Bright Air (17 page)

She frowned over her shoulder. ‘Okay …’

I got the empty table and ordered a bottle of wine while I waited. By the time she joined me my first glass was drunk, and I felt slightly better. She was still frowning.

‘Take a seat,’ I said, pouring the wine. ‘You look as if you need this. What’s the matter?’

She slumped down and handed me half a dozen pages. ‘That’s the print-out.’

While she sipped at her wine I scanned the pages. On them were printed lines of letters and digits, row after row. A typical sequence of lines ran:

2509 1105 57J WF 06663 04432 055
2509 1443 57J WF 06712 05512 072
2609 0906 57J WF 06584 04470 046

There were hundreds of lines like that, all following the same format with slight variations to the digits.

‘Is it some sort of computer code?’

‘No idea. My expert hasn’t a clue.’ Anna sounded flat. After going to so much trouble to get the notebook, this was obviously a major disappointment.

‘You were expecting the names of the guilty parties,’ I said. ‘But I told you before, things like that only happen in books. This could be data on anything—tides, weather, bird migrations, buried treasure …’

‘Buried treasure?’

‘I’m joking.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘I’m sorry, but what could we realistically have expected?’

A harrowing account of the breakdown of a wonderful young woman after she was heartlessly ditched by a slimebag called Josh Ambler, I thought. I couldn’t tell Anna how very relieved I was to see those meaningless data strings.

‘So what now?’ I saw the waiter approaching. ‘Let’s order.’

We picked the day’s pasta special, then Anna said, ‘I suppose you had lots of holidays when you were in London.’

‘Sure, cheap flights everywhere—St Petersburg, Istanbul, New York. Lots of places. How about you?’

‘I haven’t had a holiday in three years.’

‘Really? You must need a break.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. Some island getaway.’

‘Aha,’ I said, suddenly cautious. ‘Sounds interesting. Would you go on your own?’

‘It’d be more fun if I could persuade somebody else to come along. Even if I haven’t got big lips and a yellow bikini.’

‘You could always get that—the bikini, I mean.’

‘And I might even do a bit of climbing, if I had a partner.’

‘That’s possible. No breaking and entering, though.’

‘Agreed.’

‘I don’t think Damien would approve.’

‘Well, I wasn’t planning on inviting him.’

‘You know, I always wondered about that night at the Hibernian Hotel. How did it turn out for you?’

She looked impassively at me. ‘Josh, there are some questions a gentleman doesn’t ask.’

When I got home after dropping Anna in Blacktown, Mary met me with a happy smile.

‘Your friend Damien rang up half an hour ago. Such a charming young man. We had a good chat.’

‘That’s nice. I wonder why he didn’t ring my mobile.’

‘No, it was me he principally wanted to talk to.’ Mary sounded quite flirtatious.

‘Really? What about?’

‘He and his wife wanted to invite us both to dinner, and he was worried I might not be able to take an evening off from the hotel.’

‘Good point.’

‘But I said it wasn’t a problem. We’re going tomorrow, is that all right with you?’

‘Well, yes, fine.’

The next evening I realised I didn’t know where Damien lived, and asked Mary if he’d given her his home address. She said yes and named a new apartment tower in The Rocks, overlooking Circular Quay. I whistled. ‘Prime real estate.’

‘It does sound rather grand, doesn’t it? On the twenty-eighth floor.’

We drove down there, and I found a parking meter not far from the address. It was a spare, elegant tower with tiers of curved balconies disappearing up into the night sky. At the glass doors I rang the number Damien had provided and his voice gave a tinny but affable welcome. He buzzed us in, and the door clicked open. Inside we gazed up in awe at the scale of the lobby, three storeys of space with bridges and balconies supported on slender creamy concrete columns, more like the foyer of a theatre or art gallery than a block of flats. A glass swimming pool was cantilevered out above our heads, so that we could look up at the pale belly of a figure stroking through the green water, and on another level, beyond a small herd of Barcelona chairs, other residents worked resolutely on treadmills and exercise bikes.

We found the lifts and went up to the twenty-eighth floor, where Damien was waiting for us, freshly showered and scented. He gave Mary a hug and we shook hands, and he led the way across the lobby to his open front door. Inside we passed through a hallway and into his living room. The
furniture was stylish muted browns and creams, and the wall beyond was floor to ceiling glass, through which the lights of other towers glittered against the dark.

