Bleak Spring

by Jon Cleary

  “He had a criminal record, mostly stand-over stuff.”

  Bezrow carefully transferred one of the steaks from the tray to his plate. “Let me ask you something. Am I suspected of being involved in Mr. Dunne’s murder?”

  Malone admired the fat man’s footwork. “In a short answer—maybe.”

  Bezrow shook his head. “The short answer and the true one, Inspector, is no. N-O. I’m no angel, as the saying is, but I’m not, definitely not, a murderer.”

  “Did Kelpie do anything for you short of murder, then? Like standing over some punters who were slow to pay up?”

  “Do you usually insult people at their own table?”

  “Not usually, no. But then we don’t usually conduct our investigations over lunch. Not since the government introduced the fringe benefits tax.”

  Bezrow smiled. “What a loss that was!”

  Clements had sat silent through most of the meal, concentrating on his eating as if spreading out what was, for him, sparse fare. But now he said, “Would one of your punters have killed Kelpie?”

  Bezrow considered that while he delicately cut his steak. “Perhaps. It’s a thought.”

  “If it’s a thought,” said Malone, “have another thought. Why would they have killed him? Because you’d asked Kelpie to lean on them? Can you name a punter who has welshed on you, one who might’ve killed Kelpie Dunne as a warning to you to back off? Thank you.” He held out his glass as Bezrow offered him more wine.

  “Let me put a thought to you, Inspector. If some misguided punter killed Mr. Dunne because he wanted to put a warning to me, then what is the connection with Will Rockne’s murder? I have a feeling, Inspector, that you are throwing bait into a pond where there is no fish. That’s an old Georgian saying. My grandfather was fond of quoting it.”

  Malone realized now that he and Clements could sit through an eight-course banquet with Bezrow and they would get nothing from him. “Every saying or proverb has a saying that contradicts it. But I can’t think of one at the moment. Nice salad. What’s the dressing?”

  “Russian.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Clements. “Do you know a Russian named Jones?”

  “Is he one of the St. Petersburg Joneses?”

  Clements smiled; he was enjoying this lunch, even if the helpings were inadequate. “Actually, his name is Igor Dostoyevsky.”

  “You’re still pulling my leg.”

  “No, really. He also goes under the name of Boris Collins. He worked for the Soviet embassy in Canberra, but lately he’s been selling Mercedes here in Sydney.”

  “So why should I know him?”

  Malone had been watching Bezrow; the fat man had thrown up defences with each fencing line in the conversation. Nothing short of torture would ever get an admission from Bezrow. It made Malone wonder if that was why torture featured so prominently in Russian history, or what little he knew of it.

  “Russians and Georgians have hated each other since time immemorial, Sergeant. We don’t fraternize.”

  “Mr. Dostoyevsky never came here trying to sell you a Mercedes in preference to a Rolls?” said Malone.

  “Dostoyevsky as a car salesman?” Bezrow chortled, in control of the interrogation; torture would, indeed, be needed. But Malone had played the wrong sport, training would be needed. “The picture is a good one, don’t you think? You’re wasting bait again, Inspector.”

  Bait was never wasted; some ponds were deeper than others, gave up different fish. Later, over cheese and fruit, Malone said, “Did you lose much on yesterday’s grand final?”

  “Are we still men of the world or are you now substituting for the Gaming Squad?”

  “We never encroach on each other’s turf.”

  “Not even when there is a murder on their turf?”

  “Ah yes, we do then. But they keep the betting franchise on whether we’ll solve it or not.”

  “Sound policy. Yes, I lost a packet yesterday. The final odds were five to four on, but I’d made the mistake of offering much longer odds than that earlier in the season.”

  “Kelpie Dunne must of known something, six to one,” said Clements. “Who’ll get the money, now that him and his missus are both dead?”

  “His estate, I suppose. We’ll just wait till there’s a claim.”

  “You won’t go looking for the heirs? They might need the money to pay for the funerals. Punters’ heirs usually do.”

