by Jon Cleary
Mrs. Carss came back with coffee and tea; Jason noticed she had got out the Spode cups and saucers, another of his mother’s treasures. Who was she trying to impress, for Chrissake? Sugar, who, he guessed, would bustle, maybe even bump and grind, her way through life unimpressed by anyone but God? He’d heard she had found religion, which couldn’t have impressed Pa, the old commo atheist.
Shelley, pretty but bloody stupid, a real pain, said, “Did you know we’re going to be rich, Pa?”
“I don’t think this is the time to talk about that,” said Olive.
“No, I didn’t know that, Shelley.” George Rockne seemed to be taking care to balance his cup on its saucer, as if he recognized he and Sugar had been favoured with the Spode. Then he looked up at his grandson. “Did you know that, Jay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Jason saw the look of disapproval, almost anger, on his mother’s face. His grandfather had sidestepped her, was going to pump him instead of her. Feeling some anger of his own, he thought, Why not? “Yeah, Dad’s supposed to have five-and-a-bit million in some private bank.”
Sugar coughed into her tea, almost dropping the Spodeware. But George Rockne’s face remained impassive, didn’t take on a single extra furrow. “Your father told me about some money in a private account. I didn’t know he had left it to the family.”
“He hasn’t,” said Olive. “Not officially, I mean. We haven’t seen any will. But how did you know about it?”
“It just came up in conversation.”
“Some conversation you must’ve had,” said Mrs. Carss, down-to-earth as usual. “Your tea all right, Sugar? I forgot to ask if you took sugar.”
Sugar gave her a big smile, peeled off her jacket; Jason wanted to laugh, seeing his step-grandmother peeling off her feathers or balloons or whatever she had worn in her stripper days. “No, I’ve never taken sugar, even though I come from Bundaberg. Up there in the sugarcane country, if you don’t take sugar they run you outa town.”
“I often meant to ask,” said Mrs. Carss, “so your real name’s not Bundy? Short for Bundaberg?”
“My real name’s Rockne,” said Sugar. “Now.”
A goal to you, thought Jason, a two-handed slam-dunk right into the basket.
George looked back at Olive. “Are you gunna claim the money?”
“Of course, if it’s legitimately Will’s. Otherwise, where would it go?”
“I wouldn’t start spending it till you get it, Olive. It’ll probably have to go before the courts and you can never trust them.”
“That’s because you’re a communist,” said Mrs. Carss.
George’s wrinkles increased; he had decided to humour the old bat. She was actually six years younger than he, but he knew an old bat when he met one. “I’m retired, Ruby. Didn’t you know communism is dead? It’s in the papers every day.” His face was smiling, but his eyes were not. You couldn’t laugh at the end of the world. “Take my word, Olive. Don’t trust the courts. Wait till you’ve got your hands on the money before you spend it.”
When Jason had opened the front door to his grandfather he had experienced the sudden sad, mad hope that all the enmity and bitterness would be forgotten, though he had never been told or understood what had caused all the ill-feeling. He had just had the hope that as a family they would be together, as he had dreamed they might be. He had never confessed it to anyone, never could, never would, but he had always wanted the sort of extended family that he had read about in some books. He knew that family life on TV was all crap, but he had wished for something like it, to have a grandfather, even if he was a commo, who would tell him what life had been like when he had been a kid, who would tell him where his roots were. He had never known what his father and grandfather had fought about, though he guessed it was politics; there had been something more, though, something to do with ethics and example, something that had gone beyond politics: his mother and his grandmother had had something to do with it. He knew that his grandfather hated what he called “yuppy greed,” and he hated it himself; but surely that wasn’t enough to have caused all the bitterness. If that was all it was, then half the families in the whole bloody country were in the same boat as the Rocknes.
For a few moments Jason had drifted off into a fog of resentment at the way things were going. He came back to hear his mother say, “George, do you have any interest in the money?”
