The Simple Death (18 page)

The birds in front of him suddenly changed their motion and dropped down on the grey building, descending to one point as though sucked from the air by a giant vacuum cleaner. The sky was clear again but Troy could still see the birds in his mind's eye, realised the photograph on Pearson's screensaver showed a much closer view. The birds there looked as though they were only ten or twenty metres away. He recalled that the top of a spire had appeared at the foot of the screen, and looked around for a church. It was off to the right, in the distance in Darling Point. He tried to work out where the photo would have been taken.

Shaking McIver awake, he told him he was going for a walk. Before Mac could complain, he was out of the car and heading downhill. He would have found it hard to explain what he was doing, but any reason for getting out of the car was good enough. His whole body was sticky and he reached up under his coat at the back, pulling the shirt away from his skin.

In five minutes he reached the commercial area, saw the grey building was more likely a renovated warehouse than a factory. He couldn't see the church anymore so he stopped and looked around, figured the photo might have been taken from on top of the building. There was a row of homeware shops at street level, and according to the directory in the lobby the upper storeys contained a mix of offices and design studios. He climbed the wide wooden stairs until he reached the top floor and wandered about, looking for a way onto the roof. It was pleasant up here, light and quiet and not too hot. He found a woman making hats in a small workshop; she directed him to a plain wooden door.

‘Derek Burton lives there,' she said. ‘The caretaker.'

The roof was largely covered with what looked like tarpaper shot through with some metallic ingredient, so that it managed to be black and bright at the same time. Troy squinted and saw several structures. There was a big shed for the lift machinery, and a large caravan standing on concrete blocks, with a substantial pigeon loft next to it. Troy blinked. The caravan and the loft were covered by two shade cloths, held up by an elaborate arrangement of posts and ropes attached to yet more concrete blocks. A man was standing outside the caravan door, arms folded.

‘Mr Burton?'

Troy produced his badge. Burton was mid-sixties, a balding, stout guy in old jeans and a worn Specials T-shirt. His expression was blank. Troy replaced his wallet and took a photograph of Pearson from a coat pocket. Burton found a pair of reading glasses and peered at the picture.

‘That's Mark,' he said, his accent English, west country.

Troy swallowed. ‘When did you last see him?'

‘Thursday.'

Troy looked around the roof. He still couldn't quite believe a caravan was sitting up here. ‘What time?'

‘Six, six thirty, same time he usually comes. Is something wrong?'

Burton mustn't read the
Sun Herald
. Or watch television.

‘Could you tell me how often he comes here?'

‘Once or twice a week. He likes to see the birds fly. We have a chat.'

He pointed to some plastic chairs near the pigeon loft, under the shade cloth. They were on green matting.

‘You're the caretaker?'

‘Cleaner, mainly. What's this all about?'

‘I'm afraid Mark's dead.'

The man looked surprised, then sad. Took off his glasses and nodded several times, as though acknowledging he had heard the words but for the moment was unable to speak.

At last, ‘What happened?'

As Troy told him about the ferry, Burton blinked and looked at the pigeons, standing on ledges on the back wall of the loft. There was a soft murmuring coming from the birds, competing with the sound of traffic from the street below, which was louder than Troy would have expected.

‘Well,' Burton said, ‘I'm very sorry about that. Very sorry indeed. I would have had him down as the careful kind.'

‘You knew him well?'

‘He approached me one day about the pigeons, found his way up here. He wanted to take a photograph. After that, he'd drop by a few times a week. Just for a chat.'

The strange world of Mark Pearson, Troy thought.

‘Do the initials LS mean anything to you?'

‘No.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘Football, mainly.'

‘Did he ever stay the night?'

Burton looked surprised at the suggestion and shook his head. ‘Not up to his standard of accommodation, I'd reckon.'

Troy looked at the caravan, determined not to ask.

Burton smiled faintly. ‘They renovated the place in the nineties and hired a whopping great crane to get some old machinery out. Someone put the van up here as a joke, and they forgot to take it down. It's quite comfortable.'

