Bleak Spring

by Jon Cleary

  “Not yet. I don’t think he had any intention of doing so.”

  “It wasn’t Rockne’s money, you know that? He came to me and said he had a client who wanted to bury some money, bury where no questions would be asked. I met the client and recommended your bank. That was before you arrived out here.”

  “Harold Junor tells me it was originally deposited in a trust account, with Mr. Rockne as the trustee. Then two weeks ago it was transferred to an account in Mr. Rockne’s name only.”

  “Junor didn’t query it?”

  Palady shifted awkwardly in his confined space. “Bernard, how would you feel if we queried what you did with your money? We’re not that sort of bank. If we were, what use would we be to our clients?”

  Bezrow nodded. “Point taken. So what’s happening to the money?”

  “The police told us to freeze it till further notice, which we’ve done. After that . . .” He shrugged, the only movement he could make without fighting the heavyweight beside him for space. Other people’s money never worried him, once they had paid their commission and fees.

  “When the police come back, Walter, keep my name out of it. Understand?”

  “That may not be so easy, Bernard.”

  “Harold Junor will think of something, he’s been here long enough to know the ropes. This country has some of the most incompetent and dilatory investigators one could ask for—you have only to read the accounts of the royal commissions and other investigations going on all over the country at the moment.”

  “Inspector Malone didn’t strike me as either incompetent or dilatory.”

  “He’s a Homicide detective, Walter. Throw him into the money field and I’m sure you and Harold Junor can bamboozle him. After all, your bank has fooled some of the best financial brains in bigger countries than this backwater.”

  Palady looked hurt, but did his best to smile in agreement. It was taking him some time to become accustomed to Australians, even those with Russian blood in them. Their rudeness was not as civilized as that of the English and the French. He admired those two, aspired to be a blend of them, perhaps because in his polyglot blood there was a pint or two of those nationals.

  5

  I

  “WHAT DO you want for lunch tomorrow? Or are you going to disappear again without telling me?”

  “Mum, I did tell you—you just weren’t listening. I told you Jill had called, she wanted you, and then she asked me if I wanted to go down and have a hamburger with her.”

  “What did she want me for?”

  Jason and Olive were making their slow way down the aisles of the supermarket here in the Randwick shopping centre, he pushing the trolley and she choosing what she wanted from the shelves. Olive had always done her grocery shopping here at Franklins at Will’s insistence; Franklins was cheaper than the other chains and Will had been a compulsive comparison shopper. Olive, on the other hand, was an impulse buyer; the true species, not the lovers, who made the real world go round. Jason had grown tired of hearing the constant arguments over her spending. Today, he guessed, they had come here to Franklins out of habit.

  “I’ll tell you when we get back to the car.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Something important?”

  “I dunno, it could be. Not here, wait till we’re out in the car.”

  A well-dressed man said, “Excuse me,” and went by, pushing a trolley containing a box of cornflakes. He did not look like the usual shopper here in Franklins, but Jason took little notice of him.

  He followed his mother on automatic pilot, thinking about Jill and what she had told him and what he now felt. When he had arrived at his father’s office with the hamburgers, the chips and the cakes he had bought as an afterthought, she had got up from her desk and closed and locked the front door. “So’s we can eat in peace . . . You look tired, Jay.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping too well. You look okay, though. No, you look better than that. Great.”

  She was dressed in a khaki skirt and a yellow blouse that showed off her breasts; he had noticed them before and sometimes had wondered if his father had. Dad obviously had: hence the weekend at Peppers. “Thanks. I don’t feel great. I’m sort of up in the air—what’s going to happen here?” She gestured around her. “Will your mother sell the practice?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Mum seems to be stumbling around in the dark at the moment. Here.” He gave her a hamburger, sat down opposite her. Her skirt was short and it slid up well over her knees. He had never been a leg man, that was something older guys seemed to appreciate, but now all at once he saw what good sexy legs she had. “Great.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Are you worried about your job?”

