Barry Maitland: Bright Air

Something over my shoulder caught his attention and he said, ‘I’m going to have to shoot off straight after this, but we must catch up.’ He slipped a business card out of his top pocket. ‘Here.’

‘You’re a lawyer?’ I said, noting the name of a big law firm in Martin Place.

‘Yes, I gave up on science the year you left, concentrated on law. Commercial mainly, up your street. Who were you with in London, by the way?’

‘BBK, a German bank …’

‘I know them, they’re clients of ours. So you’re working for them in Sydney now? With Victor?’

‘No. I’m looking around first.’

‘Okay. Who was your London boss?’

I hesitated. ‘Sir George Henderson.’

‘Don’t know him. Well, look, give me a call. Soon.’ He clapped me on the arm and moved off. I felt as if I’d been strip-searched. I joined the crush moving into the church. I couldn’t see Anna anywhere.

It was a good service, I suppose you’d say, very professional. Parts of it moved the people around me to tears, especially when Curtis’s brother delivered a heartbroken eulogy, but I couldn’t feel anything. It all seemed so remote from the two blokes I’d known. Only the pair of caskets, side by side on the altar steps, stopped me short, metonymy in spades.

But afterwards, outside the church, I had to face Owen’s wife, Suzi, and that was painful. She was weeping and looked totally washed out, as if she hadn’t slept in days. We hugged each other and she whispered her thanks to me for coming. I hardly knew what to say, and mumbled some platitude. Really, there are no words, are there? She was twenty-five, a pretty but not very bright girl with few options. A little boy was clinging to her hand, looking confused.

‘Do you remember Thomas?’ Suzi asked, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

‘Of course. I used to babysit you. Can I have a hug?’ I bent down and the boy gave me an awkward peck on the cheek.

Ranked behind Suzi were the families, her parents and Owen’s holding the second child, a baby, and then Curtis’s next to them, with Curtis’s brother. I shook all their hands, and they said they recognised my name and knew I’d been a good friend to the two young men.

Anna was outside the church, standing in the shade of a large tree, the morning sun turning hot.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘You okay?’ I saw that she’d been crying too, a little smear of make-up in the darker skin beneath each eye.

She hunched her shoulders. ‘Did you see Damien?’

‘Briefly. He seemed in a rush. He said a few words about the boys and then grilled me on my CV. Very focused.’ I was remembering a more carefree Damien, a lad with an eye for the girls, who fell for him with bewildering speed. We never understood why because he wasn’t particularly good-looking. We’d quiz the women afterwards, but they didn’t seem to know either.

‘That’s what happens to us,’ she said. ‘A couple of months filling in six-minute charge-out time sheets and calculating his Christmas bonus, and Damien has turned into a wage-slave like the rest of us.’

‘True enough. Want a bite of lunch?’

‘I haven’t got long before I have to get back to work,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Let’s talk over a sandwich, then you can drop me at the station.’

We found a cafe not far from my car, and sat at a window table. She ordered turkey on Turkish with a mineral water, and I a large cappuccino and a ham sandwich.

‘Did you get a chance to read the cuttings?’

‘Yes, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. It seems to me that Curtis and Owen felt that they’d been negligent in some way. Maybe they persuaded Luce it would be easier if she unclipped her harness, or maybe they had an argument about something that made her go off on her own. I don’t know, it could have been a dozen things, but when she fell they blamed themselves. They were ashamed and didn’t mention it at the inquest, and so, in his dying moments, Owen felt compelled to say that they’d killed her, and that it hadn’t happened exactly as they’d said. But they didn’t murder her, for goodness’ sake. Nothing like that.’

She stared at me for a long moment, considering this, and then she said quietly, ‘Are you really sure about that, Josh?’

I had a sudden feeling that I’d underestimated Anna all those years; that, from within the shadow of more glamorous friends, she’d learned to observe and become rather more perceptive than I’d given her credit for.

I shrugged. ‘I just think, maybe that’s the best thing we can believe.’

She frowned, then shook her head. ‘I want to know the truth. I owe that to Luce. I think we both do.’

I winced, bowed my head. ‘Yes.’

‘The thing is, if we can’t rely on what Owen and Curtis said afterwards, then we really have no idea at all what happened to her. All we can say for sure is that she disappeared.’

I was struck by her choice of words, disappeared rather than died . ‘But is it possible to know the truth now? What can we do? If you go to the police with your story of Owen’s last words, I’m sure they’ll just tell you to forget it.’

‘I know.’

‘Tell me, why didn’t you speak to Damien about this?’

She looked uneasy, poking at her food. ‘Maybe I’ve been letting my imagination run away with me, I don’t know. But if we can’t rely on what Owen and Curtis said, can we believe Damien and Marcus either? They all stuck together at the inquest, told exactly the same story. Perhaps … there was some kind of cover-up.’

I gaped at her. ‘A conspiracy? Oh, come on now, Anna. That is getting a bit wild.’

‘Yes, probably.’

We ate in silence for a while. When we were finished I wiped my mouth and said, ‘So, what can we do?’

‘I was thinking-the police prepared a very detailed report of the case for the coroner. It contained transcripts of all the interviews they conducted, diagrams, timelines, everything. I saw it at the inquest, a big fat document, the coroner referred to it all the time. If we could get hold of that, we might find something.’

‘Okay, yes, we could try.’ I was trying to sound encouraging, just to satisfy her, but it sounded pretty hopeless to me. ‘Any idea how we could get hold of a copy? Do we apply to the coroner’s office or something?’

‘I thought we might ask Damien to get it for us. I thought it might be a sort of test.’

I laughed. ‘You devious …’

‘Only it won’t work if I see Damien on my own. He’ll just laugh at me and brush me off with some condescending remark.’

I thought she was probably right about that. There had always been a slight undercurrent of antagonism between them, something to do with Damien’s rather cavalier approach to the opposite sex, I assumed.

‘He gave me his card.’ I reached into my pocket and showed it to her. She nodded and looked expectantly at me. I hesitated, then decided that Damien was probably the only one who could reassure her. I took out my phone and dialled his mobile number.

‘Stokes.’

‘Damien, hi, it’s Josh.’

‘Oh, hi, Josh.’ I could hear the surprise in his voice.

‘I met Anna at the funeral, in fact I’m sitting having a cup of coffee with her now. We’ve been talking things over and there’s something we’d like to discuss with you.’

‘Oh yes? What is it?’

‘It’d be better if we sat down together, the three of us. Have you got a half-hour you could spare in the next day or two? We’ll come to you.’

He laughed. ‘Mysterious, Josh. Well, of course, if it’s important. Stirred up a few memories today, did it?’

‘Yeah.’

We waited, then he came back on. ‘How about this evening, six-thirty? There’s a little bar across the street from where I work-Sammy’s Bar.’