Barry Maitland - Bright Air

‘Oh yes?’

‘He said you and Anna paid him a visit, at Castlecrag.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What did you think?’

‘It was a bit of a shock, frankly, seeing him again. He’s really gone downhill, hasn’t he? The house was a mess, and he didn’t look too fit.’

Damien nodded sadly. ‘You’re right. I’ve watched it happen. The university treated him very badly, you know. Really beat him up. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years, especially within his own faculty-well, you know how sarcastic he could be. The dean hated his guts and saw the accident on Lord Howe as a way to get rid of him. Rumours circulated-that he hadn’t organised proper back-up for the team, that he was indifferent to safety procedures, that he was spaced out on drugs when it happened-all discounted by the police investigation, but no matter. They made life as difficult for him as they could, and when he accepted a package they refused to give him a reference. Then Luce’s dad went for him.’

‘What? Her father?’

‘Mm, Fred Corcoran, tough old bastard. He saw Marcus’s quitting the uni as an admission of guilt and when the coroner cleared him of any negligence, Corcoran took a private action against him. It dragged through the court for a year. In the end it failed, but it cost Marcus his university payout in lawyers’ fees. The court sympathised with old man Corcoran, even though he was wrong, and didn’t like the look of Marcus, so they didn’t award him costs.’

‘Hell.’ I shook my head.

‘What was so unfair was that Marcus really was devastated by what had happened to Luce, but he just refused to show it, and people didn’t like that. They thought he was arrogant and didn’t care.’

‘So what is he doing now? He said he was involved in some kind of research.’

‘No, no.’ Damien said it with a dismissive flick at some breadcrumbs on the white tablecloth. ‘He’s become a recluse, living on an invalid pension. We tried to help him, Curtis, Owen and I, but he’s difficult. He has these mood swings, and he hates the idea of people feeling sorry for him, or giving him charity.’

Damien put the last piece of barramundi in his mouth, chewed, and then said, ‘When he phoned me, Marcus said something strange. He said Anna told him that Owen made some kind of confession to her, just before he died.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Apparently Owen said that the accident hadn’t happened the way they told it afterwards.’

He stared at me. ‘Really? You didn’t tell me this before.’

‘No. I was a bit sceptical. I think Owen’s brain must have been scrambled by the fall, but Anna is convinced he was lucid.’

‘And you really didn’t think it was worth mentioning this to me?’

There was an unspoken undercurrent here, concerning our places within the group, that I’d allowed myself to overlook, or forget. He was saying that, of all people, he should have been the first to be told, for it had always been his role to take charge and get us organised, whenever that proved necessary. And equally, I guessed this was the reason why we hadn’t told him straight away, because we knew he’d try to take over.

I shrugged and turned back to my fish, embarrassed in spite of myself. ‘As I say, I don’t know that it can be taken seriously.’

‘Well, it was serious enough to confront Marcus with it.’ His grip on his knife and fork tightened.

‘We just wanted reassurance from him that Luce wasn’t … wouldn’t have jumped.’

But he wasn’t to be deflected. ‘What exactly did Owen say?’

‘What I just told you, plus he said, We killed her .’

‘ We killed her ?’ he repeated through his teeth. ‘I was there, Josh. I was part of that team, part of we , and you two didn’t think it worth telling me about this?’

‘I’m sorry. We would have. We just wanted to get up to speed first on how things were out there.’

He looked incredulous. ‘You got me to obtain the police report for you, but you didn’t tell me the real reason you wanted it. What was that, some kind of test? You thought I was involved in … what? A murder? A cover-up?’

His field was commercial law, but it occurred to me that Damien would have made a pretty sharp criminal lawyer.

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

There was an awkward silence, during which he stared at me, then he turned away, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Who else have you told about this?’

‘No one. Well, Mary.’

‘Don’t you realise how preposterous it is?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘And what motive could we have possibly had?’

‘There was one thought that occurred to me.’

‘Oh really? I’d like to hear that.’

‘Do you know that Curtis and Owen had … a relationship?’

‘A sexual relationship you mean? Yes.’ He said it bluntly, as if to emphasise that he would know everything that went on in the group. ‘Why? What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Luce was worried about Suzi. She didn’t like the deceit. I wondered if it was still going on, and she maybe confronted them.’

‘So they pushed her down a cliff? That’s laughable.’

‘Was it still going on?’

He hesitated, looked down at his knuckles. ‘I’m not sure about that. Possibly.’

Another long silence, then I said, ‘Well, it was just a theory.’

Finally he said, very softly, ‘It doesn’t matter, Josh. Not any more. Curtis and Owen are dead. The rest of us just have to live with it-Suzi, old Corcoran, Marcus, me. Christ …’ He put a hand to his face, wiping his eyes. ‘How do you think I feel, knowing that if I’d been with them that day it might never have happened? I feel guilty as hell.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ I said, not meaning it unkindly, but thinking that his tone wasn’t quite right somehow, more complaining than contrite. ‘In fact I don’t really understand why they did go without you.’

‘It was a bright sunny day, we’d already been up and down that cliff several times and they were all confident. They just wanted to finish off the job. They didn’t realise how the heavy rain the day before could have loosened the scree. Look, I don’t believe your theory for a moment, but even if it were true, what’s to be done? Uncover the truth? Confront Suzi with it? Destroy her son’s memory of his father?’

I shook my head.

‘No, it’s not really on, is it?’

We finished our meal in an uncomfortable atmosphere, and as we left the restaurant I asked if he had Suzi’s address. He gave me a dark look.

‘It’s okay, I just want to see if I can help.’

He knew it off by heart, and wrote it on the back of one of his cards for me, with a final warning. ‘We’ve got to move on, Josh. She doesn’t need any of this.’

He was right, of course. The only trouble was, he wasn’t the only one feeling guilty.

Risk management had been my area in London. After we parted, as I walked around the quay watching the gulls wheeling over an incoming ferry, it occurred to me that Damien would also make an excellent risk manager. He had been forceful, persuasive, working me into a corner from which I had little choice but to agree with him. But Marcus’s voice kept whispering insistently in my ear, ‘There’s no conspiracy here.’ I’d never heard him sounding needy and cowering before. It had been an unpleasant experience, more so than being pressured by Damien.

I stopped at a toyshop and bought a handheld electronic Spiderman games unit that the man assured me was perfect for a boy of six, then bought a bunch of roses and some chocolates next door, and made my way to the address Damien had given me. I parked outside, and stared at the blank front door, imagining all the pain and turmoil on the other side, and lost my nerve. I would have started up the engine and driven away again, but then I saw them approaching along the footpath, Suzi pushing the baby in a stroller with one hand and holding Thomas’s little paw with the other. It hadn’t really struck me at the funeral how like his father the boy was, with that serious, studious expression, and the same black hair. In a couple of years I expected he’d be wearing glasses just like his dad, too. I got out of the car and Suzi looked surprised, then glad. We went inside for a cup of tea, and I handed over the gifts. Thomas took to the game as his father might have to a new electron microscope, and after I’d set it up for him he sat in a corner of the room, utterly engrossed. Suzi and I chatted, mostly about London and the places she’d like to visit in Europe one day, and then I escaped. Of course I didn’t bring up any difficult issues. Sitting there, the doubts and suspicions that had been going through my head seemed simply obscene, and I came away convinced that there had to be some other explanation for what her husband had whispered before he died. I went back to the hotel and began to sift through all the material again, determined to find it.