  “Not yours, Sergeant, from what I hear. You’re a punter, you know bookmakers aren’t in the Salvation Army game. We’re famous for our donations to charity, but not to punters. Be realistic.”

  Malone threw more bait: “Mr. Bezrow, your man Charlie Lawson went down to Will Rockne’s office last week and asked for your files. The secretary couldn’t give them to him because we’d put a seal on the filing cabinets. If you were after your files, that’d suggest Will did some business for you. Yet when we went through the cabinets, there were no files on you. Nor Mr. Jones.”

  Bezrow was coring an apple; he did it with all the concentration of a surgeon taking out a vital organ. At last he said, “That’s interesting.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? What would the files on you, if we ever find them, tell us?”

  Bezrow looked up, the surgery completed. “This and that. Bits and pieces. Mr. Rockne did some conveyancing for me on some properties I sold.”

  “That was all?”

  “Yes, nothing more. I was just throwing some business his way because he was a local.”

  “So why would the files go missing? And why did Charlie Lawson go asking for them?”

  Bezrow ate a thin slice of apple. “You think your bait has finally got a nibble?”

  “I think so. Is there a Georgian saying that covers that?” Bezrow just smiled, and Malone went on. “The only two files missing were yours and Mr. Jones’s. Mr. Dostoyevsky. There must be some connection.”

  Bezrow ate another slice of apple, then said, amiably, “I don’t think I’d better answer any more questions, Inspector, not till I’ve consulted my lawyer.”

  “I thought Will Rockne was your lawyer?”

  Bezrow was still seemingly unperturbed. “Mr. Rockne belonged to the lower grades, Inspector. We’re coming up to a grand final, aren’t we? I’ll have to bring in my first team.”

  “It wouldn’t be Mrs. Bodalle, would it?” That was a wild cast into the pond.

  Bezrow frowned. “You have me there, Inspector. I’ve heard of Mrs. Bodalle—who hasn’t?—but I’ve never met her. No, I’m sure you know my lawyer, Caradoc Evans.”

  “Oh sure, we know him. A Welshman and a Georgian. We’re up against something, don’t you think, Russ?”

  “I still like our chances,” said Clements. “You wanna take a bet from me, Mr. Bezrow? What odds will you give me?”

  “I closed the book a moment ago, Sergeant. Coffee?”

  9

  I

  JASON WAS in bed with Jill Weigall. It was no dream; yet he couldn’t believe it. When she slid off him and lay beside him, he remained flat on his back, every nerve-end wanting to burst out of his skin. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to wake up. That was what he actually said: “I don’t wanna wake up.”

  “I wish you could stay till morning. I’d keep you awake all night. That’s unbelievable.”

  He was no longer embarrassed by it. “Well, you gotta go with what you’ve got.”

  She just smiled; and he wondered if he was making a fool of himself by trying to sound cool and sophisticated. He would never ask her, but she could not have been to bed with guys as young as himself, at least not since she herself had been his age. She was experienced—God, was she experienced!—and she had spoiled him for any young girls in the future. For a moment he thought of Claire Malone, whom he had never even touched, and was instantly ashamed, though he didn’t know why. From now on his whole life was going to take a new direction, at least when it came to women.

  He had moped around the house all day after he and M
um had come home from the court; he hadn’t wanted to go to school and face all the guys with their unspoken questions. Gran had been there, fussing about, picking on him for being in the way, and Shelley, sensibly, had escaped and gone to school in the afternoon. When she came home she had told him she wished she had stayed at home—“God, you’d of thought I was a freak or something! If it hadn’t been for Mother Brendan . . . Usually she’s a drag, but today she was really nice. I think we should give up school, Jay, move right away. Go somewhere else, up to Queensland maybe, somewhere where nobody will know us. You think Mum might say yes?”

  “We can ask her. But not yet . . .” Not till we find out if we can keep that five million dollars. That had been on his mind all day, once they had released his mother from that ridiculous charge of murdering Dad.

