Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  “One thing more,” said Clements, rising. “Was Miss Springfellow wearing a blue dress on Monday?”

  Ms. Quantock thought for a moment, with that concentration that some women have for remembering what other women have worn. “No, she was in yellow. She has several blue dresses, but she wasn’t wearing one on Monday.”

  “Thanks,” said Malone. “That will be all, Miss Quantock.”

  “It’s Ms.,” she said almost automatically, as if she spent half her time battling chauvinists like him.

  “I never try to pronounce anything with no vowels in it,” he said with a grin, “I once ruptured my tongue trying to book a Polish feminist. Don’t bother to call Miss Springfellow and tell her we’ve been to see you. Well tell her ourselves how loyal you’ve been.”

  He and Clements left Ms. Quantock and went out to the lift. He said, “What did you think of Mr. Broad? I could feel you in there, wanting to get up off your chair and thump him.”

  “I’m beginning to get pretty shirty about this Springfellow outfit, from the boss lady downwards. They’re an uppity mob, aren’t they?”

  “Wait till you’ve banked your first million. You’ll be the same.”

  They caught the lift and went down past the floors where euphoria, not so many days ago, had threatened to burst the windows. Two young men in broadly-striped shirts with white collars and their $125 Hermes ties got on at the foreign-exchange floor, their faces slack and pale. They looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “You, too?” said one.

  The other nodded. “Leave Friday.”

  “Just been fired?” said Clements.

  They looked at him, decided he looked solicitous and concerned, proving they couldn’t read faces. “Yeah, just this minute.”

  “Tough titty,” said Clements and grinned as if he had just seen a 100-to-l shot come home in the Derby. “You going to swap the Porsche for a skateboard?”

  “Up yours,” said one of them as they got off at the fifth floor.

  “Who’s got shit on the liver now?” said Malone as the lift doors closed. “You made a fortune on the market and you put the knife into those blokes.”

  “It’s being middle-aged,” said Clements, unrepentant. “Kids like that making the money they did! It’s criminal. Nobody should be successful till they’re middle-aged like me.”

  “Alexander the Great was successful at twenty-one.”

  “You mean Greg Alexander, plays for Penrith? Don’t try to make me feel a mean old son-of-a-bitch—you’re not gunna be successful at that. I’m gunna be just as shitty towards Justine when we see her. I think deep down I’m a Commo. I usedn’t to be, but it’s all these rich yuppies.”

  “I always thought you saw nothing wrong with being rich.” Over the past few weeks Malone had heard at least two snide jokes a day about the young high-flyers who had crashed. Nothing binds the lower orders together more than malicious envy, not even patriotism.

  “I don’t. So long as you’re middle-aged.”

  They got to the ground floor, crossed the pink-and-grey marbled lobby and went out into the hot morning. They walked across to The Wharf and climbed the granite steps to the brass-and-glass entrance. A doorman seated at a desk behind the glass wall spoke to them through an intercom, asking whom they wanted to see. Clements just flashed his badge, saying nothing. The doorman peered through the glass, then he pressed a button and the doors slid open.

  “We’re very careful here.” He was a tall thin man with hunched shoulders, as if he had spent his working life bending over to explain matters to rich old ladies. “We have the tightest security in Sydney, with the people we have living here. You wanted to see—?”

  “Miss Springfellow,” said Malone. “You’d have seen her if she’d gone out?”

  “Oh, sure. Unless she went straight down to the basement, to the garage. I’ll buzz her.”

  “Not just yet.” Clements put his hand on the doorman’s arm as he reached for his house phone. “Were you on duty here Monday night?”

  “Monday night? Yeah, sure. I only started day shift this morning. Yeah, I was here Monday night. There was a big party upstairs, at the Poluxes’. A Melbourne Cup Eve party, it was.”

  “Peter Polux, the banker—he has a flat here?”

