Bright Air Part 8

We stepped carefully through the obstacles on the living room floor, and I recognised a Lloyd Rees print on the wall that Luce and I had admired on one of our visits. The memory brought back just how much energy and life there had been in this house then, and how neglected it now seemed. I felt sorry for Marcus. He'd been an intriguing and generous man to know, and he'd made our student lives more interesting, more vivid. Now he seemed utterly lost.

When we reached the front door, Anna led the way up the path between the rocks, but Marcus put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me. He was uncomfortably close, his breath foul on my cheek. 'Josh,' he murmured, 'you don't want to get into all this. Really. I understand how fond of her you were, but believe me, there's no conspiracy conspiracy here.' here.'

I nodded, embarra.s.sed to see what looked like a tear in his eye. He was so close I couldn't avoid noticing the unhealthy colour of his skin, the tufts of bristle he'd missed shaving beneath his chin.

'Anna's got it all wrong, you see. You should put her straight. Don't let her make trouble. Bad for everyone.'

I didn't mention this to Anna as we drove back to Central, where she wanted to catch a train. On the way she said, 'Poor Marcus. I can't believe how much he's altered. This thing has really done him in, hasn't it?'

'Yes, pretty much. He's a changed man all right. Did you believe what he said, about the accident?'

'Yes, I did, though he wasn't there of course, when Luce fell.'

I had believed it too, until that last little exchange at the door. Now I wasn't so sure.

We agreed we'd have a think about things and talk again soon.

9.

I wanted to think about something else, and Mary helped by giving me a new list of jobs that needed doing around the place. I got stuck into them, and was rewarded later with a lobster dinner and a bottle of wine. After the meal I lay on my bed with a crime novel one of the guests had left with us. She'd recommended it highly, and the reviews quoted on the back cover were all ecstatic, but it annoyed me. It wasn't that it was unrealistic, at least concerning the technical aspects of murder-DNA profiling, gunshot trauma, the action of bacteria in buried corpses, autopsy procedures and all the rest-in these things it was grossly realistic. But I just couldn't relate to the characters. They were so incredibly resourceful and resilient; the more they were beaten up and shot and misled, the more determinedly they returned to the fight and the more brilliantly their brains worked. Real people aren't like that-they're very easily frightened and confused, their motives are boring and selfish, and when trouble comes they have a tendency to curl up into a little ball until it all goes away. I know, because I'm one. But of course that doesn't make for a very interesting read.

I had been confused by our visit to Marcus all right, and unsettled in ways I couldn't quite define. The house had been part of it: claustrophobic, chaotic, a chamber of memories and ghosts. And Marcus himself, diminished and turned in upon himself. I thought about that performance of his, my mind coloured by the book I'd just been reading. In crime novels, of course, every fact, every event may be significant, carrying the germ of some revelation. Life may not be like that, but the more I considered Marcus's mystic bl.u.s.tering, the more dubious it seemed, like an elaborate cloak he'd felt obliged to gather around himself. I began to become convinced that the cloak concealed something. A secret. And I wanted to know what it was.

On Monday morning Damien phoned and invited me to have lunch with him. It was a very swish place on East Circular Quay, with a stunning view of the Opera House, and I felt a little out of place among all the corporate suits, but pleasantly so. I really didn't want to be like that again.

Damien was expansive and friendly, but also, I felt, pointedly a.s.sertive as he ordered this and that, as if establishing a certain position of authority. I let him come to the point in his own time, as we were halfway through our fish.

'I got a call from Marcus Fenn at the weekend,' he said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin.

'Oh yes?'

'He said you and Anna paid him a visit, at Castlecrag.'

'That's right.'

'What did you think?'

'It was a bit of a shock, frankly, seeing him again. He's really gone downhill, hasn't he? The house was a mess, and he didn't look too fit.'

Damien nodded sadly. 'You're right. I've watched it happen. The university treated him very badly, you know. Really beat him up. He'd made a lot of enemies over the years, especially within his own faculty-well, you know how sarcastic he could be. The dean hated his guts and saw the accident on Lord Howe as a way to get rid of him. Rumours circulated-that he hadn't organised proper back-up for the team, that he was indifferent to safety procedures, that he was s.p.a.ced out on drugs when it happened-all discounted by the police investigation, but no matter. They made life as difficult for him as they could, and when he accepted a package they refused to give him a reference. Then Luce's dad went for him.'

