The White Tower

by Dorothy Johnston

  I found Brook, who said the duty officer was about to respond by turning off the power to the whole block. One second I was looking up at a phalanx of lights, the next a shadowy wall. I thought of the thick boles of trees on Lyneham oval, their amputated arms, how the physical world was at the same time precisely tuned to terror and indifferent.

  ‘They won’t let it go on past midnight Sandra.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know the officer in charge. If he hasn’t got them out by eleven, eleven-thirty, he’ll get set to move.’

  ‘What’s Colin asking for? What’s he want?’

  ‘He’s not making much sense. Got it fixed in his head that there’s a conspiracy to stop him doing his job. Keeps ranting about machines that save lives and people who destroy them.’

  ‘Is he using Peter as a hostage? Why doesn’t he—?’ My voice cracked.

  ‘Where would Rasmussen go if he did get out? He says Peter won’t come to any harm if he’s left alone to perform his duty. There’s a heap of swearing and abuse, but that’s the guts of it.’

  I knew Brook was holding out on me. ‘He’s threatened to kill Peter hasn’t he? Hasn’t he?’

  ‘If they don’t get a result in the next half hour, they’re going in.’

  ‘What if it’s too late?’

  ‘Listen to me Sandra. If he was planning to kill Peter, he would have. He’s boasting about how he threw Niall Howley off the Telstra Tower and fooled the lot of us.’

  Brook was called away, and a constable dragged me back to what I thought of as my car. I held on to the steering wheel. Colin was crazy and might do anything to Peter. Throw him out the window. With a start of shame, I realised that I’d wet my pants.

  Freda Jansz brought me a thermos and a sandwich. She didn’t say anything about the smell of urine, or offer any reassurance, and I was grateful for this. I drank something from a cup. It had no flavour of tea or coffee, but was sweet.

  There was movement on the roof of the flats. Men dressed in black, with black helmets and guns, merged with the darkness, moving with ease across the sloping roof.

  An enormous noise filled the night, not one gunshot but ten. Another and another. My stomach heaved. Up came the tea and bread and I was running, screaming, kicking and punching at arms, legs, bodies that would hold me back.

  I stumbled. The entrance to Colin’s flat was a dark noisy tunnel. A man was coming through a doorway at the end of it with a bundle in his arms.

  Peter was staring at me, eyes huge as though the pupils would never again get sufficient light. I squashed him to me as though my body, ill-practised when it came to danger, had only just now realised what was required of it.

  The man who’d been carrying Peter let me take him and led both of us back to the entrance to the flats.

  Derek rushed forward, his face framed above Peter’s head in car headlights and the outside lights of the flats, so bright they blinded us.

  An ambulance had backed up. I craned my neck, looking for Ivan. Where was Colin? What had the police done with him?

  Someone was shouting behind us. Colin appeared, half carried by the special operations men. As they passed us, Colin swung his head and spat, hard and accurately, in my face.

  Ivan and I managed a few words while Peter was being settled in the ambulance. He wouldn’t come to the hospital with us. He wanted to fetch Katya and go home. The sight of his big head bobbing over others round the side of the ambulance, disappearing between paramedics in their red and white, told me it was over.

  Twenty-three

  ‘Come on,’ Ivan said, ‘a family hug.’

  Peter grinned and held his arms out to his sister. He yawned—he’d only just woken up—then giggled, his face against Ivan’s chest and my right arm.

  Katya laughed. I squeezed Ivan’s other hand and answered his raised eyebrows with a nod.

  I’d cleaned myself up in the bathroom next to Peter’s ward, and Derek and I had sat with him until dawn. Bill McCallum had looked in briefly. He’d told us that as soon as the team had broken down the door to Colin’s flat, Colin had let Peter go. He’d shouted abuse, but he hadn’t used Peter to defend himself. As soon as they got him to the city station, he’d said he wanted to sign a statement confessing to Niall Howley’s murder.

  Why had Colin hidden Peter overnight, then taken him to his flat? Had he planned to kill Peter, but found himself unable to go through with it?