  “We don’t call „em flats, they’re apartments. Other people live in flats. Like me.” He grinned. “Mr. Polux has the penthouse, right above Miss Springfellow’s apartment.”

  “Was she at the party, do you know?”

  “Not as far as I know. No, I don’t think so.”

  “Lady Springfellow?”

  “No. I didn’t know everyone who came in. I think Mr. Broad was the only one from across at Springfellow’s. He’s the finance director or something.”

  “We’ve met him. What’s your name, incidentally?”

  “Stan Kinley.” The doorman frowned, his long thin face suddenly lost in a maze of lines; he worriedly watched as Clements made a note of his name. “What’s this all about? I dunno I’m supposed to talk to you about the residents here.”

  “It’s about people’s movements, that’s all,” said Clements. “Did Miss Springfellow go out at all on Monday night?”

  We already know that, Malone thought; but he held back. Clements, probably without his realizing it, had taken over the investigation. Sooner or later Malone would have to wrench it back from him; but for the moment he found it safer to remain silent. He didn’t want Russ Clements asking him questions he’d rather not answer.

  Kinley hesitated a moment. “Well, yes, she did. Early in the evening, I dunno exactly when, just after I come on duty, she went out. She didn’t take her car or ask me to call a cab or anything. Then she come back, I dunno, I guess about nine o’clock, maybe a little later. She went out again about eleven—I was seeing some people from Mr. Polux’s party out and she went out at the same time. Again no car or taxi. She come back about half an hour later, maybe a bit more.”

  “How was she?”

  “How’d you mean? She was all right, a bit quiet, now I come to think of it. But she’s often like that, a bit up and down in her moods, you know what I mean? Don’t quote me, though.”

  “Never,” said Clements. “Now would you like to tell Miss Springfellow that Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements would like to see her?”

  Kinley looked at Malone with sudden new interest. “You’re not Scobie Malone? Geez, I saw you play at least a dozen times. I never knew why you weren’t picked for Australia.”

  “My sentiments, too,” said Malone modestly.

  As they waited for the lift he was grinning. Clements said, “That makes you feel good? Maybe I’d better start patting you on the back.”

  I’d feel better if you were less enthusiastic about kicking the rich in the bum.

  They rode up in a lift that was all brass and glass; the carpet on the floor felt thick enough to be straight off a merino’s back. Everything in The Wharf was designed to show the residents where their money had been spent. Discretion was something only the poor should afford.

  Justine was waiting for them at the door of her apartment, tension in every line of her, in her voice, too: “My secretary rang to say you’d been over there questioning her—”

  “We thought she might,” said Malone. “It’s just routine. Did Mr. Broad ring you, too?”

  Justine looked puzzled. “No. Should he have?”

  “I don’t know,” said Malone blandly. “I don’t know how things work in the Springfellow Corporation.”

  They followed her into the apartment. There was plenty of glass here, black glass; though no brass. The big living-room opened out on to a wide balcony, though these days anything larger than a pigeon roost was called a terrace; the harbour lay immediately below, the ferries seemingly coming in to berth in The Wharf’s basement. An interior decorator had been let loose in here, allowed his or her head. Black and white were predominant: black glass walls, white carpet, black and white leather couches
and chairs, black glass tables on white metal legs: it was like being trapped in a modernistic nightmare. The abstract paintings on the walls, with their vivid reds and greens and yellows, were somehow a relief to the eyes, as if reassuring any visitor that he hadn’t lost all sense of colour. Malone knew nothing about interior design, but he had the feeling that this was all old hat; when he described it this evening to Lisa, as she would insist that he did, she would tell him that it was definitely old hat, something that had gone out with Fred Astaire movies. If this was a rebellion on Justine’s part against her mother’s pinks and greys, she had gone all the way. How will my kids rebel against me? Malone wondered. But let that question remain in the future, the best place for problems.

  Someone materialized out of all the black glass, as if stepping out of a magician’s mirror. It was Alice Magee, who would never be at home in anything like this, not even with Fred Astaire.