The front doorbell rang. Jason waited for his grandfather’s answer, but the old man just smiled at Olive, then looked up at his grandson. “You gunna answer the door, Jay?”
II
Malone said, “G’day, Jay. Your mother home?”
“Sure, Mr. Malone. But we’ve got visitors, my grandfather and his wife.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“You’re too young to start questioning how a policeman thinks. May we come in?”
Jason led the two detectives through the house and out to the garden room. The two tall men and the even taller boy crowded the entrance. Olive, Mrs. Carss and Shelley looked up, startled; Shelley grabbed her mother’s hand. Sugar gave the newcomers a wide smile; she had been smiling at men all her life, stripped in the crib. Only George Rockne showed no expression; he smelt copper. All his life there had been police who had hounded him, fascist bastards who had never acknowledged that he was fighting for them as well as for himself.
“We’d like another word, Olive,” said Malone. “It’s George Rockne, isn’t it? I’m Inspector Malone, this is Sergeant Clements. I don’t think we’ve ever met.” There was no politics in Homicide, at least none that concerned outsiders.
“Pleased to meet you,” said George, who wasn’t. He rose, jerking his chin at Sugar. “Time we were going, love. We’ll be at the funeral, Olive.”
“If you could just spare a minute?” said Malone. “Is that all right, Olive? Then we’ll talk to you.”
“You got a hide,” said Mrs. Carss, “coming here, taking over like it was the police station.”
“Would you rather go up to the station?” Malone asked Olive.
“No. No, it’s okay. Make some more coffee, Mum.”
“That’s all I’m good for! Bloody tea lady!” Mrs. Carss headed for the kitchen again.
“I’ll give you a hand,” said Sugar.
“Never mind! I can do it m’self!”
Olive smiled wanly at her mother’s rudeness; then she, Shelley and Sugar went out into the garden. At the back door she paused. “Jason?”
“I was gunna stay, Mum.”
“I think it’d be better if you went with your mother, Jay,” said Malone.
The boy looked hurt, as if he had expected Malone to be on his side. He looked at his grandfather. “What do you say, Pa? If you want any back-up—”
“I’ll be jake, son.” Malone’s ears pricked: George Rockne sounded like Con Malone, old slang on his lips like old sun cancers. “Keep your mum and Sugar company.”
When the women and Jason were gone, he gestured for Malone and Clements to sit down, “I don’t think this is gunna take long, is it?”
“Probably not—mind if I call you George? I feel I know you, I’ve been reading about you for years.”
“On charge-sheets?” But George Rockne smiled. “Not much of that, not for years, not since I got out of union politics.”
“There was a piece about you the other day in the Herald,” said Clements.
The old communist nodded, the smile gone. “A snotty-nosed girl reporter, you knew she’d been educated at one of them private schools. She wanted to know what I thought of the death of communism, did I regret all the years I was deceived. Deceived! Christ—ah. you don’t wanna talk about that, do you?”
“I don’t,” said Clements, who had seen enough dreams die; not his own, but other people’s. “I don’t think the inspector does, either.”
“No,” said Malone. “George, I understand you and Will didn’t get on?”
“We got on better over the last few months.” Rockne
sounded cautious; but then, over the years, he had been subjected to a lot of interrogation, had had his words taken out of context. “I guess Will didn’t tell his missus about it. We don’t get on well, Olive and me, I mean.”
“Did Will ever talk to you about enemies, threats, things like that?”
Rockne shook his head. “Inspector, Will was nothing more than a suburban solicitor, he wasn’t a big-time criminal lawyer, he never got himself into any business with gamblers or crims like—”
“Like who?”
Rockne shook his head again. “No names, no pack drill.”
“Will must’ve got himself involved with someone. He has over five million bucks squirrelled away in a small bank in his own name.”
Rockne said nothing for a moment; the lines on his face deepened, like eroded earth falling in on itself. “In his own name? You sure?”
“We’re sure, George.” Malone was watching him carefully.
