The White Tower (16 page)

‘Another kid died today. There's no question this time that he took his own life. I told Bill he needed a change, and he told me I was past my use-by date and wasting everybody's time. Maybe I should get sick again. Make the bastard feel bad.'

I didn't know what to say. Should I remind Brook that McCallum was a mate and he'd come round? Is that what I believed?

Instead I asked, ‘How did you get on with Bernard Howley?'

‘He thinks Fallon was in Australia some time in the new year.'

‘Jesus, why didn't he say so before?'

‘Claims he was protecting his wife.'

‘Did he tell you about the concert tickets?'

‘He says he didn't know Moira was selling them. He says there was one evening, shortly after Niall broke up with his girlfriend, when he was acting very strangely. Some family occasion which had been planned for weeks and Niall announced at the last minute that he couldn't go. He wouldn't give a reason. Bernard wonders now if he was meeting Fallon.'

‘Did Moira know?'

‘They weren't talking to each other much. He doesn't think Niall told her.'

‘He's guessing.'

Brook nodded. ‘Ready enough to jump to conclusions, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. I've got someone going through airline records.' He sighed. ‘I best be going. But be warned you two. No more back door visits.'

Sixteen

I heard the postman's motorbike and went outside to bring in the mail.

There was a letter from Bridget Connell, on notepaper with a floral border, a Woking postmark on the envelope. I held it to my nose. Faintest whiff of Bridget in silk shirt and catwalk trousers, Bridget caressing a huge flightless bird.

‘
I don't trust email any more
,' she began, in a loose, back-sloping hand. ‘
The world is full of malicious eyes and ears.
'

‘No kidding,' was Ivan's comment when I read the letter out to him that evening.

In response to Bridget's probing, one of the Heroes had said yes, he did recall an incident where Ferdia was being followed. It had been during a foraging expedition outside the Castle. The player doing the harassing had been Blacksnake. His threat had impressed the Hero, who claimed to have recalled it word for word.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Playing crusader turning out harder than you thought? Do-gooders end up with blood on their hands. Get out of Canberra. Take your doomed quest elsewhere.

The incident had stuck in the Hero's mind not because of the taunting—taunts were common—but because Blacksnake seemed out to get Niall, not Ferdia. He knew where Niall lived, and had the means to carry out his threat in person.

They'd gone back to the Castle, where Blacksnake had not been able to follow. The Hero had asked Ferdia if he was okay and Ferdia had said he was. He was safe from Blacksnake in the Castle, and outside it, Blacksnake didn't have the shield and layers of protection Heroes painstakingly acquired.

The Hero hadn't said anything about the incident. The MUD was getting pretty chaotic by then, and it wasn't long before he, like Bridget, decided to quit.

‘By the way,' Bridget added as a postscript, ‘thought it might interest you to know that Sorley Fallon was charged a few years back with hacking into British government computers. He got himself a hotshot lawyer and the charges were dropped.'

For a second, I suspected Brook of holding out on me. But if he'd known about the hacking charge, he wouldn't have missed the opportunity of pointing out the kind of shady character I'd got myself mixed up with.

I imagined Blacksnake watching over my shoulder while I roamed the streets of Belfast, trying to recall lines from
The Second Coming
. Were Heroes in the habit of quoting Yeats to one another?

. . .

That night I checked my incoming mail. There was a message from Fallon.

I take a dim view of folk messing about in my computer.

I hit reply and typed,
I agree. Absolutely. The dim view is mutual.

Ivan was standing behind me, reading over my shoulder.

‘He'll sick the Irish mafia onto us. He's mad. They're all completely mad.'

I recalled Fallon's tidiness, washing up the coffee mugs in the kitchen behind his shop. Colours of autumn, and the absence of even the ­suggestion of a customer. Ferdia's symbolic execution a tidy man's solution to a problem. I thought about the edges soft Irish voices could acquire, edges that could hide under sibilance as a knife can be hidden in a sofa cushion.

‘No he's not,' I said. ‘Just used to playing things at more than one remove. It's a hard habit to break. What we need to do is make him see that this time it's worth breaking.'

‘I'm not quite with you.'

‘Let's send him the diagram and see how he reacts.'

‘He won't.'

‘What have we got to lose?'

. . .

In the morning Moira said, ‘I could have confided in the police myself if that was what I wanted.'

I stood on her front porch, knowing it was too late for an apology. She did not invite me in, or ask me what I was carrying in the manilla envelope I held under my arm.

