The Tower

by Michael Duffy

  Wu started to put his case again, and the others listened to him patiently. Kelly was being polite, and with the way she smiled and kept her eyes focused on him, Troy guessed the guy must have some clout. This went on for a few more minutes. The senior police would say a few words and then Wu would come back at them, still sounding completely confident that his view would prevail. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something. Troy wondered why Siegert didn’t just throw him out. There was work to be done, and he wanted to know why he’d been called in.

  The phone rang and Siegert snatched it up. He listened, grunting, and finally said something polite, his tone not entirely convincing. He replaced the phone heavily, as though it had just acquired a lot more weight.

  ‘Blayney,’ he said to Kelly. He turned to Wu. ‘You can reopen the site at 11 am. Except for the encampment down in the car park, and the two crime scenes. But no cameras anywhere.’ Looking at Troy now: ‘Mr Wu is making a documentary about his building.’

  Wu said, ‘Actually, they approached us. They already have a distribution deal with over a dozen countries. There is considerable international interest in the Morning Star Tower.’

  He stood up and looked at his watch. He had to flick his sleeve back to do so, and something about the gesture caused Siegert’s face to redden again. But Kelly was fine, she was shaking Wu’s hand and telling him to call them if he had any more problems. Wu pulled his hand from her grip, as though keen to leave the room. Siegert opened the door and said goodbye to Wu, who didn’t even look at Troy.

  Closing the door, Siegert looked at Kelly. ‘This is all wrong,’ he said angrily. ‘And how did he know about the handbag?’

  ‘It’s The Tower, Ron,’ she said. ‘That does make things different.’

  Siegert shook his head. ‘I know that. But this is a murder, we don’t have the victim’s ID, we have a killer loose on the site. And then these illegals—’

  ‘The killer’s probably long gone.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ he said loudly. But his anger was not directed at Kelly, not really, although Troy knew there was something between them, something that was not being said, maybe because he was there. Recovering himself, Siegert stared at Kelly. ‘This is not ideal, is it?’

  She eyed him and then, as though the word hurt her, said, ‘No.’

  He smiled grimly. The admission seemed to make him feel better. Nodding slowly, he opened the door again to signal they should leave.

  Kelly led Troy through the station, explaining that Vella had left earlier to prepare for his trip to Bourke. As they walked he realised she knew where she was going, which impressed him. Generally it took him a few days to find his way around a new place, his mind preoccupied by the early stages of an investigation. And this station had at least five levels.

  ‘Wu must have good contacts,’ he said.

  ‘He had a point,’ Kelly said over her shoulder. ‘It could have gone either way.’

  ‘Won’t make our job any easier.’

  ‘We just have to move on,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a sergeant, Brad Stone. He’s from Fraud.’

  ‘He’s got homicide experience?’

  ‘It’s the best I could get.’

  Troy was surprised. Things were bad in the squad, but he hadn’t realised they were like this.

  ‘You can’t,’ he said.

  She found an empty room and went in, sat down and yawned. He realised she hadn’t changed her clothes from last night, which meant she hadn’t slept either. Still, she looked a lot better than Siegert had.

  ‘He’s a good detective,’ she said gently, touching him on the arm for a moment. ‘We have to do the best with what we’ve got.’

  Putting a sergeant without specialist experience in charge of a homicide investigation was unprecedented, and he wondered why she wasn’t admitting this.

  ‘I could come back to work,’ he said. ‘Give him some advice.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said, but there was something in her tone that gave him hope.

  ‘But I’m fine, really. Look,’ he said, putting out his hand. ‘No shaking.’

  She smiled. ‘Are you really okay?’

  ‘Staying home will kill me. I want to be part of this.’

  She seemed to be considering it, but then, with a certain reluctance, said no again. He argued with her some more, keeping it under control but forceful. After a bit he said, ‘It’s got to be a breach of some procedure to put a detective with no homicide experience in charge of this. Especially with The Tower involved. Compared with that, allowing me back to work is a small thing.’

  He could see he’d touched a nerve. Finally she nodded her head.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘As long as you’re sure you’re fine. But you’ll still need to see the psychologist and do a stress shoot before you can have your gun back.’