  “Of course. They’re hard to get. I’ve got two girlfriends who’ve been out of work for six months, nine months, one of them. If I lost my job I’d have to move back home and I don’t want that—it’s nice being free.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He wondered for the first time if she had a boyfriend, if she lived with some guy.

  “Jay?” She was looking at him carefully, a slight frown between her brows.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m worried. And scared, too.”

  He paused in his eating, the hamburger halfway to his mouth. “What’s been happening?”

  “Nothing, really. Except—” She pushed her hair back from her forehead; he liked the way it fell down to cover one eyebrow. “The police told me on Sunday, that Inspector Malone, that nothing in here was to be touched. Then the police from Maroubra came here on Monday and told me they were sealing the filing cabinets—they’re coming back this afternoon to go through everything.”

  “So what are you scared of—the police?”

  “No. No, they’ve been pretty decent—they’re young guys—”

  He’d be pretty decent, too, if he had to deal with someone as pretty as Jill. He’d taken notice of her before, what guy with balls wouldn’t, but today, somehow, he was looking at her with different eyes.

  “This morning, just as I got in, a Mr. Lawson came in. He said he’d been sent by Mr. Bezrow and he wanted all Mr. Bezrow’s files. I said I couldn’t give them to him because all the cabinets were sealed. He didn’t seem too upset, he just sorta shrugged and left. But then not long after, Mr. Jones came—”

  “Mr. Jones? Who’s he?”

  “He’s the guy you heard me telling Inspector Malone about—no, you didn’t, I think you were out here then, while I was inside with the inspector. He’s the foreign guy who came a coupla times to see your father, a real smoothie. He asked for his files, too. But then he got pretty—agitated? You know, worked up—when I told him the same as I’d told Mr. Bezrow’s man. He asked if there were any files of his in the cabinets and I told him I couldn’t say without checking. Then he snapped something at me, I dunno what the language was, and he stormed out, pretty angry and het up.”

  “Did you ring the police?”

  “No-o. I thought I’d talk to your mother first.”

  “Did this guy Jones threaten you?”

  “No, not in so many words . . . Jay, I hate to say this, but I think your father was into something fishy before he was—was murdered. And I don’t want to be any part of it.”

  He leaned across with a comforting hand; without design, it fell on her knee. He left it there when her own hand came down on his. “Jill, I think you’d better tell the cops when they come this afternoon.”

  “Jay, I don’t want to make things complicated for you and your mother. And for your father, even though he’s dead now.”

  “Jill, you don’t owe me and Mum—and Dad—anything, not if it’s gunna cause you any trouble. Jesus, I’d hate anything to happen to you!”

  She squeezed his hand; under the pressure his hand tightened on her knee. “You’re sweet.”

  “Sweeter than Dad?” He couldn’t help that: he could have bitten off his goddamn tongue.

  She looked at him, her hair down
over her brow again. “Yes, I think so. But you should never ask a girl a question like that. You’ll learn.”

  He grinned, pressed her knee. “Yeah, I guess so. You want coffee?”

  He stood up, feeling her fingers press his hand again as he took it from her knee. He stood above her, looking down at her from his full height. She looked up at him from under the fall of hair, her lips slightly open. They were a woman’s lips, fuller than a young girl’s like Claire’s. He could feel the discomfort growing in his jeans and he hoped to God it wasn’t going to show. In the shower after basketball he was both proud of and embarrassed by his dong; the guys, knowing his father was a lawyer, used to ask him if he was what was known as a well-hung jury. He didn’t want Jill to think that all he felt about her was randiness. He bent, slowly, waiting for her to turn her face away, but she didn’t; he kissed her, feeling her lips open wider under his. Then, abruptly grown-up, knowing when not to push it too far, he straightened.

  “Thanks,” he said quietly. “That was nice.”

  She nodded, still gazing up at him; he hadn’t noticed before how beautiful her eyes were, dark blue and slightly slanted, as if maybe her great-grandmother or someone had gone to bed with a Chinaman. “You’ve all of a sudden got older, haven’t you?”

