Bright Air

11

But they didn’t catch us on the highway, nor, to my relief and surprise, did they come calling the following day. I got on with my chores and waited, but nothing happened. I did read Luce’s note again and again, trying to extract its meaning, without success. And I looked up the word phasmid in the dictionary. It was an insect of the order Phasmida, apparently, a leaf or stick insect, which immediately brought an image of Marcus into my mind as we’d last seen him, all awkward arms and legs. Was that what she was referring to? Was that how he saw himself, the last phasmid? It didn’t make much sense to me, and I wondered about Luce’s state of mind when she’d written that note.

I continued going back through all the documents I had relating to Luce’s accident, searching for some new angle, and a couple of days later I found it. The first hint of it was in the bottom corner of one of the last newspaper reports of the accident that Anna had photocopied. It was the small heading for another article that was off the page, and it read, LORD HOWE RACE YACHT SKIPPER QUESTIONED. It seemed an odd coincidence to me, and I decided to find out what it was about. I went to the local library and searched through their microfiche copies of the paper until I found it. It was a eureka moment, and I felt that burn of apprehensive excitement you get when you come across something really big. It was almost as if I could sense Luce’s presence at my shoulder.

Australian Customs and Quarantine officials in Sydney yesterday detained the skipper of a boat recently returned from the Sydney to Lord Howe Island yacht race, after a search of the vessel uncovered a quantity of rare native bird eggs on board. A spokesman for the Australian Customs Service revealed that the search had followed a tip-off, but declined to identify the nationality of the suspect. He said that the illegal international trade in wildlife was estimated by Interpol to be worth $10 billion annually, and was surpassed in value only by drugs and weapons.

This surely was what I had been searching for. Birds’ eggs were exactly the reason why Luce and the team were on Lord Howe Island-the grey ternlet’s eggs, to be precise. I did remember that much from what Luce had told me. They were carrying out research into its breeding habits, so you could say that she had died on account of the sex life of a small, rather delicate seabird, listed as a vulnerable species in Schedule 2 of the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act. About the only other thing I could remember about the bird was that the sexes were practically indistinguishable, with no plumage variation during the breeding season, which, as I suggested to Luce, might have been one reason they were a vulnerable species.

And now here was someone recently returned from Lord Howe and accused of smuggling rare birds’ eggs. Had Luce discovered what was going on? Had Curtis and Owen been somehow involved? I scanned the papers for the following days, but could find no further reference to the case. Eventually I gave up and walked back to the hotel, head spinning. The race yachts had arrived at the island on the twenty-seventh of September, I remembered, just five days before Luce’s accident. She had gone to the party that was held for them on the twenty-eighth, and they had helped in the search for her.

I returned to my room and began going through the police report again, working at it far into the night, until I finally stopped at around four and fell into a troubled sleep.

The next morning I phoned Anna. She said she’d given Luce’s diary to the computer whiz who serviced the equipment at the nursing home, but hadn’t got a result yet. I told her I had something to discuss with her and we arranged to meet that lunchtime. When I got there she took us to the deserted library room, where she’d arranged a tray of sandwiches.

She saw how agitated I was. ‘What’s wrong, Josh? Have the police been in touch? Mr Corcoran?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’ve been doing a bit more digging, and I think I’ve come across something. Look.’ I showed her the print I’d taken of the newspaper article, and she made the connection straight away.

‘I couldn’t find any other newspaper reports about the boat, but you see the timing.’

‘Yes, of course. Luce would probably have come across this man at the party they had. What are you thinking?’

‘Well …’ I rubbed my face, trying to put together the chain of logic that had seemed so compelling the previous night. ‘It seems to me that the smuggler would have had someone helping him on the island, someone who knew the right places and had collected the rare eggs beforehand.’

‘Right.’

‘It struck me, going through the police report again, how often the Kelso family crops up. Marcus and the team stayed on their property, went to the party at their house, and were ferried around the island by one of the sons, Bob Kelso, listed as a fisherman. The other son, Harry, runs adventure hiking trips over the mountains at the south end of the island for visitors. You can check out his website.’ I showed her some pages I’d printed off. One had a picture of Harry Kelso and a group of grinning, windswept kids roped together against a panoramic backdrop of rugged scenery.

‘I think that’s taken on Mount Gower, near the cliffs where Luce fell.’ I turned the pages of the police report I’d brought until I came to the photographs of the site of the accident.

‘Did you look at the index that lists the sources of these pictures?’ I asked.

‘How do you mean?’

