The Bat (24 page)

“Cause of death?”

“Didn’t you say you were the one to find him? What do you think you die of if you’re hanging from the ceiling with a cable round your neck? Whooping cough?”

Inside Harry, the fuse was beginning to burn, but for the time being he held the mask.

“So he died of suffocation, not an overdose?”

“Bingo, Horgan.”

“OK. Next question is time of death.”

“Let’s say somewhere between midnight and two in the morning.”

“You can’t be more precise?”

“Would you be happier if I said five minutes past one?” The doctor’s already ruddy cheeks were even redder now. “OK, let’s say five minutes past one.”

Harry breathed in deep a couple of times. “I apologize if I’m expressing myself … if I seem rude, Doctor. My English is not always—”

“—as it should be,” Engelsohn completed.

“Exactly. You are undoubtedly a busy man, Doctor, so I won’t delay you any further. I hope, however, you can confirm that you have taken on board what McCormack said about the autopsy report not going through the usual official channels but directly to him.”

“That’s not possible. My instructions are clear, Horgan. You can pass on my regards to McCormack and tell him that from me.”

The mad little professor faced Harry with his legs akimbo and arms crossed, sure of his ground. There was a glint of battle in his eyes.

“Instructions? I don’t know what status instructions have in the Sydney Police Force but where I come from instructions are there to tell people what to do,” Harry said.

“Forget it, Horgan. Professional ethics is obviously not a subject you’re familiar with in your dealings, so I doubt we’ll be able to have a fruitful discussion about that. What do you think? Shall we draw a line under this now and say goodbye, Mr. Horgan?”

Harry didn’t move. He was looking at a man who believed he had nothing to lose. An alcoholic, middle-aged and middle-range pathologist who no longer had any prospects of promotion or getting to the top and who therefore had no fear of anyone or anything. Because what could they actually do to him? For Harry this had been one of the longest and the worst days of his life. And now he’d had enough. He grabbed the lapels of the white coat and lifted him up.

The seams nearly burst.

“What I think? I think we should give you a blood test and then talk about professional ethics, Dr. Engelsohn. I think we should talk about how many people can testify that you were rat-arsed when you carried out the autopsy on Inger Holter. Then I think we should talk about someone
who can give you the boot, not just from this job but any job that requires medical qualifications. What do you think, Dr. Engelsohn? What do you think about my English now?”

Dr. Engelsohn thought Harry’s English was just perfect, and upon mature reflection took the view that just this once the report could perhaps go through non-official channels.

McCormack was sitting with his back to Harry again and looking out of the window. The sun was going down, but still you could catch a glimpse of the temptingly blue sea between the skyscrapers and the dark green Royal Botanic Gardens. Harry’s mouth was dry and he had a headache coming on. He had delivered a reasoned and almost unbroken monologue for over three-quarters of an hour. About Otto Rechtnagel, Andrew Kensington, heroin, the Cricket, the lighting engineer, Engelsohn; in brief, everything that had happened.

McCormack sat with his fingertips pressed together. He hadn’t said anything for a long while.

“Did you know that way out there, in New Zealand, live the most stupid people in the world? They live alone on an island, with no neighbors to bother them, just a load of water. Yet that nation has participated in just about all the major wars there have been in the twentieth century. No other country, not even Russia during the Second World War, has lost so many young men proportionate to the population. The surplus of women is legendary. And why all this fighting? To help. To stand up for others. These simpletons didn’t even fight on their own battlefields, no sir,
they boarded boats and planes to travel as far as possible to die. They helped the Allies against the Germans and the Italians, the South Koreans against the North Koreans and the Americans against the Japanese and the North Vietnamese. My father was one of those simpletons.”

He turned from the window and faced Harry.

