I was back in the same unit at the Kookaburra Hotel I’d been in around a week before. I was too wired to sleep, especially after my late snooze. What did I know for sure? Well, Mal Gross had said they’d got Crossland in Wyndham. I clicked on my computer and checked distances between Derby and Wyndham. No way he was swimming croc creek at 6.00 am and getting all the way there. Plus there were cops along the Gibb River Road almost immediately after that, on the lookout. He was not the guy. But who was, and why would you take that risk to get away? If you were poaching crocs you’d just stick your hands up. Maybe they had something to do with Turner. Maybe Crossland had hired a third party to get rid of him and they’d stuffed up. I liked that theory. Crossland would know criminal types for sure. I made a note to run it by Clement: check Crossland’s phone calls. Probably he was already on it. My brain jumped to the body in the desert: the girl we now knew was Kelly Davies, tracked back to here, the night Kelly disappeared. The bar girl was a hundred percent credible. She’d played hide the sausage all night with Crossland. She hadn’t thought he was weird in any way. He was a normal sort of guy, no mental genius but well built. I could see the penny dropping when I kept asking about him but I deflected her questions. I wasn’t going to say she had a close shave with a serial killer. It was possible that at some point when she slept – even though she denied that, people do drop off without realising – Crossland had slipped out, killed Kelly Davies, stuffed her in the back of his car, returned to bed and coolly driven off the next morning to dump the body in the desert. Okay, his car wasn’t perfect for the job but if he was careful maybe he borrowed a car. There was something about the body I should have been homing in on but I had too many ideas pushing and shoving. I forced myself to play devil’s advocate.
Could Crossland be innocent of Kelly’s death? Could it be a coincidence? Who was the last known person to see Kelly alive? According to the accounts I had, Sierra. She said she had seen her in the ladies. Could the girls be lying to me? Jealousies on tour, where would they lead? I only had their word Kelly had said she was going to quit anyway. But like Crossland’s car, their van would never have made it into the desert to dump the body. They’d need help and, unlike him, they weren’t criminals.
I suppose I could check their time lines but I just couldn’t sell it to myself. I was starting to get antsy. I wondered if Crossland had confessed already. Doubtful, Clement had promised me he would let me know right away and I believed him.
It was just after 2.00 am I reckoned that was around 8.00 pm in Barcelona. My computer was running. I signed up for the pub internet and launched Skype. Presto. A little icon told me Tash was online. And then I was looking at her beautiful face and wanting to hold her and realising all over again how deeply I missed her. We chatted for ten minutes about their adventures. Gaudi had become their hero.
‘It’s as if he takes our stupid modern lives and turns them into a beautiful mystical tale.’
We talked about her work. She found Barcelona inspirational. She asked about my case. I trimmed: successful outcome, big payday. She read me even via an internet cable.
‘So what’s the problem?’
I spilled on it all: the body in the desert, Crossland – leaving out his name – I trusted her but was paranoid of speaking into anything electronic. I told her I’d recognised the pendant. I told her it was so clear and obvious and a vindication of my work way back when … except it wasn’t. Things didn’t add up. She listened for a good twenty minutes. We didn’t lose the connection. It was like I had my personal therapist. When I started going over everything the second time, she interrupted me.
‘You told me, Dad told you once, a poor detective doesn’t reach, but a good detective can be guilty of the same error in reverse and reach too much. You remember that?’
I have to be honest, I didn’t remember telling her that, but I did recall her father Dave Holland, the best detective I’d ever known, giving me that piece of advice when I first started. My memory was fading, I guess. She was still talking.
‘You mustn’t fit the case to your theory, no matter how beautifully it seems to work.’
And now it was like she was inside my head, decoding the intuition I’d felt over the last fifteen or so hours.
‘If the facts say it’s not your suspect, maybe it isn’t.’
‘But …’ I started. It was as far as I got.
‘Yesterday Grace and I were walking down Las Ramblas and we’d been talking about her getting her licence. I told her about how the first time I drove as a licensed driver, I broke down in Barrack Street. There I was, middle of the city. I was petrified. I didn’t know what to do. And there’s a knock on my window and there was John Norton, her grandfather’s friend, and he helped me.’
I knew there had to be some point to the story. I held my tongue.