‘There are the ones taken from sea level, blurry views up the cliff, using a telephoto lens by the look of them, from a boat pitching in the swell. Detective Maddox took those, from Bob Kelso’s boat. Then there are the others, closer shots of the area where Luce is assumed to have fallen, much sharper but still difficult to interpret. Curtis, the team’s photographer, took those.’

‘So what?’

‘Maddox never went up to the accident scene. He wouldn’t have been able to climb up there. Think about it-the investigating police officer never got within a hundred metres of the accident scene. He just had to take Owen and Curtis’s word for everything.’

I pointed to one of the views from sea level. ‘The place where Luce disappeared was to the right of this buttress-you can see its shadow. She was out of sight of Curtis and Owen. Up above you can see the forest coming right to the edge of the cliff. It wouldn’t have been impossible for someone else to have abseiled down from there to where Luce was. Someone who knew Mount Gower well, for instance.’

‘Harry Kelso?’

‘I’m just speculating. But suppose the Kelso boys were doing a bit of illegal trafficking on the side, and Luce overheard them talking to the yachtie at the party, say.’

Anna shook her head. ‘She wouldn’t have kept quiet about it, that’s for sure. She’d have been horrified. She’d have told Marcus.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t as clear-cut as that. Perhaps she only had suspicions and was trying to get proof-remember how she seemed to withdraw in those last days.’

‘And Curtis and Owen were involved?’

‘That’s possible, I suppose.’ I thought of how they were both always short of cash. ‘Look, this is pure speculation. It probably wasn’t like that at all.’

‘Maybe the diary will tell us something, if we can get into it.’

‘Yes. The other possibility is to speak to some of the other people who were there at that time. I’m thinking of Sophie Kalajzich, for instance, the girl who cleaned the house they rented and became friendly with Luce. She was on a short-term contract over there, and could be back on the mainland now. There’s a Sydney address given in the statement.’

I got the number from directory inquiries, and tried it. An answering machine responded, its message giving me the number of Sophie’s mobile. I finally got through to her, saying we were old friends of Luce, and she agreed to see us. She was a model now, doing a job at a photographic studio in Newtown, she said, and we could meet her there and talk between sessions.

The address was a converted industrial building, grubby brick walls hemming a narrow laneway. Inside, past a flashy little logo, the old structure had been given a veneer of white minimalism. From the entrance lobby we could see through to a dazzlingly lit studio space in which two girls were posing in swimwear. Through another opening, seated models were having their hair and make-up worked over. I saw the expression of bemusement on Anna’s face as she took it all in, as if we’d wandered in on a freak show.

A woman came past us, heading for the make-up room, and I said, ‘Excuse me?’

She stopped and turned to me, disconcertingly pretty, but not quite real, a life-size china doll. The industrial brick and steel of the surroundings made the butterfly-bright fabrics and the tanned flesh and the impossible hair seem blatant and somehow embarrassing, even to me.

‘We’re meeting Sophie Kalajzich,’ I said. ‘Would you know where she is?’

‘That’s her.’ The woman indicated the model in the yellow bikini. ‘I think they’ve nearly finished. Take a seat.’

I thanked her and we did as she said. There were magazines scattered on a low table beside us. Anna picked one up, touching her hair self-consciously. I was watching Sophie being posed by her photographer across a striped deckchair. She was very thin. Another kind of phasmid.

Eventually she finished and wrapped herself in a robe and came towards us. We introduced ourselves, and she said she could only give us ten minutes before she’d have to get changed for the next shoot. ‘This isn’t some legal thing, is it?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Legal?’

‘You know, insurance or something. Only I don’t know anything about the accident really. I wasn’t there.’

‘Oh, no!’ I smiled brightly. ‘No, no, nothing like that. What it is, we’re old friends of Luce, and I’ve been in London all the time since it happened.’

‘London? Oh, you’re the boyfriend, are you?’ Her eyes lit up with interest.

‘She mentioned me?’

‘Only briefly. We were discussing men.’ She grinned.

‘Ah, well … anyway, when I got back we decided, Anna and I, to try to remember her on the fourth anniversary of her passing with a little book of memories, of people who knew her, especially in that last month. Something for her family to have, you know?’

Her very full lips turned down as if she’d tasted something unpleasant. ‘Oh, right. That’s really … sweet.’

‘Yeah.’ I gave her a sad smile. ‘So if you have one or two memories of her, a shared laugh, a special thing you remember about her, that would be really great.’

