The Tower (2 page)

For some reason this seemed to annoy McIver. ‘Ron's a bit of a thinker, is he?' He looked at Troy: ‘Ron Siegert.'

‘Point is,' said Little, ‘makes it less likely she killed herself, if she was here doing something with other people. People like privacy to kill themselves. Maybe here on business.' He stabbed in the direction of the building with his cigarette. ‘Maybe a prozzie, brought in for the guys working here tonight.'

Little sounded excited. Troy wondered how he'd made it to sergeant. But there were so many ways.

‘And if she
was
killed,' Little continued, ‘we were here within minutes. Could have blocked off the escape route of whoever done it. Only two ways out.' He pointed to the uniforms standing outside the pedestrian entrance to the building, and the one for vehicles just up the road. ‘The killer might still be around.'

Troy looked at the lower storeys of The Tower. Like all construction sites in the city, it was surrounded by a high temporary wall. He pulled out a piece of gum and slowly unwrapped it.

‘How many storeys is it?' he asked Little.

‘One-twenty. But it's stepped in away from the road at forty on this side, so she must have come off there or lower.' The three men stared up into the dark. ‘The glass goes up about twenty levels. So far.'

Troy grunted, thinking about the manpower they'd need to search a building this size.

Little's radio crackled and he turned away and had a brief conversation.

‘Harmer says she'll be out soon,' he said, turning back. ‘She's just sent up two search groups.'

McIver said, ‘So where's the great man?'

‘The super?'

‘Himself.'

‘Back at the station. That New Zealand game at the Football Stadium was called off because of the weather. He managed to get the uniforms before they were sent home.'

McIver walked away from them, back to the car, where he had a word with the crime scene officers. Troy was about to follow when Little said, ‘Siegert calls The Tower a red ball, something he picked up in the States. Anything happens here is a media event, means it could get political. For him.'

‘I remember there were some base jumpers,' Troy said, looking at Little's cigarette. He'd never smoked himself, but sometimes wished he had, to help fill in the time. A cop spent a lot of his life waiting around. Gum was all right but it wasn't the same.

Little nodded. ‘Six guys got up to level forty and jumped off. Landed in Hyde Park. They got someone to film them and sold the footage around the world. That's when they brought in Siegert. The old super was put out to pasture.'

‘Hardly his fault,' Troy said.

Security for The Tower was in the hands of a private company. He had seen a few of the guards wandering around in their dark grey uniforms.

‘These days, never know whose fault anything is,' Little said, vaguely but with feeling.

McIver was coming back from the car, looking around. Looking bored.

‘Keep an eye on these turnips,' he said to Troy, indicating the crime scene officers with a tilt of his chin.

‘Where are you going?'

‘See Harmer,' McIver said, and walked off in the direction of the entrance to the building site. After pausing to allow several uniformed officers to precede him, he disappeared inside.

Troy saw a GMO he recognised further up Norfolk Street, at the barrier. The medical officer gave his name to the uniform with the clipboard and approached the detectives. They spoke for a while and then Little went behind the screens with him. Troy stood by himself, feeling the cold move up through his shoes. He thought about calling Anna but she might still be putting Matt to bed. Their son had asthma, which seemed to mean a lot of work, what with the medication and cleaning the house. Much of this fell on Anna's shoulders, and he felt a bit guilty because he was often away on jobs. She didn't complain, but once the boy was asleep at night, she liked to have half an hour or so to herself. It was her way of coping. He looked at his watch and decided to give it more time.

Two

T
his list of countries,' she said, ‘what's it for?'

Sean Randall paused naked in the doorway, his half-erection not sure which way to go. Kristin was sitting on the side of the bed, bent over his wallet. God, she was white. Randall was Irish and he'd seen a lot of pale women, but not white like this, about as white as a person could be.

‘You shouldn't go through my stuff,' he said.

