The Tower (24 page)

‘You should have called me immediately.'

‘I was just about to. Aren't you interested?'

Sometimes, conversations with Henry reminded him of his brief marriage. Recriminations loaded with assumptions.

Henry didn't seem interested at all. He said, ‘Make him like you. One man in the right place is all you need.'

The problem with Henry was he always wanted more. And for what? Sometimes, Randall wondered if the Houston deal would ever happen. But that was separate, and of course it would happen, because he could make Henry a lot of American money. That would still be there after this matter had blown over.

‘He's a happily married suburbs guy,' Randall said.

‘Think about him,' said Henry. ‘Every conversation you've had with him. Every expression on his face. Think. Every man wants something.'

He'd hung up without saying goodbye. Randall's wife used to do that too.

The mass was almost over. Kristin had called this afternoon, wanting to meet him tonight. Wanting to talk about the illegals. He knew he couldn't stand it, had given her some excuse. There was something new about her since this business had started, as though she'd assumed some sort of authority. Over everything, him included. That was what she did, in her job, just waited until a situation came along where she actually knew something, and suddenly her job turned her from a nobody into someone people had to listen to for a few weeks. She was even involved in The Tower investigation in a minor way; he'd told her some details and she'd got her NGO involved. It was giving the immigration department information the United Nations had on trafficking women from Thailand. The way she went on about it when she'd called him, you'd think she'd actually gathered the facts herself.

The priest was finishing up now, everyone crossed themselves and turned to pick up their bags and coats, head back out to the cold world. Randall moved slowly, one of the last to leave.

Outside he almost bumped into the girl. She had freckles; he hadn't seen them in the dim church. Freckles hadn't attracted him in a long time, but for some reason they did now.

‘Excuse me for asking,' he said. ‘You're not Helen Walsh's sister from Rathmines?'

‘Indeed I'm not.'

She was Siobhán Casey from Galway.

He asked if she fancied a drink over at Scruffy Murphy's, and she took a step back.

‘I'm over Ireland for the moment,' she said, looking him up and down. ‘That's a nasty scratch on your head.'

‘I was pistol-whipped.'

She considered this. ‘I know another place down the road.'

‘That's all right then.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Let me buy you a martini. It's a long story.'

They were in bed at his place later that night, after their cocktails, after dinner, after everything. He'd used the last of his supply to keep it exciting, needed to call Gregor and get a delivery, maybe at work tomorrow.

He hadn't bothered turning the camera on. The girl was all right, she put in a lot of effort, almost too much, there was sweat between her breasts, under her arms. Usually women would comment on the amount Randall sweated. First they'd tell him how little hair he had, and Siobhán had done that earlier; not like an Irishman at all, she'd said. But in the sweat area she was giving him some competition and he'd needed a few lines to get his mind off that. She'd clicked into party mood, he had a bottle of Stoli going on the bedside table and now she had a swig, sitting up in bed. She lit two cigarettes, handed him one.

‘God, that was good,' she said. ‘Wasn't that truly good?'

‘Fantastic,' he said, reaching for his mobile.

She looked from it to him. ‘Jesus,' she said. ‘I don't believe this.'

Trying to take it from him playfully, but he wasn't in the mood. He turned around and sat on the side of the bed with his legs apart, his Johnson flopping down on the sheets as he rang Gregor's number. Wondered where the fellow was—this was the second time today he hadn't answered. Man was in a service industry, for Christ's sake.

She came around the bed, her cigarette gone, and kneeled down in front of him, flicking her hair back. There were freckles on her breasts too. ‘We need to get this show on the road again,' she said.

He could see she wasn't naturally like this; the coke was making her frolicsome. That was what it was for.

The mobile rang and he stared at it in surprise.

‘Randall?'

It was Eman Jamal, saying he'd just had a visit from Henry Wu.

Randall wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

‘It's eleven o'clock,' he said, panic running like electricity over the surface of his naked body. Pushing the girl's head away.