  Troy felt a surge of exultation. Anna would not be happy. But this was where he needed to be.

  Kelly said, ‘So, let’s introduce you to Sergeant Stone.’

  When they reached the office they’d been given, there were two people in it. One was Ruth Moore, unloading a big cardboard box, her skin flushed from the exertion. When she noticed Kelly and Troy she stood up and turned to the other person there, a big man who was sitting at a computer screen. He jumped to his feet with relief.

  ‘Bloody e@gle.i,’ he said. ‘Never used it before.’

  Kelly smiled tightly. E@gle.i was the system that recorded all the information gathered during an investigation. She said, ‘Brad Stone, Nicholas Troy.’

  Troy shook hands, wondering why Stone hadn’t been at the meeting in Siegert’s office. The sergeant had red hair and freckles, and a suit tight across the shoulders. He seemed physical and impatient, unlike any Fraud detective Troy had met.

  ‘Welcome to Strike Force Tailwind,’ Stone said.

  ‘I need to go,’ Kelly said. Then to Stone, ‘I’m working on those bodies we talked about. My staff officer will call you.’

  He nodded and Kelly smiled at Troy and Ruth, then walked quickly out of the room. She hadn’t told Stone what Troy was doing there. It occurred to Troy that maybe he already knew. Kelly had known if he came in he would beg to be allowed to come back to work, and she had decided to say yes. She was very good.

  Stone said, ‘Try not to look so disappointed.’

  ‘What?’

  The big man was smiling broadly, making no attempt to hide his nervousness. ‘I know you’d rather have one of your own in charge. But you Murderers seem to’ve run out of sergeants.’

  Troy nodded. ‘You’ve done homicide work before?’

  Stone sat down and shifted in his seat. Troy wondered why he was so twitchy. ‘I’ve been on loan interstate,’ he said. ‘Can’t tell you the details, but it did involve homicide work.’

  ‘It wasn’t fraud?’

  ‘There was a bit of everything.’ Stone stared at him almost rudely. Then, softening, ‘I’m hoping you’ll play an important part in running this investigation.’

  Troy thought it was a strange thing to say. ‘I hope I will too. Who have we got?’

  ‘Four so far,’ Stone said. ‘They’re out at Villawood, reinterviewing the illegals.’

  Villawood was the city’s detention centre for people with no legal right to be in the country. Stone named the people who’d been allocated to them from Central and an adjacent station. It was crazy, Troy thought: he was the only experienced homicide detective there. And he was upset to hear one of the locals was Little.

  ‘We don’t want him,’ he said. ‘He’s racist, I don’t think he can deal impartially with Pakistanis.’

  Stone stared at him. ‘Any proof of this?’

  ‘Just something he said.’

  ‘What, one comment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I believe you have an Indian wife?’ Troy wondered who’d told him that. ‘Maybe you’re a bit sensitive in this area. I wouldn’t blame—’

  ‘No, that’s ok
ay,’ Troy said. ‘Blame me all you like. I am sensitive in this area, and it’s not just because my wife was born in India. I can’t work with Little.’

  He felt better having said it. Much better.

  Stone, suddenly looking tired, scratched his chest. ‘You’re prepared to come off the investigation if necessary?’

  ‘I’m saying you’ll have to choose between us,’ Troy said.

  As soon as he spoke, he wondered where the words had come from. It was not like him.

  Stone jumped to his feet again. ‘Give me to the end of the day on this, okay?’ Troy nodded and Stone made his way to the door. ‘Come with me. I want you to look at someone.’

  They went downstairs, and Stone explained that ballistics had confirmed McIver had been shot with his own gun, the one found in the car park. ‘Our prime suspect is Nawaz Khan; he tried to wipe his prints off the gun but we got a few partials.’

  Troy said, ‘But there’s no residue on him. And if Khan was the man upstairs, I would have recognised him. I saw all the illegals last night.’