‘Bernard—the police have got Bernard to say that he thinks Fallon was here, in Canberra.'

‘You don't think that could be true?'

‘I'm sure it isn't. Niall would have told me.'

Moira's face was doughy, and the lines under her eyes cut deep into her cheeks, but there was a strength in her that had not been there before.

I'd brought a copy of the log from the hospital computer that had been used to access
Castle of Heroes
.

‘Could you do one last thing for me?' I said. ‘I need your help to begin a process of elimination.'

The business with the logs had turned out pretty much the way Brook had predicted. When he'd arrived at the hospital with a warrant, neither the CEO nor the solicitor had been able to prevent him taking the computer. But before the afternoon was over, a Supreme Court order had arrived instructing him to take it back. Brook and the ­constable assisting him had duly obliged, but not before they'd downloaded the logs for the two months before Niall Howley died.

Moira stood to attention facing me, willing me to leave.

‘Niall
did
tell you what was troubling him didn't he?'

‘Trouble. He used that word.'

‘Did he say what kind?'

‘No. I begged him. I begged to be allowed to help, take some of the burden, whatever it was. Was it political? I asked. He said not your ­ordinary kind. I reminded him about the tickets, how I'd sold them. I waited for him to tell me more, but I could see that in his mind he'd moved away. He said he should leave me and Dad in peace. He apologised, said he knew he'd been a disappointment as a son. I begged him to stay, said he could come and go as he pleased, I wouldn't bother him. He didn't say any more about moving. I counted it a small victory at the time.'

I took a deep breath and said, ‘I think Niall met someone at the Telstra Tower that night, but it wasn't Fallon, or anyone from Ireland. Whoever it was had been playing
Castle of Heroes
though, and causing trouble between Niall and Fallon. Fallon gave me the address of a computer at Monaro Hospital that was used to access the MUD. I've got a printout of the logs for April, May and June. I want you to look at the dates and times and tell me if you remember a time when Niall wasn't at work, when he couldn't have been using the hospital ­computer.'

Moira wrapped her hands around her elbows and stared at me.

‘He didn't kill himself?'

‘No.'

‘And his death isn't connected to that game?'

‘Perhaps, but not the way we thought.'

She faced this with an eerie calm.

I handed her the printout. She sat down where she was and began to read it.

After a few minutes, she said, ‘Saturday April twenty-sixth. That was Bernard's birthday dinner.'

‘Niall was there?'

‘Oh yes. His fiftieth. We went out for dinner. To Santa Lucia's.'

‘You were together at the restaurant,' I pointed to the time recorded on the log, ‘at nineteen past nine?'

‘Our booking was for seven-thirty. Bernard drove home. Not that any of us had much to drink.'

‘So Niall could not possibly have been at the hospital?'

‘I just told you. It was Bernard's birthday. Niall gave him a book on gardens of the world. We'd been planning it for weeks.'

Moira went back inside the house. She'd said nothing about a final payment, or, alternatively, about paying me to continue. I hoped that, when she'd had time to think about it, she'd be as keen to discover the identity of her son's murderer as I was. I watched the door close behind her and felt a pricking at my temples, as though I wore a coronet of chestnuts' spiny shells, as though
Castle of Heroes'
elusive double player had taken a further step out of the shadows.

. . .

I phoned Brook, who said he'd been talking to the hospital sysop, who'd reported someone dialling up the MUD from one of the radiotherapy department's computers.

‘What happened?'

‘Not a lot, it seems. The CEO passed the information on to Fenshaw. Fenshaw said he'd deal with it.'

‘When was this?'

‘Some time in April.'

‘And when it went on? When it didn't stop?'

‘The CEO said he spoke to Fenshaw several times.'

‘That's all he did?'

‘Apparently. He's worried now.'

‘A deer in flight?'

Brook said dryly, ‘More like a hyena.'

I laughed, then said, ‘Our man in Ireland.'

‘Yes?'

‘Do you know anything about a hacking charge? One that didn't hold up?'

‘No,' Brook said immediately.

If it was true, and the London officer who was supposed to be checking Fallon out hadn't passed it on to him, then the officer would pay. Brook wasn't in the mood to forgive sloppiness or oversight.

. . .

When I checked my email, there was a message from Blacksnake.

It's a small world Mrs Mahoney. I suggest you keep your head down.

At a sound behind me, I swung round, half expecting to see a stranger with a gun, or knife.

