The Tower (9 page)

‘How are you?' Anna was standing in the doorway, holding a copy of the
Herald
. She was wearing a white cotton jumper over green shorts, setting off her brown skin. When she went out she usually covered herself up: he remembered one of the joys of the first year of their marriage had been the sight of her skin at home, her legs and arms. It still gave him pleasure, although these days it made her nervous to see him looking at her like that.

He said he was fine, a bit shaken but better than he might have been.

‘I'm so glad Vella has given you some time off.'

‘Actually, it was Kelly. There's some procedure for this situation.'

When you've shot someone, he meant, but he didn't say it. He'd never been involved in a police shooting before, and he had little idea of what happened next. But Kelly would tell him today.

‘Maybe we can go for a walk on the beach this morning,' she said. ‘And the Dawsons tonight? I can call Aleisha.'

Aleisha was their babysitter, a pretty university student from around the corner. It was one of Anna's jokes that Troy secretly lusted after her. One of her less successful jokes, in his view.

‘Is there any news about Mac?' he said. He wondered how he could have forgotten about the sergeant. Maybe he was more shaken than he knew.

‘He's fine. He had concussion from falling over and hitting his head, but he'll live. They're operating on his arm this morning.'

He nodded, relieved. Anna was a nurse: if she said Mac was okay, he could believe her.

‘It's in the paper?' he said.

‘I heard it on the radio. It's a big story.'

Now she was crying, and he stood up and hugged her awkwardly, the newspaper caught between their bodies. He started to tell her about last night, but before he'd finished she'd grown tense. When the story was over, she detached herself from him.

‘You could have been killed.'

As though it was his fault. But no, that was unfair. He wasn't thinking clearly.

‘Once in twelve years,' he said. ‘It won't happen again.'

‘That's a promise?'

‘I'll do my best.'

She smiled and looked away, thrust the crumpled newspaper at him.

‘I couldn't believe it. Jon's on the front page. Your picture's inside.'

He took the newspaper and sat down. It was on the bottom half of the page, under the headline
DOUBLE SHOOTING AT THE TOWER
. He ran his eye over the story, then opened the paper and flicked to his photo on page four.

‘You're famous,' Anna said, standing behind the chair and putting an arm around him, then taking it away again quickly. As though afraid of where all this emotion might lead them. He looked up at her and she smiled, then went back to the kitchen.

The pictures must have been obtained from the local newspaper in Dubbo, where he and McIver had worked on an investigation at an abattoir. It was the only time Troy had ever been photographed by the press, as far as he knew. He'd been coming out of the local police station and looked startled, his mouth half-open. The
Herald
story was okay, basically his statement to Internal Affairs—although this was not mentioned—fl eshed out with a few meaningless comments from senior officers. The most senior one quoted, Assistant Commissioner Jane Blayney, said the detectives had acted bravely. Apparently she'd turned up at The Tower last night, although he hadn't seen her there.

‘This is good,' he called out.

‘Bravely' wasn't everything, but it was a start.

She came back in, wiping her hands with a small towel. ‘You don't mind being a celebrity then?'

There was a smell in the room, and she crouched over Matt, checking his nappy. Troy stared at her bottom, the full curves as the shorts strained against her body. She was an attractive woman, slightly above average height, well-covered without being voluptuous. What a waste.

‘It's not that,' he said, turning away. ‘There's some politics. Jon shouldn't have been up there. I mean, he
really
shouldn't have. So a story like this, it helps.'

‘There's no problem, is there?'

Anna was good at picking up situations, but the details of his job did not interest her. Now she was concentrating on Matt, not looking up at him but waiting for his answer.

‘No problem at all.'

‘You wonder where these journalists learn things,' she said. ‘Maybe we could go up to Brisbane while you're on leave?'

Her parents lived there, and they hadn't seen them in a while.

‘Perhaps,' he said. ‘Kelly has to let me know the procedure.'

Anna stood up, murmuring to Matt, and took him out of the room without saying anything more.