‘Pretty stunning apartment, Damien,’ I said.

‘Seidler,’ he murmured, unable to suppress the little smile of pride. ‘One of his last.’ He cocked his head to a side door. ‘Darling?’

Lauren appeared. She was pretty stunning too, a svelte brunette with shrewd eyes and an ironic smile. She kissed us in turn, saying how wonderful it was to meet us finally, Damien having told her so much about us. Mary was clearly captivated. She handed over some chocolates and asked if the evening was meant to celebrate something, perhaps the new flat.

Lauren said, ‘Oh no, we’ve been here six months now.’ Then she turned to Damien and said, ‘Shall I?’

He smiled, shrugged, uncharacteristically sheepish, and she said to us, ‘There is something to celebrate, though. I’m pregnant—we’ve just found out.’ She gave a laugh. ‘We haven’t told anyone yet. You’re the first.’ She went to him, and he put a protective arm around her shoulders, grinning broadly.

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘Just as well we brought champagne.’ I shook Damien’s hand again and handed him the bottle.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t,’ Lauren giggled. ‘I’ll give up after tonight.’ She looked flushed and excited, and it was impossible not to be touched. ‘I’m sorry, I was going to be so cool about this and not say a word, but the first people we meet I blurt it out. We’ve been trying for a while.’

Mary said, ‘When is it due?’

‘The beginning of May.’ We sat on beautiful Italian leather while Damien brought flutes of champagne, and we drank a toast to the baby. Mary was full of questions. Would Lauren give up work? Certainly not. Were there conveniently available
grandparents for baby minding? Lauren raised an incredulous eyebrow and spoke of a nanny agency. She offered to show Mary the rest of the flat, and Damien and I took our glasses out onto the balcony.

We were about a hundred metres off the ground, a couple of pitches up Frenchmans Cap, and gravity yawed at me through the glass balcony front. We were in a canyon of towers, between which we could make out a section of the Harbour Bridge, the lights of a harbour ferry. These peaks glittered with light, and were inhabited not by grey ternlets but by migrating tourists and mum-and-dad investors. Damien leaned on the rail and waved at another couple on a balcony facing us across the dark void. They waved back.

‘How was Suzi?’ he asked.

‘About as expected, I guess. Don’t worry, I behaved.’

He smiled, then reached into his pocket for his wallet, and plucked out a business card, which he handed across to me. ‘Friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Merchant bank.’ He grinned. ‘Thought that would appeal to you. Looking for bright guys like you. If you’re interested, give him a ring. He’s a good bloke. You’ll like him.’

I tapped the card with a finger. ‘Hm, thanks, Damien.’ I pocketed it and said, ‘I met an old girlfriend of yours the other day.’

‘Really? Who was that?’

‘Sophie Kalajzich.’

He couldn’t place her at first, then I saw it register. ‘You saw Sophie Kalajzich?’

‘Yep. She’s a model now, remembers you fondly—actually asked me to give you her number, but I guess you won’t be needing that.’

He studied me carefully. ‘Why did you want to speak to her?’

‘I had a bit of a brainstorm, mad idea probably. Looking back over the old newspaper cuttings about Luce’s accident, I came across a report that one of those yachts that called in to Lord Howe while you were there had been involved in smuggling rare birds’ eggs.’

His face froze for a brief moment, then he very slowly shook his head. ‘Birds’ eggs.’

‘Yes. Quite a coincidence, I thought. So I wondered if someone on the island had been helping this smuggler, and I thought about the Kelsos, who seemed to be involved in everything. Sophie worked for them for six months, so I thought she might have an idea.’

‘And did she?’

‘No.’

Damien just stared at me for a bit, then said, ‘Josh, you’ve obviously got too much time on your hands. You need something to occupy your mind again.’

I grinned. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

And he probably was, but I couldn’t get this odd coincidence out of my mind, and the following day I decided there was only one sensible way to move forward. I rang Kings Cross police station, and eventually got put through to Glenn Maddox, now a detective sergeant. I could tell he was intrigued when I introduced myself, and he suggested we meet in a café in Victoria Road, not far away. I recognised him from a photo in the press clippings Anna had copied for me. He was short and wiry, aged about fifty, with the air of someone who’d seen everything but was still game for one or two more rounds. His face was lined, with the trace of a scar on his left cheek, eyes steady, grizzled hair going grey around
the ears, and his crumpled suit looked as if it had spent too long slouched in courtrooms and seedy bars. It had a bulge under the left arm that I guessed was his gun. He was in fact exactly how I might have imagined an experienced cop from Homicide to be.