‘We had lunch and walked around and started back to the pensione and who do we see? Oliver. I’m not joking. Oliver Norton, John’s grandson. He’s on a break from uni. Coincidences happen, Snow. Maybe the girl decided to quit the troupe, was hitching and got picked up by the wrong guy.’
Later I lay in bed with those thoughts still zipping through my head. What Tash said could be true. The coroner had said Kelly’s body had been crushed. A big rig would do that. She could have hitched … coincidences happen …
Stop it, I told myself. You’re grasping at straws and you know it. I hadn’t told Tash about my swim through croc creek. Maybe one day I would. I conjured her beside me, became drowsy. I saw Grace’s life in flashes: in a highchair, face covered in yoghurt, wobbling on a bike, the first time she won a school prize. I drifted. I was in dappled light, on the edge of a mangrove swamp. There was a big croc right in front of me, I had to get out of there but I was frozen. Clement, no Dave Holland, was there too but couldn’t see me or hear me or was paying no attention. Someone else was in the shadows on the other side of the swamp. If I wanted to see who it was I would have to get past the croc. There were magical shapes, buildings. Tash was taking photos. It was a city, it was Gaudi, but somehow it was right next to where I was in this mangrove swamp. Dave Holland was saying something, mumbling numbers, distances, repeating that it was impossible, it didn’t add up. The shadowy figure was getting away from me. They were more lit now but only their back. I wanted to advance. The croc was getting ready to spring at me. I realised there was a branch above me. Perhaps I could jump for it …
I woke with my legs jolting from the imagined leap. Light streamed through a gap in a blind. Outside a cleaning trolley jolted. Reality smothered me. I checked the time on my watch on the bedside table: 7.50. First thought, check my phone. Yes, a text from Clement. I was lucky, I didn’t need glasses yet. Well, maybe I did, my eyes got a bit blurry when I got tired. I’m sure I held my breath.
No dice. Only admits to phone theft. Perth have him tom.
Shit. I suppose I more than half expected it but I’d always thought there might be a chance he’d cop to Autostrada. I lay there enfeebled by the dream and the text.
A proper breakfast was calling.
The weather was glorious, the sky the colour blue I remembered from old Westerns. It was warm but with a freshness you no longer got in Perth where every summer was more humid than the one preceding. I wandered the streets. Cars, front and back, had been feasting on red dust. The gentrification of Port Hedland was well underway. I knew this as soon as I spotted a Dôme café. Dôme was born in Perth, a sophisticated version of Starbucks. The originators hit the zeitgeist full on: baby boomers – who had travelled OS where they’d bought leather jackets in Manhattan, boots in Milan, and gallery prints in the Tate – had slowed down, generated families and traded Jim Beam for espresso. Dômes carried the spirit of Singapore’s Raffles, ceiling fans, rattan-themed furniture, open space where cutlery clatter ascended to the cupola, the underside of the eponymous dome. Those who played bongos in parks, sucked fire and still rolled their own shied away, too middle-class. Everybody else thronged. This Dôme sported an impressive, long, latticework veranda replete with hibiscus. Inside, the place was thriving with morning trade, white collar and hi-vis vests evenly split. I ordered tea and the big breakfast, out of sentimentality selected my old guernsey number fifteen for my table number, and found an unoccupied two-seater. A previous incumbent had left half an Australian and the local rag. I skimmed the Aus – terror and taxes – and turned my attention to the local as the tea arrived. The Hornets had flogged Karratha in netball. Front page told the town it would be shortly be welcoming the Premier and Federal Minister for Industry for the inking of the big deal between China and my former employer Giant Ore. I thought there was supposed to be a glut of the red stuff but I suppose I was wrong. Nelson Feister was clearly still able to make a buck. The big breakfast arrived: bacon, eggs, sausage, tomato. Barcelona could keep its tapas. Unfortunately it still had what I truly treasured, my girls.
I sat back as the food hit and contemplated my next move. I could drive back to Perth, that’s where Crossland would be heading. On the other hand, there was unfinished business here. What had happened to Kelly Davies? Who had led me through croc creek, and why? The phone rang. Clement. I wondered if he’d caught any sleep or been working through. I answered through bacon and tomato.
‘So he didn’t put his hand up.’
‘No. He admitted to the phone, denied the drugs. I showed him the pendant. He hardly noticed.’
Crossland was practised. He’d been there before.
‘Where are you now?’ I asked.
‘Sitting on my bed getting dressed. Sounds like you’re out and about.’