  Then, almost without thinking, he had rung Jill at the office. Miraculously, she had had no date for tonight, and the invitation had tumbled out of his mouth: would she like to go to a movie with him?

  He had had to borrow the money from his mother: “Fifty dollars? What do you want that much for?”

  Just as well he hadn’t asked for a hundred, his first thought. “Mum, I owe the guys a movie and a hamburger. It’s my turn to shout.” She would kill him if he told her it was to take out Jill. “Come on, be a sport. We can afford it.”

  She looked at him shrewdly and for a moment he worried that she was going to ask him if he was taking out Jill. But she said, “You’re not thinking of that five million dollars, are you?”

  “Yes,” he grinned.

  She smiled, too, and gave him the fifty dollars. “We mustn’t, not yet.”

  “You’re spoiling him,” said Gran Carss, but he felt so good that he even grinned at her.

  His mother lent him the Civic, insisting that he put on his P plates—P plates, for God’s sake, when taking out a girl like Jill! But as he drove over to pick her up at her flat in Tamarama, he smiled at the thought: he was on a Provisional licence, at least as far as a lover went. But before he went up and knocked on the door, he removed the plates.

  He took her to see City Slickers, a movie she said she wanted to see—“I love Billy Crystal.” He was glad she hadn’t chosen some R-rated show, all chock-a-block with nudity and sex; that would only have made him uncomfortable. When he came out of the cinema with her he was thrilled and relieved when she suggested they go back to her flat—“My flatmate is away for the week.” He silently thanked the absent flatmate. The twenty-eight dollars he had left in his wallet wouldn’t have bought the supper Jill expected from a guy on his first date with her. They had gone to an early session and there would have been time for him to have had to buy her a proper dinner.

  He hardly looked at her flat; all he noted was that it seemed cramped after the rooms in the house at Coogee. He guessed you had to live small when you started out living on your own. She cooked them bacon and eggs and took a Sara Lee apple danish from the fridge for dessert. “I’m the world’s worst cook. Do you want to marry a fabulous cook?”

  The question took him by surprise; but it seemed an innocent one. “I haven’t got around yet to thinking about a girl in the, you know, kitchen.”

  “Where do you think of them? In the bedroom?”

  The apple danish, though oiled with ice cream, went down his throat like a lump of rock. “Sometimes.”

  She smiled. “I’m teasing you, Jay. Come on, finish that.”

  “What about the washing-up?” Why did he ask that, for God’s sake? To show he was domesticated or something?

  “Leave it. I’m not a good housekeeper, either.” He had noticed that: the kitchen sink was full of last night’s dishes.

  Ten minutes later, he was astonished how quickly it happened, she said, “Undress me.”

  He had lost his virginity twelve months ago to a girl from Ascham at a party in Bellevue Hill, where he had been a virtual stranger. She had been much more experienced than he, though no subtler; it had been like groping a female gorilla. When he first got inside her sweater she told him she had only been screwed (the word had jolted him: he hadn’t expected it to come out of Ascham with the la-di-dah Darling Point accent) by Protestant boys from Cranbrook or Scots; she wanted to know if a Catholic boy, with his sense of sin, would be hotter; her mother, it seemed, was a psychologist. The word sin had also jolted him; it almost made him go limp. But he had recovered and had sinned, twice, flat out like Lucifer himself.

  Now he opened his eyes and turned to look at Jill, at her profile against her tangled hair and at the undulations of her marvellous body. He said, “I love you.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet, Jay.”

  “Why? Because I’m too young for you?”

  She put her fingers on his lips. “No, for other reasons, Jay. Wait till you’ve known other girls . . . I’ve got something to show you.”

  She got out of bed and he shut his mouth tight before he could make some bloody stupid remark about what she was showing him as she went to a dressing table, then turned and came back to him. She sat on the side of the bed and handed him an envelope. He recognized it at once, the sort of legal envelope he had seen many times in his father’s office.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s your father’s will. I found it today in one of his legal books. Looks like he had hidden it there for some reason.”