  “I thought my granddaughter would like some support. You’re going to make a nuisance of yourself, aren’t you, Inspector?”

  “Only if we have to, Mrs. Magee. Have you been waiting for us?”

  “I’m just surprised you haven’t come sooner.”

  “We work to union rules, Mrs. Magee. Slow and easy.” The banter was done with a smile, but he wondered why she should have been waiting for them. Had Emma Springfellow had everyone as expectant as this when she had been alive?

  “Do sit down,” said Justine in a tone that suggested Malone and Clements had been galloping about the room. They sat down, the black leather sighing embarrassingly beneath them; the designer evidently had never been troubled by flatulence. Justine and Alice perched themselves on the edges of steel-framed chairs, like birds on a roost. Now they were together the resemblance could be seen, though Alice had the weathered, coarsened look that would never mar Justine. It had nothing to do with the fact that the granddaughter could afford the best of cosmetics and beauticians: she just could not imagine the life her grandmother had lived forty or fifty years ago. Circular Quay was more than a mere 700 kilometres from Cobar.

  Malone decided he had better do the questioning; Clements had to be held back. “Miss Springfellow, you’ve already told us you went up to see your aunt on the night of her murder. You got there about eight and you thought you left there about nine or so. Did you come straight home? Here, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you here Monday night, Mrs. Magee?”

  “No, I was down at Exeter. My daughter has a property down there. I told you.”

  “With Lady Springfellow?”

  “No. I’m still down there. I just came up today to do some shopping. And to see if Justine wanted me to stay with her?”

  She looked at her granddaughter, who shook her head. “No, I’m all right, Gran . . . Inspector, why are you here? Just to repeat your questions?”

  “No, to ask a few more. Did you go out again on Monday night?”

  She hesitated a moment. The two detectives and the two women were sitting on opposite sides of the big black-glass coffee table. There were six white-glass drink coasters on the table, like blank eyes in a black face. Justine picked up one and began to handle it nervously.

  “Ye-es. Yes, I did. I went out about eleven.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I just went for a walk—I went up Macquarie Street as far as Martin Place, then I came back—I don’t know, I can’t remember whether I came back down Pitt Street or Castlereagh. No, it was Pitt.”

  “That end of town is pretty deserted that time of night. Do you usually go for late-night walks?”

  “No. I was—I was upset. I’ve already told you I had the most fearful row with Aunt Emma. It was about the family takeover. There’s a tremendous amount of money involved—” She was her mother’s daughter, keeping the priorities prominent. She rolled the coaster through her fingers, as a gambler would a gambling chip.

  “When you walked up Macquarie Street, did you stop and think of going into The Vanderbilt?”

  “What was the point? Talking to Emma was like talking to a brick wall. I wasted my time going there in the first place.”

  “You should’ve listened to your mother,” said Alice.

  “We should all do that,” said Malone, but couldn’t remember a single piece of advice Brigid had ever given him, except not to forget his prayers and to keep his shoelaces tied. “Was that the only reason you went out, that you were upset?”

  “Well, no-o. Peter Polux upstairs rang down several times, trying to get me to go up to his party. I, er, don’t like Mr. Polux.”

  “Mr. Broad was there. Does he like him?”

  “I don’t know. They’re just business acquaintances, I think.”

  Then Malone said abruptly, deciding the plunge had to be taken before Clements dived in ahead of him, “When you went for your walk, did you take the gun with you?”

  It was almost as if he had produced it and pointed it at her. “What gun?”

  “The .380 calibre Walther you took from the collection in your mother’s house. Your father’s gun.”

  “Who said I took the gun?” She held the coaster as if she might throw it at him. Then she put it back on the table, as if putting temptation out of reach.

  Malone didn’t answer her question, but looked at Alice. “Did you know she had taken it, Mrs. Magee?”