“My father told me a story about an artillery gunner on his boat during the Battle of Okinawa against the Japanese in 1945. The Japanese had mobilized kamikaze pilots, and they attacked in formation using tactics they called ‘falling like walnut-tree leaves over water.’ And that was exactly what they did. First came one plane, and if it was shot down, two others appeared behind it, then four and so on in an apparently endless pyramid of diving planes. Everyone on board my father’s boat was scared out of their wits. It was total insanity, pilots willing to die to make sure their bombs landed where they were intended. The only way they could be stopped was by mounting the densest possible flak, a wall of antiaircraft missiles. A tiny hole in the wall and the Japanese were on top of them. It was calculated that if a plane wasn’t shot down within twenty seconds after it had appeared within shooting range it was too late. In all probability it would succeed in crashing into the ship. The gunners knew they
had
to hit every time, and sometimes the aerial assaults could last all day. My father described the regular pom-pom-pom of the cannons and the increasingly high-pitched wails of the planes as they dived. He said he’d heard them every night since.

“The last day of the battle he was standing on the bridge when they saw a plane emerging from the barrage and heading straight for their ship. The artillery hammered away as the plane closed in, looming larger from second to second. At the end they could clearly see the cockpit and the outline of the pilot inside. The shells from the plane began to strafe the deck. Then the antiaircraft shells hit home and the
guns raked the wings and fuselage. The tail broke off, and gradually, in slow motion, the plane disintegrated into its basic parts and in the end all that was left was a small chunk attached to the propeller, which struck the deck with a trail of fire and black smoke. The other gunners were already swinging into action against new targets when a bloke in the turret directly below the bridge, a young corporal my father knew because they both came from Wellington, clambered out, waved to Dad with a smile and said: ‘It’s hot today.’ Then he jumped overboard and was gone.”

Perhaps it was the light, but Harry suddenly had the impression McCormack looked old.

“It’s hot today,” McCormack repeated.

“Human nature is a vast, dark forest, sir.”

McCormack nodded. “So I’ve heard, Holy, and it may be true. I saw you had time to get to know each other, you and Kensington. I’ve also heard that Andrew Kensington’s doings on this case ought to be investigated. What’s your opinion, Holy?”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

McCormack got up and started pacing in front of the window, a procedure Harry was now familiar with.

“I’ve been a policeman all my life, Holy, but still I look at my colleagues around me and wonder what it is that makes them do it, fight other people’s wars. What drives them? Who wants to go through so much suffering for others to have what they perceive as justice? They’re the stupid ones, Holy. We are. We’re blessed with a stupidity so great that we believe we can achieve something.

“We get shot to pieces, we’re obliterated and one day we jump into the sea, but in the meantime, in our endless stupidity, we believe someone needs us. And if one day you should still see through the illusion, it’s already too late because we’ve
become
police officers, we’re in the trenches and there’s no way back. We can just wonder what the hell
happened, when it was exactly that we made the wrong decision. We’re doomed to be do-gooders for the rest of our lives and doomed to fail. But, happily, truth is a relative business. And it’s flexible. We bend and twist it until it has space in our lives. Some of it, anyway. Now and then catching a villain is enough to gain some peace of mind. But everyone knows it’s not healthy to deal with the extinction of vermin for any length of time. You get to taste your own poison.

“So, what is the point, Holy? The man’s been in the flak turret all his life, and now he’s dead. What more is there to say? Truth is relative. It’s not so easy to understand what extreme stress can do to a person, for those who haven’t experienced it themselves. We have forensic psychiatrists who try to draw a line between those who are sick and those who are criminal, and they bend and twist the truth to make it fit into their world of theoretical models. We have a legal system which, at its best, we hope can remove the occasional destructive individual from the streets, and journalists who would like to be seen as idealists because they make their names by exposing others in the belief that they’re establishing some kind of justice. But the
truth
?

“The truth is that no one lives off the truth and that’s why no one cares about the truth. The truth we make for ourselves is just the sum of what is in someone’s interest, balanced by the power they hold.”

His eyes held Harry’s.