  “I guess so . . . Have you got a boyfriend?”

  “No one special. I go out with several.”

  “Would you go out with me some time? A disco or something?”

  She hesitated, still looking up at him. “I’ll think about it, Jay. In the meantime . . .”

  “Sure. In the meantime . . .” He tried to sound—suave?—but he knew she had gently brushed him off. He had, after all, rushed things. “In the meantime, I think you’d better tell the cops about that Mr. Jones.”

  “Are you going to tell your mother about him?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She’s got enough on her mind right now.”

  And now, as he pushed the supermarket trolley down the aisle behind his mother, he wondered how much he should tell her when they got out to the car. Though she was doing her best to keep to her regular routine, he could see that she was barely holding herself together. He had loved his mother and father, in a way that he could never put down in a letter to them. If he couldn’t actually tell his mother he loved her, he could show it by protecting her. He made up his mind to lie to her, to tell her he didn’t know why Jill had called her. If Jill had told the cops, as she had said she would, let the cops come and tell his mother.

  When they got to the Honda Civic in the covered car park, a man was standing beside it with something under his arm. It was the well-dressed man who had passed them in the aisle inside the supermarket; the something under his arm was the packet of cornflakes. He straightened up, dipped his head in a little bow.

  “Mrs. Rockne? May I have a word with you?” His English was good, but he had an accent. Jason, who had a good ear and was a good mimic, thought there was a trace of American in the accent, as if the man might have learned to speak English in the States. But he was foreign, all right. “I should like to speak to you alone, if I may?”

  “Who are you?” said Olive, key in the door of the Civic. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “Just a little business talk, Mrs. Rockne.” He was tall, almost as tall as Jason, with a broad-cheeked face, thick eyebrows and thick dark hair combed straight back. He wore what Jason thought might be an Italian suit, though he really wasn’t into suits, and a dark blue tie with tiny red shields on it, like a university tie. He looked professional and successful and Jason wondered where his father had managed to snare a client like this. If he was a client. “Alone, I said.”

  “No,” said Jason. “I’m staying. If you wanna speak to my mother, then you’ll have to say it in front of me. Okay?”

  Olive looked at him and for a moment he thought she was going to send him away; then she looked back at the stranger. “Whatever you have to say, say it in front of my son. Who are you?”

  “A client of your dead husband’s. I don’t think my name matters.”

  “It wouldn’t be Jones, would it?” said Jason.

  Both his mother and the stranger turned their heads sharply; then the stranger said, “It will do. You’ve heard of me?”

  “The police mentioned your name the other day.” Leave Jill out of it.

  That seemed to trouble the stranger; for a moment he seemed as if he might turn and walk away. Olive was still looking at Jason, almost as if he were as much a stranger as this tall man confronting her. Then she turned back to Jones. “Say what you have to, Mr. Jones.”

  He gazed at the two of them a moment, as if debating whether he had anything to gain by saying anything at all. Then: “Your husband stole five million two hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars from us.”

  “Stole?”

  “Yes, stole.”

  “Who is us?” Jason had to admire his mother: she was cool, her mind clicking over in the right gear, like a lawyer’s. Like Angela’s, goddamn it.

  “I don’t think you need to know that, Mrs. Rockne.”

  “I think we’d need to know if we had to make out a cheque to hand it back to you.” Jason was surprised at how well his own mind was working. He was scared, sure, but he was almost enjoying standing up to this stranger. “You wouldn’t want it in cash, would you? Five-and-a-bit million?”

  Jones glanced at him, almost smiled, then looked back at Olive. “You have a smart son, Mrs. Rockne. Smarter than his father was.”

  Cars were coming and going, their noise accentuated in the low roofed cavern. There was a crash of metal as someone drove in out of the bright sunshine to the comparative gloom of the car park. Jason turned his head and saw an elderly man get stiffly out of a small Ford and look at its dented fender; the car he had hit suddenly began to complain as its alarm went off. Jones looked irritably over his shoulder at the noise, then turned back to the two Rocknes.