“Jesus! How’d he make that much? All he was ever interested in was making a dollar, that was one of the things we used to argue about. You’d ask him what someone was like and he’d tell you how much he was worth, that was his yardstick, how much anyone was worth. I used to call him the Eighth Dwarf, Yuppy. I never thought to ask him how much he was worth. Where’d he get it?”
“He could of stole it,” said Clements from the sideline.
Rockne jerked his head quickly towards him. “Shit, no! I wouldn’t wanna think that of him!” It was hard to tell whether he spoke as a father or as a communist; it was bad enough having a greedy materialist as a son, but a thieving one? “Nah, I think you’re making a mistake there.” But he sounded neither convinced nor convincing. “Are you looking into that?”
“Yes,” said Malone. “If he did steal the money from some client, it could’ve been the client who murdered him.”
“This has floored me, I don’t mind telling you. What’ll it do to Olive and the kids?”
“I hate to think. I mean that, especially to the kids.”
“But not so much to Olive?” Rockne lowered his head, looked at the detective from under sandy brows.
“Olive is bearing up better than I expected. What do you think?”
“Women are tougher than we give ’em credit for.”
“Is that why you never let ’em get far in the Party?” said Clements, but smiled.
The bony face creased again. “Give ’em an inch and they take a mile. It’s a man’s world. That’s the only thing God got right.” Then he added, “If you admit there’s a God.”
Malone stood up. “Righto, George. Could you give Sergeant Clements your address and phone number, just in case we want to talk to you further?”
“You think you will?”
“It’s on the cards, George.”
Rockne called in Sugar and they both left, their farewells abrupt except to Jason, who escorted them to the front door. Malone and Clements went out to the garden, took coffee from Mrs. Carss and sat with Olive on fold-up chairs beside the pool. Shelley had gone into the house and the two detectives sat facing Olive; a neighbour, peering over one of the side fences, might have mistakenly remarked that Olive was questioning the two men. The house was built on a double-block and the three of them were far enough away from the next-door gardens not to be overheard.
“Olive—” Malone sipped his coffee; Mrs. Carss made a poor cup, too weak. Or maybe it was some sort of revenge for being kept on the outer. “Something you told me Saturday night doesn’t fit with something we’ve heard since.”
“Oh?” Olive, like the coffee in the cup she had been holding when the two detectives came out to her, was cold. She put down the cup and saucer on the tiles surrounding the pool, then sat with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap. Like an old-fashioned convent girl, one educated by nuns cloaked in old habits. “In what way? What did I say?”
“You said you heard the shot that killed Will. We have a witness who swears there was no shot, we think a silencer was used on the gun. He also swears that Will never got out of the car.”
“Who is this witness?”
“I’ll give you his name at the proper time.”
“He’s lying or he’s mistaken. There was a shot.”
“We’re not saying there wasn’t. I’ve told you, we think a silencer was used and in that case you wouldn’t have heard any shot. You also said that Will had left the car lights on and he went back to turn them off while you waited for him. The witness says that’s not the way it was. He saw you, but there was no sign of Will and the car lights were switched off as soon as you drove into the car park. When I looked at the car on Saturday night the keys were still in the ignition.”
Olive looked at the pool, where camphor laurel leaves floated like dead green fish. She was young middle-aged this morning; or anyway, no longer girlish. Then she glanced at Clements, taking notes, then back at Malone. “Are you accusing me of something, Scobie?”
“Not yet. Did Jason tell you about the money we’ve found in Will’s name in a private bank?”
“Yes. I find it hard to believe . . .”
“Oh, it’s true enough. We’ve been to the bank this morning and checked it. Do you have a bank account of your own?”
She hesitated. “No-o. Will and I always had a joint account. He—he always said I couldn’t handle money.”