There'd been a girl once, Moira he thought her name was, who'd help herself to a line if he left the room for even a minute. Nose on her like a vacuum cleaner, good healthy appetite. But he couldn't recall anyone going through his wallet before.

‘I know,' she said, looking at him bold-eyed. Taking things between them to a new level. ‘But I like to know about the men I spend time with.' Looking around the bedroom: ‘It's not like you leave many clues.'

It was only a rented place. Nice big colour photo of the Taipei 101 tower on the cream wall. Stacks of
Wired
and
Fast Company
on the beige carpet. Big television in the corner, connected to the small digital video camera on its slender tripod. All their clothes scattered around, phones and shit on the bedside table.

‘What's that rock?' she said, pointing to a chunk the size of a baby's head lying on the floor.

Randall smiled. They all asked that. ‘Jack Taylor, my boss, went to Italy to select the marble for The Tower's lobby. You go to this huge quarry and look at all these huge lumps of the stuff, make your choice. When it turned up here six months later it was different—they'd substituted some flawed stuff for what Jack had picked. So he asked me to go over and sort it out.'

It was a good story. He'd flown over, selected some good stuff, huge rocks as high as he was, and signed his name on them with a big marker pen, then taken photographs of each rock. Attention to detail. Finally, just as he was leaving, he'd given the quarry sales manager an envelope. First-class return tickets for two to the Gold Coast, a week's accommodation at the Palazzo Versace.

‘We got the right marble,' he said, and saw she was impressed, despite herself. This was good.

He felt his erection stiffening and came into the room and sat down, running his hand down her back as the give of the mattress pushed their thighs together.

‘Come here,' he said.

Kristin turned and kissed him. Her lips were thin and her breasts small. In many ways she was not especially feminine, although her arse was big enough. But she was very determined, about everything, and he was enjoying that. His last girlfriend, if you could call her that, had tended to get emotional about things. Randall liked variety.

‘So why are thirty-eight of the countries marked?'

He took her hand and put it on his thigh, feeling the small piece of paper drop between his legs. ‘They're the ones I've been to. I want to visit every country on earth one day.'

She frowned in concentration and he waited patiently, working on her spine with his nails.

Eventually she shivered and said, ‘I've been to thirty-two. How old are you?'

‘Thirty-four.'

‘Well, I'm only twenty-eight.'

They kissed for a while but then she stopped. ‘You never told me you'd been to Iceland. Who do you know there?'

She was from Iceland, worked for the United Nations or some related NGO—she'd told him the first time they'd met but he hadn't taken much notice. He recalled her saying her organisation helped women who'd been trafficked for sex, and guessed she must be a player to get sent to Sydney, a far more pleasant posting than most places with trafficking problems. Randall liked players.

‘I was flying from New York to Frankfurt one time and we had to land, some engine thing,' he said, licking her ear. ‘Only an hour, we didn't even get off the plane.'

‘So you're cheating,' she said.

‘That's right.'

She put her arms around him and pushed him down on the bed, each of them a little excited now.

After a bit, she said, ‘Is the camera on?'

‘I thought you didn't like it.'

‘I want it now. But don't get up.'

‘It's okay,' he said, reaching out while she sat up, running her fingernails down his chest. He felt around on the bedside table, careful not to knock the open wrapper of coke, eventually locating what he was looking for. It had been difficult to find a camera with a remote control, and he'd wondered what other people used it for.

‘Let's make a movie,' she said, coming down at him with her tongue out, her backside wiggling at the camera.

This, he thought, is going to be good.

But then the phone rang.

Three

M
cIver had been gone a while and Troy was starting to feel anxious. He was pretty sure the sarge was pissed. You were supposed to look out for fellow team members, but with McIver it was hard because he did like a drink. He thought about the last time they'd worked together, a domestic killing at Forbes. They'd been away for almost a month, which was not unusual. McIver had spent every evening with colleagues or acquaintances he made in town. Sometimes he would ask the motel where they were staying to provide a room so they could watch a DVD. He had a big collection, with lots of Westerns. Troy didn't like Westerns usually, but Mac's were pretty good. When it wasn't a film night, McIver would be at a pub or club, often with his guitar. He had a fine voice, and could play just about anything, though he had a particular liking for old American songs, blues and country. But always there was a bottle nearby.

