Bright Air (31 page)

I said, ‘So your dealer wouldn’t have been able to breed them?’

‘Oh, that wasn’t the problem. I’m sure he could have created
conditions favourable to faster breeding. No, the problem was what would happen when he discovered that he had the world’s sole supply of a creature with a built-in immortality gene. A rare insect is one thing, but this … Its value would have been beyond anything.

‘Did Luce not tell you about Arne Naess’s eight principles of deep ecology, the principles that must underlie any part that we may have in sustainable life on this planet?’

‘I think she did mention …’

He shook his head. Bad student. ‘The fifth principle states that the flourishing of both human and non-human life requires a substantial decrease of human population. As I said, we are a plague, and our population is out of control. And we don’t want to die. Imagine the discovery of the immortality gene, and its transfer to the human genome. It would be a catastrophe, unimaginable …’

He let that sink in for a moment, then he murmured, ‘That’s why the phasmids had to die.’ And then, almost a whisper, ‘That’s why Luce had to die.’

‘What?’

‘What if she killed the rats? What if she and the phasmids survived out there, and she was rescued? What if she came back and told the world? We simply couldn’t risk it.’

‘So …’ I hesitated, knowing that we’d finally reached the cusp, the moment of truth, and that the next seconds would change our lives forever. ‘So, what did you do?’

‘On the fifth day, when the search had moved far out to sea, I sent Damien and Curtis out to the Pyramid in a Zodiac from my friend’s yacht. Owen didn’t have the stomach for it. I must say I didn’t blame him. They found her eventually.’

‘She was alive?’

He nodded. ‘Weak, but alive.’

‘What did they do?’

He gazed sombrely at me. ‘I’m sorry, Josh.’

The room erupted in noise. Through a singing in my ears I heard Anna wailing, and another voice, my own, screaming,
You bastards! You fucking bastards! She was pregnant!
and Marcus’s startled face as I lunged for him and tried to smash my fist into his face. We tumbled and fell, struggling, in a heap on the floor. At some point the singing in my ears faded, and I found myself sitting astride Marcus, his terrified face staring up at me. I got off him and staggered to my feet. My right hand felt as if I’d broken a bone.

Anna went and crouched over him.

‘Have I killed him?’ I panted.

‘No, of course not.’

I heard him groan as she helped him sit upright.

‘Damien,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get Damien.’

‘I’ll come too.’ She came running after me, leaving Marcus sprawled against the legs of his throne.

We ran blindly out into the night, got into the car, and somehow manoeuvred the winding lanes at speed, out onto the main road. At some point, I’m not sure where, we stopped at traffic lights, and I said, ‘Fuck. What if Marcus makes a run for it?’

We weren’t really thinking clearly, adrenaline buzzing wildly. Anna said, ‘I’ll go back, make sure he doesn’t.’

‘I’ll turn around.’

‘No, there’s a cab over there. You go on. Should we call the police?’

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

She jumped out of the car, the lights turned green, I took off and I saw the cab driving away without her. But all I could think about was getting to Damien.

As I crossed the Harbour Bridge I looked up at the glittering ramparts around Circular Quay, wondering if Damien was sitting up there on one of those bright ledges with his newly pregnant wife, sipping champagne. And I had a blinding image of myself bursting in on them, and hurling him off, out into the night.

I parked some way beyond his entrance and walked back, breathing deeply, trying to calm myself, and reached the glass doors just behind two couples, chatting cheerfully together. One of the men spoke loudly into the speaker, and I heard Damien’s name. Then the door clicked open and I was following them in. They oohed and aahed in the lobby just as Mary and I had done. Another pale figure was plying through the water in the pool overhead. I went on to the lift and pressed the button, and they all piled in behind me.

I noticed that they were eyeing me dubiously as they got into the lift, and I supposed I must look a bit dishevelled. I said, sounding unnaturally jolly, ‘Twenty-eight, yes? Damien and …’ I suddenly couldn’t remember her name. My head was spinning.

‘Lauren, yes,’ the one who’d spoken into the entry phone said. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

I wiped a hand through my hair and tucked the half of my shirt that had come out back into my trousers. ‘Yes, yes, fine.’ The lift was accelerating skyward.