‘Big breakfast, Dôme. You got some sleep?’
‘Three or four hours. Tell me about the bar girl.’
I told him everything she’d told me. ‘She’s not lying. She’s genuine. Okay, it’s possible he snuck out in the middle of the night …’
Clement cut in. ‘I know. But it’s a stretch. And the car bothers me. I wondered if he could possibly have had an accomplice.’
I told him the same thought had crossed my mind. I remembered what Tash had counselled about reaching too far and then promptly ignored it. ‘Maybe he had a trail bike or something in the car,’ I said.
‘Or one of those James Bond jet packs he strapped to his back.’
Okay, I was asking for it.
Clement said, ‘Perhaps Crossland being at the Pearl really is a coincidence.’
I was poked by the absurd thought that Tash and Clement were in cahoots.
‘I don’t like coincidence.’
‘Me either, but probability is a weird thing. If you have twenty-three people in a room, what do you reckon the probability is of two having their birthday on the same day?’
‘Really, Dan?’
‘Three hundred and sixty-five days to a year, twenty-three people … what’s that about one in fifteen? Seven percent.’
‘Fifty percent. See, you have to work out the probability of having that many people who don’t have a birthday on the same day. There were a lot of people interviewed over Autostrada. Perth isn’t that big a place. Maybe one of them was bound to be in Broome when we found the pendant.’ He sounded liked he was trying to convince himself.
‘You don’t have twenty-two other people, just Crossland.’
I think it worked. He sighed. ‘Keeble’s going over his clothes and car but there’s nothing obvious. Are you heading back?’
‘I haven’t decided. I want to help with Kelly Davies. I’ve got money in the bank from the Feister job. I’m not in a rush.’
He had to go. I told him I’d let him know if I was staying. We ended the call and I finished up my breakfast and ordered a coffee. I was waiting for it to arrive and replaying in my head my conversation with Clement when wham.
Sometimes you say something as a joke and have no idea of its significance. Out of the mouths of babes and all that. I called Clement back.
‘I’m driving,’ he said.
‘Can you get me into Hedland police, or better still the AFP?’
He heard it in my voice. ‘You’ve got something.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Should I drive down?’
‘Let me have a look first.’
‘At what specifically?’
‘CCTV of the airport road.’
I could almost hear his brain clicking. ‘I’m coming.’
‘You’ll be hours.’
‘I’ll fly.’
Apparently we were lucky. The Crossland arrest could have buggered up an AFP drugs operation but Crossland hadn’t actually made contact with the drug supplier before his arrest, so Clement was still in good odour with the Feds. Now we sat in front of a computer screen watching road traffic to the Hedland airfield at midnight August 17. Clement had flown in from Broome by himself. The rest of his team had been working non-stop so he’d given them the morning off. I’d been waiting at the airfield and we’d discussed my reasoning on the way to the Federal Police building.
‘When I asked who Kelly spent time with that night, the dancers all said Ingrid Feister. Angus Duncan told me she and Max Coldwell had an early start and had left early with him and his Chinese client. But I rang the girls again and Sierra, who is the most reliable, was sure that when she and the other girls left, all four of them and Kelly were still there.
‘So, what, some threesome that got out of hand?’
I didn’t see Coldwell as that kind of guy or Feister as that kind of girl.
‘You know what it’s like: go to the character of the victim. The girls said Kelly wanted the life of the rich: big house, international travel, kids, horses. She was attracted to bankers not would-be pop stars.’
‘And what made you want to look at the airport road?’
‘Her injuries.’
So here we were perched in front of the computer looking at the screen showing night, no traffic. Clement was dubious.
‘The airfield is closed this time of night. You can’t fly.’
‘You mean you’re not supposed to. This is still the Wild West. It was you talking about having a jet pack that got me thinking.’ Minutes ground by, all the same: dark, nothing.
‘There.’
Clement sat up and pointed at the screen. A car had pulled up at the gate, the logo on the door clear even with this low-res: Giant Ore. A driver got out. Angus Duncan. He punched a keypad and climbed back into the vehicle. It slid forward through the gate, Ingrid in the front passenger seat, Max Coldwell behind her closest to the camera, two other people in the back blocked by Coldwell. The gate glided back, the car faded into black.