‘Did Mark ever seem like he was under the influence of any sort of drug?'

Burton seemed to find the question distasteful. ‘If you knew him you wouldn't ask that.'

I'm trying to know him, Troy thought.

He asked some more questions but learned nothing of interest. Burton had an alibi for the period after Mark had left on Friday night. Finally Troy thanked him for his help and walked towards the top of the stairs.

‘Another officer will be along to take a written statement,' he said. ‘You always let the birds out about now?'

‘Normally dawn and dusk, but today I slept in. I was up half the night, certain problems down below.'

‘In the building?'

‘No.' Burton glanced at his stomach. ‘Closer to home.' As they reached the door leading to the stairs, he said, casual-like, ‘It was usually with Charlie.'

Troy stopped.

‘Charlie?'

Burton nodded, as though the whole world knew Charlie. ‘Do you think he'll still come?'

‘Charles Pearson came here?'

‘Lovely fellow but pretty slow. Sad, all that.'

He recalled Mark's brother lived in a group home for people with intellectual disabilities. They'd checked his alibi: he'd been there at the time Mark died. ‘Sad that Charles is slow?'

‘Not that.' Burton shook his head. ‘Sad that Mark's wife wouldn't have him in the house, that they had to sneak around to see each other.'

Troy felt the familiar surge. Sometimes, Mac had once said, this job is as good as sex.

‘Charlie lives in Artarmon on the disability pension,' Burton went on, ‘he gets bored. So twice a week he catches the train over, he can do that okay, walks down from the Cross and meets Mark here, after work. It's a big outing for him. We chat for an hour or two and they go off, Charlie back to his place and Mark to the ferry.'

‘No one else knows about this?'

Burton shrugged. ‘It was their secret. Charlie doesn't like Mark's wife. She never talks to him, he reckons, gets angry when he makes a mess.' He looked over at the chairs. ‘He can be a messy bugger.'

‘Is he very disabled?'

‘I wouldn't say so.'

‘Their parents would have known they came here?'

‘I don't see why. Like I say, it was their secret. They were brothers.'

Troy thought about Emily; about Mark; about their marriage. He shook his head. ‘So Mark and Charles were here together last Thursday evening?'

‘Yeah. Is that when Mark died?'

‘When did they leave?'

‘Around eight. It was a pleasant evening. Charles and me had two light beers, Mark had a can of Coke. They left together, arranged to meet here next Tuesday.' He scratched the top of his head. ‘Never turned up.'

His hand on the door handle, Troy said, ‘Apart from coming here, did Mark and Charles do anything else together?'

‘Football games sometimes. We went to see Milan play last month, over at Moore Park.'

Troy pulled out his notebook and flicked back to the date when Mark was supposed to have been at Liverpool overnight.

‘That would be the twenty-second of January?' he said.

Burton nodded. ‘It was a rubbish game, none of their best players came out. Charlie was upset by that, he can be pretty sharp at times. Reckon I can go to the funeral?'

‘I'll mention it to the parents.'

Burton smiled sadly. ‘It was still a great night for him, he stayed at a hotel up the road.'

‘With Mark?'

‘Yeah, they'd done it before.'

‘Why would Mark do that?'

‘It was like a treat, you know. Charlie's a big kid really. And I guess Mark didn't want to tell his missus where he'd been.' Burton smiled and looked at his birds. ‘I never married.'

*

Back at the car, Troy found Conti sitting in the front seat and holding her bottle of water. He slipped in beside her and asked where Mac was.

‘He called half an hour ago,' she said. ‘He was going for a walk to find a shop, he felt dehydrated.' Troy's heart sank. ‘This weather, you've got to watch the fluids.'

He told her what he'd just learned and she became excited, he liked the way she did that. Certainly he had more tolerance for enthusiasm than Mac did. When he'd finished she swigged some water, said bright-eyed, ‘So now we know what LS stands for.'

‘Enlighten me.'