‘Quite a surprise!’ I said. They looked blank. ‘About the baby?’

‘Baby? What baby?’

‘Well—Lauren’s baby.’

The women both squealed. ‘Lauren’s pregnant? So that’s what this is all about! She sounded so mysterious on the phone!’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘You didn’t know? I’ve spoiled the surprise. Don’t let on, will you?’

The lift sighed to a halt and everyone spilled out to greet the waiting Lauren, who kissed them all in turn and then stared at me with a puzzled half-smile.

‘Josh?’

‘Hi, Lauren,’ I said, conscious of the others waiting to see how this was going to go. ‘I need to have a word with Damien. It’s extremely urgent.’

‘Well … but he’s not here. Someone called, his friend. He needed Damien urgently too. He left fifteen minutes ago. Is this the same thing? What on earth is going on?’

‘Which friend was that, Lauren?’ I said, and I realised that the tone of my voice was alarming her.

‘Marcus, Marcus Fenn. Damien said he had to go over there right away, to help him, some kind of emergency. What—’ But I had turned away and was thumping the lift button. The doors slid open and I jumped in.

Something had happened on the Harbour Bridge, an accident of some kind, and all the northbound traffic was being forced into one single lane. I swore and beat my hand in frustration on the wheel and the minutes ticked by as we slowly edged forward. I tried phoning Anna but got only her answering service. At last I was past the obstacle and speeding on
through North Sydney towards Castlecrag. When I finally turned down into The Citadel I saw a small BMW standing outside Marcus’s house. I pulled up beyond it and as I flung open my door I heard a woman’s scream. I ran to the top of the entrance drive and saw the front door of the house crash open and Anna come tumbling out, silhouetted against the light. A second figure followed—Damien, but a Damien possessed, roaring like an enraged animal. He brought her down with a flying tackle and I leaped towards them, lost my footing on the slippery moss, and crashed on top of them. We struggled for a moment, then Damien disentangled himself and stumbled upright. For a second he stared down at me, eyes wild, open mouth gasping for breath, then turned and ran back into the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

Anna was lying beside me on the wet stone, choking. When I put an arm around her and tried to get her upright I felt her whole body racked by convulsive sobs. I held her as they slowly subsided. She was trying to swallow, a hand clutched at her throat, her face distorted in the shadowy light.

‘Oh … Josh!’ she finally managed. ‘He tried … to kill me … his hands round my throat … and all the time saying he was sorry …’

She turned her face against my chest and began to sob again. I stroked her head, soothing her like a baby.

Finally she pulled away and said, more collected now, her voice hoarse, ‘I couldn’t get a taxi and decided to walk back, but then I got lost in the winding streets … when I finally got here the front door was still open and I went inside. In the back room Marcus was sitting in his chair, Damien crouching beside him. As soon as our eyes met I saw that he knew that Marcus had told us what they’d done. I started to back away, and he called after me to stay, softly, like not to scare me, but
then getting angry. I turned and ran. He caught me in the living room … We fell, his hands round my neck, and he was shaking me and choking me, telling me he was sorry he had to do this. There was an empty bottle by my hand. I hit Damien with it and he looked so surprised and annoyed, rubbing his head, and I managed to get up again and run for the door …’

‘Can you stand up? I’m going to call the police and an ambulance for you.’

‘Josh!’ She gripped my arm. ‘I don’t know if Marcus was alive. He was slumped in the chair—like he was dead.’

I tried to think. Had I killed him? I said, ‘You go and wait in the car and I’ll go round to the terrace to try and see.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

She insisted, and we found the narrow path that led down the side of the house towards the rear. We had to push our way through wet branches and several times lost our footing, but eventually we found ourselves on the edge of the terrace. Light spilled out onto the paved surface through the French windows. We walked over and looked in. There was Marcus, just as Anna had said, slumped in his throne, his pale face tipped forward and to one side, as if asleep. He was no longer wearing the lab coat, and the left arm of his shirt was rolled up above the elbow.

