do anything for you.'

‘Yes. I know what I did was wrong. I'm very sorry.' Carter glanced at the camera, contrite.

‘So you didn't go to Circular Quay that night?'

‘No.'

‘You didn't catch a ferry?'

‘No.'

‘When is the last time you caught a ferry?'

Carter shrugged. ‘Maybe a year ago.'

‘Ian Carter,' Troy said slowly, ‘you are under arrest for the murder of Mark Pearson. I must warn you that you are not obliged to say or do anything, as anything you do say or do will be taken down and may later be used in evidence. Do you understand that?'

It was the first time he'd charged someone with murder, and it felt good.

‘No,' said Carter. He was angry, looked as if he didn't understand anything at all. The lawyer began to complain, and it took a while to sort everything out and get them outside.

When Carter had been taken off to the charge room and the others were in the corridor, the solicitor turned to Troy.

‘This is crazy,' she said. ‘You're saying Ian's a serial killer?'

‘My guess is he genuinely didn't know why those people died.' The latest estimate for the number of Burns and Cornish's victims at St Thomas' was five. ‘But we're not charging him over them.'

‘You've got zip. Dr Carter is a hugely respected figure in the Sydney medical community. He won the University Medal, he's about to go to Johns Hopkins to pioneer this new system that could revolutionise hospital management.'

Or not, Troy thought.

Conti was looking at him as though she thought the lawyer had a point.

‘There might be something else,' he said. ‘We obtained all the tickets captured by the machines at wharf three at the Quay on the night in question. We're fingerprinting them.'

Conti half opened her mouth and then closed it. Troy realised he was looking at her lips and turned away.

‘All of them?' said the lawyer.

‘There's over five thousand.' He nodded. ‘Big job.'

Her surprise was evident immediately, painful. A woman that thin, Troy thought, doesn't have the flesh to hide much.

‘You're printing all of them?' she said again.

Often a lawyer guessed their client was guilty, even though they couldn't know it, not officially. But this one seemed genuinely thrown. Troy figured Carter had fooled her too. He was a very good liar, and this made Troy feel better about everything that had happened.

‘I might go see if my client wants to do another interview,' she said.

‘Your decision.'

He watched as she clattered away on her high heels.

Conti grinned. ‘You've got a sense of humour, haven't you? It's not obvious, but it's there.'

‘I have no idea what you mean.'

‘Where did this all come from?'

Troy began to walk with her towards the front of the station.

‘Just before he shot himself, Burns told me he didn't kill Pearson. It got me thinking.'

‘About how he could have planted the pethidine in Pearson's bathroom?'

‘That and other things. But I didn't get anywhere, so I stopped. Then we found Valdez, there's no question he was a thousand kilo- metres away when Mark Pearson died. Then I had this strange call from David Saunders.' He described the last bit of it to her and she smiled.

‘How is David?'

‘Still a CFO.' He went on with the tale: ‘Carter probably didn't know patients were being murdered, but I bet he knew they were dying too often. If that had come out, BRISTOL would have been blamed, which would have been the end of Saunders' patronage. He would have made sure Carter never got to America. And Carter wanted that really badly, as much as it's possible for anyone to want anything. So his future depended on keeping the deaths quiet. And then Pearson became interested in them.'

‘Carter said he suggested Pearson get the stats.'

‘I don't believe him.'

They'd reached the front door.

Conti said, ‘You've found his ticket, haven't you?'

‘I told his lawyer we were looking.'

‘Please! Good prints?'

He smiled. ‘Right hand, thumb and second finger.'

She thought about this and grinned.

‘But you wanted to have him on tape, denying he was there.'

Troy nodded.

‘Get him in front of a jury, it's going to be a struggle,' he said. ‘He'll admit he was on the ferry after all, say they had an argument, Pearson tripped and fell over. They'll discount Austin's statement, maybe even get it excluded.'

‘But show a trail of lies, the jury might think twice.'

Troy nodded, looked at the DVD in his hand. ‘So we made a movie.'

She was smiling now, so much it exposed her, reached into every part of himself. She was a woman who admired success, a lot.