‘How the fuck he knows where I live? Had this big bloke with him. Really big. I didn't know whether to ring you.'

‘I'm glad you did.'

‘He never told me not to.'

Wu had insisted on being told Asaad's address, and in the end Jamal had given it to him.

‘Why'd you do that?'

‘He's a scary guy, mate, you know his rep.'

‘I've heard stuff,' Randall said, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder, trying to push her away, but she wouldn't go. ‘You think he's, ah, violent? Potentially?'

‘Mate, you've said it yourself.'

Jamal blathered on, sounding eager to please. Randall realised he must have done a deal with Wu, given him Asaad's address in return for keeping his company's contract with The Tower. Cutting out the middle man. Which meant Henry didn't trust him anymore.

‘Did he mention me?'

‘No mate.'

‘Did he ask you where you got Asaad's address?'

‘I told him I'd only just got it from my people. Said I was about to ring you. Don't worry, I didn't drop you in it.'

What bullshit.

‘Cheers, buddy.'

‘You take care.'

Randall disconnected. This is it, he thought. The time when I find out what Henry Wu is capable of. The sweat was running down his sides now, so much of it he could feel the trickle of moisture. He looked out into the hallway, over towards the front door. Feeling scared again, it was eating away at him.

‘This is no good,' the girl said, straightening up and doing the thing with her hair again. Her voice was slurred. ‘Percy doesn't want to come out to play.'

He slapped her on the side of the face and she fell backwards and lay still on the carpet. He got up and stood over her, noticed her body was almost the same colour as the beige carpet. She looked serious and her cheek was red, but she wasn't crying.

Looking up at him, she said, ‘I think it's time for me to go home.'

WEDNESDAY

Twenty

T
here was a colour photograph of Margot Teresi on the whiteboard now. Troy looked at it as Little fidgetted and Stone ran over the state of the investigation with them. Stone had already told him that he was taking back control of the day-to-day management of the investigation. Troy had been relieved; maybe his complaint to Kelly had had some effect. He was still second in charge of the investigation, but now he could get out of the office more.

In other parts of the room, detectives worked the phones, putting together a picture of Margot's life by calling every number listed in her phone records. On the board, Margot was still alive, rich, vivacious. Other pictures were up there too, including an artist's image of the man who'd shot McIver, almost certainly a Pakistani.

‘Obviously having a victim ID is good,' Stone said, ‘but we still don't know an awful lot. We're hoping the details of Margot's life will lead us to an explanation of what happened. I'm seeing Ben Wilson; Nick and Conti are visiting this singer. We're still chasing Jenny's parents.'

Troy wasn't paying much attention. Stone had an annoying habit of repeating himself, going over the known state of the investigation out loud, as though afraid he'd forget it otherwise. This contributed to the sense of things going around in circles, even when they weren't.

He looked at his watch. He'd talked to Damon Blake's agent yesterday evening, and learned the singer was in Brisbane, due back this morning. They had an appointment in his apartment later.

They'd discovered Bazzi had a bank account in a business name, and had been receiving three hundred dollars a week from a company owned by Margot Teresi. He'd withdrawn two hundred dollars every month, presumably to pay Asaad. Ten thousand dollars in cash had been withdrawn the morning after Bazzi disappeared. In Melbourne.

Little said, ‘What about the payments Sidorov must have been making to Bazzi?'

‘No sign of them yet,' Stone said. ‘Bazzi's gone cold on us. He could have had an escape plan. I've got Melbourne airport checking their cameras in case he flew out under another name. We've discovered Tryon missed Asaad's connection to the Wolves. The Gangs Squad are talking to people, trying to find where they might be hiding him.'

‘We'll never find him.'

‘You never know. If he was working on the side, not cutting his brothers in on some action, they mightn't be happy with him.'