The phone rang. It was his sister, Georgina, sounding worried, and excited too. He forced himself to repeat the night's events, give her some detail. Georgie was the only other family he had.

‘The poor woman,' she said. ‘Do you know who she was?'

It took him a moment to realise who she was talking about. With everything that had happened afterwards, he hadn't given any further thought to the woman who'd fallen onto the police car. He told his sister that, as far as he knew, there was no information at all.

She said, ‘They say this Sergeant McIver shouldn't have been there, where you found him.'

‘Who does?'

Georgie read aloud from the
Telegraph
. When she reached the end of the article, he decided it wasn't too bad. The journalist had somehow picked up the tension between Homicide and City Central, but it was in the story only obliquely.

‘I'd better go,' he said, suddenly feeling restless.

‘Call me,' she said quickly. ‘You've got to talk to people at a time like this.'

‘Sure.'

‘I love you, Nick.'

His mobile was on the table and he turned it on, feeling a mild jolt of panic when he saw there were twenty-eight messages. Friends and colleagues, people from the church and the surf lifesaving club—it was good to be cared about, but right now he didn't want to talk to them.

The thing began to ring even as he looked at it, and he turned it off quickly.

Using the landline he rang Vella, but the inspector had his voicemail on. He called the office of the Homicide Squad at Parramatta, curious about the state of the investigation. Probably he should just let them get on with it, but he needed to do something, to have something to think about. They put him on to Ruth Moore, one of the squad's analysts, who'd been assigned to the investigation. She asked how he was and he told her, realising he would be having the same conversation with everyone he spoke to today. With Ruth it wasn't hard. She was a friendly young woman with long brown hair, tall and strong-featured. They got on well and he respected her work. In Dubbo they'd had a few good conversations, so good he'd taken to avoiding her towards the end of the investigation, when they were off-duty.

She told him the hospital said the bullet had glanced off the bone and played havoc with Mac's deltoid muscle, but with time he'd probably get most of the use of the arm back. Troy hoped so: you had to wonder how Mac would be if he couldn't play the guitar. The hospital also confirmed he'd received a minor head wound, probably from striking his skull when falling after he'd been shot. This had produced several blackouts.

He asked who'd be replacing McIver. Vella was still trying to find someone, Ruth said.

‘You mean there's a death at The Tower and we still don't have an investigation?' he said slowly, not quite believing it.

‘This staff freeze—'

‘Rogers is crazy about the media. You'd think he'd make an exception in this case.'

‘Maybe he will. Kelly's supposed to be seeing him this morning. Vella's been running it so far, but he has to go to Bourke.'

Troy didn't have much respect for Vella, who in his view was carried by McIver and another sergeant in the team. But he wasn't going to mention this to Ruth.

He said, ‘Have we found the guy with the gun?'

‘No. They searched the car parks again, then they went through the whole building. Nothing.'

They hadn't found Bazzi either, or another guard who had disappeared, Andrew Asaad. Their houses were under observation and there were plans to get warrants and conduct detailed searches. Time was moving on, Troy thought: twelve hours in and they had almost nothing. But it was not his business.

‘Any prints on the landing platform on thirty-three?'

‘Too wet.'

‘Do we know who she was?'

‘No.'

No one was happy when they didn't have an identity. It was not just that it made the investigation much harder, it was deeper than that. As though something fundamental was missing. Ruth told him they hadn't found the woman's bag either. He asked if there were any prints on the gun.

‘Nawaz Khan, one of the illegals we found.' Troy stood up and ran a hand through his hair, wondering if Khan had been the man up top and he'd failed to recognise him. Ruth added, ‘But there's no GSR. Not on him or any of them.'

‘What about the man I shot?'

‘Not on him either.'

Troy sat down heavily. It didn't make sense. In the circumstances of last night, it wouldn't have been possible for the man who'd shot McIver to wash off the gunshot residue before he was caught. Not if he was one of the men they had in custody. But it didn't seem possible that he'd escaped.