We shook hands and he said, ‘So, you’re the boyfriend.’

‘That’s right. I just got back, trying to catch up, and I only just learned that you tried to contact me at the time. I’m afraid my father had the wrong address for me in London.’

‘Well, it didn’t seem relevant to my inquiries. Should it have been?’

‘No.’

‘So how can I help you?’

‘A friend of mine had collected newspaper clippings about the accident, and when I was reading them I happened to notice another item on one of the pages.’ I took my photocopy of the article from my bag and showed it to him.

He read it. ‘So?’

‘Well …’ I was beginning to feel a bit stupid, playing the amateur sleuth, doing exactly what I’d accused Anna of. ‘Luce and the others were studying rare birds and their eggs on Lord Howe, and this boat had just returned from there. It seemed a pretty big coincidence. I wondered if Luce might have … got wind of what they were doing.’

‘And the smugglers decided to shut her up by pushing her off the cliff?’ The deadpan way he said it made the notion sound all the more ludicrous, an episode from some adventure of the Famous Five.

‘Something like that.’

He sipped his cappuccino, getting chocolate foam on his upper lip. He licked it, then said, ‘Yes, I noticed that report too. The boat had been at Lord Howe when Lucy was there,
and it’s even possible she met them. Unfortunately the eggs that were found on board didn’t come from there—they were endangered cockatoo eggs, Major Mitchell and gang-gang cockatoos that aren’t found on Lord Howe Island. They’d been bought from a dealer in Sydney by an American crew member on board the yacht. The tip-off probably came from a rival dealer. The American was fined twenty thousand dollars, the dealer got three months.’

‘Oh.’ At least I didn’t feel quite so stupid, seeing he’d also been interested enough to investigate. ‘So there was no connection to Luce’s disappearance?’

‘Not that I could see. You’re trying to find some other explanation for the accident?’

‘Just trying to come to terms with it, I guess.’

‘Is that a copy of my report to the coroner in your bag, by any chance?’

I coloured. ‘Yes, it is actually.’

‘Sounds like you’re taking this pretty seriously. Let me guess, you’re even wondering if she isn’t dead at all, that maybe the yachties took her off the island somehow and spirited her away.’

I gaped at him. ‘How did you know that?’ It was barely more than a fantasy that I’d allowed to take shape somewhere at the back of my mind, creeping out in the bleakest hours of the dark night to tantalise and comfort me.

‘You said just now “Luce’s disappearance”, not her death.’

‘Did I?’ Just like Anna.

‘Missing persons are like that. No body, no way to be absolutely certain what happened. People hang on to hope long after I know there is none. And you’re feeling guilty, right? You weren’t there. You never said goodbye.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Just like Mum, I thought. One day I left her
sleeping in the hospital bed, and the next she wasn’t there any more. She’d vanished. And I couldn’t even cry properly because all I felt was bitter guilt. I should have done more. I could have been a better son for her.

‘Believe me, I’ve seen every kind of pain and grief. I’ve experienced a good many of them myself, too. And I know that there’s only one person who can help you.’

‘Really? Who’s that?’ I thought he was going to recommend a psychiatrist or a private detective or something.

He held me with that steady gaze and said, ‘The Lord Jesus Christ.’

‘Oh …’ I was stunned into silence for a moment, then muttered, ‘Um, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that.’

‘Well, when you are, you contact me.’ He took a card from his pocket and passed it to me. There was a man’s name and phone number beside a cross. ‘I’ll introduce you to this man, or you can get in touch with him direct. He will lead you to the Lord, and you won’t look back. Trust me, I know.’

I had been about to tell him about Owen’s confession to Anna, but now I stared dumbly at the card and said nothing.

‘And I’ll give you something else to put in that bag of yours, son. Something that’ll help you a lot more than my report to the coroner.’ He reached into his jacket, to the bulge that I’d noticed, and drew out not his service Glock but a copy of the New Testament, which he handed to me.