'What? Her father?'

'Mm, Fred Corcoran, tough old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He saw Marcus's quitting the uni as an admission of guilt and when the coroner cleared him of any negligence, Corcoran took a private action against him. It dragged through the court for a year. In the end it failed, but it cost Marcus his university payout in lawyers' fees. The court sympathised with old man Corcoran, even though he was wrong, and didn't like the look of Marcus, so they didn't award him costs.'

'h.e.l.l.' I shook my head.

'What was so unfair was that Marcus really was devastated by what had happened to Luce, but he just refused to show it, and people didn't like that. They thought he was arrogant and didn't care.'

'So what is he doing now? He said he was involved in some kind of research.'

'No, no.' Damien said it with a dismissive flick at some breadcrumbs on the white tablecloth. 'He's become a recluse, living on an invalid pension. We tried to help him, Curtis, Owen and I, but he's difficult. He has these mood swings, and he hates the idea of people feeling sorry for him, or giving him charity.'

Damien put the last piece of barramundi in his mouth, chewed, and then said, 'When he phoned me, Marcus said something strange. He said Anna told him that Owen made some kind of confession to her, just before he died.'

'Yes, that's right. Apparently Owen said that the accident hadn't happened the way they told it afterwards.'

He stared at me. 'Really? You didn't tell me this before.'

'No. I was a bit sceptical. I think Owen's brain must have been scrambled by the fall, but Anna is convinced he was lucid.'

'And you really didn't think it was worth mentioning this to me?'

There was an unspoken undercurrent here, concerning our places within the group, that I'd allowed myself to overlook, or forget. He was saying that, of all people, he should have been the first to be told, for it had always been his role to take charge and get us organised, whenever that proved necessary. And equally, I guessed this was the reason why we hadn't told him straight away, because we knew he'd try to take over.

I shrugged and turned back to my fish, embarra.s.sed in spite of myself. 'As I say, I don't know that it can be taken seriously.'

'Well, it was serious enough to confront Marcus with it.' His grip on his knife and fork tightened.

'We just wanted rea.s.surance from him that Luce wasn't ... wouldn't have jumped.'

But he wasn't to be deflected. 'What exactly did Owen say?'

'What I just told you, plus he said, We killed her We killed her.'

'We killed her?' he repeated through his teeth. 'I was there, Josh. I was part of that team, part of we we, and you two didn't think it worth telling me about this?'

'I'm sorry. We would have. We just wanted to get up to speed first on how things were out there.'

He looked incredulous. 'You got me to obtain the police report for you, but you didn't tell me the real reason you wanted it. What was that, some kind of test? You thought I was involved in ... what? A murder? A cover-up?'

His field was commercial law, but it occurred to me that Damien would have made a pretty sharp criminal lawyer.

'No, no, nothing like that.'

There was an awkward silence, during which he stared at me, then he turned away, shaking his head in disgust. 'Who else have you told about this?'

'No one. Well, Mary.'

'Don't you realise how preposterous it is?'

'Yes, I do.'

'And what motive could we we have possibly had?' have possibly had?'

'There was one thought that occurred to me.'

'Oh really? I'd like to hear that.'

'Do you know that Curtis and Owen had ... a relationship?'

'A s.e.xual relationship you mean? Yes.' He said it bluntly, as if to emphasise that he would know everything that went on in the group. 'Why? What's that got to do with it?'

'Luce was worried about Suzi. She didn't like the deceit. I wondered if it was still going on, and she maybe confronted them.'

'So they pushed her down a cliff? That's laughable.'

'Was it still going on?'

He hesitated, looked down at his knuckles. 'I'm not sure about that. Possibly.'

Another long silence, then I said, 'Well, it was just a theory.'

