The Simple Death (21 page)

Thirty-seven

T
roy got to the hospice just after five, needing some time with Luke before Anna arrived. He'd called earlier and been told Luke would see them. When he arrived, the priest was propped on pillows, staring at the door. His skin had acquired a yellowish tint and his eyes were pale. They exchanged greetings, and Troy sat down next to the bed, until he realised Luke was having trouble turning his head to look at him.

He stood up and Luke caught his eye, said, ‘Where's Anna?'

‘She'll be here soon. I've talked to Tim. I knew you didn't do this.'

‘What?' Luke looked confused.

‘Abuse Brian Hughes.'

There was silence for a while, then Luke said slowly, ‘I'm not always like this. About once a day I'm lively.'

‘You going to tell me what this is all about?'

Luke sighed. Often when people sigh, it's just a form of punctuation, but this was the real thing. ‘Napoli's going to be chairman of the big education review the government is setting up. He wants to please.'

Troy reached out and gripped the bed head. ‘Please who?'

Another sigh. ‘If I tell you what's happening, you've got to not tell a soul, promise you won't talk to me about it again. I'm . . . I've had enough, Nick.'

‘That's—'

‘For a month. You won't talk to me about it for one month. On your oath.'

Because you'll be dead in a month, Troy felt like saying. But there was no need to say it. He knew that unless he gave this promise, he'd learn nothing.

‘Okay.'

He recalled the similar assurance he'd given Tim Kalnins: it was all part of the same promise, really. He might come to regret it.

‘Knowledge can be a burden, can't it?' Luke said, smiling faintly. ‘I suppose you know something about that too.'

For the first time since Luke had started to die, Troy felt like crying.

The old man used his elbows to push himself up a bit on the pillow.

‘Hughes
was
abused at the camp,' he said slowly, settling back. ‘It was done by the seminarian who was there with us, a young man named Geoffrey Davies.'

For a moment Troy recognised the name but couldn't remember who it belonged to. Then he gripped the bed head more tightly.

‘The politician?'

‘There was another incident a month later, at a church down near Wollongong, but this time the boy's family complained. I knew nothing of any of this at the time, of course. It was kept very quiet, and Geoffrey left the seminary. A psychiatrist said he'd been having a nervous breakdown. The archbishop has assured me that from that time on he's led a blameless life. For most of it he's been happily married. There's five children.'

‘They won't be happy when this comes out.'

Luke just lay there for a while, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling. Then he said, ‘It's not going to.

‘It'll have to.'

‘Geoffrey's career as a trainee priest was so brief it hardly happened. He went straight to university the year after leaving school—it's not on his C.V.'

‘So—'

‘Apart from the compassionate angle, Geoffrey is a very good friend of the Church. He's responsible for the money the government gives our schools, and we're about to get a big boost. This is a national issue, Nick.'

Troy knew the budget was enormous and it was important: Catholic schools made up a quarter of the country's education system. Millions of pupils attended them.

‘No.'

Luke said, ‘Other members of the government are hostile to the Church, so it's essential at the moment to have a Catholic in that position. A huge stroke of luck. This Hughes scandal happened at a very bad time for us.'

Troy remembered how central the local primary school had been to Luke all the years they'd been friends. The meetings he'd attended, the fundraising. For the Catholic Church in Australia, schools were as important as churches. But even so.

‘You can't do this.'

Luke smiled. ‘I have done it.' He yawned. ‘Sometimes I think Jesus led a pretty straightforward kind of life.'

Troy wouldn't have thought Luke could hold such a thought, let alone express it. Wondered if the priest had been reviewing things in recent months like he'd been doing himself, if they were turning into different men. If those men would still like each other.

He said, ‘So you've agreed to keep quiet? For the good of the Church?'

‘Yeah, and you have too.' The promise. ‘I wanted to tell someone.'

‘It's okay.'

‘I wanted you to know. It's . . . You know the line in the Bible: “He died in a good old age, full of days, riches and honours.” One out of three would have been nice.'

‘Luke—'

‘I'm tired, son. You'd better go now.'

‘Before you tell me any other secrets?'

‘Just bugger off.'

He didn't mean it, looked over Troy's shoulder and came alive, pushing himself up again on the pillows. Troy turned around. Anna was standing there smiling at them, her teeth white against her dark skin, the light glinting off two silver rings in her left ear. She was just over average height, her figure curvy, more so than when she'd left him. That'd be Mary's cooking. One hand was clasping the strap of a bag she had over her shoulder, in a characteristic pose that made him grin idiotically. As she stepped forwards, he remembered that he loved her. It was probably not wise, but he was certain. He put his arms around her and she responded, he felt the pressure of one of her hands on his back, and it was as intense as any physical connection they'd ever had. Then it was gone and she moved around him to the bed and leaned over Luke, greeting him too.

She was wearing jeans and he looked at them until she straightened up. Then he watched Luke and her while they talked. It went on for a long time and there were tears. Luke told her he was innocent of the allegations against him but didn't go into details. He asked her a lot of questions about Matt.

After twenty minutes, Luke started to fade. The colour left his face and his eyelids began to flicker, then they closed. It was as though when Anna had arrived some power source had been switched on and was now running down.

She said, ‘We'd better leave.'

‘Stay.'

‘I'm a nurse, all right? I'll come back tomorrow.'

She looked around the room as though seeing its details for the first time, peered at the drip just above her shoulder. Then she patted Luke's hand and he murmured something.

‘What was that?' she asked.

‘He said “Happy”,' said Troy, putting an arm around her. She pushed against him, rubbing her forehead on the side of his chest. ‘Let's go for a walk.'

*

In the warm streets they wandered the hills of Paddington, peering through terrace windows into rooms furnished with books and paintings and old wooden furniture that gleamed as it grew dark and lights were turned on. Not all the rooms were furnished like this, but a lot of them were. Troy wondered if you could live in a room like that and do the job he did. Probably you couldn't.

