by Jon Cleary
“Do you think that was what she was trying to do? Bring them to justice?”
Malone shook his head. “No. But I’m not going to contradict them. Would you, sir?”
“As I said, you can’t catch them all. And sometimes it’s for the best.” He smiled and put out his hand. “Good-bye, Sergeant. It’s a pity you’re not staying longer. We could have gone and seen a few cricket matches together. I could have told you again how I bowled Wally Hammond for a duck.” He winked and smiled more broadly. Why, the old bastard can even laugh at himself, Malone thought. “Sergeant Coburn sent you his best. Said to tell you his girl – he called her his bird – she’s just given him a present to celebrate his escape from that bomb. A purple weskit to go with his purple tie.”
Malone grinned. “He’ll look good in that at the Yard.”
“Over my dead body he will,” said Denzil, and with a final wave of his hand walked away, stolid, dependable, eroded only by memories of other days.
Lisa was the last to say good-bye to Malone. “I’m coming home,” she said. “But not for a few months. Mr. Quentin has asked me to stay on till the new High Commissioner is appointed. I’ll be training a new girl to take my place.”
“You might like the new High Commissioner.”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter who he was, what he was like. I couldn’t stay on, not after—” She took his hand, began to walk towards the passengers’ entrance with him. They had been in the V.I.P. lounge, the last time, Malone knew, that he would ever receive that sort of treatment. Two days from now he would be back in his proper status. “I think I’d like to try Sydney for a while.”
“Sydney? Not Melbourne, with your parents?”
“Sydney,” she said, and lifted her face and kissed him for the first time. “Will you write me each week till I come back?”
“Every day,” he said, and returned her kiss. “I like that perfume.”
“I’ll douse myself in it just before I get off the plane.” She gazed at him for a moment, then nodded, as if satisfied she had made some sort of right decision. Then the had turned away and gone across to say good-bye to Quentin.
Now Quentin, in the small restaurant in Sydney, said, “Are you ever going to tell Lisa the truth?”
Malone waited while Quentin paid the bill, then they walked out into the bright spring sunlight of Macquarie Street. The lunch-time crowds were hurrying reluctantly back to their offices. Flushed, tousled-haired girls who had been playing basketball in the Domain went by in their brief bright skirts; it was difficult to imagine that in ten minutes they would be cool, modestly clad typists. A tanned healthy-looking street singer stood in the gutter telling the passing girls he couldn’t give them anything but love; nobody dropped any money in his upturned hat, nobody believed in his destitution. Sydney in the spring was a city where people were too gay, too preoccupied with their own awakening sap, to want to know the truth about other people. The street singer’s sign said: Heart Disease, Unable to Work; but no one believed him. They laughed, were sure he was joking, and passed on.
Quentin stopped by the singer and dropped two shillings into his hat. “Thanks, mate,” said the singer. “And good luck.”
“Thank you,” said Quentin with a touch of his old grace.
He and Malone walked on and at last Malone said, “No, I’m not going to tell her. Lisa, I mean. I told her I’m a policeman, I was on special duty. But that’s all.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. When I was in London I thought the truth would help you and Mrs. Quentin. Now I don’t know that it’s going to help anybody. It won’t help Lisa. She had – has a lot of time for you. Why disillusion her?”
Quentin walked in silence for a while, then he said, “Are you going to marry her?”
“I’m going to ask her. It’s another thing whether she’ll say yes.”
“She wants her head read if she doesn’t. And if you don’t ever tell her the truth about me – well, thank you. But you don’t owe me anything, you know.”
“Well, let’s say I owe it to myself,” said Malone.
They came to a corner. Quentin stopped and put out his hand. “I have a doctor’s appointment. I have some vaccinations to be done. Good-bye, Scobie. If I write to you from Malaysia, will you—?”
Malone nodded. “I’m a poor letter-writer, so Lisa tells me. But I’ll write. And like that bloke back there said – good luck.”
Quentin nodded his thanks, went to say something, then seemed unable to get the words out. He put his hand up to his moustache and tugged at it; behind his hand his mouth quivered with emotion. Then abruptly he turned and walked off up the street. Malone watched him go, a man who might have been great, till he disappeared, anonymous and alone, into the careless, incurious crowd.
If you enjoyed The High Commissioner, check out these other great Jon Cleary titles.
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About the Author
Jon Cleary, who died in July 2010, was the author of over fifty novels, including The High Commissioner, which was the first in a popular detective fiction series featuring Sydney Police Inspector Scobie Malone. In 1996 he was awarded the Inaugural Ned Kelly Award for his lifetime contribution to crime fiction in Australia. His last novel, Four-Cornered Circle, was published in 2007.
Also by the Author
THE SCOBIE MALONE NOVELS
The High Commissioner
Helga's Web
Ransom
Dragons at the Party
Now and Then, Amen
Babylon South
Murder Song
Pride's Harvest
Dark Summer
Bleak Spring
Autumn Maze
Winter Chill
Endpeace
A Different Turf
Five Ring Circus
Dilemma
Bear Pit
Yesterday's Shadow
The Easy Sin
Degrees of Connection
STANDALONE NOVELS
You Can't See 'Round Corners
The Long Shadow
Just Let Me Be
The Sundowners
The Climate of Courage
Justin Bayard (aka Dust in the Sun)
The Green Helmet
Back of Sunset
North From Thursday
The Country of Marriage
Forests of the Night
A Flight of Chariots
The Fall of an Eagle
The Pulse of Danger
The Long Pursuit
Season of Doubt
Remember Jack Hoxie
Mask of the Andes (aka The Liberators)
Man's Estate (aka The Ninth Marquess)
The Safe House
Peter's Pence
A Sound of Lightning
High Road to China
Vortex
The Beaufort Sisters
A Very Private War
The Faraway Drums
The Golden Sabre
Spearfield's Daughter
The Phoenix Tree
The City of Fading Light
Miss Ambar Regrets
Morning's Gone
Four-Cornered Circle
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1966
Copyright © Jon Cleary, 1966
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780006167051
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007554300
Version: 2014–06–06
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