Finally he said, very softly, 'It doesn't matter, Josh. Not any more. Curtis and Owen are dead. The rest of us just have to live with it-Suzi, old Corcoran, Marcus, me. Christ ...' He put a hand to his face, wiping his eyes. 'How do you think I feel, knowing that if I'd been with them that day it might never have happened? I feel guilty as h.e.l.l.'

'Yes, I can see that,' I said, not meaning it unkindly, but thinking that his tone wasn't quite right somehow, more complaining than contrite. 'In fact I don't really understand why they did go without you.'

'It was a bright sunny day, we'd already been up and down that cliff several times and they were all confident. They just wanted to finish off the job. They didn't realise how the heavy rain the day before could have loosened the scree. Look, I don't believe your theory for a moment, but even if it were true, what's to be done? Uncover the truth? Confront Suzi with it? Destroy her son's memory of his father?'

I shook my head.

'No, it's not really on, is it?'

We finished our meal in an uncomfortable atmosphere, and as we left the restaurant I asked if he had Suzi's address. He gave me a dark look.

'It's okay, I just want to see if I can help.'

He knew it off by heart, and wrote it on the back of one of his cards for me, with a final warning. 'We've got to move on, Josh. She doesn't need any of this.'

He was right, of course. The only trouble was, he wasn't the only one feeling guilty.

Risk management had been my area in London. After we parted, as I walked around the quay watching the gulls wheeling over an incoming ferry, it occurred to me that Damien would also make an excellent risk manager. He had been forceful, persuasive, working me into a corner from which I had little choice but to agree with him. But Marcus's voice kept whispering insistently in my ear, 'There's no conspiracy conspiracy here.' I'd never heard him sounding needy and cowering before. It had been an unpleasant experience, more so than being pressured by Damien. here.' I'd never heard him sounding needy and cowering before. It had been an unpleasant experience, more so than being pressured by Damien.

I stopped at a toyshop and bought a handheld electronic Spiderman games unit that the man a.s.sured me was perfect for a boy of six, then bought a bunch of roses and some chocolates next door, and made my way to the address Damien had given me. I parked outside, and stared at the blank front door, imagining all the pain and turmoil on the other side, and lost my nerve. I would have started up the engine and driven away again, but then I saw them approaching along the footpath, Suzi pushing the baby in a stroller with one hand and holding Thomas's little paw with the other. It hadn't really struck me at the funeral how like his father the boy was, with that serious, studious expression, and the same black hair. In a couple of years I expected he'd be wearing gla.s.ses just like his dad, too. I got out of the car and Suzi looked surprised, then glad. We went inside for a cup of tea, and I handed over the gifts. Thomas took to the game as his father might have to a new electron microscope, and after I'd set it up for him he sat in a corner of the room, utterly engrossed. Suzi and I chatted, mostly about London and the places she'd like to visit in Europe one day, and then I escaped. Of course I didn't bring up any difficult issues. Sitting there, the doubts and suspicions that had been going through my head seemed simply obscene, and I came away convinced that there had to be some other explanation for what her husband had whispered before he died. I went back to the hotel and began to sift through all the material again, determined to find it.

Anna rang me that evening.

'Did you read the schedule of items of evidence at the back of the coroner's report?' she asked.

'Not really.'

'Among Luce's possessions on Lord Howe they found a diary. I checked with someone in the coroner's office. Apparently it was returned to Luce's father after the inquest closed.'

'Hm.'

'I think we should have a look at it.'

'Oh look, I said before, Anna, this isn't some detective mystery with the murderer's name spelled out in the victim's diary in invisible ink. If there was anything interesting in it, the police would have picked it up, surely?'

'We won't know until we see it. It depends what they were looking for. I've told Mr Corcoran that we're connected to the research project Luce was working on, and we need to see if there was any missing data in the diary.'

'You've spoken to him? But he knows you, doesn't he?'

'Luce and I went to boarding school together in Sydney, but I only ever met him once, and again briefly at the funeral. He won't know what subjects I was doing at uni. He was all right when I called him. Bit cautious, but all right. He said he'll be available tomorrow, and I've arranged to take the day off. Can you make it? If not I'll go on my own.'

'No, it's okay, I'll come. I'll borrow the car.' Then I told her about my lunch with Damien, and visiting Suzi.

