The Tower (50 page)

‘Blew up?' Troy said, feeling numb.

‘Exploded,' Kelly said a little impatiently. ‘They don't know what happened, but it tore the thing apart, above the waterline. The hull's still floating. Someone at the marina saw Wu sailing out half an hour earlier.'

Troy didn't believe it. He wondered if it was some sort of trick, maybe a dream. The thing could not be true.

McIver asked if there were any bodies.

‘Two dead, by the look of it. Only one body so far. They have Wu's coat with his wallet in it. Presumably he took it off while he was sailing. His briefcase too. They're searching, but Collister said it could be a while, maybe a few days. The tide's very strong there.' Sometimes the bodies of people who died in the harbour turned up kilometres away. Kelly was staring at them. ‘The body they found . . . it's not Henry Wu.'

‘Yes?'

‘There's an ID pass. Sean Randall.'

‘No!'

At first Troy thought he'd said it himself. But he was incapable of speech for the moment. It was McIver who had spoken, almost cried the word in protest, resolutely not looking at Troy. Kelly's eyes flicked from one to another as she registered this.

‘Wu and Randall?' she said. No one said anything. Troy realised Kelly didn't know anything about Randall. Officially, he'd never been a major part of the investigation. She said, ‘Speak to me.'

McIver looked at Troy, then turned to Kelly. He explained who Randall was, leaving the relationship with Wu out of it. He described Randall's arrest the day before, presenting it as just a normal drug bust, humorous even.

Kelly wasn't all that interested in Randall. ‘Accidents do happen on boats,' she said. ‘But the timing here . . .'

‘Tailwind should look into it,' said McIver.

‘Who would want to kill Wu?'

McIver spoke quickly: ‘If Ferguson's right, and Wu was using The Tower for major scams, he must have been in business with some very unpleasant people. If they knew he was about to go down, maybe they wanted to sever the link to The Tower. Killing the shooter was part of that too.'

Troy nodded. He still felt dazed. But what McIver was saying made sense. At least, it would in some parallel universe where he hadn't been involved in sending a bomb to Henry Wu that morning.

An inactive bomb.

Kelly looked at him. ‘You're not saying much, detective?'

‘I'm . . . ah . . . trying to think how anyone could have known Wu was about to go down,' Troy said. ‘How many people knew I was going to talk to Ferguson.'

McIver said, ‘There's another possibility. Last year a Chinese national claimed his girlfriend had disappeared after going to see Wu at the casino. He told North Sydney detectives that Wu had killed her, but there was no evidence.'

Kelly looked interested. ‘The complainant wasn't happy?'

‘There were threats. Wu took to travelling with a security guard.'

Kelly thought about what he'd said and announced her decision. Other officers would look into Wu's death. McIver tried to argue with her. Troy could see it was useless. She was jotting down notes while she spoke, hardly listening to the sergeant at all. After a few minutes she looked up. ‘The media on this,' she said, ‘is going to be phenomenal.'

As McIver and Troy stood up to go, Stavros arrived and Kelly's phone rang at the same time. Troy just wanted to get out, go away and think about Randall's death. None of it made sense. Kelly put the phone down. ‘Sean Randall's at the morgue,' she said. ‘He has family here?'

Troy shook his head. ‘There would be colleagues,' he said. ‘At Warton.'

‘Will you go? The body's not intact.'

Troy nodded and left the room. Behind him, Kelly was already talking to Stavros, telling McIver to stay, launching into the new and expanded story of The Tower.

In the morgue again. He did not want to be here, felt his body trying to twist and leave, and had to restrain his muscles as though they belonged to someone else. Soon the attendant was showing him a big screen with a picture of Randall's upper body on it. He could have asked to go into the other room and see the actual corpse, but there was no need. In his job he saw enough bodies.

