Yesterday's Shadow

by Jon Cleary

  “And what's he like?”

  But then the door opened and Mr. Goodbody and Miz Caporetto came in. Avery waved a finger at the door and Goodbody turned and closed it. Avery stood up and introduced the newcomers; there was obvious rapport between the three of them. Then he said, “This is Chief Superintendent Random and Inspector Malone from the New South Wales Police Service. They have bad news. Really bad news. They have just found the Ambassador's wife in a hotel up on Central Square. Murdered.”

  Gina Caporetto sat down suddenly in a chair which, fortunately, was right behind her. Mitchell Goodbody stood stockstill, one foot in front of the other, as if caught in mid-stride. Then he said, “Murdered?”

  Malone had heard the echo countless times. Violent death was beyond the immediate comprehension of most people: at least the violent death of those they knew. Consular officials, like police, must have experience of tragedy, but, he guessed, it was the tragedies of strangers. And they would not have expected personal—well, semi-personal—violence here on their doorstep in a friendly city.

  “How? Was she—murdered by some stranger?” Goodbody had a soft Southern accent. He was short and thin and looked as if he might be perpetually worried. He had thick fair hair, cut very short as if he had just come out of boot camp, and a long thin face that would reach middle age before the rest of him. The sort of worker who would always see that the office wheels never stopped turning. “Which hotel was it? Central Square?” He frowned, as if it was remote territory.

  “The Southern Savoy,” said Random.

  “The what?” Gina Caporetto was a blonde Italian-American, her birth roots north of Milan; it was an unfortunate name, a reminder of an Italian defeat in World War I; but the two Australians in the room had never heard of it. In any case men, and women, would hardly remark her name; instead they took note of her body and, eyes rising, her quite attractive face. She wore a beige knitted dress that looked as if she had put it on wet and it had shrunk. “I've never heard of it—no, wait a minute. Last year, during the Olympics, there was a big group from, I've forgotten where, New England somewhere, they were booked in there. I went up there once—” She, too, frowned. “She was—there?”

  “It's a hundred-dollar-a-night place,” said Avery. “Superintendent Random tells me the circumstances aren't—well, not the best. She was found naked in her room. She'd been strangled.”

  “You are sure it's Mrs. Pavane?” Goodbody's accent seemed to have thickened with shock.

  “Certain,” said Malone and held up the plastic bag and the passport.

  “Do the media know?” Gina Caporetto had recovered her poise, which was considerable.

  “Miss Caporetto is our press officer,” said Avery.

  “They know there's been a double murder—”

  “A double murder?” Goodbody seemed to be making a habit of the echo.

  “We don't think the other homicide—a hotel cleaner—is connected to that of Mrs. Pavane. But we've only just started our investigation—”

  Gina Caporetto looked at Avery. “Shouldn't our people be handling this?”

  “I'm afraid not,” said Random, getting in first. “This is our turf, Miz Caporetto. We'll welcome cooperation, but that's all. I don't know the set-up at your embassy—”

  “I'll explain the situation to Canberra,” said Avery. “I'll call them now. Maybe you could offer Mr. Random and Mr. Malone some coffee, Gina? Take them into your office while I call Canberra. You stay with me, Mitch. This is just between ourselves till I've talked to the embassy.”

  Goodbody still looked shaken: the wheels had come off and he had found himself with no jack. “They'll be all over us—”

  “No, they won't, Mitch,” said Avery warningly. “Go ahead, Gina, give the gentlemen some coffee.”

  Gina Caporetto led the two detectives out of the big office into a smaller one on the other side of a lobby. The secretary at the desk outside Avery's room looked up enquiringly, but Ms. Caporetto just shook her head.

  She closed the door to her office and went to an old-fashioned percolator on a hot-plate. “I make my own coffee. We Americans think we make the best coffee in the world. But—”

  She smiled and Malone said, “Don't quote you. Did you ever meet Mrs. Pavane?”