Moving on, Stone explained that a thorough search of Margot Teresi's apartment had revealed nothing, except that she'd been obsessed by The Tower. There were hundreds of pages of photocopied newspaper stories and documents relating to it. Her Porsche was in the garage down below, as Jenny Finch had said it might be. Other police had visited the house on the river and found it empty. The investigation would now start to interview all of Margot's friends and anyone else she'd seen recently.

Troy had some thoughts on this, and was about to voice them when Stone turned to Little and said, ‘Tell us about the illegals.'

‘Can we talk about the victim a bit more?' said Troy.

Stone frowned. ‘Later,' he said. ‘We need to push on. I want to know where we're at with these people.'

It seemed to be another of his habits: jumping around mentally.

Little explained the illegals were being held in individual cells now, unable to talk to each other. Ruth had drawn up a timeline for each man, showing what he said he'd been doing for the whole of the evening on which Margot Teresi died. They'd been cross-checked, and today would be followed up with new interviews.

The illegals claimed they'd been exhausted, on Sunday night as every night, after working a twelve-hour day. They'd cooked and prayed, in some cases written letters or read for a while. It was possible to go for a walk in the car park, outside the area where they lived. It was also possible to use the stairwell to go to other floors, but Bazzi had caught two of them exploring the retail level a few weeks earlier and got violent.

‘The retail floor's being fitted out, the level of activity's increasing,' Little explained. ‘He didn't want them wandering around.'

‘The poor bastards must have been desperate for a bit of space,' said Troy.

‘They were moved to other accommodation for a weekend's break once a month, some sort of boarding house in Campsie. It's a pigsty, but they were free to come and go. Visit the Opera House. Several visited the Thai prozzie we caught in Darlinghurst, Sally Tanuchit. Some of them have friends here. This seems to have been a well-run operation, where pretty much everyone benefited.'

‘Are we sure there were only twenty-one living there?' said Stone.

‘We checked the stuff we picked up there. There were only twenty-one beds.'

Stone was looking at a spreadsheet. ‘Putting what we know together, we can't account for Khan's whereabouts for about half an hour that night, between eight fifteen and eight forty-five.'

Little said, ‘One bloke reckons Khan was a bit of a wanderer, he went upstairs some nights. Actually, the bloke wondered if he was a bit embarrassed about using the toilet in the camp, went off to have a piss in private.'

‘The time's right,' said Stone. ‘If they'd met on the retail level, the shooter could have given Khan the gun and kept going.' Wherever it was he'd gone. ‘Let's try Khan again this afternoon. We'll have another go at Sidorov too.'

‘What about the construction company?' said Troy. ‘Reckon they knew this was going on?'

Stone shook his head. ‘Taylor swears blind he had no idea, and I believe him. There was nothing in it for them.'

‘Still, they don't look good.'

‘Stupidity's not a crime.' Stone rubbed his forehead as though he had a headache. ‘You can see what might have happened. Margot was in the building pursuing this weird obsession her cousin told us about. She accidentally sees something she shouldn't have, some indication of the illegals. She's killed to keep her quiet. It was a big operation, a great deal of money involved, some nasty people.'

‘It was idiotic to kill her on-site,' Troy said.

Stone shrugged. ‘She turned up in the middle of something, posed an immediate threat, someone panicked.'

It was a theory, Troy thought. ‘Why would Bazzi have let her onto the site, given he knew about the illegals?'

‘The place is huge. You've got your twenty-one workers tucked away right down in a car park, it's night-time. You wouldn't think there was much chance of her crossing paths with them.'

No you wouldn't. Troy thought Stone's theory possible, though unlikely. But for the moment he couldn't think of a better one.

Later in the morning, when most of the detectives had gone out, Stone emerged from his office and told Troy he had to go to Parramatta to see Kelly and the media officer, to decide when to announce that the victim was Margot Teresi. They also had to get pictures of the shooter and his dead colleague out to the media.

Troy said, ‘Do you have to go to Parramatta to do this? It's a five-minute phone conversation.'

‘Kelly wants me out there.'