Sean had never been quite right, he thought as he stared at his face on the screen. You could make out the features quite well. He stared at the half of his face not hidden by the sheet. The mouth and chin were intact, the silly little beard beneath the lower lip perfectly preserved. Troy had once read that sensualists had thick lips. Randall had been a sensualist, but his mouth looked about average. The nose and one of the eyes were visible, one side of the shaved skull. Looking at what was there, he thought there were few clues to the character of the man he'd known. It was all gone.

He left the room and worked his way through corridors that became warmer until he rejoined the living. It was the smell that got to you more than the temperature, though, and when he arrived back on the street he breathed deep, sucking in the city's tainted air gratefully. He thought about the bomb: everything came back to it, and it still made no sense at all. Logically he should accept the coincidence, that on the same day Henry Wu had received Troy's package, he'd been blown up by someone else entirely. But in his heart he couldn't accept it, because of his guilt, which was impossible to dismiss. Something must have gone wrong with the device. Mistakes happen. Terrible mistakes. Criminals tell you all the time: I was just trying to defend myself, I took the gun along just to scare them, I had no intention of using it.

But we don't accept these excuses from criminals, and Troy knew he couldn't accept it from himself. It had reached the point where he needed to tell someone what had happened; make a clean breast of things to Kelly, lift the load. The problem was McIver, there was no way he could implicate the sergeant. The man had tried to help him and now he must be protected. The secret would have to be kept forever.

THURSDAY

Forty-seven

K
elly's staff officer had called just after eleven, demanding his immediate presence. No reason had been given. McIver had been out and Troy rang him as soon as he got Kelly's message, but his phone was off. And then, when he reached Parramatta, McIver was waiting outside the office. Before they could talk, the staff officer called them straight in.

Kelly's eyes were alight with emotion. She looked tired compared with yesterday, and indicated for them to sit down while she walked up and down behind her desk. The newspapers were there, pictures of the hull of Wu's big boat on the front pages. Occasionally she looked at the two men, but for a while she said nothing, as though too agitated for speech. But finally the words came.

‘I don't know where to start,' she said. ‘You need to know police have been watching Henry Wu for some time. I'd guess you didn't know that. In fact, there's been an investigation in progress regarding some of the matters you told me about yes—'

‘So—'

She put a hand up. ‘Don't,' she yelled at McIver.

Surprised, Troy felt his back pushing against the chair. He struggled to keep his posture, the energy draining from him as he took in the implications of what she had just said. At the least, she must know about the delivery of the parcel to Wu's boat. A wave of shock hit him.

Kelly was staring at them both a little wildly, as though for a second she didn't know who they were. She grasped the top of her chair with both hands and looked down at the carpet for a moment. Then she said, ‘Actually, let's start again. I need to talk to Nicholas alone. I have to be very careful about who knows what in all this. Sergeant, it's better for you not to be part of this conversation. So get out.'

‘Just one thing,' McIver said quickly. ‘I know you haven't suggested this, but I swear to you neither of us had anything to do with these deaths.'

McIver looked around the room and Troy knew what he was thinking. The place might be bugged. Kelly might be about to try to entrap Troy with some offer. These days, you could never tell what was going on with complete confidence. Not if you didn't trust the other people involved.

But Kelly was nodding, looking at him and nodding. ‘It doesn't look good for you,' she said. ‘But there is a reason to believe what you're saying. I can't go into the reason now, but for what it's worth I believe you.'

‘Thank you, ma'am.'

‘It's not worth much. Don't get your hopes up.'

Wearily the sergeant stood up, looking pale and drawn. Without a word he left the room, moving slowly. As he went out, he shut the door.

The sudden draining of all energy from McIver struck Troy, who was already confused by what had just been said.

Kelly said, ‘You don't understand how close you are, how close to being thrown out of the police.' She held up a thumb and forefinger and examined the gap between them. It was necessary to stop her hand from trembling, and the effort seemed to calm her a little. ‘We have to be very careful in this conversation, because it's important I don't learn some of the things you know, and vice versa. You understand?'

Troy shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about.