  The two women stared at each other; this was something they had not expected. Then Alice Magee said, “Yes, I knew. I suggested it—I thought she needed something for protection, living alone here in this flat.” It was a flat to her, not an apartment.

  “You didn’t tell us that when we talked to you before. Why?”

  “I—I knew she didn’t have a licence for it. I didn’t want to get her into trouble.”

  “She’s in trouble now,” said Clements, saying something at last. “Her aunt was killed by two .380 calibre bullets that could have been fired from a Walther.”

  Both women’s hands tightened on the arms of their chairs; Justine’s hands looked particularly white, almost skeletal. She said huskily, “Are you accusing me of murdering my aunt?”

  “We’re just asking questions at the moment,” said Malone before Clements took them too far down that road. “Do you still have the gun?”

  “No.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I was frightened of it. I took it back to my mother’s house. I don’t know when—” She was flustered; all intelligence seemed to have dropped out of her face. “Yes, I do. It was the day of my father’s funeral. I took it with me and put it back in the collection, in the gun cabinet.”

  “Did anyone see you put it back? You didn’t tell your grandmother?”

  “No, I don’t think so. My mind’s a bit hazy about that day—I’d never been to a funeral before—”

  You’re lucky, thought Malone. Twenty-two years old and she’d never been even remotely touched by death. Now, in the space of a few weeks, she had been hit, violently, by violent death. “Is the gun still there?”

  “No,” said Alice Magee. “I’ll save you the trouble of going over to Mosman. It’s gone again.”

  “Did you see it after Justine returned it?”

  “No. If she put it—when she put it back, it couldn’t have been there long. I’d have noticed it.”

  “Are you in the habit of checking the gun collection?” said Clements. He was not taking notes. His notebook lay on the table beside the white coasters.

  “No. I just notice things, especially about the house. I’ve got a housekeeper’s eye, so my daughter says.”

  “What about the housekeeper? Would she have noticed it?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Miss Springfellow, was your argument with your aunt about money?”

  “Of course.” She sounded as if she believed all arguments were about money. Then abruptly she softened, something else coming out from behind the hard shell she had tried on in her mother’
s image: “Well, no, it was not all about money. There were other things—undercurrents. Mother and I and my grandmother, we were always treated as outsiders by Emma. She hated the thought that Mother and I had the Springfellow name.”

  “She thought Magee was common,” said Alice, who had her own hard shell; snobbery would bounce off her like rocks off a tank. “She hated anything that smacked of the Irish or Catholics.”

  Malone grinned at Clements, “I wondered why she didn’t like us that day we met her. I thought it was just because we were cops.”

  “Had you ever threatened her?” said Clements, taking up the questioning again. Malone noticed that in Clements’s approach to Justine there was a trace of the antagonism he had shown towards the two yuppies in the Springfellow lift. Clements had never before given even a hint that he would take up any proletarian cause; indeed, in his uniformed days he had relished the opportunity to rough up demonstrators, particularly any leftist trade unionists or students. Now, all at once, he was beginning to wave a banner, if only in his manner. He had developed a sudden resentment of the rich, especially the young rich.

  “Threatened her?” Justine was puzzled, the hard shell cracking even more. She plucked nervously at the blue dress she wore.

  “There was a note in her diary said you had done that.”

  That’s not entirely true, Malone said silently; the entry said that J. had threatened her. But he wasn’t going to contradict Clements in front of the two women. At the same time he realized that, sooner or later, he would have to ask the question himself of the other J., John Leeds.

  Justine looked dumbly at her grandmother; Alice Magee stepped into the breach. “We all threatened her at one time or another—we had some real donnybrooks. I threatened to throw her out of my daughter’s house one day. She was a real nasty woman, but somehow I felt sorry for her. She was around the bend, I think. It’s tougher for women, being alone like her.” She had a natural sympathy for the underdog, even a rich one. “She thought the whole world was against her.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Malone; then looked directly at Justine. “Miss Springfellow, we don’t think you’re telling us all of the truth.”