‘That’s Arne Naess,’ Luce said, in a tone that suggested Moses himself had appeared.
‘Who?’
‘Arne Naess-you must have heard of him.’
‘Sorry.’
Anna made a sort of clucking noise behind me, accompanied by a hiss of steam from her iron. ‘He’s just about the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, that’s all. He invented deep ecology.’
I hadn’t heard of that, either.
Luce said, ‘He’s also a great climber. The day after this he took Marcus onto the Troll Wall at Romsdalen. That is awesome.’
‘Looks a bit old for that.’
Anna butted in again. ‘His nephew, also called Arne Naess, led the first Norwegian Everest expedition. He’s married to Diana Ross.’
I turned and stared at her. ‘Now you are having me on.’
She shrugged, poker-faced, enjoying herself, and went on with her ironing.
When I left the flat I lingered with Luce on the doorstep, giving her a kiss, and was gratified by the response. Suddenly she was interested in me again, really interested it seemed, and I wondered if there was some quirk of wiring in her brain linking climbing and sex. I said, as if the idea had just popped into my head, ‘Hey, how about I come and help you babysit Owen’s kid?’ I imagined a quiet romantic evening, a sofa or even a bed, free of Anna, there being no privacy in the primitive flat that I was sharing at that time.
She looked at me in surprise. ‘You don’t want to do that.’
‘Yes I do. We can work on your statistics.’
She laughed. ‘All right. I’ll speak to Suzi.’ Then she slipped away, giving me a beautiful smile as she disappeared through the door.
Memories of those times came painfully back to me when I finally sat down on the terrace with a stiff whisky to read Detective Senior Constable Maddox’s weighty report. He had been sent out to Lord Howe on the third of October, the day following Luce’s disappearance, to support the sole police officer on the island, Constable Grant Campbell. Together they had examined the scene of the accident and taken statements from just about everyone who had had contact with Luce during her month there. There are some three hundred and thirty permanent residents on the island, and visitor numbers are restricted to about four hundred. At that time of the year, mid-spring, Maddox reckoned there were three hundred and twenty visitors, their numbers boosted a few days before by the arrival of a dozen yachts taking part in the annual Sydney to Lord Howe Island race.
Maddox paid closest attention, naturally enough, to those nearest to Luce, the group from Sydney, interviewing each of them several times. They began by expressing their shock at what had happened and their dismay at the loss of such a wonderful friend. Their accounts of the accident were consistent, and they described the relationships within the scientific study team as harmonious and Luce’s mood as happy. However, a shadow was cast over this rather bland and comforting story by some of the other people that the police spoke to. A young woman, Sophie Kalajzich, a temporary resident on the island working as a waitress and cleaner on a twelve-month contract, had become friends with Luce, and described her as being withdrawn and depressed on occasions, especially towards the end of her stay. She also said that Luce had referred to some disagreement among the research team, and that she felt that Luce had seemed isolated and marginalised as the only woman in the group. She mentioned that Luce had been to see the island’s doctor several times. Dr Richard Passlow confirmed that he had seen her twice, treating her for diarrhoea, nausea and insomnia. He described her mood as subdued rather than depressed.
Faced with these comments, the others in her party modified their statements. Luce had seemed a bit down lately, Curtis said, and Owen agreed that she hadn’t been her usual cheerful self, though they denied there had been a disagreement with her. Curtis put it down to the time of the month. Finally Damien, no doubt sensing the way things were going, came out with the fact that she had broken up with her boyfriend shortly before coming on the trip, and he attributed her moodiness to that. Maddox had added a note in his report that the boyfriend, Joshua Ambler, had moved to the United Kingdom and he had been unable to contact him at the London address provided. But when Maddox bluntly asked them if Luce might have taken risks on those cliffs, or even deliberately jumped, they were all adamant that that was impossible.
As I read through these statements I felt I saw Luce emerge as if through a mist, vague and unfamiliar at first, then in sharper focus, a sadder, darker version of the woman I’d known. This glimpse of her, over the gap of four years, made me feel terrible, and for a while I pushed the report away and couldn’t go on with it.
My eyes strayed to the morning newspaper on the table at my elbow, folded to an article on the sentencing of the double-murderer on the train. Rory had sent him down for thirty-four years. It struck me as an odd figure-why not a nice round thirty-five? — until I realised that the victims had been aged sixteen and eighteen. Also, the murderer was aged thirty-three and Rory sixty-seven. A methodical and precise man, our Rory. I wondered how he might calculate my guilt.
Mary came out onto the terrace, carrying a plate of savoury tidbits that she’d been experimenting with in the kitchen. As I tried a couple, she took in the coroner’s report and the whisky.
‘I thought you were a beer man, Josh. I never saw you drink Scotch until that day Anna came.’ She tilted her head so that she could read the title on the report. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Anna and I persuaded Damien to get hold of it for us.’
‘Ah.’ Mary sat down facing me, a worried frown on her face. ‘If you need help I could always ask Rory, you know. I’m sure he could arrange for you to talk to the policeman who went out there, if it would make you feel any better. I think his name was mentioned in the press at the time.’
‘Thanks. Maybe later.’ It was a kind thought, but the last thing I wanted was to get Rory involved.
‘I wonder if this is such a good idea, Josh, raking over the past like this.’
I looked at her in surprise. ‘I thought you were for it.’
She gave me a sad smile. ‘I didn’t realise then that you’re still in love with her. You are, aren’t you, dear?’
I blinked at her, and remembered a crack my father had made one Christmas, that Mary was a witch, with the gift of second sight. I think she’d caught him out over something to do with Pam, while my mum was still alive.
She reached forward and squeezed my hand. ‘We’re all just ships that pass in the night, Josh. For a brief time we make friends, we fall in love, and then we’re alone again. We all have to cope with that.’
‘Sure.’ I shrugged, embarrassed by this bit of homespun wisdom. Four years before I would have said coping wasn’t a problem, but I seemed to be getting softer with time. ‘With a little help from these …’ She thought I was reaching for the whisky, but instead I grabbed a couple of her savouries. She laughed and clipped my ear as she went back to the kitchen.
I was drawn back to the report by a lie. In one of his statements Marcus, the leader of the team, had described Luce as being a ‘highly skilled but impetuous climber’. I supposed he’d said it as a precaution, as a first small step to protecting himself and the university against any future accusations of negligence. But it was a lie-Luce was never impetuous. That was the amazing thing about her, that she could do the most breathtaking things with such control and deliberation.
That got me thinking about Marcus again, the most enigmatic and, for me at least, the most perplexing of our circle. For although he was one of us, it was never quite possible to forget that he was also a member of staff, a senior lecturer and director of the university’s Conservation Biology Centre within the Department of Zoology, and tutor to Luce, Curtis and Owen. He elided the two roles, teacher and friend, in a way that I hadn’t seen before at university, allowing him to slip from one to the other, so it seemed to me, according to the circumstance. His social life seemed to revolve entirely around his tutorial students, with whom he would be viciously funny, putting down his academic colleagues and deriding the ways of the university-then he’d abruptly assert the authority of his position and turn on one of them with some scolding remark.