Ignoring this, Kelly went on, ‘I know what happened, on the boat. I know it was an accident but I also know about your involvement. There are other investigations going on.'

She looked at the door, and Troy knew she was talking about McIver. The realisation hit him hard, and for a while he resisted it, almost physically. He wondered if Mac knew, if that was why he'd gone so quietly. ‘But—'

‘I am not going to talk about it except to say this. Someone has to go from Homicide as a result of it. Do you understand? I'm not talking about a public scapegoat—for the good of the force we do not want that. But internally, I have to show certain powerful colleagues that action has been taken. For the good of the squad, after what you idiots have done.'

Troy sort of followed what she was saying. It didn't make perfect sense, but it was getting there.

Kelly said, ‘That's been made clear to me. And I'm afraid it can't be McIver, not at this point in time.' He must have looked puzzled, because she repeated: ‘Not at this point in time. I can't go into details.'

He shrugged; the last thing he wanted was to argue against Mac.

Then she completed her speech. ‘So, it's going to be you.'

‘Me?' he said.

Of course, after what she'd just said, he shouldn't be so surprised. But he was. It was a day for surprises.

‘Why?' he said, and she just looked at him while his mind churned.

Maybe the investigation into McIver was responsible for Kelly's decision: they wanted to get more evidence on him. Or maybe it was just that Mac was more powerful. He'd been involved in stuff with others over the years, he knew things about too many people. Perhaps he had to be treated gently, whereas Troy was clean, he'd been a good officer. Which meant they could do what they liked with him. Troy looked at Kelly and noticed just how drawn she looked.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘About all this.'

‘If you go quietly, no one else will be hurt.'

He nodded, and this seemed to calm her. He saw then that she was not a bad person, just someone trying to do a good job of something that was not possible to do well.

She looked at one of the newspapers on her desk and said, ‘Nicholas, this is a terrible thing. Can't you see what you've done?' She was genuinely upset. ‘Why?' she said.

He told her about the prostitute. And the blackmail. She grew impatient as he spoke, as though none of this, the threat to his marriage, mattered. When he'd finished she shook her head.

‘Why didn't you come to me? We could have sorted this out. These things happen.'

‘I couldn't see what you could do to stop my wife receiving the video. Wu was crazy, it would have got out there.'

‘Wu was under surveillance. We could have contained it.'

‘I didn't know that.' He stood up and said, ‘I'll apply for a transfer.'

She said nothing, still hoping for something more from him, but he had nothing more to give. After a while she understood this.

She said, ‘Until then, you're on leave.'

‘If you find the video, will you destroy it?'

She nodded. ‘I'll do my best. That's a deal, Nick, a personal thing, between you and me. If you go quietly. Do you understand?'

He understood.

In a daze he walked down the corridor and into the large squad room, collecting a cardboard box as he went. When he reached his desk he sat down heavily. There was a small pile of phone messages in front of him. They'd been there yesterday but he hadn't had time to visit his desk. Now he picked them up and dropped them in the bin.

‘ 'S'up?' It was McIver.

‘They had Wu under surveillance. She knows everything.'

‘Rubbish.'

He told McIver what Kelly had said, how he was being ejected from the squad.

When he'd finished, the sergeant sat down and groaned. ‘That means they know about my mate. They would have seen the courier, traced it back by now.'

Troy said, ‘You're staying, though.'

‘That's not right. Is something up?'

‘I'd say so. But I don't know.'

McIver looked confused now, and Troy turned away so he didn't have to watch. He said, ‘If I go quietly, she'll make sure if they find the film on Wu's computer, it'll be removed. My marriage is safe, which right now is all I want.' He'd do anything to achieve this. At least this business had clarified that.

‘You deserve more.' McIver stood up. ‘Don't go away.'

‘No,' said Troy, grabbing his left shoulder and pushing him back down into his chair. ‘She's very upset about the bomb. I really wouldn't push it.'

The sergeant was squirming in pain. ‘Let go of my arm.'