  This was the horror Derek had held over me, after McCallum left, as we talked in low voices while our son slept. Peter was safe now, no thanks to me. His life had been hanging in the balance for the last thirty-six hours. It was my fault, no one else’s. I was an unfit mother. He wanted Peter to live with him and Valerie.

  Had Colin meant to use Peter as a hostage to demand a safe passage for himself, out of Australia somewhere? But then, why hadn’t he pressed his demand once the police had his flat surrounded? On the other hand, why was I expecting Colin to behave logically, make logical demands?

  ‘Mum?’ said Peter. ‘Did you ask them about Fred?’

  Fred had been sedated for most of the time since their abduction. It was Brook who’d found him, and for this Brook had gone up a ­thousand fold in Peter’s estimation. Peter wasn’t able to forgive me yet for going with him in the ambulance, rather than staying behind to look for Fred myself.

  Brook had sought out the manager of the flats, and asked if he’d heard or seen anything of a dog. The manager hadn’t, and kept repeating that there were no pets allowed in the flats, as though this was proof enough. But Brook had persevered, and eventually learnt of a basement room adjoining the laundry by a door only the manager had the key to.

  Here, after braving the manager’s protests that no tenant could ­possibly get into the room, let alone hide a dog there, Brook had found Fred, tied up behind a tall steel cupboard, lying on the concrete floor beside an empty water bowl and a pile of dried vomit. Brook had taken him straight to a vet in Limestone Avenue. He’d been doped so severely that the vet said it was a small miracle he’d survived.

  It was the recurring theme of Peter’s story, how Colin had taken Fred away and hidden him, how Colin had said that if Peter made any noise at all, if he didn’t do exactly what Colin told him, he’d never see his dog again. The terror of Fred’s death had hung over him every hour of his captivity, and was mixed up now with details of where he’d been taken, what Colin had said and done and threatened to do.

  After Colin had picked Peter up outside the school, they’d driven out of Canberra. ‘A long way,’ said Peter, ‘in the bush.’

  He described how Colin had let him sit in the back with Fred, eat a leftover sandwich from his lunchbox, and have a drink. It wasn’t until after he started feeling sick, especially after he was separated from Fred, that his real fear started.

  He recalled a river, going along beside it for a while, then turning off onto a dirt road. They’d pulled up in front of a hut. Colin had tied Fred up at the back of the hut, but that was still okay, Peter said, because even though he was made to go inside the hut and stay there, he could look out a small window and see Fred, and could hear him whining.

  There was no toilet. Colin made Peter go to the toilet in the bush, while he stood right next to him. Peter pressed his lips together as he told this part.

  They’d spent all of that night and the next morning in the hut. Colin had a gas stove and had heated up some soup. ‘It tasted awful, Mum.’

  Colin made hot chocolate and forced Peter to drink some of that as well. Then he’d gone to sleep.

  The first thing he did when he woke up was run to the window to look for Fred. Fred was lying down where he’d been tied up. He didn’t move when Peter called his name.

  That was when Colin had turned really mean. Peter had to go to the toilet again, with Colin standing over him, and then was told to get back into the car. Colin said he wasn’t to make a sound. If he did, that would be the end of Fred, a threat made more compelling
by the fact that Peter discovered, when Colin lifted Fred into the car, that he wasn’t really asleep, not normally asleep. His breathing was shallow and laboured.

  ‘Like this,’ Peter said, ‘Uh-hng, uh-hng! I got really scared then. And Mum, I had such a bad headache.’

  Peter leant against three great white pillows, the hospital blanket rucked up around his knees. His already pale skin was greenish-grey and his lips had become a thin line, but he didn’t cry.

  At Colin’s flat he’d been locked in a room with the blinds drawn, while Colin took Fred away. When he came back, he wouldn’t say where he’d taken Fred, but he had a grocery bag with him, and Peter noticed with joy that it contained two tins of dog food.

