The Simple Death by Michael Duffy Page A

relax.
    â€˜It’s tough.’
    Luke nodded. His face had changed since Troy came into the room, the skin seemed to have gone more slack.
    The priest said, ‘I keep thinking of some of the fights I had. I was pretty good then, but there were some hard ones. Some were really hard—what this feels like.’
    He stopped, and Troy saw that he was more slumped now, his head forward.
    â€˜You never gave up.’
    â€˜I keep thinking of this one,’ Luke said, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘The state championship. I lost, that was okay, he was better. But I took it to eleven rounds.’
    â€˜That’s good.’
    â€˜I can remember every minute of it and that’s what I do, sit here and go through it in my mind. Charley Jenkins.’
    Troy pressed Luke’s arm again. He wanted to stay with him. He wanted to help him, to rescue him from all of this. You love people and this is where it ends up. But it was after nine: McIver would be waiting over at the hospital.
    Luke, seeing him glance at his watch, said, ‘This Brian Hughes, the archbishop says he’s a paranoid schizophrenic. That’s why he’s got the pension. A self-professed crazy, and yet others believe him. His word against mine.’ He shouted, ‘He’s a shit, Nick. He’s a nothing!’ Luke’s eyes were dry and hot. Troy waited for him to calm down. A nurse came to the door, looked in and went away. The priest spoke, quiet again. ‘At least I could see Charley. It was all out in the open.’
    â€˜I’m afraid I’ve got to go.’
    â€˜Of course.’ Luke breathed deep, looked as though he were about to try to get up again. Realised he didn’t have the strength.
    Troy said, ‘The people here treat you all right?’
    â€˜They don’t come near me since Sunday, and when they do it’s all long faces and silence. Julie’s the only one, she hasn’t changed at all. The girl’s a saint.’
    On his way out, Troy looked for the nurse, wanting to thank her for her kindness to Luke. There was a lot of noise coming from one of the rooms on the ground floor, and he stepped to one side as a trolley loaded with medical kit came racing down the corridor propelled by two staff members. They pushed it into the room. Troy saw Julie Cornish standing next to the bed, talking urgently to several people he took to be doctors. She seemed to be explaining something to them and they were nodding, then they all turned to the trolley and grabbed pieces of equipment. She looked in his direction, appeared not to recognise him, and he moved off.
    As he left the building, he thought about the sorts of decisions that must be made every day by the people who worked there. Hard calls, about pain and life and death. He couldn’t do it himself, wondered if those who could were different from the start, or had been changed by something in their lives. He was not introspective, but for a moment considered if he had been changed by what he did, his work with the dead. And if he had, how he compared with other people. Maybe this was why Anna had left him.
    He switched on his phone and saw he had a message from McIver. The meeting with Saunders had been postponed; they’d found a body at Gordons Bay.

Nine
    T he white police boat looked far too big. The Avery was at least fifty metres long. Gordons Bay was only a few times wider than that, a small inlet scooped out of high cliffs. It wasn’t that far north of Maroubra, and on days when Troy was feeling particularly energetic he ran here in the morning. He’d never much liked the place: the cliffs were gloomy walls, and at their base the tide surged over large, grey rocks that had fallen hundreds of years ago. The only relief was a patch of sand in the middle, where wooden frames held a number of small boats.
    McIver and Conti were waiting for him up top, Conti working her phone while McIver examined the scene below