  “Cream or black? Sugar?” She brought them their cups, then took her own behind her desk and sat down. It was a neat, comfortable office; but Malone wondered how comfortable it would be for her in the coming days. Even the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes on a small standard in a corner looked limp.

  “Yes, I met her, once down in Canberra just after they had arrived and twice up here. I took her shopping one day and another day I took her to lunch. She was trying to get the feel of—well, Australians, I guess.”

  “But?” said Malone.

  “But?” She paused, with her cup held in front of her face like a mask.

  Greg Random said, “Miz Caporetto, we cops read what is unsaid. It comes with experience—in other circumstances we might have made good diplomats.” He looked sideways at Malone. “Except Inspector Malone, who is notoriously undiplomatic.”

  “Nice coffee,” said Malone diplomatically, holding up his cup.

  Her first smile had been forced, a muscular effort, but now she appeared a little more relaxed; she shook her head and smiled at both of them. She looked like a sex bomb, but she had a cool mind that could always control it.

  “Yes—but. I just, I don't know, I felt she wasn't entirely a stranger here.”

  “Did you query her on it?”

  “Yes. Diplomatically.” Just a faint smile.

  “And what did she say?”

  She took a memory pause; then she said, “I'm being mean, but it was like she was making up an answer. Then she said she had been out here eight or nine years ago on a quick business trip. She had stayed at the Regent.”

  “Five-star,” said Malone. “So why did she choose the Southern Savoy this time? It'd be struggling to pick up three stars.”

  “Did she let her hair down when you took her to lunch?” Random had finished his coffee.

  She got up, took his cup and poured more coffee for him. “Not really. We weren't exactly girls on an equal footing—she was the Ambassador's wife.” She came back, sat down, paused again as if she realized she had spoken in the past tense: was the Ambassador's wife. “She seemed to have tightened up after that first shopping visit. She wasn't rude, but she was—well, distant. As if suddenly she had taken a dislike to, I dunno, Sydney or Australia. It happened after this guy spoke to her.”

  “Which guy?” Random had almost finished his second cup. Slow in almost everything else, he was a quick coffee drinker, not a sipper.

  “We hadn't started lunch when this guy came up, said, 'Aren't you—' I didn't catch the name, he sorta mumbled it the way—”

  “The way Australians do,” said Malone. “My wife is always telling me to open my mouth. She's Dutch.”

  “Well, yes,” said Ms Caporetto, trying to sound polite. “Well, anyway, she just froze him. She just said a blunt 'No' and he apologized and sorta limped away.”

  “Did you get a good look at the man?” asked Malone.

  “Not really. I was looking at her. He was short and, I'm not sure, bald. He stopped by for just a few seconds. The place was crowded and he just sort of disappeared.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Even at the time I thought it a bit strange—she just made no comment. She didn't look at me, picked up her menu and, I think I've got it right, said, 'I'll have the oysters and the barramundi.'”

  “So she knew about our oysters and our fish?” said Malone.

  “Well, yes, it seemed so. But she'd been in Canberra a coupla months—no, at that time a month or maybe five weeks—and maybe they'd told her what was best.”

  “What else do they have to talk about down in Canberra?” said Random. “Where did you have lunch?”

  “At Catalina. It was a Friday, all the eastern suburbs lad
ies were there.”

  “What do you know about her back in the States?”

  “Nothing. I knew nothing about the Ambassador till we heard he was coming. He's from Kansas City. I come from Philly—Philadelphia. Anything west of the Mississippi is still Indian territory to us.”

  Just like us, thought Malone, though on a smaller scale. Sydney's eastern suburbs thought of the western suburbs as Indian territory. “What's he like?”

  “Charming. He's no hayseed or cowboy—” She stopped, shook her head again, looked squarely at the two men. “Why am I talking to you like this? Because you're cops?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Malone. “Because, like us, you want to know who killed the Ambassador's wife.”