  “I thought Mum had already got a copy of the will?”

  “I don’t know whether there’s another copy of that. After the police released all your father’s personal papers, I sent them up to your place in a box. Then I found that copy today when I was going through the books on his shelves. It’s one he made three weeks ago.”

  “Do you know what’s in it?”

  She looked at him reproachfully. “Jay—”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean had you peeked at it. But why give it to me? Why not to Mum?”

  She got back under the sheet, as if the discussion was now too serious for nudity. He eased himself up in the bed, she propped a pillow up behind him, and they lay there like a couple who made a habit of discussions in bed.

  “I should give it to her, I suppose. But she turned her back on me at the funeral, did you know that? So deliberate, right there in front of all your relations and friends. But not before she told me I shouldn’t even be there. God!” He was shocked at the anger in her and didn’t even know how to handle it. “I wasn’t there because I was your father’s mistress or anything! One weekend, that was all, a bloody miserable failure! I was there, for God’s sake, because I worked for him for two years, because he was my boss!”

  “I looked for you after the funeral—” He touched her bare arm.

  “I sneaked away. I’ve never been so humiliated. But it’s over now—forget it. Take the will home to your mother.”

  “I think I’ll open it.” The envelope was only slightly sealed; it was remarkable how easily the flap came unstuck in his hand. “Is it against the law?”

  “What a crazy question! God, your father’s been murdered, they arrested your mother, there’s millions of dollars that nobody knows where they came from—”

  She made him sound really dumb; naked as he was, he seemed to flush all over. “Yeah, I guess opening your father’s will is nothing, then.” He pulled out the single-page document. “It’s not very long. I always thought they ran to pages and pages . . .”

  “Maybe it’s just a codicil to another will. I didn’t see what was in it, he held his hand over it while he got Mrs. Rosario the cleaning lady and me to sign it. What’s it say?” She didn’t appear particularly interested, it could have been just another client’s last will and testament.

  “. . . I hereby revoke all prior wills and testa—testa—mentary dispositions heretofore made by me and declare this to be my last will and testament . . . Does that mean everything he’s written before doesn’t mean anything now?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “. . . Blah, blah, blah . . . to divide my entire esta
te, including the monies in account Number 5104 in the Shahriver Credit International Bank at its Sydney Office, equally between my two children, Jason William Rockne and Shelley Mary Rockne . . . My wife, Olive Mary Rockne, will understand the reasons for my exclusion of her from any benefits from my estate . . .” He turned his head, looked directly at Jill. “This is gunna floor Mum.”

  It was a moment or two before Jill said, “Did your mother and father hate each other?”

  “I dunno. I never thought so. But—there was something between them that I never cottoned on to.”

  “Jay, I don’t think you should let your mother know you know what’s in the will. Seal it up and just give it to her without saying anything.”

  “I’ll have to tell her where I got it.”

  “Yes, you’ll have to do that. You don’t have to tell her where you were when you read it.” She smiled, but tossed back the sheets and got out of bed. “I’d love some more of what we’ve just had, a whole night of it, but I think you’d better take the will home to your mother, give it to her tonight and not in the morning. If you get home too late, she might guess we’ve been to bed. I don’t want her thinking that’s all I’m intent on, going to bed with the Rockne men.” Then she turned back, leaned across the bed and put her palm against his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jay. That sounded cruel, mentioning your father.”

  He stared at her, wanting to pull her back into bed; she must know how much she was tempting him, yet she was so casual about what she was showing him. God, he was so innocent, he had so much to learn about women!

  Somehow he got the thickness out of his throat. “There’s something else in the will.” He read from the page. “To my secretary, Jill Weigall, I leave the sum of ten thousand dollars, the amount to be found in cash in my office safe . . .”

  She sat down heavily on the side of the bed, remained very still. Suddenly he was taking her nudity for granted. When she looked back at him over her shoulder, the lock of hair down over her brow, all he was aware of were her eyes. They were deeply hurt. “He was paying me off. I feel like a bloody whore!”