It was literally the middle of nowhere, thought Clement, as if the tableau of his internal life had been externalised in these physical surrounds, this moonscape. Tenacity Hill was an arid hump in a bunch of arid humps. It was mild today, around mid-thirties. The sun would get higher yet and beat down on these tents. There were three of them. Two were smaller three-man tents; the other larger, rectangular, serving as some kind of mess tent. Two four-wheel drive vehicles sunned themselves adjacent to two Cessnas parked nose-to-tail on a long, thin roughly graded strip. Stephanie, the pilot, was drinking water in the largest of the tents.
‘We choppered in a little grader.’ Duncan made it sound like a mum dropping a school book off to a kid at lunchtime but Clement could imagine the cost involved. He watched Lane poke around the tents. Duncan had already said there was a three-man geology team off beyond Tenacity Hill.
‘What’s it like here at night?’ asked Clement.
‘Pleasant.’
Clement guessed Duncan knew they hadn’t flown here for a chat but all Clement had said so far was they wanted to ask a few questions. Out the corner of his eye Clement caught Snowy Lane showing a great deal of interest in a cut-down forty-four gallon drum which served as a makeshift incinerator.
‘What was it like the night of August seventeenth, or early hours of August eighteenth?’
Duncan made a helpless gesture.
‘I don’t remember what day that was.’
‘The night you flew out here after the sExcitation show. You, Ingrid Feister, Max Coldwell, Kelly Davies and your client, Mr Li. Shaun. We’ve got video footage.’
Duncan looked away to nowhere. His neck was red even though he wore his work shirt collar raised.
‘Alright. We came here to have a bit of a party. The pub was closing, Ingrid suggested it. She said she wanted to see her family’s business. There’s always lots of grog here.’
Clement jerked his chin at the strip. ‘Bit dangerous, though, night-time landing here. Not to mention illegal.’
‘I could do it with my eyes shut and one hand tied behind my back.’
Clement could picture it all now. The excitement of the night, the still beauty.
‘So. You got here and what happened?’
Duncan took his time, weighing how much to say. ‘It was a beautiful night and Shaun wanted a private dance and was prepared to pay.’
‘We understand he talked about it with the girl before?’
‘I wasn’t privy to that. Ingrid wanted to come out here. She’s the daughter of my boss. My client wanted to bring a girl. End of story.’
‘Except it wasn’t, was it?’ Snowy Lane had sauntered over. ‘Something happened, something bad.’
Clement noted Duncan showed the first sign of stress. He put two hands to his face and brushed his hair back.
‘Yeah. The dancer, she’d scored some drugs back at the pub. Ecstasy, I guess. We hung here for a little while. I broke out some grog. Coldwell was already stoned. He and Ingrid went off to that tent; the dancer, Kelly, and Li that one. We were all going to sleep the night here and I would fly them around next morning then drop them back in Hedland. I was in the mess tent on an air mattress.’
According to Duncan, about two hours later Li came running into his tent and woke him up, babbling in Chinese. He knew something was wrong.
‘I got to the tent and she was stone cold with some sick around her face.’ He threw his hands up. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’
Yes, you did, thought Clement. You knew exactly what to do for your employer.
‘You could have called us.’
‘You have any idea how much this deal is worth to this country? We’re talking billions. If Shaun got involved in that, the whole thing could be shut down.’
Nothing shocked Clement any more. His dismal assessment of humanity was simply reinforced.
Lane said, ‘Shaun was involved.’
Duncan blustered. ‘She OD’d on her own drugs.’
Lane said evenly, ‘Was she wearing clothes?’
‘She was naked. What arrangement Li and she came to was none of my business.’
Clement had figured out the next bit, albeit with Lane’s assistance. ‘So rather than call us, you took off with the body and dumped it out of the plane where you thought it would never be found. Dumped the girl like a piece of meat.’
‘It was too dangerous to land. I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Straight enough to burn her clothes and her bag first.’ Lane jerked his head towards the makeshift incinerator. ‘There’re buckles in there, and I’ll bet techs can match them to her bag.’
Duncan stared straight at Clement. ‘You put yourselves in my shoes.’
Clement was thinking the steps through. The body and evidence had been disposed of. ‘When did Li fly back to China?’
Duncan shuffled. ‘He flew to Singapore that day.’
‘What about Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell?’
‘They slept through it.’
‘A plane taking off and landing?’
‘They were out to it, completely.’
Lane said, ‘They didn’t find it surprising Kelly Davies wasn’t there the next morning?’