  She pondered a moment, then she nodded. “Okay. As I said, he's no hayseed. He graduated from the University of Missouri, then he went on to Oxford, England—he was there two or three years behind President Clinton. He's very much okay and the word from Canberra is that he's very popular and respected on the diplomatic circuit. Being a US ambassador is not the easiest job in the world, no matter where you are.”

  “What is the security set-up? Is there an FBI agent at the embassy?”

  “No, he's here at the consulate—that's the posting. But he went down to Canberra last night when Mrs. Pavane didn't return there.”

  Malone glanced at Random. “Did you know there was an FBI man stationed here?”

  “Yes. It's not top secret, but it's not broadcast. So far we've had no dealings with him.”

  Malone felt uneasy, but said nothing. Then Consul-General Avery came in. His face was stiff, but he seemed to have recovered from the shock that Random and Malone had brought him. He looked ready for business, unsettling though it might be.

  “I spoke to our Chief of Mission first, then the Ambassador came on the line. It's floored him—he sounded as if I'd hit him with a ten-pound hammer. He's coming up right away—they've got a plane standing by. He'll be here in an hour, an hour and a half at the most. Where is Mrs. Pavane's body?”

  “At the morgue,” said Random. “If you could meet him at the airport and take him there—it's out at Glebe. We'll let them know to expect him. He'll need to identify the body. Then we'd like to see him.”

  “Meet him here, will you? We'd like to keep him away from the media for as long as possible, at least till he's got over the shock. Once it's on the wire services or the reps here of our bigger papers . . .” His brows came down, his mouth twisted and for a moment he looked ugly. Then his face cleared and he looked at his watch. “Say one-thirty?”

  “We'll be here,” said Random, then turned to Gina Caporetto. “We won't identify Mrs. Pavane till we've talked to the Ambassador. We'll keep her out of the news till then. But then—”

  “Then,” said Avery with the voice of experience, “the fan starts whirring.”

  “I'm afraid so,” said Random. “Inspector Malone will be handling it. He's a good man on fans and what sometimes flies out of them.”

  “Shit,” said Malone, but under his breath.

  Going down in the lift, in the long drop from the 59th floor, Malone felt his spirits descending, too. There were only the two of them in the lift and he said, “Given my choice I think I'll take the hotel's cleaner and the knife job on him. You can have Mrs. Pavane.”

  “You have no choice, chum. My Welsh mother used to say—”

  “Forget it. You Welsh are a melancholy lot.”

  “So are you Irish at times. Like now.”

  III

  With Celtic pessimism Malone believed in the invasion of the irrational into the orderly. But he did not always accept the toss of the coin by God or the gods, whichever one believed in. He would not accept the second toss of the coin.

  He dropped Random off at Police Centre and drove on back to Homicide in Strawberry Hills. There were no hills and there had never been any strawberries, but the voters of Sydney lived and worked in other areas with names just as illusory: Ultimo, Sans Souci, Como. God set a bad example for developers when He named the Garden of Eden.

  Malone rode up to the fourth floor, let himself in the security door and found Phil Truach sitting with Clements, waiting for him.

  “How'd you go?” asked Clements sympathetically.

  Malone told them of the visit to the Consul-General's office. “I think it's going to be a really bad headache. Let's talk of something simpler. How'd you go, Phil?”

  “I haven't come up with much. Nobody saw the cleaner knifed—he was well and truly dead when another guy found him. He wasn't popular, but I didn't get the idea that anyone there would want to top him. He was found in the room where they keep all the cleaning equipment. There didn't appear to have been any struggle—all the buckets and mops and things were neatly stacked. Unless the killer put everything back . . . Crime Scene have dusted the room for prints. They'll let us know.”

  “Who was he?”

  Truach looked at his notebook. “Boris Jones, aged forty, his card said. He was a Russian, they said, but he'd changed his name. Mrs. Jones is in there—” He nodded towards one of the interview rooms. “I went out to see her, she lives out at Rozelle. She asked who was in charge and I said you and she said you were the one she wanted to talk to.”

  “Why me?”

  “I dunno. Ask her.”

  “How's she taking it? His murder?”