And there, too, was Damien, seated in the armchair at his side, crouching forward as if trying to fix something that I couldn’t make out. He raised his head and saw us, and for a moment our eyes met and he gave us what appeared to be a sad smile. I could see now what he’d been doing; his left sleeve was rolled up too, and he was pressing the needle of a syringe into his forearm.

I grabbed the door handle and tried to open it, but it was locked and of a heavy, solid construction. I rattled and banged it and called to him to stop, but he took no notice. We watched
helplessly as he went on with what he was doing. I got out my phone and rang for help, then I stepped back and charged with my shoulder. The door burst inward, its glass panels shattering all over the floor as I stumbled in. Anna followed me, and I told her to go and open the front door to meet the ambulance.

I squatted beside Damien, who was staring at the broken door with eyes bright with tears, preoccupied with some internal experience I couldn’t share. The syringe was empty, and I had no idea what he had taken. I asked him, but he just closed his eyes and smiled. His face had become flushed, and there was a purple bruise forming on the side of his forehead where Anna had hit him. Then something changed. His face darkened and took on a glow of sweat, and he whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Josh. Really.’

By the time the ambulance arrived I’d found the bottle on the floor beside Marcus, with his hand-printed label:
Digitalis
(
Thevetia peruviana
). I gave it to the medics as they went to work on Damien. Marcus, it seemed, was already dead.

Anna drew me aside as we stood watching them. ‘What are we going to say, Josh?’

We were discussing this in whispers when the first cops arrived, two uniformed men who took us out to the front room. One sat with us, taking down names and addresses, while the other spoke to the ambos. Then plainclothes police came in, and eventually Detective Sergeant Maddox.

I wondered afterwards what he must have made of the scene when he first walked in. Apart from the bodies and the smashed French windows and the deranged-looking witnesses, the whole place had an air of chaos, as if some shocking event, an earthquake perhaps, had given it a violent shake. Perhaps
he was used to it, for he moved about very calmly, directing the others, then took me aside from Anna, cautioned me, and asked me what had happened. He fixed me with that evangelical eye and told me that he wanted the truth.

Well, yes. We all say we want that. Anna and I had spent the past weeks searching for it, but now we’d found it I wasn’t sure it was something we could entirely share. I imagined myself standing up in the Coroner’s Court and explaining that the distinguished ecologist Marcus Fenn, who had once climbed a mountain with the great Arne Naess, had decided that, in order to save the planet, one of his students had to be killed. And had then persuaded his other students to carry it out. I imagined the other people in that courtroom—Damien’s wife Lauren, Owen’s wife Suzi, Curtis’s parents—listening to me explain how their sadly missed husband or son was in fact a murderer. I imagined the families that would be fractured by those words. Bob Kelso would be in trouble, and the others would have to re-evaluate their whole lives. Assuming they believed us.

So I told him the simplified version of the truth that Anna and I had hurriedly decided on. We had returned from Lord Howe Island without finding any definite new facts, but were still troubled by the official account. When we visited Marcus that evening to discuss it with him again, we found him working in his laboratory. He seemed overwrought, and probably drunk. He became highly emotional as we talked about the deaths of Luce, and Curtis and Owen, and he said that he was responsible for them. At one point he became so agitated that I had to physically restrain him. Much of what he said was confusing, but he seemed to imply that Damien knew the truth about Luce’s death. We decided to leave and talk to Damien about this. On the way we became worried that Marcus might harm himself, and Anna decided to return to keep an eye on things.
However, in the meantime Marcus had apparently phoned Damien, who had set off for Castlecrag before I arrived at his apartment in The Rocks. By the time Anna got back to Marcus’s house, Damien was there, and Marcus appeared unconscious. Damien became very emotional, physically attacking Anna and driving her out of the house as I arrived. He bolted the door, and when we eventually went around to the back of the house, we saw him inject himself, and tried to stop him.

No eggs, no phasmids, no Balls Pyramid.

Maddox asked me to enlarge on certain parts of this account, then went away and took Anna through the same process. There was a spell where he left us in order to direct a photographer and others securing the scene, and then we were taken to the police station at Chatswood. There we were examined by a doctor and a forensic officer, and our clothes were removed. Dressed in overalls, we were separately given cups of tea and biscuits, then formally interviewed on film by Maddox and another detective.