‘I told them I’d dropped her back in Hedland, then come back for them.’
Clement was thinking of the vision of Feister and Coldwell at Sandfire. He recognised that body language now: they’d been part of something traumatic. He didn’t buy Duncan’s story.
‘And you flew Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell and Li back to Port Hedland.’
Now Coldwell and Feister running off into the outback made a lot more sense.
‘That’s right.’
‘You wouldn’t be trying to protect your employer’s daughter?’
‘No, I would not. They didn’t know anything about it.’
‘And then you lied to me when I asked where Ingrid was,’ said Lane.
Duncan protested. ‘I tried to convince you there was nothing to worry about. That she was fine.’
Clement drew an arc in the sand with the toe of his shoe.
‘You’re facing a heap of charges including illegal disposal of a body, hindering police investigations, withholding evidence.’
‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ was all Duncan offered in his defence.
‘Alright, you’ll fly back with us to Hedland and be charged.’
‘What about my plane?’
Clement said, ‘It contains potential evidence. Our techs will check it over.’
They were back in Lane’s room after returning to Port Hedland where Duncan had been charged with the offences threatened. Lane had made them an instant coffee with the powdered milk supplied. Up until now they had curtailed any discussion of the case in front of Duncan or other police.
Clement sipped. As a rule he didn’t mind instant but this brew was pretty awful.
‘You saw that CCTV footage at Sandfire,’ Snowy said.
‘Yeah. Coldwell and Feister knew what had happened. They were traumatised.’
‘The question is, was that all he lied about?’
Clement spelled it out as much for his own sake. ‘The client gets rough. She resists …’
‘You’ll have to interview Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell. They might give you the real story.’
Or they might not. At the very least they’d concealed evidence. Clement wondered if, now that the background was known, the pathologist would be able to tell anything about how Kelly Davies died.
Lane said, ‘Will you take it on or leave it to Perth?’
‘No, my case, my burden.’ He couldn’t drink any more of the coffee. ‘But we can rule out Crossland.’
‘Ironically, if he supplied the drugs and Duncan isn’t lying about how she died, Crossland could be up for that, some manslaughter charge.’
Once again Lane was ahead of him.
‘You should sign up again. We need some good detectives.’
Lane seemed amused. He was obviously still pondering the facts. ‘If Crossland didn’t abduct Turner, we’re talking another coincidence.’
‘Crossland probably never knew who took the pendant. How would Crossland know Turner had been arrested for the break-ins unless he was hanging around the court? I’m thinking it was Mongoose Cole abducted him. Maybe he didn’t do it himself. He’s got plenty who would. But we’ll probably never know. Turner is as good as brain dead.’
Clement stood. ‘I have to be getting back. I’ll be flying to Perth no doubt.’
Lane got up too. ‘You might make it before me. I’ll take my time down the coast. Please let me know about Kelly Davies. I’d like to inform Alex Mendleson and the girls.’
‘Of course.’
They shook hands.
‘We did good, Inspector.’
Clement’s shake was not convincing and Lane read it.
‘You’re still not sold on Crossland for Autostrada?’
‘I suppose it has to be.’ Lane knew Clement was skirting the question. ‘But?’
‘When he saw the pendant I might as well have been waving a biro.’
‘He’s had years to practise.’
Clement supposed so. Lane suggested they catch up in Perth if Clement ever had the time.
Clement told him he’d look forward to it … if he ever had time. Right now he had to fly back out to Tenacity Hill.
There were four techs going through the tents and the incinerator drum. Lisa and Mason had Duncan’s plane to themselves. The geology party had returned and been told they would have to stay with their vehicle until the company could fly them out; apparently a plane was standing by but with three planes already on the makeshift strip there was no room. Clement finished off his bottle of water and walked over to Duncan’s plane. Lisa Keeble saw him and climbed down. Things hadn’t stopped for her and her team.
‘There’s no sign of any blood, I can say that much.’
‘Any way to tell if Duncan’s lying about the overdose?’
‘I don’t reckon you’ll get anything like a tox screen from the body.’
‘Strangulation?’
‘So many bones were broken it might be difficult. And there’s no way to tell really if they happened post-mortem. Grabbing, dumping a body …’
He understood the difficulties. It would be up to Ingrid Feister and Max Coldwell to paint a true picture of what happened.
‘Did you see the reports on Sidney Turner? I put them on your desk.’