  “She's pretty calm, considering.” Truach looked towards the closed door of the interview room. “She's been bashed. A black eye and some bruises.”

  “The husband did it?”

  “She didn't say. Just said she wanted to talk to you. She hardly said a word all the way back here. She's got a friend with her, a Mrs. Quantock. She does all the talking.”

  Malone stood up. “Righto, I'll talk to her. But she's your girl. I've got enough on my plate with the Ambassador's missus. Russ, make sure that Regent Street has got the names and addresses of everyone who was booked in last night at the Southern Savoy. They can start doing the donkey-work, checking everyone on the hotel's register.” Then he looked at Clements' still-clean desk. “Get ready, mate. That desk is going to see more paper than a ticker-tape parade.”

  “I can't wait,” said Clements and slumped further back in his chair.

  Malone went into the interview room, motioning Gail Lee to follow him. It was standard procedure that two officers had to be present during an interview; he chose Gail because of the two other women in the room. In the climate of women he, with a wife and two daughters, was showerproof; but heavy weather was another matter. Not that he expected heavy weather in this room: that was to come when he met Ambassador Pavane.

  The two women were sitting side by side at the single table in the room. One was in her mid-forties: age and measurement: there was a lot of Mrs. Quantock and she looked ready to use her weight and experience. The other woman was slight, dark-haired and would have been attractive but for the damage to her face.

  “Well!” said Mrs. Quantock; she had a voice for shouting over backyard fences, several of them. “We've had to wait long enough!”

  “I'm sorry, Mrs. Quantock. There was another murder at the same hotel—”

  “Another?” She looked at Mrs. Jones. “Delia—?”

  Delia Jones looked across the table as Malone sat down. “Hullo, Scobie.”

  Malone was accustomed to shock; it came with a policeman's lot. But not for the shock of meeting Delia Bates, the long-forgotten love of twenty-five years ago, now the widow of a murdered man. Recognition had not been instant: twenty-year-old Delia was partially hidden in this woman with the battered face sitting opposite him.

  “Delia—” Involuntarily he put his hand across the table to press hers. “Jesus, I didn't know—”

  “You know each other?” Mrs. Quantock was the sort of friend who would never be left out of any relationship. She would intrude with the best of intentions, swamping the friend with rescue efforts, throwing lifebelts like hoopla rings. She glared at Malone: “You
didn't know what sorta bastard he was? He's been belting her all their married life, in front of the kids—”

  Delia, still with her eyes on Malone, put her hand on her friend's arm. “It's okay, Rosie. We haven't seen each other in twenty-five years.” As if she had counted every one of them. “He knows nothing about Boris. He's married and has got kids of his own.”

  Malone was aware of Gail Lee observing all this with what he called her Oriental lack of expression (though never to her face). She was half-Chinese and she had never succumbed to the temptation to favour her Australian half; serenity is not an Australian expression, at least not amongst the city voters, and she always looked serene. At the moment her face was blank.

  Malone was a private man and he did not like his private life exposed; not even that of twenty-five years ago. He had been in love then; or thought so. Till he had gone to London and met Lisa, and then Delia and all the other girls he had known had dropped out of his mind. He had come back to Sydney (he had that year been on another case that had taken him into diplomatic territory; he had gone to London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner, another ambassador, for murder), had spent two days finding the courage to be decent, then met Delia and told her it was all over, that he had fallen in love, deeply, with another girl. Delia had looked at him, saying nothing, then she had got up from the table where they had been at an outdoor cafe and walked away without a word and out of his life. He had sat there, feeling an utter bastard; then there had been the deep feeling of relief (an honest emotion that bastards can feel) and he got up and went down to the old GPO and booked a call to Lisa, still in London. He would never be able to explain that to Gail Lee. Nor had he ever fully explained it to Lisa. Girls one has slept with should be left undisturbed.

  “I dunno,” said Mrs. Quantock, “I dunno how you can sit there so bloody calm, like nothing's happened—”

  “I was always calm, wasn't I, Scobie?”