Bright Air - Barry Maitland [5]
I returned to the terrace with the bottle of wine and refilled her glass.
‘Who else have you told about this, Anna?’
‘No one. I’ve been wrestling with it for the past ten days, quietly going mad.’
‘I can imagine. You haven’t spoken to Damien, or Marcus?’
She shook her head, but didn’t elaborate. ‘The other day I remembered your aunt saying you were coming back, and I had to come into town today, and I thought, if you were here, I’d mention it to you.’
I thought it odd, not only her not talking to Damien but also not phoning the hotel to make sure I’d be in, as if she were so reluctant to share this that she had left it in the hands of fate.
‘I’m glad you did, Anna. Look, he was delirious, surely. His brain would have been scrambled by the fall—how far did they fall anyway?’
‘About forty metres.’
‘There you are then.’
‘Into snow. No, his brain was about the only bit of him that they didn’t seem too worried about. And he really did sound clear-headed, just for those few minutes.’
‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t hallucinating. He’d have been stuffed full of drugs, massively traumatised, on the point of death.’
‘I’ve tried to convince myself of that, but you weren’t there, Josh. You didn’t hear the certainty in his voice.’
I decided to try another tack. ‘There was an inquest into Luce’s death, wasn’t there? Did you attend?’
‘Yes, every day.’
‘Was there any suggestion of doubt? Any hint of foul play?’
‘No. But they never found a body, and the rest of the group all told the same story, so there was no reason to doubt it.’
Curtis, Owen and Damien, the three who’d been climbing with Luce, and the organiser of the trip, Marcus Fenn. That was about all I knew of what had happened, that and the place—Lord Howe Island, out in the Pacific, five hundred kilometres off the New South Wales coast. Of the six of us who used to climb together, Anna and I were the missing pair. I wondered if she felt as guilty about that as I did. But then, she had no reason to.
‘It’s preposterous, Anna, to suggest that they would have deliberately done anything to Luce.’
‘I know …’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘How much do you know about her accident?’
‘Not a lot. Mary sent me a newspaper cutting.’
‘I remember she came to the service.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right. She told me about it, how so many people were there.’ But not me. Not me.
Anna reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a blue plastic folder. She handed it to me. ‘I kept some cuttings.’
‘Ah.’ I stared down at the file but didn’t open it. It only weighed a few grams, but it felt much more, and I understood why she looked so tired.
‘Have a look—not now. Read it and maybe we can talk again.’
‘All right, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I mean, you just have to remember how we all were, Anna. There’s no way …’
We swapped phone numbers and she got to her feet and began to make for the door. I followed, thinking that the hotel felt strangely quiet. It was as if the place were under a spell.
I opened the front door for her, and she turned and gave me a little smile, sad and wistful. ‘I’m sorry, Josh. I had to tell someone.’
‘Oh sure, of course. I’m very glad you did.’ But that wasn’t true.
We walked together across the forecourt of the hotel, what had once been a front garden but was now brick-paved to provide a few parking spaces for guests. Cars hummed past in the street, their headlights on in the fading twilight.
At the pavement she glanced back at the hotel. ‘This is a wonderful place, isn’t it? We all came here once, didn’t we? Your aunt gave us lunch.’
‘Yes, I remember.’ The memory tugged at me, a warm and happy day, and on an impulse, as she turned to go, I added, ‘Look, apart from this business, Anna, we should catch up, have a drink or a meal or something.’
She nodded without much enthusiasm, and I realised that she must have been as reluctant as I to make this contact,