‘Um, well, let me see.’ She put a perfectly shaped long nail to her chin and stared upward in thought. ‘She loved her birds, the seagulls, you know? Said she wanted to be as free as them, high up in the air all the time, never coming down to land.’

I was writing dutifully. She came out with a few more fairly banal memories.

Then she said, ‘She showed me your picture, standing on the edge of that cliff, you know? And one day I met her out walking, and she asked me to take a photo of her standing in the same sort of position, with the sky behind. I think she wanted to stick it onto your picture, so it would look like they’d been taken together.’

I stopped writing, a lump in my throat.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she cried. ‘That’s so tactless of me!’ She reached out a hand to touch my arm.

‘No … it’s okay, Sophie. It just catches me sometimes, you know.’

‘Yes, of course! I’m so sorry. I still have a little cry about her sometimes too.’

‘Do you? It must have been terrible for you all when it happened.’

‘Oh yes, everyone was devastated. And the boys! Being there when she fell! Watching her … They were a mess. They locked themselves away that night and got totally smashed. Well, you couldn’t blame them.’

‘No, of course not. And do you remember how Luce was herself in those last days before the accident? I mean, did she seem depressed or anything?’

‘Not really, but I didn’t see her after the party at the Kelsos’ house.’

‘Right. I just feel so guilty, not having been there. It helps talking to someone who was.’

‘Oh.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I can imagine. She did seem a bit run-down physically, you know, like tired? She had a tummy bug, and saw the doctor a couple of times.’

Sophie had striking, attenuated features, and I guessed that Damien must have made a play at her. ‘I suppose you got to know them all pretty well? Damien?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, Damien was fun. Of course he only came for the last couple of weeks, but he livened things up.’

‘I wondered if he might have been, well, comforting Lucy, after our break-up?’

‘No, actually,’ she grinned, ‘he and I got together for a while. Then …’ She ducked her head.

‘What?’

‘Oh, when the racing yachts came in, there was this really dishy guy on one of them, and when they had the party I went off with him. Damien got pretty annoyed.’

‘Luce was at that party, wasn’t she?’

She thought. ‘Ye-es, she must have been. Yes, I remember her talking to one of the yachties, an American I think.’

‘Do you remember anything else about that evening?’

Another big smile, half-embarrassed. ‘I was pretty preoccupied-but I remember Lucy was very quiet, not drinking. I think she got upset with something the yachties said. But I pretty much had my hands full with … Do you know, I can’t even remember his name now.’

‘They were due to fly out on the Saturday. Didn’t she say goodbye to you?’

‘Not that I can remember. Anyway, they stayed on, didn’t they? The weather turned foul.’

‘So, did you see them again after that?’

‘Ye-es. At least, I saw Damien. It was the night before the accident. He was pretty annoyed with me, but it wasn’t just that. Something was wrong, something to do with their work. They were all pissed off.’

‘And Lucy?’

‘No, I’m sure I didn’t see her. I think she was feeling ill again.’

‘What, they told you that?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And the next day, the day of the accident?’

‘No, I didn’t see her, but she must have felt better.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, she went climbing with them, didn’t she? I thought I might have seen her when I went to the house that day-that was my regular cleaning day-but she wasn’t there, because she’d gone with them. It’s terrible to think, isn’t it-if she’d been a bit sicker she wouldn’t have had that accident.’

‘Yes, true enough. How about the Kelsos, were they nice people?’

She screwed up her nose. ‘I was glad to leave, frankly. Muriel-Mrs Kelso-seemed all right at first, but she was a hard bitch if you were working for her. I didn’t have much to do with Stanley, but he’s an important man on the island and you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.’

‘How about the sons?’

‘Not my type. Bob was okay, I suppose; didn’t say much, spent all his time with his boat. I did think he might have had a bit of a crush on Luce, the way he looked at her sometimes. Harry … he tried it on with me a few times, until I finally got it into his head that I wasn’t interested.’

‘Bit pushy, was he?’

‘Yeah, seemed to think I’d make myself available as part of my contract.’

‘Was there some rumour that they were into something dodgy, smuggling or something?’

‘Drugs? I never heard that.’

‘Not drugs necessarily.’

But she didn’t like this line of questions. She looked pointedly up at the clock and said she’d have to go.

‘Sure. We really appreciate you talking to us, Sophie.’

‘You’re welcome. Who else have you spoken to?’

‘Oh, you’re the first we’ve tracked down, really. Who do you suggest?’