  ‘Have another look,’ Stone said. ‘You never know your luck. We got another one too, late last night. He’d been outside, visiting a doctor. One of the uniformed guys on the boundary spotted him in Norfolk Street. He was upset because he’s got a brother among those we caught. He started emoting, and our blokes nabbed him.’

  ‘Nice work.’

  Stone grunted. ‘One of his mates says this guy likes to go to a brothel in Darlinghurst, so we paid them a visit. Turns out he’d gone there after the doctor. Our people found a Thai girl who’d been trafficked.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘The way we’re going, this investigation will solve half the crimes in Sydney.’

  Stone was scratching his chest again. He was not wearing a coat, and Troy saw that the holster beneath his arm was irritating him, as though he was unused to the feel of it. Yet it was an old holster, the edges of the leather rubbed smooth. Troy wondered why he was so uncomfortable with it.

  They reached the custody section of the station and Stone had a word with the sergeant, who took them into the cell area and opened the hole in one of the doors. Stone gestured with his thumb and Troy peered in.

  Khan was a lightly built man in his mid-thirties, wearing a paper smock and sitting on a bench staring at the wall. He ignored Troy.

  ‘Recognise him?’ Stone said as Troy straightened up.

  ‘No. He’s older than the man I saw last night.’ Stone didn’t seem too disappointed. Troy said, ‘Did you ask the security manager, Sean Randall?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Stone peered in through the hole. ‘Some of our colleagues gave Khan a hard time. That might have got things off on the wrong foot.’

  He walked down the short corridor and indicated for Troy to look in another cell. The man sitting inside this one was big, with dark hair and sallow skin. He was reading a magazine and he too ignored Troy.

  ‘Alex Sidorov,’ said Stone. ‘Australian-born, successful in the concrete business. Now we know why.’ Troy raised his eyebrows. ‘Uses illegal labour. Not a bad racket—a big site like The Tower, there’s so much going on no one’s going to bother you.’ He indicated for the uniformed officer standing behind them to unlock the door, and stepped into the cell. Troy followed him in, and smelled expensive aftershave.

  Sidorov closed the magazine, and Troy saw it was the Economist. ‘Lives in Vaucluse,’ said Stone, who was standing almost over the man on the bench. ‘Done well for yourself, haven’t you, Alex?’ The man stared at both of them intently, as though this was personal. His cheeks and chin and nose, everything about him was big, slightly swollen. He was wearing a leisure suit in dusty pink, with white leather loafers on his feet. A smaller man might have worried about wearing such a feminine outfit, but Sidorov didn’t look as though he paid much mind to what other people thought. Stone said, ‘Alex isn’t talking to us—not one word since we lifted him from the family mansion last night. His lawyer will tell him to talk eventually, and then we’ll be able to go man to man. But right now, Alex is hiding behind his brief.’ Stone was showing more emotion now, but Troy could see it was no good: Sidorov was feeding off it. After a while Sidorov grew bored and switched his gaze to Troy, but only for a moment. It slid away and he picked up the magazine again.

  Stone turned around in the small room and almost pushed Troy out of the way as he left. When they were walking back to the office he said, ‘That bloke’s got the illegals terrified. I don’t know what they’re keeping from us.’

  ‘Isn’t it all over for them now? They’ll be deported.’

  ‘They’d be worrying about their families back home.’

  ‘Sidorov brings them out?’

  ‘No, someone else. Immigration are working on it. They think they have a lead on him: a Jakarta-based bloke named Jason. But that bastard back there is the reason Khan’s not talking. I’m sure of it.’

  Troy was having trouble following Stone. He seemed to operate in fi ts and starts. ‘Well, maybe Khan’s not important. There’s no GSR on him—maybe he just found the gun.’

  Stone scratched his head. ‘The problem is, we don’t have much else to go on. The security guards keep a record of whoever goes onto the site by foot and there’s no woman on the list.’ Troy thought this line of thinking was ridiculous. Given the massive security breach represented by the twenty-one illegals, there was no point in trusting anything the guards told them.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Stone continued, ‘they only record the drivers’ IDs and the numberplates of vehicles, and we’ve discovered there were about a dozen men working on level thirteen that night; they came in with two vans. Could have brought in a woman.’