“So who cares about the truth with regard to Andrew Kensington? Who would benefit if we sculpted an ugly, distorted truth with sharp, dangerous bits sticking out that doesn’t fit anywhere? Not the Chief of Police. Not the politicians on the town council. Not those fighting for the Aboriginal cause. Not the police officers’ trade union. Not our embassies. No one. Or am I wrong?”

Harry felt like answering that Inger Holter’s parents
would, but refrained. McCormack stopped by the portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth II.

“I’d be obliged if what you’ve told me remains between us two, Holy. I’m sure you appreciate that things are best left like this.”

Harry picked a long, red hair off his trouser leg.

“I’ve discussed this with the mayor,” McCormack said. “So that it won’t seem conspicuous, the Inger Holter case will be prioritized for a little while longer. If we can’t dig up any more, soon enough people will be happy to live with the notion that it was the clown who killed the Norwegian girl. Who killed the clown may be more problematical, but there’s a lot to suggest a crime of passion, jealousy, maybe a rejected secret lover, who knows? In such cases people can accept that the perpetrator gets away. Nothing is ever confirmed, of course, but the circumstantial evidence is clear, and after a few years the whole matter is forgotten. A serial killer on the loose was just one theory the police were toying with at some point but later dropped.”

Harry made to leave. McCormack coughed.

“I’m writing your report, Holy. I’ll send it to your Chief of Police in Oslo after you’ve gone. You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?”

Harry gave a brief nod and was gone.

The gentle evening breeze did not relieve his headache. And his personal gloom did not make the image any more pleasant. Harry wandered aimlessly through the streets. A small animal crossed the path through Hyde Park. At first he thought it was a large rat, but as he passed by he saw a furry little rascal peering up at him with shiny reflections from the park lamps in its eyes. Harry had never seen an animal like it, but assumed it would have to be a possum. The animal didn’t appear to be frightened of him, quite
the contrary, it sniffed the air inquisitively and made some bizarre wailing sounds.

Harry crouched down. “Are you wondering what you’re actually doing in this big city too?” he said.

The animal cocked its head by way of an answer.

“What do you think? Shall we go home tomorrow or not? You to your forest, and me to mine?”

The possum ran off, it didn’t want to be persuaded to go anywhere. It had its home here in the park, among the cars, the people and the litter bins.

In Woolloomooloo he walked past a bar. The embassy had rung. He had said he would ring back. What was Birgitta thinking? She didn’t say much. And he hadn’t asked much. She’d said nothing about her birthday, perhaps because she’d known he would come up with some idiotic idea. Go over the top. Give her a much too expensive present or say something superfluous for the sole reason that it was the last evening and deep down he felt bad because he was going. “What’s the point?” she might have thought.

Like Kristin when she came back from England.

They had met on the terrace outside Frogner Kafé and Kristin had told him she would be home for two months. She was tanned and gentle and smiled her old smile over a glass of beer, and he had known exactly what he was going to say and do. It was like playing an old song on the piano you thought you’d forgotten—his head was empty, but his fingers knew their way. The two of them had gotten drunk, but that was before getting drunk was the be-all and end-all, so Harry could remember the rest as well. They had caught the tram to town, and Kristin had smiled her way past the queue at the Sardines club for both of them. In the night, sweaty from dancing, they had taken a taxi back up to Frogner, climbed over the fence into the lido, and on the top diving board, ten meters above the deserted park, they had shared a bottle of wine Kristin had brought in
her bag, looking out over Oslo and telling each other what they wanted to be, which was always different from what they had said the previous time. Then they had held hands, run and jumped off the edge. As they fell he’d heard her shrill scream in his ears like a wonderful, out-of-control fire alarm. He had been lying on the edge of the pool laughing when she climbed up out of the water and came toward him with her dress clinging to her body.

The next morning they had woken up wrapped around each other in his bed, sweaty, hungover and aroused, and he had opened the balcony door and returned to the bed with a swaying post-booze erection, which she had welcomed with glee. He had fucked her stupid, clever and with passion, and the sounds of children playing in the backyard had been drowned when the fire alarm went off again.

It was only afterward that she’d posed the enigmatic question.