  ‘I asked him, and he told me to be quiet or I’d get Fred in trouble. And Mum, he started acting really weird. He made me get under this blanket and he wouldn’t even let me have my head out, but I did, I peeked, and he was just standing at the window.’

  It had been much worse than the shack because he and Fred were completely separated, and he had no idea where Fred was, but also because he’d been forced to stay in one corner. And Colin had been worse.

  ‘Weird,’ said Peter. ‘Really crazy. No one could hear me whispering, but I wasn’t even allowed to do that. And you know what, all the time he was talking on the phone, he got so angry and he couldn’t hit the guy he was talking to, so I thought he was going to hit me. Then when I heard that banging I thought, if I don’t get out of here in two minutes I’ll be dead.’

  A nurse came, took Peter’s temperature and pulse, and suggested that he use the bathroom and get ready for breakfast. To give him some time alone with Ivan and his sister, I went downstairs to visit Brook.

  The accoutrements of Canberra Hospital were all arrayed before me as I followed the signs to the lifts and then ward 101, from chrome bed frames and railings glimpsed through open bathroom doors, to the curved night sister’s desk with its serviceable lamp. Disposed in soldier lines, all those bright things that make a hospital. I thought about the time I’d sat in the Monaro cafeteria with Eamonn, the day I’d chased Eve up and down corridors toting a dripping, wrecked umbrella. Now the real heat, the flat, breath-squashing inland heat had at last arrived, the rain and those long September winds seemed not only to belong to another season, but another time frame altogether.

  Brook had collapsed as soon as he’d delivered Fred to the vet. I’d looked in on him twice during the night. Both times he’d been asleep.

  I sat down in a chair beside his bed. His arms were outside the cotton blankets, a drip attached to his left wrist. In a weak voice he asked how Peter was.

  ‘Fine,’ I answered, moving my chair closer. ‘They told him if he’s good he can come and see you. You should hear all the please and thank yous.’

  Brook smiled.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘They’ve taken a bone marrow sample.’ The parched edges of his voice summed up all the other times that marrow had been sampled. ‘In the meantime I’ve been told to rest.’

  ‘You’ve been doing too much.’

  ‘I’ve been living.’

  ‘I should have noticed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You getting thin again.’

  ‘Fashionably.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You didn’t need to. I can tell what you’re thinking by looking at you.’

  ‘That’s why I’ll never make a detective?’

  ‘One of the reasons. Come here.’

  I squashed my face against Brook’s chest, wanting to bury it, shut out the light. His chest was too thin to bury anything in, even a small gift, a mouse’s heart. His chest was thin and brittle and resistant, and a little further up was where his dry voice came from.

  ‘Has Bill apologised for doubting you?’

  ‘Bill? Apologise?’

  ‘But it’s okay between you?’

  Brook didn’t answer.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that—’

  ‘Not me. Peter.’

  After a moment, Brook said, ‘When I saw that damn dog lying there, it could have been me.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You think I never imagined dying in a hole?’

  He started to speak again, coughed, then blinked as though the words were somehow trapped behind his eyes. Then his face cleared and for a moment he looked calm, unwrinkled, a man who accepted himself, who had no great wish, just then, for deliverance.

  Twenty-four

  Sitting in her garden, Moira Howley listened to my account in silence. I looked at her and thought how summaries must always be unsatisfying, and how, as so often, the important things were not being said.

  The old Moira, the Moira I’d met at the beginning of September, would have been tense and concentrated with the effort of what she wanted to say next, of not losing the thread of her intentions, of what she must impress upon me. Now she seemed drained of responses and emotions.

  We talked about Colin Rasmussen, who’d made a full confession. On 21 June, Colin had sent Niall an email pretending to be Fenshaw, and asking Niall to meet him at the tower the following night. Niall had emailed straight back saying yes. Colin had intended getting Niall onto the public gallery, then overpowering him and throwing him over the fence. He hadn’t reckoned on the weather being so bad. He’d got there early and walked around, keeping out of sight of the guards, confronted by the practical problems his plan presented. He’d overheard the two technicians talking. They’d been so absorbed they hadn’t noticed him. When he saw them disappear into the basement, he’d tried the security door and found it open.