‘Lennie Small. Character in
Of Mice and Men
. It's a novel, we did it at school. He's big and slow, has a mate, a normal guy, who looks after him.'

Charles and Mark.

‘LS,' said Troy, remembering the film. ‘That ended badly too.'

‘But not in the same way.'

Troy smiled.

‘I'll tell you something else for free: there was a copy of the novel in Mark's desk at the hospital. I saw it on the exhibit list.'

He got out of the car, the thrill of his discovery starting to evaporate as he thought it through. The six o'clock appointments had provided a line of investigation that might have helped explain Mark Pearson's death. Now that was gone, like just about every other line. All they had left were Valdez or Carter, neither a strong suspect. There was Saunders, but it couldn't be Saunders. He looked around the empty street, and began to walk.

He found McIver in a pub up the hill and around a corner. It was a small place, dark and cool, and there were almost no other drinkers.

‘I'd offer you a beverage,' Mac said when Troy had taken a seat on a stool next to him, ‘but one of us has to stay alert.' He pointed at the empty shot glass standing next to his schooner. ‘Always wanted to try the American way of drinking. There's a lot to be said for it.'

Mac had never been sentimental before, in Troy's experience. He sat down and told him about Charles Pearson. It was one of those breakthroughs you lived for, worthy of celebration. But the sergeant seemed hardly to be paying attention. When Troy had finished, he clapped him on the shoulder, said, ‘So young, and so full of enthusiasm.'

Troy took a deep breath. ‘Do you want to talk about this? How you're feeling?'

‘You like your job still, what are you now, fourteen years in?'

‘I like it.'

‘What if you woke up one morning and found you didn't like it anymore—how would you feel?'

Troy shrugged.

‘Why did you become a cop?'

In their time together, it was not something they'd discussed.

‘I used to think it was because I needed a family,' Troy said. ‘Then I used to think it was because of the violence, that lift you get when you see it's happened to someone else and not to you.'

‘That's not kind.'

‘Anna says it's because of the hit-and-run that killed my parents, I'm permanently trying to solve that failure to stop.'

‘What do you say?'

‘I don't care anymore.' It was like marriage; sometimes the reasons you began something were not the reasons you went on with it. ‘So,' he said, ‘what about you?'

McIver swallowed some beer, looked at the glass fondly. ‘The singing, we talked about it last time, the singing is the problem. I like it so much the job's become empty. Like the meaning's shifted from one part of my life to another.'

Troy shook his head. There was a stab of panic but it faded.

‘At least it's still there,' he said.

‘Well, I can't just fucking walk away from the job and become an itinerant blues man. We're not that good, you know. And I still owe two hundred grand on the house. Things have become more confused than I've been used to.'

Troy wondered if you lost flexibility as you grew older, how much this differed from one person to another. He would have thought Mac had more resilience, but the look in the man's eyes now, he was almost scared. It made him look like a different person.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

This seemed to anger McIver, who began to laugh, an unpleasant rasping noise. ‘That's your idea of sympathy?' he said. ‘For a smart kid, you're pretty stupid.'

‘So now it's me?'

Mac said nothing.

Troy decided not to take it personally; he was collateral damage. Still, the idea lacked dignity. He slid off the stool, said, ‘I'll be getting back.'

Mac grabbed his shoulder.

‘Do you think I drink too much?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Ruth thinks so.'

‘She's an observant woman.'

McIver smiled, swallowed the remaining beer in his glass, and got up. He stood tall, hardly wavered. ‘That's my last one.' Thank God, Troy thought. ‘I mean my last one ever. This is an historic moment.'

‘I'm pleased for you,' Troy said uncertainly.

‘You don't believe me, do you?'

‘One day at a time.' He took a few steps.

Mac looked around the bar fondly, waved to the television high on one wall.

‘Ruth's with child, gave me an ultimatum. I stop drinking or she walks out.'

Troy stopped, came back and felt a sense of things falling into place; not everything, but a lot.

‘That's great!' He clapped McIver on the shoulder.