My hands were shaking, and I had to wait a few moments before I could shut the computer down.

I shouted at Fred when he appeared in the doorway, thinking it was probably him I'd heard. I made sure the front and back doors were locked, then went around the house locking all the windows.

. . .

When he read it, Ivan was inclined to dismiss Blacksnake's warning. Ivan took the view, based on previous experience of stalkers, that if Blacksnake wanted to remain invisible, he would.

‘He hasn't changed his identity. He's still Blacksnake,' I said.

‘If he suspects you're getting close to him, he will.'

His address was America online, which meant he could be coming from anywhere.

‘Niall told Bridget he thought the stalker was somebody he knew.'

‘Don't reply,' said Ivan. ‘Just resist the temptation.'

Ivan didn't believe that Blacksnake would show up on our doorstep, or climb through the bedroom window with an axe between his teeth. The point of being a net stalker, as he tired of explaining to me, was that you spooked your victim from a distance. I wasn't convinced.

Seventeen

In the middle of an October afternoon, Sydney was hot, summery, sticky. Cronulla beach was crowded. A lot of the crowd looked like they hadn't had to live through a winter anywhere. Brown, fit people jogged along the esplanade. In their shiny wetsuits, the surfers over the point hung nose to tail like live sardines.

Katya was so completely covered in melted icy pole and sand that you could have used her to scrape the paint off a wall. She banged her hands in the shallow puddle Peter kept filling up for her. Since I'd joined them, he'd fetched three full buckets from the sea. As fresh sea water splashed into the hole, Katya yelled and laughed. More sandy water splashed up and found its sticking place.

‘Mum! This boy came and wanted our bucket and Kat barked at him. Just like Fred!'

‘Oh dear,' I said. ‘I hope she didn't scare him.'

‘Nah. He just wanted a loan of it. He brought it back. Mum? Can we have fish and chips for tea?'

‘I don't see why not.'

I glanced across at Ivan, who'd arranged the umbrella so that Katya and her puddle had most of the shade. He'd curled himself around the edge of it, a cloth hat perched on top of his rough hair.

Eamonn had sent me several addresses. I'd picked Tanya Wishart's because she'd been the first to leave the radiotherapy unit. In fact, she'd left well before any of the others, before Niall Howley died. I'd just returned from seeing her.

Ivan looked at me and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

‘Thumbs down, I'm afraid.'

‘Mum, I'm thirsty and we've dranken all the fruit boxes.'

‘Drunk,' I said. ‘We've drunk.'

Ivan was taking care to keep his expression neutral.

‘Let's clean up Kat and put her in the stroller. I'll carry it over to the path. And see there?' I pointed to a kiosk. ‘Could you take her over there and buy some drinks? She'll like that.'

Peter grinned. ‘Pinch Mum.'

I watched the proud set of his shoulders for a few moments, then rolled over so I was lying next to Ivan.

‘Do you want to have a swim?'

‘Maybe. So the lady didn't talk.'

‘You should get wet at least.'

‘The tide's coming in.'

‘So?'

‘So the waves are getting bigger.'

‘Wimp. There's always the pool.'

‘What do you think, that the waves stop at the wall and say, I mustn't go there, there's a big fat Russian who only likes going in up to his knees?'

‘You should learn to surf. I'll make you.'

‘And you're making excuses.'

I sighed. ‘She was cagey as hell. She said the job here was a better one, and moving back to Sydney meant she'd be close to her parents who could help with the kids.'

‘Why'd she go to Canberra in the first place?'

‘Dunno. She's divorced. That's maybe got something to do with it. When I asked her why six of them had left at once, she said she didn't know.'

‘I've told you before Sandra. You've got to bluff. It's no good if this lady, or whoever, gets the idea that you know bugger all. People only tell you what they think you already know.'

I shaded my eyes and counted heads till I found Peter's. He was still in the queue outside the kiosk. Across the sandy paths, I felt his thin shoulders bent towards his sister, his cheerful taking on of duty.

. . .

Over fish and chips in Cronulla Street the weather held, our luck held as a family. Peter spread his capable good humour so that it flowed over and around us, mingling with the warmth and grit and tiredness of the evening.

Whatever Moira thought of the turns my investigation was taking, she'd been generous enough, and brave enough, to tell me she was willing to pay me to continue. I thanked her silently now for having given Peter and Katya a day at the beach.