Clement explained he’d had no time.
‘Turner had a large volume of horse tranquilliser in his system. I also retrieved a partial tyre tread from behind the creek on the second visit. There was nothing of significance from our first examination and nothing else of interest in location two near the creek except for one thing.’
She was reeling him in.
‘Which was?’
‘A very small trace of wattle, which might not be unusual except there was none in the immediate area and it was an exact match of the wattle from the tree on the corner of Olive Pickering’s street.’
Clement made the jump immediately.
‘So, the person near croc creek the second time could have been the same one with Turner the first time?’
‘Or at least have been around his street at some time recently. There was hardly any sample at all. My guess is it might have come from the first visit, probably off the sole of a shoe and onto the mangrove root where I found it. There was probably more originally. We would have missed it if someone hadn’t gone back.’
Clement was thinking it through. ‘Ketamine in his system. Plenty of users go for that, right?’
‘Not in these quantities. There was a needle mark but Turner is not an intravenous user. I’d say he was dosed into a stupor.’
‘Mongoose Cole would likely have access to a large quantity of ketamine. Did you find the wattle in his car?’
‘No.’
Which didn’t mean he couldn’t have cleaned his car or had somebody else snatch Turner. Why had they gone back? Lost something? Taken somebody else out there? Shit. They’d have to search the creek and that meant trapping the croc.
She had lost none of that haughty beauty that was her trademark. Even from where he sat in the Mimosa garden bar looking into the sun, he recognised her from the way she carried herself. She saw him and walked over. The frock was white, naturally elegant. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, the kind you might see at the races but without the fruit. She could get away with that and she was very sun conscious which was why he had chosen a table in the shade. He had already ordered her a chardonnay. When he’d called her upon his arrival back in Broome, he’d said he could come over to the house right away but she had said Brian was home today and she didn’t want him present.
‘Thanks for seeing me. You must have been flat out.’
She seated herself, smoothing her dress beneath her bottom, and raised her glass in a ‘cheers’. He was on soft drink. After this he had to fly to Perth to confront Ingrid Feister and he wanted all his wits about him.
‘Yes, it’s been unbelievably busy. I’m sorry about last time we sat down,’ he said, not truly meaning it.
‘I doubt that, but it’s okay. I probably wasn’t being fair.’
They talked about Phoebe, easy stuff to settle them both. She was doing well at school but could do better. She was becoming too interested in social media but then she was hardly alone in that regard. They both monitored her and there was no area of conflict here. Small talk had spent itself quickly. The breeze lifted slightly. Marilyn pulled his eyes to hers.
‘You think the wedding is a mistake because you’re a romantic at heart. You also think no man can know me like you, which is probably true and why I asked for your advice, but that doesn’t mean you’re better or more desirable, necessarily. It does mean you are special.’
Clement tempered his response. ‘That’s a relief.’
She let it slide by. ‘Brian asked me to marry him over a year ago. I said no. Don’t ask me to tell you why, I probably couldn’t tell you, except that it hurt when we broke up. It really hurt that we failed … I failed.’
‘I can take my share of the responsibility.’
There was a far-off look in her eyes and she was staring down at her glass as if trying to remember, for all time, the exact shade of yellow of the wine.
‘Brian has cancer. I feel I owe it to him.’
Clement was rocked. It was the last thing he’d expected. ‘What sort of …’
‘Prostate.’
Prostate, that was barely a cancer most of the time, more an inconvenience. He did not want to appear dismissive though, even if part of him was.
‘There could be a lot worse. They get it early?’
‘We think so. It appears to be contained.’
‘And you want to know if I think it’s a good enough reason to marry somebody you don’t love?’
‘I do love Brian. I can’t tell any more if I wanted to marry or not but I think it’s the right thing. Just, before you say anything, put yourself in his shoes.’
Clement did not want to put himself in anybody else’s shoes, Brian’s especially.
‘You should do what makes you feel good,’ he said. ‘If that’s marrying Brian, for whatever reason, marry him. If marrying Brian is going to make you miserable, then don’t. You’re right, romance isn’t a valid reason for marriage. If it was, we’d still be together.’
And that’s how you give up, he thought. With the breeze wafting in slowly, opposite a beautiful woman in a white dress, you renounce ownership of what might be and settle for what is. He wanted to feel sorry for Brian but he couldn’t. Cancer or not, Brian had Marilyn. He’d won.