He said, ‘What's Khan's story?'

‘Nothing. He won't speak. The others are, but there's nothing useful from any of them.'

‘He won't speak?'

‘We don't know why, but he's not saying a word.'

Troy was silent for a moment, thinking about what she'd told him, picturing all the people he'd encountered last night and where they'd been in The Tower at different times. But it wasn't his business anymore, and at last he said, ‘I'd better go.'

‘You take care.'

She said it with feeling and he hung up and considered her, what she might be like if he got to know her better. But there was no way he would have an affair with someone at work; the complications would be unbearable. He'd once had a girlfriend at one of his early stations, a fellow constable, and after they broke up he'd had to apply for a transfer. He liked things to be uncomplicated. It was an ideal that was rarely achieved, he knew that. But it was his ideal.

Anyway, maybe Ruth wouldn't be so pleasant when you got to know her—people did change as you got closer to them. When he'd first met Anna, she'd been different. She'd been an Anglican, which had seemed strange to him because she was Indian. But she'd explained there were lots of Anglicans in India.

‘There's lots of everything in India,' she'd said.

She'd been interesting to talk to. Something about her being Indian had grabbed his attention and held it, forcing him to concentrate on her as an individual, in a way he'd never been all that good at doing with previous girlfriends. There'd been lots, but he'd never lived with anyone for more than a few months; he didn't seem to have a talent for intimacy. Somehow, Anna had broken through to him and for a few years there it had been good. And then Matthew was born and everything had changed.

Don Vella called back. After they'd talked for a while he said, ‘Kelly wants to know if you can come in and talk to some people. She's at City Central. Have another look at this bloke Khan.'

This was a surprise. Kelly must be really desperate for people. Vella didn't sound happy; he wouldn't approve of Troy returning to duty so soon. But Troy knew he wouldn't have said anything to Kelly, either.

‘Has she talked to the commissioner yet?'

‘I don't know. Can you do it? No need if you're not up to it, everyone will understand.'

‘I'll be there,' Troy said.

He couldn't believe his luck. The prospect of an enforced holiday had been hanging over him like a jail sentence.

After putting on a suit he went to the kitchen, which looked out onto the backyard. The weather had turned warmer, and Anna was playing with Matt on a blanket she'd laid out beneath the mulberry tree. She was sitting with her legs folded effortlessly, lifting him up onto his rubbery legs, the two of them laughing. Troy grabbed an apple and turned away, suddenly feeling angry, leaving the kitchen before she looked up and saw him. If she did, she might come inside and ask what was wrong. He didn't really know, but guessed it was an after-effect of the night before. His emotions seemed to have been set adrift and his anger over the state of his marriage was surging through him with a new vigour.

‘You act like there's a big problem, but there's no problem,' she'd said the last time they'd discussed it. She had postnatal depression and it would get better. She'd said the same thing before, in twenty different ways, said it was just a matter of time. But she'd been saying that for eighteen months, and refused to see anyone about it. He'd even made an appointment with a marriage counsellor at ChristLife, but she wouldn't go. That hurt him, that she couldn't see how important it was to him—to them.

The news came on the radio as he drove into the city and he heard a report of the previous night's events, based solidly on the story in the
Herald
. There was nothing about McIver being anywhere he shouldn't have been; the story expressed concern and even admiration for the police. He wondered if Rogers had made his decision yet. It might depend on what he thought of McIver. Troy had once heard that the two men had some sort of history. If Rogers wanted to get rid of Mac, here was an opportunity. Troy would be collateral damage. The commissioner had had a lot to say publicly about the standard of behaviour of police officers.

He switched off the radio and turned into Oxford Street, looking at the city's skyline ahead. The Tower reared up almost straight in front of him. The design was unpopular with architects because of the lack of originality. Essentially it was just a larger version of the Empire State Building, which apparently made both its appearance and its structure out of date. But the public seemed to approve of the design, whatever they might think of other aspects of the project. Maybe ordinary people liked having a bigger version of a famous building in their midst.