  He’d met Niall, explained that Fenshaw hadn’t been able to make it, but that he and Fenshaw had decided they could see no problem with a new inquiry into the Ventac. They’d reconsidered and come round to Niall’s point of view.

  Colin then told Niall that there was something going on and nobody appeared to be paying much attention to security. ‘Why don’t we sneak a look at their fancy equipment?’ Niall had agreed. Once inside, Colin had pushed him over the edge.

  Colin’s sarcasm came strongly though this part of his statement, as though the fact that Niall hadn’t run away, or called for help, made him easier, and therefore more contemptible, prey.

  Colin had stalked Niall on the MUD and, masquerading as Ferdia, caused trouble between Niall and Sorley Fallon, threatening to steal the game’s source code and bringing Fallon’s wrath down on Niall’s head. Fallon’s counter threat had been perfect from Colin’s point of view. He hadn’t thought of murder until then, but when Fallon made his threat known on the MUD, the idea came to him of the Telstra Tower, and a way of getting rid of Niall for good.

  Colin had picked Peter up from school and then sent me that spiteful picture. Re-routing it so that it appeared to come from Fallon’s computer, and timing it so that it arrived after Peter was missing, had been easy for someone with his skills.

  In his confession, I could find no hint of remorse for kidnapping Peter, or for killing Niall, but he did state that he’d had no intention of harming my son. His aim had been to punish me, and to draw attention to the evil that I represented. People like myself and Niall were ­‘parasites whose aim in life was to spoil everything’ and ‘the scum of the earth’.

  I’d risked Peter’s safety, wilfully brought him into danger. Derek would never forgive me. I doubted if Brook would either.

  Ivan was reluctant to let Katya out of his sight. He’d rung the creche and told them we’d be keeping her at home till the start of school next year. I knew he was within a hair’s breadth of chucking in his job at the ANU, so he could be with her all day and not have to leave her with me.

  How much of Colin’s confession was calculated to sound insane, and how much genuinely so? The whole of his vendetta against Niall was crazy. Most chilling of all was that Colin seemed completely convinced that what he’d done was right. Anyone who
challenged him or got in his way deserved to be eliminated. The Ventac saved lives. People would always make mistakes, and were expendable.

  But I couldn’t help wondering if Colin had wanted to be caught. When his carefully constructed fantasy about Niall started to unravel, and the police began turning up again at the hospital, when it was clear that Fenshaw was under serious investigation, Colin had grabbed Peter and, when caught, confessed immediately to Niall’s murder. Was it too far-fetched to see the kidnapping as a desperate, last ditch bid to save Fenshaw and draw all blame, all responsibility down on his own head?

  Fenshaw had played a part in attempting to discredit Niall, and, that night at Regatta Point, it was Fenshaw Niall had told about his decision to go public. I knew that if Colin went ahead and pleaded guilty, as he was intending, I’d have a next to impossible time trying to convince anyone that Fenshaw was at least partly to blame.

  Colin had found Niall’s body at the base of the tower that night, and, wearing gloves, removed his wallet and keys. He’d waited several hours, then gone to the Howleys, where he’d let himself in with Niall’s key, loaded the castle scene and deleted everything else. As a parting gesture he’d emailed it to Sorley Fallon. Then he’d packed up all of Niall’s letters and papers and left again, but not before Moira had heard him. One last trip to the tower car park to replace Niall’s keys. Even using the bad weather as a cover, it had been an audacious plan.

  Moira lifted her face to the smell of the roses. Her thick grey and brown hair was pulled back off her face with combs. Exposed, her face spoke of a knowledge and a sadness that would always hold her apart from other parents.

  Bernard had moved into a flat in Braddon. Their house was up for sale.

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with a touch of her old dismissiveness, ‘I have money of my own.’

  I could have thanked her for paying me handsomely, which she had. She would have thanked me for my thanks, and that would have kept us afloat over shallow ground.