‘Well, she was friends with Carmel Bisset, the National Parks ranger; they used to meet every day on account of their research project. And she knew Dick Passlow-that’s the doctor-and his wife Pru. She was the island nurse.’

‘Right.’ I was making notes, playing the part of a grieving boyfriend. ‘But they’d still be on Lord Howe, I suppose.’

‘Not necessarily. I know the Passlows only had another year of their contract to run, though I suppose they could have extended it. Carmel would probably be in the same boat. They weren’t permanent residents.’

‘Sophie!’ The call came from a harassed-looking young man who had burst out of the make-up room.

‘Yes, coming. Sorry, I have to go.’ We got to our feet and she added coyly, ‘Do you still keep up with Damien?’

‘Yes, saw him just the other day, actually.’

‘Oh, well, you might give him my number, if you like.’

‘I’m afraid he’s married.’

She shrugged. ‘All the same …’

Anna spoke for the first time. ‘You should be careful with all that lipstick, you know.’

Sophie looked at her in surprise. ‘What?’

‘It’s full of synthetic chemicals. Over your lifetime you’ll swallow about four kilos of it.’

Sophie raised a carefully engineered eyebrow and stalked off.

Outside, as we stepped around the rubbish bins in the lane, I said, ‘Four kilos?’

‘Whatever. You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’

‘Did we learn anything?’

‘Not much. The Kelsos don’t sound like very nice people to stay with.’

‘No. Well, you can do the talking next time.’

Dr Passlow was in the Sydney phone book, listed under a group practice in Leichhardt. Anna rang, saying that we wanted to speak to him on a private matter relating to the death of Lucy Corcoran. He agreed to see us at the end of the afternoon’s surgery, at around five-thirty.

The waiting room was still crowded when we arrived, full of Italian women and their bambini suffering from what looked like an epidemic of spring sniffles. The confined, overheated space, full of coughing, sneezing, snot-encrusted infants, seemed to me like a pretty ideal breeding ground for viruses, and I thought we’d be lucky to get out unscathed. It was almost seven when we finally saw the doctor. He looked exhausted and didn’t try to hide his disappointment that we were still there. In fact, as he quizzed us about what exactly we wanted, it seemed to me that he was rather worried about our appearance after all this time. He refused to elaborate on Luce’s health or state of mind, and said he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her during the final week.

‘Well, look,’ he said finally, becoming more pompous as we became more probing, ‘there’s nothing I can tell you that wasn’t said at the inquest. I really don’t understand what you’re after. You’re not her relatives, are you? Is this just idle curiosity, or do you have some specific issue?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to murder Lucy?’

He looked as if I’d punched him, his face going pale, mouth open. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘It’s a simple question. Did she say anything to you to suggest she was afraid of anyone?’

The colour flooded back into his face again. ‘No, certainly not. I’d have told the coroner if she had. Do you have some new information?’

‘We just find it hard to accept that Lucy fell accidentally,’ Anna cut in. ‘She was a very expert climber.’

‘Expert climbers are killed in accidents all the time. The coroner’s investigation was very thorough. And now, years later, you find it hard to accept? Is that all?’

Anna shrugged. He shook his head in irritation and showed us to the door.

As we walked back through the waiting room a nurse stopped him with a query and I veered off to the desk where the receptionist was clearing up. ‘Is Dr Passlow’s wife around?’ I asked, hoping he couldn’t hear me.

‘Wife?’

‘Pru-the nurse.’

‘Oh, Pru.’ She smiled as if at some private joke. ‘No, they divorced several years ago.’

‘Don’t know where I could find her, do you?’

‘Sorry, no idea.’

Out on the street, Anna said, ‘That was subtle. You almost had him calling the cops.’

I shrugged, becoming fed up with all this. ‘I need a drink to kill some of the germs I must have picked up in there.’ But Anna was reading a text message on her phone. It seemed the young bloke who looked after the computers at the nursing home had managed to unlock Luce’s notebook. He didn’t know what it all meant, he said, but he’d sent her the contents by email, so we walked along Norton Street until we found an internet cafe where Anna could access her account.

I waited outside on the pavement, breathing in the smell of pizza from the Italian restaurant next door. I felt tired and fed up after our prickly encounter with the doctor, and I just wanted to sit down with a bottle of red and a plate of spaghetti and forget about the whole thing. I noticed an empty table for two through the window, and when I saw Anna still hunched in front of her screen, shaking her head, I decided to take the bull by the horns. I opened the door and called to her, ‘Anna, I’ll see you in the restaurant next door.’

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.’