‘When did he explain this to you?’
‘After we agreed to be part of his team. As he described it, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Marcus was the expert, and if he said it was okay, well, we thought it must be all right. It was a matter of loyalty as much as anything else.’
‘Yes.’ That did sound right. They were all very loyal to Marcus, their hip priest.
‘Are you telling me that Luce was in on this?’
‘No. I doubt whether she would have agreed to it, but Marcus never took the chance. He thought she was very special, you know. Full of the ideals that had driven him, and she trusted him implicitly. And that was the problem. She had no idea. Marcus asked me to be her climbing partner and help her do the scientific stuff and keep her out of harm’s way, while the other two did the collecting. We thought it was all a bit of a lark.’
I felt that old nauseous reflux of jealousy. He had to stay close to her, distract her, amuse her.
‘Why didn’t Marcus just leave her out of the team?’
‘He couldn’t. She was mad keen to go, she was the brightest student, the best climber. He just couldn’t.’
‘But she found out what was going on?’
‘I think she began to get a hint of something almost as soon as they arrived on the island. It’s hard to keep secrets when you’re all living together-a whisper, a nudge, a conversation that stops suddenly when you walk into the room. But she couldn’t be sure, not until the yachts arrived. Marcus wasn’t a very good actor. He got pretty anxious as the time got closer. There were some heated phone calls. The dealer was putting pressure on him. Marcus began to get very agitated during the party at the Kelsos’ for the yacht crews when he saw Luce talking to the guy. He got me to butt in and try to get her away, but it wasn’t easy. Apparently Luce had overheard him talking to Marcus about Kermadec petrel eggs, which was a bit of a giveaway, because they can only be found on Balls Pyramid, and our visit there was supposed to be a secret. She wanted to know what was going on, and I tried to fob her off. But I was a bit drunk and stupid, while she was sober and sharp as a needle. I don’t know exactly what she imagined, but she stormed off. I’m not sure what happened after that, but the next morning she didn’t say much, and watched everything we were doing like a hawk.’
‘So what happened the next day?’
‘Bob took us out to Balls Pyramid as planned, and we climbed up to Gannet Green. I was supposed to lead Luce round to the west flank, out of sight of Curtis and Owen, who were after a colony of petrels they’d spotted on the east. At first she seemed to go along with it, but then I turned to say something to her and she was gone. I scrambled back the way we’d come, and when I looked over the ridge I saw her, climbing down to where the other two were crouching among the melaleuca bushes. I called out, and they looked up and saw her. She started shouting at them … I couldn’t hear what they were saying. There were gulls wheeling and screaming all around us, and the wind was whistling in the rocks. Then Luce suddenly took off, racing up to the ridge, I don’t know why. Curtis was on the radio, to Marcus I assume, and then he and Owen set off after her. I followed, but I couldn’t keep up. Eventually I gave up and just waited until Curtis and Owen came back down. They said they’d lost her.’
‘They didn’t try to hurt her? You’re sure that wasn’t why she ran?’
‘God, no, Josh. Nothing like that.’
We sat in silence for a while.
Disgust, I decided, was what had driven Luce off like that. Disgust with the friends who had so comprehensively deceived her; disgust with the teacher who had opened her eyes to the truth and then perverted it with his corruption and greed; disgust with her species that couldn’t help destroying everything it touched, even on that lonely unspoilt place. And disgust, surely, with the lover who had left her with that little worm in her belly.
‘Please,’ Damien said at last, ‘please don’t make more of this than there is. In the final analysis it was a tragic accident. She stormed off, refused to come back down, and got caught by the weather on a dangerously exposed place.’
I suppose it was what I wanted to hear, the best that could be made of it.
‘Of course, Curtis and Owen were stricken with guilt. That’s why Owen said what he did to Anna.’
‘Yes.’
‘So …’ He leaned forward in his seat, watching me carefully. ‘The note.’
‘It was a poem, of despair,’ I said. But was it really?
‘What, a suicide note?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘At the summit.’
‘You’re kidding! She got to the top? That’s eighteen hundred feet! Well, you know-you climbed it. But there were two of you. How would you describe it?’
‘Tough,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know how she managed it.’ I didn’t mention that she’d abandoned her climbing gear. It had been heroic really, the climb of her life, like Lynn Hill on El Capitan.
I took a swallow of my Scotch. It burned. ‘I’ll speak to Marcus.’
‘Please don’t,’ Damien said quickly. ‘Marcus is a mess right now. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? He can’t tell you anything more. It was a tragic accident, and everyone involved has paid dearly for it.’
Sitting in that beautiful apartment overlooking Circular Quay, sipping a ten-year-old malt, I felt that wasn’t quite the way for Damien to put it. He saw the mistake register on my face and quickly added, ‘Think of Curtis and Owen’s families, for God’s sake. Do you really want to brand those two as murderers? They were your friends.’
‘I know.’
He leaned even closer across the gap towards me, as if wanting to physically bridge the rift between us. ‘I do appreciate you coming here to talk about this, Josh, and letting me explain. We were mates once; I hope we still can be. I know you’re a level-headed bloke. But it’s worried me, having Anna involved. She’s inclined to be a bit hysterical, when it comes to this subject. Did she tell you she went for me at the inquest? After one of the sessions, when Curtis said I wasn’t at the scene when the accident happened, she flew at me, said I should have been there. She was a very disturbed young woman, believe me.’
‘Why did you tell them you weren’t there?’
He spread his hands. ‘I panicked, basically. Just couldn’t face the prospect of having to give an eyewitness account.’ But it didn’t sound like panic to me, more like risk management.
‘Josh,’ he said, ‘please calm her down. She’s got to get over this. I could get ten years for smuggling native wildlife and misleading the coroner, you know. Ten years.’
23
I returned to Potts Point feeling the need to unwind before going back to the hotel, and stopped at the pub around the corner. I felt exhausted after all that had happened recently, capped by that talk with Damien. Thinking about it, I remembered the feeling I’d had when I met him at Curtis and Owen’s funeral, as if I’d been worked over by a pro. Basically he’d fed back to me a more acceptable version of the scenario I had put to Bob on the boat. He’d confirmed what I’d suspected, but little else. The only time he’d seemed at all hesitant was when talking about Luce’s note. Perhaps I could have made more of that, but I wasn’t quite sure how. I had a couple of schooners of New and began to feel a little better. Between the thump of the music from upstairs and the footy commentary on the big TV, it occurred to me that I should try to trace the source of that verse of Luce’s. It certainly wasn’t what I’d have been tempted to write as my parting shot to a cruel world.