Anna asked him about work. They'd rarely talked about this since he joined Homicide. The superintendent who'd hired him had said it was important not to take the job home with you, and Troy had accepted this. Anna, who had never shown any interest in hearing about violence or death, had been happy when his work was no longer a conversational topic. But maybe that was a mistake and you have to talk about things that matter to you. He began to tell her about the Pearson case and she seemed interested, so he went on.

They reached the top of a steep road and he led Anna down towards the industrial area, vaguely hoping they might see the pigeons, but it was too late. He told her about the caravan on the roof of the old warehouse and she laughed in a way he remembered. Everything about her was both familiar and new.

On the climb back towards Oxford Street she said, ‘I thought about you all the time.'

‘That's good.'

‘No. You're supposed to say, “I thought about you all the time too.'' '

He said it, and she told him a little more conviction would be appreciated.

‘Well,' he said, ‘you've been gone almost five months.'

He wasn't going to lie to her. He didn't think he was going to hide anything, either. In the past he'd kept things back because she was unwell, but he knew if they were to have a future together he couldn't do that anymore.

‘Four months isn't that long,' she said.

‘You said our marriage was over.'

‘That was then.'

‘Last time I was in Brisbane I asked how you felt,' he said gently, ‘if you'd changed your mind. You didn't say you had.'

‘I didn't say I hadn't. I'm sorry, Nick, I still wanted to punish you.' He said nothing. ‘I'm really sorry. For a long time I just blamed you. But Mum sat me down and showed me I was to blame. Partly.'

‘Mary?' he said.

This was all surprising.

‘Do you accept my apology?'

‘Yes. And I apologise too.'

‘You already have.'

He breathed in the night's damp air. The smell of rotting vegetation came from somewhere, a reminder. ‘I'm afraid I saw someone,' he said. ‘Not for very long. It was nothing. I thought you weren't coming back.'

She stopped walking and looked at him, clasping her bag strap tightly. Her face changed, and suddenly she looked desolate. He wished he hadn't told her.

‘You mean you had an affair?'

‘It was only one night. No one you know.'

‘What about Matt? What about us?'

‘I waited a long time.'

She was crying. ‘You mean it was recent? Tell me it's over, Nick.'

Since yesterday he'd been wondering if someone, maybe McIver, had told her about Conti. The timing of her return prompted the question. Now, looking at the shock in her, he saw it was just a coincidence.

‘It is, it will be. I promise.'

‘My God. I don't believe this.' She began to walk again, up the hill. He went to touch her and she turned around and cried, ‘Stay away from me! I'm going back to Brisbane.'

He took her arm and she flinched, looking at him with fear, but he didn't care anymore.

‘You do what you want,' he said slowly. ‘I love you. Tomorrow I'm telling her it's over. But this is our last chance. Come back now or stay away forever.'

She was just staring at his hand on her arm, and he wasn't even sure she'd heard him. He resisted the urge to say it again. He let go and she ran, stumbling a bit further up the hill on the uneven footpath, so that he wanted to go help her, but she recovered and walked away out of sight, into the darkness.

His heart hurt but not as much as he expected. He felt all right with what he'd done, could live with it. Being a detective was all about patience, working over time to reach a conclusion. You learned to stand back from the moment, and maybe he had learned that lesson too well. But now he was in the moment, and he hoped he'd forced her to be there too. There was a need to set things in motion again, wherever it might lead them.

Conti rang later in the night, back from Lismore.

‘Hello stranger,' she said. ‘Long time no speak. What's happening?'

He jumped into it, told her about Anna's return, feeling stupid. Explained he didn't know what was happening, but needed to keep himself free. Hoped when things were clearer—

She said, ‘This just keeps getting better, doesn't it?'

‘What? It's just—'

‘Too many surprises for a simple girl. It's over.'

He pushed the relief down, looking for some sadness. But there was hardly any.

‘It doesn't—'

‘It was one night.'

‘I'm not a one-night person,' he said.

‘Nor me. But that's what it was.'

‘If you say so.'

‘A night that never happened. I've got to work with you in twelve hours. This never happened.'

‘Okay,' he said.

‘We're agreed on this?'

He managed to wait two seconds before saying, ‘Yes.'

‘Fuck you, Nick.'

Thirty-eight

2 April

Cancer is the devil's sickness, it comes from the mutation of cells for no reason known to medical science most of the time. It is pure evil.

6 April

The devil is at work in the ward, sometimes I will go into a room and know he has just been in there. I know it from the pain in the faces of the patient and the horror in their loved ones. People don't know what goes on there. Afterwards, the living just want to forget. They want to forget it will happen to them in many cases because the sickness is genetic. When the devil comes back for them in later years, do they feel sorry? They must panic. I see panic everywhere. My colleagues deal with this with jokes and alcohol and drugs.

13 April

Mrs Collor has bowel cancer. She resided in an old place in Darlinghurst all alone they said when they found her it was disgusting. It is too late to stop so it is just her and the pain. Every night after tea she asks me to do something, today she was screaming I Want To Die. I tried to talk to Sara about this but she just doesn't want to know. Some of them do it too, I'm sure but they will never tell you. They will not talk about it. Pain is evil.

15 April

Mrs Collor again at it tonight, the patients on either side complaining, but I gave them something to sleep. Mrs C looked me in the eyes and asked me to help her die. I said no, we can't do that here. Really you cannot take the risk she might say something before it happens. But I look into her eyes and see myself there, I cannot believe the others ignore her world of hurt. It will happen soon. The devil is in her anyone can see that who looks. People do not understand with new technology the devil has found new places. But it is our duty still to fight him. To fight evil.