Unsure what to do next, Troy headed over to the entrance to the construction site. When a security guard asked him his name, he produced his ID and went inside. In theory he should wait for instructions from McIver, who was his boss. But Mac didn't work like that. He decided to talk to the head of security.

The space—what would be the atrium of the building—was enormous, perhaps five storeys high, and well lit. Three portable offices were stacked at the far end. He had a word to one of the guards and was directed to an office. As he walked towards it, breathing the cold smell of concrete, someone called out to him. He turned and saw a short woman standing next to a man, both of them in uniform. The woman was about fifty with blonde hair. She would have been attractive once, he thought.

‘Inspector Gina Harmer,' she said, extending her hand.

She had one of those looks that told you she was sizing you up, wanted you to know. As they shook hands her phone rang. She began a conversation about manpower and the guy next to her made notes on a clipboard he was holding. After a while, Troy continued on his way.

As he climbed the metal stairs he could hear raised voices inside. He opened a door with a sign saying
SECURITY
, and found two men standing by some sort of control panel. One, who looked Lebanese, was in a security guard's uniform. He appeared fit and alert, unlike some people in his line of work. The other was a tall guy in a suit, his head shaved, one of those stupid little clumps of hair just below his bottom lip. They stopped talking when Troy came in, and introduced themselves. Peter Bazzi was the shift manager for Tryon, the company that protected The Tower. Sean Randall was security manager for Warton Constructions.

‘I just arrived,' he said with an Irish accent, coming over and clasping Troy's hand. ‘Peter here called me at home. It's a terrible thing that's happened. Of course we'll give you our full cooperation.'

You will, Troy thought, as he wrote their names in his notebook.

He said, ‘What were you arguing about just now?'

‘It's your colleague. Peter let him go up unaccompanied. It's not company policy—we have liability issues.'

Troy looked at him more closely. Despite the annoyance the guy was showing, he had amiable eyes. Troy figured that, unlike many security managers, he was not ex-police.

‘Do we know who the woman was?'

Randall's smile faded and he looked away from Troy.

Bazzi said, ‘There's no record of a woman coming onto the site tonight.'

‘I'll take that as a no?'

The guard looked anxious, almost distressed. He shrugged. ‘At the moment we just don't know what's happened.'

No wonder the two men had been yelling at each other.

Troy looked out the window and saw the inspector still standing in the middle of the atrium, briefing another group of police. The search operation had been organised with impressive speed, especially for a Sunday night. He turned back to the various computer consoles. ‘So where's Sergeant McIver?'

‘There are two search groups up there,' Randall explained. ‘One moving up the building and the other coming down from level forty, which is the highest point where she could have come off. Your sergeant said he was going to join the upper sweep, which had just reached level thirty-five. So Peter sends him up with one of our guards—you need a pass to operate the lift. But your sergeant tells the guard to stop at level thirty. The man protests but in the end does what he's told. McIver gets off and the guard comes back. This is making us nervous.'

Dealing with McIver tended to have that effect on people, Troy thought.

‘If there is a killer up there,' Bazzi said, ‘they could meet.'

That might be the killer's problem. McIver was armed and dangerous and under the infl uence. But he should be up there too, watching the sergeant's back.

‘How long's he been gone?'

‘Almost ten minutes now. I was just going to have a word with Inspector Harmer.'

Not a good idea, Troy thought. He said, ‘I'll go up and get him back. Would that make you happier?'

Bazzi shook his head, but Randall looked at his watch. ‘I'll come with you. You'll need someone to work the lift.'