  “We want that money, Mrs. Rockne, let there be no mistake about that.” He spoke precisely; there was a slight American intonation. “Your husband did steal it, let there be no mistake about that, either.”

  “Then why don’t you go to the police?” Olive had opened the door of her car and was putting the groceries on the back seat. Jason, one eye on Jones, the other on his mother, wondered at this coolness he had never seen in her before. “They’ll check your story.”

  “Then they will check your husband and the way he ran his business. You wouldn’t want him branded a thief, would you, not now he is dead and can’t defend himself? Or explain why he took our money.”

  “You keep saying us and our,” said Jason, helping his mother with the groceries; their matter-of-factness was having an effect on Jones. “Tell us who you represent.”

  “Are you going to be a lawyer, son? Like your father? Or an honest one? Don’t!” He raised a hand as Jason bunched a fist; they stared at each other, their gaze well above Olive’s head. “Don’t be stupid, son, you’ll only get hurt. Are you going to be stupid, too, Mrs. Rockne?”

  Olive looked down at the tin of tomato soup in her hand; her arm was bent for throwing. The burglar alarm of the car in the next row suddenly stopped; the big car park was abruptly, almost strangely silent. Olive looked again at the tin of soup, then she dropped it on the back seat of the Civic. “No, Mr. Jones, I won’t be stupid that way. But I’d be stupid if I handed over all that money without knowing who you are. Do as I suggest, go and tell the police.”

  “You don’t care if your husband is labelled a thief?”

  “No,” said Olive, avoiding Jason’s eye.

  “You’re a strange one, Mrs. Rockne.”

  “I would be if I handed over all that money without knowing who you are.”

  Jesus, thought Jason, what’s got into her? He was suddenly afraid that his mother was pitching them into something that might have no bottom to it. Yet he heard himself say, “Did you kill my father?”

  “Don’t ask questions lik
e that, son.”

  Jason had never belonged to any gang, had never in any way been dangerously threatened. But he could feel the menace in this stranger, knew the man could kill, and he felt suddenly cold.

  If his mother recognized the menace, she didn’t show it. She put the last of the groceries in the car. “Put the trolley over there, Jason.”

  He took it across to the line of trolleys against a wall. He stood there a moment looking back at his mother and the stranger; with cars coming and going, he couldn’t hear what was being said. But they were both obviously angry with each other. Again he was abruptly afraid: For God’s sake, Mum, tell him they can have the money!

  He went back towards the Civic, jumping out of the way of some dumb young woman driver who reversed her Range Rover out of a row of cars without looking behind her. He glared at her, but she just gave him a smile as if apologizing for missing him. He hated these young mums with their four-wheel-drives and their bull-bars; he reckoned they could have won the bloody Gulf war, given their heads, in much less than three days. Then the mad thought dropped into his head that, if he had been behind the wheel of the Range Rover, instead of the dumb young mum, he could have driven it right over Mr. Jones. The thought frightened him: he was thinking murder.

  When he got back to the Civic he heard his mother say, “Write a letter to my lawyer, Mr. Jones. Her name is Angela Bodalle, B-O-D-A-L-L-E. You’ll find her office address in the phonebook.”

  Jones said nothing, just looked at her, then at Jason. Then he shoved the box of cornflakes at Jason. “You have this. It’s the sort of mush that should be brain food for you and your mother.”

  Then he was gone, striding quickly off among the cars, moving arrogantly into their paths, ignoring the tooting of horns and the screech of brakes. Jason looked at his mother.

  “He’ll be back, Mum. Who is he, did he tell you?”

  She was staring after the disappearing Jones, now just a silhouette against the bright light of the exit. “No. But we’re not going to give him the money.” Then she looked at him across the roof of the Civic. “You want us to keep it, don’t you? I think Dad meant for us to have it.”