We'd chosen an outside table, in a tourist street now practically deserted. Katya was nodding off in Ivan's arms. It had been a day of firsts for Kat. First swim in the sea, first icy pole, first chip, which she'd chewed contemplatively, then spat into Peter's outflung hand.

Ivan was taking ages to finish his last chip. At times like these I was made uncomfortably aware just how alike he and his daughter were.

He started forward, began to scrabble in his pockets, and pulled out a crumpled, greasy copy of the diagram. I was about to tell him I was too tired when he barked at me, ‘When did that girl leave the hospital?'

‘February sixteenth. Why?'

‘There it is!' Ivan jabbed with a chippy finger at the middle of the page.

‘There is what?'

‘Don't you see Sand? Sixteenth of February! It's not a bloody code at all!'

Ivan slapped the bit of paper down on a spill of tomato sauce and lemon juice, snatched it up again and began wiping at it madly with his handkerchief. ‘Knew the bastard wouldn't beat me!'

‘Are you saying that Niall wrote down the date Tanya Wishart left the hospital then hid it in his physiology book along with a sketch of the Castle? Why on earth would he do that?'

‘That's for you to find out babe! If it was me, I'd bloody well get back over there right now!'

. . .

Peter and Katya were asleep practically as soon as we got back to the hotel, Peter in front of a tape of
Cool Runnings
, which we'd promised him he could sit up and watch.

I poured Ivan and myself a nightcap out of the fridge.

‘BLS or gin?' I asked, holding up two cans.

Ivan was standing in front of the windows, staring down at the lights and the long flame of the oil refinery. When there was a break in the traffic, you could hear the sea.

‘Those cans cost an arm and a leg. And they taste like shit.'

‘I don't care. We're celebrating.'

I poured two glasses and handed Ivan his. ‘I've been thinking. Tomorrow morning early, I'll go back to Tanya. Catch her off her guard.'

Ivan made a face, but whether it was the gin or what I'd just said, I couldn't be sure. ‘Have to be out of here by ten. I dunno.' He half turned to me and winked. ‘S'pose I could stand another hour or two of beach bunnies.'

There was the traffic outside, the small click and ping of flip tops opening, the tinny smell of spirits from a can. Ivan had turned the sound right down on
Cool Runnings
, but left the picture on, something that normally annoyed me.

He lifted Peter into bed. To the sight of four Jamaican men flying down a snow chute in what looked like a huge old bomb casing, I took off his T-shirt and rubbed my hand through springy chest hair.

Ivan said, ‘You're drunk.'

‘If only. There's no gin in those things at all.'

‘You taste of gin,' he said.

I pushed him back onto the queen-sized bed, thinking that it was a shame to mess up such white, perfectly laundered sheets. It must be lack of imagination, but I could never feel the people who'd been in a hotel bed before me.

Ivan licked my nipples. I laughed and pushed his head down. ‘I had a shower.'

‘Dur,' said Ivan. But he did what I wanted. I knew by then he would.

I scrunched my bum into the impossible sheets, and Ivan's fingers slid in and found their place. And then his tongue.

I lay quietly, my mind straining for some hint of sea beneath the traffic, Ivan quiet beside me, his skin thick, pale, marked by a childhood spent out of the sun. A bodily quietness and waiting.

. . .

At seven-thirty the next morning, Tanya Wishart glared at me and said, ‘What are you doing here? I haven't got time to talk to you. I have to get to work, and Cheryl's sick.'

Tanya's eyes were huge and puffy, with great grey patches underneath, but I could see the woman she had been, fine-skinned, dark-haired, with a long stride.

A wail came from inside the flat, followed by a burst of coughing.

‘What about your parents?'

Tanya made a dismissive movement.

‘Can you take Cheryl with you?'

She stared at me and I felt the settling of exhaustion in behind her eyes.

‘You mean the hospital creche?' Her voice slowed, losing the anger it had no energy for. ‘They won't have her if she's sick.'

‘Maybe I can help.'

‘You? How can you help? I really need to take her to the doctor. Look, I've got to go. I told you everything yesterday. I've got nothing more to say.'

Tanya turned to go back inside and began to shut the door. I put out my hand to stop her.

She turned to me accusingly. ‘Last week Cheryl's brother was sick. I took time off then. Now she's got what he had. And we're short-staffed. That's why I'm working Sunday. I've got a full day of treatments.'

A small child's cry joined the baby's. I was left standing in the doorway.