Malone could imagine Will Rockne’s arrogance there. “We also found ten thousand dollars in a cash box in his safe. I checked with the joint bank account book we found in the safe—he hadn’t drawn that much money from the account. He would’ve had an office account and probably several clients’ trust accounts—we’re having those checked. But there was a withdrawal of five thousand from your joint account last week. Did he mention that to you?”
“No-o. God, the things I didn’t know about him!” She looked accusing, as if she blamed Malone for keeping this information from her. “Ours was an account where both signatures were necessary. But sometimes he’d get me to sign a blank cheque or two.”
Clements said, “Did you know he had an affair with his secretary, Miss Weigall?”
Her thin face was suddenly pinched; she was hurt, badly. She said nothing, just shook her head. A magpie flew down out of the camphor laurel, perched on the pool fence and sharpened its beak for future use. Malone said gently, “She told us, Olive, that it was only for one weekend. I don’t think she meant anything to him. Did Will, er, play around?”
“Never.” She was recovering. “He wasn’t perfect, by a long shot, but no, he was never like that, chasing other women. He wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man.”
Lisa had thought that too, had once said that, like most Australian men, present company excepted, Will had as much charm as an empty beer bottle. But then she was European; Malone had been tempted to ask her how charming Dutch men were on their home turf, but hadn’t been game. Jan Pretorious, her father, had charm, though Con Malone, the true blue Aussie, had called it smarm.
“Olive, could Will have withdrawn that five thousand? It might be part of the ten thousand.”
“He might have. I sometimes wouldn’t see the chequebook for a couple of weeks.”
Clements, the bachelor, said, “You mean he kept tabs on everything you spent? I thought women these days had their own money?”
Malone got in before Olive could bite Clements’s head off; she actually bared her teeth. “You said on Saturday night you were planning a trip to the Barrier Reef. Would Will have drawn the money to pay for that?”
“That was probably it—” Her reply was a little too quick.
“Five thousand for a week on the Reef? With all the bargain rates I’ve seen advertised?” Lisa had brought the advertisements to his notice only a couple of weeks ago, but he hadn’t taken the hints she had thrown at him like rocks.
“We were going to Lizard Island. It’s exclusive, it’s not cheap . . . And I was going to buy myself a new outfit . . .”
“What about the other five t
housand? Where d’you think that came from?”
“I have no idea. I told you yesterday morning, Will never discussed his practice with me. Scobie, why are you grilling me like this?”
“Grilling? That wasn’t the intention, Olive. Russ here will quote you some examples of what grilling is like. But if you feel that’s what we’ve been doing, maybe next time you’d like to have your lawyer with you. Maybe Mrs. Bodalle?”
“You’re coming back, to question me again?”
“I think you can bet on it, Olive. So far you know more about Will than anyone else we’ve talked to.”
III
Detective-Constable John Kagal always looked smug, as if he had just won the State lottery or been invited to dinner by Michelle Pfeiffer. He was always dressed as if he expected a call from La Pfeiffer; Malone, whose ideal tailor was St. Vincent de Paul, wondered if Kagal’s entire salary went on his wardrobe.
He was a good-looking young man with bright, intelligent brown eyes and custom-cut dark hair; he was slim, of medium height, and he moved with a certain grace that was natural. He was the only university-educated man in Homicide and he did not intend wasting that advantage. He was damned near perfect, a fact he modestly acknowledged if pressed.
“Righto, John, what’ve you got?”
It was late afternoon and Malone was tired. The Rockne case was still tops on his pad, but four other murder cases, which he was supervising, had begun to turn sour; evidence that had looked rock-solid had begun to crumble, willing witnesses had suddenly become deaf, dumb and blind. The natives voted for law and order every time, but too often they wanted their vote kept secret.
“Okay, here it is.” Kagal had a brisk voice; he would sound exactly right when he became Police Commissioner twenty-five or thirty years down the track. “I went out to the Commonwealth Bank’s branch at Coogee, where the Rocknes hold their joint account. That five grand withdrawal—it was drawn, in cash, by Mrs. Rockne.”
“They’re sure of that?”