'He's right,' she said finally. 'I don't want to do anything that will make things worse for her. But I want to know, Josh. I want to know what happened.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Me too.'

I followed the old Great Western Highway early the next morning, so that I could pa.s.s Ambler's Pies. It was a pet shop now and I hardly recognised the place, the front rebuilt and the pie removed from the roof. I could see that a giant meat pie might not be the most appropriate symbol for a pet shop, but I felt sad, and wondered what had happened to it. Dad and Pam had long gone, too, their hard-earned cash reinvested in an allocated pension fund and a Winnebago Explorer motor-home, in which they were now roaming the continent with all the other grey nomads.

I turned off into Blacktown, following the directions Anna had given me, and found her waiting at her front door. At least she didn't live in the nursing home, but in a flat nearby. She grinned h.e.l.lo as she got in the car, and I felt a touch of warmth at seeing her again. She was wearing a dark green sh.e.l.l jacket that looked identical to the one she'd worn in the Watagans all those years ago.

We climbed up over the Blue Mountains and down onto the western plains beyond, reaching Orange in time for lunch before our appointment with Luce's dad. I drove along the wide main street, recently beautified with new street furniture and trees, like every other country town we'd pa.s.sed through, and found a wood-fired pizza cafe. She chose a cheese topping and I remembered that she'd been a vegetarian. I asked her if she still was and she said yes. Like Luce, who'd persuaded her that that was the way to go. It was strange to feel the traces of Luce still present in our lives, like footprints on the sand. Luce had had no luck in trying to convert me to vegetarianism, but she did get me to stop smoking, another mute footprint.

We found Corcoran's Farm Supplies on the edge of town, housed in several large steel sheds surrounded by a car park dotted with piles of barbed wire, drainage pipes, fencing posts and water tanks. Inside, wide aisles displayed an extraordinary, and to me baffling, range of gadgets that the modern farmer apparently needs. While Anna spoke to the woman behind the counter I learned quite a lot. I had no idea what a calf puller ($59.95) was, for instance, until I saw the ill.u.s.trative photo of an unfortunate beast with a metal arm stuck up its backside. Then there was the ute dog tether ($14.95), the drench gun ($129.00) and the lightning diverter ($40.12) to protect the energiser on one's electric fence ($3,447.40 to power 160 kilometres of multiwire fence). I was studying the action of the footrot shears ($54.95) when Anna came to my side. 'He's here,' she said, and picked up a castration ring applicator ($32.95) with rather too much relish for my liking. 'This place could be a supermarket for the Spanish Inquisition,' she said.

Luce's father was a gaunt and weathered man. He gripped my hand briefly, drilling my face with his eyes (bright blue, like hers) for a moment before turning and leading us up to an office built above the counter. He was wearing moleskins and R.M. Williams Stockyard boots that clumped loudly on the timber stairs. We sat around a plain wooden desk and Anna repeated her story about the research project, and how there was some missing data that Luce might have recorded in her diary or other papers. I felt that her tone, polite but businesslike, was about right. He listened with an inscrutable look on his face, bottom lip thrust forward, and I wondered how this leathery old man could have been the father of such a vital and beautiful daughter.

'So that research business is still goin' on, is it?'

'We're just gathering the loose ends.'

'That Fenn feller isn't involved, is he? They haven't taken him back at the university, have they?'

'Oh no. He's not involved any more.'

He grunted, then stooped to a cardboard box at his side, about the size of a s...o...b..x, and lifted it onto the table.

'This is what the coroner's office sent me,' he growled. 'I haven't thrown anything away. Couldn't bring m'self to.'

It sounded like an opportunity to say something sympathetic about his loss, but Anna didn't take it, so I mumbled a few words about how sorry we were. He ignored me, and I felt stupid.

'May we look?' Anna said, after a pause.

'Go ahead.'

He didn't move, so Anna stood up, reached for the box and slid it towards her. It was roughly sealed with packing tape. Mr Corcoran rummaged in a drawer in the desk and handed her a Stanley knife, with which she cut the tape and looked inside.

'Her clothes and personal things came separately, did they?' she asked gently. This was getting a bit too forensic for me.