I walked along a narrow hallway to a living room. I could hear Tanya talking softly in what I assumed was a bedroom on the other side. I found a phonebook and started looking up babysitting agencies.

Tanya came in carrying a red-faced baby who'd cried herself into exhaustion, with a boy of about four clinging onto her leg as though he was afraid she'd disappear.

I smiled at the boy and said hello. He was too miserable to return my greeting, or show any interest in who I was and why I'd suddenly appeared.

‘It'll work out,' I said to Tanya. ‘Just take things step by step. You have a meal break, don't you?'

‘Mum?'

‘Sweetie, you should get dressed for Justin's.'

‘But I need your help!'

‘No you don't.' Tanya bent down awkwardly, moving Cheryl to her left hip and caressing her son's splotchy face with the back of her hand. ‘You can manage. Your clothes are on the chair. Have a wash first, and then we'll get some breakfast.'

Gently, she disentangled the boy's fingers from her dressing gown. He scowled at her, but turned around obediently enough. I thought of Peter, glancing at my watch. It was not quite seven-forty.

Tanya stood up with a sigh.

‘When you get to work,' I said, ‘arrange for Cheryl to see a doctor and take her in your lunch break.'

‘But what'll I do with her till then?'

‘Your son's going to a friend's, is that right? What about asking if Cheryl can go too?'

‘I can't do that. It's good of them to have Billy, and it's inconvenient, really, on a Sunday. It's not as though Justin's mother's a friend of mine or anything. They just play together at preschool.'

Tanya nodded towards the phone book. ‘I've tried three of those already. All they've got is recorded messages. It's too early. And it's Sunday.'

‘I'll look after Cheryl.'

‘You?'

‘I know I'm a stranger, but if you got a babysitter out of the phone book, he or she would be a stranger too.'

‘I don't think—'

‘I've got two kids of my own. I know we haven't met in the most trusting of circumstances, but I'll take good care of Cheryl. I give you my word. I'll come with you. I'll walk up and down with her. I won't be far away.'

. . .

Within half an hour of walking Cheryl, I was extremely sick of the ­corridor outside the district hospital's radiotherapy department. Cheryl whimpered unceasingly, tossing her head from side to side. I sat on a bench and kept the stroller moving, first with my hand and then my foot. A man hobbled along the corridor on crutches, slowing as he came level with me. I frowned in case he was thinking of stopping for a chat. Tanya had left a bottle of juice and I gave Cheryl some of that, then, though I'd said I'd stay inside, I spent the next hour and a half ­circling the car park. A few minutes before it was time to meet, I was back outside the department's double sliding doors. Tanya was waiting. She began running as soon as she saw us.

I followed them to outpatients, gritting my teeth, aware that all Tanya wanted was to escape into her appointment with the doctor.

We sat next to each other on orange plastic chairs and I handed her the greasy, torn piece of paper with the numbers on it. I explained that I thought four of them, 1602, might represent the date she left Monaro Hospital.

Tanya stared at the figures over the top of Cheryl's head.

‘Who gave you my name and address?'

‘A friend of Niall Howley's. Not someone from radiotherapy.'

After what seemed a long time, she said, ‘If I tell you what I think, will you promise to leave me alone? Never come back?'

I nodded.

‘Those four numbers are the date I left. And the ones immediately before them, these ones here—' Tanya pointed to the sequence 20018000, ‘They're a date too, and a radiation dose.'

‘A radiation dose?'

‘Yes. Eight thousand rads is the treatment dose a radiotherapy patient received on that date. That is, January twentieth.'

‘What happened to the patient?'

‘Barry. His name was Barry. It was an overdose. He died,' Tanya said quickly, as though, now she'd begun, she wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.

‘What dose should Barry have received?'

‘Two hundred rads. Doses of over five hundred can be fatal.'

‘What happened?'

Instead of looking at me, Tanya played with the edge of Cheryl's blanket, rolling it in her fingers the way you'd roll a cigarette, then letting it fall loose again.

‘I loved working for Dr Fenshaw. He made everyone who worked for him feel special. We were part of, I don't know, it was like a grand adventure.'

‘What went wrong?'

‘The other radiotherapists were younger than me. None of them had kids. They didn't really understand, though some, like Niall, were sympathetic. Then, when I got pregnant with Cheryl—it wasn't a planned pregnancy.'

She fell silent. I felt cocooned with her in the waiting room, and prayed that the receptionist wouldn't call her daughter's name.