  ‘You’ve talked to them?’

  ‘They say they know nothing about the woman. We’re reinterviewing them later.’ He stopped, and then said, ‘I suppose it’s possible. But they’re tradesmen who were rushing to complete a late job by the end of the weekend. Two separate companies involved.’

  Troy told him about Little’s theory that the victim was a prostitute, and the sergeant shook his head. ‘This stuff about whores and construction sites is an urban myth.’ He seemed certain about this, more so than he’d been about anything else. ‘I think she came in separately and on foot, which puts Bazzi in the frame, and this other guard, Andrew Asaad, who was manning the front gate.’

  ‘What do we know about these guys?’

  ‘Little talked to their boss, bloke named Eman Jamal. He reckons they’re clean, but you know. Fucking security guards.’

  Troy knew. ‘What about Bazzi’s house?’

  ‘We’ve had it under surveillance but he hasn’t showed. I’m off to get a search warrant for his place and Asaad’s.’

  Troy thought Stone had left it too long to search the houses, but all he said was, ‘I should go see McIver.’

  ‘I want you to attend the autopsy on the woman. It starts in half an hour.’

  ‘McIver’s a colleague and friend,’ Troy said. ‘It’ll only take a few minutes.’

  ‘I don’t have the staff to spare you,’ Stone said, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Just a few minutes. It’s on the way.’

  ‘No. You’ll have to do it on your own time.’

  Troy stood there, fists clenched. He didn’t know how to handle this. Normally something would have come to him, but not today.

  Stone said, ‘You sure you don’t want to take some time off?’

  Troy took a deep breath and left the room.

  Nine

  The morgue was a low building on Parramatta Road, anonymous in a line of offices and antique centres. It ought to look more impressive, Troy had sometimes thought, given the weight of what went on inside. Death should be acknowledged rather than hidden away. But Sydney was a city in love with pleasure, where death always occurred off-stage.

  When he reached the desk, he found Stone had got the time wrong and Fundis had already done the cut. He was told the professor was talking to some people and
directed to wait outside his office. Eventually a weeping man and a stony-faced woman were shown out and led away by an assistant, and the secretary told Troy he could go in. Fundis, normally a cheerful man, was closing a file and looking sombre. He pushed it aside and greeted Troy, getting his smile underway again.

  ‘You went ahead without an investigator present?’ said Troy.

  Fundis threw up his hands. ‘I’m told it’s a big priority, I’m ready to go, call this guy . . .’ He looked around his desk and picked up a note. ‘Stone, right? He doesn’t answer his mobile, I leave a message. Call again, same result. I’m in court this afternoon, reckoned you needed it before then.’

  Troy nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You okay?’ said Fundis, leaning back in his chair and studying Troy with more attention than usual.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re probably not. Lots of walks along the beach will help.’

  ‘I run there,’ said Troy.

  ‘You should try walking sometime.’

  Troy said nothing and Fundis looked at a piece of paper on his desk.

  ‘Jane Doe, our twenty-third unknown for the year.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’

  ‘They’re not unknown for long,’ said Fundis. ‘Usually you people have a name by the time you get here.’ He raised his eyebrows.

  Troy shook his head, and asked how far the woman had fallen.

  Fundis spread his hands. ‘From descriptions in the literature I’d say a hundred metres. Twenty to thirty storeys, give or take.’

  ‘That’s quite a range.’

  ‘It’s not a precise science, especially where cars are involved. Someone survived a jump off the Eiffel Tower once because they landed on a car with windows that were just slightly open.’ He smiled as though telling a good joke. ‘The roof caved in at just the right rate to absorb enough of the impact.’ Opening a folder, he slid a photo across the table, said, ‘But not in this case.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Troy whispered. He could tell from the hair it was the woman’s face, just a mashed and bloody pulp. ‘Can you give us her dental history?’

  ‘A bit.’

  Fundis summarised the extensive damage to the woman’s bones and internal organs, and then went through a list of other details: a healthy person in her late twenties; no food for at least eight hours before death; no sign of alcohol or drugs.